And the theme of the weekend is...Wellington

For our Obligatory London Weekend Adventures last weekend, we accidentally selected a Wellington theme.

(1) Apsley House

We are proud members of National Heritage and therefore feel compelled to visit strange landmarks of historical significance, because it is free. Very few of these are actually in London, thus complicating the process; fortunately, Apsley House, at the corner of Hyde Park and opposite the Victory Arch commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, is one. Therefore, we did the usual hike in via Kensington Palace Gardens and Hyde Park to go have a look.

On the way we ran into a giant peace demonstration, which lapped Hyde Park once or twice and freaked out the horses doing their daily constitutional on Rotten Row (aka Mud Central, since it has been raining all week). Police estimated 10,000 protesters (uh - NOPE) and organisers 60,000, so who knows - I would have thought closer to 100,000, myself. Interesting timing actually, as Blair announced the Iraq pull-out this week - I wonder if he was pre-empting the demonstration? Anyway, there were lots of people marching for various and sundry worthy causes, and we joined in for a bit, making it Grant's first demo - but not, it must be said, mine!

Then to Apsley House, which has been the home of seven Dukes of Wellington since the very first, a certain younger son by the name of Arthur Wellesley who was not expected to amount to much by his family, proved everyone wrong by rocketing up the ranks of the army and eventually defeating Napoleon in the land war in Europe. The house itself is gorgeous and chock full of fairly fabulous artworks, most of which Wellington No. 1 actually purchased (unusually, for an English nobleman, most of whom appear to have been of the "but I found it just lying there!" or "possession is ten-tenths of the law" schools of thought) but some of which were recovered from various Napoleonic lieutenants who had looted much of Europe, including the Vatican City. Wellington returned most of it, and memorably offered to give a particularly nice collection of works taken from Spain back to the reinstated King of Spain, who two years later replied that it was awfully nice of Wellington to offer but in the circumstances he had earned it and could keep it. A contemporary art critic commented that two of the paintings in said collection were so valuable that it was worth fighting the Spanish campaign just for them. Nice one!

Wellington also had a bit of a fascination with representations of Napoleon. He never met the guy, but the house is full of Napoleon busts, portraits, and best of all, through the staircase, a giant twice-life-size naked Napoleon sculpture. AWESOME.

Otherwise, lots of paintings of various heads of Europe and of Wellington's beloved horse Copenhagen, who got shipped around all over the place, did constant duty in the Battle of Waterloo itself, didn't get flighty about pesky things like battles raging around him but would kick you as soon as look at you, which may explain why Wellington made it through unscathed. Copenhagen lived until nearly 30 and had a state funeral, which is more than you can say for most horses I suppose. Portrait artists get extra points if they remember that the horse was not in fact white.

As an interesting matter of etiquette, it appears that if you free Europe, people give you quite a lot of stuff, especially china and silver. Given my silverware collection is meagre, am considering a drive to free Europe; will let you know how it goes.

Also: Duke number 1 had special riding boots made to keep his legs warm and dry. Can you guess what they became known as?

(2) Epping Forest

On Sunday we ventured EAST OF THE CITY (gasp!) to Epping Forest for a bit of a walk in a proper forest. It's actually technically in Essex, a large chunk of which has been eaten by London, so you can get there on the tube. Very convenient.

Things we did not quite take into account:

• forests in winter are collections of sticks of various heights (although quite neatly, there is very little undergrowth around so you can basically walk whichever way you like) rather than forests in the ordinary Australian understanding of the term, ie. something with leaves (actually, the holly still had leaves and I have plenty of scratches on my hands to prove it); and
  
• it rained all last week. We did not quite clue in to the likely results of this until the two people walking in front of us to the forest were wearing waterproof boots and gaiters. In short: MUDFEST.
  

The theme then for Sunday was Do Not Attempt Without Wellingtons, but unfortunately we had nothing but joggers and therefore got very wet even before it started raining again. I jumped a creek but Grant refused to do so citing inflexibility of jeans; there followed a very exciting half hour of us wading through ankle deep mud on opposite sides on an increasingly swollen body of water until I jumped back across - albeit with Grant's help this time. People were actually mountain-biking in the forest despite the conditions, and thereby giving all cyclists a bad name, because the paths were too muddy and the tyres were wrecking them. Naughty.

Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to going back once they've had another drought or I've acquired some decent waterproof boots, whichever comes first!

Otherwise the weekend was quite lazy, although we did manage to catch up with an old work colleague of mine who lives in the area for Saturday dinner which was nice.

Steps last week: 77K or so
This week: shut up
Bike: the obligatory 40km of uni commute
Thesis: stalled at 6700 words (10000 if you count footnotes, which unfortunately they do) waiting for my supervisor's comments. Two weeks without thesis Monday! My poor precious routine! BUT I have read 3 competition law cases so far this week, which is why you can hear my brain making steam-whistling noises. And now for three more. Sigh.

Kung Hei Fat Choi, OR, We're All Going to Die

Happy year of the pig, everyone!

After our wonderful Saturday adventure to Brighton, we decided to head into Chinatown for the Chinese New Year celebrations.

This was a very bad idea, which several billion other people had also had (see above). The minute we got off the train at Embankment, we hit the biggest crowd I have ever ever seen, and I used to commute through Town Hall station :) London has a fairly small Chinese community and I guess it was pretty cool to see the numbers of non-Chinese out in support of the occasion. I was feeling less cheerful about it at the time, when the sheer volume of human beings effectively deprived me of food, freedom of movement, and at one point, the ability to breathe.

The red lanterns were lovely as always, as were the various cultural displays, including Shao Lin brick smashing and whatnot, and four dragons, which is excellent as I am a sucker for a dragon dance (note: the dragon dancers had a human wall of crowd-shifters around them, which meant they could actually move, unlike us). What was not lovely was that despite rigorous street closures and an attempt to assert a one way human traffic direction along Chinatown, the police had basically created a Mob of Doom in Chinatown itself. It took us about 45 mins to get from one side of the three-block strip to the other, including a five minute argument about whether we should wait in line for 30 minutes for a restaurant table (Grant - affirmative, me - negative). Most of this time was spent being rammed from behind into a solid mass of bodies in front, which typically would be actually trying to do the same thing but in the opposite direction. But now and then a dragon's head would pop up over the crowd, so that was cool, at least.

We had intended to go and visit one of the National Heritage sites afterwards, but were so buggered from crowdwrassling that we just got some food from a street vendor (who was selling Thai/Japanese/Chinese food, by way of really helping the pig-ignorant European tendency to be unable to tell the difference between the cuisines, cultures and indeed faces of those nationalities) and fled home to the relatively deserted streets of Sunday Holland Park/Ladbroke Grove for a pastry and a cuppa tea.

Thesis this week: zip, am trying to catch up on copyright (and failing, I might add, although I did get 20-something case notes written yesterday).
Bicycle km: zip
Steps: might as well be zip. Last week 98K.

Brighton - on Sea, not Sands...

I think I must have been slightly stir crazy this week - with being sick last week and not really getting out much on the weekend. Fortunately, Loz noticed the subtle signs, and suggested we head down to Brighton for the day. We hadn't gotten out of London for a while so it was certainly about time. This would also cross off another one from "Best Day Trips from London" - a wonderful gift from Lee (score so far: 8/25, come on team!)

We did manage to get out of the house before 9am by some miracle, but a minor stuff up at Victoria station (we're not admitting it was our fault, and blaming the rail network is easy) meant we didn't get down there until close to 11am. Still, plenty of time to enjoy the restorative powers of a seaside town.



The big attraction of Brighton is the Royal Pavilion, and it was our first stop of the day. Well, second after the really cool bike shop. They actually stocked Kona, and lots of it! Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, the Pavilion. It was quite spectacular, and as commented by a member of parliament back in the day, largely resembled a turnip. More precisely, one large turnip upside down on a box, with many smaller turnips, also upside down on boxes. It apparently started out as a modest farmhouse, but was renovated by George IV after he got himself out of debt. I don't know how a Regent/King gets into debt or out of it, but I suspect it has something to do with the ladies and gambling, and then doing favours for Parliament. Next to the Pavilion was the Dome, but we didn't go inside to check out the museum/art gallery.

Next we walked through the Brighton streets towards the sea shore, evaluating potential dinner venues, and appreciating some of the remarkable buildings. One very cool thing was that the public buses have names. We made it down to the impressive beach with the Brighton Pier. Do the pictures provoke the memory of feeling of sand between your toes? Or, for example, pebbles beneath your shoes?

Down from the current pier is the old pier. Much like the Royal Pavilion, it appears to have an iron structure. And much like the Royal Pavilion, it is rusted and decaying. Good thing they've been doing restoration work on the the Pavilion since a year or two after it was built (so only for a couple of hundred years now).

We went and wandered out along the pier where there are many sideshow-style attractions like shooting galleries, a dolphin race(!), a very unfortunate witch, and some carnival rides. Lauren was boring and not interested in riding them - she didn't want to go on G.Laxia, the Haunted House, Turbo Coaster, Crazy Mouse, Booster, Waltzer, Wild River, or Scream. She didn't even want to go on this one.

