Oui Cherry

Camp A Low Hum 2012

2012-02-13T22:44:00.000+13:00

This year, CALH was back in Wainuiomata, so it was a whole new Camp experience for me, having only been for the first time last year when it was in Bulls.

There was a lagoon, which was freezing but nice to look at. I did actually get in on Sunday morning and while it gave me something else to think about other than my self-induced illness, it wasn't the magical cure I had hoped for.

There was a bit of rain and there were a lot of cicadas. I have never seen cicadas so big and so willing to sit on people!

There were a wide variety of topics suggested for Megalex's freestyle rapping.

There was impressive baking by Sarah - this is her pistachio shortbread, she also made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, and a really yum slice with a crumbly base, a jammy centre, and nuts on top. We also managed to draw envy with our 'gourmet' meals prepared using only a pot and two frying pans, although I can't really take credit for any of the culinary skills; I just did a lot of dishes.

There was a swing bridge made from rubber and chains, along with a wooden bridge, and a few confidence courses.

There was a lot of native bush and forest. It was pretty amazing to be watching a band play and then look beyond them to big, green hills covered in ferns and trees.

Last year, my favourite stage was the pool. This year, it was definitely the forest. Here we were sitting on the fringe of the forest to make the most of the sun, but the stage was actually facing into the trees and it was pretty awesome to be dancing and then look up through branches to the sky. At night lights throughout the trees created shadows and colours and more awesomeness.

There was a lot of bunting, made by Alice. It stretched across the goal posts we were camped by and around almost all of the tents in our not-so-little group. There was a little bit of Camp art but there didn't seem to be as much as last year - some 'interesting' performance art happened on a wood chip pile...

There were glow sticks. Still faintly glowing in the morning when the sun turned the tent into an oven and we had to throw ourselves out the door and onto the grass, simultaneously removing the six layers (okay, only I was cold blooded enough to need six layers plus my sleeping bag and a woollen blanket) we had gone to bed in.

Of course, there were bands. Lots of them. Some familiar ones from last year, lots I'd never heard of before. Above is Orchestra of Spheres. My favourite was Terrible Truths, from Adelaide. There was such an eclectic mix which is the beauty of it really, from a guy with a violin and a loop pedal, to two guys in denim cut offs showering the crowd with glitter and confetti, to a six piece band with lots of polish, there was pretty much everything.

At the end of the four nights and three days, there were lots of tired (and in need of a shower) but very happy campers.

Unnerving

2012-02-07T22:22:00.000+13:00

Sunday saw our first classic movie Sunday with Ed back in the fold. We watched Psycho. It was very, very stressful.

While I'm glad I saw it and actually really enjoyed it, Psycho encapsulated for me why I don't watch thrillers or scary movies very often, especially when I can't yell at the screen ('Oh great idea, go into the house ALONE you idiot!') or talk to the people I'm watching the movie with ('Why did he do that? I'm freaking out!'). At the end of the movie, I was a bit scared about going home to my relatively unknown flatmates and worried by the thought of having a shower (I did get over that, so don't worry, I haven't given up washing).

However, as a classic movie, Psycho was excellent. I kept thinking how great it would have been to watch without knowing the plot twist. And Norman Bates is such a perfect villain, partly because he is SO attractive. Good work, Hitchcock.

Yesterday was Waitangi Day, so to celebrate our nationhood, I went for a walk along Oriental Bay with my friend Kate and talked about one night stands, and then we went to see Young Adult.

I think I liked it. If you see it, you'll understand what I mean. Or hate it. I laughed, I squirmed, and sometimes I just couldn't watch. Not in a Psycho stabbing-in-the-shower way, more of an uncomfortable, 'I can't believe this character is doing this' way. I really enjoyed all of the performances. I liked that the protagonist was so unlikeable and you never really felt sorry for her no matter what happened. I guess, overall, I did really like it.

Cloaked in glory

2012-02-05T20:09:00.000+13:00

While over in the Wairarapa for a quick visit I picked up the nurse's cape I bought during the Christmas break from an antique shop that was having a closing down sale. Nana had taken it to get dry cleaned and mended because it had some little holes in various places. It must have been pretty dirty because it is now extremely red... I love it though, it makes me feel like Little Red Riding Hood when I put it on. You can see the patch where the fabric name badge would have been sewn to the cape, just under the the neck fastening thing on the left.

Mum and I went into a shop selling all sorts of old light shades in Carterton.

Then it was back to Wellington for dinner to celebrate Ed's triumphant return from his journeys. Adrianne made excellent kedgeree, which I've never had before but it's yum.

KDL

2012-02-02T23:08:00.001+13:00

Last night I went to one of the best gigs I've ever been to. Kitty, Daisy, and Lewis are English siblings (the oldest is only 22) who each play a whole lot of different instruments (drums, guitar, ukelele, harmonica, xylophone, banjo) and whose style is apparently a mix of swing, jump blues, and ska. Their Mum and Dad are in their support band playing guitar and double bass, it's like a family band but without the Von Trapp wholesomeness.

The gig was at Bodega (which has spruced itself up a bit since I was last there a couple of years ago) and it was PACKED. I still managed to have a pretty good dance whilst wedged between people in sauna-like conditions. After the gig, the DJ played amazing old music and a small group of people stayed on and danced until closing time. I got to dance with an 80 year old Jamaican trumpet player who is touring with Kitty, Daisy, and Lewis.

It was generally awesome, I just wish they'd played 'Honolulu Rock-A Roll-A'. Then it would have been perfect!

One night wonder

2012-01-30T22:31:00.000+13:00

This weekend it was a quick trip down to the farm for one night for Dave's 50th birthday. I was so close to missing the plane I had to run from the front of the airport to the gate, luckily Claire was standing guard, making sure they didn't go without me.

As per usual, there was a lot of amazing food.

Along with a marquee that managed to withstand some pretty strong wind.

And Isla, who had her parents all to herself for the weekend while her brother and sister stayed with their grandparents in the Wairarapa. She was the centre of much attention and performed quite admirably.

I got tired of answering the usual questions over and over again, 'Where are you living? Where are you working? Do you have a boyfriend?', so went to bed at about 11pm. I must be getting old and grumpy.

Stuff

2012-01-25T22:17:00.000+13:00

This is a house on my street. I am glad I don't live next door.

This is my brother at the golf driving range on Monday. I managed to consistently hit my balls past the first target! I also learned that no one says 'crush' anymore.

My love for hydrangeas is growing. Look at the little blue dots in the centre of each flower! These are right outside my front door.

Having gotten rid of some stuff while packing to move, I am now trying cull more as I unpack. Tonight, 103 programmes have seen the inside of the recycling bin. It was difficult, and I almost changed my mind, but I think it's for the best.

View from my window

2012-01-22T11:32:00.000+13:00

My week was very boring this week because I kept having to come home and pack; and also frequently wail, 'Whyyyy do I have so much STUFF?'

Then, yesterday, a beautiful sunny windless hot day, I continued to pack until 3.30pm when a truck and two men arrived and helped me shift. While I am very grateful to my Dad for the five times he has travelled over the hill with a trailer, parked in awkward places, and carried my things up and down stairs, from now on, I am always gettings movers. It took less than an hour from when they arrived at my Newtown/Berhampore house until they were closing up the truck and I was paying the money at the Aro Valley house. They didn't have to share the carrying of anything, unlike Dad and I: 'Okay, stop! I need a rest for a minute!' (that's me, halfway up or down a flight of stairs, trying to help carry a bed). One guy carried my BED on his SHOULDER. And then my bookcase! Although he did say, 'What kind of wood is this? It's really heavy.'

Anyway, all the packing and lugging of boxes (I did still help, I was just so happy not to have to carry really heavy things) was worth it because I love my new room. It has the best bay window ever (with cute latticework on the inside) and a view of trees and old houses. It also has a FIREPLACE. It's black with red tiles, but it currently has a whole lot of boxes in front of it, so I will take a photo when it's all pretty and I have things arranged on the mantlepiece.

The house itself is a classic old Aro Valley house, so it's going to be cold in the winter. But I like it, old houses are always so much more interesting than shiny new ones. There's a big white hydrangea bush right outside the front door, and one of the flatmates has put little vases of hydrangeas throughout the house. This is very fortuitous, because I decided the other week hydrangeas were one of my favourite flowers. Remember this?

This morning, while I was getting milk out of the fridge for my cup of tea, I looked up and saw this! A skylight! Skylights remind me of Room, a very good but very disturbing book.

Then, I had breakfast sitting out in the little back courtyard. Dream! The people next door have a lovely terraced garden behind their house which ends with beehives up the very top. I'd never thought about whether people could keep bees in what is essentially the central city. It doesn't feel like the city though, we're down the end of a dead end street, surrounded by trees and hills. Yet Aro Video, Aro Cafe, Arobake and all those other good Aro things are less than five minutes walk away. I love Wellington.

Anyway, now I'd better keep unpacking (I am determined not to end up with boxes still sitting around in my room three months after moving in, which is what happened last time) and then go do some cleaning at the old house. Oh moving, I hate you.

Further Fleet Babes, CMS Fail, and Toasted Marshmellows

2012-01-17T23:17:00.000+13:00

Turns out my flatmate took an excellent photo during the Fleet Foxes on Friday night. I guess it helps that he is much, much taller than me.

On Sunday we had the first classic movie Sunday of 2012. I chose the movie and it was terrible. I thought it had all the makings of a CMS winner - the lead actress won an Oscar for it, I'd heard the title before, it had Harvey Keitel, Kris Kristofferson, and child Jodie Foster in it and was directed by Martin Scorcese (not that I know anything about him), and there was a photo of a woman with amazing hair on the back cover.

