Home and hosed

Been back for a week now and have just about got over the trip. I always think it's weird to need a holiday to get over your holiday but that's what its felt like for the last week. 

After the excitement of trying to get to Heathrow the flight was pretty much uneventful, which is the way I like them to be honest, just the usual boredom, food and movies. I couldn't tell you what I watched though, I think it had Matt Damon in it and the grey haired guy from Mad Men, which is pretty much my usual movie experience on long flights. You watch them but have absolutely no recollection of what they are. Does anyone else find that? I can't even blame the medication as I forgot to take them with me on the return flight. Maybe its just the tiny screen and jetlag that makes airline movies so unforgettable. Or maybe the champagne and Singapore Slings; who knows. Singapore Airport was completely deserted again when I got there, so quiet it's just bizarre, after 13hours on the 'plane you arrive to silence and wonder if something very apocalyptic has happened while you were over the bay of Bengal. It never has of course, it's just another normal day in my favourite, cleanest, politest and least threatening totalitarian state.  

I did however set some sort of record for arrival at Perth "International". The plane landed at 11:30 pm and I was in the taxi at 11:48 pm! I can't quite believe it and I was there. Straight off the plane, through the magic self serve immigration gate, told by the quarantine lady that my tea bags are ok to bring in, bag third on the conveyor and sent straight out the door by the customs man. I was expecting the usual hour at least but this was amazing. The most amazing thing was the fact that there were actually taxis at the taxi stand. This, as you may know, is unheard of at Perth Airport at midnight. The driver didn't actually know how to get to Mt Lawley but you can't have everything I suppose. Why do taxi drivers here never know the way and why do they not listen when you tell then how to get somewhere? This guy asked so I said go over the secret bridge (well I said 7th avenue bridge, but that's much less exciting) and along Railway Parade. So we go over 7th Av bridge and along Carrington then back down Central the wrong way then right on Railway Parade and then up Fourth then along Beaufort then back down Third. That's not quite what I said but I suppose he has to earn a living ($35 for a 15 min trip, not a bad hourly rate).

I've been back at work for three days now and it's like I've never been away. The same issues, the same whinges and the same ridiculous children's names...two lots of Coco today. In the same school. No matter how "alternative" you think you are naming your kid there will always be someone with the same idea. It's why I believe people should just stick to normal, traditional names. At least your poor kid can end up one of many Patricks instead of one of may Tequishaes.

Final food photos attached, I was offered many more courses but just tried to sleep instead as there is only so many omelettes and sausages you can have on one airline.

Dinner

Smoked Salmon and Mozzarella Salad

Seared tournedos of beef in green peppercorn jus (what happened to 'gravy'?)

Banoffee pie

Singapore sling, my new favourite aeroplane beverage

Breakfast

Sliced fresh fruit

Spinach quiche with grilled tomatos and beef sausage

There was bread, pastries and tea and coffee too but I assume everyone knows what they look like.

Coming home

So I'm at Heathrow again. It doesn't seem six weeks since I was here last, how time flies...except when waiting for a flight of course.

I nearly didn't get here at all due to the perils and failings of the French automobile industry. When dad started his car this morning, about half an hour before we set off, it went completely mental. That's the only way to describe it. The windscreen wipers started, the lights were flashing, the engine and air con fans were running flat out. It was like a silent movie apart from the noise of the engine running like mad. The biggest issue was the total inability to switch the damn thing off, even taking the key out didn't work. Well not actually a key, the "renaultcard" thingy as a normal ignition key would be far too normal for a Renault. Eventually I had to stall it and even then the lights and wipers and all kept going. We had to disconnect the battery to finally kill it. I thought I was in a Stephen King novel for a moment. Reconnecting the battery didn't help, it just set it off again. All totally weird. The diagnostic display in the dashboard was telling us there was an "electrical fault". You're not kidding M. Frog-mobile. Even the guy at the garage was stumped when we phoned him. The old man'll have to try and get his breakdown service to tow him to Gloucester tomorrow. Gods alone knows how much it'll cost to fix but at least he's finally realised it just has to go. Hopefully it can be made mobile for not too much and he can pass it off in a part exchange for something not made by Renault. Moral of the story, don't buy a Renault.

Luckily their neighbours are fantastic and drove us to Heathrow at the drop of a hat, not something you expect them to do on their day off. I'm very grateful and lucky that their Renaults both seem to work.

So now I'm in the lounge person a copy of super yacht monthly and watching children's BBC. These business types have very eclectic tastes in magazines and tv viewing.

To all those in Perth, see you soon. To all those in blighty; it was good to see you and I'll see you sometime.

I'll just leave you with the news from the local paper, which conjures up some great mental images;

And they say the devil has all the fun.

Oh! And the picture at the top is the local winery. Just like Margaret River, only a bit more damp.

Tired of Life

That's a pretty depressing title, but don't worry, I'm just tired of London and, ergo, life. At least according to Dr Johnson that is. I got back last night after four days in the big city and, as much as I love it there, it's nice to be away from it again. It's just so full on all the time, especially when you are staying in Covent Garden. Basically this is ground zero for tourists, con men (preying on the tourists), buskers (preying on the tourists) and expensive cafes (preying on the tourists). Now I understand that while here I am a tourist but all the other tourists still piss me off. There's the huge groups of European school kids all with matching backpacks and all unable to keep to one side of the road/pavement/escalator, creating a huge, noisy, brightly coloured polyester roadblock wherever they are. Then there are the Americans, lovely people I'm sure but we don't all need to hear about your medication and latest surgical procedure (why do the yanks say "procedure" when the rest of the world says "operation"? Is that buzzy game called Procedure! in the US?). Still Covent Garden is a great location and the cheapy Travellodge on Drury Lane is both cheap and cheerful. 

