Sunday evening, and I have only an hour before Torchwood starts over on BBC Three. Rare for me to have a relatively quiet weekend planned, only to find myself having not spent any time on the computer until late into Sunday evening. Surprisingly a few stories to fill you in on with the antics from my weekend. Let me begin with Saturday evening in Brixton. For the record, I was not feeling great, having even decided to rest for about an hour in the afternoon to build up some energy for the night. In any case, I headed out around 6.40pm and caught the 7.17pm train, having just missed out on the earlier train by a few minutes. This was actually a blessing in disguise as it was semi-fast, only stopping at Beaconsfield and Gerrards Cross. It meant I would get into Marylebone around 8pm and gave myself around 30 minutes to get over to Brixton. I was far too conservative with my estimated time of arrival, it took me less than half that time. As I came back above ground, I called home, it was 8:13pm. Then I had to find Brixton Hill and the venue. I headed in the wrong direction at first but eventually found my bearings only to discover it was quite a trek. Perhaps half a mile or so? The worse thing was I was heading in direction I thought was correct but with no real idea if the bar would be around the next corner. I tried calling Pav several times but it kept going over to answer phone. Eventually I came up and saw the sign and knew I was in the right place. There was a small side road, with parking spaces but still no sign of Pav and he was not answering his phone. I waited outside for a good fifteen minutes, waiting for him to arrive but in the end opted to go inside and get a drink. The bouncer, who had been standing outside for a while was a character. He was obviously foreign, perhaps even from Eastern Europe (he had been on the telephone when I had arrived) gave me a stern look as I walked up to the door. How are you, was the question. I looked at all the bruises on his face and responded quickly, “Fine, how are you?” He gave no response (perhaps doormen are not allowed to show true emotion) and just opened the door to let me in. Waiting for Pav, I took in the venue. He had told me on MSN earlier in the week that it had been fully refurbished. This was not an accurate description, far from it. The place was in a major transition. Going from the Queen Vic to a trendy dance bar, but it was stuck, somewhere in between. Do not get me wrong, it was a dance venue, with a big dance floor in the back complete with projected screen. However, there are certain signs (in this case quite literally) that indicate that this place is still coming together. Signs (of various descriptions) printed off on landscape A4. Including one behind the bar, “CASH ONLY, SORRY”. A bit of a joke if you ask me.

Pav did eventually arrive with entourage around 10.30pm, and after a drink got himself ready for his set, which was from 11pm until around 12.30pm. Some good tunes, but unfortunately it was dead. Not surprising really, when you consider we are a week away from Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, it was great to spend a Saturday night out and about, rather than being at home on the computer. Pav did the place jumping, but it was his first time there and difficult to really get a feel for the place and the crowd. Although I was told, he had become the first resident DJ to play at Southside Bar (set list. Around 1am, we left to go to the Ice Bar. However, I now know that the bar in exclusive Mayfair closes at 1am, the same time we were leaving. Never mind, it was great driving around central London at nearly 2am, holding Pav’s N73 which was our navigation device. However the Bluetooth kept cutting out, losing connection with the Nokia GPS unit. Pav had to keep rebooting the device and re-enabling the Bluetooth and we eventually found our way around. Although, I was just shocked how busy the roads were at this time in the morning. I expected the streets to be packed with late night revelers but not this number of cars (including a silver Ferrari). In the end, we drove around Piccadilly Circus and out towards the A4 and home. I got home around 2.50am and went to sleep, I was shattered. It had been a long day and I had another busy day ahead, I just did not know it yet. My sister is studying her Masters at the University of Sheffield and we went to pick her up. My Dad drove on the way up, and I thought he or my Mum would drive back but in the end it was me, but we will get to that later. The drive up was quite good actually, the sun was shining and I had grabbed the camera to take some pictures. Plus, we had the TomTom onboard, giving us accurate ETA for the 160 mile trip. Midday was the time on the screen and as usually it was perfect. We hit a bit of traffic on the M1, just before Leicester. There had been an accident with two lanes closed. A Nissan Primera had hit the central reservation and then spun through the gravel and landed on the hard shoulder, facing the direction of on coming traffic. So strange that on a weekday, this would have been blasted across the radio stations, but on a quiet Sunday morning, it just did not register, even though the traffic was at a standstill for a good twenty minutes. Thankful no one was hurt and the traffic was moving quite quickly afterwards. We were listening to Radio 2 to begin with, Steve Wright and Love Songs, but we quickly turned it over to Radio One, as things started to get a bit too mushy for my likely. Chappers & Dave were presenting the Sunday Lie in, covering for Vernon Kay. Listeners were allowed to choose the music and then after some stupid decisions, such as Flashdance, someone with a brain cell text in with a request. The moment I heard the opening bars, I put the volume up. It was Beat It, by Michael Jackson. We pulled up outside my sister’s apartment just after 12pm. It was good to see her again and this was the first time I had come up to see her flat. Impressive, even if it was a strange maze of rooms, with various shapes. We then almost straight away headed over into the city centre. It felt like a long distance but the downhill cobble streets made the journey quick. I stopped every few minutes to take some photos. (Some of the best which I have uploaded to a FlickR set). This was my first time in this part of the world, but it was perhaps the worse weekend to be there. Seven days until Christmas Eve and busy was not the word, even for a rather lazy Sunday afternoon. Food was on the agenda and we looked around for somewhere to go. Somewhere different from the usual visit to Pizza Hut. We walked around for perhaps an hour, to eventually settle upon Las Iguanas. It was the other side of the city, built underneath a new luxury flat complex. It was absolutely dead and the restaurant just had two other customers, a middle aged couple. The food was very good and filled me up before we headed back into the city centre for some shopping. I was not really in the mood to be honest, but it was nice just to walk around and relax for a bit, before taking on the two hour drive home. There was of course the opportunity to take some more pictures, including the big ferris wheel, erected in the main square. We headed further into the city centre and to some old market stalls. My Dad walked into one selling football memorabilia and asked if they had any Arsenal paraphilnalia . “Yes, Emirates, I have my last one here, £15!”. Of course my Dad could not resist bargaining him to bring the price down but in the end he didn’t budge but I am very happy with the gift.

No where on display on the Arsenal web site or Armoury shop have I seen theses two images of the stadia together. There tends to be the image of seeing Ashburton Grove in the distance from Highbury but never a picture from 1949, together with the image of the new home, still under construction. My plan is to get an autograph on the photograph before I finally frame it for display. The frame colour? There could only be one – redcurrant.