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(*Giggle* Nick's got this new (gay alert) fabulous MONSTER Dell PC, I'm so jealous of him, lol! Unused to the keyboard layout though, so typing's a little awkward.)
It all went without a hitch. I didn't miss the plane, it arrived on time, I had Nick's instructions on which trains and subway lines and stuff to take to get to central Wimbledon.
The plane ride was very nice. Even waiting in the departure area at the airport was very nice. Why it was very nice? Eye candy! I had this awesome almost platinum blonde cutie right in front of me, I later found out on the plane when they bought train tickets for central London that he's fourteen, but I couldn't have guessed that myself. He's definitely not shaving yet!  Across the room sat a dude in his early 20s, he was reeeally cute too with darker, short and kinda tufty hair, and right behind Platinum Blonde was a boy from the Indian sub-continent. He was just beautiful, but unfortunately sat with his back turned most of the time.
How I came to know Platinum Blonde's age? He and his mom sat next to me on the plane!  I sneaked a few peeks of him I must admit. Oh, by the way... This young Swedish girl sat in the row behind me, and amongst the first things she said was, "don't barf now!", to someone else. "And, not you either!", to a third person. Heheh! Later, when we came in to land at London Stanstead, she giggled lots because her tummy felt so funny when the plane bounced unexpectedly on the air currents and such... Was fun!
When I finally got to Wimbledon, I called Nick, he came in his car to pick me up. That's when I screwed up; this trip's one and only glitch I hope. I stood there waiting at the Centrecourt (named after the tennis thingy; main entrance to the station), when I was actually supposed to stand at the Forecourt! Anyway, we solved that, and I got my luggage dropped off at his place.
Nick had to go off to work again, so I took the train back to the center of Wimbledon. I had seen some shops I wanted to check out, and I had a couple hours to kill. I looked at a belt carrying-case for my cell phone, and a cordless Bluetooth headset and some games and stuff. I'm thinking of getting a Gameboy Advance SP, and an Eyetoy and network adapter for my PS2 console.
I decided to walk back to Nick's place, it's just one stop along the train line so that shouldn't be too difficult I thought. It pained me a little to leave the center area because it was FULL OF HOTTTTT GUYS, but I wanted to look at a park with a lake Nick had told me about. The weather's absolutely fabulous, I've seen a ton of shirtless hotties today! It was rainy in Gothenburg, but here I'm literally melting away! Nick said it was 100 degrees F the other day, the highest ever measured.
Anyway, the walk to the park wasn't too long, and not too exciting either, just rows and rows of those small English semi-detached houses (all built out of brown bricks, hehe). The park was much nicer, first thing I noticed was a little wee girlie in pink sitting on top of a short stone pillar, weeping. She had scratched one of her knees and was weeping in that way kids do when they aren't really hurt, they just want someone to fuss over them and comfort them. Her mother (who was there with another female friend, also with a kid) smiled at me in an apologetic manner, but really, it wasn't so bad. The girl wasn't loud and noisy, she just wanted some attention (it was a tiny little scratch).
I continued on, first was a kids' playground with a pool that was about as deep as halfway up to my calves I suppose (I steered clear of it because a father and his kids were tossing small buckets of water at each other whilst making a lot more noise than that little girl. Lots of tennis courts followed, then came the real lake. It was fair-sized, a couple hundred meters long and a bit less across. A foot-path led along one side, where mothers and small kids stuffed various water-fowl full of white bread. The geese were quite brash, one or two came up out of the water, and they were almost as tall as the toddlers feeding them, making their mothers become a bit cautious you might say!
"Just give it the bread!", one mother nervously instructed her small son as the big thing came closer. That same kid hurled almost a whole slice of bread at a swan, barely missing it! Not that the kid meant anything by it, he was just so enthusiastic with his task.
A bit further ahead was a short cement pier, off of which several youths were bathing from. Well, youths... Hm. I dunno, none of them could have been as much as a week older than Platinum Blonde! I tell you, I would NEVER have stuck as much as a toe in that water, not with all those birds fouling it. Yuuuck! Anyway, the guys were certainly worthy of some attention, and they bathed in their underwear!
It's nice when the weather's fine, isn't it?