It was only about two blocks from the British Museum so I went there on the first afternoon. I only wanted to see one exhibition about Eric Gill the sculptor which is probably the best way to visit, if you just go there and wander about it's just overwhelming because of all the stuff in it. I'd suggest you decide what you want to see before you get there. The bit I wanted was just one room and pretty deserted so it was ok. I have now discovered what a strange man Gill was, and not a little unpleasant. I love his fonts, graphic style and his sculpture but I'm not so keen on his rabid catholicism, misogyny and mistreatment of his daughters (whom he had pose naked for him. Seedy much?). He was also completely obsessed with sex and genitals. Which just goes to show how catholic he really was. The rest of the Museum was completely heaving with school kids and yet more Eurotrash. I suppose it shows how weak Sterling is that all these foreign johnnies can come here and have a look at the stuff the British nicked from them in the first place; you have to look pretty closely to find the British items in the British Museum.

At least the foreign tourists want to be there. I was at the British Library next to see the exhibition of sci-fi  stuff. Lots of first editions and examples of great works with interesting explanations (and a TARDIS obviously. The BBC must have a clause with all UK institutions that the merest mention of space or time must involve a cross-promotion for Dr. Who) when these three northerners come noisily in to the room;

"What's in thur Garry?"

"Just loads more borin' books"

"Bloody hell, it's a bit shit in 'ere in't it"

Books. It's the British LIBRARY! Fuckwits. I was more annoyed because they were next to me and I was looking at Orwell's original notebook with the ideas he'd scribbled down for 1984. I'm in awe and these dicks just want to watch Deal Or No Deal. The next day there was a headline in the Evening Standard that one in five Londoners can't read. I'm not sure if that shouldn't be "will not" or "do not" read but either way there could be no hope for this country. I can't imagine Chinese people being led past the original of Li Bai's poetry and calling it a boring book. (I looked that up by the way as my knowledge of Chinese literature is about the same as those northern gits knowledge of English literature, but at least I know who George Orwell is.) The BL is a really interesting place to visit though, I mean you can't borrow any books but they have some great things on display. And an excellent bookshop.

After such a depressing stop I headed back to the hotel for a cuppa and a sit down. Just down the road, on the corner of Drury Lane and Long Acre, is a massive building which I've never managed to work out what it is, but this week there were hundreds of similarly dressed men going in and out and generally hanging around in the vicinity. They all had dark suits, waistcoats and various tiny lapel pins. It turns out this massive place is the Freemasons Hall. You'd think that a secret society wouldn't build a massive stone temple right in the middle of London then all hang about outside. It's almost as if they want to get found out. Gods know what they do in there but it obviously involves slim briefcases and, judging by the shop over the road, lots of regalia. I know now where to get a little apron adorned with "mystical" symbols. And swords. Who knew there was still a demand for a sword shop in the 21st Century but you can buy anything in London. 

This was further proved by a wander round the Inns of Court. This is the area where all the Barristers roost and is centred on the Temple Church (as in Knights Templar and the Crusades) south of the Strand and the Royal Courts of Justice. It's like a different world with different rules and strange terminology, the whole place is stuck in a time warp. Apart from the Jaguars and Aston Martins parked in the car park. It seems the legal profession isn't totally keen on sticking with the old ways. The church might be 12th Century but the cars and suits are not. Although this is where I saw the only wig and gown shop I've ever come across that doesn't cater to drag queens and country and western singers, just lawyers, judges and barristers. Although there may be some cross over for all I know.

I went to Greenwich the next day, a place I've never really taken too but was convinced to give another go by some friends. I went down the river to get there which was different, freezing and deserted. It's odd that the trains are packed but the ferry had three people on it, all of us tourists. It's not as though it's slow as Westminster to Greenwich only took about 20 minutes. Perhaps the commuters don't fancy a freezing wait on the dock each morning. Can't say I blame them for that. There was a massive ship parked (?) at Greenwich called The World which I thought was a bit odd, it's not exactly cruising season, but it turns out it's no ordinary vessel. The people on board actually live there and constantly cruise around the world. It sounds like hell on earth to me but apparently it's very exclusive. The Smallest studio on board cost US$600,000 and there are US$20,000 per month utility fees! I thought my strata fees were astronomical. It also explained the number of orange people with tightly stretched faces and giant sunglasses walking around Greenwich. And also explained the number of Maybachs waiting at the jetty. What a weird isolated world they must live in on the worlds most exclusive floating Butlins. I wonder how many of them succumbed to the wonderful tat for sale in all the gift shops in town? Normally I wouldn't be looking but someone asked me where they could get a tasteful snow globe when they visit London. It appears that there is no such thing as a tasteful snow globe, but you can buy some wonderful stuff. Union Jack Gemstone iPhone Cover anyone? My favourite are the royal wedding souvenirs which were obviously over ordered. There is a gift for everyone, even republicans. At least I assume that's who the ashtrays are for so they can stub out their fag on Kate and Wills' faces.

