I was sitting on the couch flicking between the Olympics and test cricket, fairly zonked on painkillers (for acute tonsillitis, not just for fun) when Emily asked if I wanted to work in a country pub. "Sure why not", I mumbled though the codeine induced haze. Ten minutes later she came back saying we started at The Spanker in Nether Heage next Tuesday. Sh*t, I thought, better quit our jobs. And so ended our short stint in Brixton.

We had intended to spend all our spare time flitting though Europe, taking in a different capital city each weekend on the cheap flight networks. But our spare time was unpredictable and we were generally too tired do do much with it so we had to make do with the odd day trip around ol' blighty. London is a very expensive city, but there are plenty of things to do for free, a lot of the art galleries and museums are not only the amongst the best in the world, but are quite often free (or at least only a "suggested" donation away). The British Museum for example has probably the finest collection of ancient civilisation artefacts anywhere, Egyptian, Greek and Babylonian, all the big names are here. The Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Friezes and the Babylonian God's first mardi-gras are all here on display and with so many big ticket items come the droves of tourists (we're "travellers" not tourists o.k?). You could easily spend lifetimes without seeing everything on offer, so we left when fatigue kicked in, happy to save some for Ron (later Ron). But we weren't just swanning about London (we were working our butts off), I also had a brief (but fun) career as Snappy the Dragon for the Snappy Snaps Brixton store 1st birthday party. God I miss that suit.