At The End of the Day

Distance Traveled:   36, 670 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L)

Time Difference: -9 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Les Miserables Cast Recording, Labyrinth soundtrack, general David Bowie

Currently Inspired by:  Palace intrigue!  Secret maze hookups and calves in silk stockings

Stacks: None.  It's official - high heels make you more careful
Words written: 60,105

 

A very English pub

It is difficult to know what to say in a blog when you are in a city that makes you feel less like a tourist than it does like you are just coming home after a long time away.  It is also difficult to have your heart living in two places at once, particularly when those places really couldn’t get too much further apart geographically, something I have just had to deal with over the last seven years since I returned from the UK.  In many ways (most assuredly NOT the weather), London is so much more “me” than Brisbane is.  I have been throwing myself with gusto into a myriad of activities and its general Londonness while wavering between feeling incredibly lucky to have the opportunities I do here and pants wettingly excited about whatever is coming up next.  I have also greatly enjoyed being a greedy and insatiable hug monster with all of my wonderful friends, the kindest and best of folks, who have allowed me to crash on their couches, air mattresses and spare beds and leave my long dark hair in hidey places all over their houses, no doubt to be pulled off a pair of jeans in about six months with a bewildered “whose frigging hair is this??”  Saving me the hideous chore of paying for non-hostel accommodation in any part of London is really the best gift anyone could give me at this point.  Packed to the ceiling with activity, the time has flown, and of the six weeks I initially faintly begrudged spending in a place I had already lived in, only two and half precious weeks remain, something on which I am trying very hard not to focus.

Dinner at Won Kei

I am very conscious of the fact that saying “went for eggs benedict with such and such” and “hung out on a couch playing a game on my iProduct with someone sitting two feet away” is not the quality of content that my patient and faithful readers have come to expect, so I will stick to the major stuff since my last blog, beginning with... Labyrinth!  Now, in Brisbane we have (had) the good old Globe but still have a couple of hard working personalities out there, most notably Kristian Fletcher, who still plug away at putting on these movie nights.  But... well... this was in the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square!  Please stop me anytime I start to sound like Eurotrash.  I decided to stay in a hotel next to the square on this particular night just to make life easier and as I was early for check in and my room wasn’t ready, got upgraded to an executive suite.  It was a stunning hotel, the deal I had got just for the regular room was already excellent, so it was a huge bonus on top and really set my mood for the night.  It kicked off with dinner at Won Kei in Chinatown, my favourite chinese restaurant here and home of the juiciest, tastiest, crispiest, duckiest crispy duck in the whole of London Town.  When we got into the cinema they handed us little baggies containing bubbles for blowing during the masquerade ball scene, a little sweet and a popper to blow at the end when she remembers the line!  It was so much fun.  The Jareth impersonator did an excellent David Bowie voice and the huge pair socks down the front of the skin tight pants didn’t hurt the impression at all.  Needless to say the girls in the cinema all screamed and carried on whenever “those” scenes happened.  None louder than I.  So much for a kid’s movie, huh?  Top night, and so much fun.

Excited! At dinner before the show

Ramin Karimloo, our incredible JVJ

The other major event has been Les Miserables.  Since I saw it on Wednesday I have bought the album and been listening to it essentially on repeat on iTunes.  Anyone who has seen it obviously knows how it can get its claws into you, although I much preferred the first act to the second.  The actor who played Javert managed to bring empathy and understanding to an otherwise horrible antagonist and the actor who played Jean Valjean really blew me away.  He wasn’t just an incredible stage presence, but also an extraordinarily talented vocalist and vocal actor.  The depth of emotion he could convey in two breathy syllables was truly astounding, and his deep set hooded eyes glinted out at us from under his shadowed brow with a kind of dark and feverish intensity that sent chills down my spine on more than one occasion.  I was glued, riveted, utterly captivated.  I sniggered and blushed, gasped and clapped, sniffled and bawled like a baby.  During the first act the entire dozen or so people next to me could have started an orgy and I wouldn’t have noticed or even cared.  Head full of music, I went to bed that night and dreamed of people lurching towards me out of fog on cobblestone streets and I marched, marched, marched what felt like all night long.  I woke up humming and wondering if my legs had moved through the night!

