Big adventures in Scotland-land

Last bank holiday, Anna and I got awae for three days in bonnie Scotland. We have lots to write about, and loads of great photos - so stay tuned to hear about the Rain! The Glen Coe massacre! That castle from The Highlander! The giant slug! The haggis (and the vegie haggis)! The magic tricks! The Loch Ness monster! The whiskey! The peat bog! The Isle of Skye! William Wallace!

Coming soon!

Pinewood Studios

How cool is my job? Popped out to our office at Pinewood Studios, home to James Bond, Aliens and so many brilliant films that my head explodes just thinking about it. Sadly it was between projects, and pretty quiet. Nonetheless, went and saw the big outdoor water tank, with its vast blue FX screen backdrop. Apparently there were still remains of a Casino Royale set up there until just recently, but nothing for me to see. Tried to get into the underwater tank, but it was closed.

Not to be defeated, I had a nice stroll around (though it started raining). They've named some of the streets inside Pinewood after Bond - Goldfinger Avenue, Broccoli Lane - and I saw a building labelled "Casino Royale FX". I circumnavigated the famous "007 Stage", for its day the largest sound stage ever built. Sadly it was recently damaged by fire, but it was interesting to see all the bits and pieces being cleaned out. I did manage to find one interesting piece of detritus - a thin wooden notice board with "Casino Royale" stenciled on it, and some production notes. (I will be a good boy and keep the details to myself.)

Not much else to see: the "Stanley Kubrick" building where they're working on The Bourne Ultimatum, Paul Greengrass' named carpark, studio for the The Weakest Link television show, Pinewood's Academy Awards and a shed full of facehuggers and latex aliens (plus something that I could swear is Arfur the Worm from Meet the Feebles).

I have walked in the footsteps of giants!

Paddington Station

At Paddington Station, I met a certain Peruvian fellow with a fondness for marmalade sandwiches and cocoa. (In all fairness, but for the hat, this bronze representation looks more like Alf.)

High density living

There are so many people in London, that everyone is super protective of their own little tiny piece of property. Hence the extremely common phenomena of the multiple authorial touch on a single roof!

Charles II

Anna and I caught up with my buddy Hugo (ex-Minters), who has joined us in London. Poor bastard has gone down the 'work in hardcore law firm' route, and is finding his hours happily eaten away by Simmons & Simmons. Anyway, we had a bit of fun unwinding in Soho. Nothing dodgy - just a few drinks, some average but overpriced Italian food, and some shenanigans involving a statue of Charles the Second.

London Underground

I work right in the heart of Soho, and am one of the several million lucky people who catch the Victoria line at 6pm.

On a happier note, I finally saw one of the famous little black Tube mice :)

Mr. Lawyer

I have been waiting to start my new job, so I took some temporary paralegal work this week, with one of the UK's big law firms. It's funny, there was a lot I missed about private practice - the fruit basket, the pretty good coffee machine, occasional free sandwiches - but sitting there in a suit and tie summarising contracts as part of an endless due diligence review... well, let's just say the in-house decision was a good call.

Anyway, it was still nice to play 'corporate' for a few days and the building was very flash. (For London that is. Due to the enormous property prices here, there is little additional spending on office overheads. Buddle Findlay is a million times more swanky than Slaughter & May.)

I now start my proper job on Monday, so am very excited. I had a brief meeting with them this week, and it looks like I'll be dropped in the deep end. But there's nothing quite like a challenge. And the promise of a trip to Amsterdam to attend a media expo. :)

Anna and I have been flat-hunting this weekend. Never a lot of fun, at least we are getting out and about and seeing a bit more of the city. We took a bus from Golders Green to Swiss Cottage, and then walked to Queen's Park via Kilburn. Our route took us (momentarily, and at the wrong end from the studio) over Abbey Road. One of the places we looked at has a nest of foxes in the backyard. If we end up living there, perhaps we'll SEE THEM!

Spent the afternoon in Knightsbridge. Anna was very excited about going to Harrod's, but when we got there we found a group of animal rights protestors outside the main entrance. Apparently Harrod's has begun selling real animal furs again. Very sad, and I hope they backtrack on this soon (especially since I found they had WWF brand plush animals for sale). We still went in, but agreed not to buy anything. It's still magnificent, and I felt like I was going back in time when I entered the toy department (I picked up a sweet racing kit here when I was six). What a shame...

Still, not to be defeated, we had a bit of a spree in the neighbouring shops. I bought a pair of jandals from that slapper Kelly Osbourne's shop for £2.40.

