Sunday shopping

Spent Sunday browsing for coats, gloves and jackets. There is too much choice. Couldn't decide on anything. Explained my dilemma to Skye over Japanese at OSatsuma. We then had coffee in Soho and was up until 1am because of it.

So that's why everyone was at the pub... the telecast of England v Turkey drew the highest ratings ever apparently...


Tonight A play by Oscar Wilde...

Mahler in the Cathedral

Another Saturday rolls by and I had no idea what to do with it, except to catch up on lost sleep from during the week. So I decided to head to one of the train stations and catch a train somewhere.

The somewhere became Canterbury. It seemed like it was going to take forever to get there, but eventually I arrived, and not finding any maps for £1 at the station, I just walked to where the town centre looked most likely to be... Well the huge cathedral helped guide the way too.

I had just enough time to browse through the Cathedral and hear a bit of the Evensong service and then I noticed that tonight maked the start of the Canterbury festival. The opening night concert was at the cathedral and it was Mahler's 3rd Symphony.

After browsing through the rest of the town I made my way back to the cathedral for the concert. I figured it would be a great way to hear Mahler's 3rd for the first time. I managed to grab a cheap seat at the side which had great sight lines for the conductor and soloist. It was only after sitting down did I realise I was sitting next to the tomb of the first person to represent the Church in Australia. What a nice touch I thought. It then occurred to me I was about to watch a concert with the remains of a dead guy in a box right beside me.

Fortunately the thrilling opening of the horns made me forget about that minor point. The concert was great, but I spent most of the last movement checkng the train timetables on my phone just to make sure it was possible to get back to London (it was).

Leave it

As the temperature drops (especially if one is in Canterbury) and the leaves start to change colour there are a few noticeable things
* Napthalene replaces fragrance on the tube as those big jackets come out of storage
* New timetables come out for trains (darn those leaves on the rails)
* Suddenly you no longer have a natural cover for your window... But neither do your neighbours!

This entry was done via wi-fi so excuse the typos!

Steppin' out...

This morning I nearly stepped in it. Walking the subways to work from E&C tube station, there was a fresh pile of crap. It was everywhere. I assumed it was a not-so little calling card from one of the local hobos. Ah one of the problems of not having public lavatories.

As I was arriving at work earlier than usual the street cleaners had not yet had time to deal with it. I thought it would be an opportune time to talk about my experiences to date with hobos.
* I have avoided engagement with hobos. Its a parasitic profession. Most people would view it as hard enough to earn enough to get by in this city without giving it away.
* Yesterday at London Bridge station one was reading a Tom Clancy novel while holding out an old Starbucks cup.
* If you get out your wallet for someone in the street who asks you for some spare change don't be surprised if they mug you.

If The Sun won't support you and your conservative... who will?? IDS's speech last night was called a flop so the plotting will keep going on... and on... and on... Even The Times ran stories about his speech being "ill advised"...

The football rape case has had its first arrests. The players haven't been named but one player has come out and said it has nothing to do with him... despite the rumours.

Its not really news, but it is free and since I caught an early tube to work today I managed to grab a copy at my station before they were all snapped up. The Metro is a free news tabloid that tube riders love. The news reporting is probably slightly above The Sun standard but you can spend an hour reading it and end up not knowing much. But it is probably better than staring at the other passengers for your entire journey. Mind you that can be fun. Almost as fun as trying to delicately force somebody to give up part of their armrest...

Things about interviews
* They are a great way to see parts of London you wouldn't think of travelling to (Enfield yesterday, today it was Lewisham)
* They offered me the job from yesterday even though I told them in a roundabout way I was lousy for the job (hey honesty must count, or maybe I was too roundabout)
* I am still happy where I am for now...