Don't ever watch Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Basically, Alice cries. A lot. She's also really awful to her poor son who gets dragged around with her and left in motel rooms alone all evening while she works as a singer in bars (despite the fact that she's actually not that great at singing and she appears to have a very small repetoire of approximately two songs). The woman with the great hair was a highlight but overall, even the 1970s fashions couldn't keep the movie interesting. A terrible classic movie start to 2012 for which I take full responsibility.

Although Alex made a tart and it was yum.

On Sunday night my two English flatmates assembled a tiny BBQ they bought for $15. We sat outside slightly burning things and then eating them. We watched the clouds turn orange and then toasted marshmellows.

It was great.

Fleet Babes

2012-01-14T14:06:00.000+13:00

This is a frame from a comic by Sarah Laing about the Fleet Foxes. I love Sarah's blog of her comics 'Let Me Be Frank', so I hope she doesn't mind me using her work as a visual aid to make up for the absence of photos in this post.

Last night I went to the Fleet Foxes at the Town Hall. There were hipsters as far as the eye could see - checked shirts, Wayfarers, facial hair, satchels, skinny black jeans galore - and the ones that amused me the most were a group who stood up in the back row of one of the seated areas above. There were about five guys and a girl, one of the guys had massive headphones around his neck, as if, at any moment if he got bored, he could just start listening to something else. They stood absolutely still most of the time, staring down at the band very intensely and kind of intimidatingly, expressionless. The few times I did see them move it was to nod their heads and bodies up and down to the music a little bit, but not too much. I hope they had a good time...

I definitely did! I had a bit of a dance (as much as you can when you're packed in amongst people and the music isn't really dance-y dance-y a lot of the time anyway) and sang along. I haven't been to many gigs where I know all the songs, the only big concerts I've been to are Goldenhorse with the NZSO at the Michael Fowler Centre and Carole King and James Taylor at the Vector Arena (both with my Mum), so I wasn't sure if it was gig etiquette to sing along. But the band was so loud (the sound was great and the Town Hall is a really nice venue) no one would have heard me and I couldn't help it. I knew all the words to every song but one, so I had a GREAT time.

The band didn't really talk the whole time, they said 'thank you' at the end of every song, one of them said something about 'I keep thinking I'm going to walk out of here tonight and the world is going to be ending, you know?' (No, actually, I don't know; why are you saying this? Is it the extreme wind or do you just think about the world ending every night?), and another said, 'Thank you so much, you've been the best crowd of the tour' (most likely a lie), but that was actually the full extent of the onstage talking. No banter for the Fleet Foxes. It didn't matter though, I was there to hear them play, not try to be funny or cool so it was fine with me. It was amazing how many times one of them swapped instruments - flute, guitar, saxophone, double bass. And their harmonies are pretty awesome.

All in all, I'm so glad I went. I love them.

In other news, I have taken no photos this week which seems strange but I have been too busy trying to find somewhere to live, which I have so now I can start packing. I'm going to miss Newtown with all its colourful characters and excellent cafes, but I'm looking forward to living in Aro Valley again after three years. The room I'm moving to has the cutest fireplace and bay window, so I will once again have a view from my window. Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Dreamy

2012-01-08T22:20:00.000+13:00

I spent this weekend at Longwood. My friend Frankie invited me and we drove over after work on Friday. It was a weekend of delicious food cooked by her Mum, endless cups of tea in proper tea cups, croquet (I won two out of three games, turns out I am good at a sport! Granted it's a leisurely sport you can play while wearing a maxi dress), feeding chickens and collecting their eggs, reading, a trip to Lake Ferry for fish and chips (the last two photos), listening to National radio's Saturday evening old music radio show, and watching movies (I fulfilled my holiday wish to watch Little Women, I felt like I was about to burst with love for the movie the whole way through, I have seen it so many times before but I have now decided it is definitely my favourite movie ever; Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Christian Bale...actually everyone in it is amazing, I cried when Beth died, and watching it in a big old house was almost too perfect to be true).

There were so many things I wanted to take photos of (including the very old falling down greenhouse which is beautiful in a ruined kind of way), but I had to refrain because it felt impolite to keep whipping a camera out in someone's home. Such a great weekend, I felt very fortunate.

On Thursday night I had dinner at Adrianne's new house (she made impressively good carbonara) and then we popped down the road to The Embassy to watch Melancholia. Beautiful, but freaky. I wish I'd read what it was about properly before going to see it.

And seeing as this is turning into a movie round-up, over the Christmas holiday I watched Basquiat which was great. It features David Bowie as Andy Warhol which I was not expecting. Some time before Christmas I watched Beginners which I really enjoyed. It was touching without being sentimental and Ewan McGregor is a babe).

2012-01-05T17:10:00.002+13:00

...to the blog!

What started as a way to document the progress of my newfound love of knitting two years ago, has since become a way to document the nice things I do and see, places I go, and people I spend my time with. That's a lot of 'I' and sometimes I feel a bit strange about documenting my life on the internet. But really, it's for me, no one is forced to read it, and when I went on my overseas jaunt in August, it turned out to be an excellent way of keeping my family updated on what I was doing. So, the blog lives on.

It's made me take heaps more photos than I used to (like the one above, a fence I walked past in Eastbourne on Monday), which I'm happy about, and I like being able to look back and see what I was doing last year or the year before - even though I rarely do. And I get to write, which I also like doing. Actually, if I added up all the words I've written on this over the past two years I bet it'd be novella length, at least. That's kind of a depressing thought. Maybe I should rename the blog, 'I could have been a novella'.

To celebrate the blog's birthday, I've changed the wee pictures in the header (having done it once before, you'd think it would have been a quick and easy process. It wasn't). Roses growing in my aunty's garden at the farm in the Wairarapa, my favourite photo from my holiday (the Sacre Coeur at sunset with jetstreams in the sky, taken from a little windy street behind it, a few hours after I arrived in Paris), and some very successful ginger crunch.

Picture perfect

2012-01-04T20:35:00.000+13:00

I forgot to document the Christmas cards I made this year! Once again I used the old stick-a-photo-on-some-nice-card trick. This year the photo was from my outing to The Roxy cinema in Miramar. The hanging lamps seemed suitably sparkly and festive. I had a whole lot of double sided stickers left from the Christmas cards I made in 2010, they're actually for sticking photos into photo albums, but they work beautifully. I was, once again, disproportionately proud of my simple skills.

Yesterday was my last day of freedom before returning to work, so Kelly, her friend Andy, and I caught the train and went winetasting in Martinborough. Upon arriving we had to fortify ourselves with brunch at The Village Cafe at the Wine Centre, and then we meandered our way out to Martinborough Vineyard.

What may appear to be trophies to the majority of the population, was apparently confused for a spitoon by some lovely wine tasters who had gone before us, because the middle trophy had red wine in it...

The weather was lovely, the wines were excellent (although, I don't actually know anything about wine, I just know whether I think something tastes nice or not), and we had a yum platter at Margrain Vineyard which is where I think I got my terrible sunburn from. It was a surprisingly cheap day - $20 return on the train, $4.50 each way for the bus from Featherston to Martinborough, and $5 at each vineyard to taste all the wines - which, at most places, was then refunded if you purchased a bottle. Obviously we spent more because we bought food, but I was surprised how little it cost to fake being a wine connoiseur for the day.

Hello 2012

2012-01-02T20:48:00.000+13:00

This morning it was sunny and the weather forecast indicated it would stay fine (after a couple of rainy days that put a dampener on welcoming in the new year) so I decided I would do something I've wanted to do for years but never gotten around to: get the ferry to Eastbourne.

Just as I was about to leave the house I got a call from my sister who was in Wellington playing tour guide to an Irish 'friend' she made at the New Year's festival/mud bath La De Da. So I met them in town and off Megan, Kevin, and I went to Eastbourne.

The ferry landed at Days Bay and we walked around to Eastbourne village; a lot of places were closed because it was a public holiday (still, I was surprised how many were closed) so we ended up having lunch at a pub. And then it started raining. We walked back round to Days Bay to wait for the ferry and decided to have a cup of tea and shelter in the cafe, but they were closing. So we sat shivering for a wee while and ended up getting the bus home, to avoid shivering for another half an hour. So, not a wholly successful day but it was a nice outing and I definitely want to go back when it's hotter and more of the cafes and shops are open.

Yesterday Kelly and I went to the new Muppet movie, it was so cute! I did some inappropriately loud laughing which I always enjoy, and got to see the new part of The Embassy. Then we ended up drinking the evening away (above is my first gin of the new year) and having dinner at Scopa. Not a bad first day of 2012.

Maxi dresses, painted toenails, nurses' capes, stripes, cricket, books.

2011-12-30T13:33:00.000+13:00

So far this holiday, I have discovered the joys of:

Maxi dresses. They simultaneously make you feel like you're part of a very conservative religious group and/or going to the Oscars and/or a Hollywood celebrity living a casual summer life - especially when you're wearing one in an airport.

Painted toenails. I have never painted my toenails before (technically, I still haven't), but yesterday my friend Hayley's Mum, who has recently opened a beauty salon in the big front room of their house (also known as 'the smoking room' because it's where Hayley and I had our first secret cigarettes ever, sitting out the big sash windows; we would have been caught except her step-Dad has no sense of smell, so when he came into the room to say goodnight, he actually believed us when we said we were sitting out the windows because we were 'hot'), offered to paint both my toenails and Hayley's toenails. I copied Hayley and had them painted in 'Cherry Crush', a dark, but not too dark, shiny red. They are so amazing, every time I look at them I love them - so tiny, so colourful! And they distract from my blistered, yam-like feet which is an added bonus.

I have also bought an actual old red nurses cape from an antique shop having a closing down sale. The cape needs some mending though, so its pictorial debut will have to wait. I am definitely going to wear it in the winter.

In Wairarapa fashion news, Maggie is apparently a huge proponent of the double-stripe look. A bold statement, but one she definitely pulls off.

