London take 1!

So here I am on the bus heading from London back home. A journey of 7 hours in length and I'm halfway through it and my behind is numb already.

I went down on the Friday morning and waited to meet Alex who is the admin of The Islanders at kings cross. Typically he was delayed due to some fire near the train lines. So about an hour(ish) later than planned, we met up and headed to the place we were staying at.
I stupidly wore my boots which were not broken in and they rubbed away at my heels making 2 very sore blisters. So getting to hostel was priority for me.

We got to where we were staying and I know it was cheap but wow what a dump. There was about a cm of dust on furniture, the tv had no aerial, the bed mattresses were too big for the bed frames. Also the springs in the mattress were so prominent and stabbed you. It was a hole basically.

After sorting our all the Islander member packs we headed into the city to meet up with Liz and her mates. We just wondered the city and Alex decided he wanted to climb a lion which he did. I got a photo of it just hope it was not too dark to see. Liz and her friends left and we went for more a wonder and sat infront of the palace for a while before heading back to the hostel.

Sleeping was tricky with single glazed windows and lot of traffic etc but managed to get a few hours. Next day we were on a mission to get something to put membership packs in and go to the Nordic bakery. Bought a couple of Karellian pies from there which were gorgeous and then wondered to go meet Pip Williams.

It was a long journey to Ealing Broadway to meet him but we found the location okay. We went to a quiet pub to sit and do the interview and have a couple of drinks. I made a total balls up of some of the questions but was all good humour and Pip was lovely and talked forever. We have about 1 hour and 40 minutes if interview audio to go through and edit etc, although I cannot upload it till after the 9th due to discussing track names.
He was a dream to interview and look forward to meeting with him again soon.

We were late leaving the interview with Pip so I did not have time to go get "pirated up" for the Islander meeting. Felt bad as Sari made such an effort as well. The meet up went great, we had a quiz with few prizes and talked about various things. Next time we will probably have more activities although drinking was a good enough one it seemed.
Roz made an Islander cake which was fab! Total surprise to everyone so a huge thanks to her it was such a nice thing to do. Then Liz presented me with this card of appreciation letters from the TH team/Tuomas/and fans. Tricky recorded the whole thing and I was so close to tears. It was such a sweet gift and something i will cherish. I'll write a bigger thank you on the TH site later.
Night ended with me, Alex, Roz, Sean,Sarah and Andrew heading to The Crobar for drinks. Again was a laugh but last underground was not long away so had to cut it short.

In all the weekend was loads of fun with some great friends. So huge thanks to them all.

Stay tuned for the very special "London take 2" which will be Sept 14th/15th

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone