I managed to have myself a pretty cool weekend.

Saturday I headed over to Hackney to go to a friend's going away party. I did mean to get there early enough to participate in a late-afternoon barbeque he was having, but a) I didn't really have the cash on my to buy any meat to bring (I could have used Tesco vouchers, but that would have meant taking meat across town.

So instead I headed out, meaning to catch the tube to Angel and then a bus to the party.

Unfortunately, the Northern Line was closed on the Bank Branch (and possibly will be next weekend... mental note: check that), meaning that I had to find alternate means to get to Angel. A Tube worker told me to catch the #43 off Princess Street. Interestingly, when I said to him 'Ah well, so long as it works when they are finished.' he laughed ominously.

I missed a 43 bus by seconds when I got to the stop. Which should have meant that I would have to wait 10-12 minutes for the next one, given that it was a Saturday.

Nope. the next 43 was about 40 minutes later. And in classic Transport for London fashion, two arrived at once, and the first one that I got on was going to terminate at Old Street, so I had to get onto the other one.

Fortunately my journey was actually pretty straightforward from there.

And the party was pretty cool. Lots of interesting people, friends I haven't seen for a while, lots of fun. And I even got two sausages left from the BBQ.

I wound up leaving just before two AM to head to Slimelight, since I knew that the host was going to turf everyone out at some point anyway, and people were a) starting to leave and b) starting to get rather loud.

Slimelight: same as usual, two electronic acts that weren't bad, crowds of people, the usual suspects dancing, and a couple of other friends who don't make it out too much lately. Mental note: since I'm writing for Virus Magazine now, I really should talk to a good friend of mine who always seems to know when the good industrial/electronic acts are going to play, vis-a-vis getting passes to cover them etc.

While I was there, someone mentioned that the giant slides at the Tate Modern were finishing after Sunday, so after Slimelight I passed up the invitation to an afterparty to head to the Tate (just to kill time I took a bus with friends down to Tottenham Court Road, and when they went west I walked East, meandering alond Through Covent Garden down to The Strand until I finally made it to a bridge across the river, and then along until I got to the Tate.

While in the queue I spotted a couple of the lawyers that I worked with at the Courthouse. How random is that?

Anyways, the riding the slides was a) deceptively scary and b) incredible fun. The sensation of flying down these metal tubes was intense, exciting, exhilerating and terrifying all at the same time. So much so that I went on the highest slide (level six) four times (it would have only been three, but an Italian documentary crew had me jump the crew so that they could send me down the slide with a digital camera in hard, to record the expressions on my face as I went down; they chose me apparently because I was wearing an intersting hat).

Because of the way that the sliding tickets were timed, I wound up having plenty of time between slides to explore the Tate, looking in the bookshop in the bottom floor, the gift shop on the second, and at least two of the exhibitions.

All in all pretty incredible. I should have started going earlier, I think, but it was still great fun.

After the slides, I walked across the bridge that links the Tate with the other side of the river (I forget which bridge it is... Millenium Bridge? I don't know) and wandered up to Holborn Station.

The tube took me back to Leytonstone where I collapsed into bed and slept for about fourteen or fifteen hours.

Today I am busy.

Apologies for the long post.

Over and out.

-J