The Tudor Palace

One of the many incredible gardens

I spent a couple of days south of London this week in the Hampton Court area, where King Henry’s palace is.  It really has the most jaw droppingly beautiful gardens I have ever seen, and I was glad to get some photos of them to replace the ones I lost last year.  As it is the beginning of spring, all the bulbs were in first bloom and the scent of the area ranged from zesty to heady and everything in between.  It was both an olfactory and visual sensory assault.  A most pleasant one.  I didn’t go back inside the palace itself because I still remember it so clearly from my first visit.  For the second time, however, I did take on the maze, and for the second time got lost for ages and just a little panicky.  At first it is fun.  I defy anyone to walk into a full sized maze and not begin to make up stories.  For me it was about good fairies and bad fairies.  The bad fairies were trying to lead me into the centre to do unspeakable things to me, and the good fairies were trying to lead me back out to safety.  So I would notice leaves and patches of sunlight, and interpret it as either a good sign or a bad sign, and go left or right.  Frequently I would round the corner into a bunch of giggling children, and rather than let them ruin my fantasy I turned them into Maze Goblins, harmless pranksters who live in the maze and like to fiddle with the signs to play with poor travellers such as I.  I warded them off with my traveler’s talisman (a garnet) in my pocket and carried on.  Finally I popped out, puffed, disheveled and just a little relieved.  The good fairies won... this time.  

Diana (goddess) monument

Just opposite the palace grounds is a ridiculously huge park called Bushy Park through which I trekked for a couple of hours, petting and babytalking at people’s dogs and listening to music next to the glistening lakes in the welcome sunshine.  Only half an hour’s train ride from one of the most densely built cities sits this spacious and wondrous piece of nature, clean and verdant, full of the most beautiful natural wildlife, squirrels, swans and deers.  Animals in England are so cute.  None of this crocodiles, funnelwebs, stonefish crap.  Just tiny fluffy things, white birds, and Bambi.  Enid Blyton didn’t make this stuff up you know, she probably just looked out into her backyard.  Gotta love it.  Another interesting animal tidbit, following on from last fortnight's blog, is that all swans in the UK belong to the Queen.  To harm one is a very very serious offence.

Click here to see all my general London photos so far

The weather here has just started to get “nice” and by that I mean it is still cold almost all of the time but the sun is out and for a couple of hours a day you should be able to find a patch to sit in, in which a jacket is not required.  As happens every year when this very first touch of Spring begins to flower in the city, virtually the entire population begins to move its activities out of doors and parks, commons and greens overflow with happy Londoners kicking footballs, playing cricket (badly, of course) and just sitting on blankets with bottles of cider, laughing and chatting and smiling at everyone.  What  a difference a season makes!  It’s a lovely time to be here and I am looking forward to more of the same over the next couple of weeks.  It is also making me excited for my Europe trip which is going to be during spring and the beginning of summer.  I am planning to train it through about seven or eight countries before settling in Italy for six weeks or so.  I suppose I had better start looking at booking accommodation and train tickets, considering it is all less than three weeks away!  This week I am hoping to do some substantial writing, not just the tiny token amount I did to get over 60,000 about a week ago, the only writing I have done in my 3.5 weeks here.  I am visiting three barbershop choruses at their rehearsals this week, which I am incredibly excited about.  Next weekend is more club fun and then the following week is Shakespeare in Stratford, THE wedding, a few more catch ups and then off again.  If I can, I am going to try and squeeze in Phantom of the Opera this week.  So hopefully I should have a lot more to talk about in the next blog!

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Distance Traveled:   36, 670 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L)

Time Difference: -10 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Eighties cheese

Currently Inspired by:  How could one not feel inspired when one is standing ten metres from the place where it is entirely possible Shakespeare wrote, and is definitely where the original actors performed, Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado, Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer etc etc?  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Stacks: None which is AMAZING because I wore quite high heels on the weekend for the first time in yonks, and felt most unsteady and out of practice. I suppose I was extra careful!  There were some funny stacks, but as they weren't mine I shouldn't mention them :)
Words written: 59,631. Haven't had time to write, I know I know I know. OK?  I shall write this week.


