London Life
[1997] [1998] [1999] [2000] [2001]
The first couple of months in London were spent at my friend Matty Dempster’s place at 27 Mawson Close, Wimbledon Chase in south London. From here I had my first conversation with the big while telephone in the bathroom in England and learnt how to use public transport and generally started getting into the UK. I started roaming around London also, and took in some of the touristy sights like Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and the Imperial War Museum. I also spent Christmas and New Years with Matt and his friends. Both Matt and myself were unemployed and we spent much time watching the landscape channel and performing other job hunting type tasks. The flatmates there were Claire, Keith, Tony (whose room I occupied as he was away in New Zealand) and Matt. Anna moved in during my last week there.
I found the spending of New Zealand dollars quite easy, and after a while found that the money was pouring out at quite a phenomenal rate, especially when I had to pay for the bond and first months rent at my next flat at 24 Court Way, North Acton. I had never bounced a cheque before. Matt’s flatmate Claire had recommended the place, and I knew it was going to be a cool flat when I went to see the room – as I just had a quick look on the way out after meeting two of the flatmates over the previous two hours and getting absolutely stoned. Initially the flat consisted of Me, John, Paul (two Scottish lads from opposite sites of the country) and Tim – although Tim’s visa was running out and he had to head home to New Zealand in a few months. After my first week in the flat, I met up with an old university friend, Todd who lived in Queensway and we went out to Swiss Cottage to meet another of his friends who worked in a pub there. The next night I met up with a girl called Sian who was a friend of my friend Jennie in Dunedin, and we went out on the town near where she lived in north London. The next morning was a Sunday, so I was up bright and early to go to the Church where my flatmate John and I proceeded to get hammered in readiness for my first day at work for Arthur Andersen on Monday. Around this time also, I went to my first concert - Green Day at the Brixton Acedemy.
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| The Mawson Close gang reunited 3 years later! |
My work at Arthur Andersen was not particularly interesting, or well paid – but it was a foot in the door to IT contracting in England and a good way to keep me from spending money during the day. The office was across the road from the Old Bailey, the criminal courts, and a stone’s throw from St Paul’s cathedral, where I used to spend sunny days eating my lunch on the front steps. Whenever a big trial was on in the courts I had to sidle past the huge SAS types carrying AK-47s in order to get to work in the morning.
I quickly found that living in England is like injecting lard into your stomach, and made an effort to go running at least three times a week to combat my increasing waistline. This lasted for quite a while, but as a result of sub standard footwear and hard footpaths, my knees gave up after about 5 months. I also made an effort to start looking around my newly adopted country, doing day trips to Bath, Oxford and touristy sights around London. I frequented the nearby Walkabout pub in Shepherds bush zealously soaking up the rugby from New Zealand on the largest screen I have ever seen (and also beer). After my flatmate Tim left and the new flatmate, Fran (an Aussie) got a job there in addition to her teaching job, this meant even more regular visits.
Fran and I also orchestrated a party/bbq at our place, which was a bit of a flop, but resulted in myself getting suitably drunk whilst still managing to catch up with most of the people that I wanted to see during the day. The weather was surprisingly good and it was a good chance to get some sun (albeit English sun) for the first time since Hawaii in November of the previous year.
After my return from travelling, the English summer seemed as though it was winter, and I got my next job at Ernst and Young. Just before I left I had met up with an old friend of mine from school days, Mel, and we had started hanging out together quite a bit. I also hung out with Ang’ from my Easter trip to Scotland often, and went with her to the Notting Hill Carnival on the last bank holiday weekend of the summer. It was amazing to see three million people just crammed into the same space, and we had a great time at some of the outdoor raves that were going on. A few weeks later, I caught Neil Finn at the Royal Albert Hall with Michelle who I had met on Eurobus. My old flatmate from university days, Jason had arrived around this time, and I took him to the Walkabout, the Church and awol@camden palace. He took to the London clubbing scene like the proverbial duck! One of the guys I met travelling, Rich, and I went for a jaunt up to Blackpool to have a look, and after seeing that ridiculous place, nothing about England can surprise me! About this time I also caught Hootie and the Blowfish at the Sheperds Bush Empire which was decidedly average.
For my birthday in November I went out to a favourite drinking haunt, ‘Bad Bobs’ which coincided with Rich’s going away party and involved £1 drinks, substantial drunkenness and memory loss. A group of us went clubbing to freedom@bagleys that weekend and I overdid things a little, again! Around this time I moved into a new flat, 21 Charing Cross Mansions, 26 Charing Cross Road – right in the middle of the west-end. I moved in with Chris who had only recently returned from his European travels on Eurobus etc, and got a job.
In December, Mel and I also went up to Scotland to see the NZ Maoris play Scotland with Todd and Al and Julie and had a great time winding up the locals and seeing some of the Edinburgh nightlife. It was also an opportunity to catch up with Chris and Gina who travelled up separately, Rich who hadn’t quite departed for Australia yet, Annabelle and Valerie who I met travelling and Doug, Valerie’s boyfriend who was a local.
After arriving back from the big ski holiday, I met the new ‘couch inhabitant’ in our flat, Joffa and Kym who had been using my room departed for a hostel. I had a few weeks of getting back into London life before I had Rebecca from Canada come and stay for a couple of weeks. We did quite a bit of stuff together during the day around London and when her sister, Belinda came over, she and I went on an open topped tour of the city together.
The New Year saw me join the gym for the first time ever and also acquire a girlfriend for the first time in the UK, a New Zealand girl, Sian whom I had met soon after I first arrived. We did quite a bit of stuff together over the couple of months that we were together, going clubbing, trips to Cambridge for the day and Copenhagen for the weekend, but the feelings towards each other were not exactly mutual and we unfortunately parted company on non-speaking terms. A week before we broke up in May, I started my first job of the year in Milton Keynes for Rockwell Automation.
As the year wore on and summer started approaching, the World Cup ‘99 cricket came to town and as I didn’t want to take the time off work to catch the NZ games, decided to head to Manchester to see Australia play the West Indies with my flatties and Phil on a bank holiday weekend. It was a great effort, getting into the ground with bottles of ‘water’ containing 100% gin and kicking the footie around on Old Trafford. Such days legends are made of, or is that myths! Unfortunately, it’s all on video.
It seemed like a good idea to get out and see a few more things in the improving weather, and Todd and I decided to visit Paris for a weekend trip. After an early start, we arrived in Paris and got our bearings. We found a hotel on an island of the Seine and had a look at Notre Dame, the Eiffel tower and other touristy sights. We couldn’t make it into the Louvre as it was on Strike and had some trouble finding an area where there was a decent nightlife on the Saturday night, but had a good time nonetheless. The next weekend Todd and I headed up to Cambridge and went punting on the Cam, and generally relaxed out. In addition to the travelling, I caught a couple of concerts around this time, seeing Orbital and REM, the former with Mel, who returned back to NZ soon after as her visa had run out.
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| The official photo (before the carnage) infront of the Dome |
The New Zealand cricket team also toured the UK after the World Cup and it was the first series victory on UK soil of which I saw the game they won convincingly at Lords. The Saturday night of the test was also my introduction to that Australian tradition of B&S balls, which I attended after only drinking moderately the whole day. The setting at the Chain Store in Trinity Bouy Wharf was however pretty spectacular.
After returning from the sun of the Greek Islands, it was visitor time, everyone from everywhere seemed to be visiting England. Among them were my parents and came over and we went to the show ‘De La Guarda’, went out for dinner and had a brief look around London. After their visit I caught up with an old girlfriend, Cheryl in Paris. This time I got to see the Louvre and the weather was very hot. Todd and I stayed in the Bastille area and went out on the Saturday night, spending all of Sunday recovering on the banks of the Seine.
Towards the end of the year the Rugby world cup began and after the hassle of getting tickets, Matt and I went to Bristol to see the AB’s play Tonga, to Huddersfield v Italy, Edinburgh v Scotland and to Twickenham where we saw Fiji play England, the AB’s taking on England and the in the debacle that was the semi-final, France. Al and Julie joined us in our support on a couple of occasions. It was amazing how many different people I ran into over those weeks. Chris Taipari at Twickenham, Katie Booth and a glimpse of Dave Buchannan in Huddersfield and Anne from my Easter in Scotland in 98 in Bristol. Edinburgh was particularly good as Matt and I stayed with Valerie and Doug who looked after us very well. Drinking in the Grass Markets was a very drunken affair.
