Hello, and welcome to the official Matthew post of the RinUKnion*. This will be telling it from my point of view, for two main reasons:

1) I was the mose important person there, and
2) I have close personal experience with what I did, and feel I can best represent me.

Dateline: my house, 5:30am.

I wake up, and manage to close WinAMP within a few clicks. After appropriate ablutions, I get on a train to London.

*boring train bit removed*

I get in to Euston station. I know I have to get to Elephant & Castle. Fortunately, the tube is easy to understand. You look at a map for a moment, find where you are and where you want to go, then look for a pretty colour that links them. That's the easy part, yet people still seem unable to grasp it. Never mind. The difficult bit is actually *using* the tube. You have to explore miles upon miles of underground corridors, battle like-minded travellers through foul-smelling rooms, and then finally emerge in a station remarkably similar to the one you left. Murkon's Refuge players, take note.

So, I'm in E&C. I have to get to some church. Apart from that, I know nothing. I use my 733t m4pp1ng madskillz to sense my way around, and then finally give up and call wintermute. It turns out that I had been heading the right way all along, and that I'm on the other side of the island. Within a minute, I'm where I should be.

Zarniwoop. When I first met him, a number of thoughts ran through my head. Most of which were how to try to not tell Gahalia that she's ugly. After a brief introduction, I am corrected and the layabout turns out to be one of the Brits. Phew, saved there.

We wait. Beasty turns up. Gahalia and Friend turn up. We leave.

We head toward the Thames, talking about nothing in that way that Rinkies do so well. Then a bit later, we turn right around and head back in order to meet Friend of Gahalia's internet friends. We feared for her, because internet people are axe-wielding psychos. After far too long, they found us.

This is when the stalking started. Ice cream vendors began to follow us everywhere we went, tempting us into a 99. We resisted for now, and went to a handy Weatherspoons for lunch. Mmm, fish and chips. wintermute had a half-coke-half-orange drink that looked like curry. Zarniwoop was very, very tired. He was also starving himself, so we ate in front of him. Eventually, we left.

Gahalia spotted a Mini and commented with some glee that she hadn't yet been run over.

We walked on.

And then we shopped. We gathered around various clothing shops and tourist traps while the Americans went inside and invariable emerged looking slightly disappointed.

Sweets were distributed, including weird sugar-based Smarties. We responded by buying a round of 99s and then raided Tescos for Fruit Pastilles, Polos, real Smarties, and the elusive Cake of Jaffa. wm's smashing-orangey-bit radar helped a lot there.

We found a stone bench, and figured it was close enough to a rock to climb on. Picture forthcoming.

Zarniwoop made one football reference too many, so we wrapped him up in a blanket and threw him onto the Northern line**.

The rest of us went to Harrod's, world-famous Very Expensive Shop. It's big, and it's not really a shop. Imagine a mall made up entirely of small, fancy fashion shops. Each has its own design, its own colour scheme, its own stock, and its own piped music. Now remove the mall corridors and stick all the shops next to each other. It's like some crazy Sim/Theme Shop, even down to the ludicrous prices. There was an amusing sign suggesting that we "Eat at Mo's." It'd cost an arm and a leg to get served a finger buffet. We had a McDonalds instead.

Next, we went to Leicester Square and decided to catch a play. We chose the Complete Works of Shakespeare by the Reduced Shakespeare Society. Summary:

a) GO AND SEE IT.
b) "Reduced" means "condensed." This is the ultimate Book-A-Minute. Less of a Royal Shakespeare Company Lite, and more of a Jolt RSC. On crack.
c) Romeo & Juliet can be done in seven minutes.
d) All of Shakespeare's comedies can be condensed into one, three-minute montage.
e) It is possible to see four versions of Hamlet *after the interval*. The shortest was 2.5 seconds, the longest a bum-numbing 20 minutes, and the weirdest minus one-and-a-half minutes. As in, 90 seconds, but backwards. Kenneth Brannagh would be turning in his grave. Sorry, *should be.
f) I can't describe it well enough. It is truly remarkable and good and so on.

Then we were hungry, so we went to Pizza Hut. (More American branding, huh?) The discussion turned to more Rinkie things, including tipping and the current state of the Forum. I left 10p tip, simply because all I had was 11p and a load of smarties that had exploded into my change pocket.

Then I went home because I had to go home. After far too long on a train, I got in and wrote this post. You read it, and you replied.

Matthew

* Or RU:UK, UKRU, EuroRU, etc.
** Note: It is a criminal offense to throw people onto the tracks. It would destroy the Kit Kats, for one thing.