“I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life…I can’t dispute it.” Bill Bryson

There are a few ratios or rules in travel which are immutable. You know the sort of thing. One should always endeavor to book one’s flight for an easy transit from checking out time. One should always check the reviews when booking a room in a pub in Birmingham. One should always check that the special offer isn’t more expensive than the standard offer. And always book flights that land at midday when entering a new time zone. That last one is particularly important.

And so, we found ourselves landing in London at 5.30 am with an entire day to stay awake through till we could sleep with the British and join Greenwich Mean Time. As we exited the plane, the zesty fresh fingers of northern winter air tickled my bare legs and flushed all the stagnant tropical air of Southeast Asia away.

We passed through sparsely populated corridors; we queued amongst stanchioned lanes designed for 100s but containing handfuls. And with very little scrutiny we emerged into Britian. We were greeted by the welcoming arms of a Costa  and immediately availed ourselves of coffee and prawn sandwiches. Then we ventured down to the tube where conveniently the Piccadilly Line took us directly from Heathrow to Tottenham, which is where Mary, our London host lives.
Mum reminisced about her time in London in the 70’s and the places she used to visit as they flashed up as being above us. We soon traversed the length of London and scampered up to a grey cold North London morning.
Mary collected us and drove us the last few blocks to her place. We conducted the appropriate English welcoming ceremony of a big pot of strong tea. We had arrived.

Mary left us for work and we watched some telly , had a Ye Olde English Donner Kebab delivered, showered , and allowed ourselves a wee nap on the couch till opening time.

I had thought about several plans to keep us awake but in the end the one that seemed most sensible was a wander around Tottenham and a couple of pints in local pubs.
We set off through the streets of North London, rich London vowels, chimed with rich West Indian ones and builders talked loudly into cell phones and people met and nattered on street corners. We passed Caribbean restaurants and Ethiopian restaurants and Turkish shops , and greasy spoon cafes and kebab shops.

We soon arrived at our first pub The Beehive. A 1930’s ‘Brewer’s Tudor’  pub that has managed to retain much of it partitioned room drinking spaces. Five Points Best was on and we took our pint and a ½ to the back games room.

Next up was the The Antwerp Arms which is a community owned pub run by Redemption Brewery. The pub was very pretty outside but had unfortunately fallen to the Farrow and Ball paint brushes inside. Surging electronic dance music filled the air. On the positive I was taken with a pair of young London mums with their bubs and toddlers meeting how Kiwi mums would over flat whites but here it was over pints.
Then it was an Uber home , and another beer before allowing the inevitable cloak of sleep to take us.