Meanwhile, Hamish had Nana and I out playing cricket on Wednesday evening. Maggie kept telling me, 'I'm on your team' as she bounced on the trampoline. Hamish observed, 'You're not very good at bowling are you, Cherie? Or catching. You're pretty good at batting though.' It's true, when a bright orange ball is coming at me not too fast, from not too far away, I can actually hit it.

For a short time, Isla joined us in reading a book before crying. I guess she's not a fan of Hamish's latest favourite series, Boy vs. Beast.

Now it's raining and I'm reading How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran. The verdict is still out.

Christmas (or, I take a million photos)

2011-12-27T13:53:00.000+13:00

After a false start due to more earthquakes on Friday afternoon causing Christchurch airport to close and our flight to be cancelled, my sister Megan, step-sister Claire, and I made it down to the farm on the morning of Christmas eve. The delay, while frightening and extremely inconvenient for the people of Christchurch, actually worked out pretty well for me because it meant I got to go to a Christmas eve eve BBQ and party.

Once I arrived at the farm I harvested some lavender. Naturally.

This lot was tied with twine and hung upside down in the hotwater cupboard to dry. I have plans to make little lavender bags with it. I doubt this will ever actually happen.

I then harvested more lavender and put posys of it in glass jars in everyone's bedrooms. I was sharing a bedroom with Claire who gets hayfever, I forgot about this.

After harvesting, I got to attack the overgrown lavender bushes with big clippers which is one of my FAVOURITE things to do. By the time I was finished with them they looked like neat little box hedges.

After a team effort baked cheesecake (how many people does it take to make a baked cheesecake? At least five apparently) and some other preparations for the next day's feasting, Claire and I went for a walk. If there was one reason I would want an iPhone, it's for the Hipstamatic app. I love these photos Claire took.

Mum and Dave's Irish friends and their two daughters are staying at the farm, so after watching Love Actually (I saw it for only the second time last Christmas and hated it; surprisingly, I didn't hate it as much this Christmas) we did the requisite Christmas eve duties for the five year old once she was asleep.

Then it was Christmas day.

Claire and I decided that this photo could go on the front of a Christmas card from the two of us next year, and say: 'Merry Christmas from the Christmas Spinsters'.

The five person baked cheesecake is bottom left, dusted with icing sugar. SO GOOD.

I (sunsmartly) sunbathed after eating way too much, while some of the kids played with playdough and made an excellent mess of playdough crumbs.

A month or so ago when Claire and I were in The Warehouse, we saw a book about some country romance. We decided our country Christmas could potentially follow the plot of the novel, hence my wistful scan of the horizon for a dashing veterinarian.

Claire, Sarah (the eldest Irish child), and I went for a long walk to try to counter the extreme amount of eating we'd done. It kind of worked, except that by the time we got home we were able to partake in round two - leftovers dinner. I then watched the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special which reinforced my love of the Welsh and Ruth Jones and James Corden.

Yesterday we went to Hanmer Springs for a picnic in the shade because it was so hot again. Then we went swimming and came home for a dinner of baked SALMON. I made potato salad which I christened 'Heart Attack Potato Salad' because of the amount of Real Foods mayonnaise in it. I think when I look back on this Christmas, I will remember the sheer amount and deliciouness of all the food, and the heat.

The company was pretty good, too.

Family heirloom

2011-12-24T21:55:00.000+13:00

On Thursday after work I caught the train to Masterton for dinner with the Jacobson side of the family. While I was there my two great aunts, Olga and Paddy, gave me a pretty amazing present. It came with a card that read:

Dear Cherie, As the oldest member of the oldest son I thought you were the rightful recipient of the enclosed... When John was sick I wanted something simple to do as we sat and talked to him or he slept! I picked up a piece of patchwork that my mother had nearly finished and completed it to make into this cot cover. As my mother had a very soft spot for Vic I thought it was also appropriate that you should have it. I hope you will treasure it as a gift from the past which contains lot of memories. I hope you or some members of your family will enjoy using it. Christmas blessings from Pat and Olga.

My great grandmother died in 1978, so it makes sense that some of the fabric is so clearly from the 1960s and 1970s. It's very colourful and very awesome. It has a matching pillowcase and I love it.

Pretty magic

2011-12-21T22:37:00.000+13:00

For the second year in a row, I had the privilege of attending Christmas carols at Longwood, my friend Frankie's family home just out of Featherston. Longwood is beautiful, the food was amazing, and there's something pretty cool about gathering around an electric piano and a violin and singing carols with a group of people.

The five of us girls (including Frankie) arrived early and helped with some of the food. I took on the task of 'smearing' homemade pate onto rye bread. Ginny and Fleur shared the cutting of the coriander and grapes and placing them 'just so'.

As well as yummy finger food, there was a giant glazed ham, a green salad with roasted kumara and cranberries, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and warm bread and LOTS of cheese. Later on we had strawberries, florentines, crunchy oaty caramel slice, and chocolates. I ate so much I had to sit in a food induced stupor for a wee while to recover.

We sang all the best traditional carols (I love 'Good King Wenceslas' and 'Ding Dong Merrily On High') and a couple of not so traditional classics ('I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus'). The evening ended at 11pm with those of us left singing the song that's always left until the very end. There are only a few copies of the words so everyone has to huddle in close.

I drove us over the hill and back again (it was 12.30am before I got home) so it's left me pretty tired this week, but it was definitely, definitely worth it.

Fa la la la la, la la la la

2011-12-18T23:40:00.001+13:00

Yesterday morning as I was sitting in my pyjamas making Christmas cards while listening to Christmas music, one of my flatmates said, 'You're so Christmassy...' I don't really feel very Christmassy at all, but I guess compared to a lot of people I am.

We not so fondly refer to our workspace as The Bunker due to the fact that we are basically underground with very few windows and little to no natural light. The garish yellow walls inside The Bunker are a cruel reminder of the sun that we can't actually see.

We put up and decorated the tree at work on Friday and then I made some paper 'snowflakes' with some origami paper I happened to have in my desk.

I'm going to try to get people to make more this week. Angry Tony helped me make a few of my initial ones and he got quite into it.

Tonight I went to The Big Carol Sing at the Town Hall with Fiona and Bret. I hadn't been before and it was really cool singing carols accompanied by the giant organ and the Salvation Army band. However, there was quite a lot of religion which isn't really my thing. The Musical Island Boys sang though, I haven't seen them in ages and they were great.

The kids in the manger scene were pretty hilarious. Joseph and the shepherd looked utterly bored the whole time (as Fiona said, 'I guess there aren't many half pipes in Bethlehem'), while one of the angels got her groove on during the songs and clearly loved being on stage. She kept whispering to the other angels who seemed a bit overwhelmed by their roles.

Twinkle, twinkle...

2011-12-14T22:05:00.000+13:00

Last night I put the Christmas tree up. I had grand plans to make amazing new decorations with silver card and ribbon, because I'm a bit sick of the coloured baubles I've had for the past three years, but realistically, I wasn't going to get around to making them in the next week so I just put the tree up and used the same old decorations. It still looks pretty good anyway.

I was so excited to show off the tiny little fairy lights to my flatmates when it got dark. Apparently when one of them came home from working at a bar till the early hours of the morning, the tree with its lights on in the dark of the lounge made her a bit teary eyed. Success!

I also bought a Christmas album I've wanted for a few Christmasses now: 'Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas'. It was recorded in 1960 and is so great! She says amazing things like, 'Look at that crazy red suit' when talking about Santa in 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' and 'I'm just crazy about horses!' at the end of 'Jingle Bells'. Oh, Ella.

Alien life

2011-12-12T23:39:00.000+13:00

This amazing flower is growing behind our house. I noticed it while hanging out the washing. Then, while taking a photo of it, I noticed the even more amazing buds.

They're like tiny little aliens, all scrunched up, taking a deep breath before exploding out...

Private Road

2011-12-10T11:23:00.001+13:00

It's been a big week. Two weeks, really.

I've walked past this sign many a time on my way to work, but yesterday I felt the need to take a photo - it was probably the flowers.

1st of December

2011-12-01T14:34:00.001+13:00

There have been signs of Christmas approaching - the tree in Midland Park with its sad, faded decorations going up, this awesome Christmas village window display in Juniper, a pile of presents being bought and wrapped in time to make the postal deadline for getting to London (and Ed) in time for Christmas - but today is the 1st of December and I am officially allowing myself to get EXCITED.

That's right. A Very Cherry Christmas was back on the iPod this morning, I'm wearing a green dress and my red Christmas earrings, and upon arriving at work I immediately set up this CUTE tree from Swonderful. We have our work Christmas thing this evening so I am looking forward to gin and yum food.

For Isla

2011-11-29T22:28:00.000+13:00

Sunday was my littlest cousin Isla's naming ceremony (I keep describing it as a 'pagan christening', but that probably sounds like we dance around with sticks or something).

It was an amazing day weather-wise, I got to look after Isla for ages (give her her bottle and get her dressed and carry her around - I realise these things are more fun when they're a novelty rather than everyday tasks...) and play with the two other wee cousins. The house was decorated with flowers and my bunting got another outing strung up on the big deck. The blue and white Russian doll in the first photo was my Christmas present to my aunty a few years ago, the flowers magically matched it! I also love her photo wall.

My sister and I were 'guardians' so we each did a reading, I wasn't a fan of the reading the celebrant suggested so I wrote my own poem for Isla. It wouldn't win any prizes and I woke up on the day thinking, 'Why have I done this?' but in the end I was glad I did.

And, of course, the food was a highlight.

Norma and Bill

2011-11-24T20:05:00.000+13:00

As I was driving over to the Wairarapa on Saturday morning I was a little bit excited about the afternoon ahead, for a really dorky reason: I was going to interview my Nana (Norma, my Mum's Mum) about her life.