Well!  I didn’t manage to get anything done I was planning to in my last day in central London, but that’s fine, it’s only a tube ride away!  I did do a bus tour though, and even after living here for two years found much of the historical information new and fascinating.  The thing with London is that there is just SO MUCH to do, to look and marvel at.  I had planned to get on and off the bus and get more photos, but it was a miserably cold, windy and slightly wet day, and the bus was nice and heated, so I couldn’t be bothered.  I will have to go back at some stage though because I need to rebuild my London photograph collection, and I shall kick myself if I don’t avail myself of this opportunity while I’m here.  Some of the more interesting things I learned on the bus are below:

Tower Bridge

• Hyde Park covers about 350 acres;
• Speaker’s Corner, a place in Hyde Park where people still gather to hear folks on their soapboxes rant about a variety of issues, was originally used as sort of a “final words” place for prisoners condemned to die on the nearby Tyburn gallows.  To this day, speakers are not permitted to blaspheme, be obscene, incite a riot or decry the Royal Family.  Free Speech, ftw!
• When the London Hilton was built it caused a huge controversy because it gave its residents views to the private garden of Buckingham Palace.  It is also where the Beatles met their spiritual guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi;
• In 1913, Ho Chi Minh worked in the Carlton Hotel, Westminster as a waiter;
• Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square is the same height from the top of his hat to the square as from the top of his ship, the HMS Victory’s mast to the deck of the ship, and the four huge lion sculptures at its base will apparently get up and walk around the square if Big Ben ever strikes thirteen;
• Another 13:  It is incredibly unlucky to have a party of thirteen diners at the Savoy, so if they receive a party of thirteen, they bring out a large ceramic statue of a black cat, called Kaspar, and place him at a setting on the table to bring it up to a party of fourteen;
• It is said that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the tower will crumble, as will the city.  So they clip the raven’s wings so they can’t leave (not happy about this one);
• Remember when I went to Gibraltar?  They also had the superstition about the Barbary Apes, saying that if they ever left the rock then it would no longer be a British territory, so Winston Churchill brought new ones over from Africa when their numbers began to dwindle;
• Still on animals:  The main reason that the bubonic plague reached the epic proportions that it did in 1665 was due to human error.  Officials erroneously believed that it was cats and dogs that were carrying the bug and ordered them all destroyed, strays and household pets alike.  Thus the real culprits, rats who carried the infected fleas on their feet, were able to greatly increase without their usual predators to cull their numbers;
• Tower Bridge, an extraordinarily beautiful structure and incredibly clever piece of engineering, has a bascule facility to allow it to raise and lower for tall ships that are passing on the Thames.  Since the bridge has been in operation (about 120 years) it has only broken down twice, and the first of those two times was, embarrassingly, at its official opening ceremony;
• The Thames is pronounced “The Temms” rather than how it is spelt, because King George was German, and this was how he said it, which prompted everyone else to do the same.

There was much more, but if you would like to know more, feel free to come and spend some time in this culturally rich environment.  I love it here.  (Come in summer though, I’m freezing my balls off right now.  Er, it’s friggin Spring, England!?  Enough with the four degrees!)  

