What I've Been Up To

Hmm, I'm so bad at keeping this thing current!

Ok, quick run-down on stuff I've done lately - which isn't much, but I always seem to be busy. That's life in London. It's hard to not be out literally every night. There's always something to do. Although not according to these dreadful American college students I sat next on the tube the other week. Now most of you know I love America and Americans, but these 2 were prime examples of the 'American abroad' stereotype. Student 1: "Ok, so we've like done the Tower and Buckingham Palace. There's like, nothing left to do here." Student 2: "Oh I know. But you know what, there's like this boat cruise you can do on the Thaymes..." It took a LOT of willpower not say "Um, the river is pronounced 'Tems', you dumb-ass ". Ah, bless. To be fair, nothing here seems ever to be pronounced remotely how it looks.

I digress. So back in April I went to a pre-ANZAC dinner/talk all about the formation of the Kiwi national identity through WW1. That was quite interesting, as it was something I studied way back in 7th form history. It was run through the Kiwi Society which has a disturbing lack of young people. Mostly old 'gels' and 'chaps'. I even managed to get my butt out of bed for the ANZAC dayDawn service at Hyde Park and was quite impressed at how many others attended it too. NZ is finally getting it's own memorial at Hyde Park to be unveiled by the Queen on Armistice Day, by the way.

I went with Fiona and her friends Mel and Lee to see Bodies. It's an exhibit all about the human body using actual cadavers which have been preserved. You get to see everything - all our muscles, our innards, the lot. It was gross, but so fascinating at the same time. I also went with Fiona and her mates to Kew Gardens, which is lovely. If it wasn't for it being on the flight path of Heathrow, you'd forget you were in London.

I've been exploring London quite a bit and am making it my mission to actually go to more off-the-beaten-track things that I read about and think, oh I should go to that, but never do. I found Postman's Park, which those of you who saw the movie 'Closer' will recognise. It's this little park near St Paul's, which has plaques commerating people who died saving the lives of others. Rather morbid and strange, but interesting too. Anyway, Natalie Portman's character takes her name from one of the plaques. I went to Borough Market the other day - a foodie's dream!



I went to on a day Hever Castle, and to Rye with Fiona and Neil - and ran into Yvonne from our Normandy trip. We are Tracks travel groupies! The castle belonged to Anne Bolyen's family and is more of a fortified manor than a castle, but it is lovely. The exhibit on the Boleyn family is great - not too lengthy, and yet, still informative if you already know a bit about them. They have 2 prayer books that Anne herself wrote in. The castle is extremely well preserved as it was bought by the American millionaire family, the Astors, who restored it, and re-created the Tudor village alongside it for their staff to live in. The grounds are lovely too - Italian renaissance style, with a huge lake, and a water maze - step on a wrong stone and you get squirted with water (great for summer). We were there for May day, so we got to see many re-creationalists enacting typical village life. We even saw Anne herself being presented with presents.

Rye is a gorgeous little village with lots of Tudor houses, cobblestone streets - Mermaid St being the most famous as the houses are all called random things like "The House with Two Front Doors", or "The House next door" etc.




I went to see "Moving Out", which is based on the songs of Billy Joel. I was expecting a musical, much like "We Will Rock You" (which is absolutely fantastic by the way). But this was a dance show instead, with a band performing all of the songs on a platform above the dancers. It tells the stories of 3 friends over the 70's thru to the 80's. The dancing was pretty incredible, and it was worth seeing for the "Goodnight Saigon" sequence alone, but it's not a patch on WWRY.

I've had lots of catch-up sessions with mates, and games nights (learnt a new one called Powergrid). Fiona, Ariane and I went to a girly night at Molton Brown (like the Body Shop, only posher). The goody bag of free stuff was a winner! I got to catch up with Cameron who takes the 'fresh off the plane' crown from me (although Fiona informs me he doesn't really count as he is staying in Ireland). Helped Ariane move into her flash new digs at North Greenwich. I've also moved myself, out to North-East London. The area I live in is ok, not too dodgy. There's loads of chavs which is great. I love Chavs. For an in-depth explanation of the Chav phenomenon and to check to see if you yourself might be one, visit http://chavstest.com/quiz/index.php Brilliant! I've attended a few bbq's and picnics, as the weather has finally decided to get sunny and warm.

Anyway, apart from upstairs neighbours who seem to be occasionally re-enacting Riverdance, I'm enjoying the flat. My flatmate Giselle is German, and is very nice. We've had many good chats about stuff like weird things that kiwis/germans/brits do, what it was like to live in Berlin before the wall came down, and of course, our favourite topic - movies. If you think I love movies, I've got nothing on Giselle. Her collection dwarfs that of my parents. Oh yeah, and she was equally as obsessed with the tv show 'Prison Break' as me. Monday nights just feel so empty now series one has ended...

My small group at St. Mary's is going well, and we've even got British people in it now! It was just aussies and kiwis. We meet every Tuesday, and they are proving to be a great bunch of people. I've found the scriptural side of St. Mary's to be a little on the Diet Coke side of things, so my small group discussions have been making up for that lack of depth.

England is in the grip of World Cup fever which is loads of fun. Personally I am going for Germany. The fact that they are my work sweepstake team has some bearing on this. The country comes to a standstill for the England games - the streets are practically deserted. The last game was hilarious - we had 3 japanese guys next to us (all wearing their newly purchased England shirts) who were literally tearing their hair out with excitement whenever "Engrund" got the ball. Despite my allegiance to my beloved Deutschland, my aussie friend Debbie has roped me into attending an Aussie-fest party to watch the Aussie v. Croatia game on Thursday.


I went to the 7's at Twickenham, which was fun, but a totally different vibe from the Wgtn one. There was lots of singing! Apparently the English got rather yobbish and spoiled it, but I wasn't there then, thank goodness. Ummm, what else? I went with Yvonne to the museum of advertising and branding in Notting Hill. It looks at advertising and packaging from Victorian times to the present and I thoroughly recommend it.



Dave, Cuffy, Nicola and I went to see Def Leppard last night (bogans came out of the woodwork!) and they went off! It was such a good concert, and jeez, for hard living rockers, they haven't aged as badly as I expected.







For the most part I am enjoying myself. I can't believe I've been here 10 months! Work is going well (although I am actively looking for another job). I love my workmates, and since we got a change of team leader, for some reason we've all become way more social. Not that our old team leader wasn't a great person! But generally going to work is a pleasure, as we just have a good laugh. Mark and Lee are especially good at keeping me entertained. Our office banter gets rather random at times - we do stuff like, speaking in aussie accents, or like pirates (Lucy is a pirate freak, don't ask why), sing annoying songs that won't get out of your head for days (we even made up a dance routine to 'Mr Sandman', as we were all singing it for weeks...) and between us, we must have tried every cocktail on the extensive list at Freud's in Covent Garden. It's taken a while, but I now feel like I have a good bunch of mates here in London, and have resigned myself to the fact that most of them are foreigners. Plus I have the luxury of having old friends here - although I'm already missing my 'wing-man' Kara, who is tripping around Europe at the moment! Obviously the best part of being here is the experiences you get to have - all the travel, and the different people, and seeing stuff that you've seen in pictures or studied. Good for the little grey cells.

Anyway, that's about it for now - I'll put up a post about Amsterdam sometime soon.

PS Saw Saffy (Julia Sawalha) from Abfab shopping at H&M. Very exciting!
PPS I must confess that I actually watched an entired episode of Eastenders the other day. I'm so ashamed!