Woolloomooloo Reunion

Moustache Magnus was in town from Sweden (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and finally here) pretty much a year to the day that I last saw him on a nice sunny day in Sydney airport as he flew back to Sweden via Thailand.

Magnus arrived late on Friday night and I was pretty much still in tired phase from the work Christmas party the night before, so no partying that night just a little chat in the flat and off to sleep for an early start the next night to go and visit Vic and Mica, our friends from Australia who were currently living in Brighton!

Vic didn’t finish work until 16h00 so we had the morning to kill looking around the shops. Brighton has small pretty cool little back street shops which have pretty good shopping. Up there with some of the London shopping, Magnus particularly liked it for its cheap retro clothes that must be all the fashion in Sweden.

We finally met up with Vic and Mica in a random Brighton bar for a couple of drinks, we then continued onto a Chinese “all you can eat” place which included ice cream, it was superb! (Apart from the long drive back to London on a full stomach straight after!!)

Vic, Mica, Magnus, Me

You might not of heard but London was nearly under a big black cloud for most of the weekend ‘toxic cloud to reach London by Saturday’ read some of the papers. It was pretty scarey as you can see from this picture –

Foggy London for real

We didn’t let it stop us. The next day we did a shopping tour of London, starting off in Camden and then making our way down to Neal Street in Covent Garden and then finally ending up on Regent Street to see the Christmas lights this year. They are the best I think I’ve seen and the corporate sponsorship was to a minimum –

Guess the sponsor

In Woolloomooloo, the locals there are always banging on about this ale called ‘Coopers’. Day in day out, Coopers, Coopers, Coopers, that is all you would hear. They drank so much of it you couldn’t go into a room without seeing an empty long neck or some bottle caps with the logo on. One of Woolloomooloo’s oldest tales was Coopers was not available in UK, as it was a ‘stralian ale and so was meant to stay in ‘stralia. Here is Magnus happily purchasing as much Coopers as he could buy to take back on the plane to Sweden from my local Quickie Mart, here in London, England –

Coopers! In London!! In a corner shop!! Not possible!!

That night we headed up to Shoreditch and had a few beers (pretty dead but it was Sunday) and also had some food at Macondo after a huge luncheon meal at All Bar One, so the night drew to a close and we were ready for the final full day in London for some tourist stuff.

We actually went inside the City Hall here in London, which I did not think you were allowed to do. You can only go to the second floor but it was still pretty cool to have a look around at the insane spiral walkway that run through the centre of the building, we then headed to Tate Modern to see some messed up art, including this giant sugarcube maze –

Sugar Cube Maze @ Tate Modern

We then headed to the National Gallery and saw some cool photographs in an exhibition called ‘Living in Hell and Other Stories‘ which was basically modern photographs inspired by old masters.

What would be a weekend in London without finishing up in a Knightsbridge Jazz Club? After pulling some strings with some Jazz contacts we managed to get tickets for Curtis Stigers at Pizza on the Park. I liked the music, I almost went into a Jazz trance a few times whilst listening to the times Curtis was banging out. They were all instrumental legends –

Curtis Jazz Trance

Sadly Magnus had to go back to Sweden, but a trip to Sweden myself has been pencilled in for next summer, providing Magnus passes his driving test! A great weekend and sad to have to wave goodbye to my surfing buddy again! The End.

An ancedote. I am forever reminded by ‘old’ people when you are young to ‘enjoy it whilst it last because life goes fast when you get older’ or something along those lines.

The reality is that time goes pretty much constant for everyone (apart from Matt the Pilot – see Twin Paradox).

However, it does not explain why when I was young I seem to remember having to wait what seemed like an eternity for the next morning to come along so I could eat another one of the advent calendar chocolates. Now, I find myself having to catch up with my chocolate advent calendar by a few days everytime I go to open another one of the doors! So it must be true, time does go faster when you get a bit older.

And finally, on a technical note, fans of Google Personal Homepage who also like to go surfing will be pleased to know they can now have Global Surfari World Forecasts DIRECT to their personalised page via Google’s new Google Homepage API!! Click ‘add content’, ‘custom section’ and then paste in http://globalsurfari.com/gs.xml to get the Global Surfari Module on the personalised page. It will look something like this –

I am in the process of making a video of the weekend, but I currently have the worse cold ever (that or some form of swimming pool disease from swimming in 30 degree water then walking home in 6 degree British winter).