Hello. How ‘bout that ride in? I guess that’s why they call it Sin City. [hahaha]. You guys might not know this, but at the moment, I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when I stayed with Nicole Ramson, I knew she was one of my own. And my wolf pack… it grew by one. So there… there were two of us in the wolf pack… I was alone first in the pack, and then Nicole joined in later. And two days after, when Nicole introduced me to Jess and Rach, I thought, “Wait a second, could it be?” And now I know for sure, I just added two more people to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the city together, in London, looking for restaurants to eat and markets to shop.
(the ironic part about this introduction is that I am freakishly similar in appearance to Alan after twenty-two weeks backpacking).
Like Sydney and many other cities around the globe, London is divided up into different areas. After Eddie’s sad departure back to Australia, I went to Chelsea to stay with Nicole Ramson. She is staying in an apartment in Chelsea – the wealthiest area of London – of which her parents Tim and Mandy own. I think her plan is to stay there for a few years working. I also think that she’ll never go back home to Australia. And why the bloody hell would she!
During my just over two weeks stay with Nicole, I met two of her gorgeous friends from Sydney, Jess and Rachel. They are also living over here and taking each day as it comes, working and having fun.
Because the girls had to work during the week, Nicole every day and the girls not as often, it meant I had the days by my lonesome. I decided I’d do a few little day trips to fill in my time.
1) I went to Wimbledon, only a few Tube stops away. I’m not going to bother explaining what Wimbledon is or why I went there. If you don’t know, ask the closest person to you and they’ll tell you. I did a self guided tour of the Wimbledon museum. Inside, the most prestigious tennis courts I have ever seen. I saw centre court and learnt that originally, only amateurs could compete in the Wimbledon tournament when it first started as it wasn’t yet an ‘open’. Thought that was quite interesting. The next time I go back there will be to watch local tennis superstar and mate, Matt Barton flog the world number two seed – he’ll already be number one – and win Wimbledon.
2) I caught the bus to Cambridge to have a squizz at the university town. Went into the main three; St John’s, Trinity and King’s. Got some awesome photos and had an argument with a bus driver as I tried to get onto a direct bus to London instead of meander around going ‘via’ places before getting there. I won.
3) You know the thing when setting the time on your phone and it asks you the GMT+ or GMT- ? Well I went to the place it all began. It’s a town just south of London called Greenwich. Greenwich Observatory is where the bloke (can’t remember his name) discovered the lines of longitude existed. The reason for this was to assist in ships navigation when out at sea. GMT stands for Greenwich Meridian Time. In the observatory there is a line showing the exact spot the Greenwich Meridian is. To the left of the line looking north, I’d be on the west part of the world and on the right of the line I’d be on the east side, in terms of navigation. Although this is probably more boring than watching paint dry, because it has relations to time and is useful to the world in the current day, it interested the hell out of me. Also got me thinking deeper into what time actually is and how it works and before I knew it, my mind became scrambled eggs.
As we were living in the wealthy part of London, it meant me and my thirteen quid jacket from Primark wasn’t setting any fashion statements. Regardless of this unimportant materialistic fact, the people definitely smelt of rich mahogany and many leather bound books. It became acceptable to see the nicest Bentley’s, Ferrari’s, Porsche’s, Mercedes’, Astin Martin’s, Rolls Royce’s, BMW’s, Audi’s, Jaguar’s (and the list keeps going), all just parked on the side of the street. There were cars that I’ve only ever seen on the testing track on Top Gear being driven around. Along with all of this, of course a telle show has to be made. They call it ‘Made In Chelsea’ and it’s similar to ‘The Hills’ or ‘The City’ if you’ve ever watched those. Anyway, the three girls loved it and watched it every week which meant I also watched it every week. To the girls’ dismay, I saw Spencer, Ollie and Mark Francis from the telle show on separate occasions.
After several drunken endeavors and nights out spending way more than was required, the wolf pack became much much closer. That’s the sense I got at least. I got along with Nicole, Jess and Rach like I’d known them forever.
On my last full day in London staying with Nicole, the three girls and I went to Hyde Park Corner to visit Winter Wonderland. Winter Wonderland is the most magical place on earth with rides, stalls, hot choccy’s with Baileys and an atmosphere that could not be discovered anywhere else in the world. We all walked under the almost cloudless crisp blue sky with the smell of cold air fighting the scent of wafting cinnamon sticks and snags. It is probably the most high spirited place I’ve ever been to for all the right reasons. I absolutely cannot wait to go back there and take mum in a few weeks. She’s going to love it!
Towards the lead up of knowing I was going to leave to continue my travels up to Scotland, I started to get sad. I didn’t want to leave. At that point in my life, I didn’t want to be anywhere else or with anybody else. But of course I know that all great things come to an end and it was inevitable that the day of my departure would arrive. I guess you can’t start the next chapter until you’ve finished reading the last and although I don’t want to finish the last chapter, I know the next few will be just as good.
Tim and Mandy, I want to thank you very much for allowing me to stay in your beautiful apartment. I look forward to seeing you both in a few weeks back in London.
Nicole, I can’t even begin to describe how thankful I am for having me be your flatmate for the past two weeks. Putting up with my habits, more than occasional quirkiness and Aussie dialect. Nicole, Rach and Jess, thank-you to the three of you for making this one man wolf pack into a four person wolf pack. Cheers for keeping me company and not making the past two weeks a lonesome couple. Hopefully we’ll cross paths again at some point in our lives.
I move onto Glasgow, Scotland where it’s apparently snowing. It’ll be the first snowfall this Battler has seen on the trip so far. I hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience!