Big Bottoms

Okay, okay, okay. Here we go. It's been a big few days and I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to get all of this down, but i'm going to try to anyway.

To begin with I'll let you know what happened after I last posted. I headed into Piccadilly Circus and met up with Richie Finnila, Bill Bjurstrom and Brian. At least I'm pretty sure his name was Brian, but he introduced himself to Stuart as Steve, so who knows really. Unfortunately Rowan had already headed home, and after arriving I think that it was probably a good move. I met up with Richie, Bill and Brian at an Irish pub next to the hostel where they were staying. I believe that they had been drinking for a couple of hours. Five minutes after my arrival Richie unexplicably dropped his pants and started dancing around a bit. He had a very nice pair of Australian flag boxer shorts on. After pulling his pants up he tried to dance with a couple of girls who were bopping around a bit, he took them both by the hand and tried to lead them in a bit of a jig. Unfortunately I think that they had seen Richie with his pants off minutes earlier and were a bit worried about what they were in for if they stuck around with that wild man.

About a beer later it was decided that this Irish pub wasn't quite big enough to hold us and we burst onto the streets of London in search of the home away from home for all drunk Aussies, the Walkabout. We managed to find, and be allowed entry into, one on Shaftesbury Avenue. It was a pretty wild sort of a place. It reminded me alot of the Transcontinental Hotel from back in the day, but ten times bigger. I proceeded to drink several Snakebites and generally have a reasonably good time getting pretty drunk. Somewhere along the line Stuart showed up, at about the same time Richie disappeared. I still don't know where he went. The night ended with Stuart and I taking the bus home at 3 in the morning and getting off the bus about 2 kilometres before we had to. You live and learn. Somewhere in the pub Stuart worked a bit of his magic on a red head, and Bill (also known as Mr X) worked a bit of his. In all, I'm glad I went to a Walkabout because it was a good time, and I can now say that I've been.

The next day was a pretty early start, thankfully I wasn't feeling too poorly after the previous night. Dad, Stuart and I headed down to the Portobello Markets in Notting Hill. It was reasonably lucky that we got there a little early because it started to get pretty packed. There were all sorts of treasures to be found at these markets, and they went on and on and on. They really were massive. Old stuff, new stuff, broken stuff, fixed stuff, unwanted stuff, collectable stuff and even a little stuff down this one alley that I'm pretty sure was stuff that was missing from someone's place. Stuart and I lost Dad, and pushed onto into the markets. We found out later that he went to Churchill's bunker and had a great day, so good on him. Stuart and I, however shopped til we dropped. One of the things that I was a bit excited about was a stall that was selling deep fried prawns, crab claws and mussels. You got quite a big bucket of them for £3. So I lined up, got some, a couple of pieces of bread and some sauce. I was very disappointed. It seems that for £3 you don't always get what you pay for. The "prawns" were actually just sea food extender in the shape of prawns, and I didn't try any of the crab claws. The mussels however were the real deal, and pretty okay. The bread was probably the best part.

So Stuart and I shopped and shopped and shopped at the Portobello Markets. At some point Stuart got into his head that he wanted to pick up a pair of tight black jeans and some big old school style high top basketball shoes. Unfortunately the Portobello Markets didn't have the selection we were after so we were pointed in the way of the Camden Markets. This was an eye opening experience. It was massive. Stuart said that they were the biggest markets that he's ever seen, and he's done a bit of travelling through Asia and stuff so I guess he's been around a bit. Still though, it was amazing. Very interesting people watching as well. Lots of goths, lots of black dudes, lots of "interesting" types of people. Hundreds and hundreds of stalls, thousands and thousands of pre loved articles of clothing and heaps of new stuff too. It was wild. One store was basically a club for Candy Kid raver type people, but it wasn't just a dingy little corner store hidden away, it was this huge thing that took a couple of minutes to walk from end to end in. The staff there were right into it, one dude even had those "horns" grafted onto his skull.

Stuart ended up picking up his pair of jeans here, although we've since decided that they are actually girl's jeans as they are heavily elasticised. He also picked up a pair of pretty neat 30th Anniversary Adidas boots. I'm not so sure about this look that he's trying to cultivate, but if you want to wear whatever you want then London is probably the place to do it.

Now unfortunately there is alot more stuff to talk about here, but so much has happened in the past few days that I must press on. One last thing about the markets though was Stuart and I were both offered what I thought were scones the first time but quickly realised was skunk about 10 times each. Also, after 9 or so hours of shopping I didn't end up buying a thing. I'm a bit pissed off about this now. I think that I had some sort of fear that if I bought one thing then I would go crazy and just start buying things that I didn't want or need.

That Saturday night I did go a little crazy though. I met up with Sarah out at her place and went with her down to a bar, then onto a club afterwards. I had a wonderful time with Sarah and a few of her friends, then Danica and Dave Honour came on down. Separately. It was a great night I had alot of fun. Had a few drinks, talked to some pretty girls, did some of these ones. In all a tops night. It ended back at Sarah's which was pretty chilled out and nice. Taking the bus home at 6:30 in the morning wasn't as nice. Nor was packing and getting out of London, but that is what had to happen that day, and that is what happened. Still, it was a bonzer way to finish off the week and I am very glad that I did.

So Sunday was spent in the car. We went to Canterbury and Dover. I'm not entirely sure where we ended up I think that it was Hastings. It was pretty windy down on the coast. It had a pier and a very sad old bar that we had a couple of drinks in, but no food at because the food could only be sold to members of the Bingo club. I don't think that the girl behind the bar has smiled since 1997.

Yesterday was spent in Portsmouth, visiting the HMS Victory which was very timely as it was the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar this past weekend. The boat was interesting, the weather was atrocious. Ah, what else happened. That night we went out for dinner, we ended up heading into the first restaurant we saw as the weather was that horrible. It was blowing an absolute gale and pouring down cats and dogs. What was funny was that it's school holidays here at the moment and there was an underage disco on. Now this in itself isn't funny, what is kind of funny is the girls and boys who were hopelessly underdressed for the conditions in which they found themselves. I mean, there were girls in short skirts and singlets! It was freezing! I had a shirt a jumper and a jacket on and was still cold! And these people live here! I think that I actually saw one young lass crying, but no sympathy. That's one thing that has happened to me over here, I now have a heart of stone! Ha!

So yeah, that's about it really. Tonight we are in Bath and it's a very historical town and very interesting. We went on a walking tour before that was very informative. The country side is all green and rolling hills and things. We saw Stonehenge this morning and the whole time I had that Spinal Tapp song going through my head.

That's about it really, hope you're all well, and sorry if I called you the other day and didn't make a whole lot of sense, I believe that I was under the influence.