Tubulaaaar bells
===============
So, the more I come back to london the more I like it. I love the tube. Even though it makes me claustrophobic, I love the way it works. People switch to automatic pilot and they all have this "look at me and I will kill you" expression on their face. Everyone (except us out-of-towners/village people) does something to occupy themselves so that they never have to make eye contact with anyone. Whereas me, I sit there like a kid at a sweet shop and study every single person in my carriage and wonder where they've been and what they do with their lives.
Rule Britannia, Brittania rules not much....
==================================
Amsterdam is pretty multicultural, but in London, you can go pretty much all day and not hear anyone speak English. This is good for me because the more often I come back here, the more I realise that I simply just do not get England anymore. I find all the different English accents hard to understand (scary!) and I simply cannot stand queuing anymore. Tonight, we waited about three minutes "to be seated" at a restaurant and I almost had a fit. I also find myself laughing out loud like Jane Eyre's mad -woman-in-the-attic at the continuous announcements everywhere you go...in the lift "doors are closing/opening/lift is going up/down/do not smoke in the lift/doors will open shortly/press button to go up or down" (no SHIT! Really? Thanks!!!). The best sign I saw today was "There are 192 stairs down to the Northern Line. Anyone caught urinating in this stairwell will be dealt with by the police". I almost felt like dropping my pants and seeing how fast the coppers came running. Ahem. But I am a Lady. Apparently. So I didn't do it.
Amsterdam meets Cheshire
======================
Randomly, Tim (B (from BAD) is also in London for a course and it's his birthday so I met up with him at Canary Wharf and had dinner with Lou and Swirly...which was quite odd, since I have known Lou and Swirly since I was three years old and the three off us spent the entire evening ripping the piss out of each other as per usual. Tim dealt with it all very well though, and we had an incredibly garlic fueled meal at some investment-wankerish-Italian restaurant to celebrate Tim's birthday. Almost came to blows with the ginger one about how to pronounce something in Italian and then asked the waiter for confirmation (and had to admit I was wrong. Grrrrowl). Then Swirly claimed "jet lag" and went home. Lou, Tim and I went to another bar where I promptly and predictably spilled an entire glass of vin rouge over Louise's expensive corporate-whore trousers. Oops. But you know what, I bet my wine cost more than the dry cleaning does. HAHAHAHAHA. I was well pissed off. Six quid down the drain. Or on the floor. Or actually, all over ONE of my brown boots. Now it's a different colour than the other one. Humph.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
London Calling Saturday - Monday
============================
So here I am on my jolly travels again. Nothing exciting this time. Just in London. Halfway through my trip already and I have learnt several things: heathrow is a criminal blot on the landscape which should be firebombed immediately (hmmm, it's probably risky to type such stuff in this climate of paranoia but stuff it), I am really, really bad a poker and there are more wireless connections in London than I have ever seen in my life (people!!! Be smart about just get one and let everyone use it AHHAHA). I feel my brain frying as I type. frrrrrzzzzz.
BM ICE ICE-BABY
===============
There I am, happily reading my femi-nazi literature on the plane, trolly dolly has tried to sell me a criminally priced cup of char for about 5 quid or something and suddenly I hear this panting noise. Hmmm I think. WTF is that?! Then I hear a dog barking and I think. COOL! Doggy on a plane! But no. Directly opposite me is a Dutch woman, about 60, on all fours on the seat (have you ever tried to do that in a plane? She must be double jointed or something) barking like a dog in the face of her husband/keeper. I am not joking. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in my life. Husband/keeper ignored her, and kept reading his book. Dog woman panted for a while then sat down with a toothpick and proceeded to pick her teeth very loudly for the rest of the flight. Bizarre. It takes about 25 minutes to fly from Amsterdam to London but then we spent an entire hour flying round in giant circles before we could land. VIVE LA EUROSTAR! Passport geezer was very interested in my passport for some reason: I've still got one of those that have a piece of plastic over the picture. He was bending it and picking at it but I passed the test and they let me back into my own country. Hurrah...I think...
