Stu’s Birthday Weekend
Back in December Stu invited us all out to London to do something for his birthday, plans fell along the lines of all gather up and lark about London round 2pmish on Saturday, and then go have tapas somewhere.
I was quite looking forward to the idea of tapas as I’d never been before, I mean not properly while out. I had always had a cool casual view of tapas though. That kind of thing where you go out with some mates, have a drink and have some finger foods and just chat and catch up about life. I liked that idea.
Though turned out this tapas experience wasn’t going to be as relaxed as that…heh
Of course the weekend kicks off with the usual gathering up at Kazzie’s place…
Friday - A Night of Stu’s favourite things
Around this time I had just got my job at Next, and I made sure I got this weekend booked off so I could go down for this event. Thing was this had been kinda planned for a while though I had always been uncertain of whether I could attend or not. I kept debating it’s worth and well it was pretty expensive travel and all but with some the knowledge of work I didn’t have to worry so much.
I had a shift that Friday and once I’d finished I sped off down to Kazzie’s in the car. I remember it was pissing down with rain at the time, and my car started to be a temperamental bastard while traffic was an utter gay. Meanwhile people (Stu, Bob and Alice) were gathering at Brent and Kazzie was getting itchy feet about fetching them.
I managed to convince her to wait till I got to hers though, as I knew Brent would be open a bit till late still, and well I didn’t want to wait around for them to return.
I finally made it to Kazzies and we jump into her car and go to fetch the others. Meanwhile I was pretty starved and rang ahead to instruct the others to see if they could find me some food though my hopes were dashed as they said things were closing up now :/
We make it to Brent and find everyone huddled near an entrance, Kazzie does a spectacular bit of parking by driving across two disabled places while we load everyone up. I gave Stu the load of glowsticks I’d brought him and Bob gave me a lifesaving pack of COOKIES! FOOD! Which I nibbled on and helped me not to die.
From there we headed to Leisure World where we (well every one apart from me) played a game of bowling with the barriers up though so there was some fun bouncing action ha. I was without my camera :( As it was back at Kazzie’s so alas this is a dull(er) bit without pretty photos to look at for you all
There’s a funny moment when I realised I’d left my phone somewhere, so me and Alice go back to the car for it, I find my phone lying on the wet ground in the rain right outside the car door ha…God I was so lucky, as it still worked fine and hadn’t been stolen.
But the best bit was when we returned inside and went to go towards the arcades bit, the guy IDs Alice, which I would understand because she is young and still looks it, but then the dude turned to me! And asked me for some too, I bemusingly say that I’m 23 mate as I dished out my ID and he was quite apologetic - ha.
So yeah that was Leisure World, and after bowling we head over to Tescos across the way for some snackage and then ingredients for a fried breakie in the morning. I also brought some cupcakes for Stu ha. While Bob offered to get Stu some champers as it was his 21st after all.
Then we go hit the usual food haunts near Kazzie’s place, first with the intention of the kebab/pizza shop place as Stu had said he could murder a kebab, though somehow ended up in the chinese ordering grub there. I got some chow mien and sweet and sour sauce though I think I paid far too much for it. Gay.
Back at Kazzie’s we eat while somehow ended up watching some Nigella haha - score for Stu. Then we crack out the bubbly, while I get out these cheap sparkle candles I brought and stuck them all in the cup cakes. I got the candles lit and we sang happy birthday to Stu in the dark then he blew them out and made a wish (I think).
I was rather disappointed by the sparkle of the candles I’d brought though. As I had expected mega sparkler type action but instead we just got some random sparkles now and again. Gay. Though amusingly they were very hard to put out, ha they kept relighting themselves, and Stu kept puffing and they just kept relighting hehe.
Oh yeah and I take my threesixtyfive shot at the moment with the help of Alice and Stu. I think this is a shot Alice took though.
Also wrestling ended up on TV and we watched that for a bit before getting bored and went to head up onto the pc for the launch of the Muse Board Advent calender that Kev, me, Stu and kinda Bob had been working hard for for the past few weeks before. Launch went well and all.
Not much else happened after now, we did get all quite antisocial upstairs but eventually we got the wii on the go and played some Brain academy Girls Vs Boys god dammit we kept losing :( Kazzie ended up playing Sonic on Bob’s psp though and was getting upset/scared by it ha bless. (0_o)
Soon it was time to turn in as it drew late and considering the full timers have had a full week of work they were pretty exhausted by then. So matress was set up and we winde down slowly with lots of random DS action. Until Kazzie and Stu headed up leaving me, Alice and Bob to crash downstairs.
Saturday
I can’t remember why I woke up, I think it was because someone was twittering quite early and so I was getting the alerts. None the less I awake and there may have been some gaming action? I forget…though I do recall me and Stu go wake Kazzie. Whom the both of us knew by now was a pain in the ass to wake in the mornings.
