Saturday, 25th March
Last drinks!

Remember Andy, the bloke who didn't exactly dress up to welcome prospective flatmates? Well today I went to a flat that trod the line almost perfectly.

The Dawes Road Palace was just a few doors down from the Bubbly Becky. Three other blokes live there, all medical students. They hadn't tidied up a great deal, but they had done the washing up. The place didn't smell too bad, and they had left the inflatable tits on the fridge. Made the beds, girlie calendars (that's right, calendars plural) still on the wall.

Unfortunately, the Dawes Road Palace isn't available until 10th April, so it looks like I'm a non-starter there.

In the afternoon, me, Quacka and the two other members of the Quacka household trundled down to the local park by the Thames to watch the Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race. There were masses of people in this small park. A mini fair was going on, with a food stall, a bar that sold Foster's and Budweiser, (are there any English beers? There only seems to be Holsten, Budweiser, Guinness and bloody Foster's!) and over by the river bank there were some Morris Dancers! There was no morris minor in sight, but that didn't stop them.

There was a Jumbotron-style tv screen in the park, so everyone gathered round when the race started. "Come on Cambridge!" "Come on Oxfoooooooord!" "Carna Blues!" (guess who that was) All these terribly posh voices hollering and cheering, they had no bloody idea. Anyway, I don't reckon half of them had even been to Oxbridge. When the two crews came into sight, everyone rushed over to the river bank to watch them row past, then rushed back to the monitor.

The highlight for me was when, after the race, this plummy voice next to me said: "Typical isn't it, the year after I leave they finally win it!"

Medical students from Fulham rang me to say that the other people who had looked at the room were shocking, and perhaps I could stay there (sleeping on the floor) until the 10th of April. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

That evening we all went down to the local pub. Pubs are very much a sit-down affair in London. Tres interesting.

And they all close at 11pm. Weird!

No such thing as "kicking on".

So we went home, and watched Match of the Day! A British institution!