London transported: Lindsey certainly was Pic: E01
So. Volcanic ash. I’m glad my travel plans weren’t disrupted as a result. I only travelled ten miles this weekend to a hen do. Since moving in to my new gaff, I’ve hardly been in it. I’ve had a whirl of social bookings. Most recently, oi’ve bin in the Landahn, innit.
I don’t do very well in cities. I’m an innocent abroad. Kate and I stepped off the train at Euston all wide eyed and a bit legless. Due to my ineptitude at booking train tickets I totally forgot to book seats. When we boarded the train at Carlisle it was heaving with bodies and we ended up sitting a few rows away from each other. This didn’t deter Kate in her attempt to get drunk at 1030am on a Friday “because we were on our holidays”.
Whilst leafing through my National Geographic magazine (word and picture porn or what? It’s brilliant. I swoon over pictures of dramatic sunsets and drool over sentences that contain words like “hardscrabble”) I received this urgent text message from Kate: “ GET YERSEL HOIKED UP THAT CARRIAGE TO THE ONBOARD SHOP AND GET US A COUPLE OF VODDIES APIECE”. She’s all class. She’s also all capital letters. She hasn’t worked out yet how to type in lower case on her new phone so everything she sends is shouty and usually misspelt. I spend a good deal of my life which could otherwise be spent flicking through the Next Directory whilst avoiding work trying to decipher her weird code. I once received the missive “BUMTROUN”. I scratched my head for a while before sending back “Eh?” She typed back “CUME ROON”. This was my order to pop round her gaff for a cuppa tea. Who knew?
Anyway, to my travelogue. We arrived in London at lunchtime duly legless on two double vodkas apiece and twenty of Her Majesty’s pounds poorer due to a mid-journey raid on the Onboard Shop. We immediately adopted our Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins style “Mockney” accent which made us laugh uproariously in Scottish. After a forty minute trek to the hotel (despite being informed that it was a ten minute walk) we checked in and within three minutes of entering the room I had inadvertently trashed it, rock star style. There wasn’t a square inch of carpet to be seen. To be fair, it was a small room.
I’m not known for my stamina. London is exhausting. People walk everywhere. Every destination requires walking. I whimpered from one activity to another. Only the promise of steak and chips at a restaurant which only serves steak and chips kept me going. It was worth the tears. There’s no menu. Only steak and chips. Genius. And – get this – they keep one half of your steak hot for you whilst you plough through the first half. If you play your cards right and eat all the chips with part one, you get another shovel of chips with the part two of your steak. Two dinners!
This overindulgence necessitated a pants and bra nap back at the hotel before embarking on a night at the theatre. We saw “Oliver”. Well, I say I saw it. I saw the first half well enough. The second half was a bit blurry due to a double gin and tonic ordered in advance for the interval. We fell out of the theatre wailing along to the songs from the show – again in Mockney (“Ays lonnng ays eeee-ah neeeeeds-ah meeee-ah”) to the nearest bar. Next thing I knew it was morning and I had a bit of a fuzzy head.
I breakfasted, showered and journeyed out for some shopping before the afternoon/evening wine drinking session which segued nicely into midnight karaoke. Yes you read that right. MIDNIGHT. Me. Out at midnight. Karaoke-ing. Madness. Don’t know how I survived it to be honest but I joined in with great gusto. I believe some photographic evidence exists, but I’m in denial.
It was comforting to get back to the sprawling metropolis that is Dumfries. I’m not going back to London. I don’t think I’ll be allowed back. I think I broke it. Sorry about that.