We do all the usuals, I mean we do impressions from Charlie the Unicorn, and shout and pick up Peanut and chuck him on the bed and so forth. She barely stirs, and I have flash backs to Stockholm where I thought she was dead if it hadn’t been her body breathing movements. In the end I go for a bath and left Stu to it, apparently he’d lifted up the mattress which not only woke her but also resulted in her banging her head hehe.
Once everyone was up and getting ready etc, we began to sort some friend breakfast.
However there was a bit of a dilemma when it was discovered that despite Kazzies double insistence there were NO beans at hers! Which was a bit annoying as all since we did check purposely consider getting beans at Tescos but stopped by Kazzie’s double insistence. Anyhow no one wanted to go get the beans…until in the end Bob did go heh.
I was a bit concerned with the idea still though, I mean we had to meet the others in London later and we’d be severely delayed if we had this. Though there we were, me and the guys in the kitchen prepping the food and all. It turned out pretty cool going, quite chilled out as all the food went on to cook and I took charge as fried egg girl. Erm I mean the girl that fried the eggs - yeah.
I don’t know why, but I always end up doing the eggs, I think it was because some people didn’t like fried eggs - and I of course think it’s wrong to have a fried breakfast without fried eggs! So I thought well okay I’ll fry myself some, which then results in me offering to do other people’s. So there I was trying to fry eggs in a small frying pan using some cake slice thing as a spatula….Stu had took the role as the main cooking man, and he dealt with all the meat stuff including sorting us some absolutely awesome bacon goodness mm.
The table was laid out nicely by the girls and the food was brought and dished out well. We could have done with more bacon though ha, as everyone fought for loads of it, but what mattered was I did manage to get my two Lincolnshire sausages (they are the daddy). We also sorted a small plate of grub for Kazzie’s mum who had been a bit unwell of late, and Kazzie was rather pleased to tell us that the fry up was the first meal her mum had finished in ages.
I take the opportunity again to take my 365 for the day, I looked so daft doing it ha.
As proven by Bob’s onlookers perspective shot…
I can report breakfast was awesomely yummy and gooddd
To London!
We headed off to Brent rather stupidly late, and heh well, Stu was now being chased up by others asking where the hell we were…alas we were trying to get there as fast as we could. This time I drove us to Brent, and I parked as fast as we could before we could walk it to the Tube Station and be on our way…that was…if it weren’t for a slight delay made by Kazzie wanting to buy something from Claire’s…
You see there had been talks before about chipping together to get Stu something, some options revolved round trying to get Stu to get himself a DS. Including getting him just an M3 ha, or as we settled on, getting him some game vouchers. Though in the end Bob was willing to just go all out for the DS itself. This was cool, but when could we buy one?
I devised a plan, kinda, which was basically we knew at Brent there was a Claires Accessories next to a Game, plan was, we’d drag Stu into Claires as Kazzie is pretending to look for something while bob does a sneaky and goes to buy it.
So we conduct the plan but of course it’s carried out soo lameee, ha I mean Kazzie was looking and she just couldn’t think of what she was looking for, she kept trying to get Alice to help by saying “You’d seen it haven’t you?” and eventually I had to make up something on the spot, which was to say it was kinda like a tie, with holes and safety pins in (of course I’m trying to think of something that only Kazzie would want to buy) - which come to think of it sounds totally lame. Stu gets rather impatient with us haha, and makes us go ask someone, we pretend we did but we didn’t hehe. Though by then bob had reappeared and we set off on our way again.
I check with Bob to see if the mission had been done, and it was, he got the black one though mentioned he could have got silver but I said that nah black was good. (I remembered Stu slagging Bob’s white psp at some point so I knew he wouldn’t want black).
Eventualllyyy after much phafting about we meet the others in Funland and all was well again ha. Okay…we were two hours late…but it wasn’t a problem in the end. Stu kept ripping it out of Kazzie and telling everyone about her silly excursion to Claire’s ha, it was quite bad considering the real point of the venture - though I personally think that Stu knew we were up to something (I don’t think he expected a DS though) and wanted to see if he could make Kazzie crack. If not then he was just a mean bastard haha.
The first thing we do is all go on the dodgems, apart from Breast Bob who ended up guarding all out stuff and taking a few photos.
We lark about a bit longer there and soon decided we should probably head to the tapas place. So led by Aino we headed off to La Tasca, strangely enough they had closed one of the roads for some mastercard spending spree thingy, and so found ourselves walking down the main road heh.
Finally at La Tasca we all look at the menus and try and decide what to have, Aino makes this group suggestion of getting the mixed tapas and then two big dishes of paella (ella ella ey ey) which worked out as 10 quid per head. Being clueless I decided that was cool, and went with it like the rest of us, apart from Blee and James who ordered separately.
We order some drinks, and everyone goes mad for a bit of sangria. We also started presenting cards and such to Stu. Bob gave the card he brought that me, Kazzie and Alice had also signed.