After that, it was mostly a long walk back to Nick's apartement. I saw a French babe with a washboard stomach finishing up playing tennis after he and friends had practiced or whatever, but not that much else happened really. When I came back to the entrance of the park, a mother was threatening her tiny daughter with a smacking if she didn't quiet down. YUCK! Child abuse's legal in Britain, anyone who raises a hand at a child should have it cut off I say, or at least have ten times the pain inflicted upon oneself!
Then a mother came carrying a small sad boy to a waiting ambulance. He had an arm in a crude sling, and was followed by the rest of the family. He was upset, yet behaved in a rather dignified fashion.
I proceeded back to Nick's place (just a couple hundred meters), and then had a nap because the day had been long and exhausting.
Ok. Done. One LennyWalk post down, several more to go I wager. Tomorrow me and Nick will go see Patrick Stewart perform on stage so I will tell you all about that too of course!
{{{Hugs}}} for everyone.
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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Wow lenny, you have such an amazing eye for detail. *hugs* That was great to read you cheered up my day man. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in London dude. bye byes
~andy
Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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Wow i feel like i know London now or at least the part you described. Glad you are having so much fun.
Here in LA, i just go to Venice Beach to check out the surfer boys, they are do fine, infact i will go skating there this Sunday. As for you i see you got a lot of hot guys to look at.
Keep telling us your so call " Lenny Reviews"
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Yeehaaaaaaa
How does monday look to you?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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e
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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Sounds like a great beginning to a wonderful trip. Glad you're havin' fun. You deserve it.
WOW! Teeny-bopper boys bathing in their underwear in public. Here in the States, they'd be arrested and labeled sex offenders.
Think good thoughts,
e
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Monday during the day would be just great, I assume that is what you mean?
Me and Nick is thinking of going at a symphonic concert in the evening, however if you want to do something... Well, we can talk more later ok?
Anyway, thanks timmy! {{{hugs}}}
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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No Message Body
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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trevor
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Really getting into it |
Registered: November 2002
Messages: 732
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No Message Body
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Hehehe - don't I wish! LOL!
No, seriously. We did meet a captain today, except it was the captain of a river cruiseboat. And, oh yeah! I forgot to tell you, Nick has another houseguest apart from me! A tiny little grey/brown mouse. We saw it yesterday evening just before we went to bed, it lives in Nick's bedroom cupboards apparantly.
So anyway, back to the second day! Riverboat. It took us down the Thames, past the Docklands area which was lots of industry and now is a posh financial district with the tallest high-rise in the U.K, and the Millennium Dome, which was a spectacular financial fiasco and now stands completely unused. Oh well. Maybe the government will learn something from that. (Doubtful!)
While the boat went along the first part of the cruise we had a constant stream of banter from the captain in a stand-up comedy sort of way about particular sights worthy to be pointed out. For example, he mentioned a trampsteamer that was moored along the shore that had first seen service there as an art gallery for two years before going bankrupt. It was then turned into a pub and apparantly did more business in two weeks as a pub than in two years as an art gallery... "Shows what kind of artists we got in London", quipped the captain, to much merriment from the onlookers.
We went past the London Flood-barrier also and that too was suitably impressive. Of course, by that time our arms and legs were getting cooked in the sveltering sunlight. Damn, who would have imagined it, getting sunburnt in England? The boat turned around past the barrier and then went up to Greenwhich where me and Nick disembarked.
Due to a late breakfast we had a late lunch there at a pub, choosing both to have meat, veggies and ale pies which apparantly is an English pub tradition. The pies went down along with roasted potatoes, and I thought it was pretty darn good (could have used a little bit more salt perhaps that's all) and Nick said 'about average', which shows that a great meat, veggies and ale pie must taste reeeally good!
We managed to pick up free drinks by the way. A company's introducing a new line of "crazy" softdrink products and they were just handing out orange and strawberry flavor bottles in a small park where a radio station had set up (a very very NOISY) camp. The only really crazy thing I can imagine about the softdrinks btw is that they contain skimmed milk! Anyone who has tried to mix orange juice and milk knows it is NOT the best of combinations, but the taste was actually pretty good. We were thirsty on the way back from Greenwhich, and I have to say no matter how crazy, I wouldn't actually have PAID for those products. It went down, it didn't taste bad, but that little extra something was missing.
