Not awe inspiring but a little bit magnificent.

This post is aboot a very random night on Thursday (I started writing about it yesterday upon my return but I was knackered and my laptop died, you will forgive me when you read of the quest.)

My lovely friend Ly has a friend over who arrived a week ago, Sam or Monkey as the nickname goes. I was asked to show her around for an evening to get her attuned to the melody of London life. Monkey had plans to meet a friend in Camden, not the most idyllic place to show London in its finest hour but a lovely place nonetheless.

Upon meeting Monkey I very quickly came to the realise that she is one of the weird and wonderful people that make life so interesting. She shares many common traits to me good mate Fatima Begum; they talk fast and think later but that doesn't mean they sound stupid, just carefree. She quizzed me on my facial expressions to different stories and I quickly learned of her dislike for both dogs and traffic.

Upon getting into Camden we went for ice cream at the Black Cap bar/restaurant. Have to say its a lovely place. Friendly barman, food on the menu looked very well priced, we ended up with a huge piece of cake and a scoop of ice cream for 2.99, lovely stuff.

Every bit as lovely as it looks

At this point I must state my deep desire for a restaurant reviewer application or program on the web. I'm surprised such a thing does not yet exist - just have a google map up, with the ability to stick pins in and give reviews to restaurants and bars. Yeah you can 'kind' of do that now, but why not have the ability to set up your own groups or even individual profile - when you/your friends review a place, when you next log in you can see their colour pin and you can find out more about their review by hovering over the place. God I wish I took IT in uni.

Anyways back to the story. Besides cake munching the first thing I was asked to do at the table was to have my hand drawn round and possibly later (we left too soon to continue) write my personality traits and whatnot in the outline. Weird and wonderful. Monkey was a good laugh.

We quickly moved onto the Blues Kitchen to meet Monkeys friend and see some music. (Blues kitchen: Prices 2/10 Looks 7/10, Atmosphere 8/10). After a ridiculously expensive bulmers I learned that Monkeys English friend had spent a year in Vietnam at uni and could speak some good Vietnamese as a result. The evening was getting very surreal.

The full band arrived after a short solo by the keyboard/guitarist, a pretty, Norse looking singer with a powerful voice was the only really visible sight on the small very dark stage. We listened for a good hour, they were pretty good for a blues band, can't say i heard the name but I'm pretty sure one of the songs was called something along the lines of 'Zombies alive' (?). No sinister by any means and a fairly lovely listen.

Good singer with a powerful voice

The lead singer jumped into the crowd a few times to boogie along and got a pretty welcome applause.All in all it was a lovely evening. We said goodbye to monkeys friend, I took Monkey back to her place in Baker St which took a good half hour longer then it would normally as both our senses of direction were fairly appalling. 

I then embarked on a random quest. Despite it being midnight and me having the ole internship the next day at 10, I decided to walk from Baker Street Station to Marble Arch in search of one of the random art works London is occasionally privy to; the one I found in the Metro paper was a 17 tonne horses head which I thought couldn't be missed. After starting out heading in completely the wrong direction like the ponce I am, I managed to walk a fairly long way in a short time, possibly because winter is setting in and its getting a bit nippy out there. The statue reward was easy to find. As the title of this post suggests, it was Not awe inspiring, but a little bit magnificent

Horse drinking from water

Marble Arch was as lovely as always, as was the surrounding foliage. From here I made the rash decision to walk a further 25 minutes to Westminster in the cold, past a road I hadn't used since my lovely friend Rocio had come to town and past my internship in St James Park. Its never fun to walk past your work place when you have to be there in less then 8 hours. But that's what I did. In retrospect I should have gone to Trafalgar Square where the N155 also goes but hey ho, alls well that ends well.

The only other thing of mention is the man I found on the floor around Victoria. Not dead I hasten to add. It made for a depressing tinge at the end of an evening, the poor guy had clearly taken a tumble face first and had some nasty facial cuts. I helped him to a seating position but the proud sod wanted to do the rest himself. I looked round after crossing the road to see him still struggling at it. Must remember to toast the elderly next time I get drunk, he looked almost 80, good on him I say.

All that remains to be said is that I found the N155, the late night drunks best friend, and made my way home. 5 hours sleep later I was getting up for work, so you can forgive my lack of timely blogging.



For now I will leave you with some fabulous mannequins I spied on the way home along with my attempt at a very British shot. Long flash with a flag, bus and ambulance. Me likely at least.

I bid you adieu!

Faaaaaaaabulous dahling...

How many British things can you spot?