Chav Update

Apparently the latest chav fashion is to keep the price tags on your clothes when you wear them. Apparently some labels look 'well smart'. Also, it gives you street cred as your clothes look like they have been shoplifted.

The sun truly has set on the British Empire.

Riccadonna is a Slack Bitch

Topping even the Cookie Monsters slackness at not letting some people (like the guy he was best man for) know about his impending nuptials, Riccadonna has managed to reach just that extra level of slackerdom.

Latest news - only months old (no particular thanks to the d&d guys), is that Riccadonna and Carrie are proud parents of the unknown age/weight, etc baby boy Ben. (I assume its a boy anyway. or spectacularly ill-named.)

Congrats Carrie - and I would give my congrats to Riccadonna as well, but you were probably at the pub during the birth.

Phooey.

Strange

Phones with MP3 players... ok, not my thing but comprehensible. Playing said tunes via the external speaker.. sad. And annoying. Especially on trains/buses. Another demographic join my 'bad people' list for when the revolution comes.

Normal Service Resumes

Thankfully it is nearlly finished. The (soccer) world cup that is. I have now watched far more soccer than I have before in my entire life, and the only word I have for it is: Feh.

(That said, watching it at the Lord Nelson with a nice cold Magners is quite pleasant.)

On other news, The All Blacks won the first Bedisloe Test! Yay! Even though we missed the first 10 mins due to the manager of the pub (the Puzzle) being late due to being out late with her boyfriend the previous night, it was a pleasant antidote to the soccer - and the Lovely Natalya was with us to watch it, as she is over here for a few weeks.

On other news, me and Alix went to Italy... where we:

Ate much pizza (tip - best pizza is in Naples, at a cruise ship crew joint, down by the harbour)
Went to Rome - saw the Forum/Colloseum/Vatican Museum (tip - if there is a big queue, look for people inviting you to join a 'tour' and jump the queue. Best 20 euro I ever spent)
Went to Pompeii
Had a 4.5 hour lunch in Sorrento (tip - fish = yummy)
Went to Capri - nice gelati

We were also going to try and see the Pope (well, the basilica thingy anyway)

But a few people already had that idea (tip - avoid pentecost if holidaying in Italy)
















And did I mention the Pizza?

Ahhh! The tourists are upon us!

London. Sunny (not) London. Now that spring is here, the flower are blooming, the swans are cygneting, and of course the tourists arrive. Relatively calm areas of london become madhouses.








Admittedly, shopping for a tent maybe wasn't such a good idea. And I guess I won't be going back to greenwich market in a hurry.

Oi! Get off my street!!

Amazing what happens when you clean out the memory stick on your camera - this was taken during the London Marathon last month.

All very warm and fuzzy, with various people running for charity (including various z-list ex-Big Brother 'celebs' who later ended up in the tabloids after walking half the way. Nothing like training on lager and take-out chinese huh?)

Also kind of funny to see the various pubs outside our house (the ship and lord nelson) doing a roaring trade to people wanting to have a cold beer - while watching other people running...

But you know, at the time, my main thought was - so how the hell am I going to cross the street to get to the DLR? Why are all you people on my island?

Somewhere, something went terribly wrong

I've been pretty used to stupid logos on T-shirts for a while - the 'porn star' logo seems to be a fad that just wont go away. However, at the pub last night, t-shirt fashion hit new depths.

Take one womans black T-shirt, and in bright spangly letters across the breasts "Crack Whore".

Interesting.

Greed (for lack of a better word) is Good

Today was another good day. Which didn't particularly involve booze*. I've been contracting to the firm in Harrow since Xmas doing a VMWare project (which just went live), and my boss recently asked me if i would consider extending.

My response was "Sure - but me want more £££"

The reasoning behind this was pretty straightforward:

1. My boss has lost some permies recently
2. My boss has taken over his bosses job
3. Bizzarely enough, they seem to think I'm doing a good job. Must be all the 'working' from home.

The result? My pimp called today, and the short version of the conversation was...

[Pimp] "How about a 3-month extension and a wodge more cash?"

[Me] "If you insist - but you still owe me a beer."


Gordon Was Right.


* of course there were a few beers in celebration with Alix and Maggotboy.

Today is a good day

Its a fairly sunny afternoon.

People are having barbeques in the square below, children and dogs are running around, and unsurprisingly for a sunday, Alix and I are sporting hangovers.

Last night was the Hilton Foundations charity Ball, at the Hilton Kensington , where Eff is the concierge. We had 3 tables of flatties and friends, dressed to the nines (black tie and masks).


