Well, it may feel like a long time for you dedicated readers, but it has sure as shit felt a lot longer for me. Between gigs, friends visiting, having the most important parts of my daily routine stolen unceremoniously, and having to move around at an extremely rapid pace, there truly has been maybe 1-2 free minutes of computer access where I could update. I’m here now, however, and willing to call it even if you guys are.

Back at the end of November and into the first few weeks of December, I was staying out at my friend Andrew’s place in Chesham. It was a nice, quiet place to be, and allowed me to relax and get a bunch of work done. I gave a somewhat comprehensive breakdown of life out there, but I now have pictures to back it up just to give you a sense of the area.

This is the road I walked down on a daily basis as I would make my way to the local Starbucks, where they would give me my “usual,” which turned out to be a bad thing. After 4 cups one day, I came home and literally could not move before getting sick for about a week. Turns out that qualifies as a shitty thing to have happen.

I moved back into the hostel game in preparation for several things, including the holidays. I was a bit skeptical about the prospect of spending Christmas in a hostel with a bunch of people I didn’t know, probably eating Wasabi peas for dinner and having a nice warm cup of tap water. Turns out that would be the least of my worries.

I was pumped to get back into London, mainly due to the rehearsing and to being able to see things like the Monument to the Great Fire of London. That started down their at the bakery on Pudding Lane, way back in 1666. I had one really shitty teacher assign a research paper to me on that topic, and the criteria for a good grade was checking out 9 library books on the topic. I think I subliminally told him to go fuck himself by way of embedding a short novel about how shitty a person he was. He gave me a C+. Turns out Google Books doesn’t count as a library.

Then tragedy struck. After staying at several hostels that I knew and was comfortable with, I had one booked across the street from the British Museum. I figured I would spend every waking hour in that place before the holidays, and then hopefully meet some fun people who would make Christmas not shitty.

This was a branch of a hostel chain that I had used before, and was thus very happy to see that they had the same security set up, which involved under-bed lockers that required a pad lock to secure. I, being hyper-conscious of my electronics, had several pad locks that I have employed successfully for 4 months now, and therefore, felt that I was in no danger when I entered the hostel that day. I took my spot, pulled out my computer, and looked around the room while chatting casually to a few people in there. Sitting in the middle of the room, however, was a guy that wasn’t saying anything to anyone. He was messing with a cellphone, and didn’t appear to have any luggage. While I didn’t consider it at the moment, when you’re in a hostel, sitting in the middle of the room is bizarre. He was there for a few hours, saw that I had my iPad and Macbook with me, and left.

Two Australian girls had taken to propping the door open with a shoe, and given that my room was one of the most easily accessible from the two doors (one of which was doorbell/passcode-protected), this did not bode well. Regardless, having seen and dealt with that before, I had no reason to ask them to stop doing that. I went out, bought some food, and returned to read and catch my breath after a day of getting around. I made my way down to the kitchen, and was drinking a beer before a member of the hostel staff approached me.

“What’re you doing tonight?”

Me: (looking down at iPad longingly, knowing my plans were about to be fucked up) “Nothing, I think.”

“You should come on the Pub Crawl! We’ve got a good group going.”

“Well, ok. That sounds alright.”

I agreed to meet them in the lobby in about a half hour. I go upstairs to my locker, where I place my laptop and iPad inside. I lock it, and head downstairs. This was 10:30.

We were on our way to Camden, which is kind of a punky little section that has a ton of bars/shops/clubs to explore, and I’m sure the latter portion would be very fun if I was a different person. Turns out, “pub crawl” did not mean going to a bunch of different bars and trying out awesome ales; quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. We went to one dance club, and we got there at 11:30, which in London time, spells certain death for getting home at a reasonable hour.

The dance club sucked, mini Becks bottles were 4 pounds, and I wanted to leave almost immediately. I humored the smallish group and hung outside for a bit before deciding to catch the nightbus back. One girl decided she wasn’t enjoying herself either, and asked if she could tag along. Crucial mistake. Damn this kindness of mine!

Turns out this girl had no idea how to buy a bus ticket. She thought it involved finding a kiosk, of which there were none. But we didn’t call our search off after 5 minutes. It took a fucking hour, before I just suggest asking the next bus driver what to do. He says we could easily pay on the bus. No problemo, even. I take my seat with the fakest fucking smile I’ve ever conjured up and wait to get back to the hostel. Pub crawl? Fuck you.

I walk into the hostel around 2am. I walk up to my room—which is pitch black, mind you—and open up my locker. I place my hand where I know my computer was when I left. Nothing. I whip my phone out as my breathing picks up and light up the cage.

My iPad and Macbook are not in the cage. This is my nightmare, folks—completely alone in a foreign place without my main information/work/entertainment hub. I run downstairs to the girl working the front desk, who just happened to be really nice, and tell her what happened.

Me: “My computer and iPad are gone.” I am keeping composed for the moment.

Her: “Oh my god. Well, no one has turned anything in since I’ve been working.”

(record scratch sound)….Nobody has turned anything in? You think I just came down here to get out of the rain? No fucking way in hell did I leave 2000 dollars worth of equipment just LAYING around for someone to pick up and return to the front desk.