Anyway, Greenwhich was nice. Traffic was horrible initially, but once we hit the (yellowed, due to extreme heat and lack of rain) parkland it got much better. We went up the hill towards the observatory, which I assumed would be an exhibition about the stars, but actually dealt more with time. In part due to the zero-hour meridian that runs through the place (lots of tourists, many of them cute, had their picture standing with a leg on either side of it).
Seems the observatory was set up by order of King So-and-so wayy back in the late 17th century or something to solve the problem with determining the latitude of a sailing vessel. Longitudes aren't much of a problem it seems, but latitudes are much trickier. They figured out that a precise watch would do the trick, and a thick book of tables too I think, heh heh. Well, the precise watch was cruical. Hence, most of the exhibition actually centered around the making of the first watch that was precise and durable enough to be taken to sea. Some guy whose name starting with H spent the major part of his life pursuing a £20.000 reward for making such a watch. He finally won when he had turned 80! Nutter! Anyway, his winning watch, the H4, was a very impressive piece of mechanical engineering. It looks like a huge pocketwatch, about the size of a CD or so, and a couple centimeters thick. Having seen the H1 through H3 clocks, one realizes the difference. The H4 seems to have been a completely different approach!
Unfortunately, after finishing with the museum there wasn't enough time to go back to Nick's place and change before the theatre play was to start in the evening so we took the boat back to the Westminster pier from which we had set out (only a stone's throw from the parliament building. Well, for me; several throws actually lol!). We proceeded on foot and went past Trafalgar Square (manymany cuties there!) with Lord Nelson up on his column, then onwards past another guy up on a column. He had what looked like a cape and a dagger in his hand, which of course means he's Lord Nelson's evil arch enemy. Everybody knows they wear capes and carry wicked daggers! As we got closer however the dagger turned out to be a rapier, but that's fine. Arch-villains may equip themselves with rapiers as well. And yes, the cape WAS a cape.
Nick tried to reason with me, 'why would they put an evil person up on a pillar? They only do that to good people!', to which I replied, 'BAHHH!'
He's got a CAPE! That means he's evil, alright! I mean, GEESH! EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS! He's evil. Trust me, alright?!
We also saw the entrance to Downing Street and the ugly brown brick house in which the PM gets to live. Wonder if they got those weird taps in the bathrooms there as all the English houses seem to have; one separate tap for cold water and another for hot! What if you like luke-warm water then? I don't know how these people deal with it really... And they have furry carpets on the floor in their bathrooms too. Weirdness. That's like, ILLEGAL in Sweden.
The theatre play was everything I had hoped for. The theatre itself was really nice, it had a total of four tiers with lots of busts and stuff on the walls, some gilded and some just plain white plaster, but it looked really nice. The preferred colors were red and gold actually, but that was fine with me.
When the curtain rose we were presented with a scene of very pale colors, whites and grey-ish whites mostly. Very sparse, yet very stylish too. The ones we immediately laid eyes on were the Master Builder's female secretary or whatever, her (as we learned later) fiancee and apprentice to the Master Builder, and his father, colleague to the Master Builder.
Patrick himself didn't enter until a few minutes later, and then the Master Builder's jealous wife was introduced after the secretary and Patrick had flirted a bit. Later, another lovely young lady was introduced, which turned out to be the main female interest for the play.
The performance was in three acts, with the first in the Master Builder's work/drawing room or something like that, and the second in may have been a library with a window in a corner (white, brightly lit curtains to simulate sunlight covering a black background, which felt kinda weird). The last act was in an eerie, misty garden with a noxious-looking blue glow up above. All colors were very dull, and/or muted. The performance was very nice though, actors behave rather different on stage compared to movies. Voices and gestures are exaggerated in a way, it took a little effort initially to get used to but then it was all second nature.
Patrick was amazing. :D:D:D:D At the end when they took their bows, I felt like screaming like a giddy schoolgirl hehehe! There were girls screaming in the row behind us and to our left. Theatre groupies, I joked to Nick.
We then ended the evening by sharing a nice Caesar salad with roasted chicken and a huge garlic bread with - I assume - mozzarella cheese made out of a split ciabatta at a cafe not too far from the theatre. It was great. Not too much food, just a lil something to fill up the stomach.
