More Londonage in, er, London

Unfortunately there are certain specifics that I'm not really supposed to mention in this post, as I believe a certain Hollywood film studio never officially authorised something I can't specifically refer to, even though it clearly won't do any harm to them to mention it, and can only show them in a positive light. But hey, I have the power to get some very nice people in trouble, so this post is self-censored, and random groups of asterisks will pop up out of nowhere from time to time. See if you can guess what they originally said. Answers on a postcard please.

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Having arisen at half past five on Saturday morning, I arrived at London Waterloo, which appears to have recently changed its name to Apple iPod Rail Station, before half ten. After grabbing a much needed coffee I left the station, followed some fellow passengers under various barriers that must surely have been placed there for a reason, and found myself on London's South Bank.

After discovering the history of the South Bank on my last trip to London, I really like the area, because it was basically created out of an area of big ugly factories by the local community, and is now a reasonably lively and pleasant place to be. So I was very pleased to see various people setting up stalls for the weekend's Coin Street Festival, many of which had a Cuban theme, and some of which didn't.

The reason I was in London was for something that will hopefully become another very successful community project. The Hoja Project is Oswin's Masterplan. Oswin was one of the Tanzanian volunteers who I worked with in Tanzania. He was placed in Nundwe, the village next to ours, and comes from the region of Songea in the southwest of the country.

One evening, I was in Nundwe after we had held a joint event between three villages, and Oswin took me to one side.

"Philip," he said. "Will you help me to put the chickens away for the night?"

Well, of course I would help him. So, after a brief chase during which I unconvincingly attempted to catch three chickens without mortally wounding them, we carried them across to the sheds in which they were kept. It was at this point that Oswin revealed his hand.

"Phil," he said. "I hear that you studied engineering at university."

"Yes, that's right I said. Civil engineering."

"Ah. Well, in that case you could be very useful to my plans."

Now, I swear that I did not embellish any of that. Oswin genuinely told me that I could be "useful to his plans". But it wasn't a secret lair that he wanted me to design for him. It was a school. Oswin has a plot of land in his home village in Songea, and wants to build a secondary school there. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Hoja Project.

I don't know about designing the actual school buildings, but I am very happy and proud to be involved in this. I won't elaborate any further here though - if you want to know any more about Hoja, you can click here, and you will find our wonderful website.

The reason this brought me to London was because Julia, who was also placed in Nundwe, has a ***** friend who is working as a ***** ***** on the new ***** ***** ***** feature film (***** ***** *****). The chap's name is *****, and he had very kindly arranged a day of studio tours in aid of Hoja, at twenty five quid a pop. I was there to go on the tour (yes, I paid my £25), and because I wanted to see something happen for the project.

So, I was ambling merrily along on the South Bank, when I received a phone call from Tigger about meeting up before the tour. I'd never actually met Tigger before, but she had found out about the tour by virtue of being a member of the same cult as me. I'll just let you follow the link and leave you to ponder that particular statement in your own time.

A short tube ride later then, and another short tube ride later, and a spot of musical platforms later, I had perfected the "Engineering Works Wobble", and arrived safely at ***** ***** ***** tube station, whereupon I met Tigger, whom I recognised by her pink top and rather snazzy folding bike.

The tour itself was fantastic, made all the better because I was accompanied by a fellow mindlessly excited slightly unhinged film buff. I would love to tell you lots of things about the tour, but I'm not really allowed to, as even talking about some of the technical stuff could give away which film I'm talking about. And I'm not allowed to mention the film because I might get ***** into trouble. Even if I did tell you, it would probably look something like this:

We entered the ***** ***** and gave the ***** a long ***** because the ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** with the old ***** in the fork-lift truck. So the ***** told us an hilarious anecdote about when ***** *****'s ***** came to visit and ***** the ***** all over the *****, but only because the ***** had a ***** in ***** with a picture of George Formby in his ***** ***** ***** *****.

Not very informative, is it? So after the tour, Tigger and I took turns to go into *****, as we had Tigger's bike with us, and sat down to have some lunch by the *****. For the second time in three weeks, I found that being a cult member is actually rather useful when you only have one reason to be somewhere, and have the whole weekend to kill.

You can meet random people, and you already have an easy conversation topic to fall back on when you run out of other things to say. And in this particular cult, the people are almost always very nice (I haven't met any nasty ones yet).

After it started to get a bit chilly, we decided to head off to The Cock, which is the official Join Me pub. If you're confused by that term, I suggest you go back and click on the link I put in earlier. So I went off by tube, Tigger went off by bike, and we got there at roughly the same time, along with Joinees Phillips, Kate JJM, Snoring Jesus and others, who had been doing the "Spies and Spycatchers" London Walk, which apparently involves lots of gentlemen's clubs.

I'd met Phillips and Kate three weeks before in Hyde Park, and had already bagged Kate's sofa for the night. One quick pint later, we split off into inadvertent gender groups, and we male types hopped onto the tube and headed off to the Camden Odeon. So for the next ten minutes I had to endure Phillips asking me how I was coping with "our underground tube system".

Well, fine, actually.

"No, no, don't worry yourself, just follow us. We know what we're doing."

Yes, thanks Steve. Actually I've been on your underground tube system before. If you hadn't guessed, he wasn't being completely serious. Or, at least, I don't think he was. I wouldn't want to misrepresent him anyway.

So, £8.30 later (bloody London prices), we were sat in the cinema watching ***** ***** ***- oh, no, hang on, I'm allowed to name this one. We were watching The League Of Gentlemen's Apocalypse. And it was revolting, and thoroughly enjoyable.

The most surreal moment of the entire weekend came next. And it was The Madras Valley. Now, this curry takeaway featured in the Join Me book, and is something of a joinee shrine. With every order you receive not only a menu, but a photocopy of a local newspaper cutting about the establishment's claim to fame.

On the way there, we were openly offered drugs of course. This was Camden, after all. Now, I knew that Camden was supposed to be quite open with dealing, but we virtually had blokes shouting, "Oi, mate! Do you want an E?!" across the road at us. You'll be glad to know, of course, that I'm a good boy and I don't do that sort of thing.

Soon were were joined by Kate and Tigger, and approaching the Madras Valley. As soon as we drew near, Steve turned around and says, "Oh, look at little Hatchard's face light up!"

And I was grinning, but not because I was particularly excited about eating somewhere that was in a book. It was just all so surreal that we were going there because it features in a book, that I was desperately trying not to piss myself laughing.

It was a nice curry, even though fans of the book will no doubt be disappointed that I opted for the Biryani rather than the Dansak. So, we sat on a bench across the road, eating takeaway curry, chatting, and starting to get a bit chilly.

So Kate, Tigger and I headed home, or at least to Kate's home, in Dagenham. And we went to sleep. And then we got up in the morning, watched a bizarre Nadia Sawalha programme featuring the most random selection of old TV clips ever, and went for breakfast round the corner. Without my coat, which was hanging from the back of Kate's door. Fortunately she's very nice and is posting it back to me.

I headed back towards Waterloo, via the Coin Street festival, had some maize-based food, which brought back happy memories of Tanzania, and got the train back home. And then got pissed on when I got to Exeter, because it was raining and my coat was still in Dagenham. A very enjoyable weekend, overall, probably because, rather than despite, it was so random.