Then out comes the daddy present, Bob brings out the DS and Stu’s pretty damn joyed about it. He was quite chuffed and joked how he was going to open it now to find it’s an empty box ha. So yeah that went down well, and it was a nice gesture by us lot, amusingly though the day after he finds that his mum had also got him a DS haha. Just typical!
So after ordering we just sat about and chatted, I was rather delighted as a bowl of olives appeared before us. They weren’t destoned though, but they came with this little dish that had a section for the stones - cool. I did a bunch of photolising, and had found myself sat next to Breast Bob and Stu, with James and Blee opposite.
The tapas appears first, a crazy bunch of little dishes that appeared out of nowhere and it was a bit of a fight to try and get a taste of everything, especially since the food was being placed near Bob first ;) I did get a bit of a taste in the end though I think, some good things here and there but not enough that made me moan in pleasure, the same sort of pleasure when I had that dessert in the Italian back home heh. Anyhow they got demolished happily and then the paella (ella ella eh eh) appeared next, steaming away in giant black dishes. There was wayyy too much for all of us, even with Bob.
Everyone tucked in like crazy, and I found Bob was disappointed to not find a prawn ha, I had managed to pick one up though and I took a while to consider giving it to Bob since he would enjoy it more than me. I do in the end and I pass it to him on a fork, though in transition he drops it :O I think something inside him cried at that point and he actually scrambles about to find it, rinse it and then still eat it haha…
The paella was pretty damn yum though, I preferred the meat one to the veggie one because it just tasted better. Alas we ate our fill as much as we could and drank more sangria, I know we left shit loads of paella (ella ella eh eh) behind though :( What a waste! I would have asked fof a doggy bag ha.
After eating we chatted some more, and played about with the leftover sparkle candles that I brought with me. Including a game of trying to put them out without blowing them. Oh and more random photolising…
Including my favourite photo of the weekend:
Paying up and heading home - Well…
Here’s the crap bit. The part where you pay the bill. Now usually in these group affairs this shouldn’t be a problem. I usually find people tend to pay a bit extra than usual but not in this case…The bill in total for all of us was about £200…granted there was a lot of sangria and the paella wasn’t cheap and so forth. But fuck me that was a lot of money. And so people starting chucking in money into the kitty, but every time Stu counted the total was so damn short every time. Not even like a tiny bit, but a massive bit…
Something had gone wrong right? I checked the bill and noted the extra 20 quid of service charge they’d kindly whacked on without telling us. Annoyingly they only added it for large parties of people. Rubbish!
It got pretty tense as we it was a struggle to pay the bill, until Bob stepped in and just said he’d whack in most the rest while everyone chip in a pound and that would sort it. It was obscene though, because as I recall both Alice and Bob had ended up chipping in a stupid amount extra. I felt bad for them to have to do that, but glad at the same time as it dealt with it once and for all. I also felt bad to not be in a better financial position to help out more either.
After the rubbish of the bill, it kinda put off people from the idea of tapas again, ha - well Kazzie keeps going on about how traumatised she was :P I just think that tapas is alright you just need to know how to do it right!
We head off into the city again, we check out a few shops and was going to go to a pub, but instead ended up in a starbucks where I got some yummy tea and we all chilled out with some mega DS action. Slowly we bid farewell to people though, I think Blee and James left first, and before we knew it the rest of us decide to head our own ways too.
We spilt up at the tube station, me and Kazzie going back to Brent for my car and all, the others heading towards Victoria.
Me and Kazzie got back to the car and I was distraught as the thing I was most paranoid about happening did happen…we were locked inside the multi-storey car park with no way out :/ SHIT!
I whizzed about up levels and down levels, and eventually we spot some cleaner guy inside the building part, Kazzie jumps out to go talk to him and in the end he tells us to ring the help point. So she goes to buzz it, and after a talk returns to the car to say to wait by the entrance and the guy on the end was coming over to let us out. Phew…
Of course the plan is to act as dumb females, well I didn’t have to do anything, Kazzie did the talking ;) she told the guy that we’d been to visit a friend and had asked someone before if it had been okay to leave our car there, and they had told us it was okay. Alas blantant lie though he let us out telling us we had been lucky that we weren’t clamped.
Onwards and outwards! Woo we were freee!
So I dropped off Kazzie and grabbed my stuff, finding a scarf that had been abandoned there, I figured it might had been Stu’s and twittered about it, while Kazzie was pissed off that her net was down again.
None the less I had to make leave, I had been called by work about coming in on Sunday and I accepted because there wasn’t much point in staying over another night. So off I went into the night, enjoying what I loved best, a spot of late night driving while exhausted and sleep deprived heh…
And that was the muser celebration of Stu’s coming of olde :D
Tags: london, meal, musers, stu's birthday, tapas