In the middle of all the rugby chaos, Matty and his girlfriend Andrea departed the UK for New Zealand and I went to see the Chemical Brothers play at the Brixton Academy.
As winter approached, I moved locations at work from Milton Keynes to Bletchley. There was no difference in the travel time, but I had my own office and got some peace and quiet and a reasonable amount of work done. Around this time we had a reasonable number of dossers, and they helped keep us busy (read intoxicated) after work. For my birthday, I hired out the upstairs bar of the Bear and Staff across the road, and had a great time there and at the zoo bar afterwards. The dossers of the day, Katrina and Selena bought me a Flat Eric, who has been travelling with me quite a bit since then.
Most of December was taken up with drinking and being cold. The holes in my work shoes were not conducive to having warm feet, but I toughed it out, being too lazy to go to the shoe shop and instead favouring the pub. Snakebite Sundays at whichever Walkabout seemed appropriate became an institution again. I had a brief interlude with a Spanish girl I met at one. I saw the play Chicago and had a less brief interlude also with a Kiwi in our party, which also involved a weekend in Brighton. Towards the end of December I went to see Blur at the Wembly Arena with Andy Fresher, a mate from Uni days and that night we went out in town where I met a girl called Mary.
The relationship with Mary initially went very well and we did a lot of things together, including heading up to Edinburgh for Doug and Valerie’s wedding. After I got back from my travels around Italy and Ireland I got a job working for an employment agency HW Group in Guildford, Surrey for a month. Mary and I spent quite a lot of time together including a jaunt to Whitstable and Canterbury for the weekend and plenty of drinking. After the months work ‘dahn sahf’ I got a job in Shepherds Bush for Net-wise communications and began cycling to work. Around this time the weather was starting to get a little better and I ditched the gym in favour of the grandiose plans of going running again in the good weather. Unfortunately the plans were good, but the execution a little less so!
After I got back from Turkey (with Goatee) the Mary thing faded away and I started doing a little mountain biking around the countryside with Jason on Saturday mornings. One particular ride around Biggins Hill in Kent nearly killed me, though it was the most difficult in the guide book - and we did see a stealth bomber that was part of a nearby air show. It was also around this time that the London B&S ball was on, so once again I went and this time made even more an arse of myself than the previous time. It ended up being quite an expensive night!
The next weekend Jason and I went out to an airfield in Oxfordshire to the Gatecrasher Summer Sound System festival. The DJs that played were like a who's who of top DJs: Judge Jules, Pete Tong, Paul Van Dyke, Paul Okenfold to name just a few.
When the contract at Net-Wise finished, I started at a .com company called Diary Dates who after a grand total of three weeks of my presence ran out of money and left me without job once again. I managed to return to the nice people at Net-Wise and use up most of the rest of the time before Rich arrived to go travelling around Scandinavia avec moi.
In between time I went down New Quay in Cornwall to catch up with Jason who had been on holiday down there and got to drink in the Walkabout pub there which has to be high on the list of the best pubs Ive ever drunk in, also I went to see the show 'Fame' with Felicity which was a pretty good time, although not quite the same as the old tv show that I used to love.
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| Ready to head out after a couple at the flat |
After getting back from the trips in the reminants of the summer, I was yet again looking for a method of income, and ended up at possibly the most bizarre job I've had yet for Cambridge Management Consulting which involved doing absolutly nothing all day for seven weeks. Not only this but we got free brekkys, usually free lunches and the staff cafe was equiped with pool table and table soccer and a web cam looking down on them so you didnt need to get out of your desk to check if anyone was playing. Suffice to say, I paid for my next trip, got better at pool and put on about a stone! This must have helped in some small way to endear me to women, because I met a nice Australian girl called Michelle around this time also.
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| After the game at the Oval |
The final few weeks at Charing Cross Road involved many drunken sessions, and a series of farewell drinks for most of the usual suspects. One of the outings was a trip to the Oval to see the Melbourne Demons play the Adeliade Crows. The weather was crap, but we had a pretty good time and managed to get a few free drinks at Shoeless Joes after the game with the players courtesy of Hayesy's friend Macca who was an umpire at the game. Joffa had a dinner at Tiger Tiger to commemerate the end of his four years and there was a fantastic pool party for Adam's 30th. Just before I left for my winter jaunt around the world, I managed to see the Smashing Pumpkins once again play a crap show at the Wembly Area. My last second last weekend of the year in Europe was spent in Paris supporting the All Blacks at the Stade de France in their victory over France.