I decided this needed to happen the other month as I was writing the end of my grandfather's eulogy for my Dad (just to clarify, the grandfather that died was a Jacobson, his wife is still going strong but she is not the Nana I'm talking about here). I was sitting at Nana's kitchen table with the laptop and referring to a spiral bound Jacobson family history book written by my grandfather's two sisters and other members of their extended family. Nana saw me looking at it and said, 'Oh yes I read that when Megan brought it home, it's very well done, but I won't be writing anything like that about my family so you'll have to make it up when it comes to me.'

I wasn't having that. I declared I would write something on her behalf and she didn't seem too averse to it. That was how I came to be sitting on the couch with my Nana on Saturday afternoon, with the laptop on a small coffee table in front of us, recording her telling me all about her parents, her childhood, my grandfather I never met, and my Mum and aunty and uncle when they were younger. We sat there for three hours (luckily I had bought her lunch on my way to her house and made her a cup of tea before we started) and I am so pleased I did it. She was really amazing about it as well, I thought she might be a bit awkward or find it a bit strange but, just like the time I asked her to pose for some photos for a Gender and Women's Studies project I was doing about images of older women, she had a sense of humour about it and in her own unassuming way she just got on with it.

(This is a photo of a photo of Norma and Bill, I'll have to ask her where they were off to - probably the Carterton A&P Show for which she said she made a new dress every year)

One of the best parts about the interview was learning a bit about my grandfather, (William) Bill Hartley Mouldey. He died when my Mum was 14 and no one ever really talks about him. Because of this, for some reason, I had always imagined he was grumpy and mean. But I think it's just because it was a long time ago and one of those hard, sad things some people find it easier not to talk about. I knew he had worked as an engineer at the freezing works, but on Saturday I learned he was a very involved unionist during those years which made me really respect him (probably because I'm reading the autobiography of Sonja Davies and there's a lot about unions in it and how hard people leading and organising them worked). He was five years younger than my Nana, they met when he was 17 and she was 22, and they waited until he was 21 before they got married. His father was killed only a few weeks after he and Nana first danced together, but she didn't know his surname so when it came across the radio that a man had been killed crossing the road coming home from the pub, it was Nana's older brother who told her that that man was the father of the boy she'd been dancing with the other weekend.

He made these gates for the house he and my Nana built (which she still lives in) and when my sister and I were little, they were shifted to our house in Martinborough where they have stayed. So when Megan and I were in Martinborough on Sunday for Toast, I made her walk past our old house with me, to see the gates again and take a photo.

Toast

2011-11-20T21:06:00.001+13:00

The weather seemed a bit questionable this morning, but by the time we got to Martinborough it was beautiful. I had to buy a big floppy hat and, although the wind meant I had to hold onto it at times, it was a wise investment. Even if I did look like a 40 year old woman.

My favourite place for food was Ata Rangi. This year Toast Martinborough celebrated its 20th anniversary and Ruth Pretty Catering is the only caterer who has been with the same vineyard every year. My sister and I shared a venison burger with orange ginger glaze and zucchini pickle, and I pretty much ate all of the white chocolate and blackcurrant creme brulee.

We also had fried camembert with mint yoghurt and beetroot chutney at Martinborough Vineyard, chocolate brownie at Murdoch James Estate, crispy pork belly with cabbage slaw, steamed rice and chilli/pomegranate/lime caramel (I'm not sure what that means but it was amazing) and a haloumi crumbed chicken schnitzel turkish sandwich at Palliser Estate where we finished the day. The wine at various places was yum too. I was happy that quite a few places had pinot gris.

We had some good dances, although it got pretty hot at one point, especially at Murdoch James Estate which was basically a giant paddock with no shade. Mostly I just loved being home again. I love Martinborough.

Vynfields' big white house

The rain started about twenty minutes before we were due to be picked up, but even that was nice.

Get your card on

2011-11-16T22:47:00.000+13:00

Essential ingredients for card making

(although, actually, it wasn't alcoholic, just cranberry and mint with an umbrella)

On Monday night I went to Gabe and Simon's for dinner and a card making evening. I wasn't sure how much card making would get done but Gabe was determined to create a stockpile.

What you can't see in this photo is Simon sitting on the couch hard at work sewing onto a card, and my flatmate Tom sitting on the floor drawing. You can see some of the various fabrics on offer, Jess made excellent use of some pink sequined material. Her cards were very...creative.

Actually all of the cards were quite hilarious as well as amazing. Simon's sewn candy cane card can be seen at the very front of the display, he had been keeping his sewing a secret the whole time and was very proud of himself when he revealed the finished product.

These are my cards. I made a total of three in two and a half hours... I hadn't realised how slow I am at making things until I was with other people. I sit and think and then rule and cut and arrange and glue very precisely. But I love my cards so it was worth my snail's pace. I got a bit carried away with the old sheet music Gabe had for us to use. It's so pretty. For the front card I used some scraps of wrapping paper I had tucked away, it's going to be for my baby cousin Isla's naming ceremony in two weekend's time.

'Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost'

2011-11-13T22:50:00.001+13:00

Last night I cooked my first ever roast. It was a success. I mean, obviously, sticking some meat in an oven isn't difficult but timing everything else that goes with the meat is, I have decided, an art. I also made apple and blackberry crumble, using the topping recipe my Nana always uses.

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
150 grams butter, cubed

You mix all the dry ingrediants together and then rub the butter into the mixture until it's all crumbly. Pour it over stewed fruit in a baking dish and bake at about 160 degrees until the top is all golden and crunchy. So good. Especially when drenched in cream...

This afternoon I went to the Roxy Cinema for the first time since it opened in April this year and saw Pina - A Film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders. I didn't really know what to expect of Pina, except that it's a 'dance film' and in 3D.

It was pretty amazing, if a bit long for my short attention span. It's kind of hard to explain the film; it was initially conceived as a documentary about German choreographer Pina Bausch and her company, but she died suddenly early on in the project - hence the 'Film for Pina Bausch' part of the title. It's now performances of parts of pieces she created, historical footage of her dancing, interviews with members of the company she worked with, and, above all, lots and lots of dancing with amazing costumes and simple but striking sets and out in the city of Wuppertal where her company was based. I particularly loved the rain falling on the stage and the piece entitled 'Cafe Muller' where dancers dance with their eyes closed as tables and chairs are moved around them. All of the pieces have lots of repetition and evoke really strong emotions; in the interviews members of the company talk about Pina's mix of fragility and strength which is a strong theme in all of the pieces. The dancers' bodies are incredible - you can literally see almost every muscle moving and they work so hard. Some of the dancers have been with the company for over 20 years and they are so committed to their work, they talk about pushing to create honesty in their work and breaking down their boundaries. Dancing is their whole life.

Also, I was particularly taken by the suspension railway that was shown a number of times in scenes in which dancers danced in and around the city (you can see it in the trailer). I've never seen footage of what looks like an upside down train before. It's so strange and I'm not sure I'm a fan, it seems to dominate the landscape in a weird way because it's above everything - what if a carriage fell down?

Finally, the Roxy is lovely. Very elegant and art deco. I really loved these lights.

Time travel, Veronica Lake, rage.

2011-11-12T10:45:00.000+13:00

I took this a couple of weekends ago, it made me feel like I'd time travelled.

Last night I went to see Drowning in Veronica Lake. It's a solo show and the actress is stuck in the middle of the stage for the whole hour, wearing a white dress with a giant skirt that reaches out across the stage. It was very effective and despite being unable to really move, the actress held my attention the whole time which was pretty impressive because I usually end up looking at my watch at some point during a show, even if I'm enjoying it.

Veronica Lake was a big movie star in the 1940s who suffered from alcoholism and following the collapse of her movie career ended up working in a hostel bar to pay for her accommodation. I am currently reading all about her through my best friend Wikipedia.

This week I watched season 1 of Parks and Recreation and I loved it. I am now really angry because I can't find season 2 on DVD anywhere.

It's errupting! (But not really because that would be terrible)

2011-11-08T21:55:00.000+13:00

On Saturday night I was babysitting. From my vantage point, it looked like Mt. Vic was errupting.

This was a happy accident.

As well as the sound of the sea, walking on the beach, and Maranui cafe, Lyall Bay has Queen Sally's Diamond Deli. I went for the first time on Sunday and wanted to take a photo of the inside because it's so cute, but it was way too packed. So I brought my sweet treat home and put it on one of a number of Kelly's awesome small plates.

View from my window

2011-11-05T15:01:00.001+13:00

For the next two weeks anyway. I'm house and dog sitting at Lyall Bay. The best part is being just across the road from Maranui...and lying in bed listening to the waves at night.

Am listening to the new Florence and the Machine album 'Confessionals' today: so far, so good. Quite dark, much like a dance show I saw at Downstage on Thursday night, Carnival Hound. There were some really amazing moments in the show - a combination of the dancers (who were really, really good), the set/props of chairs and mannequin body parts, lighting, and music. There was even some actual magic, and by actual magic I mean for a moment you are truly tricked.

Unusual Suspect

2011-11-01T08:18:00.000+13:00

Last night I drove to Masterton, spent approximately three hours there, and then drove back. This is because I am both crazy and a highly dutiful family member.

While in Masterton at my great aunt's birthday dinner (which was really just an excuse to get everyone together as some family from Australia were over), I got some lilac and entered a Melbourne Cup sweepstake. I got number seven, 'Unusual Suspect'. I have no idea what my odds are but I'm guessing not good.

Interestingly, two people had stories about lilac and funerals. When I asked if I could pick some to take some home, my Nana Gail said that her mother-in-law (the great aunt's mother) had died during lilac season and they had placed lilac all around the opening of her grave.

Then, when I called into my other Nana's for a cup of tea on my way through Carterton, I gave her some of the lilac and she said (unaware of the earlier anecdote at another house), 'My mother died in October so we had a lot of lilac at the funeral. It's got a lovely scent.'

So there we go, lilacs and funerals. I don't think I'll be able to see or think of lilacs without remembering that coincidence from now on.

