We are family!

I got all my sisters second cousins with me!

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it... but it's true, I met all two of my second cousins while I was in London, and it was ridiculously fun. Like, probably against many odds, I think I would be friends with these people in real life. By that I mean, I've been to family reunion(s) before where I've been forcibly subjected to hugs from people I've never met before, and I'm like, 'Why do I have to hug you? I don't even know you.' But I did it, because they are my family and I'm supposed to hug them. This was not like that.

Billy and I met for drinks on the Saturday that I got into London. We both brought reinforcements in case one (or both) of us turned out to be awkward slash creepy. So, with assistant friends A and M in tow, I set out from the hostel to meet the boys near Oxford Circus. We were staying quite a ways out of central London, on the District Line which (we later learned) is pretty much one of the shittiest, more unreliable tubes lines ever. We waited for a train. And we waited. About 17 trains went by on the other side of the track towards Cockfosters. We cursed Cockfosters.

Cockfosters! Why! (Implied fist shaking)

Finally, finally, a train came, but it wasn't even going all the way to our stop. So we had to get off and wait again. Ridiculous. We did (about an hour and a half later) make it, at which I called Billy for directions to the pub from the station. This was our conversation (summarized):

Billy: Where are you?

Anne: Just leaving the station, okay, I can see TopShop.

B: TopShop? Okay, walk away from TopShop, and away from the Station.*

A: Okay, wait, away from the TopShop. I see an H&M, too. Should I walk away from the Station between TopShop and H&M?

B: Um, walk away from both TopShop and H&M.

Needless to say, we were not going the right way, and this conversation was, in fact, spread over two or three conversations. We decided to just meet in front of TopShop, which was good, because we were very much walking away from the pub where we were supposed to meet. Luckily, just getting there turned out to be the most painful part of the evening.†

It was great. We talked about music, the arts, nerdy stuff. Billy is a drummer/drum teacher (I guess there must be some kind of artistic gene in the family), and I think there were only one or two awkward pauses in conversation, initially. We had to leave the first pub around 11... because they were closing! Wtf, London? Gruff (Billy's friend) got us into this 'member's only' club thing. We got into the upstairs, which was a pretty small, crowded room, and all of the seats were taken, but they were playing some pretty awesome music. At this point, A and M were fading fast, so we just had one drink, and headed out.

Then we faced the catastrophe of getting home, which I described in a previous post. But look how happy Billy, Gruff and I are while we're waiting!

L to R: Gruff (real name Gareth), me, Billy

It was a ridiculous wait, ending in a bus ride and taxi home, and I was forced to exhibit my limited break dancing skills as entertainment. I thought I was being all clever when I said, 'I can't do anything on the sidewalk without cardboard.' But then some shopowner had put out a big box of cardboard right behind us. So I had to.

This entry has gotten really long. I'm going to start another one to talk about second cousin numero dos, technically brother numero uno.


*He did give some specific street names at this point, but I don't remember what they were, and it proved useless in any case. Why? Because you can walk in, like, 8 different directions "away from the station."

†Save, trying to get home after midnight on a Saturday night in London.