Pearly Kings and Queens

Buenas a todos,

Hope you all had a fandabbiedoozie weekend. I had a great weekend in London! Everything went smoothly! Well, I missed the target Stansted Express by 2 minutes, so I had to wait for the next one, and panicked that I may miss the check in! All was well though, as Stansted Airport is not like Manchester Airport; the train station is directly below the departures terminal, so it was a case of in a lift, pop out in check in. It took all of 5 minutes!

So what of RyanAir? They weren't too bad. I would use them again, but only in the case of no other airline going to where I wanted to go (like some random place in Poland!). The plane took off ½ an hour late on both occasions, but managed to catch up/land ontime; however, I believe this to be because RyanAir pops an extra ½ an hour onto the real flying time incase of any delays. Stansted was easy to use, and to and from London was very easy on the Stansted Express, eventhough at £25 (I paid £16.50 Young Person's discount) it was a bit costly.

So... London! I have to say, I've changed my mind a bit over London. First time I went, I didn't particularly like it that much. It is true that the crowds of tourists can put me off, especially those annoying Americans, but for the most part, I've got quite accustomed to London. We went to all the usual places, looking at Big Ben and all that jazz, as well as going out on Saturday Night. We went to Chinatown in Soho and had a lovely Chinese! The crispy duck was to die for! We tried to get into Tokyo Diner, as I fancied some Japanese, but it seemed rammed, so we opted for Chinese instead. Afterwards, I let Mark choose a bar to go to, and he predictably chose G-A-Y, which was slightly packed, and full of scary Lesbians in one section. On trying to find the cloack room, some cowgirl Pat Butcher said "Sorry dahlin', this is a lesbian-space, you have to be with a woman to come in". I was like, "I'm only trying to find the bloody cloakroom!!". Christ! Anyway, as I knew it would be, G-A-Y is both overrated and overcrowded. Plus, I'm sure if there was a men-only space, the lesbians would be up in arms over equality and what not. While I'm all up for making sure that women are no longer repressed, the lesbian clique (especially the NUS LGBT campaign) are too militant in their attitude towards gay men. I'm in favour of women-only bars (like Vanilla), but all-inclusive venues should be that! Anyway, hope not offended anyone reading this! I digress...

Anyway, we went onto a venue I chose, Trash, which played indie music, with a tad of rock, and I'm sure Nicola Red would have felt happy going there. It was a bit small, but they played some cool choons I've not heard in a disco before (like Pulp, Mis-shapes). Anyway, I really liked it, but sensed Mark was less impressed, as Indie isn't really his thing, so we went to a pub down the road, had another drink and went back to the hotel. All in all, a good night. Glad we didn't go clubbing properly, as I would have been knackered and not got up properly. Well, I didn't wake up properly anyway, so we had a quick visit to Portobello Market, had a mooch and I went back to Liverpool Street to catch the Stansted Express back to the airport.

So, all in all, it was an excellent weekend! We even talked about the future, and that we might end up living in London, and we both decided that it wouldn't be too bad, not the end of the world! Anyway, we'll see!

PLUS! A good friend of mine gave me some very exciting news yesterday!! Not saying anymore!! I'm just very excited!!!!!!

Well, the Troll of Frost beckoneth...

Love, hugs and a million kisses,

Ben x

*Cham-PAGNE for everybody!*