Aaron Around The World    >>    Europe    >>    United Kingdom    >>    London, England

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Monday, 4 May 2009 - Crazies

  
 
Public holiday today (no idea why, just is), the weather forecast was for crap, so I was looking forward to a good sleep in! That however was ruined when at 7:30am this crazy cow felt it necessary to stand in the middle of the road (while traffic swerved to avoid her) and yell up at my neighbour at the top of her lungs for her bag and her phone charger, hahaha, dear me! "Sayid, give me my fucking bag and my fucking charger!" - over and over again. Sayid was clearly ignoring her as this was going on for about ten minutes (during which I noticed other people glaring out their windows as well, but none with a camera ;)
  
Her cell phone battery can't have been too flat as that received several good yellings as well after she got sick of screaming at a building hehe.

 
 
Eventually she threatened to call "the fucking police", after which there was huge thud as Sayid threw her bag onto the footpath below from his third-storey window hahaha!
  
She then called Sayid a few choice names and continued to bang on for her phone charger. Two minutes later that got fired out the window as well, nearly hitting a very bemused council worker on its way down hahaha classic!

 
15 minutes after it all started she pealed her precious charger off the pavement and stormed off, still in the middle of the road hehe! I must admit, I will miss the crazies when I leave London ;)

Wednesday, 6 May 2009 - Touch me

  

A couple weeks back a few guys from work and I signed up to play in a touch rugby league over spring / summer. Our first game was tonight, and we got thumped 5-1 hahaha, with our 1 coming from a brilliant corner by a fellow Kiwi who made awkward love to a cone in the process - spectacular action!

This was just a grading game, so they should be a bit easier from next week (hopefully with girls in the other team - groovy ;)

Thursday, 7 May 2009 - More crazies, this time with guns!

  
 
The house across the road has always been suspicious to us - weird people coming and going at all hours etc, just something not right about the place. Anyway, I'm in the middle of cooking dinner tonight when Davydd, my flatmate, comes in from the lounge saying he's just seen some guy across the road pull out a pistol, cock it, hold it out in plain sight for a few seconds, and then stuff it down the back of his trousers. I ran for my camera, hid down just below my bedroom window (which overlooks the road), and started snapping! For the next few minutes I got several shots of this guy acting really weirdly (while Davydd was on the phone to the cops). I didn't see a gun, but he's definitely got something behind is back in the left and middle photos. He stood on the steps there for a bit - constantly looking from side-to-side, slowly moved down the stairs towards the basement, and then kept swiftly pacing back and forward behind the concrete wall there.

 
This chick then emerged, walked over to him, and he handed something to her. Unfortunately I couldn't see what it was as he had his back turned to me and was obscuring my view of her. She then disappeared down to the basement flat, and was gone for about two minutes (while he kept pacing).

 
 
Then he thought he'd just stand on the wall - another normal thing to do.
  
A short while thereafter a couple others emerged from the building, and they all stood round and had a ciggy or two. While this was going on we had a mufti cop in my bedroom, with all of us watching everything (and me taking photos hahaha ;) Armed police were also setting themselves up around the corner at this time, and waiting for a warrant to come through to barge in and bust the place up.

 
 
Eventually that warrant came through (by which time everyone had gone back inside), and no less than about 20 armed cops came jogging around the corner hehe. Half of them went up to the front door, the other half down to the basement flat, out came the battering ram and fucking BANG - in they went!
  
I wasn't the only one taking photos after the neighbours noticed what was happening.

 
After a bit of dicking around the cops started bringing them all out in cuffs - one by one, including our guy. All of this happened over the course of about two hours, after which I went back to my (cold) dinner. I kept an eye on the happenings, and was later stunned to see our man walking around out of cuffs again! The cop who set up camp in my room said he'd give us a call later to let us know the outcome but he hasn't, so I assume they either found no weapons and hence had no reason to hold them, or it wasn't gun at all or there was some other good explanation for what we'd seen. Dav is absolutely convinced of what he saw, and I'd have to believe him based on this guy clearly holding something behind his back and his weird behaviour. As I write this (midnight) someone has just now turned up to fix the front door hahaha, good stuff. So yeah we're confused, but it was all pretty exciting nonetheless ;)

Saturday, 9 May 2009 - State Of London Debate

  
 
Yet another blustery and dodgy London day not overly conducive to cycling, so...
  
I attended this instead - the State Of London Debate, an opportunity for the English to have a jolly good whinge, piss, and moan (which they love so much).

 
 
This is the man they all came to see - London mayor Boris Johnson (I mostly just came to listen, and take photos ;) The State Of London Debate is a rare chance for London to grill their mayor (of exactly one year now) face-to-face and his crew of flunkies on anything and everything. I quite like ol' Boris, with his consistent dishevelled looks, good use of bad language, his love of cycling (rides to/from work every day - good on that man!), and his words get him into trouble all the time (come to think of it, him and I seem to have a lot in common hahaha!). A couple years ago Boris had this to say about the South England city of Portsmouth: "One of the most depressed towns in Southern England. A place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs." The same could be said about the whole country in my opinion!