Unfortunately, I ended up forgetting to take the rest of the lilac home from Nana's, which is a shame because it does smell amazing.

Long weekend in pictures

2011-10-30T23:08:00.001+13:00

Leaving Wellington

Anita's exhibition, Tender Chaos - Cyanotypes on Fabric, in Hamilton. Look at all those red stickers!

Browsers bookshop on Victoria Street is amazing.

I noticed these trees everywhere, their leaves are a strange washed out pinky grey. I kept thinking the leaves looked like they'd been dipped in bleach, or washed and scrubbed so much they'd faded.

Photo by Anita

Anita and I drove to Hamilton to see Alex in Hotel. This is Anita and I lurking in the corridor at the hotel in which the show was performed. Anita took the photo, as you can see, so I hope she doesn't mind me using it, because I really love it. It's like 'Me in a Mirror' all over again.

We stayed at the YHA, extremely clean and tidy with the added bonus of a 'Herbal Teapot & Cups'. On Friday, Alex and I went to Midnight in Paris. So good. The story and performances were great, but I loved seeing so many parts of Paris I saw only a few months ago and internally going, 'I've been there!' It's easy to get caught up in the beauty of Paris when you aren't being reminded of the beggars in the Metro tunnels and when you can't smell that strange, urine-like smell that hits you in certain places. Still, Paris is amazing and looking back it was definitely a highlight of my holiday.

When I got back to Hamilton, Anita and I went to a YUM Mexican place for dinner. They gave us a giant pitcher of Sangria. Anita noted that her face has never before been revealed on the blog, despite having been the star of many posts - so today as double whammy, as well as the hotel photo, her angry face.

When we got home we made ginger crunch. I have never made it before. Guess which one is mine...THE SMOOTHEST. This may have something to do with my finicky dedication to following instructions vs. Anita's 'I don't bother creaming the butter and sugar, I don't sift anything, it takes me ten minutes to make and it always tastes fine.'

I didn't taste hers but I'm sure it tasted more than fine. I don't really care though because mine tasted AMAZING. Who knew ginger crunch was so easy?! We used the Edmonds Cookery Book recipe.

On Saturday night I was living the solo Hamilton dream so I went to see The Trip. I want to marry Rob Brydon; this is because he is both Welsh and very, very funny. I laughed so much in the movie I think the people next to me regretted their choice of seats.

When I arrived back in Wellington at 9am this morning (Grabaseat, you may be cheap but you are not kind), it was a beautiful day. This afternoon I walked to Island Bay. Why have I not done this before?

I wish every weekend was a long weekend that ended with a walk to the beach and cider on the front porch with flatmates. But not sunburn. That was silly.

Rain on the parade

2011-10-26T23:33:00.000+13:00

The parade finished across the road from work...how could I not pop out and have a look?

The cup. I had to majorly zoom in - luckily, while small, the cup is so shiny it's hard to miss. Even in the rain.

Although, to be honest, I have had quite the change of heart over the last few weeks, from 'I hate the All Blacks' to 'I want to marry Stephen Donald.' I doubt it will last very long, though, after all the fuss has died down. Plus, my allegiances aren't that strong - towards the end of the final I did start hoping France would win. They were so close and it would have made fools of all those arrogant people in the days leading up to the game who so confidently wrote France off. But as so many people have said, it would have been unbearable had the All Black's lost, and it's nice seeing people being brought together by something positive for a change. And parliament looked nice with all the New Zealand flags out.

Feed me, Seymour, feed me

2011-10-25T23:33:00.001+13:00

I keep going places and people just keep feeding me delicious food.

On Sunday night Alex cooked me a roast (it was amazing and for classic movie Sunday we watched Paper Moon, a great father/daughter duo con movie, released in 1973 but set during the Great Depression and filmed in black and white; it stars the real life father and daughter, Ryan and Tatum O'Neal). I did also go and watch the rugby - what has happened to me? I'm not sure, but I blame my newfound love of Wales for changing my feelings towards the World Cup.

Last night Simon and Gabe made mint and walnut linguine accompanied by an extreme salad:

Followed by a berry almond crumble combo that far surpassed any chocolate, even the new Whittaker's Berry and Biscuit.

I love Gabe's apron, it's a proper full one (as opposed to a half one); you can see it in the top right hand corner of the photo.

Getting serious

2011-10-23T13:43:00.000+13:00

Following my date with myself to La Prima Cosa Bella on Wednesday night, I presented myself with a red rose on Thursday (it was the Red Cross' street appeal this year - a gold coin donation and you got a red rose). I said at work that I'll probably be proposing to myself pretty soon, to which someone quipped, 'You might want to try living with yourself first, just to make sure.'

The Italian Film Festival is on at the moment and you can't really go too wrong with Italian films - either the actors are beautiful, the scenery is beautiful, or both. I really enjoyed La Prima Cosa Bella, especially the scenes set in the 1970s. The characters were all very endearing in their own complicated way. Especially the mother and the son, who, as a child, had a constant frown on his face. I'd say it was more a drama than a comedy but there were lots of amusing moments.

Last night, Kelly and I went to Happy Family. I was a bit unsure as to whether I'd like it that much as it seemed like a concept that's been done quite a lot (a writer whose characters start to appear in real life and try to influence his writing). While Kelly and I agreed the parts we liked least were the parts where the characters appeared to Ezio and complained to him, the rest of the film was very funny and a bit Amelie-ish in terms of the aesthetic.

Everything seems better in Italy. Although I'd just like to point out how great my divider at work is and that's only part of it. It's like sitting in a tiny Cherie curated exhibition. I love seeing pictures of people's workspaces; one of my flatmates has a design magazine out from the library and it has an article in it about British 'artist-designer' David Gentleman (best last name ever) which includes a photo of Gentleman's desk with all his brushes, pencils, sharpeners, chalks and pastels sitting in the grooves of long strips of corrugated cardboard and the bits and pieces stuck on the wall above it.

Frogs and films

2011-10-18T23:22:00.001+13:00

Mr. Four Square was much happier about this state of affairs than I was (the dining room table at the house I babysit at on a Tuesday night is made from a giant old Four Square sign - I don't know if I've linked to this before but there was an article about the house in NZ House and Garden a few years ago, it's a bit more child-friendly now, e.g. no more vases at two year old height, but still full of heaps of cool retro NZ things).

I decided to frog the scarf I started knitting a few weeks ago because something I had thought I could live with when I first noticed it became too annoying. What's more annoying is that I'd done the same thing before and forgotten that lesson (it was over a year ago though). Basically if you want to do a border and you're doing some kind of alternate pattern inside the border (like rib or moss stitch, which isn't so much a pattern but whatever) you need the amount of stitches inside the border to be uneven othewise the border is going to look wider on one end. I had 34 stitches and I was knitting K K (the border) K P (x15) K K (the other end of the border). Even looking at it written down, it's obvious that there are three Ks in a row on one end and ultimately that makes it look like the border is 3 stitches wide on one end and only 2 stitches wide on the other end when it's supposed to be 2 stitches wide on both ends. Are you asleep yet? I'm not, I just have a headache. I am not good at maths or imagining how things will look. Hence the ripping out. Now I need to start again and make it go K K, P K (x 14), P, K K.

In unrelated news, it seems like it has been movie o'clock lately, so in brief:

The last two classic movie Sundays have actually been Saturdays. One was Cry Baby which I didn't know anything about except that a young Johnny Depp was in it. It was strange and funny.

The other was Kramer vs. Kramer. This had a young Meryl Streep in it and she was a total babe. I also really like Dustin Hoffman, although the first scene with him and his son made me worried he was just going to do a toned-down version of his strange character from The Graduate. I had a few secret tears towards the end when he's telling his son the outcome of the court case, even though I had already guessed what the actual ending was going to be.

On Sunday Kate and I watched Like Water for Chocolate which we had been meaning to do for ages, ever since we realised earlier in the year that we'd both recently read the book. I'm not sure what the movie would be like if you hadn't read the book first and didn't know that it's style is basically magic realism. But it's very beautiful - the landscape, the colours, some of the costumes - and in Spanish which adds to the exoticism of being set in Mexico. The trouble with seeing a film based on a book is I immediately went, 'I didn't imagine Mama Elena looked like that at all' and kept thinking that the whole way through. But it's a very faithful adaptation of the book - the book's author wrote the screenplay which always helps - and I loved the actress who played Tita. The hair of the actor who played Pedro was ridiculous.

And I can't remember when, I think one night two weeks ago, but I saw The Help at the movies and really enjoyed it. It's pretty long but even I, who am a chronic watch-checker, didn't feel like it dragged at all. I can't believe Emma Stone is only 22. She was great. Her costumes were an excellent contrast to the shiny, bright, florals of the Southern belles. And I loved the character of Minny. As for giving a child the first name 'May Mobley': Why? Whyyyy?

John Bob

2011-10-13T22:40:00.002+13:00

Today we farewelled my grandfather, in his 80th year. There were a couple of photos, two of which I hadn't seen before, that I really loved.

This last one is he and I. Quite a long time ago, obviously. He lived with us for a very short time when I was quite little and this was when I started calling him John Bob after my young ears misheard 'Good night John Boy' (which is apparently from The Waltons) as 'Good night John Bob'. It caught on and all his grandchildren have known him as John Bob, until the littlest ones adapted it to Bob Bob.

As was said during the service today, he could be a pretty gruff man, he had a short temper, and he didn't suffer fools gladly, but he also had a great, dry sense of humour, worked incredibly hard his whole life, loved whiskey and the sea (hopefully not at the same time if he was captaining...), and while he might not have been very vocal about it, his family.

Things people other than me have made

2011-10-11T22:27:00.001+13:00

An amazing cake - Shane the Train - made by Erin and Paul to farewell Hannah. Truly a magificent creation that took the original Woman's Weekly Cake Book inspiration to the next level.

