We should finally have a BT line (telephone line) installed at home now (only happened yesterday and we're waiting for it to be activated.....)
The place is great. Here are a few piccies of it....
Lounge/Dining Room
(Another different angle)
Our balcony!!!!! (YAY! You've sort of got to be a bit lucky to get a balcony in London!)
Our kitchen - That's about the full size of it too!!!!
So that's our humble little abode! We're pretty happy with it, and it's in a great location - we're equi-distant between Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush - we're really happy with it.
So after much rig-marole getting into the place and then having a few things not sorted out properly when we went in, it's turned out great - the landlord seems to be pretty decent - he bought us a new bed just because we asked for one, and pretty much everything else in the place was new/pretty new....
The kitchen is tiny, and the bedroom isn't huge (though bigger than one of the other ones that we almost took), but the lounge room is a great size which is a good thing.
We're just going through the finishing touches of getting utilities sorted out, but thus far it's turning out pretty good!
Moving was quite an interesting experience though - we couldn't believe how much crap we had accumulated in such a short period of time since we've been here - but it was a lot!!!! We ordered a taxi (we asked for a people mover), and they sent a small-ish one called a VW Sharam - the driver looked at us, looked at our crap and shook his head - we convinced him we'd make it worth his while, and he gave us a hand to load the car up - we weren't going far, but his car was packed to the absolute brim - Damo ended up riding with him to show him the way, but the car was so full that Nikki ended up having to catch the tube.... :-)
The shamozzle that was our apartment when we first moved in....
Damo had his birthday a while ago and ended up having a great day. Nikki really spoiled him with lots of nice gifts, food and drink - he enjoyed it immensely - there was Beer, Pizza, Chocolate Cake, much F1 artefacts and numerous other gifts which made his day really special.
During this week, we went out to a place called Cafe de Paris in Central London one night during the week to see a production called "Benobo Presents...." - Now this was an interesting experience.
We went out with some people from Damian's work, and while that was all fine, the show itself was positively strange - there was a mixture of stand up comedy, some of which was good - some not - there was a burlesque performer who was strange and came on far too often, there was a particularly old trapeze artist who looked like she had been in cirque de soleil about a hundred years ago and had developed a crack habit in the years since - there was a mime who gave birth to an extremely large balloon - and the pièce de resistance was a guy with a mohawk wearing no shirt and leather pants with a whip, and a chick wearing a dress made out of red crepe paper - he proceded to whip the dress off her - now this sounds like he may have been some sort of master with the whip, but alas - NO - he just whipped the shit out of her - you should have seen the welts on her afterwards - she was bleeding and everything - it was full on - Nikki saw her before the performance up at the bar downing drinks at an alarming rate, which is no surprise considering what she was about to put herself though.....
Anyway, we went downstairs after the show and continued having a few bevvies, and we ended up catching the night bus home (we were still at earl's court at this time), and we got home at about 3am - which wouldn't be that bad except that it was a Thursday night and we had to go to work the next day - we were wrecked.... but all in all we had a good night (albeit strange...)
Mime giving birth to a balloon
Our group at the table (Left to right - Brendan, James, Wendy, Angela, Elliott, Damo, Nikki)
Soon after this was Guy Fawkes Night - this is the celebration of a complete failure, which is quite interesting. Apparently Guy Fawkes was the guy (pun intended.... *groan*) who tried to literally blow up British Parliament a couple of hundred years ago. He failed, and bonfire night is the result.
We ended up hooking up with Elliott from Damo's work and went on a road trip down to Lewes where there are about 8 different bonfire associations (true!!!) to watch the fireworks and bonfires. So we met up with Antony, Karolin and Ian, along with Elliott, Nikki and Damo and started off on our road trip down to the south coast.
We ended up having a scheduled departure time of 18:30 and ended up leaving at about 20:00. These guys drove like maniacs - it was hilarious - it was like we were 17 again! We were in a Rover Metro and the other car that had Elliott, Antony and Karolin in it was a Peugeot 307. About halfway down there we noticed that the Peugeot was blowing a bit of smoke, so after they continued revving the ring out of it for a while, they decided to pull over and find out what was up.
Antony decided that it was probable that he'd forgotten to put the Oil Filler cap back on properly and that the smoke was probably just some leaking onto the exhaust.
But alas, it was not to be - turns out that he'd fried the head gasket.
Nikki standing in ABSOLUTELY FREEZING conditions next to the broken car!
Anyway, after a while of stuffing around with filling up oil, filling up water, waiting for the car to cool down, driving a couple of mile, and repeating it was decided to call the AA guys (RACQ/V/NRMA guys) to get sorted. He suggested that there was a pub car park not far down the road that we could park the car in, and we could continue on our journey.
Only problem here was the fact that we had a two-door Rover Metro, and there were 7 of us - oh well, no matter - we'll just shove Kate in the boot, Nikki on the floor in between Damo's legs and the other 5 in normal seats.
We continued like this and made our way to Lewes - quite a few of the boys were quite drunk by this point in time, and unfortunately we'd missed most of the bonfire/fireworks by this point in time. We made it for about the last half hour - it was still pretty cool, and made for a good story!!!! :-)
PINK!!!!!
GREEN!
So we enjoyed our short time watching the fireworks from the top of the hill instead of actually being amongst it, but then we decided that we might as well head into Brighton for some fish and chips on the beach and a few beers in the pub.
And this was at about midnight. So we ate our fish and chips, we went to some club in Brighton called 'Hayes' (or something like that) and we did it all while 7 of us were piled into a Rover Metro.
(Antony, Elliott, Karolin, Damo)
Now if this didn't already sound like an interesting night, it only got better from here - on the way home from Brighton to London (about 2 1/2 hr drive) we managed to get pulled over by the local constabulary.
EXCELLENT!!! We're buggered now, we thought - so Ian the driver jumps out, marches up to the police car, and explains the situation - the police open the boot and find Kate looking out at them and so they announce that they understand our situation, and rather than issue us with a traffic offence, he will just take our names and addresses and say that we were pulled over under the Terrorism act so he doesn't have to fine us.....
So he proceeds to get all of our names and addresses, but the funny thing was that Nikki was in a black jacket with her hood over her head crouching down, and he didn't see her, so he thought that there were only 6 people in the car - we reckon they would've thrown the book at Ian if they had have realised..... Glad that they didn't because he seemed like a really nice bloke.
We ended up getting home at about 5 am - it was a huge night, but we had a ball!
In the club in Brighton!