Great cafe, will play your vinyl from home

I won’t take up much more time one this because the stuff I have been doing is more on the personal side than usual, lots of hanging out, wine, food, cafes, conversations, shopping and catch ups.  I have been to the Camden markets, a very trendy North London area full of fabulous markets selling all manner of items and bought myself an outfit for a party I am attending and some unique accessories.  Some friends and I attempted to book ourselves into Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck in Bray, something I have been looking forward to for as long as I have known about this trip, however there was not one single evening available for the entire six week period I am here, if you can believe it!  We have instead booked lunch at his London restaurant, Dinner.  The menu looks amazing (and is much much cheaper) so I am still excited, although sad that I will not be having the true molecular gastronomical experience of The Fat Duck.  We have also booked tickets for Les Miserables in the West End and I am hoping to organise a trip maybe Singin’ in the Rain or another musical while here, as well as hopefully the London Philharmonic or Symphony Orchestra, and some Shakespeare, although the Globe season doesn’t start til June, so I may need to go out of London for that. (I may try Stratford Upon Avon, where Shakespeare was from). After this I am organising a traditional high tea outing most probably at Claridges, and also we are booked next weekend to attend a masquerade movie screening in the city of one of my favourite films since childhood, Labyrinth with David Bowie!  So there is an amazing amount of stuff coming up.

Saturday Night

This last weekend I headed up to Birmingham with my gorgeous friend Esther and about twenty of her fellow hens, interesting, smart and fun women all, to celebrate her upcoming nuptials. Birmingham is nothing like I expected.  First of all, it’s the second largest city in the UK despite being only an hour away from London on the train, and its inhabitants don’t have really strong accents.  In fact they mostly sounded generically English with an occasional tiny twang!  It was large, cosmopolitan and frankly I felt like I could have been walking around a part of London, except a slightly cleaner part of London.  Apparently it wasn’t always so, but the council has done a good job of doing the place up.  Of course we were not free of dickhead men.  If anyone hears of a place where there aren’t any, please let me know so I can arrange to move there.  I wanted to smash their heads together.  A particularly charming individual felt the need to tell me that he’d been taking a video of my bottom while I was dancing with the girls.  I wonder how often that line works?  He wasn’t ruffled in the slightest by my response (“that’s disgusting, and you’re a fucking pig”) and I spent the rest of the night paranoid and dancing with my back to a pillar. My new skirt has been relegated to the Salvos pile that I have made, due to its obvious butt-attention-drawing properties and also due to me going insane in the shops here and buying too much to fit into my suitcase.  I was sick to death of some of the older clothes I had anyway, and had some spare money due to frugal budgeting.  So why not?

Get the Zombies, Esther!

There was a social media embargo during the hen’s weekend which was (mostly) obeyed.  My photos have been vetted and are all fairly tame.  There wasn’t too much debauchery actually, probably because none of us are 22 anymore, but it was loads of fun and you can see the photos by clicking here.  The girls had originally attempted to get a midget stripper (I don’t know the PC term, but there is nothing PC about the concept anyway, so the language is less important).  Personally I would have been horrified by that so I was eternally grateful that he was busy with his other job.  His other job?  Touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Swings and roundabouts...  We had spa treatments, played games, went out for an Italian lunch, and did a dance class to MJ's Thriller, dressed up in eighties gear.  It was all terrific but the funniest part of the weekend for me was the phrase “Rack off, Bouncer”.  Do you remember the dog Bouncer from Neighbours?  They love Neighbours over here, in a kind of cheesy way.  Well apparently in the early days the characters on Neighbours used to say that to Bouncer all the time when he would get in the way, and they don’t say “rack off” over here so apparently they all find it hysterically funny, and all weekend the girls were saying it in these dreadful Australian accents.  It would go like this, someone would say “let’s have tea instead of wine” *horrified expression* “Rekk orf, Beensah!” Made me piss myself. No one can do an Australian accent!

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

Fool On The Hill

Distance Traveled:   36, 670 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L)

Time Difference: -10 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Do I need to say the Beatles?  And some barbershop.  Getting excited about Portland, even though it's a little early!

Currently Inspired by:  Pick a figure, any figure.  For the size of this country they have produced a disproportionate number of extraordinary people: statesmen, thinkers, writers, poets, artists, musicians, actors.  The benefits of crappy weather and indoor pursuits... do you think discipline may have something to do with it?  I hate to to think so, but it probably does. Ugh.

Stacks: The usual skids and stubs that come with walking around staring anywhere but at the ground.  Add the constant bumping into people that happens here.  And no matter who does it, both people apologise.  Have I said I love London lately?
Words written: 59,631. Haven't even opened it this week, so it's still on that incredibly frustrating number!

