19 July 2019
Wet cold and windy
Inside Tottenham stadium, walking around china town and M&M's world
Now the real London has arrived. It has been cold wet and windy all day. The start of this evening was probably the driest part of the day, but now at 7:30pm, its pouring rain. So thats the weather update.
This morning I went to a brand new football stadium, for work, at Tottenham, which my spellchecker insists should be HOTTENTOTT because apparently hottentott is a word and Tottenham is not. The stadium is all shiny and smells nice (no pot pourri of vomit plus urine yet) with an amazing array of beer related amenities, including a bottoms up fast filling plastic cup system that can dispense 10,000 beers in 1 minute across the stadium, and the newest contender for the worlds longest bar. Beer consumption optimisation is a key metric. The cup filling thing was actually interesting to me, you slam a cup over a tap, beer fills from the bottom, you pull it off the tap and a magnet floating inside the cup seals the hole in the bottom of the cup, anyway thats boring work stuff.
This evening I went to Chinatown, which is still mainly Cantonese rather than actual China but very busy. Then I found an M&M's multilevel department store. Read that twice, I could not believe it, I had to walk the full length of every floor just to gawk at how large a chocolate themed store could be. They also had free bathrooms. Bizzaro candy covered chocolate place was more packed than the nearby multi level Harry Potter store.
And on that note, Harry Potter store was filled with Chinese people, but Harry Potter is banned on the mainland, as are all movies related to magic or time travel, so presumably mainlanders think Harry Potter is a true story.
Tonights pictures are really bad, grey skies, rain, had my hands full of fruit salad.
My walk from the tube station to the new stadium was a couple of kilometres, in the rain. Because why would a 62,000 person stadium need access to public transport? On my way I passed a shop cat. He was very sleepy.
Here is the stadium, unlike Australian stadiums at literally has houses attached. On all sides! Very weird.
I was baffled by the lack of room around the stadium.
I was early, so the cafe in the giant Sainsburys in the car park provided a spot to sit. Avocado on toast, 2 pounds! They do not grow avocados in England. We grow them in Australia, which must by why Avocado on toast costs more than a house deposit in Australia.
I broke various rules by taking this photo. The real grass soccer pitch is on wheels, and slides out of the stadium in three sections. Under it is a fake grass pitch for American Football games (NFL) of which they only play 2 a year. They constructed all of that for 2 games a year. The gantries over the pitch are heat / grow lights to help the grass grow.
Now we jump forward to the early evening, and this is in an area where 7 laneways meet at a pole that drunk people use to urinate on. I believe its called 7 dials.
Many pubs and shops in London are decorated with similar fake floral displays. This guy is phoning the royal sunflower appreciation association to report a licensing breach.
Inside the multi level Harry Potter store. Everyone is taking selfies with huge selfie pole stick things. I take a discrete photo without getting in the way of anyone and of course, some dork in a wizard costume that works there tells me in ye olde English 'pardon me fine sir, but cameras are not permitted in our magical establishment', to which I retorted, 'fine, then watch me disappear'.
Heres some Chinatown, its just like it was ten years ago but now has bubble tea.
More Chinatown, theres also a huge number of betting shops and a pizza shop.
The horror! The horror....!!!! Everything is orange and deep fried.
They still give out these free horrifically bad for the environment advertising newspapers at every train station in London.
The busiest part of town. Leicester Square, with its German cuckoo clock liberated from the Nazis of Switzerland.
Now for some photos of the M&M's store. I still dont understand it.
More M&M's.
Another busy part of town at Piccadilly Circus. Everything is a circus.
Random shot of grey identical uninviting buildings with big red buses. One of the red buses is green.
My dinner tonight was back to Leon, my favorite chain in London. Tonight I had Moroccan meatballs with rice and salad. Very nice. Right now I am eating my usual kilo of fruit salad. I dont know what to do tomorrow, I suspect it will be raining. Might be museum day. I am not paying $170 to take a train somewhere so I can stand in the rain and wait to come back again.