She says she hasn’t seen anyone come by the front desk that is tucked far away from the main hallway. And they just buzz people in when the doorbell is rung. Security, huh? I ask if we can check the CCTV footage, which I for once am happy exists.

Her: “Oh, I don’t think anyone but the manager of all of the hostels knows how to do that. She’s sleeping right now. I’ll email her.”

That email went unanswered for the duration of my stay. The manager of the hostel, who was on the pub crawl, shows back up around 3:30am completely smashed and was actually more helpful than he was when he was sober, where he constantly reminded me that these were “professional thieves” we were dealing with, and that there was really nothing we could do. Turns out that place is a high traffic area for thieves, and tons of people have things stolen all the time. They told me the cops wouldn’t do anything, but I submitted a report anyway, because I was fed up with their bullshit. This was all on the 23rd of December, aka, the day before Christmas eve.

My friend Amanda was due to turn up on Christmas eve at Liverpool Street Station with Rosa, who actually was another UCLA-ite in her time. Customs held them up for 2 hours, which left me wondering what the fuck I should do at the station for much longer than I expected. It let me stew nice and long on a truly shitty situation. Even now, with a new setup thanks to my parents, who totally came through for me again in a true time of need, I still have the propensity to scream MOTHERFUCKER at the top of my lungs. Lots of work was on there. All of my photos. MOTHERFUCKER. (I’m in a Starbucks.)

So Amanda and Rosa finally turn up, and we find a place open on Christmas Eve that is still serving at 11pm. What type you ask? Why, a Chinese restaurant of course. And it was delicious. So that was good, and nice to see some friendly faces after dealing with the constant rigamaroll of assholes and not sleeping for 2 days straight. Nice way to start the holiday season.

I was still in the hostel where all my shit was stolen for Christmas Day. The hostel bought a bunch of food and actually made a really nice dinner, but in keeping with the trend, I had my appetite ruined by a drunk American redneck type dude who would pause every few minutes of our conversation to hit on the Chinese girls in the cafeteria, only to feel rejected by the language barrier and returning to our conversation with things like “Asian bitches are impossible.” Well, thats nice. He would say things like “The British Office sucks. I like How I Met Your Mother.” My god. There was a really great American guy there from LA who I was chatting with about airline travel, since he works at LAX. We both were sharing our stories about the TSA and how ridiculous they are, before redneck guy pipes in and says, “WELL I LIKE THE SECURITY. MY DAD WAS FLYING ON 9/11!”

“My Dad was flying on 9/11” is a sentence directly out of the Curb episode where Larry’s Rabbi had a friend who died riding his bike on 9/11. Turns out this guy’s Dad was just on a plane. On 9/11. Lots of people were, guy. He took it as some badge of bravery. I nearly vomited on him on purpose just to send a message.

Back to the meat. Amanda, Rosa, and I meet up on the 26th with plans to head to Brighton. The UK train operators were striking that day, so the 50 minute train was shut down in favor of a 2 hour bus ride through some nice, windy country roads. We arrived, and it was still awesome.

We returned after a few days to London, where we continued to explore. Places included the British Museum, Abbey Road, and the Tate Modern.

Then New Year’s rolled around. New Years always manages to be a pain in the ass because of the absurd amount of planning. This one was no different, if not more so, simply due to the fact that the London hostel scene was completely booked for this one night all the way back in late November. Why we didn’t plan ahead is beyond me, but what we wound up finding, for 25 pounds a night, which is double what I pay on a normal night, was a small place known as THE WEST TWO. Let it roll around on your tongue for a second. The WEST TWO. What does it mean? Two what? Is it West?

Turns out, this was perhaps one step above a housing project that is subject to frequent gunfire, forcing the residents to eat below the windows (I’m drawing from the Keanu Reeves classic Hardball). We had a 4 bed room, with a guy who said he was 26 (he was closer to 36) and doused the room with so much Axe spray that it was literally in our hair for the duration of the night. He said he was staying for one night, yet had 2-3 large bags, and had established a corner where he had a stock of Pringles, a few cans of shitty cider, and a bottle of Vodka. This was a mystery.

Being fearful of theft, the girls brought basically everything of value with them, and seeing as I had nothing left for him to take, only had to carry around my camera. We had plans to go to Camden again, by way of stopping at my friend Eddie, Adam, and Chris’ house, who were throwing a party. We ate some delicious jerk chicken, and went inside. Totally fun time, and it got the night started on a positive foot.

Before making it to Camden, we explored many of the bars around the Finsbury Park, including one where an awesome band was playing some African music that I danced around to foolishly.

The place we were headed in Camden is known as the Stables, which is an underground network of former horse stalls where a bunch of little shops are. It was a 50s burlesque thing, and after plenty of worrying on my part about not being able to get in due to my inability/lack of desire to dress up like anything even close to 50s burlesque, I was a bit tepid. Turns out, it was at the same night club I was at the night my computer was stolen, making that two occasions on which I was duped to going into the same place. But, after several whiskey cokes, I was having a wonderful time looking at my feet and making everyone uncomfortable as I, again, danced like a member of the Peanuts gang. Amanda and Rosa had fun, too. The tube was running for free all night!

2012, dudes. Let’s do it! FUCK THIEVES!