A drawing of me by Nova who is eight. The two giant red circles on my face are particularly accurate.

I did have a hand, well, a head in this.

Once again the Wellington International Ukelele Orchestra was amazing. I think I had a giant smile on my face the whole time on Friday night, except for when I was singing along. So many great moments but the torch-lit onsie zip assistance, the pink togs, and a man from the audience getting on stage and performing a song he had requested on Facebook but that they hadn't learned were definite highlights. And their new EP is GREAT. I love 'This Charming Man', 'Boogey Man', and 'Raylene' especially. As Abbey said, you just want to take them all home and force them to drink cups of tea with you and be your new best friends.

Spreading joy

2011-10-06T22:37:00.000+13:00

I have been passing this on my way to work each morning for the last couple of weeks (although, not so much this week because it has been raining too hard).

There are a whole lot of images hanging in the window of a picture framing shop on Cuba Street (I don't know the name, I think it's The Workshop, but it's near the intersection with Abel Smith Street; I'm not going to bother trying to say upper or lower Cuba Street because what I think of as upper Cuba is what everyone else thinks of as lower Cuba, I've had the discussion with people so many times and I still get confused as to what's up and what's down). A sign says you go in and choose your image, then go away and do something nice for someone, come back, write down what you did, and replace your chosen image with the note.

It's to 'spread joy' throughout Wellington apparently. Some of the notes are a bit cheeky ('I gave pop tarts to children!') but it's a cute idea. Maybe I should choose an image and spread some joy...

Classic movie gush

2011-10-03T22:59:00.001+13:00

Sometimes I read what I last wrote and I regret it. For example, in my last post, I sound smug when really all I wanted to say was, 'The Engine Room was really amazing and I hope lots of people go to see it.'

Anyway. Last week while buying a birthday card, I glanced to my right and saw something that immediately filled me with joy. It was the 40th Anniversary Edition DVD of The Railway Children movie that I had watched countless times when I was younger. I didn't care that it was ridiculously over-priced, I had to buy it immediately. One of the reasons being, I had never seen the first 15 minutes or so of the movie because my Mum had videoed it off TV and had missed the start, so when we watched the video it always started from when they arrived at Three Chimneys.

I loved this movie so much when I was younger, along with Little Women, and so wished I lived in a time when there were candles and lamps and long dresses, that one day when my Mum happened to make apple pie, I made her and my sister dress in shawls with me, close the curtains, light a candle, and pretend we were like the family in the movie when they arrive at the house and have the apple pie left for them by the housekeeper. One of the best things about my Mum is that she actually went along with many of my amazing ideas ('Can we dig a hole in the ground by the tree hut and make a little fire in it and cook things over it?' What kind of mother says yes to that? An AWESOME one).

I had told Alex this story when I was suggesting we watch The Railway Children for classic movie Sunday and explaining how excited I was to be able to watch the movie again and see the start for the first time. And because Alex is potentially the best person ever to live, look what she made to accompany the movie:

It was outstandingly delicious.

Someone at work had warned me watching the movie again would ruin it for me because it wouldn't be as good as I remembered (because obviously, having bought the DVD at lunchtime, I went back to work and talked a lot about how much I loved the movie, and how I wanted to go home right then and watch it, and told the apple pie and shawls story, and generally added to the ever growing number of reasons people at my work think I am unhinged).

I was adamant seeing The Railway Children again could only reinforce my love for it and I was right. The movie was just as amazing as I remembered, but better because it was even funnier than I remembered. Some of the comedy is intentional, some of it is the result of being 40 years old. I still love the station porter, Mr Perks, the best. And the Mum is such a babe.

Because of such modern conveniences as Wikipedia, I learned that the actress who played the middle child, Phyllis, was actually 20 when they made the movie and she was playing an 11 year old. Crazy. She's a pain in the movie anyway. Which was great for classic movie Sunday because we tend to shout at the TV screen and talk to the characters when they're annoying. Naturally.

The Engine Room

2011-09-29T22:39:00.002+13:00

I'm not entirely sure who took this photo, but it definitely wasn't me because I am in this photo.

On Tuesday night I saw The Engine Room at BATS Theatre. It was amazing.

Granted, I could be considered biased because I happen to know and love the majority of the people involved in the production - enough so to wear a giant Robert Muldoon head and walk about while flyers for the show are handed out. But I see lots of shows by people I know or with people I know in them and I feel like I'm pretty honest. I definitely wouldn't rave about one unless I actually felt compelled to.

So I can honestly say I think The Engine Room is one of the best shows I have seen in Wellington all year. It is very clever, it is very funny, and the performances are energetic, hilarious, moving, and highly satisfying. I learned some things, it made me think about some things, and it reminded me why I love theatre. It's also very relevant at the moment because of the Rugby World Cup and the imminent election.

And both the reviews so far agree.

Sewing the day away

2011-09-26T22:57:00.000+13:00

On Sunday I welcomed daylight savings by staying in bed until 10am reading the winter issue of Extracurricular. Then, after enjoying homemade pancakes with bacon, banana, and maple syrup thanks to my awesome Mum, I stayed in my pyjamas sewing until 3pm. I listened (and attempted to sing along) to Celine Dion circa 1996 and Dusty Springfield. It was an extremely good time.

I took my sweet time making this very basic pillow, mainly because I could. It's for my 4 year old cousin, Maggie, hence the material. Two Christmasses ago I made her older brother a Thomas the Tank Engine pillow and while he has since shifted his attention from Thomas to toy soldier figurines and the All Blacks, the pillow still sits on his bed with his soft toys. Apparently Maggie sometimes borrows the pillow for her soft toys, so her Mum asked if I could make her a pillow of her own.

Like the Thomas the Tank Engine pillow, this one has a separate cover which can be taken off and washed as my aunty is a washing fanatic. If I make another pillow like this (which I most probably will considering the latest addition to the family, baby Isla, will surely need her own pillow in a couple of years' time to complete the set) I'll make the top (patterned) layer's edge longer as it's just zig zagged and ironed over 1/2 an inch which isn't quite flash-looking enough.

While I really like my sewing machine (which due to lack of space has been sitting in its box since I moved house in February), I still love my Mum's sewing machine the most. I think because it's what I learned to sew on and because it's metal, so I somehow feel like I can't break it - even though I'm not in the habit of throwing sewing machines around the room or any other activity that could actually break one.

Mum's sewing kit is starting to get a bit worse for wear but whenever I see it it's like being taken back in time to our house in Martinborough. I tidied it up a bit before I put it back in the cupboard this time around (because I'm such a dutiful daughter/it's messiness irritated me) and there were old blouse patterns from when Mum used to sew a lot, some wide gauzy star ribbon from the troll doll house I made and decorated when I was about ten, 'M. Jacobson' name tags from when my sister lived at the Wairarapa College hostel and all her clothes had to be named, the old sellotape tin Mum has always used as a pin box...an unitentional time capsule.

Up in the clouds

2011-09-24T18:45:00.000+12:00

The view from my window seat on the 5.35pm flight from Wellington to Christchurch last night was pretty impressive.

The horizon above the clouds reminded me of a photo in a series taken at Lake Eyre, 'a flat, arid salt sink in Australia' that feature in this month's National Geographic. I'm not in the habit of buying National Geographic, I got one to take to my grandfather for my recent visit to him in hospital, and I've never appreciated just how amazing some of the photos in it are. My Dad used to have a subscription and I didn't bother looking at each month's issue because I thought it was all animals. Oh foolish youth.

I'm hanging out in Hurunui this weekend with Mum. I had the most amazing giant whitebait fritter for lunch.

YUM.

Tonight I think I'll get my knit on. I've finally started a scarf for my sister that I bought the yarn for ages ago. I'm knitting it in moss stitch which I have decided is actually my favourite ever. It's got such a cool texture. Whether this scarf ends up making it to my sister or not, I cannot guarantee...

(It's having a rest here against a cushion at the house I babysit at on Tuesday nights. They have so many cool things but this cushion is one of my favourites. The label on the side says, 'Seam'.)

Lives real and imagined

2011-09-22T22:26:00.002+12:00

A few Sundays ago heralded the return of classic movie Sunday, sans Ed, which we lamented (when we weren't devouring delicious roast dinner).

We watched Thelma & Louise. I had seen it before when I was about 15 but quickly realised that I had forgotten almost everything about it, except how it ends (and even then I remembered that a bit wrong).

It's unquestionably a great movie for the simple fact that it has two redheaded women as the main characters (played by two great redheaded actresses). It also keeps you guessing as to what will happen next and has some amazing scenery. However, I don't quite see why it has become a symbol of female empowerment. I can see why women love it - I'm sure the friendship between Thelma and Louise is one many women can relate to and their characters are both very likeable. But ultimately, left to their own devices, Thelma and Louise make some pretty bad decisions. Sure they are better off without their respective boyfriends, but are they really better off come the credits?

Last Sunday I went to see the documentary Senna at The Embassy. I had never heard of Ayrton Senna before and have no interest in motorsport, but I had read rave reviews for the documentary and was invited by some friends from my old work.

It was so good. Maybe because I have no interest in Formula One racing it was like an insight into another world and Ayrton Senna was such an interesting character. While racing is a huge part of the movie, the movie is really about a person - an intelligent, charming, single-minded, ambitious man with a very strong belief in God. He was also a babe, which helped.

The next day I told pretty much everyone at work that they should see Senna. Realistically, I don't think it would be everyone's cup of tea and I do like documentaries a lot so that probably helped. But the politics, the chain of events, his massive celebrity status in his poverty stricken home country of Brazil (even though he came from a wealthy family) all make it a compelling film. I commented afterwards that I would have liked to have seen interviews with his sister and his mother, instead of just hearing their voices over home video footage or racing footage, but then I read an article that said the director didn't want any 'talking heads' like so many documentaries have and I agree that that choice meant that, somehow, it felt more like a movie than a documentary.