By the time we finished the circuit of the pier, the sun was on the way down, and it was getting dark. This brought out a huge number of birds - flocking about around and under the pier. The photos don't really capture it, but is was quite amazing. I was able to get a number of good photos - probably too many, but I still find the sun disappearing into the ocean to be quite fascinating. The whole area reminded me of Santa Monica - it's obvious where the Americans got their influence - but I think the colonists use of timber instead of iron/steel was a good idea.

Brighton pier at night was very pretty, as was the Royal Pavilion - in particular the big turnip, pity about the scaffolding though.

We finished off with dinner at English's of Brighton - awesome, definitely taking Dad there so we can get the seafood platter!

It was a great day out, easy to do from London, and we will be doing more of this sort of thing in future!

All of the photos can be seen here.

It Done Snowed II

OK, so further to our previous tantalising post: BEHOLD THE SNOW. This would be from last Thursday. Shut up, I never said we'd update frequently! Take a careful look at the picture of Grant. He lost that beanie (lovingly knitted BY HIS WIFE) half an hour later.

It was especially wonderful snow actually - still coming down at 10am, all clothes soaked, sizeable snowperson-facilitating snow (my snowperson was lame because my hands got cold).
Much better than the previous January snow which, while nice, had stopped by the time we got up. When I went to copyright class in the afternoon, my lecturer, who is an Australian expat decades removed from the motherland, said to me in excitement: "Isn't it wonderful?"

After I dropped Grant off at the station at about 7.30am I went for a hike through Holland Park, which is the foresty snowy pictures, esp the maze, the terribly cold fishies in the Kyoto Garden and My Lord Holland You Are Sitting Very Still.

Freakishly, the tube was only running about 20 mins late when I caught it in to class in the morning despite the snow. Considering that it routinely does way worse in bright sunny weather, I was pleasantly surprised! It still would have been faster to ride in, but I get scared of unusual weather conditions, viz. when I rode home after hail in Sydney and tried to access my inner European for racial memories on what to do when hitting an ice drift at speed. I did ride in the next day, and got absolutely drenched in a sleety downpour (fellow student, English: "You don't have to ride in EVERY day, you know"), and then afterwards had to spend half an hour cleaning the grit out of the bike that had been scattered in the snow the day before. Apparently gritty abrasive salt+dirt+water = bad for bikes. Or so I am told. I have my suspicions that it is a beat-up though to make me clean my poor old bike.

Grant actually had to come home early on the snow day with a cold and was off sick the next day too (damn contracting damn no sick leave). However, he's much better now, with the exception of in the wee small hours when he tends to start hacking up a lung just to piss me off. We have new cough syrup - honey and lemon flavour. On inspection, ingredients = honey and lemon. Not entirely sure why this product exists.

Anyway, Grant's bug did mean we didn't get up to too much hiking at the weekend, which coupled with the fact I rode into school 2 days last week meant that my walking total was CRAP - a measly 58000 steps. Did however do 40km on the bike. Not very flash, but given it is the dead of winter I am pretty chuffed. I have to wear a jumper while I ride and everything. AND windproof gloves, cf Wednesday when I didn't wear them and couldn't feel my fingers for quite some time thereafter.

We did meet a friend of Grant's from when he was working in Syd, who is over for the week, for drinks and dinner on Saturday night around SoHo (no champagne, but if there had been I doubt it would have tasted like cherry cola). Met some nice friends of hers, too, which is always a good thing in this big wide city. Otherwise the only other weekend adventure was a moderate stroll to Kensington Palace Gardens for tea and scones. I used the word "grand." Now all I need to do is start saying "all right" instead of "Hello, how are you?" and I'll be set.

Thesis has been doing quite well yesterday and today, in part because I cheated by doing thesis work instead of trade marks/copyright today as well as yesterday. Aren't I clever in using my self-distracting powers for good instead of evil? Yesterday I cleaned the flat from top to bottom by way of distraction. Excellent stuff. Anyway, today's slog got me 1800 words added and about 800-1000 subtracted, so I am still ahead of the game. My argument now goes from intro to parts a through c of part 2 before running aground, compare earlier where it sort of went intro, part 2(c), make of that what you will. OF COURSE, disclaimer here is that my supervisor has read none of it yet so could decide it is all total rubbish. I think I keep deterring him from reading what he has already by sending him a new draft every week. I personally would regard that as a tip not to read anything until I had a version someone was prepared to call final! It isn't due until July but I have 6700 done pretty well and another 6000 done in early draft form. Cue freakout re: 15,000 word target overshoot (familiar from 2000 where I produced a 25000 word thesis that was supposed to be 12000), which is why I am glad to have cut some words out. Have to do some more work on the USA part of it though.

I must say Jamie hit the nail on the head when she told me the problem with grad school was the utter lack of external stimulus to activity. I have *no* assessment tasks due until July, and final exams are August. Until then I could do jack and there would be no consequences. Don't tell my brain this or I won't get anything done. It's just between you and me, OK? All of this is way worse coming from a life where the task that got done first was (a) the most overdue (b) the one with the screaming client or partner attached to it, and there sure as hell were stimuli to prompt action (positive - $$$, negative - aforementioned screaming). Feel rather like a marionette with strings cut at times. Still, it is nice to relaxxxxxxxxx just the same, also to use brain as sharp instrument instead of blunt one for a change.

UK things people never warned me about: the limescale. OH MY GOD, THE LIMESCALE, THE KETTLE KILLING, DRAIN-CLOGGING, TAPE-CAKING LIMESCALE (apparently it's very healthy for you though). Also, still a bit annoyed by lack of tags on teabags.

OK, off to veg shop and then copyright study. YAY.

Bike k last week: 40km
This: 0
Thesis: 1800 words, but lost 800-1000, so what do we call that?

Again?

So this is the forecast for tomorrow:


We'll see what happens... The max of 2 deg could be a little rough though.

Edit: this just in, news report states the forecast is for the heaviest snow fall in 10 years!

"Surreal, but nice."

Thus speaks the hero to the heroine in Grant's favourite girly flick, "Notting Hill," which was on the telly on the weekend. Hereabouts the movie is considered horrifically twee and it can also be regarded as a rather racially suspect whitening of a quite multicultural area. All that notwithstanding, it's nice brainmush and on top of that we now get to squeal "OH MY GOD, THAT'S...[insert name of local landmark/shop here]" every five seconds, which was indeed surreal, but nice. You know you've arrived when the geographical names in English film and telly start to make sense.

It was hotting up last week - even to the point of not having to wear a beanie! - but apparently this was a bluff, as it is now freezing again. Heavy frost this morning, for the first time really. No more snow, sadly.

I have given up on my lofty ambitions to do this degree properly and read each case report in full, and am now reading the headnotes only, which is like the Cribb's Notes. I feel like an intellectual traitor but on the plus side, I got through three weeks of trade mark reading in one day yesterday. You can't argue with that kind of brute force productivity, people. At this rate I might even catch up on copyright sometime before the exams.

Cycling kms last week: 40km
This week: none yet, trying to be brave enough to ride to uni today despite cold (riding is the only way to guarantee getting there in under an hour - it is supposed to be a 20 minute tube trip, but that only works under lab conditions)
Thesis this week: about 1000ish, again
Steps this week: truly pathetic 17,000.

And how have you all been?

Hippy Waitangi Day eviryone!

Hi all

Our usual weekend stroll was to the Vic and Albert Museum, or rather to the Chinese diner near there.

We did manage to see the Islamic ceramic/textile/metalwork exhibit prior to lunch which was AWESOME. And educational: Chinese artisans redesigned their blue and white china for the Middle Eastern market and flooded it with cheap ceramics in the new patterns in the 15th century. Result: market went crazy for the new blue and white china, and Middle Eastern artisans started copying the Chinese designs, including their maker's marks, which is actually the first example of someone pirating Chinese designs and trade marks I have heard of. Go Ottoman Empire! There were some beautiful rugs which were only lit for 20 minutes in the hour to avoid fading. And also some lovely embroidered robes, which are believed to have been worn by three of the 19 princes executed as children when their half-brother succeeded their father to the throne to avoid succession infighting, an exercise that was apparently never repeated.

Prior to V&A and lunch, we came across this scene. That would be the expat New Zealand Waitangi Day party, aka the Circle Line Pub Crawl 2007. Look, the New Zealand speed skating team! Here's hoping they don't steal our Australian tactics of hanging back and hoping everyone else falls over at the next Winter Olympics. They were all drinking Fosters though. Tch. Anyway, it is nice that trans-Tasman rivalry back home becomes antipodean brotherhood the minute you get to the other side of the world - we celebrated Australia Day in a much more low-key way with a New Zealander.

In other news, yesterday I rode the 10km to Uni only to find that my lecture had been cancelled, which in fact my lecturer had mentioned in passing some months ago. Didn't feel too stupid as there were 5 other people there, but still - further evidence that I am something of a brain in a bottle at times. That pretty much torpedoed my otherwise reasonably productive week as at that point I was too ticked off to do anything for the rest of the day.

