The Big Smoke...

I went to London at the weekend. It was great. On Friday night we had some vocal recording to do, and that ran a bit late, so I didn't leave Leeds till half nine. I made the drive down to Golder's Green, and it took me FOREVER. There were loads of roadworks near the big city, and I was at a standstill for a while, but I finally arrived at quarter to two in the morning. It was worth it. As always, James had a particularly comfy spot for me reserved on the floor, but this time I had come prepared, and produced a sleeping bag, camping mat, and two pillows. Much better than last time. We ate muffins with bovril; we drank cocoa. We chatted a bit, and fell asleep in front of QuizMania, which is a prime example of why I don't generally watch television. That guy has issues...

When we awoke, James prepared us cups of tea, and we set off to pick up my new enlarger. I'm well excited to have this - I've wanted a darkroom again for a while, and getting a bargain like I did is awesome. Ok, it needs a bit of work, but it's going to be well worth it. Of course it's too big to bring over to Canada. I'll have to think of something... The journey that should have taken twenty minutes each way took us a total of 3 hours. Stupid London traffic. James did a splendid job of navigating though. Then we played video games.

James showed me a side of the capital that I had never seen before. After getting my mom some books for mother's day, we trekked across towards a pub that we rather like on Great Portland Street. Except that we somehow missed the road. We walked for nearly an hour. It was ridiculous. Pretty funny though. When we finally arrived there, we walked in, and found that, even on a Saturday, it was so quiet that it was closing at nine.

We gave James' housemate Paul a call, and found that he, his friend and his sister were in a pub near to University College of London, so we went to the uni to meet him. He is a GREAT guy. He's a South African archaeologist, and a very clever, very funny man. I got on well with him. The same goes for his friend Dan, and his sister Claire, all of whom can be seen in the photograph. We visited a couple of pubs, laughed a lot (not unusual when I'm with James), and formulated a plan for my stag party, which should be enormously silly. We took the night bus home, and ended up watching QuizMania again. Hmmmm. I left early the next morning, and popped in to see mom, who cooked me a wonderful dinner, even though she didn't expect me to be there. What a star...

In other news, since our clocks went forward on Sunday morning, there is now a 6 hour time difference between Bethany and I, as opposed to the usual 5 hours. This causes no real problems, but can be a bit confusing when you're used to calculating 5 hour's difference into everything. All will be resolved this coming Sunday, however, when Canada gets itself into gear, and puts their clocks forward too. And things are resolved even further 6 days later, when I arrive in my favourite country in the world. Sweet.

I have a bunch of thoughts on things this week, but I've reserved this post for telling you about London; uninteresting as that may be to you. I'll get on with some deeper stuff later on. Love, guys...