Life in Golders Green

We're settling into a routine at last - Golders Green is a very nice area. Our street reminds me of Victoria Ave: lots of big houses and trees. And as you can see from the picture, we can't really fault the view from our window, a far cry from where most of our friends are staying. We have a month to figure out where we want to live next, but I think we may now be looking for something with a comparable outlook.

Anna has just had her first week at work. It's been quite tiring for her - we're not used to getting up early! Not to mention the long subway rides on either end of her day, plus the heat. Yuck.

I have a job now too. I got a couple of offers, which was very nice, though I had a tough decision to make - choosing between £ and the chance to work within the film industry. Obviously I had to take the industry job (in-house lawyer), so I look forward to seeing how it goes. I don't start for another couple of weeks though, and despite looking, it doesn't appear that I will be able to get any temp work in the meanwhile.

Never mind, I shall enjoy seeing a bit more of London before starting. The acclimitisation continues - some times I feel almost as if I am back home, but then I'll find myself in Piccadilly Circus, another world entirely. I do get homesick, but the other day I stumbled across William Blake and Daniel de Foe's graves while travelling to a job interview, exactly the kind of life experiences we came here for.

I went to the Prince Charles Theatre on Friday - films for £1! - and finally saw the adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. I was pleasantly surprised - they haven't buggered this one up! It was also wonderfully resonant to watch the film in the heart of London, where the story is set. On the way home I passed the Old Bailey, which is blown up at the start of the film. Neat!

Anna and I also had a nice big walk around Hampstead Heath on the weekend. It's very beautiful, and just the tonic for homesick kiwis - trees, bushwalks, fields, birds - but also foreign in its own way. We saw people swimming and fishing in duckweed-covered ponds, visited the Stone of Free Speech and spotted some rabbits and a squirrel. Finding a fox is our new holy grail!

Heatwave

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks since we arrived, and it's all taken place in the blistering heat and hideous humidity of London's record heatwave. Temperatures outdoors have been in the high 30s and the subways have been even worse, pushing upwards of 45 degrees. Believe you me, it is not the best experience to travel to job interviews in a suit, on a crowded subway carriage, in this sauna-like miasma. Yuck!

Nonetheless, we are determined to try and enjoy the heat as we know it will be all too brief, with an interminable winter to come. However, we spent the last week in a crappy little hostel room with no air conditioning and a broken fridge. We bought a fan from Sainbury's, and in order to get any rest at night we were having to sleep under wet towels. It's one thing to spend a day in the sun when you know you can cool off at home - quite another when your home is hotter than the air outside!

We've now been on three of the famous "London Walks" - guided walking tours with different themes. The first two were less spectacular than advertised, but the most recent was quite interesting:

Darkest Victorian London - a pretty good guide who does nice impersonations, but there's little to see as the city has moved on so much since then. Most interesting was the concrete builder's yard that hides a plague & pauper's burial pit with over 15,000 corpses.

The British Museum Walk - not a bad overview of the British Museum's highlights, but hampered by the massive crowd that turned up and the 'summary' nature of the information provided. Better to just see the museum for one's self, as everything is written up in detail. It was a nice surprise to find many of the 'missing pieces' from our travels here, including a large collection of the frieze decorations from the Parthenon - not to mention the Middenhall Treasure from the Roald Dahl story with the same name.

Eccentric London - quite interesting. Learn the background to a random assortment of monuments and statues around Embankment. Many good stories, but funnily enough, none are those described in the pamphlet...

In other news, we also spent a day at the Tower of London with Connor, went shopping for work clothes, celebrated Anna and Andrew's birthdays with a nice big combined evening at the pub, and did another pub walk with Ian, Nerida and Alison through Spitalfields. Also, congratulations to Anna on finding a job!

Here's an extra picture of us with Alisha at Anna's birthday drinks...

Drinking in London

Drinking is one of the national past-times in England (queueing is another). The poms don't miss an opportunity to sink a pint, and because London is so widespread, people tend to meet at pubs for drinks rather than staying in to drink. All of which means lots of drinking in public - moreso because the pub crowds usually spill out well onto the street. Last night we caught up for drinks with little Rebecca, her new boyfriend Richie and her friends from Netley - another Rebecca, Andrew, fellow kiwi Tony and Judith.

We were seated outside a pub, surrounded by a crowd that only grew bigger as the evening wore on. Picking up a round of beers could take almost half an hour, and the pub ran out of glasses and started issuing plastic cups. We also had a surprise visit from a band, installed on the roof of their car, who stopped outside to play some tunes and sell some CDs. Quite a clever initiative, and one that proved popular with the masses.

