A Trip to London

I've promised for a quite a while to produce a blog account of what happened on my recent(ish) trip up to a Politics revision conference on the 10th March in the capital. It was a great day, for a number of reasons.

I apologise if you see this more as "fluff" blogging, but I need to honour my promise to write this. It's done in a lighthearted fashion deliberately. Some of you may find this interesting, some may not, but at nay rate, I hope you enjoy it. We'll move back to more "serious" blogging in later posts, but lets have some fun!

But first, lets meet the various members of the team, the Glyn A2 Politics Group 2008.

The Team

	Luke Brook Renowned for not being able to hear well in class, although does provide some funny/useless banter.
	Matthew Dorrill Our unsung hero, usually predicts dire exam results for himself but then goes on to outperform others in the class. Good stuff.
	Elliott Downes Dark horse, who somehow got the class interested (well...) in tattooing. Does reasonably well in essays and is a quiet soul.
	James Heimers Did well in the pizza contest, surely nothing more need be said? Could have driven us to the station and avoided the playground scenario entirely but didn't.
	Richard Holliday The embattled Politics Captain, who has a tendency to make throwaway remarks that come back at inopportune times.
	Matthew Threadgold We never really expected him to make it to A2, but surprisingly comes out with the funniest controversial comments in class.

The Day

First, I think it would be a good plan to start with how the day unfolded. Yes, I decided to wear the question-mark shirt from my Doctor Who costume, as Elliott had asked me to. Which did get some funny responses, but overall it was nice and light-hearted. i think everyone saw the fun in it and that it made the day slightly more memorable. But what would do this to an even-more obvious extent was the incident in the playground on the trek from the school as a meeting place to the train station, where I managed to fall in some mud. Not a problem, but it had rained the previous night and it managed to almost-ruin a pair of jeans. It took three washes to get the mud out. But even I saw the funny side of this predicament, and I did manage to get most of the mud dried on the Tube train.

I don't really remember the trip up there being too eventful, apart from it being rather cold as I had to lose my jacket thing as it had been caked in mud from the prior incident. And, unlike the last time, we managed to get off-peak rail fares so I could easily say that was another added bonus.

I also find it quite humorous about how little of the actual conference we attended. First, we arrived late as James, Matt, Matt and Elliot decide to take a late breakfast in a pub in Euston Railway station. Even now, I wonder what possessed the architect of the 1960s station to put in an old English pub but there you are, though Matt Threadgold was none too pleased about the wait for his meal or the incinerated sausage. But, still... we did eventually bunk into the conference, and it was not quite as exciting as the one in November; no guest speakers or politicians, and nowhere near as many attendees. We did pick up the guide, we did sit around for three lectures and we did at least try to listen (however, Elliot had other ideas and thought it amusing to aim a laser pen at the speaker's bald head. It was.)

What was also quite an amusing occurrence was the pizza-eating contest that we had at the Pizza Hut in Covent Garden. Though, getting there was a story in itself, pitting the wits of Elliott, Threadgold and Luke against myself, James and Matt Dorrill, who decided to part ways at Euston. And even though technically my team did arrive at Covent Garden first, we decided to wait around the tube station for the others, who had been, presumably, delayed by issues on their part of the Underground system. But, it turned out they arrived at Pizza Hut while we returned to the tube station. I shall maintain to this day that it was a moral victory for my lot.

Anyway, here are the results of the contest, analysis will follow:

It was a dead heat, but still, we had around 90 slices of pizza among the six of us. I think some of the main highlights of the pizza eating contest were:

• The sheer amount of pizza consumed. We only got the buffet, and I don't think they expected us to eat so much.
• Matt Threadgold suffering an inopportune bout of constipation near the climax of the contest. Interpret that as you will.
• The number of refills of Pepsi consumed by James and myself, around 4 litres I'd say.
• The bill, paid for in full by me due to making inopportune "crazy" promises to pay for everyone. It was £40, and it hurt. Though, we did all have fun so maybe that justifies.

I think to conclude this was a great day out, memorable to say the least! Even though little happened with the actual conference, we did have quite a laugh roaming the streets of London for a day, and I think it's brilliant that a group of people, who were initially I think wary and unsure of each other actually did this without major catastrophe. So, guys, hope you liked your time in the spotlight on my blog, and good luck with exams and university!