Big Nige's London Adventure & Other Short Stories

So it’s been a bit quiet on here for the last seven days what with me being away and the others all having more interesting things to do, such as eating sausage rolls or taunting birds by sticking birdseed on the inside of windows*.

I’ll start with why I was away for a few days. Contrary to the popular rumours circulating in several Sussex pubs, I had not run off to join the British Equestrian team as Zara Phillips Masseuse.

The truth of the matter was that I had been sent to London. Firstly by my company to study in depth how to do this website thing, and secondly by the parish council who had thought my unkempt facial follicles might count against us if spotted by the best kept village judges.

And so I boarded a train and headed for our nations capital, Lambeth to be exact. In a hotel that boasted majestic views of Lambeth Palace and the Houses of Parliament I was spoiled with a view of – well it was a car park, 1960’s design, mostly concrete.

Now for anybody who has ever found themselves alone in a restaurant in a busy Hotel you will understand that feeling of being a bit of a tit. Firstly a book or a magazine is essential so you can bury your head in the pages and not see your fellow diners pointing and laughing. Secondly the staff are as desperate as possible to get you fed, watered and out the door as quickly as possible as the restaurant is busy and this lone diner is taking up the table that could be used by that family of four looking ever more impatient at the door.

And so most nights I decided that room service was a better way to go. The directions I was given to the venue of the course were also slightly worrying. Go down a small alley to a black door, know 3 times, ask for Steve then climb the stairs to the room above the bookies.

Thankfully it wasn’t being run by the mafia and I ploughed into a 3-day intensive course learning all about HTML code and various other things with over complicated names.

On Tuesday evening after my Room Service meal I headed across the river on the tube to find myself some entertainment. It hit me faster than I had anticipated as I left the stairs of the Underground Station to find myself in the middle of a fully blown Bollywood Dance number. There were 30 people all fully choreographed and in traditional Indian dress dancing around the base of Nelson’s Column . You simply don’t expect mass choreography on the streets of a major European capital, well unless Charlton Althetic win at home

And so I proceeded for 2 more days to get myself clever. The effects of this I hope will begin to show soon as I start to amend some of the things on this site that bug me. And then I am planning to make JB my first victim - I mean customer - when I tweak his SnappyRacers site into a lean mean web type thing. (I would have carried on the rhyming but would probably have had to pay George Foreman several million dollars)

I was going to go on further and discuss my weekend at the Goodwood Revival Meeting, Harlequins first game of the season, the Death of the Crocodile Hunter, and one of our number finding out that they ‘d been listed on a matchmaking website.

But I probably should be working for a living, so it’ll have to wait until next time.

* For legal reasons I have to say that No member of the Bryson team has ever been deliberately cruel to animals. Chi-Chi was once ejected from a popular theme park for kicking a man in a Mouse suit but maintains that it was entirely justified.