Tourist Guide to London - Part 1

Tourists Guide to London - Part 1

I love London, I love London a lot. I love it so much sometimes I want to f*ck it, any part of it, a drain pipe, a knot on one of its trees, its a very special place. But the one thing that makes London extra special are you tourists. The ones who make the effort to come here from all over the world and bathe in our rich history and heritage. And in doing so, they don’t get in the way AT ALL, when you are trying to get home after a busy day in the office, oh no..

Us Brits are keen travellers, and always thoroughly read up on our destinations, to make sure that we fit in nicely and don’t bother the locals, and partake in the traditions, such as drinking at least 6 times more than the Government suggested safety limit (for Elephants) and projectile vomiting semi digested kebab meat and pitta bread into the street and, at the end of the night,  getting a mini-cab drivers fat fingers stuck up inside us like Orville the Duck.

In thanks for making the time to come to this lovely capital, I have decided to write a guide, an intimate and indispensable "insiders" guide to getting the best out of the best capital city on Earth, and, in fact the universe. Don't thank me, just read, digest, and get involved. You're welcome..

The Airport

Hey keen tourist, Heathrow or Gatwick? Nothing to see here, the treasures of London await you and are all but a short train ride away, but the fun starts now (unless you want to get out and have a look at Crawley, where, if you are lucky, you might see a child with fins, or even crab claws, otherwise, avoid..

This country was built on Comedy, I mean look at Harlow, Milton Keyns. Or Croydon for fuck sake, mental, well funny. To make sure your UK trip gets off to the best possible start, you can circumnavigate the painful border controls by making a "funny" as you step off the plane, shout, at the top of your voice, that you have a bomb, and drugs hidden inside machine guns. Some men will appear, you won’t see them laughing behind their helmets but they are. They will take you too a room where your comedy skills will be tested to the full by some actual men from the UK hit comedy show "Dad's Army" - He will have a dead serious look on his face, but it is your job to make him laugh, they won’t let you go until you have done so, did the bomb joke work? Try it again, think about your delivery, perhaps try it in a funny accent such as comedy Arab, as portrayed in every single Hollywood film with an Arab in it.

If you do make the guy in the suit laugh, they will take you to a room and thank you by putting a finger inside your anus, this is a tradition dating back to pre-Saxon times, pre-airport! Well done, you are a honorary Londoner! We cant wait to see you and do heel clicks with you on the "Lambeth Walk". Love a duck, apples and pears, fissures and stares, etc.

Public Transport

Make your presence known in London, by going to the busiest tube station, preferably at rush hour, and stand puzzled staring at the ticket machine pressing every button and jibbering in your native tongue "bu bu bub bu buub bu BUCKINGHAM PALACE bu buuub bu bub ANGUS STEAKHOUSE bub buu. COOL BRITTANIA" take 15 minutes, Londoners love queuing behind you and experiencing your different accents, maybe queue at the ticket booth and converse in very basic English to the overweight tube worker "Please I like to go Queen" or "Please Big Ben??" Londoners will be on hand to help you out with a friendly tut, or if you are lucky a "f**k off you c**t".

On the trains, make sure that you stand in the aisles with your suitcases sideways, spread out as far as possible, Londoners HATE sitting down, after a long day in the office with little or no human contact, Londoners like to stand tightly together and feel each other’s reproductive organs pressing into their bums and backs and pancaking their own ballbags against someone else.

In the City

Want to see some street magic?? The best way to do this is to head to Oxford Street and get your phone out and stare at it for a moment, within seconds it will be magically swiped out of your hand, you won’t even see who did it! London has many street magicians that make many things disappear, its free too! Unless you want the phone back? Thats easy too, give it a couple of hours and then just pop into a branch of CEX or Cash converters and they will give it back to you, for some money, easy peas. Dog and Bone, fuck a duck etc.

Need a knife?

One of the things London has in abundance are knives, for all occasions, opening envelopes, cutting bread, all the uses. You don’t even need to go to a shop, simply dress smart, get your IPad (which has a built in knife searching app) and head for Streatham, Woolwich, Brixton, Peckham, or Camberwell, just get the Ipad out, and someone will come and offer you a knife. The ceremonial (and traditional) way to receive this is slap their cap or hoodie off and spit on their trainers while shouting "hazzah", they will then give you the knife, sometimes several times.

Walking about

There are lots to see in London, erm, Bruckenheim Palace, Big Benz, The Two'er of Bumdon and the River Thymes. The best time to see all of these is rush hour, it is called rush hour for a joke (Bloody English sense of humour!) it is essentially the opposite, during the hours of 5 - 7 you are required (by law) to walk in slow motion, stopping at anything remotely photographable and standing there, blocking as many business people as possible from getting home (Brit blocking, see below). This goes double on entrances to tube stations (which are places where people are welcome to go to read large maps, congregate groups of tourists etc, but you MUST do this in rush hour).

Brit Blocking

The British traditionally don’t like to go home, this is a tradition that goes back to Anglo Saxon times where foreigners would invade and stop men from going home to see their wives/girlfriends/children. This tradition is celebrated every day thanks to hordes of tourists, who reliably meander slowly and make going over a bridge or walking down a busy path almost impossible, listen out for tuts and cries of "f***ing c**t" which is Saxon for "Thank you" if you get shoved, simply spit on their suit or shoes, they will then give you a high five (with a fist).

