London and the Monkey

So I finally arrived at 5 in the morning, on the eigth of December. Some 40 odd hours of travel. The final leg of the flight was long, but not that bad as I got to stretch out on a bigger plane. Arriving in the UK I was surprised to find how easy it was to get through customs. The box of chewable mints I had smuggled thru Brisbane Customs, into Malaysia and finally now to the last hurdle once more went unnoticed. Now sure they were just smints, but how the hell did they know that?

So leaving the baggage collection place I took the last few corners with my trolley, putting a move on a slow moving lady to beat her out of customs by a good three metres. There up ahead was the destination, sister Joe Knorks beaming with a very excited smile for the time of the morning. Strangly she was alone, my supposed friends the Monkey and Mace Windu were supposed to be their to meet me also- how strange I thought to myself.

After an excited greeting with old Joe Knorks I had to inquire, where are the Lads? well you can imagine my amusement when I discovered that they had been there to meet me, 24 hours earlier. The next 90 minutes made their fuck up even more funny as I began to appreciate how rediculously difficult it would have been for them to get up at 4 in the morning, catch a bus, and maybe a tube, out to Heathrow, only to have to turn around once more and catch the tube home. If it wasn't such classic mubleford I would feel sorry for them.

So anyways, sans a lot of the fanfare I had been looking forward to we left Heathrow and headed for the Pickle. Which is a delightful little flat on Old Street in Hackney (?) surprisingly close to the centre of town (watch for more on this topic in a later post).

Eventually we got organised, I was now armed with my Oyster Card and London A-Z - both esential items for the new Londoner. Joe Knorks and I headed for Bond street to meet up with the Monkey and Mace and as it turned out also old Stack herself. Bond St is close to Oxford Circus, which is at the head of Regent St - a popular shopping district. My first morning in London consisted of wandering around this area seeing all sorts of shops that Master Mace assured me was infact that largest of its kind in the world (i.e. thats the biggest virgin mega store, thats the biggest hmv, thats the biggest and so on) you can imagine I was amazed.

After awhile we managed to drop Joe Knorks- who apparently couldn't get the day off work... and after a couple of dodgey touristy experiences (Trafagler and Bucks Palace) we finally managed to do what I had come for, the Covent Garden Walkabout- its a great pub, snakey bees as far as the eye could see. As I settled down over my second (or third) pint I couldn't help think that they should open this type of pub back home- then I remembered- duh!

The Lads were very excited to have me in London, the Monkey couldn't wait to tell me that he was going in a week, Mace confirmed that he was out of their in 10 days, and Robbie Paul couldn't even stay at the pub for long as he had to go back to work. I was feeling loved.

Anyways, my final memory from the first day comes from when the Monkey returned to our table with the biggest jug of snake bite you will ever see- if the Walkies do one thing right its the Jugs, there not that expensive and you get a lot of beer in them- Hooray.

Anyways, spent the next 10 or so days partying hard with the Monkey and old Ned Kelley. After two years we had a lot of catching up to do, which we did well at various pubs in the hammersmith and shepards bush areas.

The crowning achievement of my first week in London was when we went to Church. The night before had been the Monkey's going away party at the Sheh Boo Walkie then back to Mace's for a night of Vodka indulgence, then the next morning, with all of 4 hours sleep we headed to Church - which I was surprised to find isn't actually a church but an excuse for Aus/Kiwi's/Saffa's to drink on a Sunday. After lining up for an hour and buying our drinks cards we finally got into what can only be described as the old Alex without the lights on the roof. Their were skantaly clad ladies everywhere, an amazingly poor relationship of males to females, and lots of people looking worse for wear. Anyways, after a couple of drinks we all began to relax a little, and found ourselves having the time of our lives. There was a camera man on a stand going around picking hardbodies out of the crowd and zooming in on their chests- delightful.

To top of the experience at the Church a bawdy British comic then came out and sang a couple of his customized tunes, and was then followed up by a stripper- jaws dropped all around. Good Times though. After Church we headed back to the Walkie for another evening of Snakey Bees- good times all round.

In a post scipt to this story I later discovered that one of the girls we went to church with had left home on Friday morning wearing one outfit- that she didn't get out of until after work on Monday- Respect to Kelly, she is truely living the dream.