The Most Pointless Journeys of My Life
Created | Updated Apr 14, 2005
I'm sure everyone has had their fair share of pointless journeys, but at the same time I'm convinced that no-one else in the world has them quite as often as I do. Ironically enough, writing an article about each of these journeys does in fact give them a purpose, albeit a simple and previously unintended one.
One thing that always bugs me is when I have to wander around aimlessly when I'd rather be eating. This becomes especially annoying when there is food all around, and it's just a matter of someone else being picky about where we were going to eat lunch1. This was the basis for just one of many of the pointless journeys I have had on Tottenham Court Road.
Where Shall We Have Lunch?
During a winter not too long ago, my family came down to London to see me and meet my girlfriend. Naturally, the main cause of my dad's anxiety was as to where we would be eating lunch, and so he immediately informed us that we should go somewhere other than Garfunkel's, despite the fact we'd only been there once or twice. So we marched off into the cold, cold weather to find another place.
The obvious thing to do in cold weather is to limit your exposure to it - this is more than just common sense. This is why we visited the doorways of a grand total of three separate restaurants as well as two public houses, all to avoid being in any way predictable. Everywhere was either shut, full, or didn't look very nice2. So we headed back to Tottenham Court Road, the Centre Point building now looming over us like a giant dysfunctional bar heater3, and ended up wandering into a... Garfunkel's. Why is this one any better than the other one, which just for the record was a darn sight closer to home?
'It has a different layout to that other one - much nicer place'
explained my dad.
Quite bizzarely, the same thing had happened earlier on in the year when I went with a truly random group of friends for a meal. We stopped off at the first Garfunkel's to find it was full, and so we headed south in search of a Pizza Hut. We asked directions at a pub on the way, but eventually ended up outside the restaurant with the 'different layout.' I suppose the exercise did me some good.
Where Shall We Eat Pie?
Perhaps the most unusual thing ever dreamt up by mankind, the Pie Crawl did honestly seem like a good idea at first. The plan was to visit four pubs, buying one pie between us at each. How difficult could it be? Very.
At the first pub, we bought a chicken and ham pie, which took ages to turn up and only came with one fork, which we argued up to two. To confound the matter, there was no space to sit inside the pub, so we had to sit outside in the cold, fighting over the limited cutlery. We were very hungry, and so we voted to skip straight to the Ale & Pie House at the end of Tottenham Court Road. Here we had three pies and a cheesecake. I did mention that the humble cheesecake has never truly been considered to be a pie, but as the mission was already a failure, it didn't seem to matter too much. The Pie Crawl was never completed, and the idea has been mothballed for now.
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