So, here is a post.

That’s it. I’m done.

Oh, okay, how about.. I got paid!!! Finally!!! Two fscking months in London with no income. At least the income that did come is a big one! 🙂 Aussie dollars can kiss my arse!

Last Friday was the Kingsway “Bierodrome” (Belgian beers!) with Dan and Renae then onto Sway Bar for Emily’s birthday with a bunch of peeps that were at Perserverance last time then onto Shaun’s for more crazyness. 9.30am I made it home.

That night, after I’d had a couple of hours kip and bought some speakers, G&S, Mal and I went and saw “Inside Man”. G&S went home after and I went to the Shep Bush Walkabout to meet some of Mal’s friends. Got out of bed around 2pm.

This must be thrilling reading.. not. I’d love to tell some interesting stories but these days it’s usually a case of “you had to be there” and “I don’t remember doing that?!” 😉

Fark it, it’s what I’ve been doing. The Friday before I’d gone out with Mal to somewhere in Farringdon. Saturday I made an appearance at Pitcher & Piano in Soho for Emma’s birthday. After that we went to the Jerusalem Bar. I hardly drank, being kept occupied.

Then I lost my wallet. I don’t even want to think about the sh1t I had to do to get it back. Suffice to say, arriving home at 4am was a ‘little’ later than I expected and I was lighter by 30quid and my Oyster card. The fscks didn’t take the 90euro or any of my credit cards though – what’s with that?! Thankyou, d1cks! When I finally dragged my used and abused carcass out of the house I cancelled the Oyster and should get a refund for the money on it. Applied for a new card the next day – no car means bike and Oyster card mucho importanto!

The Tuesday before that was extremely messy. Shaun and I finished working on site in Victoria (“ugliest people” suburb in London) early so had to go to a pub (The Albert), then onto another in Camberwell (Rosey O’Grady’s) to play pool with Kieron then onto the Red Lion in Kennington where too many pints were downed. From here we went to the Dog House with the new Tassie bargirl from the Lion and her Tassie friend. The Dog House closed (and we scored free beer! Like I needed any! :S). Ended up getting chucked out of the Tassie chicks’ house by their flatmate and trudging drunkenly back to Shaun’s house. I made it up the stairs alive. His tree out the front was well fertilised Wed morning though. Work was a little slow that day. Insert another few Walkabout visits, Vol visits and other random drinking establishments plus a dabble in work and some morning and night taxi-dodging on the GT and you have my London life. I’ll make it more interesting when I have money to burn. I promise.

Found a doctor’s surgery that will take me (requires that I lose half a day’s work every visit – stupid NHS!) and am struggling with the 1hr daylight saving change.

I stole this laptop from work so now I might blog a bit more.. unless they realise it’s gone and want it back. Blah.. 00:10.. Mr Beam is telling me to lay down..

These sorts of clinical trials are (were?) my backup for times when cashflow was limited, e.g. unemployment. Now I’m not so sure.

“Take drugs, we’ll pay you!” is just another case of something ‘too good to be true’.

www.newsday.com – drug trial puts 6 in hospital

news.google.co.uk – drug trial articles

What? Oh, It’s the Commonwealth Games fireworks? Right.. Carry on..

So what was all that like for you locals? It looked pretty impressive to me on the box. Looks like BBC is covering the whole lot here. I’d checked the guides for the cycling but actually being near a tv when it’s on is unlikely. 7-11am, 1-2pm and 3-4pm, 6.30-7.30pm, 10-11pm tomorrow we have live cycling. 7-10.30am, 2-3pm, 16.30-17.30, 23.30-2am Friday too. Ahh fuggit, I’ll read cyclingnews. Pittman vs. Lewis: Just get out the baby oil and sort out your differences with some wrestling!

Almost made myself crook on this morning’s commute.. but none of those bastards got past me and that’s all that matters 😉

Decided I really need my HRM back and some structure to my riding. Blasting around for 35min twice a day isn’t working out for me. It’s hella fun but my endurance has been shot to bits and I just don’t think I’d be much chop racing when summer rolls around. Still waiting for my first pay cheque.. grrr.. come on you bastards.. I have a stimulant habit to support..

Saturday I spend lying on the couch, still trying to recover from a large week of kidney abuse and in preparation for a large Sunday of kidney abuse.

Sunday I head into Kentish Town and meet Simo, Tezz and Genna-Leigh. The lineup for Church is stupid long right on 12pm so we fsckoffski down the road to a pub near the station. Nice Aussie girl serving in there. Enjoyed a pint of Abbott’s Ale and at half-twelve we walked straight into Church. A quid to ditch the jacket and then it was ?7.50 per baggie of booze. Three cans per bag (Woodstock, Smirnoff or various beers and ciders).