Well, it's 5pm and still twilight so here's hoping we may be past the worst of the winter!

Thesis total: same (hey, I write thesis on Mondays, leave me be!)
Steps total: 70K and rising
Most excellent hummus recipe: one can chickpeas, 1/3 cup chickpea liquid, 1.5 Tbs tahini, juice of half a juicy lemon, 2 cloves garlic. WHIZZ.

There are some photos here from the various walks of the last 2 weeks - descriptions on the photos.

These boots are made for walking. As are these sneakers, these sandals and these attractive crocs.

Oh-kay. So we have spent another week tromping the wilds of North-Western and Western London, and it has been good. Targets this week included:

• Hampstead Heath, a terribly awesome scrubby-type park a la Richmond Park and Bushy Park only without the deer. Hampstead Heath is about 6 miles walk from our place (help, I am infected with imperial measurements!) and it took us about 2 hours to get there, as we went via our favourite Indian food stall in the Church St markets off Edgware Road, which sells truly awesome chicken tikka wraps made with roti. Yummmmmmm. Then we walked beside the Regent's Canal, home of some really unreasonably swank stately homes, to Primrose Hill, ditto, through Belsize, ditto to a lesser extent and then Hampstead (still quite swank) to the heath proper. It has swimming ponds. And a man was swimming in one of them. Even though it was roughly 2 degrees. Really, the icebergs are cool and all, but this guy was swimming in water that had just about made its own ice. Highlights included meeting a guy with two tallish red-coloured staffies and having him identify them as Long-legged Staffordshires, most useful because I totally want one, and the beautiful Kenwood House. We were rather ticked off because we are English Heritage members and should get into such places free, but it was actually free for everyone. Logically enough, Kenwood House and its fine grounds were at one point slated for redevelopment. It's nice to know that the CRAZY PERSON developmental mindset is not specific to our homeland. They had an exhibition of paintings including Dutch masters, and specifically including this very nice one. Grant and I are currently arguing about the terminology for Rembrandt's use of light (next best argument after the best means of demonstrating the doppler effect) so drop a line if you know. There and back is a 32000 step trip if you have stubby legs like me.
  
• A 23,000 step trip with Jen from Twickers to Teddington to Kingston and back via Bushy Park and a cop-out bus trip back from Teddington because my footsies were tired. Most of it was along the Thames, rather terrifically pretty river that it is. Teddington has a gigantic lock which was the scene of the fish-slapping dance of Monty Python Fame. I HAVE TOUCHED GREATNESS. Highlights of the trip were the pretty, pretty Thames, and the absolutely lovely lunch Jen made us - thanks as always Jen!
  

This week has been a busyish one too. Grant has been working until almost 6pm some evenings (everyone in Sydney: HAHAHHAHA - 6 months ago, neither of us could be relied upon to get home before 8pm). He was supposed to be moving from the temporary team leader position to shiftwork over the next few weeks, but it looks like that has been pushed back again. I wasn't desperately keen on the return of our old buddy evil nightshift Grant, plus I like having the house to myself during the day, so no broken hearts at the delay on this end!

I had another thesis-y Monday which seems to have involved adding about 3000 words to the text, although I am not entirely sure where they landed as I was messing with the whole thing. I am now at about 10000 words and am nowhere near having made my point - and this with a 15000 word limit. My supervisor is under strict instructions to edit all waffle. We will see. I am thinking of tweaking the structure a bit AGAIN but he has slapped me across the knuckles for even thinking about it, so I will have to try to manage that in secret.

Tuesday I got to play doublespeak in a meeting the degree coordinator and marketing for my uni organised with some students so that they can better prostitute, I mean PROMOTE, themselves to the market. It was actually quite useful. One thing I have found really strange is the different cultural expectations of an LLM. In countries like Australia, the UK and Japan, a Masters degree is something you get when you already have work experience - an investment in swifter promotion or at least a higher charge-out rate, and therefore $$$$$$$, which is what we all want deep down in our lawyerly black hearts. But there are lots of European students who are doing the LLM straight from their undergraduate programs because they want to get into specialist fields. It may well work in Europe, but a specialist LLM wouldn't get you into a job in IP in Australia.

Speaking of which there is a joke in English IP/academic circles that the only IP lawyers are in fact Australians. When I introduced myself to the meeting as an Australian IP lawyer, the arbitration senior lecturer interrupted "Is there any other kind?" Oz seems to produce and export more IP practitioners than you would expect - perhaps that whole "clever country" thing is paying off? Or perhaps the combination of an increasingly US-style litigious culture with a UK legal system makes Oz IP lawyers a more saleable commodity? Dunno.

Yesterday I rode to uni in very pretty winter sun, had my usual vicious argument with trade mark lecturer number 2, who is constitutionally incapable of agreeing with anything I say even though he may later make a statement of his views which may be uncannily similar to those I have just stated. I actually *agree* with the principle we were fighting about, but not about the procedural way in which the UK Patents Office deals with the issue - allowing an Examiner to "guess" that a trade mark is not intended to be used in a country which allows intention to use filing? ARGH. Never mind, I am making myself cranky again just thinking about it. Also had an interesting tutorial afterwards in which I remembered and disgorged everything I ever knew about the US doctrine of functionality. However I have no idea why I know it as we haven't covered it yet in class (so as you can imagine, the tutorial question on that direct subject was therefore pretty fun for everyone to answer). I think it was something at work? Anyway, a sure fire way to impress fellow students is to say "aesthetic functionality" sagely. Try it at home.

Today I had my so very tiring 4 hours of classes. I do like Thursdays though as it's the day when the IP peeps have lunch together. I *may* have been asked about the Crocodile Hunter. Later shocked a Nigerian student (independence from UK: 1960) by informing him that Australia technically only became independent in 1987 (GO AUSTRALIA ACT 1987!).

Tonight we are off to bar trivia with Bin at Ealing. Since we know NOTHING of local personalities it is always fun. Trade marks and public figures are the lingua franca in this world and without knowledge of either, trivia and comedy including "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" (second most awesome UK telly programme after "Top Gear" which is now back on the air) are quite bizarre experiences.

And then I have a whole 2 hours of uni left for the week. Gosh, it's a hard life.

Thesis words this week: roughly 3000, 1800 good ones
Steps last week: 120000 or so
Steps this week: Meh.

If you see my mother, tell her to call me!

Let it Snow!

In the few milliseconds between the alarm going off and me hitting the snooze button, we heard the news report say something along the lines of "south-east England ... snow". Hang on a second! We're in the south-east of England!

And lo, this is what we saw out the window of the Pixieflat:


It had been snowing, and how!

We then got all excited, I got ready for work and we ventured outside into the virgin white snow. The t-shirt slogan "I'm a virgin, I'm just not very good at it" comes to mind about now.

Anyway, it was still exciting, and the first time Lauren had seen snow, like, in the city.


Reportedly, it was more snow than London has had in the last 3 years.

By the time I saw daylight again at lunch, all but a few specks of snow had gone. We are hoping for more tonight, so we can build a snowman like this.

I took a few more photos on the way to work, you can see them here.

Grant.

I'd write something, but my fingers are blue

OK, so I would be the first to admit that we had really a dream run of weather in this country. The weather than had Europeans hysterically screaming "GLOBAL WARMING!" had us musing "Isn't this pleasant?"

But it's now two degrees. And apparently falling. The pixieflat doesn't feel like a furnace when we come home anymore; it's cosy. We have had to TURN ON A HEATER (a little one, but still). More damning still, WE HAVE HAD TO CLOSE THE WINDOW. I AM WEARING THERMALS INSIDE THE FLAT.

The dining table, which is also the desk, is against the window and as I write, cold air drifts slowly down over my hands. I *could* close the curtains to warm up, but then I'd lose the few hours of daylight we get before night hits at 4pm.

Still, someone down the road has potted palms on the balcony and they're not dead, so it can't be that bad. AND we got a nice package of Aussie goodies in preparation for Australia/Invasion Day (thanks Jan and Paul!) so I am keeping warm with litres of Bushells tea. Made with teabags with tags! Hallelujah!

See, I actually *am* working over here!

It's something of an adjustment going from a rather speed-oriented job juggling billions of deadlines with everyone wanting everything done RIGHT NOW (in fact, a boss once gave me two things to do - being already busy, I asked her which one she wanted done first and she wanted them BOTH DONE AT THE SAME TIME) and every minute involving an influx of files, mail, faxes, calls and emails to my new life as a sane person. I mean as a student/housewife who spends two fulls days a week at home studying/cleaning things and 3 days per week at uni for 3.5 seconds total. Basically, I've gone from being the very model of a modern Sydney career gal and queen of efficiency (tip: cut out the dead wood, including anything in your life you may find pleasant, also consider eating your cereal WHILE walking the dog around the block in the morning) to being a giant lump with whole days rushing past and no self-discipline. This has not exactly lead to rapid progress on my thesis.