Seville in Jan. Add 500 people for Feb.

Once back on the Spanish mainland I stayed one horrid day and night in Cadiz.  I was devastated about Marius and while attempting to find shops in which to replace my stolen / lost items of clothing, suffered several setbacks and attitude problems from people I encountered which were no doubt in part due to my own foul mood.  After much palaver and swearing under my breath I managed to find the items that were required and did a bit of splurging on some unnecessary things as well, after which I went and ate myself sick at Taco Bell, a franchise I have never before seen in real life.  For grief gorging it was perfectly acceptable but I don’t really see what all the fuss was about.  The next day I caught a bus back to lovely Seville.  Unfortunately the place I booked was not lovely in the slightest.  In my dazed and disorganised state the previous day I had booked accommodation without really paying attention and ended up at a (incredibly overpriced) hostel rather than a hotel.  Fortunately I did not have to share a room, but the bathroom was shared, and my room was right next to the reception desk which was run by a no doubt well intentioned but nosy elderly couple who kept poking their head out of the service window every time I opened my door, just to see what was going on.  They also didn’t speak a single word of English.  Not one. 

I took a couple of extra photos of Tenerife from the last link I sent through.  If you want to see the extras, you can click here and just go to the end of the album and work back.

Wisely walking past the bull museum in Jan

I didn’t take any additional photos of Seville but I probably should have, because the place was completely altered.  What a difference a month makes!  It was packed to the brim with tourists and locals, was warm (26 degrees) and sunny, the wind had disappeared and a bunch of previously closed cafes had opened up and spilled their laughing and chatting patrons out in cheerful scatters all over the pavements.  Folks lined the banks of the river with their shoes off and trousers pulled up to get a tan, and everyone was in such a carefree mood, it was easy to get swept up in it every now and again.  I was very glad that I got to see Seville that way, and it made me feel a little bit better.  Unfortunately I was still not completely compis mentis, and another consequence of not thinking clearly meant that I made an impulsive decision to take a tour through the bullfighting museum on a particularly lovely afternoon.  Well.  I have always understood that bull fighting and the running of the bulls is very culturally significant to the Spanish, even though I have always personally hated the concept.  Now, I feel very strongly that it needs to end.  There is no excuse for allowing such barbaric practices in 2012.  Many important cultural practices that helped to develop a nation’s identity have been stopped as humans evolved and developed in sensitivity, intelligence and global awareness, so why is it OK for anyone, for any reason, in any country, to torture and slaughter innocent animals for the entertainment of humans in this day and age?  It can still remain historically significant without being currently relevant.  Time to stop.  I can’t even talk about some of the artwork and items I saw on that tour without feeling sick.  It really put me in a “humans suck” mood for the rest of the day, not that I required much encouragement at that point!

I don’t think I have linked to the food album for a whole, so it may have some new ones for you.  Click here to have a look.

It was with no small amount of excitement that I went to the airport to await my flight to London.  When I first planned to come to London on this trip for my friend’s wedding I thought that I might have to miss the hen’s weekend and just come for the wedding because six weeks was too long to spend in a country that I’ve already lived in for two years when there are so many other countries I want to see.  Now I feel as though the time is too short!  I have something on most of the weekends that I am here and am just so incredibly happy to be back somewhere where I can understand the signage, the transport system, menus, TV, what everyone is saying to me and can actually have conversations with people that don’t involve ordering lemonade or asking when the bus is arriving.  We boarded the plane, sat there for quite a while, and then an announcement came over that there were technical difficulties and it may be an hour, so we had to go back into the terminal.  Once in the terminal, a second announcement advised that we wouldn’t be flying out til 8.30pm (supposed to leave at 1.50pm).  I can’t really complain because of all the types of transport I have caught over the last five months this was the first problem like this I had encountered.  Others may have been smelly, ancient, dangerous or taken too long, but none were delayed by more than six hours!  I feel I have been quite lucky on that score.  I proceeded to get roaringly drunk in the airport bar and rock out to the Australian cast recording of JC Superstar on my iPod, much to the amusement of my fellow patrons.  There was a beer bottle microphone, awkward chair dancing and cutlery air drumming going on.  It was quite the spectacle I am sure.  I fell asleep on the plane and kept waking myself up snoring for pretty much the entire trip and then landed in Gatwick with a cracking hangover and for the second time since December received the third degree from passport control before they’d let me in.  They are getting much tougher!  I finally arrived at my hotel at midnight, happy as a clam.

