Early Christmas morning, our friend's parents packed us up and we headed out to Southend on Sea to spend Christmas and Boxing Day stuffing our faces with delicious foods. The celebrations consisted of several families that over the years of migrating as childhood friends from Bengal to England for uni studies and careers getting together to celebrate and eat. The first unfortunate turn of events was being given a horrible Christmas sweater(and no, it's not a stupid jumper, that's something your mom wore in the 1990's, see
example) to wear. We laughed at Izzy's because it looks just like one of our dogs. Soon after we arrived, the cooking was in full swing and we were being taken all over the house for introductions.
Fortunately, we weren't the only ones with ridiculous Christmas sweaters on.
The day kicked off with the Christmas tradition of gift giving. Somehow, this group spread out between Southend and London and down to Madrid were able to draw one person's name and had to buy them a gift. Deep played Santa and distributed gifts. Most of the people were laughing and ooohhing and aaawwwing over their gifts in a garbled mix of Bengal and English. Not having any idea what anyone was saying and not having a gift to exchange with anyone, we just sat and watched.
Around 1:00 or 2:00, food started to trickle out. We weren't able to take many pictures of the feast as we were too busy stuffing our faces. We started with this large shrimp appetizer and a delicious sauce. The next course was turkey with delicious sides and somehow, someone though a whole ham would get eaten after all of that. Everyone was too delirious to think of eating anything else.
Below is the ham that had to wait until Wednesday morning to get eaten as a breakfast meat. I had a quick bite to eat and then caught a ride to the nearest Underground station of Upminster.
As much as I would have loved to have stayed and eaten more, I had other plans for Boxing Day. After a good hour from the furthest station to middle London and a transfer to take me north, I found myself in the Tottenham area of London. I walked a good half hour to White Hart Lane for the Spurs vs. West Brom game. I walked around the stadium to take in the sites. It seemed like home. There were bars decorated in Spurs decor, tons of people selling food, souvenirs, programs, and of course, ticket scalpers. It's good to see ticket scalping is a worldwide business. I had no need for one as I'd purchased my ticket weeks ago but they were in full force. I still don't understand their tactic of screaming "I need tickets". I just assume they're trying to say what you're thinking but that's just my guess. After a quick stop at the shop to buy a jersey and some other things, I grabbed myself a thick burger and headed in.
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. That is a blue sky in London in December. I couldn't believe it myself. The sun was out but it was cold as could be in the stadium. I helped myself to a beer and marveled at the very British selection of meat pies behind the food counters. There was no messing around with hot dogs or burgers, it was meat pies and beer or nothing at all. I had a beer and almost had myself kicked out of the stadium for trying to take it into the stands with me. How dare I think English people can drink alcohol while watching a sport live and fight the urge to recycle their drink receptacle onto the field in the general direction of a player they've been abusing all game!
The sunshine faded fast and the night time brought an even colder air to the stadium. I was fortunate to be sitting by a nice guy and his son out for a Boxing Day match. The bloke and I spoke about different players and different points of the match. His kid yelled at anything he could and tried to always keep his father's attention. It was cute and annoying all at once.
When the match let out, I had plenty of time to kill so I meandered through Piccadilly Circus looking in stores to see if anything was worth a purchase. I caught the Underground to Brixton where I stopped at McDonald's to use their internet for a quick second. While working out plans for everyone's return from Southend, I listened to a guy tell everyone about his recent trip back to Jamaica. It was an entertaining finish to a fun day.
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