July.....

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Counting down!

So, this would have been published a couple of weeks ago, however as I was stung by a crash on Travelblog, I've spent some time repairing that. Most of my Cambridge blog has reappeared, but not all of it, so that's a task as yet incomplete. I'll get to it eventually. Odds on Mum and Dad will have a copy of the text somewhere, so it might wait till I get home and dissemble the thing anyway. Secondly, if I add any images to this blog entry, the text starts disappearing so I'll look into that tomorrow and hopefully get them up. I have no idea what it's doing!

So, this is summer. Now, I'll admit, it's the middle of August while I'm writing this and it's raining and cold out. I put on a beanie and scarf this morning. Wrong. This is the worst summer I think I've ever experienced anywhere. Bizarrely, the continent has roasted and southern Italy was reaching 40 degrees centigrade on a semi-regular basis. Frightening. Of course, by the time we get there at the beginning of November, it'll be wet and nasty. Ah well, we can't win all the time eh?

July was a pretty good month actually. I spent way too much time at work and we had Laetitia's mum and sister staying with us for a week, which was interesting. I'm not sure what they did while they were here (working 7 - 7 for two weeks will do that to you) but it was a useful experiment in proving how much of my French I remember as well as a practical lesson in how much I've forgotten! Teehee.

You may recall me mentioning at some point in the past that for Jen’s birthday we were going to go to London and she was going shopping and I wasn’t allowed to complain about how much it cost! Well, I can safely say that the whole weekend proved to be something of a success. We kicked off on Friday evening, having bailed out of the office a touch early and caught the bus into the city. It was roasting in London and the humidity was stifling. Ick. Anyway, we’d managed to stumble upon something of a bargain for our weekend and had booked a room at the Hilton Paddington as well as an evening at Avenue Q. Amazingly the Hilton was £4 more expensive than the hostel we usually stay in. We’ve been doing this wrong. That’s my top travel tip for July - cheap hotel rooms are good! The Hilton was as nice as we expected and it was a pleasure not to have to share a room with drunken Australians for a change. We did feel quite out of place amongst people who will pay £12 for a continental brekky (and £20-something for the full English) but it was lovely and comfortable and a really nice place to go back to after our show.

Avenue Q is a tough show to review. To any who have seen it they already know how good it is. To those of you who haven’t, I will torment you at some stage with the soundtrack, but that will barely begin to illustrate it. Imagine, if you will, the Sesame Street of our youth on a bad acid trip - where Gordon has become Gary Coleman, Elmo is actually gay, Prairie Dawn is an overly naïve preschool teacher and the two headed monster is addicted to porn and you’ll begin to have a rough idea what it’s like. It’s irreverent, ridiculous and more than a little silly with tunes like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” “It Sucks to be Me” and “The Internet is for Porn,” Avenue Q is a light-hearted poke at children’s TV and reality all run together. It has racism, homophobia, pornography, graphic puppet sex and all manner of other things that you didn’t think you needed to see and can’t help but laugh uproariously at. I’m not sure that Jen was too impressed with the opening stanza of the opening song though: “What do you do, with a BA in English? What is my life going to be? Four years of college, and plenty of knowledge, have earned me this useless degree!” It was great! Since I'm pictureless, I'll add another video link. You can see the second track from the show on Youtube here performed by the West End cast that we saw.

Anyway, before I burst into song, I shall continue with the text. We kicked off the Saturday at Brick Lane for a curry lunch and a bit of a look around, but it was a little dead on a Saturday so we enjoyed a very good curry in the sunshine before realising where we were! Travelling in London invariably means taking the tube. We’ve had some great trips by bus around the city and they’re great when you’ve got nowhere to be. Turns out, Brick Lane is a few blocks from Canary Wharf and do you know what’s at Canary Wharf? THE GHERKIN! It’s probably one of the most iconic buildings in any cityscape anywhere and it stands out above London like a beacon. Otherwise known as 30 St Mary Axe - the Swiss Re building is probably one of Norman Foster’s (or Baron Foster of Thames Bank, if you’d prefer) most stunning constructions and ranks alongside the Millau Viaduct as one of the coolest things he’s ever built. According to Wikipedia there is a bar and observation deck on the top floor and as it’s the second tallest building in London, the views must be staggering. Sadly, you have to work there to get in. No fun eh? Oh, and check out the seriously mad construction we found nearby. Brave?! It’s all a pleasant walk from Brick Lane and an easy return to the city centre from Liverpool Street station.

