AUTUMN ANTICS

Yass, it's Autumn here in London and don't all those piles of leaves look sensational as a big thumb-on-the-nose to the glass'n'steel-loving architects' broad concrete plazas and suddenly-cluttered clean lines. Get a bit'a nature in ya, Jones Lang LaSalle.

Ahem. Anyway, quick updates. This past week I:

(1) Went on a Jack The Ripper Walking Tour through Whitechapel (last Thursday night) to catch up with my uni friend Lucy. Good stuff, even if chatting about holidays and work comparisons didn't quite gel with disembowelment and entrails-over-the-shoulder talk sometimes. Was appropriately cold and dark, lots of gruesome photos from the actual crime scenes (the last victim was seriously Done Over - yeesh) and the guide was entertainingly self-deprecating. Even better - I didn't have to do the tour with the two hard-core, fully-sick-bro Melbourne wogboys still stinking from their first Contiki tour of Europe and talking like everyone gave a sh*t about their single-brain-cell opinions - they were waiting for the other tour. Bet that was fun for everyone else in their group. Mine was great, sans Aussie d*ckheads. Next time: The Vampire Walking tour.

(2) Sampled my first match of "footers", Crystal Palace - v - Barnsley, courtesy of cheap ticket through work (Crystal Palace is in Croydon Borough so they're our local team). Interesting. Got to go to a rough-as-guts local pub in the dingy part of town and have a pint with the full-on diehard Palace fans before the game - funny and disturbing at the same time.
They loved me when they found out I was an Aussie because one of Palace's midfielders is from Oz (and from that second on I was praying to the Ghost of George Best that the Aussie didn't score an own-goal).
On a night when the Chelsea dreadnaught was up 5-0 at halftime and Milwall's finest went the knuckle on the visiting Leeds fans (just to give their foreheads a rest, perhaps), Palace trounced the wallowing Yorkshiremen 3-zip. Still not a soccer fan, but it was fun to be there at the match to see everything that went on around the game.
Weirdest bit: Meeting one of the lads from the pub after the game, big 40+-year-old guy, who showed me his palms, both split down the middle and bleeding from all the clapping he was doing. No, that's not an exaggeration. Mr. Into-It had burst open his own palms. See what I mean about hoping the Aussie didn't own-goal?
Best bits: walking up the tunnel into the lower stands just as the teams walked on and the crowd burst into the team song as one. That, and watching the substitutes warm up with agility drills on the sidelines. Those lads are quicker than a Yank to a buffet. Mind-boggling footwork. Pics in the post below this one.

(3) Went for a stroll out my front door and up the road to the Tate Modern art gallery (yep, pics below as well). Great walk it is too, past Hays Galleria, HMAS Belfast, London Bridge ("Still Getting You There Since Hadrian!"), The Clink Museum, The Golden Hinde and easily the best percussion busker in the entire universe (embodied, in this instance, by a young skatepunk dude sitting under an archway playing a wicked array of plastic buckets, cans and a cymbal laid flat on the ground - I'm going back with my video camera next time, he was off-the-dial-good). Have already talked about the Tate in my previous post, so shan't waffle. 'Tis good. You should go. Or look at its website. And did I mention it's 10 minutes' walk from me? Ja. I bask in your envy.

BOOKED:

This weekend in Hertfordshire, staying in St Albans. Roman ruins, England's oldest pub (one of the contenders, anyway), country markets, no traffic. I feel relaxed just writing about it.

Next weekend in Dublin for Halloween. As you do. No idea what to expect. Pumpkin pints, perhaps.

Weekend after that I can't say yet as it's a surprise for a friend organised by their partner and they may read this, but it's goooooood.

Shall report more on those as I go. Piccies are possibly an option too. I'll leave you with the best bus ad campaign to hit London since I got there. No pics, just these words on the sides of double-deckers:

"There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Off you go, then.