Week Dos - Just One Of Those Weeks
It was a week scarce on action but none the less not completely uneventful. There were few talking points but enough of the pretext, let's jump right into it.
The week come and went with only 1 trip to Barracuda, this is completely unheard of and i'm pretty sure the owners will be wondering where we are, not the staff of course, as we never leave a tip they are probably happy to see the back of us.
Now for the next bit I will give a bit of a backstory. There is a shop in Watford called Situls, I once went in there to buy some fairly tasteless skeleton cups, around $80 worth. I asked the manager/owner how much he could sell them for if I bought all of them, if there's one thing I learned from my trip to India it's that haggling is part of their curriculum. Expecting some sort of negotiation process the man said he would sell for $75, this was a poor deal by anyones standards so I went in at $50, he told me quite bluntly that "A man over there is about to spend $300".
For some reason the manager must have implemented a "one sale a day" rule and couldn't deal with us at the same time so I told him I'd go elsewhere, the greedy man gleefully ran over to the monied traveller and I left the shop.
Now that's out the way I will explain what happened more recently, Selina and I had just left Barracuda and were walking past when Selina decided she had a taste for something sweet, justice.
She walked in, picked out the least desirable object in the shop, which is hard when the shop is full of such useless crap, it was a paperweight with 2 footballers heading a ball, here is a picture so you can appreciate how tacky it was.
So she called over the same greedy man from before and asked if you could buy 40 of them for a football presentation, they are $20 each so naturally this man was overwhelmed. She asked if he had them in stock and if not then when could he get them for, he desperately reached for his phone and called his contact trying to get them in. Words will not do it justice but he ran from the cabinet to the till tripping over himself, dropping his calculator as he punched in 20x40, rushing round his shop, shouting at his wife to book those flights to Delhi and generally being painfully stereotypical.
He exhausted himself trying to get the details and confirmed to my sister a good price but would get get back to her soon with the delivery time, he pretty much begged for her to come back in 30 minutes, asked for her number, and even tried to up sell a guitar to accompany each paperweight, a natural combo I'm sure you'll agree. She assured him she would be back to order the goods and he thanked her as if she had saved his entire family from a burning tower block.
The only other event of note was the "early drinking" day on Saturday, the invite came about at pub quiz, Jon "I don't know why i'm friends with you lot" Hubbard came with his girlfriend, during the evening she said "Jon did you invite your friends Saturday" Jon looked like he had been caught with his hand in the till before quickly saying he was about to invite us.
So the day came and I arrived at Jon's house first, like a German at a beach resort I secured the best seat in the house then sat back and relaxed with horrible Polish Vodka, within the hour Alex, Droz, Duke, and Carolina all arrived and we made a dash for Bushey Station at around 2pm.
Now my memory of the rest of the evening is sketchy at best but I know we were in London, we went to meet Jon's girlfriend's friends, they seemed like a crazy bunch and we had a drink with them, at which point they may have evaporated or just left, I really couldn't say with any certainty.
We moved on to another place where women were literally throwing themselves at me, some people probably enjoy the attention but after the 40th lady asked for my number it got a bit tiring.
Jon unsurprisingly disappeared, it's become something of a character trait for him over the years, he leaves with no trace then will often send abusive messages to everyone questioning why we abandoned him. The train journey was uneventful except Duke and Carolina getting out about 5 stops too early, reasons remain unclear but I think all the excitement of the Jubilee Line was too much for them both so they needed some fresh air.
Alex and I powered through and went to meet the "older lot" at Bodega in Watford, we spent an undetermined amount of time in there and eventually moved on to Walkabout where we met our 3rd group of friends of the evening, the three crowns staff. It was a day to behold as Grant and Alex went from 2pm to 2am and through 3 groups of friends before finally calling it a night.
My night ended with an Uber driver of Eastern European descent calling me saying he can't find me and is going to cancel the trip, obviously the guy has been in the country so long he had lost the only thing which sets Eastern Europeans apart from the natives, work ethic.