BBC Radio 4

After hearing a few weeks ago that you could apply online to get tix to BBC shows - and they were free - I spent an evening applying for anything and everything. My efforts paid off and in the mail I got tix to a recording tonight of The Now Show. It was at the Drill Hall where I had been to see the True or Falsetto show a few weeks back. Not having listened to much radio in the nine weeks I have been here now I had no idea what it was about. So tonight I discovered:
* It is a comedy show based on current affairs / current events similar to the "Good News Week"
* BBC Radio 4 is for slightly-liberal middle-class intelligensia types who like to talk about issues in moderately-priced restaurants. They must be mainly white too (certainly if the audience was anything to go by)
* Political satire is still alive and well in Britain. And some of it was surprisingly good. The best bit was their sketch on WMD in the vein of looking for the pellet with the potion by following the tank tracks for anthrax and so on and so on.
* Only half the jokes went over my head so I must be keeping up with the latest here
* The studio audience was full of "Now Show devotees" who knew all the cues and the set pieces.

Housekeeping...

Darn I forgot to mention...
* Last Thursday I went out to Heathrow to say farewell to Dr T. It marked 8 weeks since I had arrived at Heathrow so I tried to get something out of that.
* Sunday night I stayed in and watched my very first episode of Coronation Street. Why? Well there was this matter of the first ever gay kiss on the show. It was a bit of an anti-climax to say the least. It was more of a stolen peck. And having to sit through 25 minutes of the show to see it just before the credits came up made me wonder about the Coronation Street and Eastender marathons they show on the weekends... How can people sit through 5 episodes back to back???
* This week the Conservatives have met in Blackpool for their annual conference. Their leader Iain Duncan Smith (who the press call IDC in the headlines which is a rather unfortunate TLA as it sounds like some sort of contraceptive to me) told the Tories today that he has delivered. What he has delivered is anyone's guess. The real opposition to Tony Blair's New Labour is the various other groups within Labour. Poor old IDC has a hard time getting his message across while his partyroom is making no secret about dumping him for somebody else. Anybody else!!
* Freakshows abound now David Blaine is starving in a perspex box near Tower Bridge. This week another freak Derren Brown played Russian Roulette on C4. The catch was that the gun was switched and was fake. But debate ensued. Coronation Street was looking good by midweek!

It might be a good idea to get out of Haringey this weekend as England will be playing Turkey in the Euro 2004 qualifying match. With threats for the players safety and everything else that goes with Turkey - and football / soccer - added intrigue came this week when star player Rio Ferdinand was excluded after failing a random drugs test. The rest of the team were going to strike.

Hey Enfield isn't that bad!

This evening I had an interview out at Enfield, which despite the drab website, is a pretty picturesque part of London. It is quite a civilised part of town with just enough urban funk thrown in if you want to still keep gettin' jiggy with it. Such a pity you need to take the overlander and a packed lunch to get there (especially if you are coming from Elephant and Castle) but never mind. Oh and the job is not for me. Too much number nerding...

Something to put on a happy face...

A run of Bye Bye Birdie has been playing at the South West End so last night I caught it. The theatre was upstairs from a pub and was quite low maintenance but as I paid only £5 to see it, I tried not to complain too much (or move) on the wooden bench I had to sit on to see the show.

While my glutes were going numb, I managed to be quite impressed with the calibre of talent. It was a professional production. And they did their best with rather dated material.

Tube adventures

I was late getting to Wagamama's last night. There were this cute elderly couple who got on the tube at Lambeth North and there were no two seats together available. I thought it was a shame to break up such a cute couple all dressed up in their smart coats and scarves (and the rest), so I did the very untube-like thing of getting up and offering my seat. The man kicked up a fuss so I said, "No it is no trouble, I'm getting off the next stop". Well I wasn't planning to, but I could change at Waterloo for the Northern Line to take me to Leicester Square. It was a good way to end the debate before it began. Anyway the woman was happy and the man thought that made sense so they let me stand (as by the time this conversation finished there were no seats at all free).

Well I get off at Waterloo and sombody was under a train somewhere on the line so there were huge delays.

So what is the moral of the story? I have no idea. It just amused me at the time. And it was a smashing excuse for being late for Skye!

We interrupt our regular broadcast...

The events of the past 24 hours have made me wonder if David Blaine isn't the only person in the world interested in self torture. Just letting everyone know I'm all ok...

Off to go to Wagamama for theraputic reasonably-priced Japanese food with Skye tonight in clean minimalist surroundings to put the mind at ease. Hommmmmmmm

1066 and all that

Hastings was an interesting afternoon adventure. I forgot about all that 1066 business but was reminded about it when I got there. The town itself has seen better days. It seems to be a relic of tourist salad days long gone. Now it seems to be over-populated by post-pubescent teens with a penchant for breeding as there isn't much else to do. It is a bit of a pity given the history of the place.

