not quite but almost

with no news (which is news)

I waited all day for some word from my friend.  The news that would herald the start of something.  The start of my letter of resignation.

The news didn't come.  It was a pretty standard day, made much better by the fact that the weather was lovely.  We had lunch in a pub called The Grand Junction.  I'd been rather stupid and left my wallet at home, but a friend very kindly offered to sub for me.

I rather liked the look of the bacon, eggs, sausages, and chips.  I was in a buoyant mood - still looking forward to hearing from my friend about the news - and decided it would perfectly fit the egg, sausage, bacon and chips shaped hole that had appeared in my stomach.  What arrived, was one sausage.  One rasher of rather sorry looking bacon. One egg. Plenty of rather lovely chips.  I decided not to let it dampen my mood.

I was rather distracted at work, I must be honest, but I think that was more to do with the fact that it was friday and I'd had two pints of waggledance beer (its a sort of sweet honey bitter, pleasantly surprising and surprisingly pleasant) so I managed to find many ways of getting on the nerves of my colleagues.  The prospect of changing one's life so radically is a remarkably calming thing - while I flitted round the office making people smile (I'm good at that), internally I felt rather calm and bemused.

I spoke with a friend of mine - and told him about the impending, er, decision.  Which wasn't actually impending - since I'd already made the decision.  It was someone else's decision.  Anyway once I'd told him about the, er, thing, well he seemed concerned.  It had occurred to me that I'd only really spoken about leaving work to one person - and that was the person I would be leaving to work with - and there wasn't much chance of a conversation without bias with him.  My friend suggested a pint of something beer-like and alcoholic.  I mentioned that I'd heard that "beer" was very much like that, and we settled on drinking some of it, after paying for it in a licensed bar or pub type establishment.

We arranged to meet up for a drink.  In other words.  But I prefer the way I described it.  So nyah.

I beetled home as quickly as I could - I'd mentioned to another friend that I would be in town that evening, and it would be splendid to meet up with him also.  As I got home, I decided I had time to at least make a little effort, and do something that I haven't really done properly before. 

Once I'd finished, my nails were a fantastic metallic purple colour.  Diana has the exact colour on the background of her blog.  It was a bit of a botch job, but I was happy enough with the results to inflict them on the general population.  I was going to take a photograph - as I promised Diana - but... I've taken it off now without thinking (since I'm writing this on Sunday.)  I'll do them again soon, then take a photo, and you can all look at them and go "eeeeerrrrrgggh - that's just wrong".

The Tattershall Castle is a boat.  Moored on the Thames, just the Westminster side of the Jubilee Bridge outside Embankment Tube Station, it is large, and has just been revamped.  I went for a drink on board several months ago with some friends from work - and it was lovely.  We even had a view of someone who had climbed up to the top of one of the supporting struts of the bridge, and was protesting something or other.  It got slightly hairy when his shoe fell off, and the weather got colder, but the indifference of the bar's (or bar-ges - he he he) clientele continued unabated.  They even rolled the river police out.  OR not rolled, floated.

I boarded the Tattershall Castle with my friend behind me, and almost immediately regretted my own choice of drinkery.  The place was packed.  There was SO much flesh on view from the fairer sex - not that I'm complaining, but you have to understand that I wasn't getting any of it, and that's going to make anyone slightly bitter.  My friend, however, was inoculated, having a lovely american girlfriend.  It was all I could do to prevent myself from pointing out, err, "points of interest" (I use the word "points" guardedly).

There was no chance for a beer.  My friend offered to fight through the throngs, but even he gave way when it became clear that beer came at the price of currency, dignity, and probably several teeth, and we're not talking milk teeth.  My friends a big chap now, and all his teeth are his own and there to stay.

Tails firmly stowed between legs, we disembarked and walked landwards, in hunt of food and drink.  Not being in a particularly wine-ey mood, since it was warm, we thought of walking up into Covent Garden.  We only got a further 25ft when we found two pubs of interest.  One seemed to have a street running directly through the middle of it, and the other was a Sherlock Holmes theme pub.

