Australia Day in London

I just spent my first Australia Day out of our pie eating, beer guzzling, Green and Gold wonder land..... and we managed to cover just about all of those bases.

We kicked off celebrating Australia Day in London the same way that we would do at home, with a few beers listening to Triple J's Hottest 100, although because we were doing that in London we actually kicked off at 8pm on the Friday night.

I remember hearing number 27, running out of beer and drinking Jamesons and Dry in slightly over zealous proportions, and glancing at a clock with 3's 4's and 5's, but I can't quite recall what number 27 was or which order the numbers were. Judging by my recent light weightedness in the drinking area it was most likely 3.45, but my hangover in the morning definitely screamed 5.43

Oh yeah, the Morning...... Head thumping, feeling queezy, and wondering how that little midget got into my room and shat in my mouth again.

The only way to start a hungover day that requires social interaction and a bit of drinking is.... well...... to start on it again.

I opened up a beer and mixed up 4 eggs with chilli, tomato's, bacon, mushrooms and cooked it in about a litre of oil. We sat in the kitchen and had a few more drinks while Lauren got her Green Tree Frog costume ready.

Lauren Greaves as a green tree frog

We left the house and headed down towards Lauren's friends party, only to bump into another one of her friends at the bus stop along the way. We all looked pretty Australian, wearing just about all green with Australian flag tattoo's and wearing thongs (yes thongs, not jandles and not flip flops, we call them thongs).

3 London Aussies.......Myself, Sarah Francis and Lauren Greaves

Sarah had never been to a Walkabout Pub before, and I was desperate to see the tail end of the last test against India, and what better day to do that then on Australia Day.

Surprisingly the Walkie was pretty quiet when we got there, although it was still before 12 so that might have had something to do with it. I grabbed the first round of a VB, Ted and a meat pie with sauce which came to about £8.75, but the barman was sooooo blind that he did a shot with someone else, then skulled a cocktail in a bottle, and then gave me all my money back but in change. Go you good Australian Lad!!!!

Sarah Francis enjoying a VB and Meat Pie on Australia Day in London

We sat in the pub, on a table as you do, and talked shit for a few hours. Each time I went to the bar I returned with only drinks, yet every time Sarah went up she came back with promotional hats and Aussie flags.

Me and Sarah Francis, spot the Aussies!!!

After a couple of hours we decided to kick off to see the other girls, a good idea at the time which eventually took us in an hours round trip right back to where we started.

Fortunately in between I had an argument with a bus driver and refused to get on the bus, big loss for the driver (and I now look back and think "idiot!"), which then meant we had to wait 17 minutes for the next bus, but fortunately there was a pub on the other side of the road, which of course we grabbed a couple of pints at, which of course led us to missing the next bus again.

We decided to regroup and head back home to have some steak sanga's before heading back out into Clapham to see Lauren. Unfortunately after a little over 12 hours out on the drink, and a late night the night before we promptly ate the steak and both fell asleep in the lounge room.

At the end of the day I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to, but I still got to spend it with my very cool house mates and had a ball (even if Gary Mills and Madeline Gowlett our NZ and UK representatives couldn't be there). All in all I still got to do everything I normally would (except actually play cricket), except I did it in cold weather.......... but still in thongs!!!!