Each day was jam packed with events and places to visit and take photos of, most of which will pretty much give you an idea of what we done for the 5 nights in Paris. So lets begin with the evening where I arrive in Paris after work and the next day where we visit the Louvre and Eiffel Tower.

Its weird sleeping in London and waking up in Paris
Getting there was pretty easy, I left work very early to ensure I wasn’t going to miss the Eurostar, I was told that I needed to be 30 minutes early to ensure I was checked in and everything. The train was at 6pm but I arrived at 4.45pm, slightly early but just in time for some last minute money exchange (thought I needed some emergency funds and didn’t want to go near any cashpoint machines). Once that was done it was straight to St Pancras to be checked in and frisked by security for metallic objects (not really, not going to be a dumbass and make those machines bleep).

I remember travelling on St Pancras, oh how things have changed now, everything is more done up and the station is now sporting a glassy exterior look. When boarding on the train I was able to use one of those ultra slow flat escalators (which always reminds me of the gun scene in die hard 2) that took forever to reach its destination (and you couldn’t walk yourself because there’s ALWAYS someone who blocks the “walking” path so you have no means but to whistle behind them so that they get the point and move out of the way, in this case I just told them to move it hehe). Anyway, once that’s all done I was in the Eurostar, painfully accompanying some guy who had a Mac Book Pro with him, playing Crysis on dual booted windows (grr), I went online for a bit and then fell asleep. Its weird sleeping in London and waking up in Paris.

Gare de Nord and meeting Alice

Upon waking up in Paris, I immediately notice a few things; there are double decker trains, impressive (for people who haven’t seen double decker trains)! Alice was waiting at the platform and it was just amazing to see her again :). We went back to the hotel and along the way, I got some sushi to takeaway since I was hungry, Alice had already eaten but she did have a cheeky taste on some. Our hotel was tiny in a cute way, the reviews really put me off at first saying how small and tiny it is but it was grand! Granted the hotel I stayed in at New York was amazing (3 star hotel too, but with a 32 inch LCD and a marble bathroom, as well as a safe, iron and other bits and bobs) but nonetheless my expectations of a hotel room was one that had a bed since I can sleep on a flight of stairs if needs be (haha!). So yeah, it was a tiring evening and there were lots to do tomorrow so we called it a night. BAM!

Morning’s here! The morning’s here! Sunshine is here!

Woke up nice and early (well we had to). Alice ordered breakfast in the canteen for the time we were staying in the hotel so we didn’t need to find a place to eat. Personally I would have opted to eat outside but it was nice being able to just wake up and head down for breakfast. The lift was epically TINY! It could only fit 3 people and it was one of those retro lifts where you had to open a door to get into the lift. The breakfast at the hotel was simple, just cornflakes, coffee, one croissant, one breadroll, eggs and other bits of continental stuff. It wasn’t really a buffet since we were given croissants when we sat down so we couldn’t get seconds, but nonetheless it was alright. Alice wasn’t too fond of croissants (neither was I to be honest (there’s a whole story behind it all)) but we ate them anyway, Alice wanted some strawberry jam on it and the ones in the basket were yuck. I rather enjoyed the croissant strangely, perhaps having NICE French croissants instead of the soft and prepacked croissants you get in Sainsburys was why? Anyway, that’s all from breakfast, time to head to the Louvre.

Hotel des Invalides

We found these trees and decided to take photos around it.

The louvre / lourve

This and the Eiffel tower were the two places we HAD to go during the trip, not attending is like going to Jerusalem and not visiting the Sexateria. We decided to head to the Louvre first since there’s usually a queue to enter and we wanted to appreciate the art before having it diluted and raped by tourists (a certain painting comes to mind). The louvre was renown for hosting several famous pieces of art in the world (a certain painting comes to mind) so it was only right to check them out, before that, random browsing at sculptures.

We got creative with the sculptures and decided to play a game of mimicking them, luckily noone was about in the sculptures section which meant we were able to execute the poses without much embarrassment (plus I don’t think visitors would appreciate me running away like a girl after being caught). We used whatever we had as props and did some rather funny shots and poses.

The visit was immense, as well as seeing that certain painting that comes to mind and the Venus de milo, we were pretty much “enriched” by the art. It was quite a lot to take in but nonetheless interesting as ever, the building itself was amazing, we went outside to take photos of it and did a few shots of us by it too (tourist shots for the win). We (when I say we, I meant just Alice) got attacked by tourists asking us (again alice) to take photos of them, I avoided confrontation with people and just went about and did my business. After that, it was straight to the Eiffel Tower for some painful stair climbing and touristing.

Want an Eiffel Tower keyring *ching ching*

What’s the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of the city “Paris”? Eiffel Tower? So where do you think 100% of all tourists go when they visit Paris? That’s right, the damn Tower, now before you question my statement of 100% tourists going to the Tower and tell me stories of people who went to Paris and didn’t see the Tower, well they’re not tourists so my fact is still correct. Anyway, the point was, this place is the tourist wallet magnet (not a magnet for your wallet :P), everyone’s trying to make a business out of the area. One type in particular are those who sell Eiffel Tower keyrings. They reminded me of the folks who hand people the London Lite or The London Paper in that sometimes you just want to beat the crap out of them with whatever they’re selling (in this case, their Eiffel Tower merchandise). The feeling of beating them up with their own merchandise rose when they approached you and shook their damn ring of Eiffel Towers (the keyrings were all attached to a giant metal ring so you could carry them in one hand, and shake them to get people’s attention / make them hit you). The whole system made me sick, I’m surprised a few people actually bought them, though I was more annoyed in how they could just shake their ring as a sign of salesmanship (or the international language of “buy my damn Eiffel Tower, I speak your language therefore you are like a brother to me and I’d only offer my brother an offer that juicy that you cannot refuse”. So yeah, I obviously steered clear of these people (in case I gave one the old one-two) and just focused on taking the odd photo of the Tower.

Man it was hard taking photos of the place, my kit lens couldn’t handle it so I had to make compromises in how I composed the shots. They turned out pretty well I must say, me and Alice then queued up to climb the Eiffel Tower. There was a lift service but we felt that was cheating (plus it was for losers) and made sure we climbed every step of the tower (well I occasionally skipped a step so don’t read into the line too much). The queue was pretty long but eventually we made it, you would think the queue would be pretty quick but these cashiers had to service loads of tourists who don’t necessarily speak French (or English in some cases). Luckily Alice was my translator for the entire trip. She was pretty amazing at it and didn’t have trouble in talking to the natives.

The painful painful climb through the tower

Boy those stairs were painful, and to climb them with tight jeans was just suicide. Once arriving to the first level, we stopped for a quick break and croissant. The prices were high but not as crazy as I expected (though 3 euros for a cup of coke was a bit too much). After finishing off the croissant with loads of crumbs in the floor, we went and took some photos of the place and continued our journey to level 2. We were now more prepared on the stair climb. I wasn’t that put off by it since I swear the stairs in covent garden were more painful to climb. Once at the second level we took some more photos and continued to the top of the towerrgh.

Queuing was pretty painful, once at the top the view was pretty epic, it was nice and sunny so it was perfect to view and take photos of. We weren’t at the top for long, we then began our descend back to ground level. Along the way we were able to pay a visit to the gift shop. I bought Alice a small Eiffel Tower since she sent me one ages ago and I had promised to give her one back. It was nice to make those promises and eventually do them. There was a wee problem though, the new Eiffel Towers had the word “Paris” printed on it. It was so ugly, I mean, do you really need the word “Paris” to show that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris? Maybe the level of sophisticated tourists *shuffles lapel* is on a decline. I eventually looked a few other gift shots and got Alice an Eiffel Tower with the word Paris more subtly written on the tower. Once back down on the tower, we took a few shots of us behind the tower.

Start stirring that egg

After Eiffel tower we started to get painfully lost in the metro system, the damn double decker buses kept stopping out of nowhere leaving us confused to where we were suppose to go. We eventually asked a member of staff for directions and found our way back to the hotel. We then went hunting for pizza, Alice had a strong craving for it so we walked around our hotel neighbourhood to find one. We eventually found a cute little Pizza place and decided to dine there. Alice ordered her Pizza whilst I got a nice spagnola with carbonara sauce. It came with a cracked egg which I had to pour and stir away before eating (which was fun) and yeah, the meal was nice. We were a bit peckish still afterwards so we went to a supermarket and got some croissants to eat at the hotel room. Alice also bought some jam since the jam this morning was horrific and we were intending on bringing it to the table for breakfast too. I think that was it for tonight, our feet were knackered from all the walking in the museum (4 hours worth) and more walking up the Eiffel tower (my legs were shaking after climbing down the tower (as Alice noted)).

So yeah, next day involves a shopping trip and visiting the Arc de Triomph.

I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.

We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.

The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so

We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good We then called it a night and that was that day.

The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.

Arriving at Stu’s place

Canterbury was fun. I was heading there for Stu’s housewarming party. I had only received a lovely package from Alice containing Harry Potter books that I was keen on start reading. For the hosuewarming party I pretty much brought the bare essentials. I knew we were going to the seaside but I decided against in bringing anything swim worthy like. Simply not my kind of thing haha. After a painful journey down to Canterbury (tube messed up which meant I had to take a different route and barely manage to get to the National Express coach).

