Do not pass go, do not collect 200 pints!

London, November 20, 2000.

It has been a while, hasn't it? I guess the reason is that I haven't
actually done much interesting over the last couple of months, or at
least not much that's worth sending an email about by itself. Just bits
and pieces for now...

Sara, the "Vibe Manager" (yes, that's what it says on her business card)
here at work had a birthday about a month ago so a few of us went
clubbing at Fabric. Sasha was booked to play but unfortunately did his
back in the week previous and didn't turn up. I was quite looking
forward to hearing him (he was on the night we missed the Cream closing
party in Ibiza) but nevermind.

We arrived at about 11:00pm to find the queue streching around the
block. I guess it was the 1st birthday party, but still. Some creative
queueing and about an hour later we were in and my god it was packed!
Not that I'd expected much else, but it was a bit ridiculous. We did the
best we could to dance in the space available. The place was a rabbit
warren and quite disorienting for the first couple of hours. All
underground and smoky which didn't help a great deal either.

All in all I think the night was a little disappointing. Having only
"clubbed" at festivals and in Ibiza before, it just seemed like the
crowd wasn't (as they say over here) "upferit", and the music wasn't
pressing my buttons either. Oh well. It was good to see how the mundane
clubbers lived their lives :-). I did think the dance floor in room 1,
which was wired such that it vibrated with the bass, was pretty cool
though.

It was Guy Fawkes night (aka cracker night) over here a couple of weeks
ago (November 5th). Ah, an enlightened country that still allows its
populace to blow their fingers off with low powered colourful explosives
once a year.  It had been like World War Three every night for a month
previous around my place due to the little tackers practising for the
big event but it turned out to be a bit of a washout on the actual
night. This was a pity as for once the weather forecast got it right and
predicted rain on the Sunday, so some people at my estate decided to let
off their crackers on Saturday night.

Why this was an especial problem is that I was attempting to have a
snooze before I went out to a party that night and they were letting off
these damn fireworks right outside my window. I suppose I should count
my blessings that they weren't firing them inside my window. That party
turned out to be pretty kewl. It was at Fortress Studios and I'd been
invited by a friend here at work whose boyfriend works there as a sound
engineer.

They apparently have these dos every week. They were charging a nominal
amount to get in (£6 I think, but I was on The List) and they had a DJ
upstairs and later on a band downstairs. There were quite a few
interesting people there (no, none of them agreed to sleep with me and
thanks for asking) one of whom was convinced I looked like Mark Viduka
(!). The band were pretty good (funk rock I guess), despite the fact
they didn't start until at least 3:00am. They were called "the Dons of
Quixote" and apparently have a record deal. And it was the first time
I've seen any live music since Reading.

After not sleeping nearly enough the next day I went over to Matt and
Claire's place to hang around for a while until it was time to go and
watch some fireworks. The weather had other ideas though, so we just
ended up in the pub all afternoon. D'oh. Oh, and Claire took five times
the number of photos I did in Japan and she was only there for half the
time I was. But somehow we both seem to have the same photos :-).

But it was last weekend's hijinks that were the main subject of this
email...  the Monopoly pub crawl! Rodney had said something about one he
was organising the previous weekend (when I was already going to the
Studio party) but it didn't end up happening. And it was something I did
want to do before I left London, so when Andy (Icon's other resident
alco) emailed around that he and some of his friends were doing it last
weekend I jumped at the chance.

The basic deal is that you have half a pint in a pub on every street on
the Monopoly board, including the stations. You don't do it in order
(that would be too convoluted) and Andy found a good route on the net
fairly easily.  I deliberately had an easy night on Friday and was there
at 10:30am  for a traditional breakfast of chips, egg and sausages at
the alloted "mingin' caff" in Old Kent Road. A breakfast that I would
revist about 9 hours hence.

The biggest challenge is actually making it around in the time! The pubs
open at 11:00 am and last orders are typically 11:00pm, so you've only
got 12 hours to cover a good portion of the city. The first pub we
stopped at (the George, actually just off Old Kent Rd) also contained
about three other parties doing the same trip who we ended up behind
which slowed us down quite substantially. The other thing that slowed me
down was the half of John Smith's I was presented with as my first
challenge. I'm sorry but I just do not understand ale.

>From there we took a bus to Fenchurch St station where I got Andy to
take a photo of me standing in the ticket queue, much to the bemusement
of the woman behind the counter. Anyone who works out *that* reference
(and furthermore why I was additionally amused that it was a 42 bus we
caught to the station) wins another one of the prizes I keep offering
but never delivering. We were still behind the other guys on the crawl
at that stage but in another two pubs time we had caught up to the
timetable. This was Liverpool St station and I was starting to feel a
little tispy with 2 pints under my belt at a quarter to one.

I pity the other people on the bus we caught through to Angel, but we
were having fun. From this point on I'll forgo describing the individual
pubs along the route because frankly, I forget most of them :*). Suffice
to say that it was interesting to see a whole lot of traditional English
pubs in their natural habitat and annoy their regulars.

I think the first pub I fell down in was the Moon under Water in
Trafalgar square. Or it may have been a bit later than that I'm not
sure. I may find out when I get my photos developed -- I managed to
shoot a whole roll of 36 film over the course of the day but I only
remember taking about 10 shots.  Oh dear. And I know I fell down again
because I woke up on Sunday with a huge carpet burn on my knee and a
very sore shoulder. Hmm, maybe the double of flavoured Smirnoff we all
had to "celebrate" the 13th pub (half way around) is what did it. Or
maybe the tequila at the Texas Embassy (because the pub we wanted to go
to was closed).