Then we went home and slept, basically. Today we're thinking of going to the science museum, then watching a movie or something.
{{{hugs}}}
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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Going out and about with Lenny is like having a second pair of eyes and ears. He notices so many things that I miss.
 The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is fascinating and well worth a visit. We somehow resisted doing the touristy thing of taking pictures of each other with one leg either side of the meridian line!
There is an excellent museum. The guy whose name starts with H was John Harrison (1693-1776). He is known as "the man who solved the longitude problem".
 The famous H4 watch has been described as the most important timepiece ever invented. It was taken on a voyage to Jamaica and lost just a few seconds after many weeks at sea - accuracy unheard of at the time.
The exhibition also demonstrated the very latest timepiece: the caesium atom fountain clock, which is accurate to within one second every 15 million years. Amazing.
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Today we set out for the Science Museum, which was a huge place with all sorts of gadgets and machinery, some of it quite ancient. (Oh darn, Nick just offered me some of the marshmallow cars (Swedish specialty), and I'm such a sucker for those! They made me wish for more, I could eat the whole bag, lol...).
First thing you see when you go inside is this huuuuuge landing gear from an Airbus airplane. It's got four tires that reaches to my hip at least and probably higher, and lots of hydraulic pistons and such. Absolutely fantastic stuff.
Proceeding inside one finds steam engines of varying sizes and design, including a triple-expansion marine engine that is like three meters tall or perhaps even more. That one's actually pretty small, there's a photo of a water pumping station engine from central London that was in use up until around 1970, that was at least six storeys tall. Absolutely massive!
There's also an authentic V2 rocket there (minus the one tonne warhead I assume!), and a rocket engine used in the Saturn V booster's second and third stages (think moon landings here if you don't know what a Saturn V is ). The engine weighs 1800 kilograms and produces a thrust of 90.000 kilograms! The booster's second stage had five of those engines and they ran on liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Third stage had just one such engine.
In the space section of the exhibition I saw a man with a somewhat unruly child of maybe five years or so. The thing was, the child had a harness around his chest with a short leash which the man held in his hand! I've never seen such a thing, hehe! How can anyone treat a child like that? Eeeww.
Omg, there was SO much stuff there, I can't possibly mention it all, I would have to sit here and type until it's time to go home! There was early computers there, and the very first prototype for VTOL aircrafts (vertical take-off and landing), which eventually turned into the Harrier, as used by British and American navies. There was also this big section about the human body, with DNA and our brain and such, but that part was mainly geared towards kids with stations that blinked and made sounds with big buttons to push etc.
Anyway, we went on to Leichester Square to have dinner at a far-east themed restaurant. It was nice, I'd been there before last year. Three times I wandered around at random in the evening, three times I found that same restaurant by pure chance. Three times I scanned the menu for the tastiest-sounding item and three times did I end up getting the same dish served to me! And yes, it tasted very, very good too. I didn't have that one now however.
Following the dinner we went to se Pirates of the Carribbean (JJ: :):D:)), and it was FAN-TASTIC! It was everything that Cutthroat Island was not, it was funny, well-scripted (really! I'm not sh*bleep*ing you!), and the actors rocked! Two hunks from our pageant, though dear Johnny didn't look too healthy towards the end there. You know what I mean if you've seen it.  Also, have you REALLY seen it? Like, sat through the entire credits list, or did you just walk out as soon as they started???
Was pretty funny. Nick chuckled all of a sudden right in the middle of that long long LONG list, when I asked him why, he returned: "Seedy prisoner #1, seedy prisoner #2, seedy prisoner #3, seedy prisoner #4." I dunno why, but I thought that was worthy of a chuckle as well, and yes, they weren't clean and proper prisoners, that's for sure!
Anyway, that was pretty much the day, in a very condensed form. Now it's almost bedtime for me, so see you again tomorrow!
{{{hugs!}}}
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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It has been an INCREDIBLY busy two days. I've been up and about all day for two days, and barely any more time online than to read the board and check emails, not write any posts. We came home around 11.30 both today and yesterday, and I was simply TOO DAMN TIRED to write anything yesterday, and same thing today actually.
