So. London. I know, I said I'd post this ages ago and time's run on now but it was a great weekend and I feel like documenting that for my own benefit as much as anything (as I found when I was down there, this blog has become quite a handy chronicle for me of what happened when...)
The Plan as it stood when Hamish and I decided to go to London for a weekend was to see his mate Tim on stage in the show he's in problem with that plan was that having booked ourselves flights down for a weekend when it was on and we could both get there, the damned show was sold out. Undeterred we decided to just hang out in London, I've a couple of great friends down there who I don't get to see often enough, one of whom Owen was being kind enough to put us up for free so there was bound to be plenty of scope for catching up (or in Hamish case, meeting for the first time in real life).
With The Plan dropped, our weekend just kind of formed itself organically around the very cool people I'm lucky enough to know - without really making any effort to organise our time Hame and I managed to spend pretty much every minute in excellent company and making the most of where we were. Days and evenings just formed themselves according to our moods. For example Friday night we hung out at Owen's 'local' where he appeared to know everyone and all of them were worth knowing. Late in the evening I observed that the (stupidly early) English pub closing time was threatening to call a premature halt to things. Before I'd really had time to think about it our evening was being ushered (past the queue) into one of London's biggest gay clubs' VIP lounges where things carried on uninterupted save for the arrival of some champagne.
I slept through Saturday morning emerging into the perfect chilled atmosphere of Owen's livingroom with Owen, Hamish and a very lovely friend of Owen's called Gav I'd met the night before. 'round lunchtime and staying there through the afternoon just enjoying the luxury of excellent company and no commitments. Later on Hame and I headed into town to meet my old friend Stéph, whose London is almost the antithesis of Owen's being as she's only quite recently begun building a life there - It started to feel like a 'hang out in a café' kind of evening, so an appropriately quiet and intimate Café Rouge materialised on the street we were already walking down... the whole weekend just kind of worked out like that.
Hanging out with Hamish is always good, but this weekend was the first time we've travelled together on a completely equal footing - in the past I've always driven us on our adventures which isn't quite the same as both being at the mercy of trains and planes. A sequence of missed connections meant we missed check in for our return RyanAir by 5 minutes. That was momentarily annoying but within a few minutes both of us geared down from travelling mode and spent a happy five hours in Stansted just enjoying each other's company while we waited for our Standby.
So there you go - my weekend in London, I essentially did nothing, but it was really good nothing with some great people and it all just happened by itself. I'm a lucky guy.
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