Poker face? Poke 'er in the eye more like
=================================
So Vanessa picked me up and drove me off into the burbs and I arrived at a full house ready for dinner - not sure how I managed to escape cooking duty but this was probably best for everyone. One of Tony's friend's girlfriend comes from Argentina and I delighted in practicing my standard spanish lines on her ('joder!', ¿Dónde están los servicios?") which worked very well until she actually started trying to have a conversation in espanol with me....and I had to ashamedly say my other standard phrase "OY, YOY OY mi espanol esta muy mal". After dinner, it was decided that we were going to play poker instead of going to the pub. No one could be arsed to walk the three steps down the road to the local. I tried to hustle them all into a game of scrabble instead... "Honest, I've nevah played before in my loife, guvnor, lets have a game of scrabble, I can't spell, I don't know the meaning of the word 'zo ' really..." but there were no biters. So poker is was. Bloody hell. WTF kind of game is that. Anyway, needless to say I lost all my chips pretty quickly and sulked in the corner for the rest of the night muttering about scrabble until someone thrust a bottle of bailies in my face and told me to shut up.
Sealife Centre
============
It was a full house, so Tony gallantly vacated the marital bed and slept on the floor, leaving me to share with Vanessa. And now I know why. Cos his wife snores like a walrus with a blocked nose when she's consumed two bottles of vino. Bloody hell. HA. Sleep? Not much. Not even my cough/dog-bark disturbed her. Next morning, after a propah english fry up, we all piled into la voiture to walk the dog. Vanessa was looking particularly yellow and promptly graced the countryside with vomit the moment the car stopped and proceeded to huff up her guts for the next hour or so. I almost dislocated my arm chucking the ball for the dog ( I used to be deep fielder at rounders, I told them all, so had to try and not throw like a girl) the dog tripped me over with a giant stick, I saw Windsor castle in the distance, I realised I hadn't walked in the countryside since enforced christmas day walks when I was a kid, I stood in a giant pile of dog shit aaaaaargh etc etc. Once we got back to the house, Vanessa fell asleep and I hitched a ride into london with Veronica and Tom (cheers guys!) and went off to meet Lou at the new st PancrEas station....
Organic Internet
==============
I've come to the end of my giant bucket of coffee in the "organic Wifi zone" cafe (seriously, WTF is an organic wifi zone? Methinks the sign writer needs to go on the plain english course) and now I am off to dump my bag somewhere and go to the science museum to pick off where I left off when they chucked me out last time (history of medicine ... got up to 1960!), don't worry girls, I shall look longingly into some shoe shop windows on my way, just so you don't think I have become someone completely unrecognisable. So anyway, there's a huge sign saying "happy Easter" outside this cafe which I thought was pretty funny, but mainly I came in here because it said "(organic) public wireless" and I thought it was free. But it's not. GRRRRRRR. So I'll have to upload this later.....
Monday Evening
==============
Right, here I am, in my super exec corporate apartment. HAHAHA. It's bigger (and nicer) than my own flat but the bloke next door has a serious bladder problem (all I can hear is him pissing every 5 minutes). Mental note: shut curtains before getting changed - there's more glass than a greenhouse here.
So, to continue, last night I met Lou and we trotted off to find some sustainence in the form of wine. Found a great pub just round the corner from her place and parked ourselves in these massive old armchairs and there we stayed for a while until the cravings for cheese on toast became too much to bear and we went home. I tried to install Lou's wireless connection and, to my horror, failed. ARRRGH. The shame, the shame, so there was nothing left to do except go to bed defeated.