Anyway, today I spent a WHOLE DAY WITH TIMMY WHEEEEE!!!
And smith... Timmy gave IT to me just before he left, so THANK YOU, you sweetie you... *mmmmm* giggle~~~
I will type up a report tomorrow about what happened sunday and monday. Take care everyone!
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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On saturday, Nick got an invitation from his female cousin (on which side of the family tree I don't really know) to go visit the farm in southern England where she lives along with her parents the following day. He asked if I was interested, and upon hearing there would be an air show also I became quite enthusiastic and said yes.
Of course, this meant a drive of approx. an hour and fourty-five minutes Nick said, but okay. Doesn't sound too bad I thought. That was before I realized exactly how underdeveloped the road system in this country is.
I don't want to knock anyone or anything, I'm sure the road system is just FINE.
...For a nation of around ten million people or so.
Unfortunately, we have eight million just in the London area, and getting out of the city itself was far from trivial. There doesn't seem to be much of any major motorways leading out of it, we passed through village center after village center that had all grown together into one big mass of houses, all of them connected by quite narrow, winding and TRAFFICKED roads. O...m...f...g.
Eventually we made our way out onto a real motorway, except after not too long we had to get off it again because it didn't go in the direction we wanted to travel. It was back to the narrow country road-like roadway system instead, except it wasn't a country road. It was an A-road, (apparantly, M-roads are motorways, then comes A-roads, and B-roads which are smaller still, and THEN comes country roads, which I really don't want to see, much less travel on. What are they, two wheeltracks through mud? )
After not too long a while, we hit the back end of a car queue which just went on and on and on at an ever so slow a pace, and often stopping completely in fact. Adding in the heat and the completely unmerciful sunlight meant I was seriously starting to regret agreeing on going on the trip in the first place, but of course it was too late to voice such concerns. In fact, Nick admitted about ten minutes into the car jam that the exact same thing had happened a year to the day ago when he went to visit his cousin the last time... THANKS, man! After what felt like about three ages but probably was more like 45 minutes, we finally got through the bottleneck, the nature of which we never even got to see. Just to rub salt in our wounds, cars were coming along at a fast and steady pace in the other direction the whole time... Aagh!
Anyway, we reached the place; Dann's Farm, and it was a lovely pittoresque place, inhabited by some wonderful and very colorful people. The main farmhouse building was quite large, I didn't get to explore it, but I could see from a map of the place that it was big, and it had several floors. It was also populated by hens, pigs and sheep in addition to the human inhabitants, two cool cats and two rather unruly female dogs! One of them was just a puppy, though very big still despite that (although she seems to have watched too many supermodel ads, because she's quite fussy about eating and very thin!)
We had a lunch upon arrival consisting of sandwiches which we made ourselves from meats and cheeses and pickled stuff and such, and during which we had a conversation with the other guests; Nick's cousin's fiancee, a man in the contract farming business, and an elderly man and an elderly woman, possibly friends of the family.
After the lunch and the usual chit-chat (I guess, it being the first English farm lunch I ever attended in my entire life), we proceeded further south to a coastal town whose name has slipped my mind to see the air show. Nick's cousin's fiancee Nick (!) drove Nick's cousin's HUGE enormous Land Rover, which was extremely comfortable I might add, especially since it was equipped with AIR CONDITIONING, yuuuuummmm...! We love AC, heheh.
The drive wasn't that long, and fortunately not anything like the trip to the farm itself. The landscape was hilly and very beautiful, and soon we saw what a popular thing it was to go to this particular place just to see the air show. There were cars lining the roadside all along a tall chalk cliff overlooking the ocean, and it was still several kilometers down to the town itself! When we got there it seemed like a completely futile task to find a parking space, especially for such a big vehicle as that Land Rover. I have never in my life seen anything like it, there were cars along EVERY street on either side, literally standing bumper to bumper at every conceivable place one could fit a car in... On our second round we did actually find a space. Amazing. It wasn't even far from the waterfront either! What a stroke of sheer, utter luck!
