Days 11-12 (June 17-18) - London

There are some stereotypical activities that seem so stereotypical you never expect them to actually happen. Sometimes though, they do. Every meal I had with Gar (2x lunch, 2x dinner) included a delightful side of boiled cabbage. After lunch (chicken, baked potato and boiled cabbage) Gar drove me back to Lewknor, from where I caught a bus back to London then had my first experience with the London Tube, which is actually impressively fast and inexpensive, although some stops seem unnecessary, they are spaced out about 5 minutes walk from one another. There is also a stop at the end of one of the lines called Cockfosters, which I admit causes the immature inner child in me to giggle every time I hear it announced. Made my way to Covent Garden where I had organised to meet up with Julia, an old friend from my high school days, at her work. I found her but she was assisting a woman (who apparently is some sort of bigshot TV host celebrity over here, although neither myself nor Julia had heard of her) and waited 40 minutes for her to finish up and notice me. Luckily the store had free wifi so I was able to quite happily entertain myself.

I left my bag there and walked back into London to kill a couple of hours until Julia finished work. I went to check out Trafalgar Square, which I had probably seen several times back when I lived here but didn't really remember and was suitably impressive plus only 10 minutes walk, but then it started raining so I headed back to Covent Garden. An hour later I finally got back and decided that the streets were a terrible maze so I ducked into a nearby pub to pass the rest of the time. After I met up with Julia we headed to her place in Canary Wharf which was a really nice flat looking out over the city, had a couple of drinks and then went to the O2 which is this huge... dome-thing where apparently a lot of concerts take place and had dinner at TGI Fridays whos cocktails come in huge fishbowls and then found ourselves a pub called "The Slug and Lettuce" which I decided justified going into but was filled with very poncy and lifeless poms so we headed back to Julias. On the way we stopped to have a look at a ship moored on the side of the Thames and ended up spending about 2 hours talking to the 4 American coast guard trainees who were on watch while a succession of drunk old poms walked up, hit on Julia really badly (as in both a lot and without any success, subtlety or shame) and asked for directions to some nearby strip club.

Disclaimer: In this blog I am not going to try and hide things that happen, especially things that will make good stories, but the next paragraph will be very short and if you want to know details then ask me privately and I may or may not fill you in.

The next day I took a tube back to Covent Garden where I met for the very first time (well, that I can remember) my birth father George. The only thing I am willing to say as it may come up later in the blog is that we discussed my older half brother Ben who is interested in meeting me.

After lunch I met up with a friend from highschool, Alex, who has been living in London for a couple of years and is currently a cripple boy on crutches, for a couple of drinks at a nearby pub. A couple of drinks turned into going back with him to his mates place for a couple more and then from there, at about 11, on to a big house party full of people who had been at the Royal Ascot races all day. Suffice to say I was seriously under dressed but being an Aussie backpacker that worked somewhat to my advantage and I met a bunch of really cool people. I am not sure when exactly we left but at some point we went and got KFC and went back to another of his mates places. It was a somewhat hazy evening.