A Weekend in London

48 Hours with Sam

Sam lives in America now, as you know, well if you are an ever faithful you will. In four weeks time I will be there too and I cannot wait, California is calling again as is Nashville. As stated in other posts June and July were rammed with one event after another across five weekends and I was looking forward to a weekend of doing the best part of fuck all. Sam needed to update his Visa and he has to do that outside of the US, so he flies into London and my 'doing fuck all weekend' is now one of getting a train to London and seeing my brother. Perfect.

A little potted history, if you will allow, Sam and I love a beer, we are very good at settling into a bar and chatting shit for hours, mixing with the locals, we are both quite gregarious, and love people watching and simply letting the beers flow and then regretting it the next day. I suggested this time that we should maybe take time to 'smell the flowers', go to a museum, do some shopping, not simply sit in a bar for hours on end.

He agreed. OK, first night is going to be beer heavy, that's ok, it is a Friday and we have all day Saturday and the majority of Sunday for culture and the F1 of course. We hit it, it was awesome. We got KFC on the way home, because why the fuck not? Sam was still on USA time and didn't surface until around midday Saturday, ha ha, lightweight. OK, he's awake, showered and dressed, we are ready, lets do culture.

We went via Trafalgar Square, through Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus and the shops. I got annoyed by the hard sell of the guy in the Creed store and walked out. Sam did Reiss because that is his wardrobe by definition. I have too much 'middle aged spread' for that store. We headed to Covent Garden, walked past the plastic Manc's queuing at the Oasis store, went via SoHo, now that is a place, and I got my pants pulled down by a charity worker. OK not actually pulled down, it is London I know, but even that is a stretch, I simply gave a decent donation after his flattery.

He called me handsome and said I had big muscles, come on, that's the way to any mans heart (wallet). We ended up in the Punch and Judy. Well, eventually we did, we did first walk into the Moomin store and had to wait whilst a Moomin came down the stairs. No, not an actual Moomin, don't be silly they live in Moominvalley, not London, duh. Just a person in a costume, who looked nervous of the stairs and their big feet. Brilliantly, we were followed by a group of ladies who also thought they were heading for the bar and they looked equally as confused as us when they entered the store. And there we stayed, for the evening. I ordered KFC by Uber Eats when we got back to the hotel. 'shrugged shoulders emoji'. Sunday came, Sam eventually surfaced and we said that 'no beers today' lets go into town and do something, food and find a place to watch the F1. In March I went to Egypt and met Rachel and Mich, I messaged Rachel and said we were in town, lets catch up. We met her and her husband and went to the Punch and Judy. Ha More beer.

The F1 was delayed due to rain, so we found a bar that was showing the race, ordered food and watched it. Back to the hotel, grab my bag, hug my brother and get an Uber to the train for home.

48 mad hours, no culture, lots of beers, many laughs and time with Sam. Who needs museums...