However, I've been trying to get a little more organised about my scads of time. Instead of sleeping in I now go for a walk to the station with Grant in the morning which sort of wakes me up. It's important however that I not wear comfy tracksuit pants for this as otherwise the whole day will be a write-off, don't ask me why. I try to get out to do the veg shopping while it's actually still daylight, even. In fact, the last two weeks have been 100,000 steps + which I think is not too bad. Oh yeah, and I now have free timekeeping software which I use to attempt to hammer myself into productivity, even if Grant thinks it is desperately pathetic (hey, timekeeping is a valuable SKILL in my profession; I have to stay in practice).

HOWEVER, my new-found self-discipline actually wasn't really translating very well to uni work. Yes, I've been to the library weekly for a couple of weeks. But then you actually have to read the stuff. Unfortunately photocopying doesn't itself provide for osmotic assimilation of the text. And what I was managing to write on the thesis was terribly discouraging as I changed the planned structure after I got a chunk done which meant I was going to have to rewrite it. So of course I just left it alone for a few weeks :)

But there is hope. I have discovered the 40/20 rule much beloved of PhD students (40 mins work, 20 mins break). It works really well if like me you are obsessive, bully yourself into sitting down to do 40 mins, and get up 3 hours later. Therefore not really a 40/20 rule so much as a 180-with-toilet-breaks rule but anyway, it seems to work. I've done 1800 words today that I think are actually useable. Total so far 6700, but about 2000 of those need to have quite a bit added to them to work with the new structure.

Now I'm scared to stop writing as it may be my only productive day of the academic year, but I've sort of run out of content so probably should give it a break and read some more grist for the mill. 15,000 words by July was never really in doubt, but it was in doubt that it would be any good!

Thesis today: 1800
Steps: 5700 dammit time for a walk.

O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

OK, so now and then I have to be allowed a title that shows off a "classical" Novocastrian-style education, right?

We in the British Isles have been enjoying some 90mph+ winds lately. It's really quite extraordinary - diagonal walking is a new skill for me. Lots of trees down in Holland Park, but no damage in our immediate vicinity. It isn't cold but it's damn hard to maintain a natty hairstyle or to get from A to B via public transport without spending protracted periods stuck inside tube tunnels. I would say "typical England" but anyone who has depended on the Northern or North Shore train lines in Sydney knows just how reliable they are once heavy winds start dropping widowmaker gumtrees across the lines.

It's been warmer but apparently we are staring down the barrel of 3 and below next week, so time to break out the thermals perhaps.

Our Saturday morning looked like this:
This is a huge benefit of living with Grant by the way - delicious cooked breakfast at the weekend! The coffeepot was a present from Susan and Robert, and very well used it has been. See how nicely it goes with the dodgy red cookware? Also note wee cute Union Jack coffee cup!

The massive breakfast was required for our weekly walking adventure, this time SOUTH OF THE RIVER to Battersea Power Station (decommissioned) via Holland Park, Kensington, Earl's Court, Chelsea, and Wandsworth (including the runner-up to coolest graffiti ever after Newcastle's famous THIS IS NOT ART, namely this, and Battersea Park, which is very very pretty and has tasty soup. It took an hour and a half or so to get there, and way way longer to get to the power station, because they have cunningly surrounded it with building sites and dead ends. By the time we got a decent view on an obscure backstreet near the Vauxhall Bridge, we had gone way further east than originally intended. So, instead of heading back the way we came, we went home via Victoria (ooh, Little Ben! cute!), Hyde Park, Kensington Palace Gardens and Notting Hill. By that point we had walked a billion trillion miles, the breakfast and the soup had both worn off, and for once Grant was the one having the sugar crash instead of me. Picture a cranky pants Loz hungry hissyfit with twice the brute strength and much longer eyelashes!

My feet are killing me, but it was a lovely walk - sunshine, fancy architecture, and plenty of time beside the mighty Thames. However, I doubt we can force any visitors to undertake the journey on foot.

Many more pictures of the power station (for Robert) and a rather cool round building (for Mum) here.

Thesis words written for the week: 600. That is my head hanging in shame. 2000 last week. Happily, most of the 2600 has to be butchered/deleted/revised to fit in with my new structure. HURRAY!

The Festive Photos

Ok, a bit of catching up to do. I haven't taken a lot of photos recently, but we might as well run through a few of them...

We went to the Tate Modern with Robert, Harry, and Gus - primarily for the 5 storey slide. Unfortunately, there were no tickets left for the top slide, and the 4th floor slide didn't have any free slots for several hours (Robert et. al. went back later in the week and got on the slide). The Tate was quite interesting - some exceptional pieces in there, including one video piece that I really liked. The best bit was the minimalist section - not necessarily the works themselves, more watching other people walk in there looking around dumbfounded "oh, so, like, that's the artwork?"

From there Loz and Gus headed home, while Harry, Robert and I stopped off at The Old Swan for a couple of beers. Next stop was the Prince Of Wales hotel at Holland Park. We timed it pretty well on both occasions as it was pissing down outside (Loz and Gus got the worst of it!)

Skip forward to New Years Eve. Loz and I headed out to Claire and Belinda's place at Ealing (a couple of stops past my work) to join Vron and Sarah for some quiet celebrations. We enjoyed some great company, home made pizzas, wine, beers, and flaming pudding! Vron and Loz ran out of steam, and Loz and I were home by about 4am. Fortunately they had free trains running all night, so getting home wasn't a drama.

Vron joined us in the Pixieflat on New Years day, and we took her on the first of many epic walks she would be forced to do while here :) This one was to Holland Park.

Last weekend Loz and I went out and about (via Holland Park once again), did a bit more of exploration of our surrounding suburbs - past the Victoria and Albert museum (shell blasts from WWII) and a few other interesting things (this was in Knightsbridge... think Footballers Wives). We dropped in to Harrods - along with a ton of other people. We bought a carbon steel, pre-seasoned wok (*only* 15 pounds!), and I found a coffee cup.

That *mostly* brings us up to date... and we promise to keep this thing a bit more up to date!

A few additional photos in the usual place.

We done had a holiday season

Hi all

A long silence. Sorry about that. We are all still here, but busy for a change.

Last week was my first back at uni, or to put it another way the end of my "holiday." I was sad about this for a couple of hours before I realised:

(a) I had actually done more uni work over the break than the rest of the first term, and had done it while having tons of visitors;

(b) I used to work a ten hour day minimum and now have eight hours per week of uni. THIS IS A HOLIDAY, in other words.

It was actually great to be back and see all the generally fun and nice people with whom I study. Sure, some of them are basically five and a half, but they're very precocious. And there are a few thirty-somethings who sit around and angst glumly about careers, which makes me feel right at home.

Also last week I had a very welcome taste of corporate hospitality with one of the UK lawyers with whom I occasionally collaborated at work. She was very nice indeed but I had forgotten that one of the main traits of generous corporate hospitality is that it refuses to accept no for an answer. Hence I was plyed with enough New Zealand white (not too bad actually - well done to our trans-Tasman cousins!) that I was rather the worse for wear the next day. When of course I had to go to uni.

Other than that we have had a really busy holiday season with family visiting and visits to and of local friends and most importantly a 2 week stay from Vron, whom we have missed terribly. It was great to have her around to just generally hang out, but between us we also did the obligatory tourist hike of 90% of the Greater London area, as well as surgical strikes on its largest museums. There's a great metalwork exhibit at the V&A should anyone be interested.

Of course, three people in the pixieflat was also rather an adventure. When your main bedroom is also the loungeroom, your guest bedroom is - drumroll - your KITCHEN (hygiene dictated that the bathroom not be used for this purpose). Vron has now become one of a select group of humans, namely those who have banged their head on a fridge in their sleep. Vron flew out on Saturday, and we are trying to be brave about it but maybe our chins are a little bit wobbly.

In other news, yesterday involved a mammoth hike through the wilds of Kensingtons north and south as we conducted a tour of department stores of the West End, or at least Marks and Spencer and Harrods. Harrods is very very very DJs-ish although bigger, and I am trying to work out which was the chicken and which was the egg in that particular scenario without checking the Internet, because that would be cheating. Harrods is grossly overpriced on most fronts but does have a room decorated with sphinxes which few other stores could boast. Furthermore, they sold us a union jack demitasse coffee cup for Grant (matches his new red coffeepot, thanks Susan & Robert!) and a CARBON STEEL WOK AT LONG LAST. The fact that the latter cost the same number in pounds on sale as the last one I bought at Flemington markets in Sydney cost in dollars is kind of par for the course, but since they are the only establishment in the entire country so far that has been willing to pony up a carbon steel wok and since I am sick of scooping veg all over the place from the frypan while attempting to stir fry, I am praising Harrods.

But I'm never going back there because it was really busy and scary and really really hard to get out of, and they were cheating by using the perfume and cosmetics rooms to scare me away from the exits.

Not a great deal of proper travel lately due to aforementioned visitors. We are in the early stages of working out another euro trip, but in the meantime are planning more extensive use of the "25 Day Trips from London" book!

Can you tell I am avoiding a copyright assignment as we speak?

Loz

*sigh* family

Sometimes you don't realise how much you miss something until you have it back. I've experienced it a little when I don't speak to Mum and Dad for a little while, but it has kind of hit home with the visit by Susan, Robert, Harry and Gus.

