Wednesday was St. Patty's. Being college students and proud Fighting Irish, we celebrated the day in style. Class was ... interesting to say the least. Everyone was clad in green, to the confusion of some of our English professors. After class we headed to Waxy O'Connors, an Irish pub next to O'Neill's in Chinatown for a drink. It was packed, and they didn't have any more free hats, so we left there looking for another pub. A guy on the street handed us a flyer coupon for a free pint at a list of pubs on Piccadilly, so we went to the first one we could find and got a free Guinness. There were more revelers than I thought there would be in the pubs. I guess American culture is starting to seep in over in England.We pub hopped to a trendy place called Verve for another drink, and Coleen, Alexis, Danny, and I went back for some dinner at an Italian place near the flats. We went to The Green and Exmouth Arms and called it an early night, seeing as it had been a long day of drinking.
Thursday I was told to go into Parliament late, since Simon was sick and Peter would be at a conference until two. I was supposed to go in at 11 and answer the mail and work on letters. I arrived at 11 to find the office empty ... and locked. Since I don't have a key, I was pretty much stranded. I texted Peter and went downstairs for some coffee. I periodically checked the office to see if my boss had returned from committee, and after about a half hour of wandering Portcullis I decided to take advantage of my free time. I went into the Palace and up into the public gallery to watch Parliament in action. It was Business Question time, and the opposition was grilling Harriet Harmon, Gordon's deputy, about EDMs and vulture funds and attacking Gordon for apologizing about his mistaken Iraq inquiry testimony (he claimed that defense spending in real terms had increased every year he was chancellor, which is not true). The house was half empty, and at times the opposition deputy leader looked like he was taking a nap. There were a lot of younger students and tourists in the gallery, and I felt smart knowing exactly what was going on in the debates below.
At noon I went back to Portcullis and found my boss alone in the office working on a campaign pamphlet. He let me in and I tackled the mail and answered a few phone calls. Alun reviewed the stuff I had worked on last Tuesday - correspondence with several of his colleagues about environmental and religious hate crime issues, and he made a few changes and gave me the ok to send them out. He went to lunch and I had the office to myself. I organized the mail and updated the invitations in the diary. I made a few phone calls Alun told me to make and got the office in order for when Peter would return. As I was about to leave for Church Music class, a picture on Simon's desk caught my eye. It was a picture of my boss repelling off of a tower, with someone's handwriting on a note posted on the frame: "Sure, Tony, I'll tackle the hunting bill!" I am glad my boss has a sense of humor about the controversy over his support of the Hunting Act of 2004, which changed some fox hunting laws to protect the foxes and dogs used in the sport. Peter arrived as I was leaving, and I updated him on the state of the office and hurried in to the London Center for my first new fine arts section.
Church music should be fun, as we get to go to Westminster Abbey for evensong and we are seeing Handel's Messiah this Wednesday. After class I went back to Parliament to give Coleen, Danny, and Alexis a tour of the palace. I bluffed my way through some of the tour, but the cool parts like the Norman Porch and the rooms adjacent to the Lords chamber were closed for the night. The guards let us go into the Lords chamber and the House of Commons, even though I technically wasn't allowed to take them since I am not an MP. The tour was adequate, and I worked out some chinks for when I give others tours. We went back for dinner in Coleen's room and called it an early night, as we were all exhausted from St. Patty's the day before.
On Friday I went for a nice run and stayed in most of the day to catch up on some work and my blog. Emily was in from Rome for the weekend on her spring break, so I cleaned up the flat, which was still a disaster area from Wednesday. I hung out in the flat for a long time waiting for Emily or TJ to get in touch with me. In the meantime, Peter and I had planned on going to Manchester on Sunday for the Man U v. Liverpool match. Peter bought tickets from a guy in Scotland for 90 pounds apiece over the internet, and we withdrew the cash and sent it to him via money order. Wait, we sent money in a money order for an internet purchase? Peter was checking through his emails and suddenly realized he had been completely scammed. Freaking out, we checked our bases and realized we had indeed been duped into sending money to Manchester without ever receiving tickets. We ran to the post office to cancel the money order, and, thank God, the post office guy gave us a stern "you guys are idiots" speech and refunded us the money. Whew. Peter took me out to dinner at a tapas bar in Exmouth Market because he felt bad for almost losing a lot of our money. Getting impatient later in the night, Coleen and I went to Exmouth, where Peter was tending bar for the night. The owner had told him he could have free beer if he cleaned up glasses and tended bar for the night. We went up and heckled his pours with the other locals, who seemed to enjoy his presence.
We went back past the flats to our other local, the City Pride, and I found Emily and TJ there for Karaoke night. We hung out for a bit and took a picture to make our friends back home jealous. I was still relieved I had saved almost 200 pounds in a scam, so I spent money like a drunken democrat this weekend. Ok, I didn't spend THAT much, but I bought a few more pints than usual. We went to bed fairly early again in anticipation of a busy day on Saturday. We woke up in the late morning and decided to go to Portobello Road market, a massive market in Notting Hill with antiques, jewelry, and clothes.
While it was much more of a female oriented market, I still had fun looking at old stuff, especially in one store with WWII memorabilia and some old hand stitched British flags for sale. I was very close to buying a Scottish royal standard, the yellow one with a red lion, for 25 pounds, but I conveniently took cash out of my wallet so that I couldn't buy anything. We met up with Emily for lunch at an Italian place that served pizza on gigantic meter long boards. It was right near the Travel Bookstore from the movie Notting Hill. I was much less excited about that than the girls were. We also passed George Orwell's old house on the way in, which made me happy. It was a fun day at the market, despite my boredom at some of the shops. I even got kicked out of one stand by a fat, slug-like gypsy looking woman who got mad at Kate for pretending like she wanted me to try on a crappy trinket earring. She told us to "go find another playground," and I thought she was joking until she said "did you hear me? Go find somewhere else to play around." Kate and Lizzie were going to buy something until she kicked us out. You make more flies with honey than with vinegar, sweetie. Last night we hung out in TJ's room and watched Kansas get whipped by Northern Iowa on our computers, which made me very happy. Emily left in a hurry, and we went back downstairs to watch Life of Brian. We were drunk and very tired, so we quit halfway through and went to bed.Today Coleen and I went to mass and then a bunch of us went to the Pride to watch the Man U match that Peter, TJ, and I were supposed to be at. Man U won 2-1, and I splurged on a pint and lunch, given that I had saved almost 100 pounds that afternoon by not going to the game. Tonight I will try to finish my SB journal as well as catch up on other work and plan for my family visit next weekend!
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