 
 
Boris gave a rousing speech for 20 minutes, putting a positive spin on everything despite London having just been voted the dirtiest city in Europe for the second year running, and four of England's six poorest and poverty-stricken boroughs being in Greater London. The poor chick on the left had to repeat his dribble in sign language, and the screen behind her kept getting his words wrong (with 'toils' appearing as 'toilets' just before I took that shot hehe). Then came an hour's worth of questions, and I knew the fun would begin!
  
All the old codgers were complaining about London's youth, the excessive amount of chewing gum on the pavement, and how their local bus route doesn't run as far as their local post office, etc.

 
 
The Arab's were complaining about something, but no one could really understand much of what they were on about.
  
And this guy got really riled up over some apparent recent scandal that Boris claimed to know nothing about, and was eventually escorted from the building when he wouldn't shut up hehe - sweet! All in all it was one way to kill a couple hours on a crappy day, and in conclusion I still say this city and this country are going straight to hell.

Sunday, 10 May 2009 - Roald Dahl, private property, and the Prime Minister

  
 
Welcome to Wendover, home to bugger all and sits at the foot of the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire some 60kms northwest of London. It's quite a nice little town, but Dav and I came for the mountain biking! First up, Bacombe Hill.

 
 
The ride started out with a little bit of ball busting up the side of a hill but the views on the way were pretty good!

 
 
Nice!
  
This area is apparently known for the abundant numbers of bluebells - nice!
  
Me, bike, off-road - nice!

 
 
Somewhere along the way we left Bacombe Hill and moved on to Coombe Hill, atop which is this monument and a bloody fantastic view! The monument was erected in 1904 in memory of the 148 men from Buckinghamshire who died during the Second Boer War in South Africa. It was almost totally destroyed by lightning in 1938 and again in the 1990s, and the original bronze plaque and decorations were stolen in 1972 hahaha - naughty!

 
The footpaths looked more interesting than the cycle tracks that had become sealed roads by this stage.

 
 
Shortly after leaving Coombe Hill we found (the weirdly named) Chequers - the official country residence of British Prime Ministers since 1921.
  
A chopper for transport - so much for environmental concern.

 
This is the official entrance to Chequers. I did a skid in the driveway and we got told to leave by friendly-looking cops wielding machine guns hehe.

 
 
From there it was some on-road...
  
Some more off-road past big fields of umm, something...
  
Some big hills that Dav handled like a girl...

 
 
Some more big fields of umm, grass this time. At this stage we knew where we wanted to get to (the train station) but didn't know exactly how to get there without taking open roads, so we improvised, across this field hehe.
  
Pheasant (he'll be relevant later).
  
We found this at the other end of that field hahaha - whoops.

 
 
We eventually made it to Great Missenden, another village that is home to bugger all, and was all but completely closed up and incredibly dead!
  
Must've been some action last night though - that'll make the front page of the local paper tomorrow hehe.

 
 
Great Missenden is best known as home to the late great Roald Dahl. The shot on the left is the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, opened in 2005. Down the road a bit is the Red Pump Garage, which featured (along with pheasants, hence the shot earlier) in Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World which I remember reading as a kid, and absolutely loved it!
  
A pint each to end the day, and that was that.

Monday, 11 May 2009 - Joining my brothers in the fight!

  
I found this on the way home from work tonight, creating a huge traffic jam around Trafalgar Square in the background while the fuzz looked on hehe. This was a rally by hundreds upon hundreds of London's bikers against a new motorcycle parking tax.

 
 
They just kept coming and coming, and tooted their little horns and revved the bollocks off their big engines at red lights hehe! So I decided to join in the fun, and tooted my horn at red lights too, and although my big engine (my two legs) doesn't make a lot of noise it was still a lot of fun ;)
  
I have no idea what these two were doing.

 
 
Not far down the hill from Trafalgar Square they all congregated in a side-street and had a cigarette.
  
Hahaha!

Wednesday, 13 May 2009 - And more from the Crazies!

  
I was kindly woken by the crazies across the road at 3am this morning (the same crazies who my flatmate thinks have a gun in the building hehe - full story here). The elderly geezer who lives in the basement flat was crumpled in a heap below my bedroom window for whatever reason, howling and carrying on about something, and refusing to go back inside. A couple seconds after I took this shot he randomly got up and just stormed off down the street while the skinny guy in white (one of his carers who lives above him) went after him hahaha. Fatty stayed behind and just looked on of course. Never a dull moment.
 

Thursday, 14 May 2009 - The day I survived redundancy

  

When I arrived at work this morning I (along with everyone else) was greeted with an email from our CEO saying that due to things being the way they are he needed to give 8 to 12 of us the boot (about 10% of our company). We were each to have a one-on-one with senior management before the day was out. As I was the last one to be recruited (six month ago), I couldn't help but wonder if my head was on the chopping board, but I was told during the one-on-one that most definitely isn't the case.

To be honest, the only thing that would have concerned me if I was to get the chop would be my paying for and taking my Mum and younger brother around Europe for three weeks in September - redundancy would throw a huge bloody spanner in those works. But instead tomorrow will be another day, working for the man!

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