I think I'm in London...

Now I have obviously done most of the touristy stuff in London, but as I am staying centrally I thought it might be good to get some photos of some of the main areas and monuments before I head out to the burbs and stay with my friends.  When I lived here I took thousands of photos of the UK and Europe with a film camera, and unfortunately my only copy of all of those photographs were in storage with the rest of my stuff when it burnt down, so I figure it’s high time I restarted my collection, although nothing can be done about my childhood photos!  A result of saying “I’ll scan them next weekend” for seven years.  Although I visited, and actually went inside, Buckingham Palace last time, I never actually saw the changing of the guard.  The palace is about a twenty minute walk from where I am staying so I headed there the first day to check the time it would be happening the next day and then went back.  Central London is incredibly compact, with all the main attractions within comfortable walking distance of each other.  

The Phaaaaantom of the Opera is there

I don’t really know how else to say this without just coming out and stating it.  The changing of the guard is really boring.  Now, I don’t know much of the correct terminology so bear with me. The two different types of soldiers (one lot with the tall black hats – beefeaters I think , and another lot with helmets with gold spikes) march through the streets, some playing instruments, go in through the main gates and line up opposite the guys who are already standing in there, there is a bit of shouting and rifle twirling, and then a whole heap of standing around doing absolutely nothing, which seems to be the main job description of the beefeaters.  “How much experience do you have standing around and doing nothing? Two years at the department of transport service counters? Excellent, you’re hired.”  After the excitement from ten minutes of nothing has worn off, the guys with instruments then play, incredibly randomly, a medley from Phantom of the Opera, and then the band and the soldiers who were standing there waiting march out again.  I didn’t really see the point.

National Gallery

Day One was pretty much spent walking around, chatting and reminiscing about good old London with a friend of mine who lives in Yorkshire and, like me, hasn’t done the touristy things for a while.  Good old fashioned pub meals were had, drinks were consumed, and merriment abounded.  I really could just walk around Central London all day looking at the buildings.  Some of them are incredibly impressive and look like they must be serious and historically important, and then you get to the front and it’s an insurance company headquarters or something.  I hope those people appreciate the amazing places they get to come and work in every day.  Day Two contained the changing of the guard, National Gallery and photo walking tour followed by delicious duck and dumplings in Chinatown and shots in my favourite Soho bar with an Australian friend.  The national gallery has a massive free permanent collection and it was fantastic to revisit, and the actual building itself it none too shabby.  The bar is called “Garlic and Shots” and has a restaurant upstairs in which every single item on the menu is packed with garlic (including the garlic and honey icecream) and downstairs is little dingy gothic type bar that plays loud metal and has a shot menu with a hundred different types on it.  I just love the place.

Today has been fabulously lazy because of the rain. “It’s raining in England??? I hear you gasp.”  Yes, folks, sometimes it rains a little bit here.  I only ventured out about ten metres from the hotel’s front door to the local pub for a gigantic Sunday roast lunch with the biggest mutant Yorkshire pudding I have ever seen.  As I am currently within walking distance to the West End theatres and tomorrow I head out to stay in London’s south west, I am hoping to get some last minute cheap show tickets for tonight.  We shall see.  I did intend to get photos of St Paul’s, Tower of London, St James Park, Hyde Park today and also visit Ripley’s Believe it Or Not Museum , however those plans have been scuppered, so hopefully tomorrow it shall fine up, and I will have more wonderful London photos for you in next week’s blog!  In the meantime, you can click here to see the ones I’ve already taken.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N