After a few rounds we took the subway to Picadilly Circus, with it's famous array of video and fluoro advertising boards (like Time's Square). Stopped for BK and then popped into a nightclub where we catching up with another party of people. Not really our scene, so we eventually left to catch the last subway home - very, very crowded.

I had a sudden inspiration, and wore the kiwi balanced on my head the whole way from the club home. This seemed to attract a lot of attention - I have never seen so many English people smiling. Viva New Zealand, spreading joy among the dour Isles.

Friends and museums

Job hunting continues apace. We've had a few nibbles each so far, but are waiting for something decent to come in. We're getting good feedback from our recruiting agents though, so it appears to be just a matter of time until we have job offers we actually want. It does get a bit depressing at times, but we know the process will take a few weeks so... watch this space.

In the meantime we've decided to get out and about a bit more, instead of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. We went to our first movie this week - the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel at the Clapham Picture Theatre, with Ian and Nerida. Not much of a film, but a diverting enough way to spend nearly three hours.

More profitably we took a double-decker bus (great for seeing London in the flesh) to the Natural History Museum, where we enjoyed the dinosaur exhibitions but were somewhat underwhelmed by the rest. We were pleased to see a moa skeleton though.

Yesterday we caught up with our friend Connor, who has been here since June. He may be settling down for a bit, but is undecided as to whether he would prefer to return to Turkey for more sun-bathing. He has grown a rather splendid beard.

We went for a nice walk along the Thames, stopping for lunch on a river-boat before ducking into the Tate Modern for an hour or so of quiet, intellectual contemplation. The Tate collection, though a little thin, has wonderful accompanying texts, so we intend to return for a more thorough perusal.

Afterwards we all caught up for drinks with Ben, Tim and Nina before catching the first half of Corialanus at the Globe Theatre. It's a slow paced play, and our endurance was tested by the 'groundling' experience (ie. standing for hours), so we left part-way through for hot-chocolates instead. Oh well!

Sport, pubs n grub

Anna and I spent the week doing job interviews and hanging out with our hosts. It was Ian's birthday on Thursday - he is now an old fella! Anna baked him a yummy banana cake. We have also been watching a lot of sport, what with the Wimbledon and World Cup matches every day.

I had another day with Jan at Netley Primary - we took the kids to Regent's Park playground, where I pushed them on the swings and roundabout before heading out to the fields for some (barely) organised sports. Unfortunately, we have now lost the fleeting London summer, and were eventually rained out. The crappy weather hasn't really improved since...

Yesterday we did a bit of a pub crawl. We got up early to watch the opening game of the Trinations rugby at a pub full of kiwis and ockers. I'm pleased to report that the All Blacks handed out a pretty sound thrashing (not that we're bragging about it to our lovely hosts).

Afterwards we walked through the Brixton markets, then caught the tube out to Hampstead Heath. This is a huge park in northern London, where the rich people moved their properties to escape the plague. It's still an extremely wealthy area and, en route to the second pub of the day, we did a sight-seeing tour of the houses of the rich and famous including (apparently) Emma Bunton, Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Terry Gilliam.

Pubs n grub for the evening: the Holly Bush (Pimm's cocktails, a pint of prawns and a 'rarebit'- ie. cheese toastie), The Spaniard's Inn (fruit beers, cider and massive quarter-potato wedges) and Ye Olde White Bear (chickpea patties and salad).

Tonight - the Wimbledon and World Cup finals!

PS: cherry fizzy drink round-up: Cherry Coke flows aplenty in the UK, and I have also tried Cherry Tango (too sweet even for me) and Cherry 7-Up (delicious)!

Back in the U.K.

We have returned to London, and have brought the good weather with us. Temperatures here are in the 30s, and I've heard talk of a heatwave warning from the Government. What this means is a lot of white people with pink sunburns (not us, though).

Jan arranged some accommodation for us with friends. We are currently staying with Aussie couple Ian and Nerida (pronouced neh-REED-ah) in Clapham. Very nice of them to put us up, as we were complete strangers. I say 'were' because we are now best friends - they both cook wonderfully, and Ian likes beer and music. Top marks!