I was to arrive on Friday night, though Inn Kazzie Christy and Stu were already there I was forced to go on Friday due to the fact that I have begun signing on haha (deary me). I was actually glad I didn’t go on Thursday since it sounded like a pretty hectic girly night in. Inn was petrified by the stuff people were doing (mainly involving watching high school musical and singing to some girly pop songs). Stu’s house was pretty decent for a student (sorry had to) house. I saw some really ungodly looking chocolate cake that looked like a brown frisbee as well as Kazzie’s silly spyro the dragon plush doll. We were waiting for Blee and Sarah to arrive before we got the party started.

4 Whole chickens

We wanted to buy some food to cook and consume so once they arrived (which they did) we immediately went shopping at the local 24 hour ASDA. As well as buying food for that night we also purchased some lovely BBQ food for the next day. At ASDA we manage to get some pretty awesome precooked BBQ chicken in the ready to eat section. Now here’s the best bit, they were only 70p! (odd) . You’ve got to love reduced items. We decided to buy 4 which would definitely be enough to feed a group of 6 meat eaters (Blee = Veggie).

Once back at stu’s place we unpacked and prepared the food for consuming. We didn’t really have much to serve the chicken with but we made do with beans and some chips. We made this meal pretty formal which meant everyone was wearing ties for the occasion. I ensured that the evening remained formal by applying some table formalities I learnt from Alice’s place hehe. As well as saying grace for the occasion, having a toast with our glasses, we also engaged in some typical table banter which involved me asking everyone how their day was.

The rest of the evening was spent playing the game “I never” as well as playing some hardcore video games. A lot of singster was involved tonight as well as a tedious game of Buzz to test our music trivial knowledge. I didn’t do too well I must say :(. The evening was spent playing a lot of Tetris DS as well as bantering whilst other people went to sleep. Tomorrow we were going to go to the seaside and have a BBQ, yum hehe.

Seaside and BBQ

I’m not particularly keen on seasides, they’re a bit boring for my liking You either get baked or get f**ked. I spent most of the time under the parasol. Not much to do, though it did seem like Kazzie was doing quite a lot of stuff that day including digging a big hole, buying a blow up raft and getting lost at sea (and then saved), getting buried inside her hole she dug up and almost suffocating inside it and other random bits and bobs. I pretty much sat around eating Kettle chips and chicken sandwiches prepared with shredded chicken we had last night. Seasside was however a cool place for taking photos, quite a lot of fun things you could do with sand and all.

After some crazy seaside action we decided to head off back to Stu’s place for some food since everyone was hungry. We were making sure we left early enough to avoid traffic as well as come back with enough time to actually get some BBQ action going.

The BBQ was pretty awesome, it was student BBQ so quite a lot of econo food was used, though I managed to get some hot and spicy wings involved (marinated in nando’s sauce typically). The burgers were probably the best in the bbq, especially with Nando’s BBQ sauce (yum yum). Sausages once again spat like crazy which meant we were to leave them last. It was pretty horrific to say the least, but eventually they were cooked and eaten. The bbq was alright but definitely not the best I’m afraid. We had loads of other food ready for tomorrow and we were keen on making it a proper full english breakfast. Since we bought a BBQ for stu we were able to BBQ the breakfast too.

The rest of the evening was spent playing the wii, a lot of Big Brain Academy was involved, we were split into teams and did brain quizes and sprints (seeing who answered all 24 questions first). The game was pretty intense and usually my team won hehe. The rest of the evening was spent playing an eye bleeding game of Mario Striker. I had recently bought that (so recent that it arrived yesterday). This game became pretty addictive for it’s mole killing features. The evening was pretty ace and eventually things settled down and it was back to some more sleeping.

BBQ Breakfast and Goodbyes

The morning after was a pretty awesome one. I was up nice and early followed by Blee (though I believe she might have woke up earlier than me (who knows)). We immediately got the BBQ going and started cooking the food up since people were generally lazy anyway. Blee did a pretty awesome job in cooking her food in the BBQ as well as helping me out to cook our food for the BBQ, I did all bits and bobs and slowly people began to wake up and helped out with the breakfast making. I took a sly route in terms of cooking so many sausages by simply precooking most of the stuff in the oven and then giving them a nice BBQ glaze. This was actually the slyer way to BBQ food, especially when theres quite a lot of food involved and not much cooking life in the charcoal.

Eventually the food was all ready and breakfast was served. It included loads of lovely bacon, sausages, hash browns, fried egg (me and inn got one since we prefer that to scrambled), scrambled egg, toast, beans, chicken wings (we had loads spare!) and some celebration juice (though that’s mainly for me and inn). The BBQ breakfast was quite a success and we had a lovely toast and all.

After breakfast we had a go at Mario Striker again (for quite a long time) and pretty much called it a day after that. We slowly began packing up stuff and all left Stu’s, Inn drove me and Kazzie back to Kazzie’s place where I got yet another lift to Watford Station via Kazzie’s mum and went back home. It was a pretty awesome house warming party, though parties involving the wii and BBQ’s are generally awesome (unless you have shit wii games and make shit BBQs).

More takeshi’s castle and crystal maze

Yup, when everyone wakes up at around the same time as everyone else, you just have to watch takeshi’s castle and the crystal maze . We did the same thing in terms of heckling the TV screen with lines such as “You could of had EVERYTHING!” and “AUTOMATIC LOCK IN”. I explained to Alice about the whole high death counts in both places and how they never really aired that stuff. It’s almost become a mandatory thing you do when you wake up at Kazzie’s house.

It’sa wii, warioo! HA HA HA

We also played some wii, we did the lifeline game where everyone would complete a level and at the end you had to cut strings up and kill off characters, I don’t think I won at this game, ah well. We then started playing wii sports, now THAT was funny! I was a god at wii boxing, I proved that point when I defeated Adam a while back in just one round with him doing very little damage on me, after that I have been playing that more and more and have got to pro status on it. This means bad news for everyone else who was facing me. People were literally taking turns and getting knocked off immediately each time they played me. I usually killed them off on the first round and everything but it gets pretty vicious, Popey and Inn were the main contenders but I managed to destroy them in one round nonetheless hehe, Inn did get very jabby but I kept dodging them and unleashing some godly combo’s straight back at her, ah good times.

Then we started playing games where anyone can win! Wii baseball, me and Popey went head to head on baseball, I’m not too good with the swinging so eventually I lost to Popey. He was well chuffed about it, I think I stopped playing afterwards since I was hogging the console too much and I had to get ready to go and all (not because I lost haha). I think Blee played with her friend Sarah a bit on the wii and afterwards we were once again ready to leave. Quick huh? Internet was mashed up in Kazzie’s place all weekend and she was dying without it, she was on the phone all morning trying to book an engineer to fix the problem. It was funny how mad Kazzie got whenever she was directed to a call centre in Bangalore.

Ste is a bad man, a very baaaaad man

I think Inn and Kiernan sort of drove off in advance while the rest of us were split into two cars, Kazzie took in me and alice whilst Ste took Popey Blee and Sarah. Inn had left Ste the maps to the hotel so it was ste who was leading the way whilst Kazzie tailed behind him. Ste and Popey were slightly cocky about how last night they managed to get to Kazzie’s house based on man instincts rather than maps and stuff, so I think they were doing the same thing a bit this time they drove around.

Occasionally Kazzie would swear at cars who went between Ste and her car. Me and Alice were just sitting there calm as hindu cows. However, during one point, we see Ste take a sharp sharp turn left, which Kazzie couldn’t do since it was far too abrupt and basically ste just drove off! haha. Kazzie was not pleased. Ste was supposed to be leading Kazzie, not driving off without us. Later on, I asked Popey why Ste didn’t stop and wait for us, it really sounded like Ste didn’t do it purely because he was in a “moment”, a rush and all in his head that made him go “YEAAAAARGH I’m driving fast! RARRRGH” or something. Back in our end, Kazzie was absolutely pissed off of what Ste had just done, we tried phoning them up and they gave us rather crude directions of how to get back to the hotel. We would have probably been fine if we had some directions and all but nooo, Ste had that so we were on our own haha.

Eventually Kazzie was lost, lost lost. The kind of lost when I was stuck at Wembley Stadium, only with less people, with cars involved, and we’re not in a stadium (so technically its not really like me lost, but its nice how we use comparisons to determine that it wasn’t really like that haha). Sooner or later I whipped my phone out and used the TomTom software to sort of find maps and routes to help the journey. Kazzie was rather impatient about it all so it made me give her random directions when she said “left or right?” haha. Eventually I got her to stop at some road so I could of used the advanced planning to sort out a route back to the hotel. We had phoned up Popey and managed to establish that we needed to get to Pinner Road in Harrow on the Hill to find them all. Eventually me and Alice tried to use the TomTom as a map to navigate Kazzie to Pinner Road, I wasn’t too good with map reading but Alice did a pretty awesome job. We eventually got to Pinner road but saw no sign of everyone, then we just continued to drive on finding the hotel but eventually got lost AGAIN. We were stuck at Pinner Station (quite a way back from Pinner Road!). We initially thought we’d wait for them to pick us up but they had no idea where Pinner Station was, so back we went to Pinner Road (which was slightly more confusing to find our way back to and all). Everytime I would have a weird sense of dejavu when we went passed the roads and all, it was freaky. We eventually found a place to stop at Pinner Road and just parked there waiting for them to search for us, Pinner Road was a looong road and later we discover that there were two Pinner Roads which was why they couldn’t find us!