Got drunk, sung, danced, watched strippers, waded through the most hideous mess of a toilet block I’ve ever seen. Ahh.. I just worked out how my shoes have got so dirty the last two weekends.. We were joined by DJ and a few of his mates and continued.

I can’t recall the exact proceedings but I know I followed Tezz and Genna into a Maccas (no, of course I didn’t eat McChunder – actually think I went the pre-packed sandwich option from somewhere? I love those little platic-wrapped triangles..)

I’m eating real Aussie Milo straight from the tin. Don’t believe anyone who tries to tell you the UK shit is anywhere near as good as the imported! Thanks Mum! 🙂

I remember crossing the park in Shebu (just for the record: I don’t actually call it that but it IS easier to type than Shephard’s Bush) and walking into the Walkabout. Snakebites are cheap on Sundays so we’ll have some of those thanks..

I was going to meet “Polish chick” (name witheld to protect the indecent) at Church but I’m glad I didn’t (it isn’t the classiest joint in town!) and after a round of texting I was about to give up when I spotted her on the stairs. No big deal except I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t remember what she looked like.. phew!

In the next six hours I found out she was younger than me, she was from Poland, she lived nearby with five others and she has a job. That’s it. It’s not that her English isn’t up to par, far from it, she was just.. kept busy.

Fast forward a day or so: I’m trying to arrange a meeting with her where I’m not off my head. Should be interesting. Oh, and I finally managed to hack off the remains of the plastic bags tied around my belt loops..

Today, after our cafe meeting to discuss pending jobs, we went to the Volunteer for a pint of “3-something” ale (who says beer kills brane sells?!) and then for some nutty reason ended up eating scones with jam and clotted cream along with Baileys hot chocolates! The bar girls didn’t think Shaun was serious when he ordered them! 😀

Bloody nice they were! (the bargirls too :P)

Still working on a sub-30min commute but I continue to fsck up with London traffic and I have a bit of a cold so when the hammer’s down I’m coughing up all manner of interesting lung material. Fscking awesome! 😀 AHHH AHHH AHHH Sorry.. that Kaiser Chiefs track is this week’s hippy anthem.. obviously too much time spent in Walkabouts! :S

with a bourbon fest on Tuesday night (my first bottle of Beam since landing in this heat-less, bourbon-less land of the ‘mad rush’).

Wednesday night was another Ale Trail pub crawl. We couldn’t find a Nicholsons pub so we threw in an extra pint at the Princess of Prussia near Grant’s work while he googled for a starting point. I managed to leave my Crumpler on the floor which resulted in a 10min dash back there, hoping it was still around! Luckily, the two lovely Queenslanders who were sitting next to us guarded it for me. 🙂 Thanks Helen and Kylie! Give me a call and we can get you both a t-shirt and a hangover! 🙂

Thursday night was supposed to be spent at home, preferably in bed. Shaun and Dan had other plans though, twisting my alcoholic arm until I joined them at the Volunteer (Baker Street) for some more “Landlord”s and a very odd tasting pint with the appropriate name of “Enigma”. Then it was a cab ride to The Perserverance (Lamb’s Conduit Street WC1) for Kat’s leaving work drinks. It gets a little vague here but I do remember hassling the cute bargirl for different drinks to get over the 10 quid minimum for credit card purchases. She was impressed with me because I managed to distinguish my double JD from bourbons. Poor girl – so easily impressed. “White wine isn’t for me”, strange hats, strange people (Axl Rose?), another bag-leaving incident, a bus-ride conversation cut short with the spotting of a Central line station, food, bed.

Friday at work was “slow” to say the least. I don’t think I’d been to bed before 1am since last Friday and the last couple of nights had been 3am jobbies :S

I totally forgot about the report I had to write but somehow I hauled sufficient hung-over arse to make it into work early enough to finish it. Seems to be all I do – get hammered and then rush through the day in a daze. I haven’t been paid in two fscking months though! Stupid monthly contracts! If I don’t get cash soon I might have to stop going out.. hahaha.. as if.

Church again for Simon’s chucking out partay. WIth no Saturday night shenanigans we all should be a little more energised this time.. plus there’s someone going I’m looking forward to meating.. 😉

Fitted a new Schwalbe City Jet 1.5″ slick (65psi, also in a 1.9 version) on the rear of the very shabby-looking GT today (18,397k). Some new pads went on too, replacing the paper-thin strips of glossy crap that were grinding away my rims. London winter is hard on bikes. Got some lube too and another set of pads. 15quid sounds cheap for a tyre but do the conversion and damn! I’m paying for a commuter tyre what I used to pay for my race tyres! :S

This place is quiet with G&S in Scotland. Dan and co. are in France. Simo’s off to Cypress soon. Hurry the fsck up and pay me so I can get some travel done!! Better go defile G&S’s bed now.. mwhahahaha

Lovely Sarah took us to the Volunteer for lunch today and it just so happened they had “Landlord” as one of their guest ales. Too easy for Detective Hippy!