We made our way back to the boardwalk or whatever one would call it to watch the air show. It was going on already, it had been going on for most of the day and for three days before this one. Sunday was the final day however, so we got to see two Russian prop-driven planes doing some stunts. Not too impressive I thought, after that followed a series of jets, British fighters from past decades mostly, and one being a Nimrod bomber aircraft which was rather large and slow in comparison. To compensate, it exposed itself to us by showing its main asset; the largest bomb bay in NATO, although only in volume, not weight capacity. The guy on the PA system told us that particular plane was due for retirement and would be replaced with another Nimrod which wasn't as good for public air displays since its "noise and smoke generators" (meaning the engines) weren't as impressive as on this one we got to see...
The final attraction was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, the Red Arrows.
I was hoping for five aircraft doing formation flying and such. I didn't get five. I didn't get seven. I got NINE of them, and it was the most incredible, amazing spectacle I have ever seen I think. They can do white, red and blue smoke of course, and they smoked a lot! They did a couple formations initially with all nine planes, then they split into two groups with five planes in one and four in the other for some additional stuff, then followed some flybys where two single aircraft came at each other with throttles wide open and tore past each other at as close a distance as possible while leaving a trail of smoke behind. It was quite astounding. They did that horizontally, then there was a variant when they both started climbing up into a loop, switching smoke color after passing each other. As they met again at the top of the loop they again switched color and dove downwards to meet again at the bottom of the circle, thus completing the whole thing!
They also showed a trick where two planes came towards each other with another two planes circling around the smoke trail made by the first plane. The four planes met and passed each other, continuing to make these spirals. Another trick was when a few planes went forwards in formation (three or four, I think), one plane circled around them making a spiral, and then yet another plane circled that spiral making another spiral that was bigger still!
Maybe it has to be seen to be appreciated, I dunno...
One I liked the best wasn't that complicated perhaps, but it looked really sweet. It was two planes flying up into the air from either direction so they met belly to belly, then they turned on red smoke and pulled away from each other in a sort of compressed loop. Meanwhile a third plane approaches from high above in a straight line pointing down towards the ground. That one too turns on red smoke. The looping planes straightens out, completing a heart-shaped figure, while the lone plane turns off his smoke as he passes through the heart and then turns it back on again thus making an arrow... Veeeeery nice!
During some of the tricks, we got to hear the radio communication between the planes, it sounded so weird over the PA system with short stunted utterings bouncing around the beach coming from different speakers. It was so weird!
Then we went back to the farm, hung around a bit, went to Nick the cousin-fiancee's house to help him get rid of the blaster worm (and failed, because it shut us down before we had time to download the patch to keep it out), went back to the farm and hung out more, had dinner, talked, had dessert, talked, had cheese and crackers, talked, then went back home to Nick's place again, then fell asleep.
Next day was Timmy-day. Timmy arrived at around ten twenty-five or so, give or take a little. First we had some cake that Nick had gotten from his co-workers the week before when celebrating his new MBA, because Nick had said he would bring the cake to the office the next day so if we wanted some we'd better hurry. It was nice and chocolatey.
Timmy and I then went out to try and find some Victorian London neighborhoods and Jack the Ripper murder sites. We googled a little on the internet and printed out some maps that we thought would be helpful and then got on a train into the city center. I relied on Timmy mostly, but he was almost as handicapped as me, not being familiar in that area of the city. We did not find the murder site of 29 Hansbury Street, but we did find the street itself. Almost all the old buildings were gone, probably destroyed in the war. Then we went looking for the George Yard Buildings murder site and did not find that either. The George Yard Buildings seemed to have vanished as well, along with most of the streets surrounding them because almost none of the names on our Victorian London map seemed to correspond with what we were seeing on our modern London city map.
Then we went for the Goulston Street murder site and did not find that one either, which was fine really, because by then our excursion had turned into one consisting of NOT finding Jack the Ripper murder sites...! Thus, we succeeded in three out of three attempts.
Then we started walking around trying to find St. Paul's Cathedral and initially we did not find that one either (despite walking in the general direction it was in), so we went for lunch. It was a bit of a bother trying to find a place that wasn't horrendously expensive due to all the rich and snobby pin-striped suits walking around (we were near the financial district), but we finally succeeded and had a nice meal consisting of noodles in some kind of slightly hot soy sauce and slices of tender, grilled beef filet with some other soy sauce on that. Tasted really nice I have to say, and we got a chance to sit down and relax for a bit, because we had done a FAIR bit of walking I have to say. Upon coming out of the restaurant we turned like two corners and there we had St. Paul's straight in front of us! Well, it was several hundred meters away, but it was there anyway, sticking up above everything else.