Now, on to the shopping. God’s honest truth, I’m not sure what Jen bought. We went to American Apparel, Muji (go here! Seriously!), TopShop and random other places (it’s all a bit of a blur) but the highlight was a little spot called Liberty. If you’ve not been, go. It’s like Harrods, but not as offensive and so much more alternative. It’s built in an Arts
and Crafts period Tudor Revival building on Great Marlborough Street (and a much less interesting neo-Baroque chunk on Regent Street) and sells all manner of high end products including its own fabrics. Definite highlights have to be the enormous atria (ah, cunning use of Classical plurals!) and some of the really funky furniture. There was an old reading room table from the British Library for sale- probably about 6 foot by 14 foot (you know why I measured it!) - and it was beautiful, including the really cool 30s down lights. You know, those sexy green shaded ones. Too cool. Only about £10K. A bit much, I admit.

On the plus side, we also found another antipodean café in London. Most new arrivals have heard of Flat White in Soho, but there is also a place called Sacred, just off Carnaby Street. It does excellent iced coffees. They’re almost as good as Deluxe. I sat down and had a very large iced coffee and let Jen rush off somewhere to buy some other stuff before we kicked back and chilled for a couple of hours before wandering across town to catch a stand-up gig at a random little underground club. The beer was cold and most of the comedians were brilliant. Sadly, the names have escaped me at the moment but one dude was banned from umpteen clubs across the country. He said it was because of his act, I think it’s because he wasn’t funny. Altogether though it was an excellent weekends entertainment and we were both glad to be home late on Saturday for a decent sleep in on Sunday morning for a change. Definitely the way to do London methinks.

Now, dear reader, a slightly embarrassing story. Saturday rolls round, Jen and I haul ourselves out of bed after dispensing with all of the birthday things and started to wander up to Blenheim for "Fly to the Past - a celebration of a history of flight." Our very first airshow. Now the weather in the previous week hadn't been that crash hot (you may have heard!) and we were thrilled to see that the sun had come out and we were baking as we walked the five miles or so up to Blenheim. Annoyingly, it wasn't until we reached the Woodstock roundabout that Jen noticed the sign saying "Fly to the Past, 22 July." Sunday. Bugger. So, feeling more than a little stupid, we took a left turn and walked another couple of miles into Bladon, where we visited St James Churchyard and saw where Winston Churchill is buried. For such an incredible icon of his age, and of the 20th century, his family plot at Bladon is remarkably simple and austere. A fitting tribute I think that the great man would have approved of. It was a lovely little churchyard. As we'd walked all this way, we wandered down to the Bladon tea rooms and enjoyed a quiet scone and a cuppa before the walk home. Course, you wouldn't believe it, while we'd been having tea, the clouds came over and it started to hose down. So we got very wet walking back towards Kidlington. There was an upside however, a taste of Sunday if you will. The road home goes past Oxford airport and as we walked past the end of the runway, feeling thoroughly dispirited, a Mark I Spitfire took off over our heads. I can tell you, a V12 Rolls Royce Merlin engine really purrs. Loudly, I admit, but what a fantastic sound. It was a real buzz and a great teaser!

On to the show itself! Airshows are odd. They’re great when you’re there, but they’re so hard to try and explain to other people why you enjoyed them so much. They’re even harder to photograph! So there are a couple of pics here that I’ve mucked around with a bit to see if I can improve the detail a little. You can judge for yourselves my success. The programme kicked off with a glider routine that defied belief. We were constantly amazed that a glider could do the spins, flick rolls and loops without coming to grief! Then a simulated World War I dogfight flown by two SE5as, two Junkers CL1s, a Fokker DR1 Triplane, a Sopwith Triplane and a Nieuport 17 stunned the crowd. I was amazed that they were still airworthy. Replicas all, it turns out. 😊. We saw a Spitfire, Mustang, Kittyhawk and ME108 as part of the Warbirds display which was concluded with the one thing I went to see - the Lancaster. This is my favourite aircraft ever and to see one still flying was a real treat. Other highlights had to be the Vampire and the Douglas DC6 propliner. This is like a Boeing 747 showing off at airshows in 50 years time. It’s a great looking plane and we were treated to some very stately flybys from a sadly bygone relic.