Rode to work today. I love commuting in London – it’s fscking mental compared to Melbourne!! Okay, so I miss the fsckwits trying to kill me and all but, in the rain, like tonight.. weeee! As always, speed helps makes it interesting and there’s tonnes of other riders to chase and dodging buses, taxis and a general stack of other traffic is fun.. fun! 🙂

My brakes are almost trashed so I’ve been avoiding them as much as possible – don’t really want to chew another set of rims up. Grind.. grind.. grind.. Now I really want my fixie!

Need to get faster.. must.. ride.. more.

We be going out for another Ale Trail pub crawl tomorrow night so Sheila can get one of the t-shirts. What the hell?! I’ll get drunk again and I can never have enough t-shirts!

I keep hearing tales (Private Gag: “tails!”) about a certain person’s antics on Saturday night.. jaysoos!! :S

After cleaning up the new place and turning my room into a zen masterpiece I headed into Tottenham Court Road tube for a pub crawl with Simo, Grant and Sheila.

I wouldn’t see home again until midnight Sunday. 🙂

We were doing one of the Ale Trails that Simon told us about (Theatre-something-or-other?). Hit five pubs for five pints and score a free t-shirt! Woo! Wish I could remember the name of the good one..

A little bit pissed I followed the others to Sheppard’s Bush Walkabout. Yes, not quite 12 months here and I finally caved and hit an “aussie” pub. It wasn’t as bad as I thought – Snakebites are a dodgy concept (beer, cider and red sh1t) but they still seemed to disappear fast. Saw Emma in the crowd and slurred some random sh1t to her before running off for something (someone?) else.

Some dancefloor passion (I got one of their numbers ;)) and then somehow I ended up at DJ’s or was it Court’s place? Stuffed if I know.

Continued abusing my internals there, including being talked into paying ?18 for a dozen cans of.. *hangs head in shame* Fosters! :S

Kipped for a bit (pay attention Simon!) then got woken by the others at 9-frickin’-AM and stumbled into DJ’s place. Some crazy fool waited until all of 9.30 before providing the first brekkie beers – the two Swinnie Res. lads doing their country proud.. well, it took me about 2.5 hours to finish one can of Caffrey’s.. so not that proud! haha 😛

Waited until 11am for a house inspection to take place. A prospective tenant inspection, but the chick didn’t show, was duly mocked and we headed off in a worrying looking state to..

Church.

Okay, not ‘church church’ but The Church. It’s a 12pm-4pm party that runs a bit like an inner city B&S ball. Every damage case who’s been on the turps for the last 12 hours was there, I’m sure. ?7.50 drink tokens are purchased and then exchanged for plastic bags containing three cans of beer, cider, Woodies or Smirnoff Ice. Bags are tied through belt loops or kept handy for belting rowdy kiwis. Jokin’ 😉

The music is typical crowd pleasing, bogan-esque trash and then there’s the annoying pommie MC and the strippers. Pure class. Pure class.

Against all logic, sound judgement and all that is holy, we (those who were still standing) went BACK to the Shebu (snort) Walkie and hit it hard again. Well, ‘I’ hit it hard again. DJ bailed, Laura and her sister kept topping up my Snakies with their own and by this stage, do you really think I know what happened to the rest? Nup? Damn right “nup”! 🙂

Met a couple of Kiwis who knew DJ and headed upstairs again, meeting some more people who’s names escape me – Scandi dude and chick from Melb?

Off my tree I had to go back downstairs to the mini-mosh that was happening for the night’s band – Bondi Beach Bums or something?? They did their job – at least the 20 or so people right up the front thought they did. When the band stopped, sanity returned. I bid farewell to the sweaty freaks and freakettes and tubed it home. I was actually pretty coherent at this stage which surprised me. But it took another hour before I was clean enough to lie on my new bedding! 😀

Monday at work was evil. Damaged goods but psyched with the after-glow of a great weekend!! 🙂

The new place is cool. Pop in for a visit if you’re in London! Thanks for the birthday wishes peoples and I’ll see some of you (Suz!) soon!!

After visiting the dark side of depression again (hence the lack of fresh, cutting-edge whinges from your’s truly) it finally dawned on me that I’d not done anything physical for a long while. I’d let my gym membership lapse because they were closing, I’d stopped running due to constant leg problems and, well, I haven’t ridden regularly since touring. That was it – I HAD to start riding to work!

