The Godfather

The other night I had dinner with my godfather at his flat in London. It was a lovely evening, though he plied me lots of wine (relatively speaking for me... I think I had TWO whole glasses in three hours) and put me on the tube a little on the late side. Most of you probably don't have a map of the tube in front of you, so suffice it to say that I started out in the NW area of the map, and was trying to get to the NE area (the map does not exactly correspond if you overlay it onto a map of London, so you can be duped into thinking things are close or in a direct line which aren't, because the tube map looks that way). He told me that the best bet was to go into the heart of the city and then change to the Victoria line, which would take me back out to where I wanted to be.

Sounds good. Unfortunately, when I got out of my tube in Oxford Circus, I heard the nice British man on the loudspeaker announcing that there would be no more trains going on the Victoria line that evening. Yes, a choice four-letter word came out of my mouth. Luckily, being a tourist, I had a map with me that actually had bus routes on it, so I looked at that, and hopped back on the tube to take one more stop further into the city to Picadilly Circus where I could catch a bus to take me home. Picadilly Circus appears to be London's version of Times Square, so at the late hour of 11:30 (I haven't been out that late since I don't know when!), it was absolutly packed with people (a few of them even speaking English).

I found the bus stop, checked the times, and saw that my bus would eventually show up. I saw that another bus went almost all the way home, so when it arrived I hopped onto that. It was pretty full, but not packed, so at the next stop I had a clear view of the altercation that ensued right in front of me. Some English guy was yelling at and pushing another guy to keep him from getting on the bus. The other guy had a cut over his eye and blood all over his face. The guy eventually let him on the bus, and the rest of us just shifted a bit further away. Whatever had happened earlier in the evening, the man was definitely past the point of being belligerent by now, so everyone just carried on with their conversations.

As soon as I saw my proper bus trailing the one I was on, I hopped of and switched. That bus had the distinction of driving by all the pubs as they let out, so a lot of red-cheeked, glassy-eyed people were getting on. Who ARE all these people and what are they all doing at midnight on a weeknight?

I eventually did get home, but I was reminded that there is a good reason I don't go out much. I also am thinking that my godfather might need to be stripped of his duties (whatever they might be).