I’ve finally cracked and decided to give in to Dixie’s demands and I’ll cave in the stand off between myself Uber and Xaosseed to blog about London.

So I was informed that Uber and Fatz were coming to London, Xaosseed was poked until he agreed to come and it was also Graham’s first weekend during his stay here. All was set for mayhem. The first day was marked by a public transport nightmare and rain any time Uber and Fatz decided to venture under the skies. Thankfully this didn’t affect me much since they were coming to me and hence I didn’t have to travel.

London has an excellent transport system - though you do tend to have to plan ahead a bit more than in Dublin particularly if you plan on taking a non tubular method such as a bus. Normally the tube is great, however at weekends they tend to do maintenance work on many of the lines. It is usually still possible to get around but again you kind of have to do a bit of planning. Eventually Uber, Fatz and Graham managed to arrive in Camden and due to their lateness we were able to get a table at the restaurant I wanted to go to (this is not a given on a Summer weekend in one of London’s most popular tourist destinations). We ate burgers which were very tasty and then proceeded to one of my favourite bars - the Edinboro Castle. It is a frankly excellent establishment with a wide range of beers, an excellent beer garden, and a barbeque which sells overpriced burgers but which when you’ve been drinking and the smell of cooking meat overwhelms you is hard to resist. We called it a night round closing time and I dropped them off at Mornington Crescent for some novelty value.

Saturday morning Xaosseed Alex Fatz and Graham hit borough market - an excellent food market. I gave it a miss and turned up a bit later on at which point we walked down to the Imperial War museum laughing at amusing graffiti and amusingly worded signposts. Xaosseed exited stage left at this point to do something - but arrangements had been made to meet at Angel at 8 and reservations for dinner would be made (Oh ho ho). We arrived into a hall of tanks planes and artillary and fatz declared “I’m home”. We spent quite a while wandering round the various exhibits but much like many of the museums here there’s just too much to see in one visit. Hence we decided to give the holocaust exhibits a miss, spending time with Xaosseed is depressing enough without adding to it (I blog so I get to make the jokes).

From there we wandered down to the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Southwark Palace??) and then along the southbank to the Houses of Parliament. We crossed over had a wander round waiting to rendezvous with Ian (Carroll). We walked by David Michell (of Peep show fame) and eventually found Ian. We were hungry gamers at this point but decided that we could hang on til 8 for food since the trip to Angel would take a while too.

We arrived at Angel and since there was no word from Xaosseed we went for a pint. We were very hungry gamers at this stage and hunger does not a happy gamer make. I wont go into details about the Stoke Newington incident, except to say we had to go somewhere random and didn’t get our main course til 11pm. We were very hungry gamers at that point. From there we made our way back to Angel then on to Old Street. Uber Fatz and Ian hit the gay bars while myself Bill and the others hit Club Fanny.

On Sunday Uber Fatz and Graham did some more stuff - went to the HMS Belfast and the Science Museum (I think) and I caught up with them in Kensington in the evening for a  showing of Transformers. It was excellent. Graham wandered home afterwards while myself Alex and Fatz wandered the streets of Kensington in search of a open pub or somewhere to eat. We were partially successful and then I wombled on home. Alex and Fat probably did something on Monday - but I didn’t get to see them before they went home so I don’t know. He can fill in the blanks.

More people should come to London to visit. It’s great. I promise I won’t bring you within a 3 mile radius of Stoke Newington (trust me that isn’t hard). It looks like I’ll be here for a while as I have accepted a job. A real job. I’m working a couple of days a week till I hand in my thesis then following a couple of weeks of doing something in the sun that doesn’t involve usability starting full time.

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