Sam: “Susan, you don’t have a soul.”
Susan: “That’s not very nice, Sam.”
Dave: “Yeah Sam, don’t be a dick. I’ve seen Susan’s soul before – it was that time a couple of weeks ago when she got really drunk in the kitchen, smeared peanut butter all over her door and then fell asleep in front of my bedroom door… yeah it was kind of just hanging out…”
As of yesterday at 2:17pm GMT, I am finished with my studies here at the University of East Anglia. I’m psyched to be done with the hard work part, but also glad I get three more weeks of time in the is country to relax and spend time with the friends I’ve made over here. Everyone in the dorm has different schedules for coming and going – but someone fun will be here until the day I move out. Pat is coming on June 4th and my friend Dave from London might come spend a weekend here.
And now, ladies and gentlemen – the moment you’ve all been waiting for – stories of backpacking!
This will be divided up into many posts over the next few weeks. It will be broken up by country. Some countries will be broken into segments – some segments broken into atoms and atoms into anti-matter!
Yeah: exactly. We all know I’m not really planning that far ahead. I mean, for Gods sake, I went to France by myself and barely knew how to say, “Do you speak English?” in French.
Oh, but that story is to come! Not today, because today we start in London. We’re going all the way back to Saint Patrick’s Day.
The five days of Saint Patrick’s Day.
I will come right out and say some of the Saint Patrick’s Day celebration memories are a bit jumbled. That is not (purley) because Saint Patrick’s Day is pretty much a celebration of beer, but – well, YOU celebrate the same holiday five days in a row and see if after two months you can remember what happened when.
I headed into London on the 13th of March for my first leg of the trip. I was staying with Dominic in London. His parents were in the Lake District on holiday. Dom and his brother Sebastian were going to be meeting them later in the week but for a few days they had the house to themselves.
The reason I was there on the 13th was because Dom’s band (whose name I can’t remember… it’s something Gaelic) was invited to play at the American Embassies Saint Patrick’s Day celebration in London. Dom being the class act of a fellow he is invited me to join. It was wicked cool – the embassy on Bond Street is a no kidding around military complex. That shouldn’t have surprised me but I’ve never been in an embassy before and I’d never actually thought about it. Metal detectors, bomb sniffers, rubbing us with tissues and putting the tissues in machines to see if there were drugs on our persons – it was intense. That had to put all of the instruments through the airport style x-ray machines and being just as shy as I am, Dom asked the guy running the machine if he could come look at the screen and see what bagpipes look like on the inside. The guy was very nice and let us. (Usually the band isn’t too much of a threat.)
Lots of hot shit people were there. I’m not quite enough of a politics dork to identify senators just by looking at them but I’m assuming the guys who were sipping their cocktails with armed Marines standing behind them giving passers-by the evil eye were pretty important. I went into the rest room at one point and heard this bit of conversation occur while I peed.
“Hey Jim, I didn’t know you were coming!”
“Yup. Kinda tired. I was in The War Room at 8 this morning and now I’m here.”
He was wearing a badge that had his name on it but I didn’t want to try and peek at it for fear of him thinking I was peeking at something else, and then going to find one of his Marine friends.
Dom’s band consists of him on bagpipes, James (who is 19 like Dom) on fiddle, Shameus (James’s dad) on guitar/drums/anything that needs to be played, and Miriam (16) on flute. I got to help set up and do sound check. Unfortunately, a bunch of jet lagged senators, cabinet members and diplomats boozing on foreign soil don’t make a very good crowd for anything – especially a band. There was a bit of dancing near the end, and I’m PRETTY SURE I saw Michael Chertoff dancing to “Sexy Back.” (No, I’m not calling his secretary to see if he was present. That would make this journalism – which it’s not. J)
Another invite to the celebration was a group of Irish step dancers who came and preformed after the band was done playing. They of course did the running out into the audience and conscripting unwilling diplomats to come dance with them on stage which was greatly amusing. The whole evening was good fun. I have very limited pictures because I did not have camera clearance. I’ve got a few pictures from some people who did, which I’ll post below.
