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

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Friday, 29 May 2009 - Happy birthday to me!

  
Yes indeedy, that time of year again - already. I was yanked out into the world 27 years ago next Monday, and am finally taking the bike down to Paris for the weekend on the train to celebrate (after a failed attempt to do so late last year). Katie was meant to be coming with me but she's still stranded in New Zealand with UK entry visa issues, and I can't change the name on her train ticket to someone else because Eurostar are bastards. So, it'll be just me, the bike, and the air horn, ripping up the streets of Paris. Hooray!

Sunday, 31 May 2009
I made it back from Paris tonight in one piece - fun times! Photos and videos to come :)

Monday, 1 June 2009 - No one should work on their birthday!
Sick day off work today, because I was sick, if anybody asks ;) The ICC World Twenty20 is being held in England this year, officially starting tomorrow but with various warm-up games today, including New Zealand vs. India at Lord's (which just happens to be a 20-minute walk around the corner from my flat, and since I was home sick and all, I thought why not hehe :)

 
I had a pretty bloody good view from where I was sitting, but evidently I'd been seated in the unofficial Indian section - not a lot of honkies in that shot hahaha!

 
 
For those who don't give rat's arse about cricket, the idea of Twenty20 cricket is no different to the one-day version of the game, except there are only 20 overs per innings as opposed to the usual 50, which means shorter and more entertaining games with a lot of this - whack!
  
The Black Caps were up first and smashed out 170 from their 20 - hardly the most impressive score I've ever seen in Twenty20 but anyway.

 
 
This guy made the unfortunate mistake of plastering his name on the back of his shirt, and his habitual fingering of his mullet seemed to get the crowd around him pretty excited during the Indian innings (by which time most everyone was pretty will liquored up). "Give us a wave Ricky!", and various other things in Indian that Ricky definitely understood.
  
Near the end of the game Ricky wandered off for a bit, and received an ovation from the crowd both when he left and when he returned hahaha!

 
 
Anyway the curry-munchers had a good whack around too, much to the delight of everyone around me.
  
But in the end it wasn't enough, finishing nine runs short after their 20 overs so hooray for us, but too bad it was only a warm-up game and doesn't count for squat.

Thursday, 4 June 2009 - Fun times with the Frogs

  
The photos and videos and whatnot from my birthday weekend cycling around Paris are here - enjoy :)

Sunday, 7 June 2009 - I'm never drinking again

  
 
A group of mates and I watched the British and Irish Lions take on the Free State Cheetahs in Bloemfontein yesterday, and being a South African venue we thought it apt to watch it in a South African bar hehe. According to their website, The Bok Bar is supposedly world famous (though I'd never heard of it), and is in the probably more world famous Covent Garden in central London. Downstairs is the bar, and upstairs is the Bok shop selling a myriad of Saffa foodstuffs.
  
South African bar, South African rugby, South African grog - we all hit the Castle Lager pretty hard hehe! Right after the Lions/Cheetahs game was England vs. Argentina, then after that we went somewhere else, then after that I don't entirely remember hahaha!

 
I do remember waking up at 3am feeling pretty rough, and come 9am I was in dire need of my hangover cure (Subway and Powerade - trust me it works!). It poured with rain overnight but come morning it was pretty hot in that sun - even the pavement was steaming like a kettle, so I went for a wander while stuffing my face with 12-inches worth of Subway.

 
 
After an hour or so I made it as far as, ummm, here (not really sure where this is - northwest London somewhere) before the clouds rolled in again, and pissed down again. So yeah, that was more-or-less the extent of my weekend.
  
It's bloody cold once the sun disappears ;)

Wednesday, 10 June 2009 - Selfish idiots

  
 
At exactly 6:59pm last night, London Underground workers (or at least those who are part of the National RMT Trade Union) walked off the job and went home after yet more talks over pay disputes and redundancy disputes and whatnot had failed. They're due to walk back in again at exctly 6:58pm tomorrow hehe. These arseholes aren't going to win many friends out of this, let alone support for their cause. Not only did they throw the city into chaos today, but at a time when unemployment is at an all-time high in this country (and most of the world) these pricks are demanding no compulsory redundancies and a 5% pay-rise as the cherry on top! My nearest station (Maida Vale) was sealed tight as were most others, although the number of workers that are not part of that union were sufficient to run at least a partial service in some parts of the city.

 
 
The RMT threatens to strike all the time hehe, though only a handful have ever gone ahead since I moved to the UK. However, I must admit that I always quietly hope they do go through with it because it really is amazing to see just how dependent London is on the Tube (three million people use it daily) and how chaotic things become without it (which means I have twice as much fun on the bike ;) Traffic all over the city was completely gridlocked. Driving in London is a nightmare at the best of times, but this was something else. Look at that - who the hell would want to drive in this city?! The same often gets said about cycling, but it's gotta be better than this!
  
This truck wiped the side of the BMW right in front of me. So this blocked a lane and held traffic up even further hehe.

 
 
A lot of (smart) folk opted to walk to work, and a lot of (smarter) folk opted to cycle. I've never seen so many pedestrians and cyclists in one day, and needless to say I've never had so many pedestrians step out in front of me in one day hahaha. I even got cut off by a woman cyclist! My air horn was completely flat by the time I got home from work tonight ;)
  
However, a lot of (dumbass) folk still tried to catch the bus. The queues at bus stops were enormous, and every bus that turned up was completely full anyway hahaha!

 
Those that did squeeze onto a bus got nowhere in a hurry, and ended up joining the throng of pedestrians anyway (the five in this shot have all just stepped off the bus at the front of the ten-strong queue there).
  
Yup, it was good old pandemonium - I love it! :)

 
 
Not a good day to have a heart attack.
  
The fun continued throughout the day, and was made worse at about 2pm by a massive gas explosion along Whitehall between Trafalgar Square and Big Ben (almost as central as you can get in London). That shut off this major north-south arterial road for a good couple hours hehe.

 
 
All the traffic that would have otherwise gone down Whitehall was instead diverted to Victoria Embankment along the River Thames, but all that shit down there wasn't going anywhere!
  
Any way through would do.
  
Hahaha that's a great place to park your 18-metre bendy-bus mate!

 
 
Lunchtime...
  
...Home time - spot the difference? That's right - it was a bit sunnier at 6pm ;)
  
Yes, welcome to London: Tube strikes, traffic chaos, and gas explosions - it really is a great city!

Friday, 12 June 2009
RAAAHHH!

Saturday, 13 June 2009 - In my beautiful neighbourhood

  
Sometimes it can be really hard to sleep in around here. Back home and in Brisbane we used to get hounded by the Jehovah's Witnesses every so often (usually early on a weekend morning). Living in a building with a secure entrance I sort of assumed we'd no longer have that problem since there's no front door for them to come and bang on. WRONG! I was woken at 9am this morning by our door buzzer thingee, and as I'm expecting a package in the mail (a new and improved camera for my bike actually) I figured it might be the mail man, but no. "Oh good morning sir. My name is Ron from the dada dada church. I was wondering if you would allow us to come in and discuss the Bible with you this morning?" For fuck sake. After I 'politely' declined their offer they went and annoyed the neighbours, who I'm pretty sure are of Middle Eastern descent as we often hear them chanting or speaking in tongues or something down there, so I'm pretty sure Ron's Bible wouldn't have interested them either.

 
 
If it's not the Jehovahs waking me up, it's usually this fucking weirdo across the street, who for whatever reason was wearing a purple wizard's hat yesterday morning and was talking to his own hand-puppet on the roadside a while back. I'm not exactly sure what's wrong with him but he talks at the absolute top of his lungs - he just can't seem to talk quietly at all; bloody annoying at 9am on the weekend!

 
 
This is the same mob who were toting a gun in full view of everybody a month back. We can be on the other side of the flat but we always know when they're out because our mental friend there (without the wizard hat or puppet today) starts 'talking' such that the whole damn street can hear him hahaha! Even their neighbour upstairs came to check out all the commotion below today! Who wants to come visit me?

Monday, 15 June 2009 - Ow, my face!

  
It's bloody impossible to predict the weather in this country! None of the forecasts I look at ever seem to be accurate hehe, and today was no different. However I've figured out it's usually safe to assume that whatever the conditions are in the morning, they'll be the opposite come evening. For example, this morning was sunny, and this evening it was thunder and hail.

 
 
Nice day to be a fireman. This storm started when I was half way home from work on the bike. A bit of rain at first, then suddenly thunder and really fucking torrential rain (and I do mean really fucking), and finally a shitload of hail (and I do mean shitload ;) I was two minutes from home and screaming along at about 40km/h when the hail suddenly hit and hit hard, and although the stones weren't all that big there were a lot of them, and biking into that at 40km/h hurts your face hahaha! So while everybody around me ran for cover, I stood in the middle of the road and took photos :)

 
 
Grandma and the bike got a beating, but after five minutes it just suddenly stopped - from torrential to nothing at all faster than you can say "Ow, my face!"
  
My camera which is supposedly 'weather-proof' isn't working properly now, and my cell phone which was in the front of my bag isn't working at all hahaha! Fun times.

Tuesday, 16 June 2009 - Lost time...

  
 
My phone crapped out after getting drenched in that storm yesterday afternoon (see above), so I had it in pieces over the heater to dry out last night. I put it back together before I went to bed and it seemed to be working fine again, phew! My phone also doubles as my alarm clock, and when it blasted me awake at 8am I didn't seem to feel as tired as I normally do (despite my flatmates waking me up at 7am by moving around and slamming doors etc). The first thing I usually do in the morning after scratching my bollocks is rip open the curtains to see which of the four seasons it happens to be today, and core blimey look at that - that's the brightest and sunniest it's been at this hour in a long time! The second thing I usually do after scratching my arse is check my emails, and in doing so I noticed the time on my laptop was 10am hehe. My watch, my speedo, and the clock in the kitchen all seemed to confirm it, so I rung my boss and he pissed himself laughing and confirmed it too hahaha! So my phone had somehow managed to lose exactly two hours - to the minute, weird.

Thursday, 18 June 2009 - Anyone in NZ need a washing machine?

  

Old mid 80s Fisher and Paykel top loader. Goes like a rocket!
By 'goes like a rocket' I actually mean that literally. It actually shakes the house.

It's the loudest, most violent sounding washing machine I have ever encountered.
It makes guests scared and children cry. I've lived with it like that for almost a year and it still scares me.

Once while washing a load of towels it got a bit out of balance and it got so out of control for a minute that I swear I actually saw a portal to another dimension open above it just for a second. There were dinosaurs on the other side and they looked scared too. It almost sucked me in but I held on for my life to the deepfreeze. It sucked my shoes and pants off though, and it got the iron as well which pissed me off because it was quite a good one. Luckily it sucked its own power cord out of the wall and stopped before the whole house went in. I drew a picture of the dinosaurs I saw incase people didn't believe me, they are partly red because my green felt ran out half way through...

More at TradeMe :)

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I'll come visit you if you like??
- Ba'y