I took a cable lift up to East Hill and went for a walk around the Hastings reserve. It struck me as very quiet. There were people about but it still was strangely quiet. The park scene with low bushes reminded me of the film Blow Up. I was expecting a flustered Redgrave to run into me while I was photographing badger holes (well that's what I hoped they were) and other things and then to find a body. It didn't happen. Just an active immagination.

Walking through Hastings and then to St Leonards along the seafront was great for some fresh air (and to note the maps that pointed out just how far away the French town of Dieppe was) but it was still a little quiet. It was a little too early for the hibernation period, I just assumed that Hastings and St Leonards (unlike Brighton) were just quiet places.

Worth every bit? Apparently if you sold everything in the UK it would be worth £5 trillion. I wonder if that even counts for the shabby footpaths in Haringey and the endless amounts of rubbish everywhere? Actually there were some stats about that too. Londoners produce enough rubbish to create a Canary Wharf-sized tower every 10 days. I don't think I have lived here long enough to care about this problem. But that's okay. London's recycling authority calls my market segment Urban Trash. I guess that's a bit better than being called "white trash"! Now where is that pizza box??

Tits and Press

My CD walkman was playing up this week after spilling water on it last Friday. So yesterday I grabbed The Sun to read on the tube. It isn't a real paper, but it was tabloid size and I thought that would be easier to manage while riding the tube during peak hour. After boarding at Manor House I opened to page three and there staring at me were the two biggest tits in full colour newsprint I had ever seen. People on the tube love to read over your shoulder if they don't have anything so I was well aware these humungous knockers were on full display to everyone. But then I realised it was okay. I was in England. If there is one thing that the punters love here it is Tits... Well tits and poo-poo jokes... I pulled myself together and just turned to the next page which had a full page photo of a dead dog that somebody weighed down and threw into a river and continued my quality read. The Sun is a little at the extreme end of the press but there you can learn a lot about what the English like to read and think:
* If it isn't pictures of tits it is stories about tits and particularly stories about celebrities who don't wear bras and / or like to show off their tits
* Lots of stories about robberies and burglaries... you could be forgiven that is all that happens in this country (as an aside, I looked up the crime stats for my neighbourhood, and except for a nasty terrorist incident earlier in the year when ricin was found up the road, the stats for all major crimes have been going down)...
* There are only two countries in the world. They are the UK and the US
Of course there are the quality broadsheets but I find they reflect this vibe as well but just supress it a little.

U turn, the Tony's not for turning. In a speech that made everyone think of Maggie Thatcher's U-Turn speech, Tony told the Labour party conference this week that he isn't going to do a U-turn on all the things that the unions and backbenchers are thinking to be very un-labour (such as foundation hospitals, education reforms and the like). All told despite Gordon Brown wanting the top job, he is going to have to wait quite a bit longer.

We are not amused say the Royal Family over the latest Belgian adds for the faster new Eurostar service. The ads are running in Belgium and feature the head of royal look-alikes on athletes bodies. The spokesperson for the Royal Family say they never endorse products, but Royal Warrants are splashed over a variety of products ranging from breakfast cereal to deodourant. From morning to night you could spend your day using products that carried "by appointment of HRH..." should you like that sort of thing... Endorsement by some other name.

Gang rape by footballers in London last week has been the sensational news of the week. Their names of those under investigation have been supressed in the papers, but news should be out in a matter of days as to who they are. A quick search on the net can find who the penters think they are. The rape took place in an inner-London hotel last Saturday night. Everyone was caught on CCTV. It appears that the footballers assumed the girl wouldn't mind after agreeing to sex with one that six others could join in... The test today was to see if TV coverage of today's matches wouldn't pick up crowd taunts of the players in suspicion. Apparently it didn't

Palace of Westminster
Today was the last day the Palace of Westminster was open to the public (until next July) to tour both the house of commons and house of lords, so I just had to go. It was great. It was funny that I was touring here before setting foot in Canberra but dirty London would beat sterile Canberra anyday. Entering the house of commons chamber, newly elected Tories for good luck touch the left foot of the statue of Churchill beside the entrance as they go in. It is also the thing to do for tourists to do as well. So I did. It was not as exciting as I thought it would be. But it was fascinating to be in the room where great debates since the 1950s have occurred. WW2 bombing destroyed the original Victorian Gothic building and the contrast is stark. The building was built on the site of the first Palace of Westminster that was destroyed by fire in the 1830s. The palace shows off everything grand about an empire at the peak of its power. The somewhat dour and basic replacement house of commons shows off a nation bought to its knees from a brutal world war. But hey it still shows up nicely on TV.

