Autumn in London '06

Cinema, Sickness, and a Loquacious Trip to the Coast (if a trip is capable of being so)

Hey Everyone,

Well it's been quite a weekend! And quite a range of good and bad as well.

To begin with, Friday was meant to be a boring sort of day, filled with Kev's laundry and some lounging around before a trip to the cinema to see Saw III. It all began that way, but as the day went on, I started to feel more and more ill. We ended up going to see Saw III at the cinema at Surrey Quays, an area quite close to New Cross that is home to the closest thing to an American mall that I've yet to come across. It has a gigantic ASDA (the UK's branch of the lovely Wal-Mart Corp.) and several other shops and restaurants, many of them with American themes. Also included are a giant bowling alley and, of course, the cinema, which was massive! Along the walf from the tube station to the cinema, though, I really started to feel fluish, but decided that it would be alright once I sat down. Boy was that a mistake.

See, if the film that we were seeing was something like, say, Bambi, I may have been alright. But Saw III is essentially a 2 hour gore fest with no plot or continuity. Basically, it was just one disgusting human dismemberment after another. This theme, combined with my condition, made me feel physically ill about half-way through a scene in which a woman had to reach into a cup of flesh-eating acid to get the key to unlock the harness that was holding her in a contraption that, if she didn't release herself within one minute, would rip out her ribcage. I just had to leave, and I feel really bad for Kevin missing the film, but he left with me and all but carried me to my room. After taking some ibuprofen and a long, hot shower, I felt a bit better, so Kevin went out and got some take-away food and we hung out in the kitchen watching game 5 of the World Series. Apparently, one of the five channels I get plays American sports late at night. Nice.

After the trauma of Friday, Saturday was much more low-key. Kev and I just hung out for most of the day, then we went to Blockbuster and rented "The Matador" with Pierce Brosnan. It was okay, but not great.

Sunday, however, was much more exciting. Kevin, John and I planned a day trip to the seacoast town of Brighton, about 50 miles south of London. Brighton is home to some of England's nicer shoreline, and also about the gayest town in the UK. John had been there before, and was meant to be our guide, but he missed the bus there, so Kev and I just went by ourselves. We arrived a bit before noon and wandered to the nearest attraction to the coach station, the Brighton Peer. Basically, the BP was just a carnival tacked on to the end of a pier, with crappy food and annoying tourists abound. We left shortly after not being able to eat the chicken and chips we ordered due to fear of severe illness and walked about a comercial district in the towne centre for a while, which was nice. It's a quaint little town really, a lot like Gloucester, MA but busier. We then took a local bus to the Brighton Marina, a ritzy area like Marina Bay in Quincy but with more shopping. We wandered about there for a bit before returning to the centre of towne. Our bus back didn't leave until 9, and it was about 5 at this point, so we got some food, went to see a movie (A Good Year with Russel Crowe, veeeery good movie, you all should see it), walked along the beach a bit sipping coffee and admiring the beautiful sunset, and eventually found an American sports bar that was playing NFL games. We stayed there watching the Ravens destroy the Saints before getting back on the bus and going home. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't sick still, but it was a lot of fun anyway. The town was so nice and cozy I thought, and supposedly it's the most gay populous in the UK, though there were so many random tourists there that it was tough to tell for me.

Oh, and the highlight of the day, really, was the giant flock of seagulls that kept flying in circles around a giant rig of some sort just off the shore. Soooo random, literally, they just flew in circles above it, all in unison like birds do. Fun times!

posted by Zachary Nicholson @ 11:37 PM