My day began with my alarm waking me up at 7:00 am. I promptly muttered "fuck this" and set it forward another hour.
At 8:00, I awake with a feeling of utter dread as I have overslept a whole hour and am going to be late.
Both my shower and the communal one at my place are stuffed, and no one is going to let me in their rooms at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning. Showering in the sink is tricky and cold, but makes for excellent self-depreciation.
The milk is off. I gather my wallet and sunglasses and spy someone's mobile telephone half concealed beneath a musty t-shirt. I bring that with me too.
I arrive at the station near enough nine. I am surprised to see another house mate there already. He has not showered this morning. He tells me he is going with the anime club to London today. I tell him I'm going to meet people from a website. I refrain from subsequent (and much needed) clarification and catch an earlier train to London Victoria.
I haven't used the trains by myself before, having a dire phobia somehow related to Exeter and the wrong platform. With an uncharacteristic burst of confidence that would somehow get me through the entire day, I actually get on board the correct train. Woo.
The train is airtight and the air is recycled. It feels like a low-flying aeroplane with very bad suspension. I elect to sleep through the next eighteen stops before my destination, as it becomes increasingly apparent that this train is "going round the houses."
As it approaches twenty-to-eleven, I begin to suspect that I may not be meeting the others at the pre-determined time of 10am. I call Max to forewarn him of this inconvenience and hear his voice for the first time. It is deep and peculiar and I wonder if the advice I had ignored concerning meeting people you know from the internet might actually have some merit after all. Fortunately a well-placed tunnel cuts us off before I say something to this effect.
Anxious not to appear rude and to save my meagre phone credit, I text Max to apologise and to deliver the message I had originally intended and miserably failed to deliver vocally. After composing a veritable snippet of prose that I then edited back down to a single page, I inadvertently delete the whole thing and have to start over. Not having texted with this phone before, it takes quite a while. By the time I send it off, I'm almost at the end of the line anyway.
Max texts back, informing me that the others have not yet turned up anyway, so I am not delaying anyone but him. This, I am fine with. He also provides a Raisin-says extract polluted by a foreign language that I later discover to be directions and place names within London town. This amuses me, but I am mostly interested in the cake he mentions that apparently has him cornered beneath the Great Gherkin. I look out the window and see said enormous pickle jutting out above the ridiculous London skyline. This is fortunate because it is immediately obstructed by the inside of a train station.
I get outside. It is a glorious day in London, the sun is shining, the pigeons are crapping and the people- the less said about the people the better. Still, the sun is out and it is an amazing day. My eyes hurt from the brightness and my skin prickles and burns. I put on my sunglasses (aww, sunglasses) and look for the Gherkin, my only connection to Max's location.
I noticed that city skylines are not exactly visible when you are inside them. I saw no such Gherkin, or indeed any London landmark. I muster the best that my bearings can give me, remembering my orientation skills from my cub-scout days, pick a direction at random and sprint.
Ten minutes later and I still can't see anything. I have been taught by my parents to call regularly when I am trying to find them to keep them clued up as to current events. I call Max to tell him that I'm still on my way. Not being an imbecile, he already knows this and awaits more useful information. I have none. He does not sound impressed. I feel rather stupid and useless, trail off and hang up. I elect not to call again until I have soething to say, put the phone in my jacket pocket and take my jacket off to cool down. It would later be revealed that, when carried this way at speed through the streets of London, one cannot hear my phone ringing.
An eternity later I still can see nothing. I decide to head for the river where I know I can see stuff. I would never get there. I do, however, pass by every important London tourist attraction there is to offer. Westminster Abbey, Downing Street, St. Paul's Catherdral, Nelson's Column, many of these I have not seen before. This would not change today, as they are reduced to a blur in my peripheral vision. I quickly become adept at evading tourists and ducking camera shots on the move.
During a short breather I approach a police officer for directions. He tells me that it is a long walk (at his pace- I stifle a laugh, with desperate panting) to "Liverpool Street Station." I curse the wretched ingrate who named these streets with deliberate intent to confuse me here and now today. The policeman also suggests taking the Underground, even telling me where the station is, the line to ride and how many stops to wait. This blast of clear thinking and obvious problem-solving is interpreted as a personal insult as I stand there, exhausted, late and lost. Spying what might be the Gherkin peering hopefully over the cathedral I speed off for another ten minutes.
Before me, at last, is the station Max has been waiting at. Patting myself on the back for a job well drawn-out, I retrieve my phone to deliver the good news. I discover a missed call and a text from the man himself informing me that he and Nate had left already. I call them to tell them I had arrived cast my phone away in disgust and lay down on the concrete in the shade of a wonderfully positioned pillar and wait for them to come get me.
That's where you come come in, guys. Part 2 comes later, in similar excruciating detail (unless I have any well-intended objections).
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