Now off to Hastings...

Lets talk about Sangria

I forgot to mention that on Friday I had my first encounter with Sangria. It is a special treat that one of my housemates makes and I had never heard of it. Being a Cadbury drinker at the best of times after three glasses there was much merriment. I contributed to the evening by making my usual pizzas but the educational experience of the night would have to go to Sangria. It was quite a bit of all right. And it must have been all the goodness of the fruit that prevented a hangover the next day.

Brisbane boys are everywhere

Last night Dr T was in town and I caught up with him for a bite to eat and a drink. We naturally went to Soho for eats. After not being smart enough to find the Soho Wagamama we settled for the Soho OSatsuma which is where I went with Yvette a few Friday's before. Sensibe Japanese was consumed on communal tables just around the corner from Old Compton St.

Afterwards Dr T was keen for me to show him the bars. I felt a bit embarrassed like I should have my pink card revoked as I hadn't been to many. Our first stop was the Duke of Wellington. It is nice and casual and relaxed... well maybe a bit too casual and relaxed but it was enough for one drink. It was there Dr T commented that London lads have a strange thing going about them... short hair. It is the dreaded live-in-hard-water-London-you-need-to-have-top-shit-shampoo-or-you-go-short syndrome. I pointed out to Dr T that I had gone short now too. It just wasn't worth the personal humiliation.

After finding not too much to admire in the short-haired lads at the DoW, we went next door to Rupert St. There there were a much smarter assortment of London lads in neat and tidy outfits. There were a few shabby ones as well so I didn't feel so much of a dag having arrived in merely a Ralph Lauren T-shirt and jacket, and my Diesels that I had been wearing all day... But anyway, I picked up the press for Dr T and told him to go study and suss out the sensible venues that might be his cup of tea. I picked up the Pink Papers for myself as well as I figured I could do with a bit more of a brush up on these things as well...

A (girly) hit in the office

I have created a minor sensation in the office thanks to Ryvita. Well, the multi-grain Ryvita and Philly cream cheese to be precise. Every morning at 11am I break out a stash of Ryvita's and offer them around. They are quite a hit with the female colleagues I work with. I have been informed however by my flatmates this is not a very butch thing to do. Ryvitas are a bit of a girly eat treat and seen as something women desperate to diet munch on... Well dammit, they taste good to me! I have my appetite back since I am sitting at a desk all day so I thought it was a sensible snack!

In the news
* Honour killings. They are a bit sensationalist but it does sum up the extremities of the culture clashes that exist here...
* Labour Party Conference week in Brighton. It is exciting times for the Guardian newspaper. You can sign up for SMS updates from the conference so being such a techy junky... I have!

Evensong at Kings College

Well it was Saturday afternoon, I didn't fancy going to the latest anti-war demonstration in Hyde Park (given the demographics of my area it was a popular option), so I hopped on a train to Cambridge and caught the evensong service at Kings College at 5.30. It was good way to see the Chapel and the choir.

Afterwards I took a leisurely walk around Cambridge and wandered through various bookshops. I stopped by the Town and Gown pub - a gay friendly pub (according to Spartacus) - but it didn't look that friendly so I just moved on for coffee at the local Cafe Nero. Of all the chains of coffee houses here, I think I like this one the best. Their coffee isn't too bad and I can usually find a free wi-fi hotspot for my pocket pc nearby so that does me. Anyway I got home by 10pm and managed to catch Blow Out on BBC1 before falling asleep!

Regression

While I have been here, every now and then I find myself doing something that I haven't done in years. Yesterday it was Refreshers. They are like fruit tingles as they are fizzy. But I haven't had them in years. I used to have a stash of them at home and would consume them in mass quantities. I inhaled the packet I bought yesterday in Cambridge in 20 minutes. Small things that are fizzy can be so enjoyable. I haven't yet found the perfect extra strong mint to replace the ones I used to eat back home but I am working on that...

Various pieces from around the traps...
A great new feature of the latest google toolbar is that you can automatically blog things to your site... Alas it didn't put them in this blog so I have moved them to here now!

Well somebody had to do it...
Southwark council apologises for David Blaine. They didn't expect the crowds or the taunts or the litter apparently...

Politics tonight
The lib-dems have just concluded their conference in Brighton with a declaration that they are the only credible alternative to Labour. I suspect Brits are not going to care for a dull bloated and ineffectual Charles Kennedy no matter how many verbs he drops from his speeches! Such a pity there is no credible opposition here as the government continues to get attacked for using the late political weapons analyst David Kelly for political purposes...

Tastes funny
A performance artist is to sit in a bath full of baked beans for 100 hours to promote traditional
British cuisine.

A place where elephants go to die

A recent poll taken claimed Elephant and Castle shopping centre to be the second ugliest building in London! The ugliest? The Barbican!

Of course with E&C to be redeveloped and the shopping centre to be demolished there is hope for this neighbourhood (pity about the Barbican)!

Some goings on about town worth writing home about (or not)!

La

At £20 ($A50) for a CD album I have decided that if I want to purchase music I will be doing it from amazon.com. But I couldn't resist at HMV on Oxford St the newly remastered and expanded Original Broadway Cast recording of "Nine" for £10. Besides, I need more new music to listen to on the 40-50 minutes it takes in the bus and tube to get from door to door. Not that one needs an excuse to listen to show tunes (although some may disagree), but they are mentally stimulating enough to listen to while in transit!

Super

(Supermarket Chain) Tescos are apparently hiring more staff for the Christmas season ... But what about now? It takes about 15 minutes to buy lunch.

Slower

The much anticipated postal strike looks set to happen in London. But will anyone notice the difference? Royal Mail appears to be a place that employs the unemployable, which is all fine and good for noble social reasons, but if you have to wait half an hour to buy stamps for postcards, you can appreciate why email is the way to go.

Rain on Blaine

Despite the rain, the David Blaine stunt has still been attracting the usual spoilers. Most recently a group of hoping to give david a burst of anarchic meditation.

Chatrooms no more

Microsoft has shut down all its chatrooms in the UK, not because they were crap, but because they were worried about adults preying on youngsters .

It comes after the hysteria surrounding a recent report suggesting one in five children aged nine to 16 regularly use chatrooms, of those more than half have engaged in sex chat, and a quarter have received requests to meet face-to-face and one in 10 had met face-to-face, but only two fifths of one in forty swallowed. (Sorry that last part was not part of the Cyberspace Research Centre report, July 2003)

Chill...

Hmm the weather has dropped a little in temperature for the first time in nearly seven weeks that I have been here!

Meanwhile... the papers are fascinated with Alistair Campbell's full and frank account of spin in Downing St. Such a pity the inquiry forced him to reveal it... would have made smashing reading in a book years later when no harm could have been done!

Celebrities...

On Saturday night Skye pointed out the black female cop from the Bill walking towards us in Covent Garden. She tells me it doesn't count as a celebrity spotting for me since I didn't know who the hell she was. I have on the other hand walked past Lady Archer in a corridor. I don't think bores count as celebrities. And I forgot to ask her about her husband's prison term...

Not Sondheim but important... Bea Arthur at the Savoy

I had been warned off this show by people who had seen it saying that it was contrived and she came across better on the album of the show. But there were two things that struck me about this.

First was that these days contrived is all that is on the West End. The most enjoyable things I have seen have been Fringe performances.
The second point was this since today was my birthday I wanted to celebrate I with something a touch sophistimicated... Especially since my favourite frivol Ute Lemper was about to play in Brisbane while I wasn't there!

Bea Arthur's show was a real treat. It was a bit of a running joke between Skye and I as we started to see the posters go up around town for her show that it was one show that I wasn't going to drag her to. This week she decided to surprise me and book tickets to it for tonight, but that didn't quite go to plan. Instead I offered to get them Saturday morning from the TKTS booth in Leicester Square... Very smart and sensible move as not only were they half price, they were fifth row centre.