I got out of the car to see if I could spot Ste and co who were out hunting for us and eventually I hear Inn screaming my name from a far far distance haha. I quickly get on their car and we immediately drive our way back to the Hotel del Harrow, I told Ste that Kazzie was going to kill him for driving off without us and he was well aware of it and was willing to take the beating (bless him). Once we got back to the hotel Kazzie got out of the car immediately and started to jump on him! He deserved it haha.

Upon approaching everyone Kev and everyone started giving me a big round of applause. Kev even took the liberty to shake my hand as well. Kazzie actually thought the applause was for her haha bless, but nooo, it was for me *glares at kev*. No idea what he said to everyone else, grrr. I think we immediately took off, we said our goodbyes to Blee and Sarah since they were only there for the Saturday night.
We were apparently disturbingly late for Nando’s, Max had already got the seats and all and were waiting for us to arrive, it was mainly due to Ste getting Kazzie lost and all. Here we managed to meet up with kev, Gem, Leon, Stephie, Paul and Kiernan so add them all to the list of people who were ready to travel back to Wembley Park to get our greasy chicken. Inn was somewhere else eating stuff on her own because she wanted some time by herself (chances are she was avoiding big events so she didn’t have to blog about it later on!). I think at some point Ste leaves us too to meet up with Aneta.

Eassy journey to Nando’s

Heading to Nando’s was breezy, we just took the tube and arrived at Wembley Park Station (second time again *shudders*) I was initially going to go Wembley Central but that was slightly longer so we decided to walk to Nando’s once we get to Wembley Park station. Paul seemed to have lost his Oyster card so he had to buy a new one and all (think he just got a paper travel card and all) Alice had to buy herself a travelcard too since she didn’t have an Oyster. Most of the cool kids had Oyster and were all topped up ready to go. Upon arriving at Wembley Park station I sort of led the way to Nando’s, it was pretty funny because I usually found my way to nando’s via Wembley Central but now I was a bit lost, Popey knew the way a bit so we eventually got there without getting lost

Piri piri chicken?

We walked passed another chicken restaurant that was situated right next to Nando’s and sold “piri piri chicken” even the logo looks very similar to Nando’s haha. We walked in and said that we were with Max and all but we discovered that they had to reduce their seating since they were there so long haha. Picture the episode of friends where Pheobe is having her birthday with her friends but people were late so they were forced to sit in a smaller table. Yup, people do that when you start hogging so many seats and not use them for several hours. Though the guys were pretty friendly and all and were keen on ensuring that we would get some seats as soon as possible. I reserved the table under “bob” but the guy misheard me and said “Paul?” so I said yeah why not, we had a paul haha.

We sat outside for a bit and talked for a while, eventually a table was ready and we were ready to queue up and order our food, the table wasn’t next to Max’s table but we were able to shout out stuff if we wanted to. Gem was keen on using her Nando’s reward card to get her free chicken. I managed to get Kiernan to use my reward card to order so we can have multiple goes on the card (kinda didn’t bother at the end hehe). I ordered some extra hot chicken wings this time since I wussed out with hot last time. I didn’t bother with anything else since Alice was buying chips with her chicken pita so I could of shared with her and Gem had a whole chicken which I was actually going to eat most of (I initially was going to share it with Popey and Max but later on Popey was full so only Max had some of it). So yeah, for lunch (its too early for tea) I had 3/4 of an extra hot chicken, 5 wings and some peri peri chips. It was a lovely meal, though it took ages to finish off haha.

I got a phonecall from Inn asking for directions to get to Nando’s, I gave her some rough directions and she was fine with that and vowed to find the place on her own with minimal guidance, and she did just that. Quite a lot of food ordering and consuming during the whole time and a lot of banter was made, shame we weren’t sat next to the other table otherwise it would have been fun. We however saw Leon trying to smuggle Sprite from a glass into a bottle via the use of a straw and some good old fashioned plumbing techniques hehe. Alice ate quickly (well not quickly, I just ate slowly) so she was able to borrow my camera and take photos of me eating as well as other people.

At some random point Inn suddenly arrives at Nando’s and catches up with everyone, she sat on both tables talking to Kiernan and other people, then she gets called by Ste asking how to get to Nando’s so she sort of volunteered to meet them and take them up to Nando’s. I can’t remember most of the conversations to be honest but I do remember still eating at this point (not an easy task eating so much chicken). This is why I ordered chicken wings prior to having full platters and whole chickens whenever I’m at Nando’s, with wings you know which bits to eat and how to eat it quickly. With a whole chicken you have to really mash the chicken up to get some meat out of it. Ste and Aneta arrive on the scene and sit on the newly attached table on the right which we asked some staff to join and all. Ste sort of quickly introduced Aneta to everyone one by one, I managed to do my usual hand shake thingy which was fun, afterwards they sort of sat on the far end and talked to each other.

I think most of the musers were about now, we were only missing one more person… kev. I think this is where Kiernan, Stephie and Inn sort of stand outside waiting for kev, I quickly got Alice to take a photo of them 3 waiting outside for kev, it was almost like groupies or fans waiting outside of the back of a venue for their favourite musician so they could say hello and scream into their ear about how much they love them. Kev took his time bless him but eventually made it to Nando’s, I don’t think he went inside to eat, he had a box of something and a drink in his hand so he seemed fine with the food (Nando’s without kev? Yeah I noticed, he didnt have any the entire weekend whereas Alice had two (and that was the only thing she ate bless her!)). I think after a long banter inside and outside of Nando’s we decided to head off to Wembley Stadium….finally haha.

Back to Wembley Stadium!

Today was special, all the mods and admins were guestlisted for this night which meant we would split up with Kiernan, Inn and Kazzie since we were assuming we’ll be getting seating tickets and all. Kazzie was a little upset since she was promised a guestlist spot from Leon (since Leon felt like standing for Sunday) but eventually found out that Leon wanted to sit down again (because he had a job interview in Wimbledon). Kazzie was also sad that tonight Adam wasn’t going to be at Wembley Stadium with her, actually she was sad throughout the day to be fair and quite a lot of people came to cheer her up from it. So yeah, it got to a point where the standing people went to see what’s left of the gig (My Chemical Romance) whilst we went to the guestlist area and got our guestlist stuff sorted. Kazzie handed me her bag and asked if we could look after it for her (as well as her camera) since she was going to be standing and all. We were worried about the camera so we decided to smuggle it inside Popey’s sleeping bag, as for her camcorder and stuff, we just left it there (bit weird eh?). I handed the bag to kev because I was carrying a bag of my own too (plus it was a ladybag and it suited kev more haha). During our walk kev did a lot of Stephie arse pinching being the charming man that he was (he wore a Blazer for today’s event (that he got from a charity shop) just to be fancy hehe).

Once we were at the guestlist area we had to wait around a bit since Gem needed to wait for Cara since she was her plus 1 guest. Everyone was fine to wait to be honest (well apart from Kev and Stephie who really wanted to see My Chemical Romance hehe ;)) so instead of heading in we decided to wait around with Gem. Gem was really mad at Cara since the entire weekend Cara has been leaving Gem to see other people. We suggested to Gem that we could leave Cara’s name in the guestlist and have her tell her name to the guestlist people for her pass but Gem insisted that we’d wait for her since last time she did exactly that and Cara wasn’t able to get in (no idea what gig it was). So we decided to sit around and just wait for Cara, we weren’t in a hurry anyway. Kev quickly went to the guestlist people to check if we were on the guestlist and all and it turns out we were (thats the biggest fear of going into gigs with only a name, otherwise it’s pretty awesome going into a gig with just a name, if that makes sense).

Eventually Cara arrived on the scene and apologised for being late, we immediately queued up in the guest area and lo and behold, we see Tom Kirk’s brother and Morgan hanging around here talking to each other. I instantly told Popey that Morgan was about and immediately he was star strucked, never before have I seen Popey’s eye’s stretch so wide, he was Morgan’s biggest fan, and was always mad that he never gets the attention he deserves and wanted to meet him in person and tell him he was his number one fan. I’m not too sure whether Popey was joking about this or not but I played along with it! It was funny, Popey could have just walked up to in and started a conversation to the man he wanted to meet the most but he didn’t, he was too busy with his mouth open just staring at him! Bless. (This is where I constantly mocked Popey afterwards with lines such as “YOU COULD OF HAD IT ALL!”) I managed to approach Tom’s brother once again and have a lovely chat with him and all, we talked about the gig yesterday as well as speculations as to whether or not they’ll be doing anything different for Sunday, he assumed that it will all be the same since not all people are going on both dates and that the first night was a bit too spectacular for them to just do something completely different, I agreed with him and suddenly out of nowhere I saw the entire Kirk family next to me (apart from Tom). They recognised me doing my speech at Trafalgar Square and said hello to me hehe. It was cute since I didn’t recognise them at first.

What the? Standing tickets?