We approached the cathedral from the wrong direction, so we had to walk all around it (which I didn't really mind). Upon going inside, we noticed we were required to pay the sum of SIX POUNDS STERLING PER ADULT just to be able to enter the House of God.
Seems the Church is hell-bent on making their churches into money-making tourist attractions. Good thing I'm not a christian, hehehe...
We exited fairly rapidly, not being able to see much from where we were standing, rounded the building again, although on the opposite side, to reach a tube station and then went on to Camden Market. OMG, what a circus that was. I saw so much there, it was totally awesome. I'm going back one of these days before I leave, I'm just not sure when. I saw some very nice T-shirt with glowing, flashing flourescent displays on them which I am very tempted to buy even though the cheapest ones are fourty quid!
We went all the way back down the main market street and into another tube station called Mornington Crescent, which Timmy said was the terminus for a very peculiar London game with the same name. The basic premise was, you'd select another tube station and then compete to reach this one in the shortest amount of time possible. It sounded a bit weird but cool to me, considering how many permutations there are in the London underground system with all the different lines and all the places they meet. One would have to know which lines are the most frequent, where you can't get on and off at a particular time of the day, which lines might be very crowded, which ones you'd have to move a long distance to switch between one line and the next (some of these tunnels are VERY long) etc etc. Jolly good fun, in other words!
We went to Harrods next, and it was a very fancy department store that didn't have any Swedish cheeses in the cheese section. Yes, I asked.
Timmy then suggested we might want to go see the statue of Peter Pan that was in one of the parks whose name I've now forgotten (just like I forgot to bring in Nick's milk before leaving with Timmy... Uggghhh... He even reminded me one extra time before leaving, but I still managed to forget it in all the excitement of my friend arriving and such.  ) Well, we went on foot looking for the park and then the statue. Shortcutting through a quiet neighborhood with some rather small but overall very nice houses, Timmy remarked they were very expensive. Then, a little while later he amended himself by saying they WEREN'T very expensive. "Oh, really?", I went of course, expecting them to be just that, very expensive. "No, they're extremely expensive", Timmy replied. Surely enough, there was a Rolls parked outside one of them. A tell-tale sign houses are NOT very expensive...
Anyway, we found Hyde Park, which is close to Whatever Park where Peter Pan resides in bronze form. In Hyde Park, we had sort of an afternoon snack consisting of sandwiches, since we would not have dinner until after the symphonic orchestra concert we were waiting to go see with Nick in the evening. Hyde Park was nice, with more of those horrible Canada Geese doing their business right in the pond where people were swimming. Only thing I would touch that water with would be my gaze, certainly not my body. Much less swim in that bacterial soup.
Finding the statue was easy. We went along a path to a bridge, crossed the bridge, went into another park and then walked some more. There he was, playing a long flute whilst standing on a treestump made of bronze. Timmy snapped a pic of him and said he had nice legs. Guess that's true...!
We continued through the park, where there was a dilapidated area with marble fountains and stuff that was just overgrown with water weeds, and then lots of yellowed grass (due to the heat and lack of rain) inbetween rows of suffering trees along the paths. I saw a Concorde airplane going down for landing at Heathrow, and then me and Timmy just walked around for another 40 or so minutes (including time spent to get some headache pills for Timmy's poor neck) until we were supposed to meet Nick at the Royal Albert Hall, which wasn't far at all away from where we were. Suited us eminently! I'd only heard of that before, and now I got to see it for myself. It was HUGE! A very impressive building actually.
The concert was mainly Sibelius, but one other Finnish composer called Something-or-other Aho had also written a piece in two movements which had a trombone player in it who did a very good job all things considered. No, it wasn't very good. Parts of it was, but overall it mostly sounded like a score to a Bugs Bunny or Roadrunner cartoon I thought. It had its moments where I liked it quite a lot, but those the composer always managed to ruin; overallt he piece was rather noisy and quite frankly irritating.