(me and Reuben at his place having pre-drinkies)

Everyone ended up looking pretty glam - and Eff had arranged a (inexpensive) room for Alix and me, to save us from having to trek East afterwards. (The ball was due to finish at 1Am, and there was an after-party at Effs, well, afterwards.)

And we won stuff.

Because it was a charity ball, there were of course raffles and auctions.

We bought a fair few raffle tickets (thinking of the children of course), and bid for a few things in the auction.

Missed out on the 2 nights at the Hilton in NY, with Club-class flights with BA, as the starting bid was £900... but did manage to snag 2 nights at the Hilton Arch de Triomphe in Paris, with return Eurostar tickets....

Alix seemed OK with that.

But wait - there's more.

Not satisfied with giving us one holiday away - Lady Luck smiled on us, and we won one of the raffles - 2 nights in the Caledonian Hilton in Edinburgh. Sure, we have to make our own way there, but we think we can handle the burden.

Last, but by no means least, I now have a bottle of piper hiedseck champers, for winning the prize for "clearly most attractive man in the room"... err well, best mask actually. Which seemed only just really.

Ain't Nothing But....

Took Alix and Yukman to the Blues Bar tonight. Only possible hiccup was that it was Jam Night. Which meant it took an absolute age to actually get any music (after all warming up, and pulling girls was more important).

Still, once it got pumping, all good.

Phooey to the Cookie Monster

Last weekend yukky man's (adrian) sister got married. And apparently the Cookie Monster is now engaged. I'm not hurt that I had to hear this second hand. Not at all.

PPPPPPHHHHFFPPT! to you Cookie Monster. Nyah.

Skidooooooo!!!!

Did I say I needed a holiday - well Alix and I managed a good one, by going back to one of my old stomping grounds, Bunnys Pub, in St Johann in Tirol, Austria.


Admittedly the trip there started inauspiciously - mandy (one half of the couple who run the pub) called in the morning to say that they couldn't pick us up from Munich Airport, as there was so much snow, that the roads were shut! We were advised to take the train instead - let's just say that the German Rail website is your friend.

Arrive in munich, nice smiling lady at ticket office books us through, and whoosh! we're off (via a stopover at a subway stop for pizza).


Speaking of pizza - Alix decides that austria/germany is good because of the italian-style pizza. Sounds fair enough to me.

Arrive at Bunny's eventually, party and dance the night away, and fall exhausted to sleep.

Wake up to some of the best snow I've ever seen. Yay!

Get snowboards and head up the mountain. I fall down. Alix falls down. Marital disharmony ensues. Book Alix snowboard lessons. Marital harmony ensues.

Party and board. All good. Then we get to go ski-dooing. This entails going up the top of the mountain (after a few beers) get on a bicycle where they have replaced the wheels with skis and ski down the mountain, stopping at every pub on the way.



Finish at 9ish, after many bars and restaurants, and skidooing in the dark.






Arrive back in London, knackered but happy. Yay for holidays!

Action Jackson Week

Wow - February is here and suddenly me and Alix throw off the January blues, with one of the more full-on weeks I've had in a while.

Started last Friday (the 3rd) with the Waitangi Day Ball - run by the NZ society. One of the kiwi's on my rugby team had got some extra tickets and asked us if we wanted to go. £100 - but it was dinner and dancing (and drinking) at the Dorchester, so sounded great.

But it got better - one of the other kiwi rugby lads is a concierge at a Hilton - so was able to get us rooms at the Hilton London Metropole for £30. Nice.

The ball was fantastic - great food, wine (made better by bribing the waiter to give us more wine), a cool band, a maori dance company, and glad-handing the former Minister of Wine and Cheese (High Commissioner, Jonathan Hunt).

Next day was an early game of rugby at ealing, and then a mad dash back into town to catch the wales vs. england match, and of course the Waitangi Day Circle Line Pub Crawl! Madness.

Wednesday was the Cirque du Soleil Alegria - at the Royal Albert Hall. Fantastic stuff. Very surreal. Some acts were similar to most circus acts (like the one we saw in Shanghai), but most of it was pretty original -esp the clowns harrassing the people in the front(ish) row seats.

Thursday - the Brick Lane experience (cheap and fabulous curry), catching up with Adrian and his young student docutor girlfriend. Mysterious.

Saturday - Rugby, 6 Nations, and a few funky bars in North London with a couple of the lads.

I need a holiday!

