To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....

Moving from New York to London presents no significant problems. The cities have much in common, although they are of course nothing alike. Something that truly did my head in at JFK however was that there is no outbound customs. Completely different from Australia where the friendly customs service send you off with a smile and “look forward to seeing you again soon”. Nope, just check in, go through the frisking process (which I quite enjoyed) and sit in the departures area at the gates. How bizarre. I was happy to be wearing flip-flops as I always get funny looks when I’m wearing my steel-toed boots on the planes. Usually the X-ray people raise their eyebrows.

Anyways, London is much as I remembered it, full of foreigners. I think had it not been for staying with Matt and Jo, we might not have actually met any English people what so ever! Jo was spectacular and picked us up from the airport. We had purchased some duty free including Bombay Sapphire Gin for Matt and Jo and two litres of Bacardi for ourselves. Sadly the Bacardi was never to make it into our blood stream. We accidentally left it on the baggage trolley in the car park at Heathrow. This was distressing for a few reasons. First of all, we forgot our booze, which would be enough in itself, but when you consider the state of terror alert at airports is quite high, and they insist that you don’t leave ANYTHING un-attended anywhere in the airport, we had pangs of guilt about leaving an unmarked white bag on a trolley. I had visions of an S.O.19 firearms squad surveying the car park, guns drawn and ready. Secondly the though of the bomb disposal robot teetering up to the trolley and safely detonating our Bacardi. What is more likely of course is that come chav trolley boy got his nightly booze action for free. How annoying.

Jo and Matt live quite close to Heathrow, so it was only a short drive til we got in and Jo looked after us sensationally. Fed, boozed and amused. Brilliant. As for the usual tradition of the Hardies getting me to the point of being sick from booze, it did not eventuate on this time around. Trevor the cat did introduce herself (yes, herself) during the week and we were all too pleased to pay out plenty of attention.

As for London activities, well, we popped to Manor House, which is where I used to live and had a Kebab at the best Kebab house in Britain, Yayla. In true kebab form, mine was sick all over my crotch. Garlic sauce on blue shorts, just near the flies, in the middle of the day looks incriminating for so many reasons. Sarah was entirely amused until her kebab was sick on her as well. Fortunately it was not quite as sick as mine was, so she was spared the embarrassment of garlic sauce on the crotch. We also took in the usual sights, Trafalgar Square, Oxford Circus, Picadilly Circus etc etc. The weather was decidedly not English so we managed to get somewhat of a tan, which was a pleasant surprise. We also made the pilgrimage to Belushi’s in Covent Garden where the Corona’s are always two for one before 8pm. It’s quite easy to over indulge in the heat with cheap Coronas. There were however no nudie runs, much to my dismay.

Sarah left for Edinburgh for job interviews and house hunting four days later and I pretty much exhausted Sky+ at Matt and Jo’s until I moseyed on up behind her. Tell you about that next! Big thank yous to Jo and Matt for everything!