I am studying Marketing Management here at Lancaster, but this year I have headed down to London and am on placement at IBM. I have sadly swapped Sugarhouse sweetness, and late nights in the library for a life in the city, with (some) money, a bit of glamour and a number of relatively sweaty and crowded journeys on the tube. I am halfway through my placement scheme in marketing, and felt it would be good to share some exciting, (hopefully) interesting London experiences with SCAN readers up in Lancaster.
My previous experiences of the past four New Years have hardly been fun. At about 5.00pm, I would head to work to serve a five course meal to over four hundred people at the Hotel in Chester where I had a part-time job. This was followed by an attempt to polish cutlery before running out the door in the hope that I would make it to a party or catch Jools Holland TV before Big Ben struck midnight.
Luckily this year it was different. As I am on a paid placement in London I didn’t have the need or desire to work over Christmas, I had time to visit friends, indulge in a lazy Christmas day and make the most of my bank holidays! When New Year came I had just enough of my wages left, combined with a few pennies from Christmas to spend it back down in the Big Smoke.
The options were endless; the most obvious choice would be to head into central for the midnight fireworks on the River Thames. For myself and friends the thought of standing in huge crowds on the banks of the river didn’t seem as appealing as it should. Instead we did some research online and out of the hundreds of nightclubs in London, we chose ‘The Roxy’. The website didn’t give much away but it was easy to get to from my house on the tube, plus the tubes were running until 4.30am and for free! The evening started pretty quietly, a couple of double vodkas in and we were dancing, 2012 glasses on, party poppers at the ready. The club was quite small, but as the night drew closer to 12am it got busier, an eclectic mix of, students, locals and different nationalities.
New Year came with a bang of party poppers, and a flurry of silly string. We danced, sang, made new Spanish, English and Chinese friends and danced some more. The night ended stumbling to McDonalds for a McChicken sandwich, and piling into the tube station. Only in London can you munch chips and drink fanta whilst clinging onto the poles of the train at 3.30am, attempting to avoid strangers laps. Best New Year to date!
Congratulations on having a fun new year and money.