I went off to Canary Wharf on the way back to town. What a strange otherworld this place is. A land of expensive suits, skyscrapers, dated marble corporate lobbies and tax-payer bailouts. It's a bit like Manhattan on the Isle-Of-Dogs, just with awfully dated architecture, a lot of it with a whiff of the  pharaohs about it; all slanted uprights and weird pedestal roofs. A tiny bit of hubris from the Tory backed developers at the end of Maggie's reign I think. Mind you it's not as if anyone working there seems to have noticed that they owe the UK taxpayer a huge wodge of cash and a great big thank you. This week there's a car show going on, guess what the cheapest brand there was? BMW. I've never seen so many expensive vehicles in one place before in my life. Jag, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Range Rover, Mercedes. There was a £350,000 Lexus that everyone was sitting in. Looks like there's still some bonuses to be spent. 

Every year the Royal Academy has a summer show where both very famous and unknown artists can show their work. I went this year to have a look as for the first time they had a photography gallery. I cannot believe how much some of these people want for their work, and not to sound too conceited, I can take pictures as well as any of them in there. Well unless they have people in them, then my abilities completely disappear. Maybe I need a career change, as long as I can charge £700 for every print of course. The rest of the works on display were a bit too IKEA for my liking, lots of dodgy watercolours and white canvases with white paint on them (stuff which gets contemporary art a bad reputation in my opinion). Nearly everything in there was also on a massive scale. Who buys a painting which is 10m by 5m? Or a sculpture of a twitching dog rummaging in a rubbish bin? I assume they are all aiming to be bought by institutions, or more likely by Charles Saatchi which is a guaranteed career maker. It worked for Tracy Emin. A print of her's was for sale in the RA show. It consisted of a litho of five handwritten words and was a snip at £15,000. Really? Really! It's not even in biro. She wrote it and some other mug printed copies. Even if I didn't already hate her for being a talentless bint I'd certainly hate her for her brazen money grabbing cheek.

Luckily my day was saved by the tube trip back to the hotel. Some stations are so deep that they need lifts to get you to street level and these talk to you, to let you know the doors are opening or closing and which lift arrives next. It appears that the Queen has recorded the voice at Kennington station as it's the poshest lift I've ever heard. Even the grammar was archaic: "Lift number two shall be the next lift". Everyone at the station was in hysterics so I assume it's new. Maybe its for the Olympics, they certainly need to do something to get the locals on side. There are London 2012 shops at all the stations and tourist centres all selling the most dreadful crap. To be fair it's crap mostly because the logo is terrible and the two mascots they've created look like sex toys. But you can buy commemorative models of great British engineering emblazoned with the 2012 branding. These are a Mini (obsolete), Concorde (obsolete) and a Routemaster Bus (extremely obsolete). All a bit sad and tragic really, much like the UK's medal tally is likely to be.

Royal Courts Of Justice: note the TV crew:

Temple Church: Next stop Jerusalem:

Bargain time:

Canary Wharf, where the sun always shines and you can never go bust:

She was the Queen of Hearts you know:

Go on, stub it out, right in her eye:

Great Court at the British Museum. Amazing roof, average coffee:

You have to be careful in Soho as to which are the sex shops and which the cake shops:

Slacking off

Ok I've been really slack with the blogging. To be honest I've been so busy during the day and so knackered at night that it's just got away from me a bit.

So what's been happening. Well I went back to Cardiff for the day to see how my old uni town was faring (I Think this is the source of the confusion that I might be welsh, I'm not, I just lived there for a while). It didn't get off to a great start as the train system here is a bit of a shambles. The train I got on was already thirty minutes late at Lydney, but I didn't realise this as it was so late it appeared to be the next train arriving a minute early. Not a problem I hear you say...oh but no! Because it was so late it decided to terminate at Newport, 15 minutes short of Cardiff. Why? Apparently this makes the statistics the train companies give about on time running appear better as, you know it wasn't actually late in Cardiff was it? It just never got there. Anyway we all get off and wait on the platform for the next train to Cardiff central, arriving platform 2. Oh no actually it's platform 1. Off we all traipse, up the steps over the bridge to platform 2. Sorry ladies and gentlemen it's platform 3 now so you better get your asses back over that bridge as the train is leaving in about 30 seconds! Bloody British Rail (except of course it's not BR anymore, it's about a million different companies, the one running my train was DB, the German State Rail company, who seem to do a much better job in the Fatherland). It was also at this time I discovered a new definition of "on time". For the train companies this seems to mean any time within fifteen minutes of the scheduled departure. I'll have to remember that when my patients complain that I'm running late. Needless to say I was a bit pissed off when I got to Caerdydd so I filled in the complain form to get a refund, which rather brilliantly requires you to attach your ticket. Which has been kept by the platform barrier on arrival. What a handy little trick. I'll know next time though to go through the barrier with a little man if I want a refund.

Cardiff has changed beyond all recognition since I was there last, and totally since I lived there, millions of pounds has been spent on the city centre. There are more shops that you can shake a stick at now, I mean they are all the same chains that are everywhere but there's lots of them. My favourite was the Lego store where you can buy bricks like pic'n'mix. Brilliant! I didn't do it but I was tempted. It does appear though that the council has only actually spent the money in one or two limited parts of town. When I had a stroll round to my old house in the student suburbs it was lime being in a post-apocalyptic future. Broken down properties, rubbish in the streets and sickly looking kids and locals (mind you they always look lime that do students). It was a bit of a shock. Obviously the money is only to make the city nice and sparkly for the visitors and people who can afford a city flat, the rest just have to get stuffed. It was a bit surreal and sort of freaked me out, but my iPod seemed to be psychic when I was walking round, playing lots of music from the nineties, even clicking over to Iron Maiden when I got to the old digs. It was almost as if A and J were there in spirit with their slightly tragic metal. Of course it could just be that I'm old and have lots of crappy nineties music on my iPod. Who knows.