The theme pub was empty.  But of course.  No Londoner in their right mind would be seen dead in a Sherlock Holmes theme pub, particularly one that was so far removed from Baker Street.  Of course, when I say empty, I mean, there were a fair number of tourists in there.  My friend and I ordered some beers, and some food - and found a table.  A few minutes later, the table adjoining ours was populated by a couple of American gentlemen - ostensibly a father / son combination.  My friend has an amazing instinct for isolating a group of people, and then being spectacularly politically incorrect almost in front of their faces, without realising it.  It's quite a talent, I can tell you.  Anyway, at some point we arrived at the subject of moustaches, and jokes, and I told my moustache joke.  It goes something like this:

A man hearing some unsettling noises originating from his snowmobile engine pulls into a station. The mechanic takes a look at the snowmobile and says, “Looks like you’ve blown a seal”. The man says, “No that’s just frost on my moustache”.

My friend laughed, and then added "Of course, if they were americans they would have just taken out their guns and shot each other."  This was apropos of, well, of not very much at all.  One of the Americans sitting at the table next to us leaned over, and stated that we were OK, because "I don't have my gun with me".  Cue standard apologies from my friend, forehead slapping noises from me, and general murmur from the rest of the pub as my friend and I realised that we were possibly in the minority when it came to "Americans" and "Everyone Else" in terms of the population of the pub.  This was a Sherlock Holmes theme pub, remember.

After rather a small meal, 4 pints of beer and two bowls of rather nice chips, we wandered across the river to the South Bank by the London Eye.  Standing on the south shore of the river and looking up the Thames at Charing Cross station, and the Houses of Parliament, I was able to feel the warmth of a city entering the evening with a comfortable glow.  By now it was close to half past ten, and the Thames breeze carried upon it the combined sigh of relief from the 8 million population of London.  On evenings like that, with the moon low in the sky, and a fire-juggler performing to the tribal sound of bongos, with the lights atmospherically low, London is an amazingly beautiful city.  I become so very proud of it at moments like that.  Everything.  It all just works.

Until we walked past the London Eye and discovered that County Hall has been turned into a gambling and gaming zone replete with fast food restaurants.  It is well hidden from the outside - which is possibly its only saving grace.  We walked over Westminster Bridge, through swathes of tourists, and decided that the Houses of Parliament are not buildings you would wish to fall on from a great height.  If you've ever seen them - you'll know what I mean.  We came to several other conclusions as well, that Portcullis House is an abomination to the eye, and the only beautiful buildings that have been built in London in the past 50 years are Tube Stations on the Jubilee Line, such as Westminster and Canary Wharf (which, I might add, if you're thinking of visiting London, are actually worth making the trip to see.)

On the journey back to the North of London my friend was lamenting the fact that he wouldn't see his girlfriend until early September, and that three months was a long time to go without "companionship".  Ahem.  Try 26 years then.  At least his loneliness will come to an end at a given date.  Mine is an open sentence.

I was thinking about this on the tube on the way home.  If there is some greater intelligence, some omniscient super being, and our fates are controlled by a predetermined destiny, I can imagine and office-like environment with rows and rows of filing cabinets.  Each cabinet contains files, each file has records of every predetermined event which will happen to us: our first car; our grades at university; the first time we realise that not only can we not eat fire, even touching it is not a good plan; and of course, that anything sharper than an umbrella does not make a comfortable chair.  Sometimes I can almost visualise my record, and under the section "date of first girlfriend" it simply states "TBD".

This is not good for something that is supposedly predetermined.  Makes you wonder.

With grand plans for Saturday, we downed only a couple more beers upon returning to my gaff.  It had been a particularly long day - and I only vaguely recollected that after speaking with my other friend, to determine my course of action at work, I found out only this.  The decision had not been made, and I was none the wiser.

Certainly it looked like I wasn't going anywhere for a while.  That's the problem when you flip a coin.  You must be happy with the outcome, simply because you cannot change it.

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