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