Lords Cricket Ground

Since we were picking the tickets up at the ground we organised to meet out the front at 10 (an hour before play started) so we’d have plenty of time to get in. I also had to catch a flight to Berlin at about 7 or so that night (work related) and was going to have to miss the last session so made sure I got there right on time for a change. I was 2 minutes from the ground at about 9:55 when Tim rang saying that they’d just woken up and were still in the outskirts of northern London. Apparantly after we’d left the pub the night before they all went home and polished off a bottle of some form of Japanese moonshine and no one remembered to set an alarm. So I had to hang round outside the ground watching old men scalping for tickets (which was fairly amusing) and listening to the cheers as the final Pakistan wickets fell (which wasn’t) until they dragged their sorry arses over. Finally after about an hour and a half they turned up and we ended up missing the first 45 minutes of play. Bastards.

Anyway… Our seats were actually pretty good as you can see. Good view from the side of the pitch though we were a bit far. What was surprising was that even though there’s all these apartment blocks around the ground with great views of the pitch there was only one balcony with people watching the match. I would have thought they’d be packed. Though since the game was obviously heading for a draw and play was pretty lackluster maybe people just weren’t bothering.

Tim embarassed all of us by insisting on drinking tea rather than beer, making some weak excuse about his head pounding. Luckily he soon got his act together and started sinking down the pints as is expected in England. Had a good day overall despite getting in late and having to leave early. And it was good to see Tim again even though I knew I was seeing him the next weekend in Germany. We seem to always organise things so we’re swapping countries at about the same time. The last time he was coming to the UK I was in Berlin the day before he came over. And this time I was going back over to Berlin just before he went back to Mainz.

Took a whole bunch of photos of course. Wish I’d had my 300mm lens back then though so I could get some better close ups. Still came out pretty well I think. Got some one off photos and a few full ball sequences.

some bowling

some batting

a drive

another drive

fumble

whack

We picked a random direction after coming out of the tube station and soon came across the Cutty Sark, yet another old ship which has been preserved. So I had to take a photo.

Now we just need to find a way of getting ourselves here or here and get photos with a separate limb in each of the four hemispheres. Shouldn’t be too hard.
The observatory itself was also very interesting. They had the four timekeepers what Harrison made when he was solving the Longitude Problem. Not replicas but the actual clocks he made. There’s also an old observing room which is one of the few remaining internal examples of Christopher Wren architecture in London.

For those who need to know these things it was 004 F-WWDD, landed on the 18th May 2006 at about 13:18 (depending on the accuracy of the clock in my camera).

I don’t usually mention this with photos but in this case these photos are copyright © to Brendan Hack and can’t be used without permission and can’t be linked to from other websites. If you want to use them get in touch.

Didn’t have a white christmas over here unless you count the fact that it snowed on the Christmas Day Bank (public) Holiday (27th Dec) so I guess technically it was a white christmas. Christmas Day itself was bright and sunny and not too cold. Spent the day at Graham’s (guy I work with) place with him and some of his housemates eating and drinking. Typical Christmas Day really. Anyway on the snowy day we (me and Graham) went out to Windsor Castle. I had a good look around but didn’t find any evidence of reptilian activity (if you don’t know what I’m talking about there’s a quick summary here (and an interview here) but you should really read more David Icke (and here and here) to find out more about what’s really going on). Anyway the lack of reptiles was made up for with the little crowns hanging off the christmas tree, no photos of that since you can’t photograph inside the buildings which is suspicious in itself….. That and the fire of 1992 which burnt out most of the area where tourists are now allowed to go to. It’s all been remodelled now so it’s probably not suprising that I saw nothing, it all burnt away 13 years ago.

Enough of the conspiracy’s now for some photos

Well wasn’t that a lot of boring facts. Only one more. This tower was planned as part of Portsmouth’s millenium celebrations. It only opened this year…..

OK, hope you all had a good Xmas and a fun New Years. Am heading out for mine tonight to some bar in Kensington with my housemate and some of her relatives and friends. Should be fun. Though the Tube staff are currently on strike, isn’t that reasonable of them. Luckily we’ve already booked our cab there and back.

Have fun all….

words of advice for … young people.

