the last hurrah...

I've just had my last weekend in London... :( I can't believe I've been here for over a year - in some ways it has gone so quickly...

Saturday was a brilliant day! It was the sunniest and warmest day of the year, and 15 friends came over for a BBQ. We sat outside in our little backyard and chatted and ate and drank the day away. We sat there for almost 11 hours! I had the best day. The die-hards that were still here at 11pm, are in this photo.

L-R (back) Dirk, Benno, Scott, Shirl, Mike (front) Niamh, me, Anna, Khanh, Chris.

It wasn't goodbye, but an optimistic 'see you soon'..... I will miss everyone.

Sunday, today, was spent packing and we're now about to go to the pub. On my first night here 14 months ago, we went to the Swan - so it's only fitting that I end this way.

Tomorrow I fly home, on a massive A380 aeroplane. The plane is a double-decker and takes 800 passengers, so I sincerely hope we get off the ground. I have a 15 hour stay in Singapore, and arrive into Adelaide on wednesday morning. I'm inexplicably sad but excited.....!!

free lunch, from the tardis, beneath the gerkin...

Sounds like I've had a wild weekend on something illegal from Amsterdam! But no, this is essentially a long-winded story about Anna and I having lunch today....

Where to start? It seems that the streets of London are paved in silver and bronze and the occasional gold. Since arriving here, I've been finding money. A fair amount of money. At first I didn't pick it up - but I kept seeing it so I decided I would see how much I could gather. Just like a little magpie, searching for shiny things... For the first few months I put it in my purse and spent it.

For christmas, my housemate Scott gave me a Tardis money box!! It's the most amazing thing - you have to open the doors to put the money in and as you open them the Dr talks to you (usually a line from the series). Mmm, David Tennant..! [2 minute daydream]. Where was I? Oh yes, and as you close the doors a blue light on top flashes and the Tardis makes it's disappearing noise. It's ace!!

So from christmas I began putting my findings in the Tardis. I emptied it last week and gave the coins to Anna to deposit via the coin counting machine at her bank. As you can see from the receipts I found 15 pounds and 35 pence! That's like $35! (There was so much to count that the machine broke down in the middle of it all).

I wondered what I could do with these winnings, and decided I would take Anna out for lunch. I met her today (thurs) beneath the famous Gerkin, otherwise known as the Credit Suisse building (also amusingly, overheard it called the Aubergine by an american tourist), and we ate from a fancy cafe whilst admiring the view above us. We were going to try one of the cafe's massive meringues, but we were too full to contemplate them! Of course I had to do a self-portrait, sorry abut the unflattering view of my chins...

So, a free lunch courtesy of Londoners who don't care to pick up their 1 & 2p's - from the Tardis - sitting beneath the Gerkin. Nowhere else but London.....

a very london sunday...

I made plans on sunday to meet two friends for a farewell lunch, Nikki and Fiona. We met beneath Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, and this was a great start to a very touristy day!

We went to the National Portrait Gallery restaurant for lunch, which had unbelievable views back over Trafalgar Square, ol' Nelson, and down Whitehall with Big Ben and Westminster in the distance. We had an extremely delicious 3 course lunch, with wine, which ended with raspberry cheesecake and coffee.

We jumped on a big red bus and went down The Strand to a place called Somerset House, which is essentially an art gallery - and in their huge outdoor courtyard they'd set up London's Largest Livingroom, complete with oversized furniture. We sat with our legs dangling and ate ice cream (yep, after all that lunch!).

To burn that off we walked over Waterloo Bridge (pic left) and down to the London Eye, where we went for a spin. It was my 4th flight, and I'm not tired of it yet!

As we ate cinnamon donuts, we walked back over the Thames on Westminster Bridge and bought tickets for a short boat trip up to Tower Hill. It turned out to be a comedy of errors for the two guys driving the boat, and I wasn't too happy being on water again - especially after we crashed head-on into Blackfriars pier (they left a chunk of boat behind!).

But, it did have it's up-side (apart from me getting to land, having not drowned) - as we got off at Tower Hill they began opening the Tower Bridge, which I'd never seen before! (pic right)

It was a totally excellent day, great weather, great company - and I want to bring London home with me....

cambridge and duxford...