I did notice one worrying trend in Cardiff and that was the return of the elasticated trouser leg cuff. Even on jeans. I suppose it's a logical progression as pants get tighter and skinnier that this horror would make a comeback. It's not a good look but so far seems to be limited to Cardiff. Sometimes a town can be too fashion forward.

Some pics (which seems to be the new format on here)

The Cottage, poorly name for an old man pub:




Cardiff Castle, which I have still never been in:




A subtle new building, the place is full of these:




John Lewis, looks like a happy-clappy christian cathedral:




Nye Bevan, father of the NHS (Currently spinning in his grave):




The old homestead, "Colin" to his friends:




And just to prove Welsh is indecipherable, guess what that means?:

Motorway...motorway...motorway...

So I'm back from Cornwall. For a small country it's amazing how far away some things are, it was a four hour drive from Penzance back to Gloucestershire at 80 mph, but it's not 320 miles so work that one out.

We left just at the right moment as Sunday morning was damp, drizzly and cold. In fact it was so cold on Saturday evening that the B&B put the central heating on. This is not usually required less than two days from the start of June and the alleged summer. The whole of Cornwall was also completely full by Saturday night for the long weekend so we got out while everyone else tried to cram their cars, caravans and kids into the Cornish peninsula. 

I don't really have much to add about the rest of the trip, we spent the last day in St Ives and I've said all there is to be said about that on here before. The difference this time was that the Tate Gallery was open and we all got made into a work of art. I have nothing but respect for the sort of artist that comes up with a simple idea and then gets someone else to do all the actual "art" for them.  This piece was by Roman Ondak and involves everyone visiting the gallery having their height measured on the wall in felt tip pen. Eventually there will just be a black stripe around the centre of the gallery. Clever, especially as the man himself is nowhere to be seen and may have never even been to St Ives, there's just some poor gallery curator measuring people in a West Country tourist town. Sheer genius. Fame, money and no actual work involved. I think it's barely art and I generally love contemporary art.

We left CG in Cornwall for the long weekend and as is traditional in these parts it's been absolutely pissing down for the actual public holiday so not much has been achieved apart form me buying a Ken Follett book and getting Stephen Fry's biography for a quid. In fact all the top 50 books in WH Smith are "buy one get one for £1"! Why do we never get deals like that in Australia? And why do so few people here seem to read when their books are so cheap? At least I have a massive Ken Follett opus to read on the train to Cardiff tomorrow and I can also use it to beat off any Welsh people that get too close.

Here's some pics of Cornwall to leave you with.

I assume you bring your own wellies;

Apparently there are real fishermen somewhere round here;

Lands End, on a not drizzly but very cold, windy morning;

St Ives Harbour, gods know how they get the lifeboat out at low tide;

St Ives, the bin men here must be very fit;

Oh, and Mummers;

Kernow

I'm in Kernow, that'll be Cornwall to you of course. I drove down Thursday for a few days but didn't really realize that it's a long weekend, by today it's obvious as all the hotels have filled up and there are tourists everywhere. Luckily there are seven Cornish pasty shops in town so plenty of food available.

It's really beautiful down here and we're staying in a lovely hotel in Penzance, it's a winner of the English Tourist Board "Breakfast Award". It was very nice to be woken up by the smell of bacon this morning. In fact it's been very nice since we got here. When we arrived the landlady asked if we wanted tea and we were presented with this:

The full clotted cream tea business, very nice and the start of a pretty calorie laden day. After a wander around town we had dinner in a local pub called the Dolphin, it was used to recruit volunteers to fight the Spanish Armada in 1585 and is reputed to be where Walter Raleigh smoked the first pipe of tobacco in England. Mind you both of those facts are from the pub's menu and may be for the delectation of the tourists. Even so it's a pretty old pub and the food was great. So was the beer actually.

CG arrived today after a long and tortuous train journey, something about the wrong sort of fire on the line, so we had a bit of an explore. Firstly off to Lands End, which CG's landlord had told her was only 350 miles from America. He was only out by a factor of 10 but this may have once again have been a tourist teasing fact. It was forecast to be a crappy weekend but today turned out beautifully and after walking the cliff path from Sennen I've got quite sunburned. After the cliff path we walked around a few of the little villages. This is where you notice that the locals and tourists/holiday homes are next to each other and there is quite a contrast. To buy a house here you need to be rich. Very rich. But the locals are actually pretty poor. In fact Cornwall is one of the poorest counties in Europe. It's sad to see some communities that are almost entirely made up of holiday lets. It makes for a very dead and empty community. It's not just the differences in wealth that let you tell the local from the tourist houses. All the locals have net curtains or blinds and none of the tourists do. I guess they forfeit the view for a little privacy from the likes of me walking past. It's strange to think that many of us try hard to maintain ethical and nondestructive tourism but have killed lots of communities in our own backyard with love.

Driving round here is a bit of a challenge. It's unnerving to drive down a tiny single track road and come to a sign saying "road narrows". Narrows to what? A footpath?! This narrowness of road is made somewhat worse by all the locals bombing along at 60 miles per hour and the double decker busses. If you don't like country driving I suggest you avoid Cornwall.