Camden Market

Whilst in London you are no doubt going to want to get yourself the latest in leather corsetry or glow in the dark tentacled club wear. The natural place to go to get this is the huge markets in Camden Town. Now there’s all sorts of obvious advice I could give you here: keep a tight hold of your possessions and beware pickpockets; ignore the punks blocking the footpath over the bridge, it’s how they enjoy spending their afternoons so just walk around them, you may even want to give them beer money when they ask but don’t expect them to pose for photos; beware the nefarious gentleman selling smelly cigarettes, his mushrooms won’t go well in the stir fry you’re cooking for granny tonight. But you’re all smart people, you can work all this out for yourselves and this column is all about the things that aren’t obvious. You don’t need me telling you how to suck eggs.

However, if you’re feeling a bit peckish and could go a curry be careful at the market stalls. Whilst the curry itself looks, and is, very tasty, they also sell Naan bread. Now, like most right minded people, when I think of Naan it’s a large flat piece of fluffy, buttery bread. It has a nice crisp thin crust in some places around some nice chewy dough and if you’re lucky there’s some big air bubbles in there. It is most definitely not, and I don’t know how I can be more emphatic about this, not something that resembles a greasy flat croissant in both taste, shape and texture. It was a flat oval of pastry, not bread, pastry that seemed to have been dipped in grease both before and after cooking. More like they’d piled up sheets of filo pastry and deep fried it. If this ‘bread’ had ever been with 5 miles of a Tandoor I’ll go back to Camden and go chest to chest with the aforementioned punks. Absolutely ruined a perfectly good curry completing a meal with something like that. You’d think that in this country it wouldn’t be allowed.

So, when in Camden Town, remember only this mantra, avoid the Naan.

words of advice for … young people

You can’t be an Australian in London and not go to the Shepherd’s Bush Walkabout at least once. It’s just one of those things you’ve got to do. Well I’ve been there once, got the t-shirt (didn’t actually, could of, but didn’t). At least I can now go home and not be ridiculed but I’m not going there again unless it’s to take another one of you there. The place is a dive. Obviously they don’t think you can trust Aussies with glass cause everything comes in plastic.

Only got to do The Church one Sunday now. I’m sure it’ll be worse.

And there’s no way you’re getting me to drink a Snakebite.

Was woken up at 8am after about 3 1/2 hours sleep by stupid american women who had to catch a 9 o’clock train. “Wake up”, “What?”, “Wake up it’s 8 o’clock”, “In the morning?”. This from the same idiot who was turning the light on and locking herself out of the room at about 4:30. She eventually convinced her friend to let her sleep another 15 minutes so had to go through it all again then. We eventually got up and navigated the underground system out to the Temple de la Sagrada Família. It’s a new cathedral designed by Gaudí that has been under construction since 1882. It’s full of huge organic pillars and ceilings and some weird mixes of modern and ancient designs. The insides are full of scaffolding so you can’t see much and the outside is surrounded by cranes. There’s 12 huge bell towers but only 8 are finished and of course you can climb all the way up them. Unfortunately there was a lot of people (it was a Sunday) so it was pretty much 3 or 4 steps then wait a minute or 2 to get up there. You’ve also got to be careful going somewhere like this with 2 rockclimbers cause all they want to do is climb up the outside rather than the stairs.

After the Cathedral we went down to the gothic part of town (no goths there though) which was where Barcelona started and was walled in until only a couple of hundred years ago. This where I saw the Barcelona I’d imagined, all narrow streets where there’s never sunlight and people hanging off their balconies talking to people in the street.
At street level though it was mostly roller doors. Was a pretty small area all up and only takes about 5 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other. Finished the day wandering up Las Ramblas looking at the markets and watching people trying to pull the old pea and cup scam on the tourists. It only took about 30 seconds to work out who was in on the scam and didn’t see any marks get sucked in.

Went out for a Tapas crawl on Sunday night and was bitterly disappointed. Tried a tourist restaurant near the hostel which was pretty bad and a local place down in the gothic area which was worse. We weren’t feeling too inspired and the beer wasn’t going down too well so decided to find somewhere to have some tequila. Just around the corner we found a place called (surprisingly) Tequila which advertised itself as a Heavy Metal bar and listed heaps of metal bands on the board. The place was completely empty but we tried it out anyway and had a great time. They had headphones hanging off the bar but the music sounded better through the pa. So we spent the rest of the night drinking tequila shots and gin, requesting bands from the dj and talking with some of the local metal heads as they turned up. Went to sleep at about 4am, woke at 8 to go to the airport, still drunk, and saw some mountains from the plane.

If you’re interested Jeff has some more photos on his website.

Next adventure, going to Oxford next weekend for the work christmas party so will be spending Saturday around there. Then on Monday I’m off to Amsterdam but that’s only for the day, and for work, so I’ll probably only see the airport and inside an office.

have fun!