Crazy psycho bitch from hell
========================
01:00 am and my phone starts buzzing. I'm a bit bleary, pick up the phone and I hear nothing. Hello? Then someone says "I'm looking for meneer Swijnhuis...I hope this is the right number." I'm thinking, swijn...that's pig in Dutch, Swijn huis = pigsty. Hmmm. I know the cloggies have funny names but this is one I've never heard before. Person repeats herself and I start thinking, hold on, hold on, I know that voice!!! It's Lasazulu!! OH MY GOD. WTF? For those of you who don't know, Lasazulu is a crazy, psychotic bitch who threatened to kill me/firebomb my house/murder my family about 2 years ago (all because I refused to go shopping with her...and I am not joking). EEEEEHK! She's STALKING ME!!!!! But you know what? Given the most random and bizarre couple of weeks I have had, I am simply not surprised. Anyway, I hung up and had crazy, random, cheese-induced hallucinogenic dreams and fortunately, I've not heard from her again!
Tapped on Oxford Street
====================
Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the Science museum :(. I got trapped in a book shop (seriously, took me half an hour to find my way out) on Oxford Street (which is HELL on earth...think Kalverstraat x 100 more shops x a billion people x mindless consumption x perfume x buses x 45 starbucks x 56 pret-a-mangers x 34 H&Ms = mind numbing confusion and that's almost close). Signing off now, as am off to meet Lou and Swirly and all the other investment wankers, er I mean bankers, over in Canary Wharf. More later, if I have not had to sell my laptop to survive (14 quid for two glasses of vino tinto... SQUEAL!) Am also suffering what I think can only be termed as "Phone-battery-almost-dead-might-lose-contact-with-world-soon-paranoia". AARRRRRGH!
============================
So here I am on my jolly travels again. Nothing exciting this time. Just in London. Halfway through my trip already and I have learnt several things: heathrow is a criminal blot on the landscape which should be firebombed immediately (hmmm, it's probably risky to type such stuff in this climate of paranoia but stuff it), I am really, really bad a poker and there are more wireless connections in London than I have ever seen in my life (people!!! Be smart about just get one and let everyone use it AHHAHA). I feel my brain frying as I type. frrrrrzzzzz.
BM ICE ICE-BABY
===============
There I am, happily reading my femi-nazi literature on the plane, trolly dolly has tried to sell me a criminally priced cup of char for about 5 quid or something and suddenly I hear this panting noise. Hmmm I think. WTF is that?! Then I hear a dog barking and I think. COOL! Doggy on a plane! But no. Directly opposite me is a Dutch woman, about 60, on all fours on the seat (have you ever tried to do that in a plane? She must be double jointed or something) barking like a dog in the face of her husband/keeper. I am not joking. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in my life. Husband/keeper ignored her, and kept reading his book. Dog woman panted for a while then sat down with a toothpick and proceeded to pick her teeth very loudly for the rest of the flight. Bizarre. It takes about 25 minutes to fly from Amsterdam to London but then we spent an entire hour flying round in giant circles before we could land. VIVE LA EUROSTAR! Passport geezer was very interested in my passport for some reason: I've still got one of those that have a piece of plastic over the picture. He was bending it and picking at it but I passed the test and they let me back into my own country. Hurrah...I think...
Poker face? Poke 'er in the eye more like
=================================
So Vanessa picked me up and drove me off into the burbs and I arrived at a full house ready for dinner - not sure how I managed to escape cooking duty but this was probably best for everyone. One of Tony's friend's girlfriend comes from Argentina and I delighted in practicing my standard spanish lines on her ('joder!', ¿Dónde están los servicios?") which worked very well until she actually started trying to have a conversation in espanol with me....and I had to ashamedly say my other standard phrase "OY, YOY OY mi espanol esta muy mal". After dinner, it was decided that we were going to play poker instead of going to the pub. No one could be arsed to walk the three steps down the road to the local. I tried to hustle them all into a game of scrabble instead... "Honest, I've nevah played before in my loife, guvnor, lets have a game of scrabble, I can't spell, I don't know the meaning of the word 'zo ' really..." but there were no biters. So poker is was. Bloody hell. WTF kind of game is that. Anyway, needless to say I lost all my chips pretty quickly and sulked in the corner for the rest of the night muttering about scrabble until someone thrust a bottle of bailies in my face and told me to shut up.
