Oh man what a week ! As if things weren't weird enough already !? This week I've been lucky enough to have Australians in all directions – good stuff, cos it staves off a bit of the homesickness. I've had Undies staying for the last few days while he sets himself up with a job and a place in London… plus the other day Nikko turned up on his whirlwind tour of Europe… Wednesday I had lunch with Tim & Kylie on their last day of the world trip, and today I caught up with Virginia as she breezed through on a work voyage. Very fortunate, am I !
So aside from all that, on Tuesday night I popped into town after my inaugural Tai Chi class (I'm not even going to bother explaining that for the moment) to hook up with Undies, Nick and one of Nick's friends for a friendly pint. For reasons which escape me, I wound up meeting them in Callaghan's – a fairly generic irish pub just off Picadilly Circus. Note: it didn't seem to be an “Irish Pub” – a concept that thoroughly shits me to tears – I suspect it was just a pub that happened to be irish. I could be wrong. That's hardly the point though. (WHAT ?! You mean there's a POINT !?) Aha, have I ever let you down ?
Ahem… sorry, talking to myself again. ANYWAY, I went in, sat down with my learned colleagues, and started chatting with the table of girls who I didn't recognise immediately to my right. As it soon transpired, they weren't in fact with our “group”, they were just sitting at the next table… but pretty soon we'd gotten fairly deep in conversation with this bunch of purportedly Belgian chicks about all kinds of stuff. Granted, I'm not sure they were actually Belgian, but they said they were, and who was I to argue ? They taught us a bunch of “Belgian” phrases, which I cunningly wrote down, so if and when I arrive in Belgium one of thse days I'll be able to check with one of the locals and find out if I was having my leg involuntarily extended. I don't know why I didn't believe they were Belgian… but I didn't.
It was all a bit scary really – I hoped to god that they didn't want to follow us on to the next bar we were going to, because then we'd have to think of one to go to, and being a school night I was keen not to play too hard.
If nothing else, I learnt an awful lot about the Belgian Hotel Industry.
As my learned colleague Andres pointed out, the more animated of the 4 didn't seem like the sort of girl you'd want to be caught in a small space with during a full moon. OK, so he didn't say that, but I could tell that's what he was thinking. Or words to that effect.
We also had the pleasure of the company of Wazza the Wonder Horse, who probably said all kinds of hilarious stuff, but I've written nearly 8 paragraphs about a simple visit to a pub, so I'll truncate his contribution for the sake of brevity.
Oh boy am I gonna get my arse kicked next time I see him.
Anyway, that's where I'm going to leave it, because it's bedtime, and I don't want to wear out my welcome on pub stories because I've got the entire Australia Day saga to chew through yet.
I'll leave you with this dramatic recreation of our potentially Belgian colleague. Just imagine a bit blonder and indoors.
I do hope that wasn't a cousin of anyone I know.