They did (eventually) get here. We had arrange with Jen to go out for dinner on the Thursday night for Gus' birthday (not a great photo, but *you* try and get Gus to smile) but as they were delayed due to the fog, we made it Friday (in the end they arrived at ~10:30pm, and then had a *perfect* cab ride back to Jen's place). We all had a good time on Friday night, and the Chinese restaurant was great!

(As I had been psyched up to Do Something on the Thursday, Loz and I met up at Notting Hill Gate and went to The Old Swan for dinner. While I was waiting for Loz, I took some night photos.)

On Saturday the crew came in to check out Portobello Rd (via the architectural wonder that is Trellick Tower) , and then we took them to Kensington Palace Gardens and the Orangery. Our waiter wasn't there, but we had a lovely afternoon tea nonetheless. As it is London. the sun was well and truly down by the time we left, but we walked home via the Prince Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall. (Mental note, must see Cirque du Soleil there, if only for bragging rights).

Loz and I headed out to Twickenham on Christmas Eve (London really does shut down on Christmas day - NO public transport whatsoever!). Christmas morning alas brought us no snow. We did go for a walk along the Thames to Richmond for a pint though. Robert cooked up a storm as usual, and the Christmas turkey was excellent!

Boxing day was quiet, and as I had to prepare psychologically for work, we headed home early-ish so I could mope. Three of the most boring work days in history ensued, and that pretty much brings us up to date.

There is talk of doing some trials of at least part of the Monopoly Pub Crawl tomorrow, but I suspect we will just faff about in the city - which is pretty much the same thing!

More to follow post-New Years (with Vron!).

Grant.

Relevant photos.

Brass Monkey Weather

WINTER HAS ARRIVED!

I am going by the following signs:

1. There is fog everywhere (see below)- all domestic flights out of Heathrow apparently cancelled today. Merry Christmas everyone.
   
2. The sun doesn't rise until about 8am (which of course means I sleep in until 8.30am) and sets at 3.30pm, not that you can SEE the sun!
3. I can no longer leave the house without my wearable doona with the hood up AND a beanie underneath AND gloves, and even then my legs are freezing. I *could* implement a long johns policy but then I would boil the second I went indoors anywhere.
4. I just had to turn the water tank's flow to the heater units on and then even turned an actual heater on, which we have never ever done really.
   
5. Most tellingly of all, Grant has purchased an overcoat. I think this is in a holy text somewhere as a sign of the impending apocalypse.

Because Uni is on holidays, saving me a whole 12 hours or so a week including commute time, I'm not cycling much at the moment and more walking. It rather brings home the difference between cycling in Winter (lots of energy expended, nice toasty core temperature even when wearing very little protective clothing) vs walking in Winter (SWEET JESUS I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS).

On the plus side, Uni has brought so much paper into my life that if it gets much colder we can have a nice cosy bonfire.

Today I am going to the library for the third time ever, which is again possibly a sign of the apocalypse - you have been warned!

Fog: It's not just for Treviso anymore!

It has been a little foggy on the way to and from work the last day or so (this photo was taken at around 7:40am - SUNRISE!), and today I glanced at the sky news monitor in the NMC (network management centre for the layman) and noticed some interesting headlines about Heathrow:
"Fog causes Heathrow flight chaos"
223 flights cancelled today, and potentially ~200 tomorrow too. Makes our jaunt to Italy pale in significance.

Good luck to Susan, Robert, Harry and Gus flying in tomorrow!

As Lauren said, we went to the Orangery at Kensington Palace Gardens (AGAIN!) The waiter knows us by now, and keeps asking about our friend Nat, the only person brave enough to order Lapsang Souchong. We had intended to just get the cream tea, but they had a special Christmas lunch going on that we couldn't resist:

AND it came with pudding (in this case fresh, warm mince pies with cream):



The walk up to the gardens is always very pleasant, and I have been trying to grab photos here and there when I can. I managed to get a couple of some Prince Albert things:



We also came across a very intent dog stalking a squirrel. Now, dogs stalking squirrels in the parks around here is not an uncommon occurrence, and we have long since stopped being concerned for the squirrels - we are yet to see a dog come anywhere near them (ironically, if you point your finger at a squirrel, vis "look over there, a squirrel", they think you are trying to feed them and come running towards you. Can be quite scary). The interesting thing about this dog was that he was a good 100m from the squirrel, and as still as a statue:


It was the most painfully slow stalking I had ever seen. We were there pretty much from the start, and after about 10 minutes quite a crowd had formed, and many people were taking photos. It got interesting when he noticed another squirrel off to his left that was closer than the original target. Unfortunately it ended in tragedy. Another dog came bounding in and spoiled his hard earned yards. It was quite sad really, by the end I was really hoping he'd catch that squirrel.

Grant.


p.s. Educational video of the week.

Christmas 2006 has been delayed by approximately one week. Loz and Grant apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Dear all

Royal Mail is alas not on our side for this year, with the result that some of you may get Christmas presents in January or, given my experience in the ways of international mail, not at all (see, this is very clever of me as now if you don't get a present you'll think it got lost and not that I forgot). Especially since some of the presents are in Grant's estimation likely to be regarded by customs as dummy scents to put off sniffer dogs and impounding may therefore also be a possibility.

In any case, given the cost of sending odd sized packages from the UK in the week before Christmas you can all regard yourselves as having been given postage for Christmas!

In conclusion: sorry to scrooge up Christmas, promise to do better next year.

In update news: I am now officially on holidays from Uni which is a bit odd given that I only just started, but I am not complaining. We spent the last weekend recovering from Italy and, in Grant's case, his very first full week of work. In my case I am kind of over the few months I spent desperately wanting a job to validate my existence (grief/anger) and am onto the acceptance stage in so far as that could be regarded as referring to sleeping in til 8am, actual housework including IRONING MY HUSBAND'S SHIRTS (sorry Grant, I am never letting that go), and the occasional bout of actual uni work. Leisurely research can be such a lovely way to spend an afternoon, provided Westlaw is behaving itself of course. Also I drink tea. And it is good.

I should add at the weekend there was a fair bit of pre-Christmas running about (or faffing about as I should say) and a fat lot of good that did us thanks to postage issues. Grr. Also, we had lovely lunch at the Orangery in Kensington Palace Gardens which is my favourite tea-type place so far and where I am going to drag everyone who comes to visit.

In other news, no beetroot has dared stain my hands for 30 years. I bought three last week, and the first didn't stain my hands either. I smugly concluded as a result of all the above that the cookbooks with their crazy exhortations about cutting in rubber gloves were quackdoctors or in the alternative that I have weird teflon coated hands or something conferring a natural immunity. However, I cooked the other two beetroot from the same source today, and now look like I have weird skin condition or perhaps like I should be scrubbing my hands and screaming OUT DAMNED SPOT. How is it possible that the beetroots could betray me so?

End note: we have a new webcam thingy and we just frantically cleaned the flat so feel free to call by skype and demand video provided you do it in the next 24 hours. After that we will no doubt have trashed the place, Loz and Grant-style.

Hi all

It seems we only have time to either blog or travel/study/work madly, and not both! Or at least this is my excuse and I am sticking to it.

The last two weeks have involved:
[edit: 0. a visit to Regents Park. There were some good photo ops there, and we shall shall have to go back and check out the London Zoo. http://inertia.smugmug.com/gallery/2213408 Note the canal boat blockade! The walk back also took us past Lords cricket ground - what is happening in the test series?!?!?!?!)

1. travel with Jen to visit Trish in Battle. Battle is amazing, for several reasons. Firstly, it reinforces my view that the Australian unimaginative place names phenomenon (Great Dividing Range and Great Barrier Reef, I'm looking at you) is inherited - Battle is where the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Secondly, it's the first place I've been where you can see a ruin (Battle Abbey) that was smashed up five hundred years ago and replaced with a brand spanking new massive house, which is itself now ancient. Thirdly, I learned more about the Battle of Hastings there than in the 20 minutes we studied it in high school. Fourthly, it is a very pretty town indeed. And finally, they have a pub there with a beer called White Christmas, but being a bitter girl in every sense of the word I was afraid of it. Oh, and of course we liked it because the lovely Trish is there! Photos of Battle.
   
2. quick trip with Jen from Battle to Hastings, on the English Channel. I LOVE this town. It's got kind of a faded elegance to it, although having grown up in Newcastle I am quite aware that even a few weeks of brisk salt air will fade elegance rather faster than usual. The fishing fleet is beach-based, apparently the largest of its kind in Europe. All the boats were safely tucked up on shore though because the weather was fairly exciting that day and the Channel was verrrrrrrrrrry rough (Dover ferry closed, even). It was absolutely freezing, but between downpours the wind was strong enough to dry one's clothes in seconds. Hastings has a "new town", quite shopping mall-esque, and an "old town", complete with mossy rooves and one church for every ten people and tarred fishing tackle house things and the whole bit. It also has the steepest funicular railway in England up to the top of the cliff, which while not as steep as the tram up the peak in Hong Kong is nevertheless quite steep. My ambition is to go back to this place and gorge on seafood, which can in some cases be obtained in pint glasses. AWESOME. Photos of Hastings.
   