It's worth making the trip though to see some of the spectacular things. We spent the afternoon at the Levant tin and copper mine which closed in 1930 but had been mined for a few hundred years before that. If modern miners think they deserve their high pay for the difficult conditions they work in they don't know they're born. For a start they used to get to the bottom of the mine (1600 feet deep) on ladders. It took an hour and a half down and two and a half up. For each shift. Before you even start to get paid. Then once they get to the bottom they had to walk a mile out to the mine face. And this mile is out under Atlantic ocean. I cannot imagine how hard a life it was. It did produce a lot of innovation though. Many mining technologies were dreamt up by Cornishmen. Mostly involved with pumping, which makes sense considering the whole under ocean mining thing. It's hard to imagine what it was like when all the mines were all working, the whole Cornish coast must have been a hellish vision of fire, chimneys, slag heaps and toxic chemical processing. The whole area is WHO listed now, it's amazing to think it's categorized the same as the Taj Mahal and Ankor Wat but they all represent a part of human development and history that's past.

Dinner tonight is at another pub, even older than the last one. I'm expecting the menu to tell me that it's where Mary and Joseph got put in the stable.

Going abroad

Just got back from Scotland (which isn't quite abroad yet but will be if the Scottish Nationalists get their way) and a very pleasant weekend. I drove up to Carlisle on Friday to see J and M and the kids. I always forget how far it actually is to their place, I think it's because I keep reading miles as kilometers and forgetting that they are 1.6 times further than I think.

The M6 motorway is a very boring drive, and not that lovely till you get past Manchester, unless you think that urban decay and the outskirts of Birmingham make for scenic travel. It's not quite the great ocean road. Once you get past the post industrial bits of the north though is does get quite spectacular as you drive through the Staffordshire countryside and Lake District. I of course mean spectacular in that slightly less than anywhere else's sense of spectacular that England has, it's beautiful but not quite a mountainy as New Zealand or foresty as Canada or remotey as Australia. But this is a good thing. Mountains like the Southern Alps in Cumbria would just be a bit silly. Because of the boringness of the motorway I did stop quite a few times. I would suggest you avoid this if at all possible on the UK motorway system. The services, or roadhouses if you're antipodean, are just awful. Always full of kids on school trips, old ladies from coach trips and members of the British forces for some reason. This doesn't sound too bad but add in the cost of a coffee and the unmentionable items floating in the lavs and it makes you want to keep driving. The "Tiredness Kills" signs start to sound like a good alternative. There is however one little oasis on the entire network called Tebay. This is a private service station in Cumbria which is the only motorway services in the UK with a butcher and a farm shop. And ducks in the car park. It's really lovely but I managed to miss it on my way up and stopped at a place that turned out to be only 10 minutes from my destination. It's those pesky kilometers again.

J was at work so I found the spare key and let myself in (she told me where it was, it's ok). I always think it's a very odd thing to be in someone else's house while they are at work. I could never be a burglar as it would make me uncomfortable. J and M are about to move to Australia, Perth in fact, so there was lots of questions about stuff. I also warned them to be prepared for the kids sounding a bit weird and very Ozzie in pretty short order. At the moment they are very northern so some may say it'll be an improvement. Not me though, I'd never say something like that...

On to Scotland then and to see D and P in their mansion overlooking the loch. It is just the most beautiful house in the most beautiful location. Last time I saw them the place was still in two halves as they bought it as two flats many years ago. It had been roughly hacked into two floors without much sympathy but P and D have put it back together with great attention to detail. It's the sort of place you expect to see in a Victorian drama. I imagine the vicar would live there. The location is amazing too, overlooking Loch Long. If you're lucky you get to see the nuclear subs going past too but I don't expect this to last with the current Tory cuts going on. There is just one small problem with the house and location. It is bloody freezing. This isn't a issue with the house, it's just in Scotland. Amazingly the natives don't seem to notice, we went into Glasgow and there were people with T shirts on for gods' sake! Glasgow's a funny place, really beautiful and with a very arty heritage while also being a bit of a hell hole with some of the worst social problems in the UK. I am at a loss to see how the SNP plan to pay for their health service when there is no English money available. Although the Scots do smoke a lot so there's some cash to be made there. Actually those north of the border already get a better deal than the sassenachs with free prescriptions, no university fees and parking for four hours for a quid outside the Kelvingrove museum. This is the best parking deal so far this trip.

If you are ever in Glasgow, and you may be, then a trip to Kelvingrove is well worth it. It's the only museum in the world where you'll see a stuffed elephant being buzzed by a WW2 Spitfire. Don't ask me why. It seems that when they refurbished the museum they just got everything out of storage, put it on display then tried to find ways to link together what you're looking at. It's sort of bizarre but brilliant all the same. I'm still trying to work out what child sized football jerseys have got to do with stuffed albatrosses. The kids loved it. They had activity sheets to do so that kept them busy for about five minutes then they just wanted to see the elephant and have some chips.

We drove back to Carlisle on Saturday evening and it rained the entire way, absolutely horrible conditions so I'm pretty glad I was a passenger. I've kind of forgotten how to drive in the rain and find myself turning into a classic Perth driver at the first spots on the windscreen: slowing down and pulling as far to the left as I can while the locals fly past at 80 mph. I saw my first episode of the new Dr Who while J was out getting takeaway. I thought the new child playing the Doctor was a bit too much like the last one. I assumed the point was that when he regenerates he's usually a totally different person. John Pertwee to Tom Baker leaps to mind. I'm also pretty sure he must have run out of new bodies by now. Isn't there a regeneration limit? I'm sure my nerdy friends will enlighten me. It was funny watching it with the kids, they started off sitting on the floor about two feet from the screen but gradually got closer and closer to the sofa until they were sitting on top of me. Bravery obviously doesn't last the full 46 minutes.

