She’s Got a Ticket To Ride. Unfortunately, there aren’t any trains in service

Saturday we had planned to meet up with John’s college friends for their annual Christmas extravaganza. We were supposed to meet in London, at a club near Oxford Circus. John checked the directions before we left so he would be confident in his abilities to get us there.

We decided to get off at the tube stop before Oxford Circus (Piccadilli Circus) and walk from there in order to see the Christmas decorations. This turned out to be a less than perfect idea, as it was very cold this weekend and there weren’t really very many Christmas decorations anyway. There were some lights over the street that went on for a long way, but it wasn’t really anything to get excited about. None of the shops were really decorated or anything. After walking for a while I got so cold that I had to go into H&M and buy a hat. I was getting an earache from the cold.

When we got near Oxford Circus we started looking for the club. We walked for a long time and never ran across it. We turned around to see if we’d gone the wrong way, and we still didn’t find it. Called some of his friends and they couldn’t tell us where it was. We went into a random pub to ask directions, and when I walked in I saw Gemma’s netball friend having a drink right by the door! Pretty random considering we both live in Basingstoke, were only in London for a few hours, and it was a small pub.

We finally found someone who could point us in the right direction, and as we were heading off we passed Paul (one of the guys we were meeting) and his girlfriend, who were also not having much luck finding it. Between the four of us we finally managed to find it.

The night was a lot of fun. Everyone was in good spirits. The boys gave their usual jokey gifts to each other. Caroline and I were trying to avoid any talking about the X Factor, as it was the night of the final and we’d each taped it and didn’t want anyone to spoil the results. Click the picture to the right to see more photos from the night.

The night went really quickly, and before we knew it it was time to go. The last train to Basingstoke left at 1:05, so we left the club about 12:40. Got to the tube station and it was shut! So obviously the underground does not run as long as the national rail lines. This was good information to discover at the end of the night, especially when it happens to be -5 degrees outside.

So back to the club we went. Luckily most people were still there. We found Steve and Ruth and they kindly agreed to let us stay at theirs for the evening. Thinking about it now, it’s really lucky that Ruth drove and I wonder how everyone else got home as they would have been dependent on the underground as well.

So we piled into Ruth’s car, and promptly got lost trying to drive through London. It didn’t help that we kept having to pull over so Steve could be sick. While we were still driving through London we had to pull over about 3 times for Steve, and instead of just leaning out and being ill he insisted on getting out of the car and walking into various alleys so we couldn’t see him in order to be ill. The only thing this accomplished was us worrying about him (obviously the alleyways of big cities is not the safest place to be at 1 am) and John getting out to find him. We finally found the motorway and only had to pull over onto the hard shoulder once for him to be sick.

The next morning the kindly drove us home, which is about ½ hour from where they live. The upside of the whole fiasco with the trains was that we got to see their new house, which is lovely. Saturday night we had been going on about how we had to get together in the new year and go to their house, and how the girls would have to set it up because if we left it to the boys it would never be arranged. So John was boasting all morning about how we’d said the boys couldn’t arrange a time for all of us to get together to see their new house, but they’d managed to do it in a very short time, blah blah blah.

Sunday afternoon Michelle came to Basingstoke with her new boyfriend Bruce. We enjoyed meeting him, seems like a very nice guy. We went to a pub for lunch and I had a ginormous plate of mussels. They were delish.

They couldn’t really stay for long after the meal, so when they left John put on the footie. Later we watched the Colts lose their first game this season. That was upsetting, but good to have gotten that loss out of the way now as (hopefully!) opposed to in the playoffs.