Satyrday

I met the ever cheery and grandiloquent Dave in Trafalgar Square on Saturday morning. The sun was shining, Boeing 747s drifted by serenely and comparatively silently overhead, a small boy with a large cumbersome black plastic visor attempted to return the serve of a virtual-reality-based Tim Henman, a spongey running track wove through the yellow plastic corporate banners, athletic types wandered around in purple spandex, and a really irritating man with a microphone nattered gratingly through loudspeakers above it all.

So naturally we sat down and had a coffee there.

We caught up on news, gossip and international marriage visa applications, as old friends are wont to do, and then we went into the National Gallery to look at some pictures which were hanging on the walls.

We noticed that the little annotations besides the paintings were written in a similarly senseless and diverting style as Doctor Pockless; occasionally writing something bloody obvious, or something which actually seemed to be contradicted by the paintings themselves, and when we passed one containing the phrases 'magnificent beaver' and 'caressing her fox-fur muff' in the same sentence, we concluded that writing painting blurb must get pretty dull at times.

From Trafalgar Square we meandered down to Embankment and then walked along and over the river to the Tate Modern where the resounding memory is of standing watching a film of Punch (and his friend, Joey) stroking, prodding and feeding a guinea pig (before they fought to the death over it). People make livings out of this sort of thing. I applaud their audacity.

Over the river again and wandering up Fleet Street, we discussed the need, now that we were feeling suitably cultural, for shopping and beer.
In the Walkabout near Covent Garden we discussed, tentatively, what might be my Stag Night...I'm not a big one for the whole rowdy male troupe event, and a fair proportion of my friends are very female, so I think it will morph into 'Deer Night' and 'Stuart! Get The Fuck Out Of The Country Already!' party.
We shall see.

Dave bought a caribena. For his climbing. In a climbing shop. Everyone else in the shop was very skinny, whereas I looked like I had made a meal out of the people in the last skinny-person-shop I had walked into.

We went to Tin Pan Alley so I could buy a new set of strings for my 28 year old Spanish acoustic guitar (who will probably need a name at some point - suggestions, anyone?) and we passed, of all things, a small, open-fronted café bar with a jazz duo playing. They seemed, in fact, to be exactly what the White Stripes would have been, had they formed circa 1953. We gave in to our raging need to look cool and enjoyed a couple of pints sitting at a table outside on the pavement, listening to the bouncing, bassy jazz, and watching the lively visual spectacle that is a street with twelve guitar shops, two drum shops and one Jobcentre.

"To Camden!" we cried.
We emerged onto Camden High Street and wandered up to the lock past the markets as they were shutting down, and the watered mews. Frowning men stood nonchalantly next to stalls of magic mushrooms as police cars cruised by, the streets buzzed with a hundred different fad followers, and we searched briefly and in vain for a pub still doing food. In the end we ate in a dirty, decrepit joint called Tasty Corner, which, as Steph pointed out later, is 50% right - it is on a corner.
After Dave and I had enjoyed a pint of Kronenbourg 'Blanc', which had an eery hint of fruit, as though there was a pineapple chunk dissolving at the bottom, Mark, Steph and co arrived and joined us on the balcony overlooking the canal.

More drinks were had, the national rail system was blamed for prostitution, and vague wishy-washy plans made for coming weekends.

All in all, a Saturday well spent.