(30/01/05)
Oh god, it feels like a farm animal with severe constipation finally managed to relieve itself, in my FREAKEN HEAD! Groan, it was worth it though, after such a sweet day on the circle line pub crawl.
For those of you who are unfortunate enough not to know about or have not been on the circle line pub crawl, you get a few thousand kiwis together at Paddington station on the Circle line at 10:30am and attempt to visit a pub at every stop on the circle line (that's the yellow one), going counter-clockwise. I'm sure people have actually managed to do it, but it really is just an excuse for one hell of a fantastic day out, to show London what Kiwi's are made of (for better or worse).
My goal was to try and take a photo outside every pub we visited:
That photo was as far as I got with that idea. Oh well.
As you can probably imagine, carnage and drunken buffoonery dominated the day, with at least one pint in each pub:
I took my iPod and speakers and cranked out as loud as the speakers could go Kiwi music for the day:
(Guys, if you want to get a bunch of chicks gathering around you and thinking that you're just the bees knees, play Poi-e).
Here's a taste of what a trip on the tube was like, very similar to the usual day to day commute really, with everyone singing and joking around.
London is getting used to the pub crawl, with the odd bar playing Kiwi music when we turn up and even the beggars know how to get in on the act:
I couldn't help but give a beggar holding up a "Ki-Ora" (close enough) sign a quid to help him out with his heroin addiction.
The absolute highlight of the day HAS to be the Haka preformed in Parliament square. All the guys, going hard out, shirts off. Here's a taste of what it was like to actually be in the middle of it! It's damn hard to do the Haka while holding a camera.
One of our pub stops was on the Queen Mary, a boat (which is where I had my 2004 Birthday Party):
Here's my flatties, Tania and Grant, for some reason the road was on a huge lean:
After about Tower Bridge or somewhere, most people buggered off home, but Charles and I went to some party, where Charles made me break my promise to myself not to drink any spirits. Things really start to black out from then on, but apparently we had a good time, we even picked up some chicks by the looks of it!
Obviously Charles did something wrong (must have acted all drunk and stupid or something) and we didn't end up taking them home as I woke up by myself :-(
What a fantastic day, already looking forward to next year...
By Tony Baker: email