Volume 14: Pete back in Europe
Day 1
This adventure was to a short 6 week jaunt through Europe, planned all of 3 weeks before leaving. It had been a long 2 years of lockdown in the hermit state of Victoria, it’s time for this caged bird to spread its wings & fly again.
At the airport I checked my luggage almost immediately & cleared customs without stopping to complete the process of checking luggage & clearing customs inside of 5 minutes, a process they estimate you get to the airport 3 hours early for. Only a dodgy mechanic can give you an estimate that far off reality.
My initial flight from Melbourne to Perth boarded late, with me taking off at 4:30pm instead of 3:15pm due to a valve issue announced by the pilot once on board. Whilst at the gate before the flight the PA announced they powered off the plane to resolved the issue. It doesn’t fill one with confidence when a bunch of engineers are staring at each other & one of them has likely said “have you tried switching it off & on?”. That response should only be used by an IT support department, not someone responsible for ensuring a plane gets off the ground and stays off the ground in a controlled manner, instead of nose diving to the ground with one pilot saying to the other pilot “perhaps we should try turning it off and on and hope it reboots before we hit that mountain”. I wasn’t too fussed by the delay as I was supposed to land in London just after 5am, any delay increased my chances of getting to check into the hotel early.
Once boarding was finally underway, I was delayed getting to my seat by a stewardess parked in the aisle serving sparkling water to the cultural elite in business class. As a lackey in economy class I for some reason felt I wasn’t allowed to question the stewardess on what was clearly an act that would delay boarding & this flight even longer, so kept my mouth shut as any simple commoner should do in the presence of those in a higher class of society.
One thing that does amuse me on a flight is when they announce “We welcome one world & frequent flyers…”. I always interpret that as ““We welcome one world & frequent flyers…& fuck everyone else. If we know the plane is crashing into the sea, ocean or any other great body of water we will use your dead body as emergency flotation devices. Consider yourself lucky we don’t make you parachute into your destination…fuckers”.
When the flight landed in Perth I was surprised to hear people disembarking Perth had to go through customs, but could show an orange dot or something on their boarding pass to expedite the process through customs. I was surprised to learn you can take an international flight to fly domestically in Australia, but given the state of WA considers itself a separate part of the country I really should t have been.
There’s a lot of people in the running for biggest douche in the world, you’ve got Putin, the idiot that thought Playboy magazine would sell better without the nudity, & one person who somehow flys under the radar in this category; the giant douche at Boeing who still insists they build planes with 2 headphone jacks. Why? Only answer is because they are a giant douche that just wants to do 1 of those little things in life that needlessly pisses people off. You can’t tell me one of those US shootings isn’t related to someone’s rage being triggered by trouble using a 2 Jack headphone on a plane.
We landed in London somewhere in the vicinity of over an hour late, and with me not being able to feel my ass after sitting for 17 hours from Perth to London. I chose to take the tube instead of the express train to London, primarily as I was in no rush given I anticipated the hotel wouldn’t let me check in & secondarily hearing the word “Cockfosters” at each train station amuses me greatly. I got myself an Oyster card at the airport & decided to add an extra £15. In the line at the ticketing machine a Canadian chick asked me how to top up her Oyster card. I somehow have a face that people just seem to assume I know what I’m doing in far off lands.
I got to the hotel at 9am & they let me check in! Praise the lord! After a day in transit your underwear does become pure evil, so you do have to thank god for being able to remove it & take a refreshing shower with an immediate hotel check in.
I was staying in Whitechapel, a short stroll to the Tower Bridge, so headed off there after showering & holding an exorcism on my flight underwear. At the foot of the bridge is the “Girl with a Dolphin statue”. To me it looks more like “Angry dolphin throwing girl at Tower of London walls”. It would be a daring attack for someone to spend months, if not years, training a dolphin to throw a girl over the walls, but think of the level of surprise that would generate by those defending the Tower of London. The military uses surprise tactics all the time, so this approach should not be ruled out as true meaning of the statue.
Not too far from the statue is the Sundial at Tower Hill. I took an amusing photo holding my watch up to the sun dial to indicate I was now setting my watch, which was on Melbourne time, to London time. This sun dial should be officially renamed the “Time to die sun dial” because the circumference is essentially a roll call of disasters. They list the city being destroyed by Queen Boudicca in 61AD, London being destroyed by fire in 1106AD & 1136AD, 35,417 dying of the Black Death in 1349AD & on & on until you wonder why you would waste any time setting your watch because we’ll all die soon.
I continued walking along the Thames before crossing at London Bridge, which had not fallen down suggesting the song was fake news. As I walked past the Globe Theatre I saw a poet for hire with a typewriter; just like Shakespeare, who was also an early adopter of Microsoft Word & saving his work to the cloud…which was just setting it on fire and letting the smoke drift towards the clouds in his days, so not a great way to backup your work.
I crossed back across the river at The Millennium Bridge walking aimlessly before deciding to head back to the hotel for a power nap before catching up with an old friend for some beers later in the night. This idea for the need to rest was confirmed when I continuously kept tapping my hotel room card to enter the tube without realizing it wasn’t my Oyster card until station staff pointed that out to me.
Back at the hotel I was reacquainted with the uniquely English thing of having fire doors every so far apart. I’m not sure how many lives are saved or if millions die from head injuries slamming into these doors in panic induced by a fire alarm test drill.
At about 7pm I caught up with Warwick for a couple pints at The White Hart (sums up my heritage. I come from a lot of whites and a lot of Harts), before heading to The Castle where we had a random carbon footprint & shark punching conversation with some drunk English bloke. From there we headed to the Boom Battle Bar for beer pong with some random American women who were young enough to make me feel old, and a game of virtual darts between Warwick & I that took about 501 darts each for us to hit a double to score 501 to win.
We finished up at about 1am or about 5 minutes past my bed time, where I promptly crashed in bed at the hotel.
Day 2
I awoke surprisingly chipper after the many beers and reasonably late finish and was out of the hotel by 10:30am to see the sights.
A friend had sent my an Instagram link to a hidden gem of a walk along the canal beginning at Camden and given she didn’t even know I was going to London I figured it was destiny to take the walk.
I got off at Camden along with about 300 million other people who seemed to think it was a good idea on this Saturday, although it seems I was the only one headed for the Regents canal walk which kicked off on the corner of St Marks square and Prince Albert road (I wonder if there’s a sister road less subtly named “Bolt Upon Cock road”?).
The walk along the canal was quite skinny at times, a thing magnified by the large number of prams & cyclists trying to coexist. There were plenty of houses backing back onto the canal that suggested you might need to be in a similar business to Pablo Escobar to afford to live here. About midway through the walk I came across a plethora of food stalls and seemed to be reacquainted with the 300 million people who had got off at the Camden tube stop. I stopped to have “teriyaki” chicken wings (teriyaki if served by someone on the first day of a cooking class that doesn’t know what teriyaki is) and a vanilla milk shake with a straw with such a great diameter a golf ball would have fit through it and only a veteran prostitute would have enough suction skills to drink through.
Disappointed with lunch, I continued the walk which eventually ended at Kings Cross. I saw a dog take a casual piss on a pole at Kings Cross station. It’s an odd thing dogs pissing on things. I suppose the equivalent is a human writing “for a good time call…” on a public toilet wall. And does the dog expect one day some dog will recognize that piss while in a park? “Oh, you’re the 1 that pissed at Kings Cross. That was quite pungent. Dude, did you eat your own shit that day?”.
I walked aimlessly from Kings Cross down via Russell Square & stumbled across the BMW classics orchestra rehearsing at Trafalgar Square. As it’s called the BMW classics, I was surprised to not hear them rehearsing something like Khe Sanh or Funky Town.
Further on I eventually found myself enjoying a pint at Tattershall Castle boat looking at the London Eye. Beers on boats looking at famous landmarks; essential part of tour life.
I’d walked about 14km by now & decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a power nap before beers again with Warwick tonight. I wasn’t sure the beer I’d just had on the boat would want to escape my bladder before getting on the train, so had a cheeky beer at the Princess of Wales near Embankment tube stop and used their facilities. The glass my beer was served in had “beer” written on it to confirm I had indeed ordered a beer. Which makes sense if you order something like a Coors Light as I’ve drunk that before and thought “is this cats piss?”. If served in this glass you would be reminded you had ordered beer (which tastes like cats piss). As I stood up my legs were still swaying from my time on the boat, but I successfully negotiated my way back on the train at Embankment.
After the power nap, I was back out for few pints reminiscing with Warwick about the good old days at The Black Horse and The Running Horse. We could not find any more horse related bars, so setup shop at The Castle. The pub seemed like the Tardis with more people coming in than should be able to fit in. Intrigued by this I set off on a reconnaissance mission to find this magical infinite space. The infinite magical place turned out to be a down stairs section out back. Warwick and hadn’t even rested our beers before a black chick came running at me to inform me it was a private function for her birthday party, an invite to which she was not now extending. Can you call out the race card as a 45 white man? Probably not. Anyways, we wished her happy birthday, and went back upstairs and went out of our way to wish her happy birthday when she walked past for smoko throughout the night.
Much of the night was spent watching a barmaid that looked like Jada Pinkett flirting so much with a bloke at the bar that I was tempted to go over and say “just hurry up and fuck already Jada. Will Smith ain’t around to bitch slap him”.
We finished up beers at about 1:30am and again I crashed into bed shortly after
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