Jon and I are fans of British author/personality Danny Wallace. In one of his outlandish autobiographies, Wallace writes about everyone having their “best stories” selected in their brains so they can whip them out when the time arises. We have agreed that this is, indeed, one of our best stories.
My junior year of college, I studied abroad in London. I lived in a small dorm called Furnival House, between the tube stations of Archway and Highgate. It was a cute little place out of the center of things, so a bit of calm far enough away from the craziness of central London. But an easy tube ride into the heart of the city.
During the day, pretty much anyone could wander into our dorm, no questions asked. However, in the evening, if someone intended to stay over, you needed to obtain a guest pass for them. Jon had stayed for a week when I had moved into the dorm. The night guard had been able to make a phone call and get the pass when we needed it. So even though I was intimidated by the guard, there shouldn’t have been anything to worry about.
Months later, Jon came to visit me for a few days on a Friday night. I tried to rush him past the scary guard, but he stopped us and asked for a guest pass. When I asked him for one, he insisted he couldn’t get it. He had no recollection of having done it before. Instead, he told me he could issue a one night pass, but I would have to obtain a long term one the next day between the hours of 8 and 5. Unfortunately, my study abroad program had a trip to Windsor scheduled for the next day, and I more than likely wouldn’t be around during those times. But I was so scared of the guard that I said nothing.
The next morning, my friend Jess and I left Furnival at 7:15. Jon sat alone in my room while I took a jaunty adventure to the queen’s favorite castle and the adorable surrounding town.
While roaming the street post-castle tour, we passed a Ben & Jerry’s storefront. A sign in the window advertised something called a meltdown shake. It involved making an ice cream milkshake, but heating it up. What a novel idea! I decided at some point Jon and I should try one.
We got back to our dorm at 5:30, half an hour too late to get the elusive guest pass. I considered running to the nearby grocery store, Tesco Metro, to pick up something for dinner, but Jon rewarded me with an attack hug when I got back. He was going stir crazy, and he was starving. My dorm room was incredibly small, with barely enough room for one person. Other than to use the bathroom, he hadn’t left this tiny space all day and really needed to get out. He decided we could risk going out to dinner. He would just walk back into my dorm with enough confidence to trick the guard into thinking he was a resident.
Someone had recently told us that around the corner from our dorm was the real Winchester pub, the one on which Simon Pegg based the locale of the same name in Shaun of the Dead. It had been his local when he lived in the area. We decided to make the pilgrimage and enjoyed our time there.
When I told Jon about the hot meltdown shake, he wanted to try one immediately. As an American Studies major, he loved Ben and Jerry’s, which I think we can all agree is one of the quintessential American contributions to the rest of the world. The only Ben and Jerry’s I could think of, pre-smart phones, so we couldn’t Google a location, was in Leicester Square. It was a small, hole in the wall kind of stand near places that sold discount theater tickets. They didn’t have windows or even walls on which to advertise the seasonal shake offering.
So Jon found his socially awkward self faced with the task of approaching the ice cream scooper and saying, “Do you sell… hot ice cream?”
Needless to say, the man looked at him like he had told him the sky was hot pink and it was raining flamingoes. He didn’t really hide his opinion that Jon was nuttier than wet walnuts when he said slowly, “Ice cream is cold.”
Yup. Got that.
Disappointed, we decided we still wanted a sweet treat, so we headed over to Ed’s Easy Diner. No longer in existence, this small chain paid homage to the American Ideals of Cheeseburgers and Milkshakes in a reflective silver and neon setting. We were still somewhat full from dinner, but we ordered a milkshake each anyway. Unfortunately, Ed’s had a minimum of £5 per person once you sat down. I went with the practical add-on to meet the minimum - a bottle of water. Jon, on the other hand, went for onion rings.
When our shakes came, we were shocked at how massive they were. They were served in a full glass with a side of still-full-shake-mixer to top up your glass. We sat at the counter, drinking slowly, our stomachs expanding further than we were used to. The onion rings on top of that were tough going for Jon. The end result was massive chest pains from fat consumption. At that point, he just wanted to go back to the dorm and lie down.
So we trudged back to the tube and took the forty minute journey back to Archway. There was a rather steep hill we had to climb to get back, and it was hard going without a tummy full of milk shakes. We were exhausted and nauseous by the time we rolled into Furnival House.
As we walked through the front lobby, the large security guard called out to us through the window. “Guest pass?”
Crap.
I explained that I literally had classes all week and could not get a guest pass. That I had been out during all hours when getting a pass was possible that day. Guard man was having none of it.