After I got back from my world trip the first thing to do was to find a new place to live. I stayed with Jason until Hayesy and I found a brilliant pad in Notting Hill and moved in with a previously unknown new arrival to the country from Melbourne, Martine. Prior to this I had popped over with Claire from my days in Wimbledon when I first arrived, to Cork where I helped Keith celebrate his 30th. The photo of the gang there appears in the 1998 section above.
The next thing I had to do was find a job, and after a couple of weeks working in Wokingham on a short contract, I started a contract for GlaxoSmithKline in Brentford.
As the year progressed on, I waved goodbye to Tim who headed back to NZ, catching the excellent Blood Brothers in the west-end with him. I spent one day of Easter in Bath and another at Leeds castle in Kent and couple of weeks prior I had popped over to Vienna with a mate from Dunedin, Dion for a weekend where we caught up with another few friends from those Scarfie days and did some typically Austrian things like drink beer and schnapps and eat schnitzel.
As summer began, football finished, there was some typically great May weather and a few of us zipped over to Cardiff to watch the Barbarians Rugby team play
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Jason, Aaron, Ryan, Anna and Andy before the game at Cardiff's Millenium Stadium |
So after all this getting out and about it was time to celebrate Hayesy and Gadd's 30ths, Gadd having had his birthday earlier in the year and Hayesy's actual date was a couple of weeks later. All the action is documented here.
For the real date of Hayesy's birthday we trapesed over to Dublin where Phil and Joffa were residing and I stayed with Matt. We managed to drink almost constantly for the whole time, stopping on Sunday to catch the semi-final of the Leinster Gaelic football league between Meath and Kildare, where Meath scraped home by 4 points in the end. The weather was fantastic, and the next week as the English heatwave continued, Wimbledon started and I popped in to have a look at that too.
A few weeks later, I managed to use the tickets that I had sorted in January (while still in Canada) to see Radiohead in Oxford. Myself, Jason, Rob, Claire and a couple of others went over to the concert in South Park where we had a great day and also saw Beck and Supergrass who played support. The Concert was really good and the 35 000 people there meant that this was the biggest gig I have seen to date. It did rain quite a bit towards the end of the concert, but it didnt dampen our spirits after a fun day out.
All this time (well since about April) I had been training for a Nike sponsored 10mk fun run, called RunLondon and the big event occured on July 22 and involved putting on a pink t-shirt and joining 10,000 others in a run around Kew Gardens, which initially looked lovely but got progressivly more uninteresting as the run progressed. The fact that the All Blacks had played the previous afternoon meant that I had a little fog in front of my eyes, but I managed to struggle through in a time of 46:50. The photos below are taken from the webcam footage of me finishing. The same day, Robyn and Paul celebrated their engagement with a picnic in Hyde Park which carried on through the day.
For the last bank holiday of the year, and essentially the end of summer we had a great big party for the Notting Hill Carnival. To have a look at what went down, click here.
As the year progressed, I managed to take in a bit of football (QPR) and rugby (Wasps) at Loftus Road, catch a few shows in the West End: Starlight Express, Reduced Shakespeare Company and the Blues Brothers and also two more concerts at the Sheperds Bush Empire, Turin Brakes and Paul Kelly.
Still the tourist in my home of now nearly four years, I went up
the London eye (the biggest ferris wheel in the world) one weekend, and managed
to get one of the only foggy days of the month. The ride was worth it however, and even though the views were limited
what we did see was fantastic.
As summer turned to Autumn, although London was experiencing its warmest October in recorded history (since 1657) it got a little cooler and we stopped the BBQ parties for the usual house parties. The Prostitutes and Pimps party at Sammy's place produced some great outfits and made for a great time. Check out the photo here.
As winter approached I said my goodbyes to everyone before my next big trip and moved into Josie and Paul's place to look after it while they were away travelling. Somehow the heating died while I was there, so it was a nice warm stay - but little did I know that it would be my last residence in London for this part of my life. After getting back they kindly took me in again so I could pack up my life before departing for Australia.