It's really fucking cold (redux)

Well, yes.

mmm freezing hands and ears.. yummy.

According to the bbc..



















Feh.

On the plus side... tommorrow Alix and I go to the NZ society's Waitangi day ball. At the dorchester. Nyah.

Merry xmas and a chavtastic new year!

Thats right - christmas... which meant Presents and Food!!! Did very well on the present front:

jellybeans
more jellybeans
books
socks
movies
cufflinks
and the 20-DVD set of James Bond!! Fantastic! My wife is fabuloso.

On the food front, over-did it as usual, with roast lamb, duck (with orange and sage stuffing), wild duck (teal), partridge, and ham!!! (plus thet usual roast veges and salad. Did a layer of potatos under the duck to get ultra-evil cooked-in-duck-fat privet potatos. Yum....

Plus... we went to Greenwich market and picked up some italian cheeses and salamis from the deli there...

Plus... while doing the last shop, saw at waitrose huge wheels of stilton. Yummy. But figured with just the two of us, not such a good idea... so got a baby wheel (about 6inches in diameter, and about as deep). Have ended up putting the rest of it in a pumkin, spinach and stilton lasagne - inspired by a cafe up the road, at The Space.


New years was a blast - went to the North Pole bar in Greenwich with Kath and Dave, which was open till 3 - which since it was right next to a dlr stop, which was running all night, seemed like a great idea.

Suffice to say, given the south-east london/essexish crowd, it was Chavadelic... Highlights included:

Very large bouncer frisking all the men on the way in

Women at the bar in shorts. No really. (Best was one girl in white boots, white shorts, white belt and white corset. Excellent.)

Live goldfish inside the chandeliers upstairs.

Cocktails by the jug.

Yay!

Back to work now - boo hiss....

I Should have taken the blue pill

London in December. A whirlwind of partying. Kicks off at my Birthday on the 29th of Nov, when me Alix, Kath and Dave (plus some other guy) go to see a free screening of Enter the Dragon, which is being put on by Tiger Beer.

Cue much free beer (helped by free beer from my pimp earlier), much kung fu cries from us (in the cinema and later at the pub, while re-enacting some of Bruce Lee's moves), much kebab, and much hangover in the morning.

Bleagh.

The the xmas party season begins. 2 do's at the GLA, plus various other parties and random drinks. Plus, of course some drinking after rugby - now that I have rejoined my old team the Ealing Exiles (No one likes us, we dont care.)

Did I mention the GLA? amusing place to work. good people, great location (right by london bridge station - only 40 min commute). So of course I ditched it and have taken a job in Harrow-on-the-Hill. In zone freaking 5!

Bleagh.

And to show you what I was giving up....





Left to right... Tower hill, Tower Bridge, and the One Testy of Ken (aka City Hall).














And looking across the river... From left to right, London Bridge, HMS Belfast, and a Giant Space Penis (aka the Gherkin).







And of course a gratiutous night shot. Ahhh.

It's really fucking cold

No, really. I should be hardened to this, growing up with frosts in the winter in southland, but having lived in welliefor a while (where they dont get them), i had forgotten how much fun they were. Not.

Short version - if you happen to be out on the street at 8.30 AM, looking for a newspaper in order to read about a mighty All Blacks victory , you will freeze your arse of in about 3 minutes. Which is just long enough to get to the dairy, get your stuff, and half defrost before heading out again.

Memo to self: if planning to take can of cold Dr Pepper (to try it is to love it!) back to house, accept nice mans offer of carry bag.


(ps - thats the thames back there past the last couple of trees - a little different from Alix's picture about 3-4 hours later).

It's Alive!!!!

Broadband. Not only does it let you download pr0n at a decent speed, but it actually make doing blogs feasible. Gotta love it.

Gotta not love on the other hand, the coffee at my office. I'm contracted to the GLA and offices are good, the cafe downstairs is yummy, but the instant coffee in our kitchen is vile. Admittedly, I was spoiled by the vast amounts of good Fuel plunger coffee at the Ministry, but whoever makes this muck should be shot. Along with those people who chew gum. And white guys with dreadlocks.

I'm Here

Righty ho. Time to get this actually communicating with others thing underway. Since I'm generally fairly rubbish with emails and phone calls, you might be able to get a glimpse of The Life of Dave through these pages.

And probably a fair bit of ranting about London. And if you're really lucky, some good recipes. But more likely drunken and (to me, at the time) amusing anecdotes about how public transport in london sucks ass.