“I told you yesterday you had to get one!” he yelled at me.
“But I was out all day!” I yelled back.
“That’s no excuse!” he shouted.
“No, it isn’t,” Hon told him. “It’s an actual reason.”
“Look, w have nowhere to stay.” I’m not even from this country, I thought. “Can you suggest some hotels in the area?”
He shook his head and just insisted we leave. I ran upstairs and shoved some basic necessities into Jon’s backpack - underwear, toothbrushes, toothpaste. I ran back downstairs and angrily stormed out. I get that we were breaking some rules, but now what? What were we supposed to do?
Jon later told me that in a very uncharacteristic move, he flashed a wad of cash at the guard and said, “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” But he wasn’t biting.
Jon ran out with me, and we were as clueless about where to go as each other. We finally decided to test our luck in Piccadilly Circus. On my first trip to visit Jon in the UK, we stayed in a cheap, no-frills hotel there. Yes, we had to walk down the hall to use the bathroom, but you couldn’t beat the location. However, on that random night in February, no luck. All the rooms were booked! We asked for directions to another hotel, and they told us to try Leicester Square.
So we walked off in that direction, but we couldn’t find a single hotel there. We continued walking up Charing Cross Road and ended up in Trafalgar Square. Eventually, we found our way to The Strand.
The Strand is one of the fanciest streets in London, including hotels like the Savoy. (Stay tuned for a crazy story about that!) One of the first things we passed was a Ben and Jerry’s storefront - and I felt justified when we saw a sign in the window advertising the Meltdown Shake. It did exist! We’d have to go back for one the next day.
Directly across the street was a Thistle Hotel. We stopped in and were met with another fully booked place. We tried two or three more places along the way, and they were all full.
By then, it was getting late and we had been walking for well over an hour. Jon speculated that hotels weren’t letting us in because he looked scruffy. He proposed getting a cab back to Furnival House, where I’d go to bed and he’d sit on the steps outside until morning. There was no way I was going to let that happen.
As we neared 1 am, we found ourselves wandering aimlessly. New York is the city that never sleeps, but London definitely does. It starts heading to bed around midnight when the tube shuts down. Yes, you read that correctly. The tube. Shuts. Down. At midnight. Things get darker, quieter, and slightly more sinister.
Somehow, we found ourselves in the Victoria area. We popped into one last hotel there, but no one was even manning the front desk. We might have dinged the bell to get someone’s attention had it not been for a sign telling of the prices - rooms started at £250! Couldn’t afford that one.
Back on the street, Jon and I came up with the same insane idea - getting a bus back to his place in Swansea, a 5 hour bus ride. At least we’d have a place to sleep! But like apparently all public transport in London, the bus AND train stations were closed.
We were cold. We were tired. We were utterly defeated. Jon made the same suggestion he had made earlier about sitting outside my dorm, and I cursed him out. Not my finest moment, but we were both miserable. Unsure of any other options, we were resigned to a minicab (because even regular cabs stop running in London, and figuring out the Night Bus system isn’t the easiest, so minicab, which is a night running cab system, it was). At nearly 2 am, after being on our feet for probably something like four hours, it was a relief to sit down. We reflected that the walk itself had been a relief since it dissipated to tightness in Jon’s chest.
Jon decided that when we got back to the dorm, he was going to beg and plead, possibly even cry, with the guard to have a heart and let him stay. I was too numb to even be afraid as we walked up the steps and approached the door. I let Jon go in first to try to make his case solo, on the chance that my presence would set the guard off again.
I waited for Jon to come back out with his tail between his legs. I painted images in my head of us sitting on the little stoop watching the sun come up together, my head resting on his shoulder. I gave him a full five minutes or so. Then I cautiously entered the lobby, wondering what kind of screaming match I was walking into.
It was silent inside, and there was no one in sight. I couldn’t see Jon, and I couldn’t even see the guard in his office. Suddenly, Jon’s head appeared around the stairwell corner, and he frantically waved me forward. I dashed to him and up to my room on the first floor.
“What happened?” I gasped. “I didn’t even see the guard.”
A manic laugh burst out of my boyfriend’s mouth. “He was asleep!”
The man who wouldn’t let the perfectly safe guest, who had stayed in the dorm before, rest his weary head had no trouble leaving our building open to any old riff raff off the street at 2 am. Excellent. I certainly felt safe after that!
But at least we got a ridiculous story out of it. And a place to get hot ice cream.
Which, incidentally, was excessively unremarkable. 1 out of 5, would not recommend wandering dark creepy London in the middle of a cold night to find.
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