On saturday I took a train to Cambridge, with the purpose of going to a place just south of there called Duxford - where there is an Imperial War Museum. Our grandfather flew Lancaster bombers in WWII, and I wanted to stand beneath one and get a feel for what it would have been like. You weren't allowed inside most of the planes, and it crossed my mind to try batting my eyelashes to see if someone would let me in the Lancaster (I didn't, I should have)...

The Lancaster was huge, and I couldn't imagine piloting one. From what I remember (hopefully correctly) grandpa didn't pilot any of the famous dam buster planes, but was part of a secret squadron (101 Squadron) and survived all his flights - which statistically was against the odds. So seeing the plane in it's metalic flesh, made it even more amazing to me.

I got to walk through a Concorde, and walked around heaps of other amazing planes - an F-111, Mustang, a Blackbird, and watched people taking joy flights around the air-field in a Tiger Moth.

It's so funny that I'm terrified of flying, and yet with my genes I should at least be comfortable with it!

I had a bit of spare time after Duxford, so went into Cambridge. I'd stayed there 10 years ago so had pretty much 'done' it, but walked around the city area loving how old everything was. The pic to the right is Kings College (not affiliated with King's College London where I worked).

I wish I'd been more prepared (like gone with a map), cos I wanted to find the river and see some people punting - but alas, I ran out of time and didn't find it...

a little toot of the ol' trumpet...

I knew last week was coming, and then all of a sudden it was there - my last week of work! Relatively speaking it's a quiet time of year for subscriptions, so I was all up-to-date - and training the girl who was taking over from me was foremost on the agenda...
And then it was friday. For once I didn't have a mad panic finishing things off, and at 4pm we downed tools and laid out some cakes for a little farewell party.
Geez, being in the spotlight - I'm so not good with that! And to make matters worse Claire made a speech about how lovely it was to have worked with me (aw..) and left me to say something in return, and like a complete goose I froze and didn't know what to say! So to divert attention off myself I offered to open the gifts they'd bought me, but that wasn't much better cos they were all watching, and my hands were shaking! What a nincompoop.
I got lots of hugs goodbye, and they said some really nice things about me in my farewell cards (yes, I got two!), which I read on the tube going home. I'm going to miss some genuinely lovely people.
I'm just glad I survived the year - admirably I think - and now I'm officially unemployed for the next 3 weeks! I need a holiday...

deer, and king lear...

It doesn't happen often, but this humble blogger is almost speechless. I had such an amazing weekend.

I made plans on saturday with a friend to go down to Richmond, to take a wander through the town, along the Thames and through Richmond Park. I kind of thought the Park might be the size of the Treasury Gardens, but no - times that by about 200! We looked at the map at the front gate and thought we'd take a look at a couple of the old homesteads, a few lakes and ponds (and the amusingly named Spankers Hill), but got to the first place via a massive hill with awesome views and had to rest and stop for lunch! After that we kind of got a bit lost - cos the place was so bloody huge! - and walked a million miles through amazing parklands, foresty bits with lakes and swans, and eventually had to ask for directions on how to get out. Back the way we'd come, of course...

But I'm so glad we got lost, because we came across a traffic stoppingly beautiful herd of deer! The pictures don't do them justice. They had fuzzy little antlers and cute swishy tails...

I walked my little legs off that day, down to ankle stumps, but it was well worth it.

And I was so looking forward to sunday! A while ago I organised tickets to see King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. A bunch of us went, we had lunch beforehand, and headed to the Globe at 1pm. I wasn't sure how I'd go listening to Shakespeare, and the play was 3 hours long sitting on hard wooden benches (ok, I cheated, I hired a cushion for £1). But I can't tell you how amazing it was - sitting in the open roofed round theatre, with perfect seats facing the stage, and views of the audience on every level up around us, and 'penny stinkers' crammed onto the floor below (well, that's what they would have been called in the 1600's!). It was a magical atmosphere.

The play had the best Shakespeare actors, and the whole thing just gave me goose-bumps. I loved it. 3 hours flew by and then we were all being deafened by the applause. If you come to London, you simply must do this.

