A London Thing...

This weekend, myself, K.P and the family ventured into the big city to celebrate Kylie's Dad's retirement. It was a tiring (in a good way), jam packed couple of days which saw us visit most of the tourist hot spots, drink in some trendy bars, meet up with a fine friend of ours (Mr Dan Hollingsworth) and club it up in Camden at the very cool Worlds End bar and it's downstairs indie rock dive called, suitably, 'Underworld'.
So tired am I that I'm going to have use bullet points. There are they...

SATURDAY

- We got into Kings Cross at 9:15am. 9:15!! Nice and early. We had lots to see and we walked around everywhere, avoiding the tube for the most part and making good use of our legs. My legs are super powerful because of the mileage they strided. Seriously, my thighs could crush crystal.

- Kylie realised that she'd left her glasses in Leciester so there needed to be a trip to Vision Express. While she and her Dad sorted that out, Adam and I went to the big Virgin Megastore which is now called Zavvi (It sounds like a posh smoothie) where he picked up some albums and I brought a Jaws t-shirt. I had to get a small which was enough. I wanted to say to the clerk "We're gonna need a bigger size!", Brodie-style but I thought it best to just pay without any pop-culture quippage. On the way out, a Buddist monk stopped us and chatted to us about stuff
- Kylie picked up some new glasses that looked ace. I've always a thing for girls in glasses, more so if they're those slightly thick rimmed kind. Needless to say, she looks hot in them. I don't share my appreciation for Kylie with the world (i.e the four people that read my piffle) that often but she is a pretty, pretty thing and my average features just sort of lull around next to her.

- We had a couple of drinks in The Woodstock, The Ben Crouch Inn and an Irish Bar. Between bar trips we crossed the Millenium Bridge, went on a boat across the thames and went to the Tate Modern which was mostly cobblers to be honest. I'm glad I went just to say I've been and seen it but modern art isn't really for me. It's full of chin-stroking people that see way too much in too little. I got told off for using my camera. I think it's because they don't want anything given away or the bubble burst for people who think that the Tate Modern has art worth seeing.
If you want to see paint splattered on paper, give a paint brush to your kids, nieces/nephews etc and they can recreate the Tate and less pretentious, joyous affair. The Shakesphere place is next door..

- Later on, after more sight-seeing, we headed to Camden for more beery frolics. We went to Worlds End which is a huge, rad place. We were going to head ro The Barfly but we went to Underworld next door/underneath Worlds End. It was a decent place but it was oddly pricey and the dance floor REEKED of body odour. It was so bad that I couldn't dance there. It was just too much sweat. Adam, a man of stronger stuff, braved it and joined the fray. We hung near the side, bobbing, singing and occasionally high-fiving a chap that was keen for high-fives off everyone. He looked like my old friend Dominic T. I saw a lot of clones in London. I saw about seven versions of Kylie's Dad, two versions of my frind Lindsay and a guy who looked like Simon Pegg.

- We grabbed a cab and headed back to Kings Cross where Adam engaged in hearty, laddy banter with the driver about football. We tucked into a Subway opposite our hotel which was much needed. I'm borderline addicted to their Veggie Delight.

SUNDAY

- We got up, packed and I got mildly enraged by the 'Prince Harry Goes To War' coverage. Fucking guy made war sound like a fun holiday and the footage of him 'serving' was so staged that it may have been filmed at Ealing Studios. He's checking houses and barns with a quick glance meaning that someone had already secured the area and all he had to do was just walk with a gun, carefully avoiding the camera lead and boom mike. I don't want to go to hostile places because I'm a massive coward but if I HAD to, I wouldn't be on T.V talking about how great it all is. If he'd have gone on T.V and said: "It's a nightmare. It's a pointless, questionable mission and everyone should just go home like me" Nah, it's like Butlins to that motherfucker.
Still, it feeds the fancy of flag-waving royalists who call him a hero.

- We went to the big Museum and saw some cool, old stuff. The Rosetta Stone which I only really know from Double Dragon 3. I enjoyed walking around there. It was far better than the Tate.

- Kylie and I went off to meet Dan and we went to Hamleys (A big toyshop), ate at Pizza Hut, went to Forbidden Planet and shopped at Fopp. Dan is a good chap and a self-confessed geek (Which is by no means a bad thing). It's cool to hang out with someone who actually WANTS to shop for comics and isn't reluctantly dragged into such places by yours truly. Dan is 'good people' as some folks sometimes say. I saw a 'Complete Deaths Head' book which I wanted to buy BUT, had I started buying stuff at Forbidden, it would have been too hard to stop. I didn't want to overload my bag which already had a shit load of stuff crammed into it. I made a note to get it online. I love having things delivered.

- We walked around some more and caught the trains home at 7. It was a long trip, delayed by the usual rail errors but mostly easy going. We pretty much crashed when we got home. I was tired but also energised by the weekend. I wish my life could be that jam packed all the time, It's broken up by work, commitments and early nights. If I had my way, I wouldn't stop at all. That's another post for another time.

- Thanks to everyone for the fun times and to Kylie's Dad for arranging the adventure and paying for pretty much everything. It was a great weekend for sure.

- The bullet points were supposed to make this brief. They failed.