I've dragged this out long enough, you will leave knowing that the following week was far more eventful, see you next time!
The week come and went with only 1 trip to Barracuda, this is completely unheard of and i'm pretty sure the owners will be wondering where we are, not the staff of course, as we never leave a tip they are probably happy to see the back of us.
Now for the next bit I will give a bit of a backstory. There is a shop in Watford called Situls, I once went in there to buy some fairly tasteless skeleton cups, around $80 worth. I asked the manager/owner how much he could sell them for if I bought all of them, if there's one thing I learned from my trip to India it's that haggling is part of their curriculum. Expecting some sort of negotiation process the man said he would sell for $75, this was a poor deal by anyones standards so I went in at $50, he told me quite bluntly that "A man over there is about to spend $300".
For some reason the manager must have implemented a "one sale a day" rule and couldn't deal with us at the same time so I told him I'd go elsewhere, the greedy man gleefully ran over to the monied traveller and I left the shop.
Now that's out the way I will explain what happened more recently, Selina and I had just left Barracuda and were walking past when Selina decided she had a taste for something sweet, justice.
She walked in, picked out the least desirable object in the shop, which is hard when the shop is full of such useless crap, it was a paperweight with 2 footballers heading a ball, here is a picture so you can appreciate how tacky it was.
So she called over the same greedy man from before and asked if you could buy 40 of them for a football presentation, they are $20 each so naturally this man was overwhelmed. She asked if he had them in stock and if not then when could he get them for, he desperately reached for his phone and called his contact trying to get them in. Words will not do it justice but he ran from the cabinet to the till tripping over himself, dropping his calculator as he punched in 20x40, rushing round his shop, shouting at his wife to book those flights to Delhi and generally being painfully stereotypical.
He exhausted himself trying to get the details and confirmed to my sister a good price but would get get back to her soon with the delivery time, he pretty much begged for her to come back in 30 minutes, asked for her number, and even tried to up sell a guitar to accompany each paperweight, a natural combo I'm sure you'll agree. She assured him she would be back to order the goods and he thanked her as if she had saved his entire family from a burning tower block.
The only other event of note was the "early drinking" day on Saturday, the invite came about at pub quiz, Jon "I don't know why i'm friends with you lot" Hubbard came with his girlfriend, during the evening she said "Jon did you invite your friends Saturday" Jon looked like he had been caught with his hand in the till before quickly saying he was about to invite us.
So the day came and I arrived at Jon's house first, like a German at a beach resort I secured the best seat in the house then sat back and relaxed with horrible Polish Vodka, within the hour Alex, Droz, Duke, and Carolina all arrived and we made a dash for Bushey Station at around 2pm.
Now my memory of the rest of the evening is sketchy at best but I know we were in London, we went to meet Jon's girlfriend's friends, they seemed like a crazy bunch and we had a drink with them, at which point they may have evaporated or just left, I really couldn't say with any certainty.
We moved on to another place where women were literally throwing themselves at me, some people probably enjoy the attention but after the 40th lady asked for my number it got a bit tiring.
Jon unsurprisingly disappeared, it's become something of a character trait for him over the years, he leaves with no trace then will often send abusive messages to everyone questioning why we abandoned him. The train journey was uneventful except Duke and Carolina getting out about 5 stops too early, reasons remain unclear but I think all the excitement of the Jubilee Line was too much for them both so they needed some fresh air.
Alex and I powered through and went to meet the "older lot" at Bodega in Watford, we spent an undetermined amount of time in there and eventually moved on to Walkabout where we met our 3rd group of friends of the evening, the three crowns staff. It was a day to behold as Grant and Alex went from 2pm to 2am and through 3 groups of friends before finally calling it a night.
My night ended with an Uber driver of Eastern European descent calling me saying he can't find me and is going to cancel the trip, obviously the guy has been in the country so long he had lost the only thing which sets Eastern Europeans apart from the natives, work ethic.
I've dragged this out long enough, you will leave knowing that the following week was far more eventful, see you next time!
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