Yes, it's me.
I have reappeared, but not for long. This week's endeavour is getting our phone reconnected (Herculean) and then getting the broadband service sorted out (Sysiphean). Do not hold your breath for a fast result there. It will involve two companies and several hours of phone calls to service centres. I am frankly dreading it. Everything else with the house has been painless, except the carrying of a double bed up the stairs which nearly ruptured me and also the sheer expense of absolutely everything whihc made me cry. I now know I own far too many books, but they're on their shelves now and are staying there come hell or high water. I am never moving again.
I like Leicester and don't plan to go anywhere else. A lot of my friends (and I could internet people amongst them) live in dynamic, exciting places like London and Edinburgh and Seattle and New york, but I am ultimately too lazy to move. Also, as I said, I like it there. I live in a decent area with a place to put my car. I like my job and have a desk by a window. My friends aren't far ( one is in the other bedroom in fact). It was in the paper that we have some three billion quid of development going on, so the chances are we will have a branch of Fopp soon enough. Plus more than one good cafe. I don't mind Starbucks and so on, but given the choice I'd rather have a nice Italain place with Rai Due on the telly and home made pasta. Caffe Roma is great, but they know what I want on sight now, and I feel the need to manitain some mystery. I am also inspired by the whole "new start" ethos and am looking forward to summer.Make the most of it now I can. Hopefully our badminton hall won't be full of anxious students taking exams for much longer and I'll be buff for the ladies as well. Oh yeah. Badminton'll do that to you.
Anyway, Blake has agreed to get the digital telly done, which sounds easy - tell the man from Sky and he'll come and bolt a dish to the side of the house at a time of your choosing. The phone will be a nightmare, I know it. I used up a lot of this lifetime's karma on this move and someting bad has to happen now. So I am taking the chance to write now; I am currently sat in James and Louise's flat in Streatham Hill, and they have this kind of thing down pat by merit of being organised and having lived here for two years.
So I am in London again. This is my birthday weekend, and it has been great. Just about all my friends from various places have appeared over the weekend (they all seem to live in London now) and I have another day here to hang with Lousie and visit odd art galleries. Boss. So far we have been very busy. A troupe of French theatrical types have bought a giant wooden mechanical elephant to town, and yesterday Trafalgar square was shut to allow its procession to progress. It was all rather good, with an eighteenth century Sultan theme, a giant girl in a rocket and a band playing lengthy grooves (twenty minutes in D - they did look a bit bored). We looked and were impressed. Afterwards it was to a pub where I saw John Terry of Chelsea and England, who at this rate could be the only football player England have left upright by the time of the World Cup. After some bus fun we hit the evening's chief destination - Vinopolis, London's leading, and indeed only, wine museum..
Vinopolis is quite good, but used to be better. The idea is that as you enter as a clueless heathen unversed in the mysterious world of wine, but leave enlightened and committed to the lifestyle of the conniseur. What actually happens is that several hen parties make they way noisily round from tasting table to tasting table, eat some water biscuits and then go wherever it is that hen parties go next. The rest of you mill about a bit, pretend to read some of the labels on the exhibits and wonder if using all your tasting tokens in half an hour is excessive. After a while it thins out and the sense of urgency is replaced by a muzzy pleasure in pulling silly slurping faces and having competitions to see who has the most horrible drink. "Try this, " said Jonty, "It's quite the worst drink you'll ever have". He was right. You buy more tokens and try whatever is to hand. So Chilean white is nice, ruby port is lovely but absinthe is horrid. It tastes of mouthwash and makes you vomit. If you want to experience a dizzying hallucinagenic high, do it properly and drop a tab of LSD. Absinthe is pointless, and the stuff with wormwood in it is illegal anyway. Vinopolis also translates as "City of Wine", which is a little bit funny. Literal translation is a fine way for a young man to pass the time, and also brings the satisfying realisation that Drugs Czar, the title of the government's chief drug-crime enforcer, means "King of Drugs".
The one thing missing is the "learning about wine" bit. There is an introduction lecture but really all everyone wants to do is get to the booze. You learn to swirl, scan and swirl, but it's all lost really. All I needed was someone to say "do you have a sweet tooth" and on hearing that I don't, say "try this wine then". Knowing something goes well with beef is not enough to someone who is happy to drink Ribena with anything. Eventually my friend Dan did ask and did tell me what to try, but I shouldn't have to rely on the advice of another visitor to the musueum of wine to tell me about wine. The other thing I learnt was that the more expensive a wine might be is no reliable indicator of how nice it is. Louise and I found some waylaid premium wine tasting vouchers and went off for two glasses of the most pricey we could find. They were both horrible, and it's a valuable lesson - given the choice between a bottle of 1998 vintage claret and a new pair of shoes, go for the shoes. They'll last longer and if they don't suit you can take them back.
We then went to Masters Superfish, the very best chip shop in the universe. They do gurnet, which you only get in London and north Kent. I used to get it from the chip shop all the time when I was little, but it doesn't exist in Leicester. It's a rare treat. Masters is a nice mix of old-fashined and posh. There is a winelist and choice of breads, but the table tops are formica and you get a plate of pickled onions whether you ask for them or not. The ketchup and tartare sauce is called the sauce trolley. Terms like this have died out everywhere else, but live on in this one corner of Waterloo Road. Every taxi in London is parked outside, and if the cabbies say it's good, it must be good.
Then back to the flat, which is lovely. It's in a nice sreet in a nice area just south of Brixton. There are three international supermarkets on Streatham Hill selling wierd Turkish cuts of meat, Polish jars of pickles and drinks labelled only in Armenian. We bought strawberry juice to go with this morning's croissants, and if I can find it in Leicester I'll be a happy man. Also the flat has a clear window in the bathroom, which means you can have a piss whilst looking out over Streatham, a pleasing feeling. I suppose it also means Streatham can look straight back at you too, but the window's above waist height and I'm not excessively tall.
Anyway, it's coming up for dinner time now. I have been sat tapping away for the length of Maximo Park's album now whilst James tidies and Louise cooks. I feel terribly guilty, and it's all your fault. No, not really. I love you all. So until Talk Talk decree otherwise, I'll say goodbye.
Good night, and good luck
Doug
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