Afterwards we stayed at the Globe and had a bottle of wine or two, by chance sitting along-side some of the actors - then headed home.

Blimey, I wasn't speechless after all...!

And to show our broad range of cultural interests, Anna and I watched 4 episodes of Underbelly as well...

58 weekends down, only 2 to go........

a pink, sparkly princess party...

Anna and I took a bus to Leeds on saturday, to spend time with my uncle John, Helena, and my two little cousins Felix and Hetty. The first of the goodbye's....
We arrived mid afternoon and spent the entire time chatting, and for dinner we had the most delicious roast with yorkshire puddings. Yuuuum!
Hetty had a birthday party on sunday, so from 10am the house was filled with tiny 4 year olds running around dressed in fairy and princess dresses! So cute! It was a sunny day so they played outside before having games. They still play the same games I played as a kid - pass the parcel, and musical statues! The only difference these days is the food - there's a distinct lack of little hot dogs and party pies, parents like to see healthy things like carrot sticks and fruit. Where's the fun, sugar-rush and sickness in that...?
After all the princesses went home, John set up a paddling pool and a slip'n'slide that ran off a slide in the backyard, and we watched Felix and Hetty pour dishwashing liquid down the slide and fly off the end. Very entertaining!
I left Leeds feeling sad that I wouldn't see my little cousins until they were probably much older, but that's what happens when you live on the other side of the world...

book club at a garden nursery...

Sunday was book club day, and since Anna and I were hosting it we thought we'd go out rather than have it at our place (our loungeroom is small and uninspiring).

We'd had recommendations from 2 people to go to a place called the Petersham Nursery, down the Thames in Richmond. The restaurant there is chef'd by an aussie lady called Skye Gyngell, and the nursery itself was said to be really lovely.

It didn't disappoint! It was very pretty, with lots of little elephant statues everywhere, other Indian things, and heaps of colourful flowers. There were heaps of glasshouses - a few of which had rustic tables and chairs where you could sit with a pot of tea and a slice of Skye's cake.

We gossip'd for ages and thought we'd better talk about the book, which was Brave New World. Quite a hard book to discuss in public, especially when the girls had so many thoughts on relationships, promiscuity, drugs, psychology and society. We were getting funny glances. We gave up after a while and wandered around the plants instead!

a couple of jousting sticks...

This weekend I thought I'd do something quintessentially English. Go to a castle, and watch some jousting!

We had a family day out, with Anna and Mike (hi Mike!), Scott and Mirka. We got up early on saturday, jumped on a coach, and headed 1.5 hours south east to Leeds Castle in Kent (it isn't in Leeds, confusingly!).

The Castle is set on a lake, and has lovely huge gardens with lots of ducks and swans. The last lady to live there in the 1920's had black swans imported from Australia. The inside of the castle was a strange mix of very old and art deco, as it was 'modernised' in the 20's. I would have been happy to live there! The castle was used by people like Henry VIII as a stop over to France.

We had an excellent lunch, supplemented with Pimms and lemonade! There was a display of medieval comedic antics - and jousting, which was fast-paced and colourful!

We also saw a Birds of Prey display, with a huge owl/hawk thing (can't remember what they guy said) which had a massive wing span. The guy got the bird to do a low fly over the tops of kids heads. The two little kids at the front are so cute - heads down, bums up!

dancing the pachanga...

Last thursday was the long awaited night at the theatre to see Dirty Dancing! 5 of us went so we made a night of it and went out for dinner beforehand to a chain pub called the Walkabout. It's Australian themed and serves stuff like kangaroo burgers and VB, and a drink called a snake bite. Not sure whats in that, something red, but it's so popular with anitpodeans that it's known as a snakey. I didn't have either a snakey, or a VB (yik).
Dirty Dancing itself was fantastic, but one of those things where it could never be as good as the movie. I had very high expectations - it used to be my favourit-est movie (yeah ok, it still is!) and I used to know all the lines, so the stage production was going to have to be a masterpiece to be better. It was almost line for line to the movie, and the dance routines were what made it. All the classic songs were done, and thankfully no-one sang She's Like the Wind - only Patrick Swayze can sing that.
I came away having really enjoyed it, and wishing I could dance like that..!