The downside to being so close was that you got to see how old she really looked. After my initial recoil of horror (and it was horror, she looked like hell) that she resembled only vaguely the airbrushed-vaseline-coated images in her publicity, we got into the show.

Ah but there is another thing before I should proceed. Skye had a moment of horror when we walked into the fabulous foyer of the Savoy. No it wasn't the Art Decco pannelling that got her, it was the fact she felt she was the only woman. It turns out Bea has two audience types: Elderly couples and queeny gay men. It was like walking into a bar with all these beady queeny eyes in Versace prints fixed on you.

Still we both managed to nervously laugh at the scene and make our way to our fabulous seats.

Anyway as the show progressed it was like being in Bea's lounge room. She sang she talked, she wore no shoes. It was all tightly scripted and contrived and never once was sincere. Except perhaps when she talked about Tony Curtis returning to their acting school whispering loudly to them (while they were in class), "I just fucked my first movie star." There was a pause. "Oh we were just so thrilled for him" was her dry reply.

I guess nowadays we expect our one women shows to be more soul-searching and heart aching. Bea didn't go there (except for hinting about divorce and lost loves and liberal causes). But as the show progressed I was kinda glad she didn't. From the snippets of her life she gave and the quips that accompanied them, I got the impression she could be a real nasty piece of work. Great entertainer, but one sure-fire bitch... I was happy for her to keep it bright and breezy and to supress her personality. And hey, that should be enough.

At the urinals during interval, an American guy quipped "hey I could get up on stage and tell anecdotes". He could probably sing in a gravelly voice too... But it was the way it was delivered, the skill and craftmanship of an old pro that made it a night.

One particular ditty Bea sang she interrupted during the laughs, "its not Sondheim but its important". It summed up the show for me.

That turned out to be my weekend birthday. The rest was spent looking after a sore head... Ah well... dems de brakes!

Work work work...
Not a great deal to report. Apart from work. I did discover the joys of large music stores on my way home last night. There was too much choice with the cds on offer so confused I gave up. Besides, pay from last week came through TODAY!

Blainia
* David Blaine in a box is now a set piece for other news. Paul McCartney went to the press today saying he didn't fire his publicist for tipping off the press that he was visiting the man in the box. Punches flew and chairs were smashed in two apparently.
* Oh and in true British style you can bet on him failing!

Other news today
* Labour loses a seat in a by-election to the Lib-Dems, underscoring the sentiment that the punters now want anyone but Blair leading him. It took a 29% swing to do it, but Brent East now has the youngest sitting member in the House of Commons.
* Cherie Blair's soothsayer / lifestyle guru Carole Caplin is still in the news but not for nice reasons. Reviews on her new column offering lifestyle advice in a newspaper have been mixed. Still lifestyle coaching is so in vogue here. A new series of a TV show called What Not to Wear is starting up again. There are already two books written from the series.
* The foul fowl sellers get jail for selling dodgy chicken to hospitals, schools, supermarkets and the rest. Sometimes the black market here doesn't always triumph!

Train late but at least you know!
* People don't seem to mind that the tube system is crowded and old and got problems. As long as they know WHY there are problems that seems to keep them at bay. The Underground website has a news service that informs you of where the problems are on the line and why. Since according to the website the Picadilly service was playing up this evening I decided to stay back and update the blog...
* Incidentally I had my first jam-packed tube ride yesterday as well. Well after six weeks it was bound to happen. I arrived at work for a nine am start which meant I was right into peak hour. This meant some girls tits were against my right arm, some guys crotch was pressed against me from behind, someone's armpit was in my face and some shorty was dandruffing on my tie. Mental note to get to work early in future or otherwise bring lubricant...

So dip me in chocolate, and throw me to the lesbians

Last night Skye and I decided to see Jerry Springer: The Opera at The National Theatre. It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing when I got into work yesterday morning when I decided to browse their website and I saw that two second row seats were available for the evening performance. I thought why the hell not?

