London one-way!

Golly gee wizz I can’t believe it’s November already! This last fortnight has flown by in a mess of work, free loading and book-writing.

I went to my second Qype event, this was the official Qype party/Ghost walk for Halloween. We began at the Hop Cellars by London Bridge station, and I met a bunch of nice people. We all had to write our Qype names and our favourite scary person – me and two other girls wrote Freddy Kreuger, and we got photographed and that picture ended up on the front of the weekly Qype newsletter! What a surprise!

The actual night was great too. This is my Qype review:

It was lovely to meet some more fellow Qypers last night, as well as taking a walk around the dark and eerie Thames where I found the scariest part listening to the origins of nursery rhymes – and why do we tell these to children?!

The most interesting story had to be of the Cross Bones Graveyard where the south side’s prostitutes were buried – they only found out for sure when London Underground dug up (to make way for the electrical sub station for the new Jubilee Line) 150 skeletons which turned out to be only 1% of the buried population. A group of admirers meet regularly to pay their respects and throw gin on the graves.

There are many stories along the Thames, and about the river itself. A bit on the wild side is the idea of sacrifice – that you give mother nature something in return for building on her or digging great big pile-ons into her river. Although the building shadows were pretty creepy – the idea that if your shadow touches a construction site building your measurements are taken and buried in the construction. When it’s completed your shadow has “been buried” and you just disappear!

Chris was a great guide, and like so many has stories upon stories that lead off into various tangents. He seemed to think this was a bad thing, but I think the more interesting and non-stock standard ideas and stories come out when you go off on a tangent.

I loved beginning in Borough Market. At night time it is so different to the hussle and bussle of a weekend when it is full of stalls and tourists and locals. As a friend of mine said this morning, you get to realise the full beauty of the building when it’s dark and empty. And of course it is such a great place which is why so many films have used it as a major location – Chris churned out a few names – Diagon Alley in the third Harry Potter film, the site – above the Globe Pub – of where Bridget Jones lived.

Actually Chris was quite pleased with the fact the Bridget Jones film stayed quite true to the physical locations of London – unlike so many films where the character is walking through Notting Hill and all of a sudden walks around the corner to Picadilly Circus. So wrong!

We went back to the Hop Cellars afterwards for another drink, some food and good company 🙂

I spent that weekend at Imogens, and we had a blast hanging out. I took her to her choir event on Saturday and then we watched a bunch of chick flicks. On Sunday we went out for a walk through Clapham Common, and met Lija at the station. We walked back through the French market that was on and Lija and I bought some cheeses and sausage.

Imo and Lija made brownies while I cooked a big fry-up for lunch – it was the works – bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, tomatoes, on toast of course.  And because it was pouring outside we went and watched the other movies we hadn’t seen yet: In Bruges, What Happens in Vegas, 27 Dresses and Martian Child.

I’ve also been helping my boss write a book. All of my other duties have been put aside because the book has to be finished within deadline from the editors, so I’ve also been working between the offices in Notting Hill and Edgware Rd. I’ve worked on bits of a few of the chapters, and then completed one entire chapter all about making money.

Yesterday Lija and I went and watched Chelsea beat Sunderland 5-Nil at Stamford Bridge. We got really good tickets in the lower stand but still under cover luckily, because it poured during the whole game. Joe Cole was amazing, he’s such a great team player and my favourite. Anelka scored three of the goals, and Lampard got his 100th in while Alex scored the first in the first half hour.

Afterwards the masses, all 42,000 of us, made our way out of the stadium and half of us headed towards the tube station. Lija and I managed to squish onto the second train that came into the station, but we only got as far as the next station, West Broadway, when the driver told us that some nutter was running around the tracks at Fulham Broadway (the station for Stamford Bridge) and they had to turn off the electricity so the police could get on the tracks. The Wimbledon line was halted for several hours, and we had to catch two buses to get up to Paddington.

We finally went to try that Indian restaurant that I walk past on my way home from Notting Hill most nights. It always smells awesome, and the actual restaurant is in the basement. You have to walk past the kitchen to get to the restaurant, but the chefs are really nice, and they cooked us up some great food. We don’t bother with rice anymore, but go straight for the naan bread with the mains, and I also got Aloo Gobi this time because it’s one of my faves – cauliflower and potato in a spicy covering.

This morning we headed down to Wallington to visit Sarah because we haven’t seen her for ages, like since her birthday in June! It ended in another fry up because I had to get back to London to do more on the book. I will actually be glad when it’s over so I can breathe again!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.