Advance your token to Mayfair

Well, I suppose before I start I should apologise for such a long absence.

But I won't. Get stuffed.

I was thinking the other day actually, that when I originally started this blog, what seems an age ago back in April 2006, that at the time I didn't think I would be overseas any longer than about 8 months or so, and the plan was to return by Christmas. Then, I found myself extending my flight back home from December to April, and now I find myself back in the UK all over again. It's been a great experience to travel, and as Glen has repeatedly told me, one needs to make the most of the chance, since it won't come around again for a long time.

Making the most of it, by the by, is the whole point behind this return trip. My time already spent here was through winter - which isn't very conducive to travelling, so I worked instead. Result - I have now built up a nice little travel nest egg, and now I've got a chance to spend it. I'm aiming to finish up at work around the end of August, so while I'm still working I want to try and get away most weekends, and see the England that exists outside of London. I've got a few places in mind, so keep an eye on this blog for further travel related tales.

After I leave work, it's off to the continent. Christian is keen to head off into Eastern Europe for a couple of weeks in September before HSBC post him out to Hong Kong, so I'd definitely be up for that. Eastern Europe is one of the cheapest places in the world to go, particularly when travelling on the pound. Having someone who speaks German along will be a big bonus too.

Eventually, with any luck, I'll wing my way home after that - probably around October. I'd like to get home with enough time to spare to land a job before Christmas, if possible.

But enough of this rot - no-one cares what I'm planning in the future. I'm sure you're all wondering why on earth this blog has a monopoly themed title. The answer is simple.

The Great Monopoly Pub Crawl is an institution in London - because all of the streets and places listed on the Monopoly board are located in central London, it's relatively easy to reach all of them in a single day. That is of course, if you're not trying to drink a half pint of beer at each one - all 26 of them (22 streets and 4 railway stations). Factor that into the equation and it rapidly becomes relatively difficult. By the time one rolls up to Mayfair one is very likely to be roaring drunk, and probably won't still have $400 in his pocket to make an offer. Nonetheless, a group of about 20 of us, some from the badger, some ex-badgers and some randoms all got together at Old Kent Road at 10:30am, wearing our Badger Monopoly Pub Crawl T-shirts, and began our great beered up trek around London.

A pub crawl, while it sounds like fun, is actually pretty hard work. It starts out easy enough, but you can't afford to to linger at pubs too long, which means you need to set a decent pace with the drinking of the beer. I fell afoul of this a few times, as at some of the pubs if you were served last, the first people served would already be halfway through their drink or finishing. To make up for this I ordered a straight scotch whenever this occured so I could rapidly polish off my drink. This however, didn't do much for my sobriety levels by the end of the night.

You also need to be able to keep walking between pubs as well. Again, this is probably the hardest part of the event, especially towards the end, when you're tending to sway a bit, and wind up walking twice as far as you normally would, just from all the sideways motion.

Nonetheless, it was an absolute cracker of a day. We made it to Mayfair about 12 hours after we started, around 11pm, where I celebrated with a double Jack Daniels and then made a beeline for home before I passed out. That night, I lay in bed, feet aching from the miles and miles of pavement we trod, head spinning from the booze, and what was undoubtedly a silly, smug grin on my face.

Whoever knew Monopoly could be so much fun? My usual recollections of playing it as a kid was my sister crying foul after she landed on one of my hotels with only $2 to her name, and complaining because I wouldn't loan her money so she could pay her rent to me. (Anna's grasp of economics was never that crash hot.)

Now, for the photos.

This one was taken fairly in the piece as you can tell by the name of the road. We tried to do the pub crawl in order as much as possible, so I think by the time we got to Pentonville Road it was only our 3rd or 4th pub. Hence why everyone is still standing upright at this stage.

Here we have Pat, Dan and Dee. This was at Old Kent road if memory serves - already only one pint in and Pat's already looking trashed. I'm not sure how well he ended the night - being a South African and a Sharks fan he was pretty gutted when they went down to the Bulls in the Super 14 final which was being played on the same day, so he was hitting the drink pretty hard after that.

By this stage we were all getting fairly trashed. We did Vine street after we'd done the reds and the yellows on the boards, so we were about 3/4 of the way through at this stage. Vine Street is actually nothing more than a 20 metre dead end these days, and there certainly isn't a pub within coo-ee, so we just took the photo and moved on.

King's Cross station, obviously. We actually cheated a little bit - apart from King's Cross, the remaining stations (Liverpool St, Fenchurch St and Marylebone) are so far out of the way of the rest of the pubs that we opted not to include them. This was done to save our legs, and our livers

Yeah...by the time we were getting close to the end, some of the girls were feeling the booze. Alana here is politely asking the people in front of us to slow down a bit, and wait up.

Finally, it's not a good night out unless you've got girls groping another girl's titties.

I think that's as good a note to end on as any.