Sunday I headed for home again but decided to make a stop at Morcambe on the way back. You may never have heard of it but Morcambe was once as famous a holiday destination as Blackpool, attracting massive crowds of the "better sort". I've always wanted to go to see the Midland Hotel. This was built in 1933 by the LMS railway for their passengers to stay. It's a wonder of Stramlined Moderne with sculptures by Eric Gill (who designed the Gill Sans font on your Mac, among other things). It was pretty much left to rot during the 60s and 70s, with the decline of Morcambe as a holiday destination, but has recently been renovated and it is a sight to behold. You can really imagine the smart set arriving in their Bentley drop head coupe for a weekend by the sea before dashing off to give Hitler a jolly good thrashing. It's beautiful and I'm glad I went to see it.

However the rest of Morcambe...

What a sad, sad place. Even for me who has a strange affection for out of season British seaside towns. The wind was so strong that I could barely walk along the promenade, it was raining, freezing cold, half the businesses are shut, buildings are in poor repair and the hotels look like doss houses. I hope it improves in the summer for the poor buggers who are compelled to holiday here. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it had very cheap diesel at the Morrisons supermarket servo. Oh and the chips were pretty good.

Anyway here's some pictures;

The Midland



The chips



Eric Morcambe



Lucky Rita!



The beach looks ok but...



You need to follow the instructions



And dress like this




I'll stick to Cottesloe.

Shop shop shop

The last day in London was spent at the new Westfield shopping centre in Shepherds Bush, right across the road from the glorious institution that is the BBC Television Centre. You can almost see the Blue Peter Garden from the car park.

Now I knew it was big but blimey! It took two hours to walk round the first floor without going into every shop. The last Westfield I went into was in Innaloo and you could fit the whole of that into Marks and Spencers here. In fact it's too big to go to unless you know specifically which shops you want. After doing one floor we were over it. It never ceases to amaze me how shopping has become the default leisure activity over here. The place was pretty packed but hardly anyone seemed to be buying things, just wandering around on their day off and having chain store coffee. In fact the developers seemed to have miscalculated the requirements for cafe seating as all of them (Starbucks, Pret, Costa et.al.) were standing room only. We finally to get a seat in a slightly fake French bistro called Le Pain Quotidien. Actually it was more than slightly fake, the service was excellent for example, but they were trying to make it French, even down to the coffee being served in bowls instead of cups with handles. It reminded me of a hideous school skiing trip to Switzerland when I was 11 and breakfast was bread and jam and hot chocolate served in a bowl. O! Our crazy European cousins.

I did manage to meet up with CG while I was there which was great, she of the international woman of mystery world tour. She's been living in London for about a year now which pretty much makes her a local. It's strange but I keep bumping into her on different continents, Australia, North America and now Europe. It was fun as she always has some excitement going on in her life, currently it's the shady sounding bloke she's house shares with. He's a lawyer who spends most of his time in "Bangladesh". I don't know why I parenthesized that but it sounds like a euphemism for "terrorist training camp" to me. Still it's always fun wondering when special branch are going to break down the door of your flat. I'll see her again (dodgy flat mate permitting) in Cornwall in a few weeks, bizarrely she's booked to be in Penzance the same weekend as I'm taking the folks down there. Which is probably lucky as it's not easy being a tourist in Cornwall without a car.

So I got home on Monday and have had a pretty quiet week since then, just a trip to Hereford yesterday to see the cathedral and buy M & D a new Hoover (that should probably be changed to "dysoning" now seeing as nearly everyone in this country seems to have a Dyson).

It's a beautiful place is Hereford, really pretty, lots of old buildings, a proper indoor market and parking is only £1.20 for two hours, which must be some kind of record. The only slight problem is that the cathedral, the biggest thing in the city, is almost impossible to find from the high street. You have to go down a tiny alley between Marks and Spencers and WH Smith. It's a bit odd but does give the whole thing a touch of the Harry Potters, you half expect to find a shop selling wands. I have to say though that the cathedral is a bit of a disappointment. It's a bit too short to be imposing and is made of Hereford sandstone which makes it a bit dull. The real reason to visit is to see the mediaeval Mappa Mundi. This is an early world map and is supposed to be amazing. I saw it when I was a kid when It was just stuck in a case on the wall in a dark corner of one of the transepts. Now it seems to have been moved to a secret location known only to the elderly ladies who act as tour guides in British historic places. Needless to say I couldn't find it and there was no one about to ask on a damp Wednesday in the marches. Oh well its one more historical icon left to cross off my list in the future.

I'm off to Carlisle and then Scotland on Friday, for the day believe it or not, so I'll report back after that but until then some observations;

Boozing: Three pints of decent beer in a pub on Marylebone road cost me less than £10/$15; the same at the Inglewood in Perth would be at least $20. I never thought I'd see the day when a central London pub was cheaper than Perth.

Loans: Some people still need loans over here though, even if the beer is cheap. There was an ad on tv for one. The interest rate was 4235% per annum. Bargain.

Defunct Counties: The British seem loath to let boundary changes affect the way they name things. For example we still write Middlesex on envelopes even though it ceased to be in 1965. Or there's West Mercia Police. Mercia hasn't existed since 918. I haven't missed the "1". The local plod are named after a place that hasn't appeared on the map for over a thousand years.

Sometimes people just can't move on.

Up the Parliament!

It was my dad's actual birthday on Saturday so we went up the smoke again. Except this time we went on the tube. 40 minutes instead of 2 hours so there's a top tip, busses for short trips tubes for long trips.

Anyhow I had discovered that the Houses of Parliament are now open on a Saturday. Lucky our hard working politicians only do a three day week so the tax payers can go have a look round their workplace. Actually it's more of a gentlemen's club than a work place, I don't know about you but my office doesn't have pubs and restaurants in it. Or a post office (possibly the last one left open in the UK).