Anyway, I loved it.

Another example of small things that are awesome

2011-09-19T22:00:00.000+12:00

The other day I hung out with my four year old cousin.

We made an awesome crown, had a tea party, and went to the park where her brother joined us in feeding the ducks. It was slightly crushing, though, when after making the crown we took turns 'presenting' each other to everyone and she said, 'Presenting....Megan!' (which is my sister's name). This has gone on since the day her older brother could talk - no matter how many times I tell them otherwise or point out the difference, they always think I'm Megan.

They're just lucky they're so cute, otherwise I probably would have given up on them by now.

The baby wasn't having a very photogenic day, which is sad because she was wearing a really cute knitted white hat with a purple flower. She is very well stocked with knitted items - including the booties and cardigans from our Nana - which makes me feel less bad about my attempted booties being such a fail. I can't even give her the amazing baby shrug of 2010, because her mother hates mint green. I have, however, given her the baby pinnafore I made at my sewing classes last year. I can't wait to get a photo of a real live baby wearing something I made!

Town and around

2011-09-16T20:10:00.000+12:00

Last week I went to a conference (for work) held at the old Museum Building. I'd been to a work-related awards thing there one evening a few years ago, so I knew it was a pretty cool building, but this time I was able to look around in the lunch break.

The building is now home to some of Massey University's fashion and design students, so I got to see some great fabric prints displayed in the stairwell foyers. I love the Art Deco details in the building, it seems like the perfect place for creative wee students.

On Saturday night I went to Love Story at the Penthouse in Brooklyn. It was very strange but also very funny and lovely. It was great to see a different (and probably a lot more realistic) side of New York city. The filmmaker sees a woman on a train and asks her on a date, then he has real New Yorkers suggest ways for the 'story' to progress. By the end you're not sure what's real and what's not. It's quite clever. The filmmaker is a New Zealander and he Skypes his Dad back home in the Bay of Islands for advice. His Dad is hilarious. Those were my favourite parts of the movie.

On Sunday I went to Maranui again seeing as I have a newfound love for it. My friend Lauren and I had brunch there (it was definitely worth the queue that stretched almost the length of the stairs) and as we were waiting to pay I suggested we try out the mystical palm reading machine. Only 50 cents to have your fortune told, a bargain! Lauren was highly disappointed when all my levels (the helpful categories include creativity, friends, success, health, love) were higher than hers. I assured her that the only reason my levels were higher than hers was because she warmed the reader up for me. Now we want to go to a real palm reader...

During the week the amazing-and-lovely-and-soon-to-abandon-Wellington Hannah Smith alerted me to the cutest thing ever. TINY crocheted things at Deluxe Cafe. A matchstick! A drawing pin! To scale!

There are also tiny food items. I love tiny things.

This diorama was taking bids, it was already up to $100. Whoever made it must have a lot of patience.

Hail!

2011-09-14T00:40:00.000+12:00

Yesterday a group of us came out of a team meeting to find everyone gathered around one of the few windows on our floor, peering out. I helpfully quipped, 'Why is everyone looking out the window? Is the world ending?'

Turned out the world wasn't ending, not immediately anyway, it was just GIANT AMAZING HAIL.

When the hail continued steadily and strongly, a whole lot of us rushed outside and stood on the footpath, exclaiming and taking photos. The hail stones were the biggest I've ever seen and it was so cold they stayed on the ground for quite a while, even after the hail had stopped falling. When I walked home at 6pm there were still little piles of it in patches along the footpath.

It was so exciting and strange to see everything blanketed in white that I felt like it almost made up for missing the snow while I was away. Some guys from the office block opposite us came out and scooped up handfuls of hail. They managed to make some big hail balls which they then threw at each other and people looking out from the windows above.

I momentarily stepped out from under cover to stand in the hail - unfortunately, unlike snow, it hurt.

Read it

2011-09-11T16:05:00.000+12:00

I think I've had blogging exhaustion after my almost-daily efforts while on holiday. But records don't write themselves, so I'd better make a note of the two books I finished while I was away. One of which took me about four months to read.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing is giant; the print is tiny, the pages are thin, and it is generally just a tome of a book. The book begins as a novel told in the third person but is interspersed with sections from four notebooks in which the main character, Anna, is recording her life in the first person. These different coloured notebooks record her political life, developments in her writing life, her personal life (dreams, affairs, troubles), and a novel she is writing which is very similar to her real life. To begin with, I loved it; and actually I mostly enjoyed it until towards the end, even though it got a bit confusing - switching from 'Free Women' the novel, to bits of notebooks, to Anna's novel-in-progress which was very similar to her life in the novel 'proper'. I was waiting for the golden notebook to finally tie everything together nicely, but ultimately it didn't do that and after investing so much time in the book it seemed like a bit of a let-down. Especially after perservering through the last few sections of the book in which Anna descends into madness - it became irritating because she kept saying, 'X happened and I could tell I had fallen even deeper into madness than I had ever been before.' The first few times it was fine because, of course, how would you know if things could get worse or not, but after a while it got a bit repetitive.

Lessing has said she wanted to capture a time in history and I do think she achieved that; it was interesting to read about the British Communist Party in the 1950s, the living circumstances of various people in society, and attitudes towards women living alone. Since its publication in 1962, The Golden Notebook has been hailed and condemned as a feminist work but Lessing has said herself that she never intended to write a feminist novel. She was more interested in breakdowns, the fragmentation of personalities, the effect of the world at the time on various individuals, and I think this is pretty clear in the last third of the novel.

I'm glad I finished the book - being set so firmly in London, perhaps it was appropriate that I did so on a plane leaving London - it felt like quite an achievement. I'd be interested to read another of Lessing's novels, but I think I'll wait a wee bit first.

The next book I read was completely different and perfect for reading on a plane. Tina Fey's Bossypants was pretty light reading but very funny (my lack of sleep may have made it even funnier) and seeing as I love reading about people's lives, it satisfied my nosey-side. For a memoir, Tina Fey doesn't actually give much away and that's one of things a lot of the reviews of the book comment on. But it was the same when I read Joy Cowley's memoir, you just have to accept that the writer is only going to tell you as much as s/he wants to and you just have to take what you get and enjoy it. Especially with a memoir, rather than an autobiography.

I really liked the small insight the book gave into being a female in comedy, espeically improvisation, because it's still true that the majority of roles women end up playing in improv are the wife/girlfriend, secretary, mother...When I did Politics: The Musical with The Improvisors a while ago, I came on a few scenes in and announced I was the co-leader of the Green Party because up until that point I had been an MP's wife and a private secretary and I was like, 'Hold on, I'm not having that.' Fey also makes the point that people ask her all the time what it's like being a woman in charge of a sucessful US sitcom, i.e. being female and being the boss, but no one asks Donald Trump whether he finds it hard being a man and being the boss. Fey might give very little away, but she does make some important points.

Home again, home again

2011-09-04T21:31:00.000+12:00

Well, I'm home. I've been back in Wellington for a week now and, surprisingly, the post-holiday blues have yet to hit. Flying back into Wellington airport I cursed living in a city where landings are never fun, but the sun was shining and I was happy to be back.

After a particularly bumpy start to the flight from London to LA, I finally finished a book I've been reading for about four months and started a new one. Customs in the United States were decidedly unfriendly, the guy who checked my passport made me feel like a criminal for travelling by myself. 'You've been to all these countries by yourself? Why?' When he asked which city I was born in, I made the mistake of saying, 'Masterton...but it doesn't really qualify as a city!' He was not impressed with my joke.

My flight from LA to Auckland cemented my love of Air New Zealand. We were on one of the newly refurbished planes, so even economy seemed flash (as did the toilets!). There were so many movies and tv shows and songs to choose from and even when the lights were dimmed and most people were sleeping, the cabin crew still came along every hour or so to check if anyone who was awake wanted water. Little things like that make such a difference when you're seven hours into your second twelve hour flight. En route from Auckland to Wellington, I finished the book I'd started on the flight from London, so I felt very productive. I watched a good movie called Toast about chef and writer Nigel Slater's childhood. Helena Bonham Cater plays his step-mother with whom he starts to compete for his father's attention through baking. She really makes the movie.

I arrived back at the flat feeling very awake and had all these grand ideas to unpack and then go off visiting people. I unpacked and quickly realised I wouldn't be going far at all, as I started to get very tired.

I went down the road to get some lunch and buy some groceries and had to take a photo of my haloumi and potato rosti stack from Baobab. I can now authoritatively say that Newtown has some of the best cafes in the world.

By 3.30pm I could hardly keep my eyes open and kept bumping into things, so had to have a little sleep. At one point I woke up and had no idea where I was - I panicked trying to work out whether I was at Chrissy and Piet's in London or Lisa's in Edinburgh or whether that really was my bookshelf across the other side of the room. I forced myself to get up at 5.30pm and make some dinner and I managed to last until 9pm.

This past week hasn't actually been too bad, I babysat Monday night, had a night at home on Tuesday night (during which I fed some of my flatmates duty free gin I'd bought), went to Eight at Circa on Wednesday night, went visiting Thursday night (the bus stop above was on my way home), and to Masterton for the night on Friday.

I got to meet my new wee cousin Isla yesterday. She is pretty tiny and generally lovely.

Everyone seemed to like their presents - I wasn't sure Hunter would be a fan of the tartan tam o'shanter I got him in Edinburgh but he put it on straight away and declared he would wear it to mufti day. Note the frost on the grass through the window behind him - it was COLD on Friday night.

Last night I went to the album release of St Rupertsberg - a very cute all girl band. And today the sun was shining again so I went for a walk with my friend Kelly along the beach at Lyall Bay and, unbelievably, to Maranui for the first time. The view is excellent and the food similarly good. This summer I definitely think more time at the beach is necessary.