If there is a show in town with buzz at the moment (that doesn't involve a man in a perspex box) then this is it. It has had raves from all the major papers, and from various celebrities. The tube is full of poster ads for its upcoming transfer to the West End. So one just had to see it eventually.

Buzz and hype aside, it really is still a show in development. With rousing operetic choruses set to libretto such as "what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fucking fuck" and "chick with a dick" and "dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians" it is quite a night. You do walk out of the theatre with a few of these ditties in your head.

It isn't all opera either and some of the better songs borrow from a variety of musical pastiches. All of Jerry's audience types are there... the hobos, the hillbilly's, the tough guys, the fats, the fems, the drug addicts. Having them express themselves through opera and other musical forms is quite an inspired idea. My only quibble was that as satire of this day and age set to music, the songs from South Park the movie were better. Still this is live theatre and for a show ten years in development I suppose the times have moved around it while it was in development hell.

The first act is pretty much his show on an Operatic scale. At the end of the first act, when Klansmen do their tap dancing routine and a black man with a diaper fettish grabs a gun to shoot them, Jerry gets shot. In the second act, Jerry goes to hell, and things start to get a little weird for him. But it doesn't matter. Jerry says he is just offering up a mirror to the world and so all is okay.

After the big all-singing all-dancing finale, the plot really didn't matter that much. They were handing out buttons to take at the exits. Skye didn't want to partake in it, but me thinking "Ah theatre memorabillia!" grabbed as many as I could. They all say "chick with a dick". Skye declined my offer to give her one. Smut has never been so classy as everyone left the Royal National Theatre on a high (and not the "crack whore junky" kind of high)

In the news or not
* If one thing pisses people off in London, it is Council tax. Blairs admission that it has risen 70% since he took office is yet another thing for middle class voters here to hate Tony for.
* Lord no more as Jeffrey Archer is to loose his peerage
* David Blaine seems to have escaped the past 24 hours without somebody trying to hurt or kill him. Never mind... there are still three weeks to go.

Sensible touristing
If there is one thing that helps in this city, it is to have the latest copy of Time Out. When visiting London it is all you need (well maybe that and a London A-Z so you can find the places). Whether you want to go to a nightclub, an opera, a movie or watch tv it is all there. It comes out every Wednesday and for £2.20 is pretty handy (not to mention the discounts that come with it).

Other touristing...
The Times on the weekend talked about the trend to do counter tourism and other crazy things rather than take the same ol dull shots of Big Ben etc... I thought I tried to do that with my photos but now am armed with even more tips...

Coffee 2

Found out the name of the coffee machine at work. It is called a Flavia. The testimonials are a bit of a worry. Arthur Andersen said "The stylish, compact design of FLAVIA� is perfect for our offices where space is at a premium." I would have to beg to differ. Mind you it can be a hazzard with all this free coffee on hand... Can make you a bit... Anxious.


Mocks and Spocks

They may sell shitty clothes (think downmarket Target), but the Marks and Spencer take-home meals are so attractively packaged and nutritional they are hard to resist. Take home meals are popular here. I think because after working 10 hours nobody can give a shit about cooking!

I wish I said that
Overheard in the subway at Elephant Castle from a woman to a street beggar after he asked her for change:
"You shut your fucking mouth!"
Street begging is a profession with its perils sometimes the wrath of a woman who has had it with em!

Wake up and smell the coffee
Aside from the aromatic smell of piss as I meander through the subways from the Elephant & Castle tube to my place of work (you can see why there are underground walkways when you click this link), upon arriving I am greeted with other interesting aromas. The fire stairs have that smell of old fat from a greasetrap. A colleague said it reminded her of her grandmas house as in between chain smoking she used to always be frying something up. It is probably the same unmistakable lard and smoke combo that one is experiencing here. The other interesting aroma is from the coffee machine.

Where I am currently working has a tea and coffee machine that works on packets. You stick these packets in a draw and place a cup on a tray and gurgle gurgle gurgle later you have a cup of something. The tea tastes like tea and the coffee tastes like coffee, but the more interesting setting is the 2 packet process of making a "cappuccino". You place a packet called "frothy milk topping" into the machine first, and then you place a packet of coffee in there. The end result is nothing like a cappuccino and the taste is a little odd. It has led my colleagues to label it the "monkey spunk coffee". There is something milky-ish and creamy about it, but you just can't put your finger on it.