3. panicked study for me, as my thesis has been giving me gyp and I am suddenly picturing myself as navigating the treacherous seas of past research in a very leaky theoretical boat. I decided to deal with this by reading more and more junk to the point where I could no longer remember what I had wanted to write about in the first place and had rewritten my introduction 4 times and had started to wander around the flat sobbing "I'm stupid!". My supervisor then took this timely moment to schedule a meeting and request a draft first chapter, which I tried to avoid to no avail. Fortunately, he is experienced in the management of the breakdown of Type A personalities, and not only doled out the required ego boost but also took my frantic babblings and wrote down the structure of my thesis for me in diagrammatic form based thereupon. Then he told me to stop reading, already, because there was nothing new under the sun anyway. I feel like my head has been spring cleaned. The lesson of this story is twofold. One, that one's relationship with one's thesis will have the same pattern as any other: the giddy honeymoon (I don't know a thing about you, but I love you!), the horror once information as to the other party becomes available (oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?) and finally acceptance (let's make the best of a bad job). Two, one should never attempt such a crazy endeavour without a level-headed thesis supervisor or friend-slash-relationship therapist as the case may be :)
4. a trip to Italy viz Venice/Morsano where Robert's father's family comes from, but as Grant has already written about this, so I will put it in his words:

"I finished work at about 3.30pm on Thursday[1]. Caught the tube to Liverpool St Station then caught National Rail to Stansted airport. Queued at the Ryanair[2] check in desk for a while, managed to shuffle pretty quickly to the front thanks to a busload of school kids sticking together in one queue. Sat at airport then flew to Italy. Scheduled arrival time was 22:00 local time. After 2 attempts at landing (fog... not unusual around Treviso) we started to redirect to Trieste, but as Ryanair is not allowed to land there, we were redirected to Brescia [ed note - 190km away from original destination!]. 1st bus arrived, filled up, and left without us even knowing. ~1hr later the next bus arrived and took us back to Treviso (~3hr). Got picked up by family and driven to the old country of Morsano [ed note - arrived at about 5am. The flight to Italy part of this story probably also has a moral, along the lines of "don't fly Ryanair late at night into fog-prone areas that don't have capacities for instrument landings." But at 30 pounds total for two of us to go to Italy and back you can't really complain, even if you can feel terribly sleepy].

All up it took almost 15 hours[3]. I thought Europe was supposed to be small?

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting various local attractions, spending time with The Wife's family's family and then in to Venice on Sunday.

For some cycle-related content, there happened to be a cyclocross race on in Morsano on the Saturday. I was impressed - when we first arrived it was the kiddies racing, and there was a pretty decent turn out. Plenty of team vans and support persons.
http://inertia.smugmug.com/gallery/2230339
(warning, some not-very-exciting pictures of Venice are in there too)

Grant.

[1] not a bad way to start a job, only been there 3 days and I asked
to leave early and take off a friday!
[2] need I say more?
[3] the trip home (straight from Venice) took considerably less time,
but still didn't get to bed until about 3am this morning! [ed note - Monday morning, when Grant had to be at work at 8.30am and I got to sleep in until 9.30am or so]"

...end quote.



I should add that we have a really lovely time. The weather was pretty rainy for most of the Friday and Saturday but thankfully we are now used to being rained upon, and also we now have RAINPROOF HATS, take that UK weather! We saw Udine which has a beautiful gallery walk thing up what looks like the only hill for miles around, so you can see quite a distance of domes and pillars and streets and all things Italian. Also I picked up my much beloved 50 Euro long down-filled coat thing there, which is like wearing a doona and which will hopefully see me through the rest of what a European winter has to offer (Jen - coat really would have been useful in Hastings!). My story regarding purchasing same with frantic sign-language reduced an Italian fellow student to hysterical laughter. You may wish to picture me using sign language for "showerproof" at this point for full effect.

We also saw a walled city whose name I can't remember, and a restored old villa by which I mean giant palace covered with statues, also can't remember the name. Annoying! Fellow Italian student above noted that there is not much English spoken where we were (except Venice of course) and while that is true (a) Robert translated everything for us and (b) as I noted to fellow student, it is rather arrogant to stride over the earth expecting people to speak your language, and I'm thinking next trip I'll at least learn some basic phrases ahead of time (NB: student's response was "it's only arrogant if you don't realise that other people do in fact speak other languages").

On Sunday we went to Venice on the sunniest day I've seen in a good long while. It was touristy but sort of transcendently so. The San Marco piazza defies belief really. I mean, there is a lot of Victorian architecture in the UK that is opulent in the extreme/covered in gold leaf, or what have you, but this took it to the next step. And also there were about a million different kinds of marble involved so it was geologically educational, too. We went ahead of Susan and Robert with Harry and Gus and it was really great to spend some time with the cousins. We had rather a lot of fun on the ferries, too. Warning re Venice: they will make you pay to pee. Photos of Italy (no bathrooms, I promise, but lots of airport shots).

On return to London we avoided bread and cheese like the plague for a few days, but we're ready for more pizza now.

Highlights of week: thesis supervisor spring cleaning my brain; students demonstrating the enunciation of "h" at lunch.

meat substitute products - not just for vegetarians anymore!

So - Lauren, being the wanna-be hippy that she is, has been chipping away at my carnivorous tendencies. I'm sorry to say, it hasn't hurt.

First was the sausages. Did you know that in 'ol Blighty, they have all sorts of sausages named after various places, all with distinct tastes, spices, herbs... It's like beer, but food! Well, the vegos have seen that as a challenge, and stepped up to the plate. Glamorgan was the first one - kind of cheesey and light, I think of it as a breakfast sausage. Then came Linconshire and Cumberland sausages - a bit more body, more "mature"... definitely dinner sausages.

Lauren then started seeding my conscience with comments about some new, futuristic meat substitute: Quorn. The added appeal for Lauren, I think, was the trademarking... For me, it was thoughts of food cubes and food replicator units that piqued my interest (I'm sure this is the future of food - place some non-defined substance into a machine and it will produce the meal of your dreams!). Apparently it is some super-mycoprotein somesuch that a company has developed. They can manipulate it into all sorts of shapes, sizes, textures, tastes... it's scary.

We started with Quornchiladas. They were good. Very good. The item labeled as Quorn "chicken style" pieces. Weird. Tonight, we had Quoritos, using Quorn "mince". It is a bit more beefy, and I guess mincey than the other variety. It's all a bit scary, and exciting at the same time - the future is NOW!

I should probably point out at this point that both the Quornchiladas and Quoritos were made by yours truely - only the raw ingredients were provided by Quorn.

So, while we suspect Marlow Foods[1] has created one of those creatures from Milliways[2]. were not about to look too closely in to it...

Grant.

[1] creaters, or at least owners of the trademark, of Quorn
[2] refer to The Restaurant at the end of the Universe.

Sossages

We'll save an update on the new round of Grant Job Drama for later as hopefully there will be some resolution over the next week or so, and narratively speaking it works better if you're on the edges of your seats for a little bit longer. In the meantime, picture us both in the Pixieflat, hunched over textbooks and arguing over whether it is too hot in or too cold. It is funny how quickly you develop an expectation of wearing nothing but summer clothes indoors when it is freezing out, especially when you don't have to pay extra for heating.

Last weekend, Sarah very kindly hosted us in Birmingham, pearl of the north Midlands. We caught the bus down on Friday evening, which in hindsight wasn't the world's greatest idea as we were in gridlock for more than an hour. However, the bus was quite pleasant as buses go, and Sarah picked us up at the station at the other end for dinner at an Indian - in Chinatown! On Saturday we went to Stratford Upon Avon, where the primary industry is Shakespeare and everything was either built five hundred years ago or yesterday. The place on the right is the entrance to the cottage where Shakespeare was born. Query why they felt that red brick was the way to go in a town otherwise comprised of Tudor everything.

Like Birmingham, Stratford Upon Avon has a healthily developed canal system, although there are some indications that it might not have been the fastest way to travel. By way of comparison, the trip to Birmingham by train takes about half an hour. Lunch was had in a pub built in 1600, which has a continuous liquor licence predating white settlement of Australia by a century or so. Freaky. Also there were the usual hungry swans slash Canada geese. In addition to its 800 year history and its famous son Will, Stratford Upon Avon is notable for catering for pixie folk and making it easier for them to open doors.

In the evening we had the pleasure of a tour of downtown Birmingham and its fabulous German Markets, which come from Frankfurt for a month until Christmas. The markets are awesome, but Saturday night was cold - like, Grant wearing a scarf cold or Loz buying a new improved lined earflap beanie cold (well, let's face it, I'm a sucker for a beanie), like keep the Gluhwein (mulled wine) coming cold. According to some accounts it hit 1 celsius.

The German markets also feature scary Santas, and sausages and pork steaks in scary quantities. I did not partake of same, but diligently applied myself to Gluhwein. I am calling it preparation for the various English mulled wine products that are happily becoming available over Christmas. We liked the markets so much we went back the next day, and learned that chestnuts are most delicious.

