Damien rocked up on Monday afternoon and man was it great to catch up with him again. It’s been about a month and a half since I’ve seen him since he’s been travelling all over the place.

We quickly made our way out into the city and went straight to the Tower of London. This place was so awesome I wanted to shoot myself in the face. With a crossbow. Don’t get me wrong, castles are pretty badass with their cache of swords, canons, crossbows and castle-y kind of things… But a line that takes about 50 mins to see some ridiculously expensive jewellery, plates and other assorted useless royal artefacts is not so badass.

I think one of the highlights was the Scaffold Site. How good is scaffolding?

That way to the scaffolding

So after £17 and a couple hours of my life I decided I’d make sure to get my moneys worth and make off with the Crown Jewels

The Crown Jewels taken outside of the Tower of London

After this Damien and I went on a self-guided tour of the city, along the Thames (and spotted Matt Bellamy from Muse), past the London Eye, over to Big Benjamin/Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and over to Buckingham Palace. Walking along in the park we stopped to check out the squirrels, they really liked Damien. Probably after nuts.

Because I somehow missed it last time I was in London, here’s a picture of Trafalgar Square:

We also met up with Ash, that was pretttttttty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. She’s now living in London, working as editor of the Australian Times… Drinks and dinner with her, and we’ll be catching up with her on her birthday this Sunday night at Rage Against The Machine.

…Tuesday…

Went up to Camden markets for a bit of a geeze, only to discover they don’t open till really late in the morning, so we took a quick look around the area, cuddled some horses, and then headed for the train station to go to Brighton.

Chuck

Brighton is a pretty rad little place. We made tracks for the beach, first time seeing a stoney/pebbly beach. Didn’t stop us from catching some rays. It was such a beautiful day for it. Goddamn overcast and rainy.

Having fun in the sun

Went for a stroll up to Brighton Pier, full of amusements. It was kinda bizarre, rides aside it appeared to be encouraging kids to gamble… so of course we bet on the horses. I won about 40p… I may have made a loss or five before that though.

Also I saw Oasis while there. Pretty cool.

Walking further along the beach we came across Crazy Golf.  £2.50 for 18 holes, that’s a bargain in my book, and of course that meant we had to go get our putt-putt on. Don’t let the ‘Crazy’ in the games name fool you, this game was serious business:

Testing wind direction

Following through on the swing

Considering the angle

It was so serious I think we lost track of score. Pretty sure I won.

Get back to the hostel to get ready for the night’s Alkaline Trio / Set Your Goals / Attack! Attack! Show and maybe have a few pre-bevvies, check the intrawebs for a few minutes and discover GALLOWS ARE PLAYING A LAST MINUTE SURPRISE SET! Pretty much lost it right then and there. The best part was Damien and I bought tix to the show a couple months back just for something to do and only knew Alkaline Trio were playing… but two of our favourite bands ended up playing the bill. Best value tickets ever.

Got to the venue, partied with Damien and Tim and had a tip top night.

Set Your Goals

Gallows

Gallows

Alkaline Trio

Currently in the air somewhere over France on my way to meet up with the lovely people I like to call Mum and Dad. Pretty excited to hang out for a few chill days in Trieste with them.