Anyhow we got into town and wandered down to the HOP (as they call it) to behold the massive queue. It was moving, and it turned out you have one of those timed entry ticket jobbies, so we got our tickets and I got a bit of a shock. £15 entry! Well, ok, as I'm not actually a tax payer I can accept that, but it was the same price for the locals. Perhaps I'm a bit of a lefty (I hear you all gasp) but I really think that entry into the place of government should be free, or at least very cheap, seeing as we're already paying for it. But no, same price for all. Well £10 for the oldies but it does make it an expensive day if you want to take the kids for some education. Much cheaper to go to Tesco.

It was worth it though, the place is amazing. I even coped with the security as it was all done by real police persons. Even the lady on the door handing out the lanyards for the passes was a real copper. The first thing you see, while in the queue outside in the sunken garden, is a massive statue of Cromwell. You know, the fellow held responsible for the regicide of Charles I and 12 years of religious fundamentalism and the canceling of Christmas. It's weird that the British put up statues of the bad guys as well as the good guys. There's a statue of Washington in Trafalgar Square. I don't believe there's a statue of George III in Washington.

The tour of the place starts in Westminster Hall. Amazing that the English can use a building that was built in 1065 and has seen the trial of kings and traitors as a ticket hall and queuing area. The whole place is amazing, a riot of bonkers Victorian twiddly architecture and even more bonkers decoration. Especially at the Lords end, I've never seen so much gilding and flocked wallpaper in one place before. It's like the biggest Indian restaurant in the world. The Commons end is much more subdued, just plain stone, but that's because it was all rebuilt in the 40's thanks to the Germans. I did note that the two biggest statues were Winston Churchill and Maggie Thatcher. Maggie in a classic pointy "do what I tell you or you'll get a taste of my handbag" pose. Why the hell she gets the same size statue as Churchill is beyond me. I'm not sure the Falklands conflict rates the same as World War II.

It was a pity we weren't allowed to take any pics, I assume because international super criminals could take pictures and plan some sort of attack with sharks and lasers. This does however ignore the fact that the place is on the tv everyday so the terrorists could save themselves £15 and still see what it looks like. The commons was surprisingly small and the lords was tiny seeing as there are 800 odd peers who are able to sit in it. And I mean odd in all senses of the word. Apparently Dave Cameron has spent the last year creating hundreds of new peers to help even out the hundreds that were created by Labour in the last 13 years. You have to love an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable upper house that can't actually block any legislation anyway. They do get a very fancy office block to work in though.

If you're in London I can thoroughly recommend a trip round, especially if you have the slightest interest in history or politics. I particularly enjoyed the story about General DeGaul, who was scheduled to make a speech to the house but politely declined when it was pointed out that he'd be making it standing between a massive fresco of Wellington accepting the surrender at Waterloo and a massive fresco of the death of Nelson at Trafalgar. He wasn't daft that frenchie.

We went for a bit of a stroll after that, up to Trafalgar Square and round to Covent Garden (tourist hell if you don't know the side streets) then over the Thames to the beach on the South Bank. Yes I did say beach. At the moment there is a summer festival along the festival walkway and they have brought in some sand to make a beach. It was very popular yesterday but it was too cold even for the English to sit on. Which tells you how chilly it was yesterday. It's surprising how busy the South Bank is now as it was always a bit of a concrete hell braved only by those heading to the National Theatre complex (another proof of my theory that all arts centers are modeled after the Führer bunker). It's since they knocked up the Millennium Wheel/London Eye. Now you can't move for eurotrash tourists, Americans, terrible, TERRIBLE buskers (mostly the "I can stand really still while painted silver" type. I really think there should be busker auditions before they are let out onto the streets) and hucksters doing the old find the lady card trick. It was amazing how many of the people winning looked exactly like the guy running the game. The old saying is true, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Especially on Westminster bridge on a Saturday afternoon.

The Daily Fascist

An almost perfect Daily Express front page:



Something about yobs and thugs, a call for national service, a photo of a pretty royal, an insult to the Germans, instructions for the Prime Minister, a call to arms against Europe and an article denigrating older women.

This should go in the British Library. Filed under 'bigoted'.

Midsummer

So I went to visit my friends on the other side of the county the other day. There are two sides to Gloucestershire, my side with run down towns and villages, old industrial and mining areas and dark forbidding woods. Then there's the side where P and B live. This is the Cotswolds and a more picturesque and chocolate boxy place is hard to imagine. Just crossing the Severn makes a huge difference. It's all mellow, golden stone cottages and houses; little, narrow, sun dappled lames and roads and a load of bloody middle class hippies.

This was made abundantly clear to me when entering town and reading the proudly displayed sign declaring "Nailsworth is a Fairtrade town". So no slave labour picking the cocoa beans in Nailsworth then. The guardianreaderness continues in the village store (built by the community of sustainable products and run by volunteers) where ALL the detergents are green and environmentally friendly. No Persil in sight.

Don't get me wrong it is a beautiful place and has a real sense of community but Its like visiting the set of Midsummer Murders or the Archers. Which isn't surprising as one of the producers of the venerable Radio 4 country soap lives here. So when Horsley got a community village store, so did Ambridge. That really is art imitating life. I assume The simple folk of Ambridge are also unable to purchase biological washing powder.

