As I was checking my email, I heard some shouting from across the street. The voices were female, so I opened my window and peered out. I am on the 5th and top floor of this building, and they were across the street in a similar building at the same height. I shouted, and we held a conversation, establishing that they were sisters, German, and claimed to be 19 (but travelling with their parents? Suspicious). It was difficult to see each other very well, which naturally added to the mystery of the situation. They at first wanted me to visit, but later, either because I actually seemed interested, or perhaps the reason they gave (their parents next door, who they had thought were asleep, actually were not) they changed their mind. They said they would visit me at noon the next day, which was nice but I did not particularly believe. One of them was obviously more enthused than the other, your standard party girl/timid girl combination. It was very amusing to me, and since anyone with an open window and good hearing in either hotel could have eavesdropped, other people may have gotten a laugh as well. Certainly no one complained, though we shouted for 15 minutes.

In the morning, I was awoken at 11 by their shouting "halloooo!" I threw on some boxers and pants and went out. They were delighted by my toplessness, and we continued to chat loudly. They wanted to see more flesh. I said it was their turn. They dangled a bright yellow bra out the window. I asked if they wanted to see my tattoo, and they did, so I let the moon shine at 11AM over the street. Fortunately or unfortunately, no one looked up, so the gesture reached only its main targets. They kept asking to see my shorts (underpants?), and even held up a magazine featuring a guy in his briefs to make it clear. One of my favorite shouted phrases, after I'd gone inside to put in contacts and brush my teeth and such, was "Halllloooo! American boy! We want to see your shorts!". Also "We love you" was sort of sweet.

We even took pictures of each other, across the street, little faces amidst ranks of windows. I hope my picture comes out, it turned out to be the last one on the roll [It did. Boy I had good luck with pictures!]. Naturally I pushed for a personal visit, but they refused, which seemed sensible. After all, there is something delightfully mysterious about a distant flirtation like this, something that will only be destroyed by a personal meeting that does not turn out 100% perfect. They said something about having to leave.

We closed our respective windows, and I pondered. What the hell, life is short, its worth a try. Forget all that stuff I just said about mysterious. At the worst their hotel security will kick me out. I went downstairs and walked across the street and into their hotel. I tried to look like I belonged as I walked past the reception to the elevator. The receptionist gave me a look, but said nothing. It took the elevator a good minute to arrive while I sweated. As the door opened, out stepped two girls loaded with luggage, possibly german, possibly sisters, probably the faces I had seen at the window, and *definitely* not yet 19. I stepped past them and into the elevator, and I do not know if they recognized me. i was dressed differently and we hadn't had that good a view of each other. In any case, the doors quickly closed, and it took me a few minutes to go up and back down without doing anything obviously suspicious to the people in my area at any time. The girls had obviously been checking out, and did not seem to be in the lobby when I got back down. I returned to my hotel, happy to have tried but satisfied with the extent of our relationship.

This afternoon I did some errands, getting reservations for the Chunnel train to paris and then a train to pamplona to meet Mats & Riyad. I also got my glasses fixed, upon which carelessly I had trod (word order quite strange uses he). I wanted to perform some contact juggling, but unfortunately all of the places where there are lots of street performers are all concrete, no grass. Since I drop occasionally, I don't want to do a show on concrete, and while I had a towel with me, what I really needed was a 5 or 6 foot diameter circle of towel with a raised lip to stop a rolling ball. I decided not to perform, but had fun walking through the parks (of which london has some big ones) while contact juggling.

Before I went to the show (Reduced Shakespeare), I heard someone in the room next to me go outside. The three rooms of which mine is the center have a little area that runs outside their windows, big enough for one person to stand, with a concrete lip that is a good 4.5 feet high. Like a very very shallow balcony. So I leaned my head out the window and chatted a bit with a random british guy, here in town for an electrical job. He and his friends like to travel to Thailand, Nepal, and Asia, since the exchange rates are really good right now. Apparently they like the ready availability of drugs and prostitutes in those parts of asia.

The kindly fellow offered to roll a spliff, showing off to me a chunk of hash he'd smuggled in from asia. While doing so, he told me about his friends, who had just smuggled in 2 kilos of Nepalese hashish and sold it. Nepalese hash is very pure, nothing has been added to it to dilute it, unlike the cheap crap you might get on the street in britain. It seemed a little strange for him to be telling me this on the basis of 15 minutes friendship, but he was perhaps a little stoned, and I don't exactly look like a narc. I couldn't help but wonder if his friends have jobs or just run drugs - my back-of-the-envelope ignoramous estimate of the price of 2 kilograms of hashish (gross, but they probably didn't pay too much in Nepal) is $20,000 (certainly within an order of magnitude, probably half an order of magnitude). wow. So we smoked a quick one, and then I took off for the play.

Wow, Reduced Shakespeare Company was hilarious. Just the right amount of Shakespeare, which is to say not too much but rather more than none at all. I greatly enjoyed the show, I highly recommend it to you folks. Knowing Shakespeare fairly well helped for some of the bits, so you could understand what they were parodying. This is sort of obvious, like all satires or meta-shows, one needs to understand the source material to get all of the humour.

Afterwards I have returned home, and am shortly going to go to sleep. I think I may try to see wimbledon in the morning, or perhaps not, depending on when I wake up.

<< Expensive Lettuce << || >> Pamplona >>