Sarah also showed us canals. Lots of them. Birmingham has more canals than Venice, reflecting its heritage as a forerunner of the industrial revolution and for a good long while Britain's largest industrial hub, from which one might like to ship things. Said heritage also reflected in the solid gold statuary and trillion dollar architecture from the city's Victorian heyday, where its captains of industry walked the earth as gods or at least really really rich people. There's a Cadbury factory here too. What more could you ask for?

Boring pictures of locks and other exciting material pertaining to canals are in the Birmingham photo folder for those of you who are mechanically minded. Final shot of Birmingham for those who miss Sarah, also proving that having warm ears makes me damn happy.

It was a wonderful trip - having a local guide really made it fun. The Gluhwwein helped too.

Onto this week - I have been having better luck getting up the quantities of Uni reading. Noone else seems to be bothering but I am a swot as we know. I am also sufficiently experienced in the subject fields to be a total teacher's pet on the basic stuff, and I am duly expecting my comeuppance as we get more technical/European. Also, as the only English first language speaker in more than one of my classes I appear to have been designated a translation service provider which is really great where it's not just a technical legal term but one not reflected in the questioning party's legal system, or better still a medical term, thank you patent law.

While I have no hope of catching Ro at this stage in the cycling kms challenge, I am still commuting to uni for the sheer joy of having a reliable expected arrival time AND saving 12 quid a week for the 3 days' travel. The tube tends to be an expensive disappointment when you are actually in a hurry to get anywhere! The bonus is that the Strand's gridlock has cleared for reasons I cannot divine, and the 50 minute trip with lots of scooting between cars is now more like a 35 minute trip. Still too slow for 10.5 km but better than before, and faster than the tube. The parks I ride through are gorgeous right now with the leaves changing, and it seems rather clear that we are in a different country. I still can't quite believe that I get to ride past two palaces on my way to and from class. City congestion notwithstanding, it really is a dream commute. And of course I get street cred from my fellow students, who are nice folks one and all.

Frustration of this week: Oxford Uni's moot contest on IP is CLOSED TO CURRENT OR PAST PRACTITIONERS! How is that fair? Just because we'd beat the inexperienced kiddies to a bloody pulp? Sigh. Second frustration of the LLM program: two of my courses keep covering the same topics, to the point where every class is an exercise in deja vu of the first order.

Hope all is well at your respective ends.

Dos and Don'ts

DO be awake at the scheduled hour of a phone interview. The nyum nyum nyum of recent awakeness can be off putting

DON'T be in the throws of high-fever head cold when trying to sell yourself to a prospective employer - I can't be certain of what I said, but the hallucinations were great, and he wants me to come in for a face to face this week.

Now, back to bed for me.

Grant.

Children of the Quorn

We have settled into a somewhat "flexitarian" lifestyle in these parts, due to (a) the pixieflat's habit of retaining cooking smells in ins 3 sq. ft. space; (b) the rather horrific price of dead animal over here; (c) the Will of Loz (amen) and (d) the availability of a really, really wide range of vegetarian fake meat food options. Disconcertingly meaty vegetarian Cumberland sausages? YOU BET!

One such scary product is Quorn (capitalisation intentional - trade mark issues involved). I assume Quorn is available everywhere, but I hadn't seen it before here. It's some freaky stuff, supposedly made out of a fungus or some such. That is their story, but I am not entirely convinced that chicken-style Quorn pieces are not, in fact, chicken. It is one thing to replicate the taste of meat, but its texture? Offputting. Rather unpredictably, Grant is fond of the stuff and we now have 700g (GBP4!) of it in the fridge. Come around to ours for some Quorn (insert name of dish) here!

You can also get mince but I am too scared of that to try it at this stage.

Ironically given the wealth of fake meat products, buying plain firm tofu in Notting Hill and surrounds appears to be impossible.

Londonish stuff this week consisted of two giant weekend walks. On Saturday we walked from here to the Church St markets off Edgware Road. Compared to Portobello Markets, this place is blissfully quiet albeit a little more down-market. Lots of cheap clothes around, and I managed to pick up an OK winter coat for 15 quid, which was timely as it was FREEZING. The coat's only fault besides its slight lack of stylin' is the fact that it reeks of dry cleaning chemicals, which is rather difficult to address when you do not have access to a covered outdoor area for airing. Come around to ours for a bathroom that smells of a dry cleaners! (Kulcha note: it's not "laundrette" over here, it's "laundErette." Fortunately for us, our laundEry is in the kitchen, so we don't have to avail ourselves of the facilities of the laundErette around the corner).

The Church St market has decent street food too, as always. I love how you can get Halal chicken tikka in this country. Beat that for fusion cuisine!

On Sunday we hiked about an hour into town past all the usual landmarks of my uni commute (now including New Zealand war memorial beside Victory arch). There were rather a lot of people and rather a lot of poppies around still from Remembrance Day the day before. It's rather interesting to see how many people wear poppies, etc over here for the occasion - I suppose the memory of war is a lot closer? A woman in a niqab was looking at the giant Royal Artillery war memorial near there and its fake-poppy wreaths with her little boy, and a picture of that might have helped in the middle of the race-hate law disaster of last week rather a lot, I think.

We had a dim sum lunch in Chinatown - rather a taste of home. Chinatown here appears smaller than in Sydney, and the usual form of dim sum is a little different from yum cha and usually involved ordering rather than picking from carts of food, which does take away a bit of the fun. On the plus side, the ordering system meant that you weren't just writing a blank checque to the establishment and did have a fair idea of how much you were spending, and the food was excellent. We will not dwell on how the pleasant waiter asked if we wanted to leave a tip AFTER applying the 10% service charge (uh, that would be a NO).

We are FINALLY deep in Autumn. The trees are changing in the many parks I cycle through to get to and from Uni. It is really something to ride through Hyde Park or Kensington Palace Gardens at twilight with all the colours around. Though it is getting colder, hovering under 10, I can still ride with jeans and a really thin jacket. However, it has effectively killed my desire to ride unless I am riding somewhere in particular. I am getting better at the necessary between-lane scooting along the Strand, and for the rest of the ride traffic flows smoothly or I am in a park and therefore off the road, with only dog and pedestrian dodging to worry about. Which reminds me, re: the rules of traffic, London-style (and I use the term "rules" loosely):

1. there is little consensus between walking on the left and walking on the right over here, making every cycleway a deathtrap - at least the cars have worked that part out, MOSTLY. Grant is a one man enforcement machine where this is concerned, but I tend to duck out of the way even if it means walking on the right rather than risk grievous bodily harm. One could consider blaming the Americans or the Eurotrash;
   
2. the traffic lights turn orange before they turn green as well as before they turn red. They frequently do this while corresponding pedestrian lights are still green. I believe the intended meaning is "get ready to go" but the signal is invariably interpreted along a spectrum between a dropping checkered flag and "faster, pussycat! Kill, kill!". It may be that the system was originally intended to give a sporting chance to slower moving innocents such as pedestrians and cyclists, but if so that has long since been left behind. In caution: before crossing Kensington High Street even if the lights are in your favour, watch out for the crazed Maserati drivers (see: above re Eurotrash);
3. at an intersection with dedicated lights for a left or right turn, the straight-ahead signal will be a green up arrow, and the turn signals will be plain lights. I could go on about how this ascribes a normative significance to turning rather than going straight ahead, and what this means about the Empire as a whole, but I'm too busy remembering how not to get killed; and
4. on really special occasions, if you are a cyclist, buses will try to change lanes INSIDE A ROUNDABOUT by turning right into YOUR LANE. They are bigger than you, so there's no point making a fuss. You may have to run a red light to escape death by crushing though. Why the buses didn't think of the potential difficulties BEFORE the roundabout is anyone's guess, but the Strand and Trafalgar Square roundabout are not places for the fainthearted.
   

Oh, humorous commuting event of last week involved me overtaking two mounted police outside Buckingham Palace. That didn't happen often back home!

Grant's jobhunt has been hotting up - he has an interview today, two tomorrow, one Thursday and one Friday. Cross all available fingers. One of the jobs is pretty much what he was doing back in Oz, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Of course, he also has a giant headcold so you might want to consider crossing toes as well just to be sure.

We are off to visit Birmingham this weekend - German markets for all! - and are very much looking forward to it. I am taking my coat, regardless of the funny smell. $$ tip: you can get to Brum and back for GBP10 by bus or roughly GBP100,000,000 if you catch the train. Witness the free market at work.

UK gripe of the week: WHY DO TEABAGS NOT HAVE STRINGS? WHY? If anyone knows a brand that DOES have a string (and at this point I really don't care what it tastes like), let me know.

It never rains...

Just a quick update on the job hunt progress...

There is one offer on the table at the moment, had a technical test today, meeting a recruiter to discuss a project tomorrow, one face to face and one telephone interview on Wednesday, interview at Basingstoke on Thursday (will probably take out the whole day getting there and back!) and we're off to Birmingham on Friday arvo to spend the weekend with Sarah!