There were three displays of suicidal daring - the Blades display team did things with aeroplanes that would make most people need new trousers. Crazy near misses, stall turns, loops, corkscrews and turns of five, six and seven gees! Amazing. Along with these madmen there were two blokes with helicopters - one in an ex-Vietnam Iroqouis and the other in a Hughes 300 and they were mucking about like kids with a BMX, except in a helicopter. Madness.

To polish off the show they’d called up a bloke from the RAF to do a display in the Eurofighter. Wicked! Modern fighter planes are AWESOME to watch. Plenty of speed, plenty of burners and plenty of noise. I loved it! His best trick was flying low over the crowd and pulling up into a vertical climb before lighting his afterburners. What a racket. More than a few ringing ears, I’m sure. And then, in complete contrast, there was an encore from a French chap in a microlight who has trained his cranes (and geese and other birds) to fly in formation with a microlight. Think Fly Away Home and you’ll get the idea. Really cool.

Combine all that with some crazy sods pretending to be Dad’s Army, some excellent Helicopters on the ground and a half a dozen classic Morgan roadsters and it was a brilliant day out. For those who feel so inclined I took a couple of videos since the video zoom is a lot better than the camera zoom. The quality isn't great, but if you crank up the volume on the Eurofighter one, you'll get a rough idea of why I enjoyed it so much! You can see the Lancaster one here and the Eurofighter here.

The following weekend we were back at Blenheim for the "Battle Proms." Now perhaps we should have seen this coming, but we're foolish and we didn't. We went down into Summertown in the glorious sunshine and bought all the necessities for sitting on the grass in the sunshine listening to music. FOOLS! By the time we got to Blenheim about 90 minutes later, it was rapidly clouding over. We arrived a nudge after six, in time to see some cavalry displays from the Napoleonic Association. They showed commendable skill galloping up and down and decapitating melons! Definite props for the uniforms - lots of fur, flashing, gold braid and excellent hats. They must have looked very silly in the real wars!

We were treated to a very pleasant opening act, a folk singer by the name of Matthew Ord who played some fantastic old Scots and Irish folk songs. He had the voice for it and was a real talent. However at this point it started to go slightly wrong. The orchestra opened up and so did the heavens. Now it wasn't hosing down, but a steady drizzle started about 7pm and just never quite abated. We cowered under umbrellas, like so many others, and tried our best to be enthusiastic, but it was simply a bit much. While the music was great, it was really hard to enjoy it. We stayed long enough to hear the 1812 Overture, with cannon blasts from a World War I OQF 18 pdr, but when the announcer said the orchestra would take a 45 minute break we, like many others, gave in. Now, due to a poor piece of forward planning, we missed the second to last bus by about half an hour and would have had to wait another hour for the last bus, so we walked. In some respects, it wasn't all bad as it was a still night and the gully in which the concert was held funnelled the music wonderfully. Four miles down the road we could still clearly hear Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia, and we saw a good chunk of the fireworks. So not all bad. A shame that the weather wasn't better, but hey, these things can't be helped.

That was July. Time flies when it's hosing with rain. On that note, can I just say a big thanks to everyone who emailed and made sure we weren't under water! There was some flooding in Oxford and Kidlington but it was no where near as severe as that which struck Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham.

So we've got two more weeks left in the UK before we head out. There's not much left to do, just a bit of organising, some catch ups and a couple of leaving dos. We're both looking really forward to getting away now. It's going to be a great trip.

At this point, it merely remains for me to say:
Talk Soon,
Al and Jen.

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Photos

Gherkin
Foster at his very best.

Not a Gherkin
How it's still up I do not know....

Planes!
An SE5a chases the Fokker Triplane

Lancaster
The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight - a Lancaster followed by a Hurricane

The Blades Display Team
Or 4 of them. I'm not sure where the fifth plane is!

DC6
A majestic old queen of the sky

The RAF Raptors
Nutters. All of them.

The Eurofighter
Loudness!

The Proms
How it kicked off....

The Proms
How it wound up!

Napoleonic Horseman
Of the 18th Light Cavalry, early uniform I'm told

Another Napoleonic Horseman
Also of the 18th Light Cavalry, a later uniform with a much sillier hat!

Charge!
Well, why not?

Comments

[Ronnie]

wow
Only 2 weeks left! mygod time went by fast!!! you'll have to publish your itinery/plans on here so us avid readers can track all the exciting countries you go to... Ronnie