Once that was done we were in ready to unleash our names and get our tickets etc. We were entering the “Club Wembley” entrance where everyone was dressed up nice and fancy. Even the bag searches were slightly more fancy than the normal entrances (since we were asked to sit our bags on the table whilst they did their search). It was pretty fun how they didn’t find two DSLR camera’s in both me and Popey. Tut tut. They didn’t really search for Popey’s sleeping bag so technically he could of smuggled a gun in that! Having said that he did have quite a lot of bags with him (since he was going to leave straight after the gig). Once in the reception area we had to give our names again so the receptionist would find and hand us our tickets. Immediately you could feel the wristband so we already knew that it had a special pass of somesort. However the surprise is that we discovered our tickets were…standing. It was strange because we were the only ones to have special Hospitality Suite passes but with standing tickets. We were slightly confused, we didn’t know what to do so we asked someone and was later escorted to the hospitality suite where they served free soft drinks. The problem now was to be able to get passed the security guards who were checking for tickets to make sure people had the right tickets and not just a VIP pass.

Kev approached them and explained the situation and they told them that we could simply stay in the suite but had to go back to standing since we didn’t have seating tickets and seats were reserved. We were a bit annoyed at this since it meant we couldn’t really enjoy the VIP area haha, so we tried the other exit to try our luck and hope they just let us in. Whilst kev was explaining the situation again to the guard I was able to just walk passed the guard and actually get to the seating area. Though being only me I decided to step back again haha (I just find it funny when one person distracts the guard, the entrance is practically an open invitation for anyone to just walk in haha). I even spoke to the other security guard about whether or not there were spare seats last night which she replied yes. We were then directed to some lady who explained the situation to us that we could not have seats purely because we had standing tickets, she said she’d gladly escort us to get standing passes (since we got through the area where you exchange your tickets for passes) and direct us to the standing area blocks, but we could stay around the VIP area for a bit if we wanted to. We decided to quickly stock up on a glass of soft drinks before we went back to standing. There wasn’t really much for us to do to be honest.

During the walk, Leon kept talking to lady, it felt like he was going to get her phone number just like he did for every female muser this weekend! (it was funny watching his list of female numbers build up). We were slightly disappointed that we didn’t get seating since we were all tired and all but we were also glad in a way since we were able to meet up with everyone who were standing. I managed to quickly use the toilet in the VIP area, apparently when I was in there kev managed to catch Tom and tell him that our tickets were standing, he quickly responded with “Standing is better!”. I think I heard that one at Shepherds Bush Empire hehe, but he was right, it was better… if we had golden circle passes *grovels*. We tried to ask the lady escorting us if we could get golden circle passes but that didn’t work too great either, ah well.

Meeting up with Kazzie and co again!

Once back in the Stadium we were able to meet up with Kazzie and everyone, I managed to give Kazzie back her camera (which was inside Popey’s sleeping bag still) and soon after, Alice needed to use the toilet (she should of used the VIP area hehe) so I went with her on the quest to find a toilet (it was going to be hard since My Chemical Romance JUST finished so all the guys and girls were rushing to the toilets and all). The normal toilets weren’t really an option for Alice since the queue was loong. We decided to get back to the VIP area and use the toilets there since there would hardly be anyone in need for the toilets there. So we went on a crazy trip finding our way back to the VIP area, we had to get a security guard to take us to the outside area and all, he only took us halfway but we managed to find some vacant toilets and all on the 2nd floor. After that we had to jog back down the stairs and get back to where everyone was standing and all since Muse were about to start very soon, we dashed the stairs a bit too much since we hit the basement level and had to dash back to the ground floor again. Finding our way back was pretty easy and we managed to find everyone again! Phew (not like my bathroom break tragedy the night before one must say).

We were all lounging around the middle area again, this time, being prepared to find Muse bobbing out of the grey box again so we can take photos of it, since everyone had compact cameras and all they were either taking a few shots or a clip of them ascending from the box, I went slightly oldskool and used the telelens to do a burst shot of them coming up so I could use it as a gif! I was told by Kazzie that we were cool to use our DSLR cameras because it seems like they weren’t too fussed about it! This was why I took the big daddy DSLR camera out as well as the telezoom lens! (Wish i knew that the previous night though :(). This meant photos were going to be a lot more nicer and all!

Suddenly the music stops, Muse were about to appear from the box again, it was funny how there weren’t many people hanging around in the centre area after knowing that Muse will be coming out from the box, and like last night they came up posing. The funny thing is how they couldn’t keep a straight face this time, probably because everyone knew they’d be coming out from there, everyone mentioned how Chris couldn’t hold a straight face when he was rising up. I was at it with my camera taking burst shots until they full ascended from the box, the confetti was a bit annoying now since the focusing kept focusing in on the confetti so now the band was blurred, though having said that there was so much confetti this time that you couldn’t really see the band anyway. Here’s the gif of them in action!

Muse and the 55-200mm lens

Once they started heading for the stage we knew that was it, Kiernan told us to head down to the side of the venue so we just started following her. It was cool because suddenly the crowds became less packed around the sides, probably because you couldn’t see the entire stage from the side so you’ll be missing all the clips and stuff. It was fine for us since we already saw it last night so we were now benefiting from seeing the band at a much closer distance. It was still pretty far but I was able to take some pretty decent shots of Matt with my 55-200mm lens. I only noticed that Kiernan, Kazzie and Alice were about, the rest apparently managed to find seats to sit on to enjoy the gig and all. I was happy where I was standing because I was tall enough to catch all the action as well as take photos of them! One of the funniest sights however was seeing Kazzie go nuts the entire gig, at one point she had her arms up and was smiling as if she was gathering the powers of all her ancestors who were previously crazy giggers so she could go nuts at tonights gig. It was a funny photo hehe, I was then going nuts on the photography with the lens, occasionally Kazzie would ask to borrow my lens so she could have a shot at it but the problem was she wasn’t tall enough to get the money shots hehe. It was heaven for me :p

I think eventually Kiernan and Kazzie left the side which left me and Alice to watch the gig by ourselves. The best shots I took were when Matt stood on the side paths that had an amp for him to rock out on, he did that several times and from those times I was able to take some pretty sharp shots of him (see the photos in a bit). Alice was really patient with me and my photography, I was being a bit antisocial when I was taking photos of the band and all, however she was understanding of it all and allowed me to go nuts at the shooting, occasionally I would stop simply because I wanted to enjoy the songs with Alice. I gave up on taking photos of Matt when he played invincible and I didn’t want to take photos of him when he did unintended. It was a song for some good old fashion swaying and all, not photography hehe. It was the best night ever, being able to listen to Muse, take photos of them and be in company with Alice who was amazing throughout the show.

Some bullet points of the gig (heres the setlist found at Musewiki), though less since it was so similar to the previous night:

• Dan the trumpet man only played for Knights of Cydonia since city of delusion wasn’t played
• Blackout had the same girls, this time both me and Alice were able to take photos of them with the zoom lens!
• Alice was too short to take photos, bless! (though she did take some photos of the flying acrobat ladies)
• I kept shouting out the song names before they were played, you can instantly figure out a Muse song by a few seconds of song, usually you can hear echos of the guitar and just odd sounds that instantly prompt you on what song is going to be played next, I was annoying by telling everyone the next song haha, I did that both nights :p
• No more crazy hair lady jumping up and down next to us spilling wine all over the place
• We were slowly able to linger into the front of the stalls, go us! haha

I think that was it, the show was very similar to previous night but with a better photo opportunity for me as well as a few songs changed here and there. Near Take a Bow we decided to head off whilst it was playing, reason being I wanted to be able to exit the stadium as soon as possible by being closer to the exit as well as being able to take some wide shots of the stage, particularly when the flamethrowers were on during take a bow. Once that was done we were able to leave the place quickly. I was still buzzing from the gig, it was an awesome set like yesterday and was fun listening to them play live.

No flames

Flamesss

And then there were 8…

Once outside the venue, we immediately found the others outside waiting for us! We then found out that they were sitting down for the gig so were able to exit it easily. We were learning from our mistakes this time in terms of getting out of Wembley and getting to Wembley Stadium. Everyone talked about how mental Kazzie was and how much they ripped the piss out of invincible by using their bodies to illustrate the lyrics, I kinda wished I was there to see it as it seemed like they had a proper buzz from it all hehe. We said our goodbyes with people who were heading back home and all which included Popey, Ste, Gem and Cara (Ste was driving back up and was dropping off Gem and Cara back to Leeds). The only people left were Kazzie, Stephie, Kev, Inn, Alice, Leon, Kiernan and me.

There was a crowd still like the previous night but people were moving a lot faster than before, we were able to get to Wembley Park Station ok (I told people to make sure Kazzie was in front of us!) and somehow we were split into two groups, group A (me, Alice, Kazzie and Leon) and group B (Kev, Kiernan, Stephie and Inn). I had no idea why we were split into teams, I think it was just to make the journey back exciting as well as ensure that we’d move faster and not have to look out for everyone, just our team mates. Since me and kev were in opposite teams there was already a sense of mandatory competition and all. Don’t think we competed in anyway anyhow haha.

Kebabland or Curryland?