In contrast, Sibelius was much, much better, so Setras, all hope is not lost for your people when it comes to composing music. Unfortunately, Sibelius can't compose anymore stuff since he is dead since many decades (which means he's busy de-composing, ha ha h...aaa... Lame joke. Sorry. ).
Oh, by the way, this is so funny. Much in contrast to my stupid Sibelius joke... When we met, me and Timmy and Nick, him coming straight from work, we did a small recap for our newly-arroved friend of what we had been up to today and Timmy mentioned we left Camden Market from that particular tube station with the game. They immediately launched into a discussion of the best strategy starting from some other place which I don't remember. Oh, this is sooo funny, well it was to me anyway. They continued to bounce names and places inbetween them with completely straight faces, names and places which I hadn't the slightest chance of following by the way since I'm not born and (in?)bred anywhere near here. When asking them to explain, they just ignored me or replied with, 'it depends on the rules you use' or some such. Queries to explain those rules were also ignored, but finally they must have felt they had to take mercy on poor me, because finally they explained one or two things. I won't ruin the fun for you guys, let's just say THEY HAD ME COMPLETELY. For details, go here guys:
http://www.dunx.org/mc/
Dinner we had at this really weird noodles restaurant. It reminded me a lot about my school cafeteria in a way, except colors were brighter, everything looked nicer and the food was much much MUCH better. Food was fantastic actually, I really loved it! We all had noodle soup-things, me with grilled chicken breast and Nick with red ginger-marinated pork and Timmy with... Um, I don't remember actually, but he said it was good and it smelled amazing.
During the course of the evening, me and Timmy both admitted to Nick having looked up Pan's skirt, unfortunately, there wasn't much to be seen there, just more bronze.
Was two days filled with lots and lots of fun and I am extremely grateful to my hosts that they've been so incredibly nice to me... Big hugs and kisses to you both! :):D:)
Ok, this has taken over two hours to write. Time to sign off. Luv you all!
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I met Lenny at Nick's place at about 10:30 and we struggled to find the places we wanted. "Jack the Ripper Murder Sites". So a many station ride on the tube to Whitechapel. And then we tried to correlate the Victorina map with the 2003 map! Impossible. But we found one of them. And missed severla others.
Then we walked towards the City, to find St paul's catjhedral. We had lunch within the "Sound of Bow Bells" near the church of St Mary Le Bow". This is the church bell peal that defines a real Cockney. If you were born within the sound of Bow Bells, then you are Cockney. No other definition exists.
A walk to St Pauls Cathedral showed us a £6 entry fee. "WWJD?" is an interesting thought there. We declined to pay. On the way we'd seen The Monument" which we climbed last year, and decided not to this year.
From St pauls we headed for Camden Market. It's an odd area. Ask Andy! Andy, did you go into "CyberDog"? The loud one with the weird, weird clothes?
And then to Knightsbridge, where we wandered into Harrods. It truly is just a big store, but it has pretentions.
A wander away from Harrods are two parks. Hyde park, where we sat and had a sandwich in the cafe by the Serpentine, where people swim amid the goosecrap; And Kensignton Gardens.
In KG I fulfilled a lifetlong ambition. There is a statue of Peter Pan. A bronze. I have never seen it before yesterday. It is not beautiful, exactly, but it is magical. And he has the most amazingly gorgeous legs.
We hit Kensighton High Street briefly after that, and then met Nick at the Royal Albert Hall where we saw yesterday's Promenade concert. Then supper.
Lenny is going to describe it FAR better!
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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YUp YUp went in and mourned over the fact that I could buy no clothign bescause I had no placein my pack to put it Went to Harrods too they were having some big sale.
Peace out
~andy
Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
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I remember Camden Market. It seemed like you could buy almost anything there, assuming you had the energy to look for it. And you really missed an amazing view when you skipped the St. Paul's. You can climb almost all the way to the top and go outside and you see quite far from there. Though I think it was cheaper than £6 for students, maybe like £3 or something.
I hope all the rest of your days there are as much fun!
Setras
That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.
-Master Li in Neil Gaiman's Sandman
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First Post From London! 
Cool! 
Happy for you and a bit jealous - enjoy the trip! 
Quick update... 