This really shouldn’t have made me as excited as it did, but they had Sam Adams at the embassy bar. Nothing sooths the homesickness like the sweet nectar of home! They didn’t have the Octoberfest brew (ya know… cause it was March) but they had the Boston Lager and the Winter Lager which was more than I could have asked for. I was stoked. Not only was I stoked, but I later found out that the man who served me my Sam Adams was the head of security for the entire embassy. Apparently when you do too good of a job making sure nothing bad happens – you get to bartend until something hits the fan.
Dom had far more beer than I did on night-one of Saint Patrick’s Day. We’ve never actually discussed this system but I’ve noticed that we both gauge our intake levels on how much the other is drinking – so there’s always one of us in good enough shape to keep an eye on the other and make sure everyone gets home without incident. Granted, this might not have been very smart on Dom’s part because not only did I have no idea where we WERE but also I couldn’t have found my way home if my life depended on it and I had a GPS in my hand… well maybe that’s not true, but it was my first time in Central London for sure.
I’m not sure the relation, but at one point someone’s little cousin named Natasha, who was 12, came over to our table and started talking to us. At 12 years old, this little girl was wearing a shirt that said “All the cute boys are gay.” Who lets a 12 year old wear that? Honestly!
Anyway, this little hellian at one point steals Dom’s can of cider, runs away and then comes back about 10 minutes later.
“What did you do to my cider?” asks Dom.
“You won’t drink it if I tell you,” she says.
“I promise you if you tell me what you did to it, I’ll down it in one gulp.”
You’re kidding, right?
“I filled it with toilet water,” says Natasha.
Dom looks sad.
“Don’t be a moron,” I say.
Occasionally Dom says realllly dumb things when he’s drunk that everyone remembers and repeats over and over until it stops being funny. So far, none of them have stopped being funny. Okay, take it from the tops!
“I filled it with toilet water,” says Natasha.
Dom looks sad.
“Don’t be a moron,” I say.
“No! No! You know what Dave? I – I am a – a man of my word! I’m a man of my word! I’m a man of word and I promised Tash that if – I promised that she would…” and DOWN the hatch it went.
The only thing I could do was shake my head and laugh hysterically.
“You’re going to get Hepatitis-C, Dom.”
“What’s that?”
I’ll spare all of you out there who are legitimately worrying about the outcome of this incredibly bad judgment. Natasha found out that Dom was really, really worried he was going to die and later told him that she had actually filled it with water from the sink.
Personally, I still would go get a Hep-C test… but personally, I also wouldn’t drink a cider can filled with toilet water… but that’s just me… and me? I’m a man – I’m a man of my word!
Anyway, we left the American Embassy shortly after this. Dom and Shameus were pretty toasted, so I followed closely behind James, as it was his house I was to spend the night at. (Apparently Dom’s parents hadn’t left for the lake district yet.)
At some point, Shamus gave Dom a drum. It was a hand held drum that you play standing up and bang on it with a small stick. I don’t remember the name of it but you get the picture. It was a drum. James and I are sitting on a bench in the tube station talking to each other when Dominic runs off with the drum. Dom’s a big boy, he can handle finding his own way home if indeed he’s run off somewhere. But he hasn’t.
No, because a moment later James and I hear a loud voice boom from across the tube station.
“Who wants to see me take it out and give it a good whacking?!”
Dominic is standing there with his hand in the drum bag, threatening to take out the drum stick. Granted, his drunken mannerisms made it clear that this was an intended sexual innuendo and he wasn’t about to flash someone – but it was late and the tube station was crowded…
“Pretend we’re not with him,” James says.
“Yes. He does this all the time,” he tells me.
“Really?” I ask.
“WHO WANTS TO SEE?!?!?”
“Okay…” I say, chuckling.
James and I watch Dom go harass poor sober people in the tube station as Shamus actually HAS taken the drumstick out and is giving it a good whacking. Unfortunately, because both James and I wanted to see it happen – Dom did not get arrested – or even scolded. So, other than Dom making more noise than normal, we got back to James’s house safely.
Dom told me ahead of time that “English people” don’t use heaters like us Americans. They ask if I want a blanket before I go to sleep on the couch – I take one and everyone looks at me funny.
“Okay, well, you know where they are if you need more in the night…”
Dom and I at the American Embassy.
2 comments:
You're really gonna drag this out, aren't you?
Hey, if Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone came out in 1974 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix didn't come out until 2008 - I can build up the suspense!
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