lupestripe | Through the Bagel Hole

LONDON - 24th JULY

That's right it's the pointless serialisation that just REFUSES to go away! As exciting as your parents' photographs of their caravaning holiday in Tenby, "Through the Bagel Hole" builds up day by day into a collection that you can treasure forever. Or more likely stuff down the bottom of the bird cage for Billy the Budgie to pee over. So you join us on day four with India are 154-4, England trailing by 56 runs and I'm about to fall asleep through the tedium of it all. Here comes the next over...

Tuesday

I've always thought Tuesdays are weird nothingy sorts of days. Lacking in the dreariness of a Monday it also has none of the anticipation associated with days towards the end of the week. Indeed Tuesday is the archetypal pointless day. To celebrate this we decided to sleep through the pneumatic drill and wake up at lunchtime. We probably would have woken up even later but the room service people gave us a polite phone call telling us to get our arses out of bed. At half past midday. *Ring ring (why don’t you give me a call)*
“Do you want your rooms cleaning?” No.
“Do you want to be left alone?” Yes.
“Do you want the workman to drill through his foot in order to stop the relentless sound disturbing the quiescence?” Damn right!
Did he shut up? Of course he didn’t. He was drilling more than Handy Andy on Viagra. And boy could he keep it up for hours…

The weather may have been cool but for us things were about to get sweltering as we were to have a Scorcher in our wake. This was because I had drunkenly phoned him on Saturday night about going to Barcode, one of his favourite haunts, and he surprisingly phoned me back the following day to suggest a meet-up on Tuesday in Central London. I expected this to be a spot of lunch and a chat - a mere two hour affair. As it turned out, it was a twenty-four hour marathon. Like Le Mons on foot without the poorly made Womble costumes. Or perhaps a twenty-six mile long chocolate bar. But still it was great fun. I even got the same feelings of sickness you would probably get after eating said chocolate bar, which I probably would have done after the chronic munchies I got later on in the evening through chronic alcohol consumption.

We met at Caledonian Road Tube station (nice tiling, nice lifts, apparently the worst Chinese restaurant in the whole of London) before walking straight back to our hotel and where we started from. We had gone to Caledonian Road to grab some Ethiopian cuisine as I have never tried it before but for some reason this area of London was closed for training purposes. Or something. So we settled on Indian cuisine in the little Indian district around the corner from where we were staying. And I’m glad we did. You can tell a restaurant is good when people of the same ethnic origin eat there and as this restaurant was full of Indians we knew we would be in for a treat. Most of the dishes were also atypical to the ones you would get from your average curry house which gave it a greater feeling of authenticity. It was also fully vegetarian too which made life easy for me. After sampling a gorgeous mangoey-yoghurt drink whose name so sadly escapes me (STOP PRESS: Wolfie has just informed me it was Mango Laccai - thanks hun) we settled down to some of the most sublime Indian food I have ever tasted. Followed by a couple of Rennie's. Curse my weak feeble stomach!!

After some mundane friends of mine decided they were too tired/lazy/stoned/hungover/constipated (delete as appropriate) to meet up with us, Scorcher, Wolfie and I decided we might as well make a night of it. We went to an Oriental supermarket where I bought every different type of beer in stock. I also spent most of the time gauping at the colourful wrapping of all the products, wrapping that so accurately reflected an interesting alien culture. All this was in Chinatown, a place I am completely enthralled by. There are so many things down there you would never see in Middlesbrough – a cultural melting pot full of new tastes, smells and sounds – that only made me yearn ever more to go and visit that part of the world. There were even some Chinese gospel singers telling us that "Jesus Loves You", which was reassuring.

Next Scorcher wanted to take Wolfie to the Trocadero. This was where I felt a little left out in all honesty - arcade games are not really my thing and I couldn't help but feel a little down about the fact that I wasn't fitting in. In the end I went exploring before grabbing a double vodka and coke in a nearby bar whilst waiting for them to finish gaming. This inability to get into the gaming spirit is something I’ve always felt sad about, particularly now as it seems to set me apart from most of the Furdom. For some reason I have huge bouts of self-awareness when I am around these games and I can't really shake it off. I'm willing to give most things a go but playing such games I feel too self-aware. I have had next to no practice on such things and I am paranoid I will just look stupid. Yet on the flip side of the coin, in the Trocadero I was all too aware that my non-participation could have affected Scorcher and Wolfie’s enjoyment and that had I been happier they may have stayed longer. Perhaps I’m just too harsh on myself.

By this point we had persuaded Scorcher to walk around in bunny ears, a bunny bob-tail and a long flowing rainbow feather boa that we had picked up from a shop in Soho some three hours previously. Whilst down there we also had had a few cocktails in the Admiral Duncan, a famous pub made more so in April 1999 when it was destroyed by a nail bomb, killing three people. It was a callous act that I have often dwelled upon so it was good to go down there and see the pub first-hand.

Three hours later in Lloyds we were accosted by three Russian exchange students who were enjoying Scorcher’s bunny impression so much that they just had to take pictures, much to the bemusement of the only male in the trio. They also begged Scorcher for his bunny ears to wear, which he obliged gracefully. We left them to fits of giggles as we headed to the Ku Bar and once more to the heart of London’s gay district.

I must admit the Ku Bar was good – a good mix of cheese and indie that only the hardened cynic would find intolerable. The company was also good, with everyone out for a good time. We met a few people with whom we tagged along for the rest of the evening but the night was predominantly made up of us spilling beer everywhere, playing drinking games that inexplicably involved clapping or getting told off by the bouncers for toasting marshmallows over the novelty candles they had placed on the tables. I mean what else were they there for? Decoration? Not bloody likely. We also marvelled at Scorcher’s impressive dancing – my does that man move J

At about 2am we headed off with our random friends to G-A-Y. We found a few were Dutch, some had relationship difficulties whilst most were very drunk. I nearly got run over by a speeding skip whilst ultimately we were refused entry into G-A-Y because we dared to turn up in a group.

So with tiredness setting in and the prospect of another morning of drilling ahead of us we decided to head back via a 24-hour Tesco’s for some Babybels and Dairylea Dunkers. I don’t know why, it just made sense at the time. But then most things do when you’re drunk. It must have been about three o’clock by the time we got back and without a Bagel Dispensary in sight we made our way gingerly to the room, anticipating what Wednesday would bring…

Tune in soon for the fifth and final instalment of “Through the Bagel Hole”. Will the intrepid young wolves check out on time? Will they manage to do a whole week of sightseeing in one afternoon? And most importantly would Lupestripe have a bagel other than one coated in cream cheese? Find out as soon as I can be arsed writing it.