Spent our arrival day chilling with Jan, Ian and Nerida, drinking Grolsch (for the lads) and Pimm's (for the ladies) and watching the England vs Portugal game (I won't comment on the results). We then spent Sunday in the Golders Green commons (U.K. speak for park) with Jan, Nerida and Andrew - another of Jan's many friends, whose apartment we will be borrowing for a few weeks in August. We had a lot fun kicking a football around, playing frisbee and looking at the animals in the park's mini-zoo. Jan and Andrew had an OJ fight.

Anna and I will be busy this week finding jobs, buying SIMcards for our phones, and working out just what the hell we are doing here.

Farewell to the Continent

Seems to be a lot of nice shopping in Madrid, and it's surely cheaper than it will be in London. We had a look in a number of nice shops, but our only purchases were a couple of pairs of shoes each from Campers. They have a very interesting and trendy range of pseudo-rubberised and leather shoes %P

Also knocked off the last of the 'Big 3' art galleries, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. This is housed in a very large and impressive modern building - lots of glass elevators - and is perfectly suited to its collection, a veritable who's who of the last hundred years. We were in time for a special exhibition showing Picasso's famous Guernica with numerous preparatory drawings and a couple of contrasting works by Goya and Manet.

We've enjoyed our food this week too, having made a stop at the LP-recommended chain Mallorca, also popular with locals (a good sign). They have several display areas - sweet, savoury, salads, wine, bonbons - and we couldn't resist a few fancy pastries. These were lovingly wrapped in red paper and string, and even survived the journey home unscathed! (Though they didn't last long after that.)

Plus we had an awesome lunch at the art gallery restaurant, Arola. Very fancy, the kind of place Hannibal Lecter might choose to dine, though the cutting-edge modern decor (ie. crap lighting and werid couches) left a little to be desired. Here we had a series of exquisite tapas: mini fish pies, mushrooms gratin, brown rice and vegetables (done like a risotto), fried gorgonzola cubes, prawns... mmm...

Ah well. Tomorrow we will be back in the land of mushy peas and grim meat pies. Old Blighty - here we come!

Art galleries, oh my!

Madrid has an excellent collection of art spread over three internationally-profiled galleries. We dutifully bought our combined ticket, and knocked off two of them (the third closed early today).

The first, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, had the most (relatively) minor collection, but was very well laid out. It was possible to walk chronologically, and lineraly, through the entire collection. This approach is very insightful vis a vis the history of art and its development from Romanesque to Modern, and we enjoyed the galleries very much.

The second, Museo Nacional del Prado, was so popular as to be Madrid's Louvre, but had a disappointingly schizophrenic and rambling lay-out. It was also run by frustratingly small-minded museum staff. I was looking forward to a particular painting by El Greco (it features on a Vangelis album cover, the music of which is themed to the artist's work) which, although part of the permanent collection, was hanging in the temporary exhibition space. It was visible from the exit so I asked the guard to let me have a closer look - afterall, I had paid to see it and I wasn't interested in the temporary exhibition (Picasso, of whom we'd already seen plenty). Long story short, after much heated discussion, he pointedly refused - despite the painting being only a few feet away. So close and yet so far - you may understand why I was so riled.

The second, Museo Nacional del PradoToday we saw work by Agnolo Gaddi, Barnardo Daddi, Simone Martini, Jan Van Eyck, Della Robbia, Uccello, Gozzoli, Veneziano, Holbein, Ghirlandaio, Piero della Francesca, Crespi, Tintoretto, Fra Bartolomeo, Fra Angelico, Carpaccio, Titian, Lorenzo Lotto, Bronzino, Raphael, Botticelli, Il Veronese, Tiepolo, El Greco, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Goya, Velazquez, Bosch, Carreggio, Parmigianino, Cranach, Durer, Rubens, Brueghel, Corot, Gainsborough, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Waterhouse, Fragonard, Manet, Whistler, Gericault, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sargent, Pierre Bonnard, Vuillard, Gauguin, Munch, Braque, Otto Dix, Grosz, Kirchner, Mondrian, Leger, Krupka, Popova, Klee, Chagall, Magritte, Dali, Ernst, Miro, de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Bacon, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Kandinsky, Robert Delauney, Matisse, Derain, Picasso, Juan Gris, O'Keefe and Modigliani, (in vague order).

Random photos

Beaches in Europe









Random Anna photo









Random kiwi photo









Random Mike photo

Madrid walkies

Finally made our way onto the mean streets of Madrid for a walkabout. We're a bit off the beaten track, so we caught a Metro up to the Plaza de Isabel II with its nice view of the Teatro Real (rebuilt in the 90s after being blown up a few times). Made our way through the lovely Jardines Cabo Noval to the Plaza de Orient outside our first stop, the Palacio Real de Madrid.

