My friend Barney is currently on his gap year, but rather than faff about in an impoverished third world hell-hole, he’s done the wise thing, and taken a gap year travelling around Britain (I told him to give Birmingham a miss to make sure that he definitely avoids hell-holes). He’s been in London for the past week, so on Wednesday, I went down there for the day to meet up with him, just for the fun of it.
As you might have noticed – I liveblogged a lot of it on Twitter and my blog’s sidebar.
I met up with him in Trafalgar Square, where, as it transpired, were some sort of St George’s Day celebrations – whilst this display of patriotism obviously sickened me, I was delighted to spot Giles Dilnot from the Daily Politics doing a live OB.
Anyway, after a wander around London we eventually ended up the Sir John Soane museum – he was the architect who designed the Bank of England and loads of other stuff. What was unusual about it, was that aside from it being a small museum (it was Soane’s old house), you had to wait outside for someone to let you in, and then had to sign in, which made it feel all the more exclusive.
You could tell it was an old house – the walls were caked in tat, like all of the paintings and old Roman stuff he’d collected. There was a bit towards the back where there were loads of old Roman head statues overhanging a drop down to where there was some sort of old sarcophagus – it was unbelievably tempting to push them off, but somehow I managed to resist the urge.
After this, and a brief jaunt to the British Museum, we headed to the spiritual home of PKMN.NET meet-ups (this is how I know Barney), The Rocket, where we met up with Mushroom (or “William” as he’s also known). He was somewhat startled when I phoned him and asked if he wanted to go to the pub, considering that both Barney and I both live over 100 miles away from London, in different directions.
After this we headed to another pub, which was something of a personal triumph for us. Only a couple of people reading this will appreciate the significance that we found “The Shakespeare Pub”! On previous trips to London, we’ve (well, I’ve) consisted failed to find The George Inn, which is thought to have been Shakespeare’s and Charles Dicken’s local pub. Considering we were there on April 23rd, it seemed particularly relevant, as it was not only St George’s Day, but Shakespeare’s birthday and death day. It was literally the most relevant place in the world to be at that time.
(Wearing someone else’s hat doesn’t mean that I endorse St George’s Day or the volkisch concept of ‘patriotism’.)
After leaving this pub, we ended up encountering some Morris Dancers just before heading to the pub next to The Golden Hind – the, er, fourth pub of the day, which was the other spiritual home of PKMN.NET meet-ups. Barney bought four pints of a specific drink just to get a free St George’s Day hat. Just goes to show that marketing works.
The Morris Dancers were appalling, have a watch of this:
I had an excellent day yesterday – I went down to London to meet my nerdy mates from my other website. Here are some exciting photos of me looking really popular in the company of other people:
Chris, Lottie, Barney, Kyron, Ant, Me, Sam, William, Shark, Kat and Dan. Not pictured: Katy.
Dan bothering a mime.
It being Easter, we thought we should respect the religious aspects, and celebrate Jesus’ death by recreating Leonardo’s Last Supper.
As luck would have it, Barney looks a bit like Jesus. And Sam looks a bit like Mary Magdeline. And I played the part of Judas. The other apostles were perhaps a little less enthusiastic.
Spending about eight hours with me is difficult enough for anyone, really. Unfortunately, William’s Jamesomalley tolerance was slightly less than eight hours, so he ended up punching me.
But it was fun. I may have another tale to tell about this in a few days.
On Saturday, I went down to London to go to the pub with some of the people from my other website who are old enough to get into pubs. It was most excellent, because it means I’ve got 90 photos on Facebook like this, which make me look really like a really popular and easily likeable person:
Adam, Rex, Shark’s hand, Me, Dan, Steffan and Sam. Not pictured: Katy, Matt, Chris, Barney, the ghost of Christmas past.
It was also excellent because I got to meet my friend Matt for the first time – after knowing him online for very nearly seven years:
Despite being in London, we didn’t do anything particularly touristy – we just went to three pubs and a Pizza Express like locals may do, largely ignoring the spectacular views of central London around us.
As the day went on, things got progressively louder, culminating in a drinking game in the last pub (which didn’t really work on me, as I wasn’t drinking alcohol), and Barney, Dan, and Sam getting approximately very, very, drunk. They’d been drinking since 11am, having gone to a pub at Liverpool Street Station before meeting the rest of us, so by 9pm, weren’t walking in a straight line. This meant that me, being sober (I’m straight-edge), and Katy (who I’d dragged along for the day), who was only tipsy, had to try and guide them back to their train stations so they could get home.
People came almost literally from all over the country – we had people who’d come from Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Kent, the south coast – almost everywhere really. My friend Jeroen, who’s from the Netherlands, had even given up a day of his holiday in London to meet us all.
Nearly everyone who was there.
Being the webmaster and technically the owner of a major website has its perks. In the afternoon, when we were all in Hyde Park, my fellow administrators and I managed to persuade a couple of the lesser proletariat to go and buy us drinks. The other interesting thing was that because I’m the webmaster, the bloke at the top, I sort of assumed the leadership position. I was making executive decisions about where we should go and where we should go and so on.
Jeroen, Mike, Me, Steffan and Terry – the PKMN.NET Administration team.
It was when I was speaking to the group as a whole and leading people to a spot in the park that I realised that I had created an army. I’d re-iterate that it was amazing, but I fear that it could be (correctly) interpreted that I was enjoying the power trip and megalomania more than I was the meeting people.
Most of the gang lasted until Leicester Square.
After the “official” meet in Hyde Park, about fourteen of us took a trip to Leicester Square to acquisition some food, before (at my command) heading to Westminster via Trafalgar Square. It’s not a trip to London if you don’t see Big Ben. It wasn’t until we were sitting in an underground bar in the former Greater London Council meeting (just across the Thames from Parliament) that we realised we were missing someone. Whoops.
We found him eventually though. As the evening went on it ended up with seven of us, the most hardcore of the gang going to another pub near Euston station – which coincidentally, was a Scream pub. In other words, the same brand of pubs I go to all of the time – and it was just like the ones in Leicester, with its stacker, video jukebox and pool table. The only difference was that it was charging London Prices.
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