Sealife Centre
============
It was a full house, so Tony gallantly vacated the marital bed and slept on the floor, leaving me to share with Vanessa. And now I know why. Cos his wife snores like a walrus with a blocked nose when she's consumed two bottles of vino. Bloody hell. HA. Sleep? Not much. Not even my cough/dog-bark disturbed her. Next morning, after a propah english fry up, we all piled into la voiture to walk the dog. Vanessa was looking particularly yellow and promptly graced the countryside with vomit the moment the car stopped and proceeded to huff up her guts for the next hour or so. I almost dislocated my arm chucking the ball for the dog ( I used to be deep fielder at rounders, I told them all, so had to try and not throw like a girl) the dog tripped me over with a giant stick, I saw Windsor castle in the distance, I realised I hadn't walked in the countryside since enforced christmas day walks when I was a kid, I stood in a giant pile of dog shit aaaaaargh etc etc. Once we got back to the house, Vanessa fell asleep and I hitched a ride into london with Veronica and Tom (cheers guys!) and went off to meet Lou at the new st PancrEas station....
Organic Internet
==============
I've come to the end of my giant bucket of coffee in the "organic Wifi zone" cafe (seriously, WTF is an organic wifi zone? Methinks the sign writer needs to go on the plain english course) and now I am off to dump my bag somewhere and go to the science museum to pick off where I left off when they chucked me out last time (history of medicine ... got up to 1960!), don't worry girls, I shall look longingly into some shoe shop windows on my way, just so you don't think I have become someone completely unrecognisable. So anyway, there's a huge sign saying "happy Easter" outside this cafe which I thought was pretty funny, but mainly I came in here because it said "(organic) public wireless" and I thought it was free. But it's not. GRRRRRRR. So I'll have to upload this later.....
Monday Evening
==============
Right, here I am, in my super exec corporate apartment. HAHAHA. It's bigger (and nicer) than my own flat but the bloke next door has a serious bladder problem (all I can hear is him pissing every 5 minutes). Mental note: shut curtains before getting changed - there's more glass than a greenhouse here.
So, to continue, last night I met Lou and we trotted off to find some sustainence in the form of wine. Found a great pub just round the corner from her place and parked ourselves in these massive old armchairs and there we stayed for a while until the cravings for cheese on toast became too much to bear and we went home. I tried to install Lou's wireless connection and, to my horror, failed. ARRRGH. The shame, the shame, so there was nothing left to do except go to bed defeated.
Crazy psycho bitch from hell
========================
01:00 am and my phone starts buzzing. I'm a bit bleary, pick up the phone and I hear nothing. Hello? Then someone says "I'm looking for meneer Swijnhuis...I hope this is the right number." I'm thinking, swijn...that's pig in Dutch, Swijn huis = pigsty. Hmmm. I know the cloggies have funny names but this is one I've never heard before. Person repeats herself and I start thinking, hold on, hold on, I know that voice!!! It's Lasazulu!! OH MY GOD. WTF? For those of you who don't know, Lasazulu is a crazy, psychotic bitch who threatened to kill me/firebomb my house/murder my family about 2 years ago (all because I refused to go shopping with her...and I am not joking). EEEEEHK! She's STALKING ME!!!!! But you know what? Given the most random and bizarre couple of weeks I have had, I am simply not surprised. Anyway, I hung up and had crazy, random, cheese-induced hallucinogenic dreams and fortunately, I've not heard from her again!
Tapped on Oxford Street
====================
Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the Science museum :(. I got trapped in a book shop (seriously, took me half an hour to find my way out) on Oxford Street (which is HELL on earth...think Kalverstraat x 100 more shops x a billion people x mindless consumption x perfume x buses x 45 starbucks x 56 pret-a-mangers x 34 H&Ms = mind numbing confusion and that's almost close). Signing off now, as am off to meet Lou and Swirly and all the other investment wankers, er I mean bankers, over in Canary Wharf. More later, if I have not had to sell my laptop to survive (14 quid for two glasses of vino tinto... SQUEAL!) Am also suffering what I think can only be termed as "Phone-battery-almost-dead-might-lose-contact-with-world-soon-paranoia". AARRRRRGH!
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