School Holidays

This week has been school holidays, which has been a nice break. Damien has also been working in schools, as a teacher’s assistant. Its been quite fun work, swimming, city farm outings, yoga, cooking and its school hours, home by 4pm!
The first few days we chilled out didn’t do a great deal. We went to Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe. 3hr standing! Was cool, we stood under a black blanket that covered the whole crowd, with head holes cut out. The show was good, gory and hard to understand.
The weekend was eventful, Friday we went to a pub called Waxy ‘O’ Conners. Its bit of an Irish pub, but really nice on the inside. It has a large tree in the middle and the whole room is covered in nice wood. It’s a bit like a fairy tale hobbit hole. The music was good and we had a good time with a few people from the hostel, including Sarah who is leaving shortly.
Sunday was Grand Prix Sunday! Woo Hoo… Christine and Mel went on another shopping spree at some of the markets in London. The afternoon turned into a sport fest with rugby and tennis also being on after the GP.
The week also got a bit of arty culture, we went to see Spamalot a theater show in Wimbledon. It’s a comedy about king Arthur and the knights of the round table in search of Monty Pythons holy grail. It is actually a show I say 3 years ago in Las Vegas so it was good to see it again, Christine had not seen it before. Just quietly I think the Vegas show was better, but it was also new back then so a bit hard to compare.
We went to a movie for the first time in a long while, Robin Hood. Made another trip to the Tate Modern and spent a day walking around London seeing Kings Cross, Regents Park, Lords and the canals of Little Venice. Walking past Lords inspired me, so the next day I came back to watch a county 20/20 match. The star recruit for Middlesex was playing his first match, Adam Gilchrist, but wasn’t around for long, contributing a single run to the total before getting bowled.

Summer comes early to London

Well summer has been and gone this week in London. That’s right a heatwave in the mid twenties for a few days and then its back to dreary grey and rain!
We did try and make the most if it however. Living so close to Hyde Park is great. Much of the week was spent in the park for a walk after work, drinks after work or dinner in the park. We also made use of the baseball set from the piñata and played baseball and French cricket. Being Spring there is also a lot of ducklings on the lakes which makes Christine happy.
Sarah, one of our friends and managers at the hostel only has a couple of weeks left in London before she heads of travelling. Saturday the weather was nice so we had a big day out with her. We headed down to Waterloo and bought a day pass for the ferry. Cruising down the Thames past Westminster, The Eye, Big Ben, London Bridge, Tower of London and Tower Bridge we sat on the upper level of the boat basking in the sunshine. We got off at Tower Bridge and walked across the bridge to the Borough Markets. After a spot of shopping, mainly for picnic essentials, we were back on the boat and headed for Greenwich.
The four of us (Ally came too), spent the afternoon lazing about the park in Greenwich and stuffing ourselves stupid with the fresh bread, dips, cheese, olives, sundried tomatoes and salads that we had bought at the markets. We also had a bit of a wander around Greenwich and the line that separates the eastern and western hemispheres. I think due to the weather half of London had the same idea, and the place was very busy! There was a nice view from the top of the hill looking back over the rest of London.
After the boat ride back home, and a rest indoors and out of the sun (Sarah looks like a lobster!) we headed back to hyde park for the evening with a bigger group of people from the hostel, the picnic foods and some ciders.
Sunday we had booked some tickets to see Aussie band Grinspoon, however a few weeks in advance we found out that the tour had been cancelled. This was very distressing!
Again the sun was out, so with Mel we headed to Hyde park for a picnic lunch. Another brilliant idea was to go to the Dianna fountain which we would be able to put our feet in to ‘cool’ off. When we got there you couldn’t even see the fountain, it was covered in people who had the same idea, but got there before us. Instead we opted for a relatively quieter spot by the lake.
About 4pm we headed home, collected Sarah (West Coast Eagles fan) and headed to Shepherds Bush Walkabout for the Saints Eagles replay. Sunday afternoon at the Walkabout is messy, as hundreds of people arrive in costume from The Church (another pub). Despite the crowds, its was a good evening, drinking jugs of snakebite (mix of beer, cider and red cordial). The game was good, eagles led for the first half before saints ran away with it in the last quarter. We hung around for a bit, few more drinks, listening to a not so good band playing great classic music. Then the four of us stumbled home with a few drunken stops to play on the Elephants scattered throughout London at the minute and the oversized gardening tools outside the Hilton, aaagh good times.

Brighton

This weekend we headed off to Brighton which is on the south coast of England. We booked bus tickets a fair way in advance, meaning it was cheap, but also it was a gamble on the weather. Turned out a bit grey and chilly but could have been worse. We didn’t swim! What we hadn’t planned on was the town being so busy that all the accommodation was booked out. We got lucky in the end, booking online the week before. Apparently the hostel we booked was full, however a problem on the website allowed us to book anyway. The staff were great and managed to find us some beds in the end.
The town was so busy as there were two festivals on. One was a 3 day music festival with artists performing in venues rather than stages in a park like most festivals. The other was a 3 week festival of performing arts.
When we arrived in Brighton we did not have directions (or a confirmation) for our accommodation. We wondered through town, got a map at the tourist info, then headed to the Brighton Gallery. The main reason for this stop was coffee and lunch, although we did spend a bit of time looking around also.
We found our hostel and dropped our bags, into a crowded and messy 12 bed dorm. Were only here for one night so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. We then headed back into town. Looking around there was a lot of street performers and people promoting shows. We grabbed some churros at a busy market stall and sat in a park to eat. The park is right next to the King’s Summer Palace which is not huge, but quite an interesting design.
We spent the afternoon walking along the foreshore which has a spectacular exhibition of wildlife photography. We also walked out on the pier which is very old and covered in amusements, from merry-go-rounds, slides, bars, dodgem cars, roller coasters, karaoke and pokie machines.
When we arrived we had no idea that all the shows were going on, but we soon found one that we thought might be interesting. It was a school teacher doing a comedy show. It turned out to be more of a scripted performance than a stand up act. When we enquired about tickets we were told that it was sold out. Still we decided to head down to the venue. Despite being sold out we were told that we could wait til the show was about to start, on like a stand by list. Turns out we were able to get some tickets which was a bit lucky. The venue was tiny, the basement of a café, probably only held 50 people. The show was amusing but not a witty as we had hoped for. We ended up staying for the second show which was a bit more entertaining, a skit show based on the film and media industry.

Sunday morning we were up early, in comparison to everyone else in the hostel! Breakfast was included, coco pops, yum! The peculator coffee was strong and there was only one other person awake. This was lucky as an hour later when we were leaving the small breakfast area was packed with people! After breakfast we got a nice surprise, Mel sent us a message saying she was coming down for the day, we knew she was thinking about it, but wasn’t sure if she would make it.
We met her down by the beach, and wandered along the foreshore. This morning there had been a Mini Cooper car rally from London to Brighton, and they were all meeting up along the foreshore. There were hundreds of Mini’s mostly old but a few of the new model. We checked out all the different cars and played about on the (rocky) beach.
Again there was performing arts randomly around town which we got to see a few of, dancing in the streets etc. We walked around the Lanes which is the old part of town, had lunch in the gallery again followed by huge sundaes before we headed back to the coach station for the bus to London.
Brighton was really nice and very vibrant with so much happening while we were down there. Many of the buildings are painted different colours which also livens the place up a bit. Despite being so busy, the town had a nice relaxed feel about it, that makes it seem a bit more livable than London, although I’m guessing the costal weather would be quite extreme over winter.

Back in London

It’s been a busy week with my mum (Judy), my aunt Bronwyn and their friend Tony coming to visit. They arrived in London whilst we were still in Amsterdam so had settled in nicely by the time we had arrived home. We met them all at their accommodation down the street on the Friday then had dinner at one of our local Asian restaurants along with Tony’s son Andrew.

The Monday after we arrived home was a public holiday which was very convenient as it gave me an extra day with mum. Tuesday I was back to work at the same school while Damien was contacting his agencies to organize some work before our next trip. He has signed up with my favourite teaching agency and may get some Teaching Assistant work.

The girls all headed to Oxford for a couple of days which left Damien at home to set up our room and have my dinner ready when I got home from work.

During mum’s stay we spend quite a bit of time in Hyde Park trying to spot squirrels (Damien was the best at this and it was funny when Judy got excited that she had spotted a ‘squirrel’, until we yold her it was actually a rat) and admiring the Elephant Parade which is an installation of painted fiberglass elephants all over the city. We also enjoyed the sunken garden at Kensington Place which was full of flowers.

On the Friday when mum, Bronwyn and Tony got back from Oxford we had arranged tickets to the musical Pricilla Queen of the Dessert. The costumes were amazing and some of the singers were fantastic (not Jason Donovan). We all enjoyed the show but agreed the movie was better due to all the shots of the dessert landscape.

Meanwhile, back at the hostel our friend Sarah was having her Mexican Fiesta birthday party complete with homemade piñata. We arrive home to find everyone having a great time except of course Juan the much loved piñata. We were very slack and didn’t dress for the occasion but other people had dressed as a tequila bottle, a cactus, a donkey and of course a couple of outlaws and signoritas.
Saturday was quite relaxed. We met for lunch at a traditional English pub which has a menu of gourmet pies. These were very good and everyone waddled out feeling very full. We entertained ourselves in the evening as Mum, Bronwyn and Tony were heading to a concert at the church Saint Martin’s in the Felids.

On Sunday, their last full day in London, Bronwyn and Tony decided they were tired and would have a relaxed day. Mum Damien and I heading for the Spittalfields and Brick lane markets. Spittalfield has lots of crafty items while Brick lane is famous for it’s curry stalls. Mum bought me a t-shirt as a belated birthday pressy whilst she got a lovely leather pouch with a zip as a mother’s day gift.
It was great having the girls over but a bit difficult to say goodbye when it was their time to leave for their tour of spain.