Life In These United Kingdoms

It’s been a while since I’ve put anything up, probably cause not much has been going on. Happy New Year to those of you for whom it’s now New Year (most of the people who’d be reading this I assume) and I must say I’m quite happy to be away from the 40 degree + heat you’re all going through right now.

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

Garden in the castle showing that it really did snow.

It also snowed in Ealing but just as I was leaving so no snow pics from home.

St. George’s Chapel and the Changing of the Guard

The guards take far too long to change. We watched for about 15 minutes then got bored and went through the chapel. By the time we came out they were still changing over.

You’d think they wouldn’t have built one of The Queen’s homes under a flight path

Various castle pics

A big courtyard just outside the state apartments

They claimed there was a moat, there wasn’t. Very disappointing

And the castle from outside, looking back from the Eton side of The Thames.

The day after that I went down to Fareham near Portsmouth to see Matthew who was back from Germany for Christmas. Went out to an aussie pub (you can’t seem to get away from them over here) with him and a whole lot of his friends and spent some of the next day wandering round the docks in Portsmouth. Apparantly it’s the biggest naval port in Europe. They have a big historic section with lots of old boats and history around. Firstly there’s The Warrior which was the first iron clad warship in England. It runs under sail and steam and there’s a cool remote control model of it in the visitors centre, they don’t let you play with it though. Not sure if the real one moves any more or if they’ve concreted it in. They also have The Victory in dry dock which was Nelsons flag ship in the Battle Of Trafalgar. I think this one’s concreted in too pretty much. We didn’t have time to go on board either of them but did have a look at the remains of The Mary Rose which was one of King Henry VIII’s boats and was the first purpose built warship in England. It sank after about 35 years of use and was dug up again in the early 80′s. They’ve been spraying it continuously with water soluable wax for the past 13 years to preserve it and intend to keep spraying for a few more years until it’s air dried for 5 years and ready to be housed in a museum that’s not at 100% humidity. This should be sometime around 2012 which is the 500th anniversary of it’s launch.

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….

Lately, I’ve been giving thought to the fact that I’m building up all sorts of useful experiences and knowledge over here which I am duty bound pass on to you, those who will come over after me. I’m sure there’s all sorts of little pitfalls and problems which I could help you avoid. Just picture me in a large wood panelled room, reclining in a huge leather armchair in front of a roaring fire, looking resplendant in my smoking jacket and puffing contentedly on my pipe whilst all you little kiddies sit around my feet absorbing my waves of infinite wisdom. So in ripping of William S. Burroughs I present the first installment of an irregular column entitled:

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

I miss my little eric so I just had to show her off to you all. Isn’t she cute!

I miss my other birds: barry, jackie and russell too. Hopefully jackie isn’t trying to kill barry any more.

thanks to nads for sending me the pics.

Well, finally did it.

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.