It took ages to sort it all out; I needed permission to access the bike room and showers at work, I needed to work out how to get office clothes (FYI: I fscking HATE ties!) to work un-crinkled and so on. In my mental state, this was quite some chore.

On Saturday, I’d bought some new kit – a pair of Nike knicks, a pair of Pearl Izumi knicks and a very funky Altura Night Vision jacket:

On Sunday, I tested the route out. It took 43min to cover the 13.5k from Ealing to Baker Street, via Oxford Street. I wasn’t going hard at this stage, knowing I’d have to ease back into riding after being off the bike for so long. Back home after 27.56k, 1h23m with a massive 19.8kph average speed.

Monday: I couldn’t fit everything in my bag at once so I took stuff like jumper, ties and shoes in on the train (size 12 Docs are not small or light!) to make it easier tomorrow.

At night, knowing I needed to do SOMETHING, I ran a loop. EARL took me 44:04, which is slower than the first time I’d ever run it. But, I purposely ran slow and reduced the load on my right knee, walking whenever I felt like I was going into injury territory. The last EARL I’d run on the Monday prior was a crazy-slow 47:16, with constant stopping due to knee pain. I can’t stand not being able to do something because my body is failing me – arrgh!!! Running is for mugs! 🙂

Tuesday: I woke at 6am and spent an hour prepping, packing, eating toast and drinking coffee. Then, I rode in!

It was very cold and raining so I was glad I wore the new jacket. I would be changing from knee warmers to full leg warmers tomorrow though!Brrr!

43min in again, showered, wrestled with my tie and at my desk at 8.30. The ride home was faster: 38min (20.8kph).

Wednesday: Up at 6am again and much quicker to get ready. My butt hurts from yesterday’s ride – told you it’d been a while! Mind you, I’m still using that crappy San Marco saddle that totally doesn’t suit my backside. I’ll pick up a Selle Italia Flite or bite the bullet and test a Fizik Arione as soon as I get paid. 45min in, taking it easy at 17.9kph. It sleeted at lunch time! That’s how cold it was today! Unfortunately it didn’t continue for the ride home – I really want to ride through snow! This ride was longer because I missed Oxford Street and had to take a detour. How I missed turning at Oxford St. is anybody’s guess!! Even with my braindead navigation and detouring I still made it home in 37min at 22.4kph.

Thursday: Congrats to the newlyweds Tee and Keith!

I found a shortcut in the A-Z which cuts out Oxford St. and involves riding up Sussex Gardens Rd. and Marylebone Rd. This saves about 800m but, more importantly, means I don’t have to dodge a million peds and buses cruising up Oxford. 13.09k in 35:58 (21.7kph). This included turning wrongly and doing a lap of Lancaster Gate instead of riding along Lancaster Garden Rd or something. I was so fast in the morning I must’ve dislodged the speedo magnet, so I have no speeds for the ride home 🙂 All I know is that the outbound traffic in the rain was ridiculously slow and congested! It took AGES to get out into “open” road. With all the stalling and car/bus/scooter dodging it took 41m23s to get home.

Friday: I got the Sussex Gardens shortcut right this time and the distance in was only 12.73k. It was very cold this morning and I actually rode into sleet. It’s like rain but you can feel the particles hit differently (until your face goes totally numb that is) and you can see the snow-like bits collect on your clothes. My legs were bright pink from cold when I peeled my knicks off to shower! (there’s an image to scare the masses with!). Time was 38min at just over 20kph. Same route home took 34m50s (21.8kph). I think it was faster because I left later at night, having taken four hours off in the middle of the day to get my National Insurance (NI) number. Just for the record, NEVER EVER EVER EVER complain about ANY government process that occurs in Australia – it is nothing like the sh1t fight you have to go through to get stuff done over here!!

Saturday: Packed the last of our stuff upstairs and cleaned the house. Then there was an inspection and we cleaned more – frickin’ tightarse inspector! Carried our essentials to Leo, Mei-Ling and Fiona’s place on the other side of Ealing. Only minor spinal damage sustained after the two trips to cart everything there!

We pick up the keys for the new place (still in Ealing) on Wednesday. I might be in Southhampton at a client’s site though?

Grant returns from Oz (enjoy the sun you lucky b@stard?!) on Saturday and moves everything from the old place to the new place while Sheila and I have coffee and cake and bark orders at him 🙂

I posted this last night but the c*nt of a webhost seemed to have done a f*cking rollback on their database and cheerfully f*cked my post up so here is a shorter, lamer version. Also the c*nt landlord has told us we can’t store our stuff in the old place (he’d previously said we could) so now I have to hire a car and we have to move out Thursday night. I can’t wait to drive the f*cking hatch over his front garden! We’re happy little Vegemites..

Look outside my office window and I see snow!

I am alive. I’m not going into details. I might get back to you later.