October 16th saw myself, Lee Richards and the man-beast Dean Jennings leaving the island to hit the mainland and the days B-Boy Championship Finals on at the Brixton Academy in London… the same place I saw Wu-Tang last year and will also be going to the Soulwaxmas event in December.

I wonder if I should just get a room there…?

I prepared for our train journey the night before by drinking a shit-load of vodka, smoking too much shrubbery, and throwing around more bag than a Woman’s Institute party.

We hit the train at 12.15 which would give us plenty of time to ruin ourselves up in the big smoke. The boys had bags of alcohol, but I was a little disappointed to find that they were stuffed full of cider… I haven’t drunk the stuff since I was hanging around bus shelters at the age of 16. Still, when in Rome… or at least on a second rate train to London.

(Which, incidentally, Lee picked wrongly which meant we were stuck on there over half an hour longer then we should have been. Tit.)

Clapham was our stop, and more than a little oiled up we debarked, hitting the first pub we found where we watched Arsenal beat Sunderland before Lee started a conversation with a pissed up old Irish boy which seemed to go on forever. I tried to save him, but old Irish had his sinkers in pretty deep.

Shaking him off, we burst into the sunshine across from an old church where there were LOTS of people dressed in fancy dress. Last time I was here in Clapham with DJ C-Kay we saw the same thing… I was getting a deja-vu…

After amusingly watching Lee run after a taxi and catch it we jumped inside and spent the next ten minutes seeing the sights of London… which involved a lot of smoke, smog, Indians, and people unable to look each other in the eye. Bit like the last orgy I attended.

We arrived outside the Brixton Academy… and dived straight into another pub to wet our beaks, before stomping down the side of the Academy, where we found a scuffle involving police and a group of lads. We were too lubricated by now to pay attention so staggered on past and into the hall itself, where we each got searched… Lee thoroughly. I think they liked his pretty features.

We’d arrived a good hour and a half late – due to alcoholic intake – but the show hadn’t started, and there were people tucked away in corners busting out moves, pop-locking, and generally just being cooler than us. Which wasn’t hard.

The battles started soon after we took up positions in ‘the bowl’ – the area where the crowd stands. It wasn’t a bad view, and the big screens showed us what we might have missed, and the crowd started to get lively as the breakbeat boomed.

I’d like to give you details of the battles, but the compare was so busy shouting ‘yo yo yo’ down the mic, we missed a lot of it. Plus we were steaming drunk by now.

But what we saw, I was impressed with… after a slow start. The moves were swift, and I spent most of my time slurring about how the French were going to win it.

The French won it.

Must admit, that just by watching the beginning ten minutes the French Vagabonds look like they piss it, until the Korean Jinjo Crew step it up some…

Soon we had slipped out, leaving a couple of ropey birds who had clung to us to ‘watch our drinks for a moment’… and we were back out and on the town. Things get a little vague around this point, but I

know we all jumped in a rickshaw… several times… and were ridden around London like a two-bit hooker. I vaguely remember nursing a drink from one pub into two or three more, and then cradling it in the back of said rickshaw.

We managed to get the half ten train back… where we then had to catch a fucking bus between stations which took fuuuuucking ages.

Fucking ages, man.

I was almost sober on the boat home… well, once we’d finally found Lee after he wandered off on a top-heavy lean well past the boat, and once on the boat the two boys crashed out, leaving me with my lager. And then the JD when I got in.

Yeah, this is a pretty vague blog, but I consumed enough alcohol in over 14 hours of drinking – and I’d hit the cider again – that I couldn’t really remember a lot of what went on.

Maybe Lee and Dean could fill us in a little…?