Eating

There are many places for tourists to eat inside London, well, 3 places, there is the Aberdeen Mistake House, MacDonners and Wetherspoons pubs, the good old English pub, make sure you get here for 5.31 and order your food slowly and in broken english, they wont serve you unless you get it spot on, if there is any doubt that you have not used the exact Queenz English your food will arrive cold and sparse, you have only got yourself to blame.

Do not drink the beer in the Wetherspoons, this cats piss is for scum London plebs only, drink only the coffee, the suited plebs will patiently wait behind you while you order your various hot drinks, ensuring at least one of them is made with soya milk.

Enjoy yourself, remember, that London is for YOU, not the pricks who live in it.

Part 2 to follow- Days out, what to do, and a more in depth guide to the importance of spitting and its tradition in London folk lore..

Commuting on the London Tubes
I’ve travelled on many public transport systems all over the world from third class in South Africa to the wonderful Paris Metro, nothing however dangerous, rickety and smelly can prepare you for the London underground as a way to start your day.
From the ancient Indiana Jones thrill ride that is Met Line, a ride so jumpy in parts that you literally inadvertently leave the seat flying upwards sometimes up to the height of a small ewok, to the daily crush of the Northern Line, which I believe carries the highest rate of ignorant elbowing self centred self preservist commuters.
Survivalists, who would literally elbow a pregnant pensioner out of the way to get that seat so they can sit sweep their fingers all over their obligatory IPhone like an arthritic octopus, and the routine obsessed OCD types who will read their broadsheet and eat their over priced pastry and drink a scolding hot black coffee directly over your balls (if you are lucky enough to get a seat).
No matter what side of the bed you get out of, what your stars say, or how motivated you are for a day in the office, a tube commute will leave you feeling abused, angry and cheated, and can even be so packed that the crush will leave you questioning your sexual orientation, its never a good thing when you can happily draw a perfect genital recreation sketch of the guy who was recently squashed up against you like a hardcore version of Brokeback Mountain.

For anyone with the pleasure of living in Clapham, which I believe is the closest thing to heaven on earth, the wonderment ends in the morning, when the SW12 set become the poor relations of the Northern Line and it’s a struggle to even get on the train at all, let alone find a tiny space just large enough to enjoy a panic attack in peace. Thankfully, and given the organised manner of the people of Clapham, they have evolved into Tetris shapes, and as the train pulls in that funny Russian music starts and people adopt their shape and cascade towards the door ready to fill every nook and cranny, if four people manage to get on at the same time, everyone speeds up as the level increases, the women are usually the T shapes, men with big heads the large L, sadly, I manage to fuck things up by simply being an ill fitting blob shape and mess the whole sequence up. The looks confirm that I simply do not belong in Clapham.

If you were to describe the daily horror of the commute to work to a complete stranger, say one of those Amazon tribes who have never seen anyone outside of their tribe (apart from Bruce Parry, who no doubt has been there and gotten pissed with them on what ever they drink or inject) they would assume it was some sort of torture, the very fact that you have to pay the highest prices in Europe just to get to work and get hammered to spam on taxes, just adds to the whole degrading daily locomotive sodomy. The only alternative is to cycle, to dart your way through crazed buses, cement Lorries and School run mums like some lycra covered sperm trying to fight its way to the egg.

Something happens to people when they go underground, the caring emotions switch off, must be something to do with being closer to hell/Australia, even when somebody plucks up the courage to regain their dignity and wrap themselves around the front (and sometimes back) axels of a speeding tube train, the horror of the entire event is greeted with an irritated tut. Anyone unfortunate enough to faint, which happens lots because its generally 35 degrees c 365 days of the year, is stepped over with even less grace than a dog turd. We have all done terrible things on the tube, there should be a Hague tribunal for people to be tried for their crimes, I personally have elbowed a midget into the air and refused to get out of the way for someone with Muscular Dystrophy (I didn’t know until he told me, I thought he was trying to play chicken with me?) and been massively sick and cleared an entire packed carriage.

Help is at hand though and this hell will soon come to an end, a HUGE investment into the tube infrastructure is well underway, hundreds of millions of pounds of investment has resulted in years of 100% effectiveness, effectiveness being that most weekends, 100% of trains on some lines are not taking 100% of passengers to 100% of their destinations. A look at the tube upgrade programme brings hope (hope that death will come soon) http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/10138.aspx
For example, the completion of the Bakerloo line works is due in 2020 and will result in an increased capacity of 57%, and an increased journey time of two minutes? That would assume you commuted the entire length of the track, unlikely and surely it would be easier to increase capacity by putting some more trains in service? Anyway, what ever they are doing, by 2020, we will probably be transporting like in Star Trek so they will be able to stick their 2 minutes up their warp holes. Look for yourself, yes the work needs to be done, but the expense to London business from people not being able to get from A to B is incalculable. You need to be the England Football team, or Bon Jovi to get the Met Line to run most weekends. Anyway, I could go on, it’s just a sad reflection on people of today, real men and woman laid these lines in far less time than its taking these privatised profit orientated firms to fart arse about and bring them up to date.