From Wirreanda High to Chinatown, London

Yesterday I spent the afternoon walking the streets of London with my old high school friend Andrew. It’s been 12 or 13 years since he left Morphett Vale, South Australia, for England, and hence it has been just as long since we last saw eachother. If memory serves me well, I was possibly the most annoying friend Andrew ever had, so I was humbled and gladdened by his phone call a couple of days ago. You can never tell how things will turn out when you meet an old friend after such a long time, particularly when that time has stretched between the last of our teen years and the end of our 20’s. Fortunately we both grew out of our tragic obsession with roleplaying games and miniature painting well before the close of the millennium and didn’t spent the whole day aimlessly reflecting upon our respective past lives. No, we instead stood around Piccadilly Circus pretending to be young preachers spreading ‘The Word’ and sold about 35 bibles at a quid a piece. My Dublin accent isn’t as good as Andrews, of course, but I managed to chat up a nice Irish year 12 prefect as she was ushering her latest band of protégés across the Regent Street intersection. I’ll leave it up to you, fair readers, to decide whether or not this part of my story is true. I’ve been invited to Andrew’s place in Reading next week, which promises to be a pleasant excursion into one of the ‘slower paced’ sections of England. I’ll report back here, as always. In the meantime, here are some photographs I took as I walked home from Westminster Bridge last night. Sunset came at around 4pm.