Week 14 in London

Week 14: 6 – 12 July 2015

The city of London was thrown in chaos from Wednesday evening onwards when Transport for London tube staff went on strike. Given the significant proportion of London workers who rely on the tube to get to work, the shutting down of the tubes meant that all these people had to end up above ground in some form, whether it was in their own cars, on a bus, bike or walking.

Brendan’s journey from home to work is fortunately on a direct bus route so he was mostly unaffected by the strike. Roslyn however usually catches an overground train to Victoria station before swapping to a tube for the rest of the journey. On the strike days, she instead had to catch a train to Waterloo and then walk an hour the rest of the way.

Our housemate, Nathan, had his birthday on the Sunday but because he and Michelle were going on a Croatian cruise, our flat ended up hosting its first birthday drinks and cake celebration on Friday.

Lured by the prospect of potentially winning £1,000, on Saturday we went on a scavenger hunt organised by Contiki. It was a little awkward when our fellow Contiki travellers turned London dwellers, Shaun and Amanda, also arrived for the event.  However slim the chances of us winning seemed, we didn’t want to have to share our prize and so we hadn’t invited them to be a part of our team. It seemed that they had felt the same sentiment, as neither group knew the other would be there.

We were given a sheet of vague and cryptic clues, relating to a range of locations and landmarks spread across London, the answers to the clues all worth different points depending on their difficulty. The challenge was to decipher what the clues meant, and make it to as many destinations in the limited few hours that we had, and post a photo of each one to Twitter.

Exhausted by the end of the day, we attended the mandatory post-hunt drinks for the final scores. As it turned out, we did far better than we thought we would although we were still a long way off winning. We’d more than doubled Shaun and Amanda’s score though, so perhaps we were better off by ourselves anyway ;)

After not eating all day, the 4 of us went across to Hammersmith for food and further drinks at Belushi’s.

We rose late on Sunday, caused by both exhaustion from running around all day Saturday and a slight hangover from Belushi’s. A few weeks earlier, Roslyn had found a girl selling her tickets to the sold out Ed Sheeran concert, which she snavelled up. So on Sunday afternoon, we headed across to Wembley Stadium to be a part of the 87,000 strong crowd. Support act Passenger was engaging and humorous, admitting to the crowd that he really only has one famous song (http://bit.ly/1j1JzPJ) and OneRepublic showed that they have come along way from Apologize (http://bit.ly/1jo0PvR), before the headliner took the stage. No backup singers, no band, just Ed amazing the audience as a solo performer.

Lately, it seems that all it takes to make Brendan a fan of any artist is just to see them live. He has now been to both Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, entering both shows fairly unfazed but leaving impressed and with far more interest in both acts.

Highlights for the week:

- Tube strike sending the city into a state of disaster

- Our flat hosted its first birthday cake and drinks

- Contiki scavenger hunt

- Dinner at Belushi’s Hammersmith

- Passenger

- OneRepublic

- Ed Sheeran!