National Film Theatre
But anyway, I digress. Since tonight the Bakerloo tube wasn't working properly (which is the one I take to get to and from Elephant & Castle) I decided to hop off at Waterloo station (two stops north) and go to the National Film Theatre at Southbank to see Madame Sata. The whole National Theatre complex with its design and layout made me feel so much better about the concrete bunkers that pass for the cultural centre back home, but I guess this design was from another time and place. At least it was easier to navigate than the Barbican. Anyway I settled down to watch a film that almost held my attention. Naturally the musical scenes were better than the rest.

Around 8pm the film finished and it was still light. It was also unusually warm. So I decided to walk it back to The Strand via the New Hungerford Bridge. The view on that link is exactly what I saw (only a little bit darker). Very sensible and very ambient. Well I figure there are not that many more warm days left here so I should make the most of them!

Ongoing to do list
* Find a doctor and work out what National Insurance is
* Spot a celebrity (that isn't attached to David Blaine or who hasn't sold their story to The Sun)
* Try to work out what I am supposed to be doing at work while still appearing intelligent
* Eat more Turkish food (since it is so handy)
* Try and get tix to Bea Arthur
* Make note of the weekend when England play Turkey in football and get the hell out of Haringey
* Stay home on the night when the next season of Jamie's Kitchen starts

Saturday night
After wandering throughout the city I decided to skip the Last night of the Proms or its cheaper counter-part Proms in the Park (in Hyde Park) for something a little more obscure.
I went and saw True or Falsetto - A Secret History of the Castrati. It is an encore season of Ernesto Tomasini's one-man show that first did the rounds last year. It is a whirlwind tour of musical history and quite entertaining as he moves from sacred music to opera and then to the music hall. Tomasini has a four octave range so he is quite up to the job.

The venue was intimate and warm at the Drill Hall. The Drill Hall is across the road from the Eisenhower Centre, the deep bomb shelter used by Eisenhower towards the end of WW2 so seeing that non-descript building was a bit of unintentional touristing as well. It was a bit like being a concrete bunker in the venue without much air and with hot stage lights. Tomasini was sweating like a pig towards the end of his performance. The small but sold out audience of 50 or so people were quite sympathetic to his plight. At the end we applauded very loudly...

After the show I made my way to Soho for a sensible drink and to watch the punters go by before catching a bus home. It was my first bus I successfully caught and enabled me to get better bearings as to where the hell I lived. It turns out that I am not that far north of the city as the crow flies. As the bus drives, well that is a different matter. But anyway it was early so it wasn't crowded. By the time I reached home I was entertained by a bad Pink Panther Film on TV.

David Mania
The biggest tourist destination at the moment is the David Blaine in a box spectacle near Tower Bridge. I didn't get to it yesterday as I confused the location with London Bridge so today I went back to London Bridge and walked the extra 500metres to Tower Bridge so I could see it.

Top things overheard as the thousands of people watched Blaine:
* I wonder how he pees?
* Eh si non comprende la toilet?
* Howdoeseegopee?
* Zzzha zha zha zha pee?
and then there was
* Ay Davidgiveusawave?
* Wave!
* Zzzzha zhaaa zha wave

I particularly like the bedsheets posted scrawled with writing on the temporary fencing around his box (which has expanded in the past few days so security can keep an eye on you as pelting eggs and other missiles at his perspex box is becoming a new London fad to do). My favourite:
YOUR MY HERO IM YOUR NUMBER 1 FAN

I thought it highlighted perfectly the literacy levels of London. No wonder the Home Office wants to give new migrants a basic test in English. In many ways it is too late. What is spoken in London now is some hybrid-English.

There also was some stick figure with tits and hair at the site that I assumed was his model girlfriend. Perhaps this stunt of 40days without food is to slim down to her size.

The Sun
Yesterday while on the tube I managed to grab a copy of The Sun. I had no idea what was really going on in this city! I particularly liked the Hook Benefits Scandal story. If this paper loves freaks, then they have got a goldmine in the muslim preacher of doom and hate who has gone underground. The paper is offering £1000 for information leading to his wearabouts... Hmm what would they do with him...?