First off, a whinge. Yay! Just for a change. I headed down to London on Saturday, having forked out an extra tenner on my train ticket to avoid the engineering works at Peterborough. The alternative was a coach service to Stevenage that I didn’t fancy. Fortunately by paying a little extra, I could change services and hop onto a different train. No worries.
Only when I got to Stevenage I found out that the service I was changing on to wasn’t running. Because of the engineering works. In fact, no services were running and none would be running and this had been announced when the works dates were set. This, however, hadn’t filtered through GNER’s booking system.
So basically, I forked out extra to take a bus that I’d actually paid the money to avoid. I am not happy.
That was about the only crappy but to the weekend, though. Except maybe the long walk to Amy’s when I got their because I decided to take the scenic route. I was not lost. I didn’t get lost. At no point had I lost my way. At all. At any point I could have retraced my steps to Kings Cross. I may not have known exactly where I was but I wasn’t lost. I hope I’ve made that clear.
Anyway, once I’d figured out how to get there I found out we were going out to a nice restaurant for dinner with about 6 other people. Great. I had nothing but t-shirts and jeans with me. Thankfully Camden’s open lateish so I got a nice black shirt in a sale.
Then the next surprise. We’re off to a Japanese restaurant called Wagamama. Great. The most exotic my diet gets are the spices in HP sauce. And putting mint sauce on roast beef instead of lamb. It was ok, though as I was assured they did Western food as well.
On arriving, I discovered that the Western food consisted of half the dessert menu. And they didn’t supply forks with anything other than the cakes. Oh bugger. And I’d not eaten before coming out either. I had downed two bottles of Dog, though, so I was feeling adventurous. With careful selection, I chose the blandest thing on the menu – some kind of pork soup with noodles, and about the only thing that didn’t mention garlic. And, hey, it was ok. And hey again, I can do chopsticks.
One large bill later and we headed for Yates where Amy proceeded to buy far too many drinks at far too silly prices and we all got far too wasted. Well, ok. Amy got far too wasted. She also got pissed off because I tried to snog the Portuguese guy she’d pulled and he ran off. Don’t shout at me – someone bet me a fiver to do it. What’s worse is I lost the bet because he turned away and wouldn’t do tongues. Bah.
Have to say I had a great time. I’ll apologise by saying I’m not 100% certain of the names of the people we were out with and it’s not their fault. Great crowd. If memory serves, there’s Erica (American but don’t hold that against her – she’s actually OK), Rascheed (really unsure about that one – American of Indian descent and not exactly happy that Arnie got voted in as her governor), Beckie (from "The Valleys" in Wales and has the most delightful accent that sends shivers up my back – how weird it that)… and three others whos names I really couldn’t even guess at! If any of them read this, kindly correct me to spellings etc.
End of night, Amy’s in bed, bucket is next to her and I’m cowering on the airbed on the floor every time I hear her turn over in case she misses and bits of Japanese food get expunged onto my sleeping bag. Fortunately, the chunder count was nill that night. Phew.
And you’ll only care about the price of dry-cleaning your clothes.
and you’re cheating with the dates thingy……..
LOL @ you in a Japanese restaurant.
Sushi next?
No way am I trying sushi. I don’t like cooked fish, I’m hardly going to like raw stuff. Ick.
No, we’ll make you eat raw fish, with lots and lots of garlic. You won’t care about the price of the beer then.
Only if they do pork soup with not much else in it. And the beer’s cheaper.
Ooh, that would be a LOT of fun!
So we can take you to a Japanese restaurant next time?