This weekend heralded the notional last night of freedom for a certain Andrew “The Lothario” Best, but I’m going to start with a bit of a moan first.
As part of our plans, Rich had pre-booked (and paid) for tickets for ‘Guilty Pleasures’ being hosted at a club called Koko in Camden Town. The tickets stated that if we could arrive before 12:30am – we duly did so at 12:25am and were refused entry by a bouncer. The bouncer (as t’wasn’t his fault) summoned the promoter, who was a class A twat who made up a load of bollocks when basically they’d just let more people in and not allowed for tickets they’d pre-sold. We did get a refund, but it left a sour taste – so if you’re thinking of going to a Guilty Pleasures night, don’t bother – it’s run by a bunch of twunts.
Andy with some new friends!
Anyway. Aside from that, the weekend was brilliant! It started with a slight concern as a migraine suffering Rich texted me to say he was stuck in Lincoln ’til he was fit to drive the night before – fortunately he recovered sufficiently to get back down to Nottingham as planned, from where we drove down to Henley and caught the Tube to Camden to meet up with the rest of the boys.
After checking into a grotty hovel of a youth hostel, we hotfooted it back to the Tube to get across to Leyton where the mighty Reds were playing Orient. The game wasn’t the best, but a fortunate goal from Junior Agogo was enough to get us a much needed away three points – so the weekend was certainly getting off to a good start!
We headed back to Camden with a few cans – which caused a few problems for Tim on the tube as one of them decided to empty itself into his bag – and then headed out in Camden to the quietest curry house in the world, which was very amusing for all manner of reasons, although the most important factor being the food quality – and this didn’t disappoint at all!
After this we went around a few pubs in Camden – Camden’s a great people-watching place, full of people desperate to be ‘different’ by basically dressing in strange clothes, which are available in abundance from the market stalls and shops on the high street. A few of our party were interested in catching the end of the egg-chasing, so we found a pub showing that… I saw Jonny Wilkinson miss a couple of kicks and score a drop-goal, as well as a try – I still don’t get it.
Then was the fateful walk to the Guilty Pleasures night. After a pointless argument with the charismaless bastard running the night, we headed back into Camden Town and ended up in a place called ‘Underworld’ – which played some great tunes, but didn’t have the friendliest clientelle in the world – not sure that Andy mooning them from the stage repeatedly helped in the ‘making friends’ stakes, mind!
A strangely accidentally arty pic of Andy in action in Underworld!
It was here I succumbed to a banging headache – I spent an hour or so alternately trying to drink my way through it (initially with alcohol, then with some water), dance through it or just sit down near an aircon unit and hope it went – but it didn’t so I escaped back to the hostel to get some much needed sleep – probably a good job I did as Rich was in no fit state to drive back, so I ended up doing that this morning with him kipping on the back seat!
A top weekend, though – really enjoyable, given my usual dislike of all things London! Rich and I are heading back down to the capital next month so I can have my didgeridoo lesson, which should be a laugh! There’s a few photos here, I’m sure more will appear on Rich‘s site too…
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