Built from 1734 onwards, this monstrosity has 2,800 rooms (a quarter of that planned by the architect before his premature death). It's yet another grand affair, and somewhat blinding in the sun due to the white stone of the facade and the massive white gravel courtyard. We have yet to figure out how people of ages past kept their eyes open without sunglasses.

Much like the Palazzo Real in Naples and the Doge's Palace in Venice, the visit comprises room after room of opulent trappings - including a room whose very walls are made entirely out of porcelain relief sculptures. There's also an impressive collection of chandeliers, clocks, Stradivarious instruments and Goya portraits, as well as the Farmacia Real (Royal apothecary) and the Armeria Real (Royal Armoury). This later exhibition was very interesting, and included a number of ornate suits of armour for children (one hopes - unless the Spaniards of yesteryear were very short).

We also popped our heads into the neighbouring Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Almudena which, despite its fancy facade, is refreshingly simple on the inside, without the baroque frivolities or Gothic over-detailing we have become used to. Outside we saw the remains of the Arab Wall from the 9th C - now home to a colony of vagrants.

Finished off with a nice promenade to the Plaza Mayor - in its time a thriving a public space, now only notable for the frescoes on the outside of the Casa de la Panaderia - and the Plaza de la Puerta del Sol. Sol is considered Point Zero in Madrid, and is a bustling semicircle of roads and shopping arcades. There is a lovely statue here of the city's symbol, a bear nuzzling a madroño (strawberry tree), who has been silent witness to the uprising against French occupation in 1808, the assassination of a prime minister in 1912 and the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931.

Madrid

Hola! We are now in Madrid, capital city of Spain. Not as picturesque as Barcelona, but there are still plnenty of trees. To tell the truth, we haven't wandered very far yet as our apartment has all the creature comforts - including a computer with ADSL. So we've been taking it easy since we arrived, concentrating on living like the locals - buying yummy food and beer at the supermarket, eating tapas from the local restaurant and generally having a siesta. Which is not to say we haven't done anything - this morning we went to the famous Madrid markets. This has been taking place on Sundays since medieval times, and sells everything: produce, furniture, old junk (yay!), old books (yay!), tools, computer peripherals and clothing. And guess what? Our street is the marketplace! It's quite fun watching the crowds from the window of our place. We even waved to a throng of enthusiastic Hari Krishnas.

Barcelona left-overs

Returned to the Trade Fair grounds at the base of Montjuic to tick off a couple more items on our Barcelona list.

The Mies van der Rohe pavilion: a recreation (in situ) of a groundbreaking building design from the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. A very interesting space, where every angle begs for a photograph.

Caixa Forum: a collection of contemporary Spanish art owned by the Caixa national bank, the highlight of which was a temporary exhibition of animated shorts (some arty-fartier than others).

Montjuic

Started the day with breakfast in bed. A nice change of pace, but the brekky wasn't terrific. Caught the Metro and a Funicular (always fun) part-way up Montjuic, so named (translates as Jewish Mountain) for the Jewish cemetary, and possible settlement, there used to be. Plenty of places to visit here:

1. Fundacio Joan Miro: A large collection of work by this Spanish artist, which we enjoyed even though information was scarce. In summary, Miro has a very idiosyncratic style, and he developed a personal symbology and abstracted forms that are often quite whimsical, and endeared him to the surrealists. There were also homage works by Rauschenberg, Duchamp, Ernst, Masson, Matisse, Christo and Acconci.

2. Castell de Montjuic: A punishing acent up the hill, rewarded with a beer break. This 17th C castle was used as a political prison and execution ground, but now houses a military museum. Splendid views of the city, which sprawls immensely across the bay. Met a nice couple - Christian and Marieke - from Holland, and arranged to meet for dinner.

3. Museu Nacionale d'Art de Catalunya: Built for the 1929 World Exhibition, this is huge and beautifully laid-out collection. A world-class set of Romanesque frescoes and altarpieces harvested from decaying churches in Catalonia gives way to a display of minor works by a wide array of Renaissance artists such as Velazquez, Rubens, Carracci, Titian, Lotto, Il Veronese, Goya, Perugino, Lorenzo Monaco, Gaddi, Fra Angelico, El Greco, Tintoretto and Gainsborough.

Long walk home, then another nice dinner at Attic with our new Dutch friends. Had a good time discussing beer, housing prices, marijuana, travel and theme parks. Very interesting!