2009 June 06 « Occam’s Paintbrush

LDN 05/09 part 1 (Wednesday)

Various Political and Social news events have left me feeling pretty disillusioned and disconnected from the world we find ourselves in. But I think I’ll save all of that horrible stuff for another day as writing about it will just make me feel worse. Instead, I thought I’d share with you my Trip to London through the Art School last month. Mainly because it’s been due for ages, but also because it was one of the best weeks of my life, and looking back on the photographs and those amazing memories makes me smile. I’ve collected together pictures from everyone here to give you an idea of what we got up to.

Well, the beginning seems like a perfectly reasonable place to start :p We were all due to journey down with the coach from Dundee, which although probably would have been a good laugh, I’m afraid the idea of 10 hours on a Coach to London sounded like my idea of hell, so being the luxurious bastard that I am, I opted to catch a train from Edinburgh. I did have to get there first on the dreaded Megabus, which I had just accepted as probably going to be a rubbish journey, but it was an absolutely gorgeous day and I had the best bus driver ever. Seriously, he smiled, was helpful and informed us that we would be taking the slightly longer but scenic route to drink in the lovely weather, so we should just ‘’sit back and enjoy the views!” What a man.

From Edinburgh to London my journey was pretty non-eventful, being that as I was on my own with my i-pod. One major highlight being the discovery of the Mondo Movie podcast over at http://www.mondomovie.com/ If you’re a fan of anything from extreme Asian cinema, classic 80’s horror, over the top gore or trashy exploitation movies, swing by and check it out. Well, since my journey pretty much consisted of listening to that, here’s how the rest of the gang got on with the Coach.

(the first of many gunshows)

Visually, a tad more exciting than hearing about me banging on about listening to a podcast while sat beside a Spanish woman. Although……..

I pulled in to the Big Smoke at about 6 and made my way to the Hotel, and was highly amused to be passed by all four coaches, which made for lots of waves. It was like when you’re on a school trip when you’re about 10 and you see a dog or something. Everyone goes mad and is just glued to the windows. Anyway, after meeting up with everyone, finding our rooms (which would soon prove to be rather difficult, but more on that later) we headed out to grab something to eat in Chinatown. This proved somewhat awkward as, out of politeness, I invited along Rory who I was rooming with. Now you should know that Rory is an interesting character. Bless him, he’s got a heart of gold but he has the social skills of wooden table. If you were to imagine a stereotypical geek, he’s your man. Awkward, clumsy and slightly naive. It did prove somewhat frustrating as I began to feel like his mother as the night wore on, always checking how he was and trying to involve him in everything. To be fair, he is from Orkney and this was his first time in London and he was thrust into Chinatown with a bunch pierced freaks, lesbians and weirdos with mad hair. To sum it up. no one was entirely comfortable with the situation, but I couldn’t just leave him in the hotel room so we made do. After much wandering around and lots of Gunshow posing, we devoured some noodles, averted a mild tantrum and made our way back to the hotel were I left Rory to retire for the evening while some of us fell into hazy stupor of alcohol and exhaustion. All in all, what a start to the trip!