I'm pretty sure it wasn't until the Fanfare and Firkin (about the 23rd
or so pub) where I had to take a quick trip down to the gents in order
to call God on the Great White Telephone, signifying the end of my
night. I did make the distance to the last pub though, and *didn't* fall
down in any tube stations as Andy apparently did. All's well that ends
(moderately) well though, and if I have time and they're not too
incriminating I'll post some of the photos on my web page when I get
them back tomorrow. But my knee still hurts.

Speaking of photos, ages ago I finally found time to scan some stuff
from Ibiza, so you can have a look at
http://ratkins.cjb.net/gallery.html if you like. Still nothing from my
initial bout of travelling (Singappore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan) up
there, I think I'll have to come in on a Sunday if I want to do that.

This weekend just gone was a huge one for live music. Powderfinger
played at the London Astoria on Friday night followed by Moby at the
Brixton Academy on Sunday. Friday was absolutely fan-flaming-tastic. The
boys were in such form. Out of the capacity crowd of 2000-odd, there
would have been 4 Poms, 50 Kiwis and 1946 Aussies. At one point they had
a rotating globe projected onto their backdrop and a huge cheer came up
from the crowd every time Australia rolled around :-). They played the
same basic show as they have been doing on their Odyssey #5 tour in Oz
-- mostly the new album, with a fair bit of Internationalist and a
couple of tracks from Double Allergic.

And as is traditional at these expat events, I ran into someone from
school. Jen something (argh! I can't remember her surname, need a
McCarthy magazine :-). She was well and having a great time in London
and we had a great time gossiping through the support bands about the
rest of you back home -- a regular face to face hatched, matched and
dispatched column.

Saturday was relatively quiet but last night, Sunday, definitely wasn't.
MOBY! Woohoo! The Brixton academy is a great venue, about 3000 capacity
with a nice gently sloping floor so you can see from just about
anywhere. I was of course right up the front :-). He's an energetic
little munchkin, running around the stage like a mad thing doing his
"masturbatory guitar solo" and banging on his bongos. The light show was
pretty fantastic too.  He played an eclectic mix of stuff from Go,
through his version of the James Bond Theme, Porcelain with just him on
accoustic guitar and a violinist (did I mention his three piece string
section?) to some of his earlier house stuff. There were a couple of
songs in there that I recognised but didn't recognise as him.

He's a fantastic entertainer, a remarkable musician and a consumate
performer but I'm afraid he can't sing to save his life. He tragically
opted to sing all of Run On by himself when his band was equipped with
two perfectly good (actually, quite spectacular) sets of lungs inside a
couple of big black gospel singers. Ah well. He ended his set in what is
apparently the traditional manner, playing "Thousand", his track which
is in the Guiness book of records for being the fastest song ever made,
while standing on his keyboard in a Jesus Christ pose with lots of
etherial backlighting. What showmanship!

In other news of the last couple of months, we thought that our new
flatmate Jake had pulled a Nick (the Polish model, remember him?) when
he went out on a Thursday night and nobody saw him until Sunday. He
hasn't really provided a satisfactory answer when we've asked him where
he was. Maybe it's got something to do with the huge fresh scars he's
got all over his chest and arms... it looks like he's been wrestling
grizly bears. Very strange.  What else... I think it's probable that I
will go to Israel, despite the trouble over there. I've emailed the
Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv and they say it's safe as long as I don't
go to the Gaza Strip or any of the bad bits of Jerusalem. I've also
found somewhere to stay until the end of January (thanks Matt!) so I'll
be in London until then. I've been evicted too.

Yes, you read it right... Steve "insanely smart but clueless" Farquhar,
the landlord with the business brain of George Soros and the social
skills of an autistic chihuahua strikes again. A week after I sat him
down and told him that he was NOT, repeat NOT to come into our house
again without giving us at least a week's notice and chewed him out for
putting our phone number on another one of his Loot ads, I find a note
(delivered on my bed, by the way!) telling me he wanted another forty
quid a week out of me, starting two weeks before I was planning to move
out anyway.

I went and got some legal advice on this (Citizen's Advice Bureau) and
coming in unannounced is classed as tresspass and harassment and we can
technically have him arrested the next time he does it. In addition to
this you can't raise the rent in the middle of the contract. But this
all turns out to be immaterial as the following Friday I get another
note (this time on my desk, but still in my room) telling me that "due
to a breakdown in the relationship" he was terminating my contract,
giving me two weeks notice. What a prat.  The really annoying thing is
that I only wanted to stay there another two weeks anyway. It's only a
minor annoyance even if it does happen (I haven't seen him since all
this has gone down) as I'll just find somewhere to doss for a couple of
weeks.

Don't worry though, the dickhead left his keys (not just his keys, all
the keys to all his flats) at our place the other day and he's not
getting those back until I get my deposit :-).

So how are you all doing? I'm happy/sad to hear about OSIX and
disappointed I can't be there for the wake (hey, maybe I can... what's
the travel budget for the party? :-) and it's been good to hear from
everyone else that I've heard from. Oi! You ex-Tamworthians out there!
What's all the latest gossip from people at home? I didn't have nearly
enough to exchange with Jen when I ran into her! Merry Christmas in
advance to all of you, and it's getting so f*ck*ng cold over here I had
to buy a beanie on the weekend! You don't know how lucky you all are!

Cheers, Robert.