![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Gone dannah pub
Apr. 25th, 2006 09:24 amI am staying at a big hostel between Kings Cross and Russell Square in Camden. I will tell some story outlines and flesh them out later.
There is a decent, shiny bar in the hostel. This was great fun, lemme tell ya. I learned to play what they call pool, which is really just eight ball without the numbers. You have seven yellow balls, seven blue balls (which reminds me...), one red and one white cue ball. I explained the concept of nine ball to the Australian guys I was playing against and they liked the idea. The balls are small (heh...) but I figured it out after a bleh first game. And yeah, I do play better with one or two tied on: the rules get simpler.
I got to talking to a German law student. We'd start with the difference between Canon Law and Common Law and wound up with me telling all sorts of stories.
I keep explaining to people how lucky they are that their nation isn't overrun with born-agains and literalists. Then they complain about how slow the trains are compared to Europe's (80 MPH versus 120). Yes, England still does not really think it's part of Europe and is not sure it wants to be yet. They don't like that the EU wants to ban clotted cream and other quintessentially British things. A lot of them believe the EU is going to fall apart anyway.
Then again, they could be like the Brummies (people from Birmingham) I met at the bar. I would've avoided 'em like the plague if it had not been for this woman I met when I was finishing talking to the German dude. She was done up in a blue mini dress with red stockings, blue Mardi Gras beads and a tam for a purse. Needless to say I nearly jibbed right there. When she opened her mouth and barnyard epithets came out in this luscious Scottish brogue, it upped the ante. She needed to find the bathroom, so I walked her over and waited because we were in the middle of swapping favorite curse words. She was ecstatic that I waited.
Later she explained why. She had met some dudes and brought them in the bar with her. However, it turned out they were creepy coke dealers. She didn't have to explain anymore, but I suddenly had to drink a lot more per her insistence. When you end up with such an intensely cute thing dancing with you, even though she mentions over and over her Irish-Belizian boxer/accountant boyfriend back home in Perth (thirty miles out from Edinburgh near the Forth Rail Bridge), well... you're glad to be somewhat drunk so that the tackle doesn't activate.
She looked younger than I but I stopped thinking that when she told me she had been an aircraft engineer but decided to ogo back to school for art. I kept thinking of the old Bob Newhart piece about Abe Lincoln's manager talking him through his story lines for the public: "you were a rail splitter, then a lawyer. It doesn't make sense the other way around."
She insisted, only about 200 times, that I meet her today for hanging out. "Nineteen forty-five, here in the bar" to see Arsenal play Villa Real. We're also going with her friends to some modern galleries. This is a lot better than my original plan for the day: take the train to the Isle of Wight. I still want to go there, so maybe tomorrow.
You may be asking, "but you're in London! See the tourist stuff and go shopping!" Somehow, I'm not interested. I went to St Brides, which was great. I walked over and under Holborn Viaduct, a cast iron overpass that took 25 years to build in the mid-Nineteenth century. However, I really want to see the rest of the island. I want to get an idea what would captivate someone about this land. The Midlands were so flat compared to home that I couldn't believe it. I want to see their idea of the edge of land. As impressive as London is, it's awfully... normal. It's a modern honky metropolis. I want to see what everyone left.
That, or see if I can get into that Scot's knickers. Cuz I'm subtle. "I hate the Yanks," she says, "but I really like you."
-many many more tales to tell, Dante
There is a decent, shiny bar in the hostel. This was great fun, lemme tell ya. I learned to play what they call pool, which is really just eight ball without the numbers. You have seven yellow balls, seven blue balls (which reminds me...), one red and one white cue ball. I explained the concept of nine ball to the Australian guys I was playing against and they liked the idea. The balls are small (heh...) but I figured it out after a bleh first game. And yeah, I do play better with one or two tied on: the rules get simpler.
I got to talking to a German law student. We'd start with the difference between Canon Law and Common Law and wound up with me telling all sorts of stories.
I keep explaining to people how lucky they are that their nation isn't overrun with born-agains and literalists. Then they complain about how slow the trains are compared to Europe's (80 MPH versus 120). Yes, England still does not really think it's part of Europe and is not sure it wants to be yet. They don't like that the EU wants to ban clotted cream and other quintessentially British things. A lot of them believe the EU is going to fall apart anyway.
Then again, they could be like the Brummies (people from Birmingham) I met at the bar. I would've avoided 'em like the plague if it had not been for this woman I met when I was finishing talking to the German dude. She was done up in a blue mini dress with red stockings, blue Mardi Gras beads and a tam for a purse. Needless to say I nearly jibbed right there. When she opened her mouth and barnyard epithets came out in this luscious Scottish brogue, it upped the ante. She needed to find the bathroom, so I walked her over and waited because we were in the middle of swapping favorite curse words. She was ecstatic that I waited.
Later she explained why. She had met some dudes and brought them in the bar with her. However, it turned out they were creepy coke dealers. She didn't have to explain anymore, but I suddenly had to drink a lot more per her insistence. When you end up with such an intensely cute thing dancing with you, even though she mentions over and over her Irish-Belizian boxer/accountant boyfriend back home in Perth (thirty miles out from Edinburgh near the Forth Rail Bridge), well... you're glad to be somewhat drunk so that the tackle doesn't activate.
She looked younger than I but I stopped thinking that when she told me she had been an aircraft engineer but decided to ogo back to school for art. I kept thinking of the old Bob Newhart piece about Abe Lincoln's manager talking him through his story lines for the public: "you were a rail splitter, then a lawyer. It doesn't make sense the other way around."
She insisted, only about 200 times, that I meet her today for hanging out. "Nineteen forty-five, here in the bar" to see Arsenal play Villa Real. We're also going with her friends to some modern galleries. This is a lot better than my original plan for the day: take the train to the Isle of Wight. I still want to go there, so maybe tomorrow.
You may be asking, "but you're in London! See the tourist stuff and go shopping!" Somehow, I'm not interested. I went to St Brides, which was great. I walked over and under Holborn Viaduct, a cast iron overpass that took 25 years to build in the mid-Nineteenth century. However, I really want to see the rest of the island. I want to get an idea what would captivate someone about this land. The Midlands were so flat compared to home that I couldn't believe it. I want to see their idea of the edge of land. As impressive as London is, it's awfully... normal. It's a modern honky metropolis. I want to see what everyone left.
That, or see if I can get into that Scot's knickers. Cuz I'm subtle. "I hate the Yanks," she says, "but I really like you."
-many many more tales to tell, Dante
