Everybody's getting a three piece together...

Anyone willing to take a guess at how many blog entries about visiting London are named after a particular Clash song? Approximately 283,553 on the search I just did (I'm not kidding, type "London calling" into blogsearch.google.com and see what you get). So I'm avoiding that cliche by going after another one - I'm getting the band back together. Yep, a grand total of three days had passed since the break up of the band before there was a brief reunion tour of London. I went down to hang out with my old friends Claire, Lucy and Andy, and it just so happened Ruth was in town at the same time for a job interview. Brilliant, so here's a quick run down of the Teenage Rockin' Road Trip European Reunion Tour '07.



I went down to LDN (that's for you Lily Allen fans, youngsters) and met up with Ruth when she arrived from Nottingham. We wandered around for a while and were quite impressed that our hometown Sydney had not only stolen most of its names from London but also their character. For example, King's Cross in Sydney: kinda skanky. King's Cross in London: kinda skanky too. Ahh, it felt like a little piece of home. Anyhow, after we'd had our fix of crusty nostalgia, we went to the Tate Modern Gallery which had an exhibition on cities which I crudely photoed above (that's LA). We then headed back into town looking for alcohol so this is Ruth sprinting across the Millennium bridge toward St Paul's.


We hooked up with Claire who was ready to cash in on the beers you may remember I owed her (if you've read this blog before). It was brilliant to see Claire, who has been only been in blighty for a short time and was no doubt happy to see some familiar faces from home (well, really, I think she actually wanted the beers I owed her but we can pretend). So we hung out, drunk, ate, caught up with some of Claire's friends visiting from Oz and had a great time. Ruth and I ended up staying at a B'n'B in Golders Green which is famous as the resting place of Marc Bolan's and TS Eliot's ashes. I'd like to say I was excited about the TS Eliot thing but when I was supposed to read those poems in Uni, I skipped them because they were kind of boring. But Marc Bolan! Bang a gong! C'mon!


Anyhow, apart from seeing Claire, I also went to London to go to Andy and Lucy's Aussie BBQ engagement party. They didn't know Ruth and I were coming so it was nice to surprise them by crashing the party unannounced. It was a pretty dark and rainy day but as soon as Andy fired up the barbie, sunlight broke through the clouds and there was the sounds of angels singing and sausages sizzling. The BBQ was obviously divinely blessed and if you look closely, you can see Andy shutting his eyes and pretending he was cooking snags on his balcony back at Bronte.


A lot of Andy and Lucy's old mates from their England days showed up and there was a merry time had by all.


So sweet...


Congratulations Andy and Lucy on your engagement.

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What's next? Well, I'm heading to Paris on Saturday to see my beloved Queens of the Stone Age and some other band called Sonic Youth (whatever). After that I'm going to make my way down to Barcelona to catch up with an old friend. After that, I don't actually know what I'm doing so send me an email if you've got any suggestions (or where I should go in France)...

PS sorry if you've emailed me and I haven't replied to you recently. I've been totally and utterly snowed under with laziness...