Once we arrived at Harrow on the Hill, we were stuck with the ultimate question, Kebabland or Curryland? We were standing on a subway path that forked into two directions, the left hand side led to kebabland and their friendly staff with funny accents, the other side there was a street filled with curry houses that kev wished to go! I think we kind of split paths in search for food, kev went to curryland whilst we went to kebab land. Though a few minutes later we see kev coming back and telling us the other path doesnt seem to be the path to curryland (haha) so we were walking back together as a group of 8. It was a Sunday so most of the restaurants were closed. Finding food at this time of the night was really hard! We walked passed kebabland but decided that we wanted to go to curryland.

We managed to find ourselves a burger king, though we weren’t going to eat there since the food sucks and we were all determined in going to curryland. However, Kazzie wanted to have a burger there since she was not fond of curry haha. She ordered her food whilst I ordered a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice since I was parched. The juice was godly! So godly that I ordered another one! Kev found a burger king crown and wore that for a bit whilst Stephie saw a Stuart Little car ride and immediately got on it, from then on… things happened. I think they were trying to put money into the car but.. uhm.. well see for yourselves…

There was a really huge bee buzzing around the place which we tried taking photos of, but to no avail :(.

After the quick stop at Burger King we went back to our adventure in finding a curry house. I think the first two we went into were closed but eventually we found one that was still open and was taking orders. We were also able to eat in but we wanted to make use of the 20% discount and all so we ordered a Takeaway. The one thing we were missing however were knives and forks (I think Kazzie picked up a fork and handed it to me so I quickly shoved it in my bag haha). We quickly ordered our food as well as some popadoms to share (kev bought them for us). Everyone bought curry whilst I thought i’d be different and ordered seafood fried noodles on the Oriental Menu haha. After some bantering we got our food and all, they had given us our 20% discount as well as charged us less for the popadoms, I told kev to give him a hug but he didn’t so I gave the waiter a hi5 (kinda felt guilty for taking his fork haha). We went back to the hotel to eat our food, stopping by at a Kebab place to get some additional cutlery as well as a bottle of water for Alice to drink. The walk was long but we finally made it!

We went inside Leon’s room (since Kev’s room was small and it smells) and immediately jumped into the his bed! Mmm comfty beds! We were then munching on the food we had! Alice was once again not hungry so I didn’t force her to eat anything. My noodles was amazing, it was nice and hot still too! It had mussels, prawns and all sorts of seafood bits, I let inn have a taste and she really liked it. I tried a bit of her stuff but it was far too mild hehe. I wasn’t too sure about everyone else and whether or not they liked their food but they didn’t seem too pleased. The popadoms were nice too, I think Kazzie had some too since she had no idea what it was originally. Kev noticed that me and Alice were wearing matching socks, I explained to him that it was purely coincidental that we were wearing matching socks and he went awwh! During our feast Stephie knocked over kev’s food on the floor which was funny, and to top that off she got milk (not hers) all down her top and on the wall, it looked really wrong haha!

After that I think Kazzie was ready to head off, Inn followed us to the car park as well as she bided us a farewell and drove off back home (home home). So now we’re left with me, Alice, Kiernan and kazzie. We drove back to Kazzie’s place for the last time (with Kiernan giving directions) and eventually got back to her place in peace (Kazzie was getting more familiar with the route back now). I managed to smuggle the bed inn was sleeping and shove it in the living room to sleep in. Kiernan was sleeping in the guest room again and Kazzie slept in her room again. Not much talking was involved (really tired) and we all soon fell asleep, well most of us anyway… (me and Alice actually kept hearing these strange noises, it sounded like the cat or someone laughing, but the morning after we discovered that it was 2 air fresheners spraying their stuff at timed periods, grr). Oh and we turned douglas around because he was a creepy, pervy man sitting there watching you!

And that’s it, the morning after Kazzie drove us to Watford Junction and we took the train back to Euston where I left Kiernan to escort Alice back to Kings Cross where we had a nice long hug and said our goodbyes. I was a bit sappy and actually did a bit of platform running haha, haven’t done that in a long time. It was a nice and fun weekend, I dont think anyone disliked it, we all met each other and had a wonderful time together and when watching Muse play. Even two weeks after (and blogging this weekend) I still miss the weekend and wish we could relive it or have another one again. Ah well.

The godly sounds of the word…”godly”

The sky is now a lovely shade of light blue, birds are still singing and people in the living room are starting to show signs of life. I randomly met some of Kazzie’s mums friends, it was funny saying hello to them. I felt a bit out of place since Kazzie was still in sleep. Eventually everyone woke up and complained about the lack of sleep they had, I kept talking about how godly of a bath I had, I think I repeated the word “godly” several times (no wait, i dont think, i know, you’ll see soon). Sooner or later Kiernan and Inn emerge in the living room too, I think at around 9am since they did plan on waking up at 10am. Inn complained that I was constantly using the word “godly” that my voice sort of went through the ceiling and straight into her ears hehe bless. I apologised and made people tea.

“You could of had everything!”

Whilst settling down, we watched some tv, namely challenge TV. I think we managed to catch some Crystal Maze and Takeshi’s castle, with Takeshi’s castle we pondered at the thought of the amount of casualties made from the show. Some of them are ever so close in falling down and crashing their skulls into the hard concrete bits of the course. I said that they simply didn’t air all the casualties and that under the rivers and ponds are a nice layer of dead bodies and decomposed corpses of ex contestants who missed the platform or fell off the bridge the bad sort of way. Though left with a sinister and morbid thought we were soon cheered up with the contestants falling over comically theres one of the courses where you had to catch a ball that was falling down a maze type thing, you had to sort of predict where the ball would come out and sort of jump for and catch it with a bucket. There was one contestant who saw the ball fall down into the muddy pond but felt obliged to just jump face first into the muddy pond any, weird Japanese. I explained about an endurance gameshow (japanese naturally) I saw on Tarrent on TV in which contestants were to take laxatives and have a lovely camel ride, the aim was to see who was the last person to you know… relax themselves, there was a toilet in the middle of the arena and the camels just rode around in circles.

After Takeshi’s castle we watched some Crystal Maze, this was immense, Popey explained how him and his friends used to shout out “AUTOMATIC LOCK IN” whenever there was an automatic lock in clause in some of the rooms. Unfortunately the contestant managed to pass the courses that had the clause. We werent pleased, it was funny how we didn’t want them to win. A winning team is a boring team! Everytime a contestant would give up in a room we would all shout “YOU COULD OF HAD IT ALL!” or “YOU COULD OF HAD EVERYTHING!” in the most dramatic voice ever. The team didn’t win this time which was a plus! Haha, not like the prizes are amazing anyway.

Back to the Harrow on the Hill

After some Crystal Maze action everyone was pumped up and ready to head off for the meetup and stuff, I had to meet up with Alice at Kings Cross so I had a bit of a diversion to take, not to mention selling my tickets to someone on Musebay. Kazzie’s mum asked for two strong men to carry some fridge into the house, initially I was assigned that role but I passed it onto Jon and Ste since i’m just skin and bones, inn went off to take photos of them doing the handy job haha.

I unloaded most of my stuff into a plastic bag and left it at Kazzie’s place, I was once again assigned in Inn’s car whilst Kazzie followed behind Inn to Harrow on the Hill. I can’t remember the car arrangements but thats a bit trivial. I think Kiernan was in the car with me too, Kazzie was slightly mad that we had all left her behind at the end and that noone was going to sit with her. I wasn’t too fussed at who’s car I was sitting in. Inn quickly told me to go and sit in Kazzie’s car, but once I started walking to Kazzie’s car it seemed that Max and Aino were to sit in Kazzie’s car. Having that sorted, we were ready to head off to Harrow on the Hill. I think…

Once we were at the Harrow on the Hill we met up with Gem and Cara in their hotel room, Kazzie was worried about parking and stuff so we ensured that Stephie was going to ask the Hotel people that Kazzie’s car was hers so it wouldn’t get clamped and all. Upon entering Gem and Cara’s room I quickly went to the toilet for a wee, only to find a floater in the toilet.. *shudders* after doing my business I quickly flushed the toilet and went outside to tell people theres a floater, Leon suddenly appeared and then I just glared at him haha. After some bantering we went to Stephie’s place for a bit, she was surfing on the net in her room with the TV, fancy. I think inn then went off to find Ril, so me and Kazzie (and Kiernan i think) were left lounging around with Stephie whilst she did her make up. After some bantering and squabbling everyone all met up and were ready to go to baker street where most of the people were (the actual Musers Meetup, held in Regents park).

I think by now the following people were about; Inn, Kazzie, Stephie, Kiernan, Gem, Leon and Ril, Aino and Max sort of headed off to Harrow on Hill by themselves whilst the others were on other cars meeting us all at Regents Park. During the tube journey we went passed Wembley Stadium and sighed that we will be seeing them soon, I think someone mentioned how they saw people already camping outside the venue waiting to get some golden circle action! Sad sad sad! We quickly sang happy birthday to Ril since yesterday was his birthday and all, we were originally going to do the “Hip hip, HORAY!” thing but he was too old to we only did 3 and counted them as decades haha!

Once we were at Baker Street I managed to meet up with my Musebay ticket buyer (David Ticketman, thats right, his surname is Ticketman), we quickly did our transaction in the dodgiest way possible, Inn and the gang walked passed us and laughed at our dodgey dealings but I shoo’d them away. An additional £80 spending money for the weekend was nice! The guy was actually buying 7 tickets for his friends and all, sounds a bit crazy if you ask me (especially when you find out that touts were selling 3 Muse wembley tickets for a tenner!). After selling my tickets I left Inn and the others to find eat or do whatever they were supposed to do whilst I went to pick up Alice at Kings Cross Station.