I also found out that some of the certification exams I was planning to do will be retired at the end of this year. There is no self-study material for the replacement tests yet (unless you fork out $$$ to cisco!) so I am going to do some serious cramming to try and get at least 2 of the 4 exams done before the end of the year. I was thinking 3, but considering how busy I have been this last week (without even working!) I think that would be pushing it...

Anyway, will hopefully have some concrete job news by the end of the week!

Grant.

Mayo (not the clinic)

We have had a moderately lazy week thus far, Grant's mountain biking adventures and rampant job applicationing (more below) notwithstanding. Perhaps I should say that *I* have had a moderately lazy week thus far! Anyway, our mandatory "English experience" consisted of riding out to Richmond and getting really damned cold on Sunday. We had intended to have lunch in one of the very nice pubs in Richmond on the banks of the Thames. Unfortunately:

(a) the Thames was having a really freaky king tide, which basically ate the entire riverside walk and severely ate into outdoor eating areas (seriously, there were ducks SWIMMING on the footpath - this was at Chiswick, and on the way back home it was obvious the entire road had been covered); and

(b) several hundred thousand rugby fans had had the same idea before heading off to the stadium at Twickenham for NZ vs England (GO ALL BLACKS!).

As a result, we had a somewhat less posh lunch in one of the pubs up the street, which had attained a sudden but short lived absolute waterfront status, hopefully not unruly impacting upon its rent. We did however meet a very nice dog there, Sophie the pink-collared staffy cross rottweiler with the punk owner, who like her owner was a giant sook. She made us miss Queeniedog!

The next part of the plan had been to do a couple of laps of Richmond Park so I could make a few kms on Rohan in the Great Odo Challenge of 2006, but we got really cold and the light was failing, it being 3 IN THE AFTERNOON, so we quit. We probably needn't have chickened out actually, given the rugby traffic had all dissipated by then so the trip home only took about 35 mins or so. At least we now know we can travel the 12km to and from Richmond rather more quickly by bike than by tube - takes about an hour on the tube! We might try to make the park again this weekend.

Over the weekend, yesterday and today Grant has been applicationing up a storm. His record is 16 applications in one day. There has been a pretty good response so far, and he has one or two interviews lined up for tomorrow. Today started with a recruiter calling at 7.30am (!) and another one called while we were having dinner at 8.30pm (!). Clearly they are working corporate lawyer hours. The job market is looking pretty promising so far.

Otherwise we have been living the low key London lifestyle of the unemployed, which involves a lot of veg shopping at markets / cooking at home rather than enjoying the culinary delights of the capital too much. The food is great but it is also reasonably expensive unless you are earning pounds sterling. We are very much looking forward to the gainful employment of a certain member of the household so we can leave the kitchen alone for a few days a la Sydney. This is particularly so as we suffer from a hyperactive smoke alarm which is wired into the mains, so we can't even yank the batteries out to shut it up. Basically, if you turn the oven on, you are up for a chorus of beeping. IT IS UPSETTING MY KITCHEN ART.

The fun thing about coming here has been returning to the kitchen equipment of student days, ie. hardly anything. Cf. Underwood Road, where our kitchen equipment aquisitiveness reached its glorious zenith (Esteele! le Crueset! Mundial! Dualit! and many more!). I have been driven to such extremes as making breadcrumbs by GRATING TOAST. It is just lovely to be cooking with both hands tied behind your back and exactly the implement you need in someone's shed in Oz!

We have not yet had to resort to mashing potatoes with a fork, much as the pilgrims must have done. However, we have addressed some of the horrors of gadget deprivation by buying a stick blender set on ebay which has a chopper attachment as well as the blender (Jan and Paul - a poorer cousin of the great one you have waiting for us back home - tragically cheaper to buy a new one here than have one sent from Oz). And yea, the new stick blender is awesome. Awesome to the extent that Grant made mayonnaise in it this evening. MAYONNAISE. I've never done this before, but seeing as it takes all of 5.3 seconds and is a very cool party trick to boot, I'm not quite sure why I've been buying the crap from the supermarket my whole life. I feel quite cheated actually. It is pretty good stuff fresh.

And I got to make breadcrumbs with the chopper, without grating toast, which for those who haven't had the pleasure is quite a hazardous exercise. And I also discovered why one would want a 400W motor as opposed to our wee old 150W back home, viz: RAW POWER. I fear the 600W monster waiting for us back home.

In other news, the Great Power Shower Incident of 2006 has come to a conclusion with the introduction of a new member of the pixieflat household. Isn't it beautiful? It doesn't have hot water geysering out of it all over the floor at unexpected times or anything. NB: landlord installed it with emergency taps. It's not like he doesn't trust us, but, well...

Back to Uni tomorrow. I don't know how I can be expected to show up for 8 whole hours a week. Oh wait, that's with my optional subject - they actually only expect me to show up for 6. Excellent!

Loz.

Dirt!

I finally went mountain biking today. Headed out to Swinley Forest with some guys I met through the London MTB mailing list.

It felt just like home - riding with like minded cycling idiots, crashing in to trees, going over the bars, being extremely cold (well - that was a bit different to home). Veronica will be pleased to know that yes, I did draw blood, but only a little.

I managed to score a lift with a guy who lives conveniently close - just a few blocks away. As with pretty much all decent nearby mountain biking, it is about an hour by car from the city. Public transport should be doable with a short link ride.

Unfortunately I left the camera on the charger, but will definitely go back out there and get some photos.

The trails were... interesting. I guess somewhat similar to Canberra - loamy forest type riding. Plenty of flowing singletrail, switchbacks, smooth trails mostly but with the occasional rooty section. Not any real hills (which suited me fine - not enough riding lately!), and not very technical (which also suited me fine - still getting used to the new bike, and it has no suspension). Body is a bit battered and sore, mostly due to lack of riding, but it felt great to get out there for some proper riding.

I think Loz and I are going to ride out to Richmond tomorrow and loop around Richmond park. Hopefully we will get some distance in - we really need to do some longer rides before the winter scares us off completely. Speaking of winter, I think my clothes are going to be completely inadequate - both normal clothes and cycling clothes. I'm going to have to start taking note of what other people are wearing.

Grant.

Remember, remember the 5th of November

As everyone knows, the 5th of November is Guy Fawkes' Day aka Firecracker Night, on which the British, with their really twisted sense of humour, celebrate the foiling of the treasonous Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament by...blowing up some fireworks.

They're also supposed to burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, because being hung, drawn and quartered for treason isn't enough, clearly - you need to be ritually punished for centuries. LET THAT BE A LESSON TO ANYONE THINKING OF BLOWING UP THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

Anyway, the 5th of November is clearly more guideline than hard and fast rule, because for more than a week the delightful young people hereabouts have been setting off crackers non-stop in carparks, albeit never after 11pm, bless them and their oddly considerate delinquent ways. (Humorous aside - they were setting off crackers beside the estate's fenced soccer field last week. One of the large and burly soccer players threatened to come out and get them if they threw a cracker on the field, whereupon they said in very offended tones "we would never do that!")

As the Lord Mayor's fireworks show isn't on until tomorrow night, we assumed that the firecracker noises tonight were nothing more than an unusually organised delinquent carpark firecracker display. However, it kept going, and we therefore went around the corner (rugged up in our woollies, because it is FREEZING here) to have a look.

And saw this:



This would be a bonfire of stupendous proportions, for the local Firecracker Night. There were fireworks as well, obviously, given that the noise was what drew us out of the cosy pixieflat in the first place, but we didn't get there in time to get shots of the good ones. No-one seemed to be burning a Guy, but maybe he was all burned up before we got there. There was however a pumpkin on the bonfire, which is what happens when American culture eats everything else I suppose (viz. cranberries in Kew Gardens).

This was all happening in Portobello Green, the so-called "village green" which is a thin park running between Portobello Road and Latimer Road beside the suspended A40 motorway. Which is to say that this freaking huge bonfire and fireworks display were a few metres away from a major arterial road, and I imagine that anyone driving it this evening must have had the living daylights scared out of them.

A few points to note:
* firecrackers are freely available over here, and nobody seems worried about the safety of the 12 year olds playing with them in car parks;
* the above giant bonfire was unfenced and unguarded, and people were just basically hanging around getting singed by it;
* in this country, a sparkler is a perfectly acceptable toy for a toddler.

Basically, we are just now realising that Australia is something of a nanny state, with a hefty "No touching! Ouchies!" approach to anything remotely fun. However, being a citizen of a nanny state makes it very difficult to look at the cute little tradition of Firecracker Night as anything other than an absolute deathtrap. For the same reason I continue to wear my bike helmet whilst cycling, even though I am no longer lawfully obliged to. It does make me wonder though. Do they not have the horrific firecracker accidents over here that we had back home before crackers were banned, or do they just not care provided that everyone remembers the 5th of November? Or is Australia just old fogey land?

Anyway, in future I will have more faith in humanity, and run out to see when I hear firecrackers, instead of swearing quietly at the neighbourhood hoodlums ("chavs"). It felt very English to stand with all the locals and their sparkler-carrying toddlers beside the bonfire, and it was beautifully warm on such a cold night.

Loz