It was great to see P and B and the kids but it makes me realise how little I want any kids of my own. Don't get me wrong their's are great, very bright and very happy, but I'd be dead at 50 if I had to run round after them and break up the water fights and try and stop them stripping off and running down the main road and fighting over whether to take the soccer ball or the rugby ball to the pub on the common and get them all in and out of the car and get them to go to bed. I'm knackered just typing it all.

Saying that I was tempted to keep their little girl, last time she was only two and a bit wary of me, this time I was almost hugged to death. I suppose there are many many benefits to kids that I just can't really see by turning up and getting them all hopped up on icy poles and sour strips.

After I'd recovered from the kids we have come up to London for my dad's birthday. I'll never understand the traffic here, I was in a traffic queue for almost an hour at the roundabout outside Oxford, millions of cars in front of me, but as soon as I went past the junction there was no traffic? Where did it all go? I don't get it. It's like here in London yesterday morning, I was expecting a massive traffic jam to get to where the folks are staying from where I'm staying but nothing, at all, I just whizzed the two miles up the road in about two minutes.

In fact even central London was quite quiet but it still took three hours to get from Northolt in west London to Woolwich in the east. This was because my dad and his mate decided that we'd go on the bus to "see more than the tube". This is incontestably true as there ain't much view from a tube train but busses are so slow. That three hours was to cover 24 miles. That's 8 miles per hour. We were on the express bus for a bit but that doesn't work very well when it's following the regular service and still has to stop every time the bus in front stops. Genius.

But to be fair we did see a lot. A lot of it was not really worth seeing. The change from murderville to loadedville in London can be a matter of only a mile down the road. A good example is Greenwich. It is pretty nice, with beautiful houses round the park and on Blackheath but it's surrounded by god awful places like the Old Kent Road and Woolwich. It's quite confronting to be honest. It pays to know where you're going so you don't get off at the wrong stop and end up somewhere pretty nasty. This is made easier by the useful, and very British trick, of using pubs to navigate. Even the bus stops are named after the local boozer. Sadly I noticed that some of the stops are named after now boarded up boozers. That's what happens when you can buy four cans of lager in the supermarket for 99p.

We were heading for the Royal Artillery Museum (called Firepower, how tacky) for dad to catch up. With some old mates from his National Service days. It's interesting to see that the rightwing media is always on about bringing back national service to sort out the "thugs and hooligans", I.e. anyone under 40, but the people who did it seemed to spend their entire time trying to skive off and making tea instead of being on guard. The thought that this bunch of conscripts was all that stood between Britain and a million Red Army soldiers is a bit of a joke really. I don't think today's youth would get much benefit from learning how to peel potatoes and stand still for periods in the rain. The museum was good though and includes one of the most dangerous military posting in the British army; showing groups of kids how to fire a field gun. The two squaddies on duty yesterday looked like they'd rather be back facing the Taliban than year 5 from the local primary school.

So today is dads birthday and I have no idea what were doing, I'm just about to go up there and find out. I'll let you know what happens.

Car Troubles

I seem to be having some issues with my hire cars. I'm now onto my third in three days, not bad going really. The first one was a Fiat Punto from Heathrow but it was just bloody awful, it felt like it was made from tin cans and was so noisy that I was totally deaf by the time I got down the M4, I also couldn't get my iPhone to sync and there's was no way I can cope with Radio 2 for the next week and a half. So I took it back to Hertz and asked to swap. I think this may have been a bit of a weird request as the guy at the local branch looked a bit bemused that I wanted to swap my car just because I didn't like it. So they gave me a Ford Fiesta exactly like the one I have a home, which was great. Except this one blew a fuse every time I wound down the window. Bit of a problem when it's raining. So I went back to Hertz again and they gave me another Fiesta. This one has the oil light on and half of the plastic body panels missing but I'm past caring now. If it blows up it's not my problem. It's also very, very red.

So now I have a hot hatch, three door, red racer. A classic hot hatch. But it's got a diesel engine. Not something that an Australian would think of as a sporty option (they tend to prefer a massive V8) but it's pretty common here for sports aspirational cars to be diesel powered. And to be honest it goes like the clappers but that might be because it's a hire car and as everyone knows, the fastest car in the world is a hire car. Any hire car.

That's something else I'd forgotten about Britain; absolutely no one pays any attention to the speed limits. In Oz we are all brainwashed into slowing down, obeying the signs and being caught on camera. Here nothing. Hardly any speed cameras and I haven't seen a single cop car in the last three days and 200 miles of driving. I don't really know what Clarkson et al are always banging on about, if you really want restrictive speed regs and cameras go to Victoria. In Blighty if you do 70 mph on the motorway you will be the only person doing so and you'll feel like you're parked. It's quite liberating to just put your foot down and get going.

The weather has been a bit crappy since I got back, pretty much rained each day and been fairly chilly, but today the sun came out and boy can you tell that the British don't get a lot of summer. It was 18°C at the very most today but everyone was out sitting in the sun an eating their lunch in any available bright spot. Gods know what would happen if it ever got to 35° here. I assume mass absenteeism and a massive increase in the sale of tanning lotion (we don't use sun screen here, we WANT to burn 'cos it's nice to get a bit of colour). Here's the scene in Cheltenham today to show you what I mean;




Not exactly the riviera but it keeps the locals happy.

Some pics as promised

So here's Afghanistan:




And here's the food: brekkie PER to SIN:







Brekkie no 2: SIN to LHR (you know it's a hell flight when you get two breakfasts)







Lunch SIN to PER










And as I can't be bothered to type what it all was, here's the menu;








So there you go. Life among the jet set.

Oh and as someone asked me how much legroom there is on the plane here's a pic to piss all those Air Asia and Tiger fans off.