Meeting up with Alice

Alice had just finished her major exams on Friday (which was why she wasn’t about on Friday) and wanted to join in with us all since her friends she was going were travelling at a different time and all. The morning was pretty hectic for Alice since there was a flood in Halifax which meant she had to drive all the way to Bradford Station in high speed megaoverdrive. Gem explained earlier on how Halifax never floods and that it was funny how it was flooding today. Alice however managed to catch the train from Leeds to London. Her luggage was a bit too minimal since she didnt bring her mp3 player which meant she was just left sitting around in the train for 2 hours.

Back in London, I was queuing up in Kings Cross station for paper one day travel cards for Alice since she didn’t have an Oyster. The queue was pretty long so I thought I’d save some time by queueing up (rather then lounging about in the station for 30 minutes and doing that again). After purchasing the ticket I tried looking for a poncho or something waterproof since it was raining quite a bit now. I had a look at boots but to no avail :(. Eventually Alice’s train arrives on Platform 1, I grace Alice with a nice long hug and we begin heading off to Baker Street where everyone was waiting for us (I told them that we were quite close anyway so we could have easily met them and all), not before a quick toilet break, apparently the toilets in the carriage was broken so she couldn’t use it so she just went to the one in the station. It was pretty funny waiting for her and hearing women coming out of it whilst rolling their eyes and complaining about how long the queue was (got to love male toilets, you just go in and out within seconds haha). We quickly headed off to Baker Street to meet up with the rest of the gang.

Alice, Mission 1: Guide the lost french man

As soon as we arrive in Baker Street we were given to directions to the cafe that inn and the rest were sitting around in. Initially when I walked passed Weatherspoons I told Alice that this was the most likely going to be the meeting place for musers! (more from this later) Upon meeting up with inn and co at the cafe, Alice was immediately given a mission to help some poor french man with directions and all. Ril was actually trying to help the guy first since he knew a bit of French but it didn’t work too well. It was pretty funny see her go at it helping the french guy, I constantly joked around with everyone by doing Joey’s take of speaking French (“Bler de la bler! De blue bla blei” (see, italics make me sound french, i bet you thought that too :P)). After some french banter, we discover that the guy wants to go to Marble Arch and all from Baker Street using his magical map. It was pretty confusing because Alice was good at her french but had no idea what the guy wanted to go or do exactly. It got really confusing and eventually Alice gave up hehe. Bless. I blamed the french guy for being confusing, if he wanted to get to Marble Arch than he could of took the tube to Marble arch, thats what the tube is for :p.

The nando’s sniffing nose

Still raining, we decided that the park wasn’t a good idea to be so where to go? Max had mentioned that he was going to take away a Nando’s so immediately we knew that there was a Nando’s, the trouble is where? This was where my super sensitive nando’s nose was put to use. I managed to quickly point at the place we should be walking to get to Nando’s. Now I haven’t been to this nando’s before, neither have I looked at any maps prior to this meetup. Lo and behold, after walking down the road a bit (every was slightly sceptical that I could find it) we find a nice Nando’s restaurant gracing us with their godly flamed grilled chicken aroma. I was smug about it, once again I was about to sniff out another Nando’s. We all went inside and got ourselves a seat. I think this is where I constantly kept calling people “kind stranger” (though I was doing it quite a lot on Friday too). Everytime I was served at a restaurant, shop or the venue I would say “thank you kind stranger” at the end. Usually I’m greeted with nice responses and all which was good, most of the time the staff were confused.

We had some lovely seats downstairs with big cushioned up chairs. We all ordered our food (I think just me, Alice and Leon ordered since Gem, Ril and Inn finished eating their breakfast not long ago) Alice had extra hot pita per usual but I chose hot for my wings. Alice wasn’t too pleased that I picked hot haha. I preferred extra hot on whole chickens and hot on chicken wings! Ho hum. Leon had
a veggie pita since he was a veggie.

“HEAD TO KFC!”

During the nando’s fest Stephie and Kiernan phone inn up wondering where we were, we told them that we were at Nando’s in Baker Street. They initially had no idea where to go and all so it was up to inn to guide them to the restaurant. It was really funny listening to inn give directions and all, I was constantly going “head to KFC” since Nando’s was located in the same road as KFC and it was nice and red, but inn was persistent in not telling them to look for a KFC, she constantly used other places such as Starbucks and Pizza Express, Stephie and Kiernan were very confused. Kiernan later on explains to me how the stores inn suggested were on the corner so they had no idea which road inn was talking about. In the end KFC saved the day as a noticeable landmark and Kiernan and Stephie were able to find us, KFC 1 - Inn 0 haha.

We were now joined with Stephie and Kiernan who were very hungry (like us) and were ready to feast on the beasts (except Stephie, she feasts on bits of vegetables). I remember how relieved I was when I ate my food because I was really hungry after having just a burger and some burnt yakitori’s for dinner last night, and since I was sleeping outside and all I felt a bit weak and all so the food really helped! The spices helped out on my nose too as it was getting a bit sniffly haha. Kiernan was a bit scared on the heat of the peri peri sauce so she ordered just a medium for her chicken pita (you cant get any fitter with a chicken in a pita). She wasn’t impressed by the heat (medium are for losers thats why!) So yeah, we have a lovely meal and all. I think Stephie ordered some frozen yoghurt in which Inn happily helped herself in some (she did ask dont worry hehe). We then started to play a game on how tall we can get the frozen yoghurt, well it wasn’t a game since it was more of a task for me to see how tall I could get it. I was warned that the machine was located upstairs and all so not only did i need to ooze the frozen yoghurt out of the machine in a way that it stands up tall, i need to quickly run back downstairs to show everyone before the whole thing falls apar, the final masterpiece was pretty tall, though a bit of it fell off (which I quickly attached back on)

Right after taking photos of the frozen yoghurt, Inn suggested I’d eat the thing without using my hands, it wasn’t hard at all but you were guaranteed an instant brain freeze! I do so and as predictable as ever I got brain freeze. Inn somehow managed to dare Ril to do the same thing too which was funny because he got frozen yoghurt all over his mouth when doing it hehe. After all chicken was consumed as well as the mountain of frozen yoghurt we decided to meet up the rest of the gang before we headed off to Wembley Stadium, we phoned them up to ask where they were… and guess where? “Weatherspoons!”

I immediately told Alice about how predictable musers were in terms of places. They could not escape the curse that is weatherspoons, its all about the cheap alcohol I suppose.

A very brief meet and greet

I think this was one of the shortest meetups I’ve been to (short for me anyway, only because we were at nando’s eating). Upon arriving we were greeted with millions of musers (millions is a lie but it did feel like a lot!) It was confusion all the way, most of the unknown musers I have never met were lingering at the back of the pub whilst the ones I’ve met were all walking around meeting each other. As Stu explained, it felt like speeding dating only without the dates and more weirdo’s haha. Alice hadn’t a clue of most of the musers around, she knew the obvious ones but lacked to recognise the less obvious ones. She said how she thought Max was a lot taller and all (but he’s not bless). I managed to simply point and tell alice who most of them were, I did a pretty good job as well (until I reached to the random people at the back where I had no idea who they were either), I really should of did a proper meet and greet. Naming the people present at Weatherspoons is going to be a painful and pointless task so its probably best for you to just look at the photos and find out who’s who! Some key new characters that I met and had a slightly longer chat with were Gemsy, Blee and Haze I think, Haze was fun to speak to again in particular since we only met last year in November for Muse at Wembley Arena.

After a quick banter Inn decided to take some mega ultra group shots of everyone, so in order to do that she required everyone’s attention. Who else can generate enough attention on a crowd so big? Me haha. Initially I was going to slam the table at an ungodly rate, Phoenix Wright Style but my arms were still weak from lack of energy and sleep from last night so I sort of managed to stand on the coffee table type table and do an Aino impression. I dont think aino and max aren’t aware of this impression still but basically during the February Mona meetup when we were doing all sorts of challenges; Aino did a Salmiaki challenge and to get everyone’s attention she shouted “everybody listen to me” in her funny accent. So now whenever I called everyone’s attention I used Aino’s line and accent to draw everyone’s attention, the sheer sillyness of it managed to get everyone’s attention and all! Wish I had done the slam to be honest, people love the slams :p. I told everyone to get ready for some big group shots as Inn whipped out her DSLR camera equipped with a nice wide 18-55mm lens (wish I had mine). Seeing as I wasn’t really keen on being in group photos I whipped my DSLR camera out too and started taking separate broken down shots of the group whilst Inn was focusing on a wide group shot. It was fun because I just made them stand around for 5 minutes and a bit. Funny thing about my shots were that they were totally random ones, I really wasn’t concentrating so most of them turned out blurry due to a slow shutter speed. Below are some shots, some people are looking quite natural judging from their expressions but some (like Ril) were plainly posing hehe.

Hand up = Go, Hand down = Stop

After taking some group shots we were ready to head to Wembley Stadium, since I had already got everyones attention I was yet again leading everyone to get to Wembley Stadium, Inn and Leon had to quickly drive back to the hotel since Leon had left his ticket in the hotel (silly him!), not to mention a few people wanted to unload some stuff back in the hotel rather than bringing them along to the gig and all. I was cool, I had my camera nice and smuggled in my bag with bits and bobs in my laptop bag for the gig (some of which were to distract the guards and all!). They left slightly earlier than everyone else.
Back to leading, I quickly did another Aino impression and we were all ready to head off, at one point Alice had to use the bathroom and told me to promise her not to leave her once she’s in the toilet hehe bless. I had to do the same thing too (was a long trip and I had a bit too much bottomless action! (bottomless drink that is, not man love with a guy with a flat arse!)).

The journey was filled with random stops to check up on people and perform headcounts but I managed to establish a simple rule that is; if my hands is up, you go, if it’s down you stop and wait. A lot of waiting was required for people to top up their stuff and buy tickets. Once the long wait was over we went straight to our station, to our amazement Inn and Leon were there in the carriage. We quickly ran down the stairs to get into the same carriage as them. It was quite a rush since the last people barely got in. Next time when you’re in a big group just split them into smaller teams, its a lot more manageable and all

It seems that the train was just waiting around for quite some time before it headed off which was why Inn and Leon were still there. Once the train was moving we started talking in our own little groups, at one point we all started singing happy birthday to Ril again, it was far more majestic and grand than this morning’s singing since we now had more people involved. Once we arrived at the station things become harder to manage since people knew exactly where they were going. Me, Alice and Gem knew we had to wait a bit before heading in anyway since Gem had to wait for Cara and Alice had to wait for her friends to give them their tickets. We walked pretty close to the stadium and decided it was best for us to stop and wait, eventually we saw Haze come back saying how he was hungry and needed to use the bathroom since he had a bladder of a 9 year old girl. Since the food in Wembley Station was extortionate, we decided to head to McDonalds for Haze to unload his bladder and fill up his stomach. We still had plenty of time to spare since they were only support bands playing (I’ve become more and more prone to missing support bands and only seeing the main act!).

The long long wait for 4 drunken people

As well as a visit to McDonalds people also went to the cash machine to get some money and all, alot of road crossing was required but I kept ensuring that people used the zebra crossing purely because it was there to pay tribute to the dead spirits of a zebra who was once run over while crossing the road. McDonalds was pretty packed with other fans wanting to have a quick bite before they goto the gig, the toilets there were funny as you saw a nice long queue of people waiting to goto the toilet, I later on realise that they were all women so the men’s toilets were in fact free and ready to go! In the toilet, some guy was actually trying to sell tickets to me! I said no and then he started to approach other people in the toilet, asking whether or not they wanted tickets haha….some weirdo (but at least he tried I guess).

Afterwards we managed to meet up with Kev, Inn and Leon. We however still needed to wait for Alice’s friends before we could go, there were apparently drunk and stuck in Stockwell station. We had a quick visit to the local newsagent as well as Wimpy’s where kev bought some chips. Other than that we were sat around the meet area near Wembley Park waiting for Alice’s friends to turn up. Now and then we would hear announcements telling people not to congregate in the station as well as not stop to take photos of Wembley Stadium (people did so anyway! dumbasses). The wait wasn’t too bad since we had loads to talk about and all, one really vile topic involved why the golden circle was called… the golden circle, and how Muse were going to do a GWAR and literally fire canon’s of Matt’s urine all over the crowd…. this is what you get when you mixed Leon and Kev together. I was starting to understand why Kev invited him to see Muse and all. Hmmm, when I said the wait wasn’t too bad, that was a lie… it was actually pretty bad! The time sitting there was ungodly, Alice would now and then apologise for her friends and Leon would tell her to give him her phone so he could have a proper yell at them. People became slightly impatient about it all and my neck was getting sore from turning around to check if the new batch of people were Alice’s friends. Though I dont know why I did that because I had no idea what they looked like.

It did take a while but eventually Alice’s friends arrived to pick up their tickets, we were trying to persuade Alice to just throw the tickets at them and throw a fit at them since they made us miss a few bands and all, but Alice just handed the tickets over to them where they quickly gathered around the envelope to look at the tickets. It was cool, we didn’t need to go with them since they were already quite pissed as well as the fact that we were pissed too (pissed off at them haha), Alice was really sorry that we had to wait for them to arrive and that they were so late and all. Bless

The ticket process was pretty straight forward, you hand in your ticket and they would wristband you up with a standing or seating wristband, we initially thought Haze had a golden circle pass but found out that he just had a normal one like everyone else bless hehe. I managed to have a friendly chat with the ticket man about how his day was, twas fun. Up to the bag checkers, they did a really slack job! They just had a quick gander at my bag and left it like that, little did they know that I was smuggling a DSLR camera and telezoom lens! Finding the entrance to the standing area was quite tedious too, eventually kev asked someone and we found the block number we were supposed to enter in.

Wow, everything was so… white… and big!

I must say upon entering the stadium I wasn’t too surprised about the size of the Stadium, it felt a bit like Wembley Arena to be honest. The catastrophic size didn’t really hit me at all throughout the gig. We eventually found Kiernan and the rest of the gang who were standing around the centre of the stadium. Alice needed to use the toilet so she nipped off for a bit (again I promised her I wouldn’t leave her). I was still adjusting myself to the size of the venue, nothing really clicked to be honest, Alice kept asking me on whether not I was excited and I kept saying how I wasn’t really excited, and I’ll probably be excited only when Muse start playing. Back to describing the venue, I suppose the size of the venue is mainly due to the amount of seats there were, after all its for football matches so it’s all about the seating.

The standing area was split up in a weird shape, there were two “golden circles” in which the first comers were located, and then there was the standing area for normal people. I found the idea silly since there was a lot of space at the back of the golden circle, its weird how Wembley would cripple the view of so many people by separating the early people with the people who turn up at a decent and less ungodly time. The reason why there were two golden circles was because theres a lovely split in the middle that leads straight up to the stage. I initially thought that there was an inner and outer circle and felt that to be even more ridiculous and arsey about where people would stand. The only benefit I felt the golden circle achieved was to stop people who just randomly arrived to the venue to just barge all the way to the front, but to me, this is one of the beauties of gigs haha. Ah well, enjoy some wide shots of the venue to have a clearer idea of what the venue looks like.. I didn’t take them because I knew I had to upload them and I was more about taking money shots this weekend haha.

A weak bladder will get you lost in Wembley Stadium

There was an announcement in the stadium, telling us that the Streets will be performing in 5 minutes, Alice had came back from her bathroom break, but now it was time for me to need it! (Worst time ever). I told her to hold on to my bag and not to leave me hehe. I quickly ran back to the stadium for a quick toilet break, the queue wasn’t too bad but walking there was a pain (it was Wembley Stadium). Upon coming back to the Stadium, I was lost, The Streets have started playing and there was more people about! I couldn’t see Alice and everyone else. I knew the only landmark that everyone was standing next to which was the grey thing, I started to follow it but somehow I ended further down the left hand side of the stage and still lost like silly. I was dangerously lost! Since when is it hard finding someone in the crowd with ginger hair (I was spotting kev’s hair since there’s not many ginger people in the area) Since the crowd was more packed then beforehand I thought it was almost impossible to find them, I knew Stephie was standing on the rails so that was my hint that I had to get nearer the stalls! I did, but people weren’t happy, usually I’m quite nimble at squishing through people without them complaining (since I’m quite thin and all) but this time people weren’t too happy of people going passed them, one wanker thought it was funny to push me deliberately right after I got passed him, was pathetic if you ask me, its not like I’m going to fall, I’m wedged into a crowd and the push really didn’t seem like a push, just a minor inconvenience. Not to mention I was actually moving back from the stage rather then forward, why would it matter that I’m moving around the stage? Still lost silly I tried texting Alice that I was lost, apparently she started dispatching other people to come and find me.

Now I was quite further down the stage, this is where it sprung to me that perhaps they weren’t that close to the stage, perhaps it was my natural instinct to try and get closer to the stage rather than finding everyone else. I decided to retreat properly and work my way from the front of the stalls, I eventually saw Alice and everyone, their area was more relaxed than further down the standing area which was good haha. I was relieved that I got back, it would have been pretty silly if I saw the gig myself, wedged in with a lot of stupid Streets fans haha. I told them about the pushing and all, it was definitely a bad place to be during the Muse gig if it was already squishy now! I mean come on! Its the Streets playing! I find out about the whole search team out to look for me and I felt a bit guilty about it, but nonetheless I was back! Phew

All we hear is? Come on! Jump!

Man the streets were really bad at controlling a crowd. There was no energy in them, I don’t think Stadium gigs really suited them to be honest. Most of the time you could only hear the music, its the rapping and singing that were a bit, meh? Most of the time he wasn’t exactly singing, just talking throughout the gig. The crowd in my area really detested Mike Skinner, there was one bit where he did a Time Is Running Out cover, that didn’t go down too well with the crowd as well. It was really awkward, it was like cousins having sex. I do enjoy listening to the Streets at the comfort of my own home because you can hear everything nicely and mixed nicely, but it was just really really bad here.

Now to really add to the awkwardness of the gig, Mike Skinner constantly sang the chorus line in Queen’s “Radio ga ga” (All we hear is, Radio ga ga…), but he was hoping to get the crowd to participate in it, he sang “All we hear is…” and tried getting the crowd to go “radio ga ga”. Perhaps the people in the golden circle were saying it, but at our end all we hear are people telling him to shut up of f**k off haha. It was pretty painful seeing him doing it. The thing is, he did this not just once, not twice, but 7 or 8 times throughout the gig! Everytime at our end the crowd were just agitated from it all. Mike Skinner explains how he saw Queen do it on their Live at Wembley Stadium DVD (bless, he was researching!) and really wanted to get the same reaction. The problem lies here, Freddie Mercury didn’t do it 7 or 8 times and more importantly, Queen were the headline, everyone bought tickets to see Queen (unless My Chemical Romance were supporting haha) so obviously the entire Stadium loved Queen, so it was easy being able to pull that off if you were actually Queen performing, not when you’re the streets. As well as doing this “All we here is..” crap, he tried getting the crowd to jump too. Apparently he tried that in Leeds Festival too and noone was listening to him hehe, that felt just as awkward as well, I think they should of just stuck to playing and singing, they were too cocky as a support band for Muse I’d say, he even kept jinxing the damn weather by constantly saying “Please don’t rain”. A lot of head shakes one must say…Alice kept closing her eyes and just sleeping it off since they were that bad hehe.

Look its Muuuse ascending from the centre of the Stadium!

After the Streets were had a nice break for soundchecking and instrument moving etc. We discussed about how bad the Streets were and took some photos of each other. The sky was beginning to turn dark and all which was perfect (since the lighting rocked most when it’s nice and dark!) and suddenly the DJ music stopped. The crowd went at it and screamed like loons and suddenly… the big grey box next to us starts spewing confetti! What a weird place to fire confetti onto the crowd, then suddenly the music started kicking in and you could see heads slowly ascending from the grey box. It was Muse (duh haha)! Quite an unexpected entrance one must say, purely for the fact that they were sitting inside that grey box for quite some time before the show starts. It makes you wonder what they were doing inside, perhaps they had an xbox 360 set up inside and were just playing against each other, perhaps they had a lovely view for the support acts? or perhaps they had their DS Lites out playing Brain Training against each other.

It was funny watching Muse just stand there posing whilst everyone cheered at them, they then started to walk down the crowd to the stage with some random people in yellow suits following them. We couldn’t see but from the photos they sound like fun ha!. They kicked off the gig with Knights of Cydonia which everyone later on complains to be a good opener but would have preferred it if it was the finisher instead of Take a Bow. I’m not going to review the gig itself too much since you can read reviews and stuff for that, however I will bullet point some noticeable things during the show, for full details you could check Musewiki for the setlist and notes, anyway, some bullet points:

• Dan the trumpet man was here to play Knights of Cydonia and City of Delusion, was happy they played that, he got a nice mention and all, I think Stephie and a few others were talking about how “fit” he was haha
• Morgan received no attention this time! Popey was heartbroken, I don’t think you could even see him at the gig. I think Muse are keen on making Muse a 3 member band now
• Some of the clips on the screens were fun to watch, some were a bit obscure and Windows Media Player visualiser esque, I loved the feeling good one with the cherry blossom petals, plug in baby’s one was awesome too.
• Most of the songs were extended and finished off with a riff fest, was lovely for moshing
• I didn’t really use my smuggled camera since we were standing in a place that was difficult to take photos in, not to mention the amount of security guards standing in front of us all. Would have had it instantly confiscated!
• There was this crazy haired lady who was a bit too enthusiastic about the gig (hence why she’s crazy), she spilled wine over some guy and almost got wine on us, she went nuts on all of the songs! Alice was a bit scared from her especially when she kept jumping on her feet! They should have a pit for crazy women and see whether or not they could cope with not being “the annoying crazy one”. I kinda had the feeling that she was the same crazy lady that was dancing along during Bliss when Muse played at Wembley Arena.
• Dom’s green trousers, Dom’s green trousers, Dom’s green trousers! I think Muse are trying to use Dom to target the gay scene
• Soldiers Poem was the mobile phone waving song, it was fun and sappy, I tried recording a footage of it on my phone with deliberate phone swaying.
• Unintended was ultra chees, nonetheless a song to sway with the person you’re next to hehe, I’m quite glad that they’ve kept Unintended ultra simple with Matt on the acoustic and Chris on the bass.
• Microcuts was played this evening (not the other I’m afraid), that was fun to listen to!
• During blackout, aerial acrobat ladies ascended from the stadium via balloons and danced around throughout the song, this was one of best moments of the gig, was spectacular and really complimented with the song, I managed to take out my DSLR camera for that occasion, though most of the shots werent too good haha.

That’s about it, I also managed to set my life ambition for the gig, which was to give one of the security guards a hi5! At first it was impossible getting his attention and all, and when I did we tried it twice and missed! GARGH! He gave up and went back to his job while I screamed “nooooooooo!”. It would have been something I would have regretted to do for the rest of my life! Luckily near the end I saw him again and managed to get that hi5 in the end haha! Then the rest of the musers gave him a hi5 too. Stephie was lucky enough to get the guards to get her the setlist they possessed which was lucky, we pondered at what she had to do or show to get that setlist haha.

Muse finished with Take a Bow which was a bit of a weird climax, the flames near the end was the best though! For a moment there they were rammstein haha. Jus that one moment :p. Now here’s the hard bit… How the hell do you get 77,000 odd people out of Wembley Stadium and back to whence they came?

The ungodly exit and the forever vanishing Kazzie

Getting out of the venue and back to Harrow on the Hill was a pain! So many people were oozing out of the venue, and unless you have a light sabre like Celtic Rose and Firebaptist (who weren’t with us) its actually really hard to find each other in the dark, lost in a sea of sweaty and horny musers (i’m assuming the ones at Trafalgar Square were still horny after the Muse gig).

We made the big G sign (exit G) outside our meeting point, we phoned up people who were missing in the group and managed to gather everyone to the sign and all. Finally out of nowhere emerged Kazzie and Adam, they were nowhere to be seen during the entire purely because they both went off somewhere else to see Muse and all. Adam looked as gay as ever so I mocked him on that one and Kazzie just looked silly with her big yellow shiny thing and silly clothes (apparently loads of people spotted her during the gig!). I managed to meet Adams mum and all and strangely gave her a hi5 (probably some excess hi5 mojo coming from the security guard I hi5′d earlier on). Eventually we had everyone and was ready to head off. We tried being sly about it all and held each other’s hands to make sure noone is lost. Kazzie was the main culprit of disappearing, she wanted to speak to Adam some more but wasn’t aware that the trains were going to stop after a certain time so it was crucial that we got to the station as soon as possible. Kev thought the announcement said that the met line closes at 11:15pm odd which I felt very strange since trains usually stop running after midnight. I kept asking kev if he was sure and he kept assuring me that was the case (in the end is wasn’t haha).

The entire road back to Wembley Park station was flooded! I would have been easy for one person to worm their way out of the crowd but we had a big group with us, and having Kazzie disappearing so many times meant that we were in trouble in terms of catching the last tube home. Once Kazzie and Adam said their goodbyes, Kazzie was instantly texting adam and everything. Now remember this, Kazzie is letting loads of us stay at her place, not to mention she had to drive people around, so we really couldn’t lose her and all. This was were people started to get annoyed with Kazzie and told her to stop being distracted and make sure she’s still with the team. At one point we were disturbingly lost and we needed Inn to get on Leons shoulders and wave an umbrella to get Kazzie’s attention because she was left at the back again! During this time I kept spanking Inn’s butt and telling kev to join in (in which he started to pinch it haha). It was fun until Inn started attacking kev for it, he was a serial butt pincher the entire day, Stephie’s bottom was most likely in prune state from all of kev’s cheeky bottom pinching. We were getting very worried about Kazzie but we eventually managed to find her again, we were in a position where we seriously couldn’t lose anyone since there was a crowd of people heading to Wembley Park station and we weren’t in a position to wait (especially with the train deadline and all).

Eventually we all manage to get into Wembley Park station, some of us wanted to go to Baker Street whilst some needed to get to Harrow on the Hill, so this was where we had to part with some of the musers (can’t remember who to be honest! haha). We headed to your platform and managed to squeeze in with the other musers into the carriage. It was VERY packed! This was where I was able to do the sardines joke! It was funny when Stephie was squashed by so many tall people hehe, you couldnt see anything but a hole where Stephie was sort of crouching and hiding from all the tall people (ie everyone), Bless.

The legend of Kebabland

It was packed but we still managed to have fun talking to everyone in the carriage, eventually we were freed from the carriage and go out of Harrow on the Hill station. People were hungry (kev mainly) and so Kev decided to take everyone to Kebabland (land of Kebabs) to get something to eat. Upon arriving at Kebabland we immediately got ordering, the seating area was closed off which meant we were only able to takeaway the food or just lounge around the place and eat standing up or squatting. The staff working there had the funniest accents and none of them were really able to say the phrase “next please?”, the word next was alright, its when they say please it sounds more like “pliz” or “plis” or even “bliss”. When I was ordering I kept commenting on their funny accents hehe. I ordered myself