All in all, I am very happy to be home. People keep asking what the highlight of my trip was and I keep saying I don't have one in particular because I loved it all. Paris was great so I guess that was a highlight. But after a week of work - and while everyone at work was very happy to see me, they didn't waste any time in giving me lots to do - it seems very far away now.

A feast followed by six hours at Heathrow

2011-08-26T22:19:00.000+12:00

Feeling a bit worse for wear on Thursday morning, I made my way to a cafe around the corner I had passed quite a few times when going to the little supermarket. It's a bike shop and a cafe. A sign outside says, 'Have a coffee while we fix your bike.'

Then, passing Lady Stair's Close, I went to my final Fringe show, Translunar Paradise. It centres around an old man whose wife has died and his coming to terms with living without her. The story itself was a bit cliched, but what made it worth seeing were the masks. The actors who played the old man and his wife were young (in flashbacks they played younger, maskless versions of the characters) so most of the time they held 'old' masks in front of their faces. The masks were so detailed they actually seemed to change expression depending on how the actors were moving or the mood of the scene. There was no dialogue, only very clever accompaniment by an accordionist who actually played a big role in the show, sometimes holding a mask in front of an actor's face to free up their hands, singing, provide genius sound effects using only the accordian (my favourite was the sound of slow motion breathing). There's a trailer and a photo here, but neither really do the masks justice.

There's a lot of dance in the show and overall I thought it got a bit repetitive, some sequences were done numerous times with only slight variation or none at all, but it was a really beautiful production.

Then Ed and I had tea milshakes at a cute wee tea place on the way to my abode. I'd had a tea milkshake there the day before by accident (I walked in thinking it was a tea shop and was taken aback by opening the door and immediately having someone say, 'Table for one? Over here please' that I just sat down) and it was so yum.

For my last night in Edinburgh Lisa cooked a Scottish feast for Ed and I.

We had Scottish salmon. Followed by:

Haggis with mashed turnip and mashed potatoe (after trying my first ever haggis and liking it, I proceeded to follow Lisa and her partner Luke's lead and smother everything in cheese sauce and brown sauce, SO DELICIOUS) accompanied by Iron Bru. Looks like Fanta, tastes a bit like cough medicine. Apparently it outsells Coca Cola in Scotland.

Despite being absolutely full to the brim of hearty haggis and root vegetables, I managed to fit in a little bit of cranachan. A desert made with oats, cream, whiskey and berries. Lisa said its only the second time she's ever made it, the first was in New Zealand for her flatmates on Burns' night. It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult so I think I might have to try making it myself, it was really good.

I felt like I wouldn't need to eat for a week by the time I bid farwell to Ed, who is off to London on Monday, and then who knows where. I packed my bag - it's a squeeze but not too bad, lucky I left room for accumulating stuff (although it's actually only about 3kgs heavier than when I left Wellington) and set my alarm for 4.15am.

When the taxi I'd booked the night before pulled up at 5am, the driver asked, 'For 116 St Stephen Street? To the airport?' I felt like saying, 'Because you wouldn't want to confuse me with any of the hundred other people waiting on the footpath outside number 116 at 5am with a pack, would you?' The street was deserted.

Edinburgh Airport was packed and I stood in line for 45 minutes to check in. Helpfully the woman behind me kept saying, 'This is ridiculous, this line is hardly moving, they should have more staff on, what are they thinking? We're not going to make it.' Airports, such fun places...

Especially when you're now stuck at one for six hours. Currently two hours down, four to go.

My final verdict of my time in the UK: Cardiff still wins. I liked Edinburgh but I didn't love it. It's hard to know what it would be like outside of Fringe time - Luke said, 'Ten times more boring'. The Fringe was great but more expensive than I thought and the quality was much more varied than I expected. It was awesome being able to see so much stand-up comedy and puppetry though - two things we don't get so much of in New Zealand.

The traffic lights in the UK are strange. I'm not sure I'm convinced by this flashing yellow between red and green. Also, all the traffic stopping while pedestrians cross wastes time for everyone. Is it that difficult to turn after giving way to pedestrians who have the green man?

The best thing about Scotland has to be Tunnock's Tea Cakes. Like Mallowpuffs but way better. The marshmellow is like eating a cloud.

Lisa kept saying it was a shame about the weather but it hadn't bothered me. It rained at least once a day but only for about an hour or so and it was nowhere near as cold as when I left Wellington. I'm hoping New Zealand is struck by a strange heatwave in the next 24 hours.

A yacht and a late night

2011-08-26T11:45:00.000+12:00

Tuesday saw Ed and I venture to Leith, an area in Edinburgh. It's also the name of the river. Apparently there's a nice walk along the river from where I'm staying to the 'waterfront'. We did not manage to find it. Instead we went a strange, long way, not helped by Google maps. We saw such sights as:

The worst knitting graffiti ever

A post-apocolypse scrap yard

Actually quite a nice cafe with the most reasonably priced cups of tea and cake I've seen all week

Leith is like Newtown but much bigger and with more homeless people and dogs. The 'waterfront' is not that great, the part we went to used to be docks and old rail tracks still snake amongst all the cobblestones. In an apparent attempt to make it better, naturally, someone built a mall. You have to go into the mall to get to...

The Royal Yacht Britannia. We hadn't specifically planned to go the yacht but we realised we were close and it seemed like it would make the long walk to Leith worthwhile. I actually had a good time, mostly because the yacht is full of family photos of the Royal family and some of them are quite funny.

The yacht was launched in 1953, replacing a previous Royal yacht. The Queen and Prince Philip oversaw the decoration and went on to view the yacht as a home away from home. Surprisingly, the Queen had a single bed. As Ed pointed out, the bedrooms all looked like rooms from a very nice resthome.

The yacht is giant, it has a massive state dining room where the Queen entertained all sorts of dignitaries. The crew's quarters were less spacious - I definitely wouldn't want to be on the top bunk. My eagle eyes spotted the matching rugs that the Queen and Prince Philip had in their studies.

It seems they may have only visited New Zealand a couple of times, but the Queen and Prince Philip trod on it often.

The Yacht was decommissioned in 1997 and so fond of it was the Queen that she publicly shed a tear when disembarking for the last time. It is now a visitor attraction with the rooms on display all kept as they were when the Royal family used the yacht for overseas visits, holidays, and honeymoons. The honeymoon suite is the only bedroom with a double bed, Prince Charles had it brought on board especially for his honeymoon with Princess Diana. Everything is pretty dated and not at all lavish.

Every single clock on the yacht is stopped at one minute past three, the time when it was decommissioned.

We got the bus back to town and - strange fact of the day - busses in Edinburgh do not give change, so if you don't have the exact coins, too bad. That evening we went to another Australian comedian, Fiona O'Loughlin. Her show described her experience of alcoholism, including passing out on stage in front of hundreds of people, the night before she was due to make her Australian Dancing with the Stars debut. The show's producers wanted her to claim exhaustion, but to her credit she just told the truth. She was very good, a great storyteller, and her ending was very memorable...

Early in the afternoon on Wednesday I went to the second show in the Festival by Hannah Gadsby, although this was more of a comedy lecture about the representation of the Virgin Mary in art throughout time. It was very funny and informative, Hannah Gadsby is great.

I then went to the Scottish National Gallery where the best part was an exhibition called 'The Queen: Art and Image'. It showed photographs, paintings, and sculptures of/inspired by the Queen since her ascension to the throne. It was only a small exhibition, but more than anything it was interesting to see such thorough documentation of someone ageing over 60 years.

After going home and getting changed, I met Ed and the Wellington person we'd seen at the Forest on Sunday night, and the three of us had dinner at a Japanese BYO. I got a taxi because I was running late and it was so fun! I hadn't been in a Black cab before - they're giant; I chatted away to the driver, an older Scottish man who said, 'Aye' a lot. It was very bumpy though, the cobblestone roads must wear out tyres quickly.

We'd decided we'd try to go 'out' after a show we had tickets to see at 10pm. I have to admit I wasn't altogether sober when we got to the show, which actually may have made it better. It was called Table and was described as a 'triptych', each of the three scenes/sequences involving puppetry. I liked the first scene best, the puppet was amazing. He was reminiscent of a Japanese Bunraku puppet in that he was operated by three people in black. He had a cardboard head and a cloth body and he was so expressive. Puppetry is amazing when it's done well. The other two scenes were pretty strange and a bit long.The last was a story told entirely through pictures and the occasional word drawn onto plain white paper and pulled out of a briefcase. There were probably nearly a hundred, maybe even more, pieces of paper and three people pulling the pieces out and moving them around.

After the show we went to a bar and then down into Cowgate, one of the parts of the city under a bridge, to see if we could find somewhere to have a dance. We managed to find a place underground that was selling 2 pound Jaegerbombs and playing very remixed music. The music wasn't ideal but it was good enough and I didn't end up getting home until 3am.

Sunday, Monday

2011-08-24T22:21:00.005+12:00

On Sunday, after what felt like the first sleep in I've had in years, Ed and I met on the Royal Mile and ventured to The Castle. Despite having already been in Edinburgh for two weeks, Ed had very kindly waited for me to arrive to visit the Castle, quite admirable considering he admitted he had a fascination with castles when he was younger and this was his first real castle.

They might have gone to all sorts of lengths to keep invading forces out, but nothing can stop people scratching their names into wooden doors

The Castle is not cheap -15 pounds - and if it wasn't for the excellent views and lovely weather, I think I probably would have felt rather ripped off.

Maybe it was because I'd already been to Cardiff Castle, but while we spent about two hours walking around, I wasn't particularly blown away by anything. A lot of the buildings were built as military barracks and one now houses the National War Musuem.

St Margaret's Chapel is the oldest building in Edinburgh but it seemed to be in the midst of a strange redecorating process. It turns out the stained glass windows, the nicest part of the tiny chapel, are actually from the 1920s.

We went down some stairs into dark, damp, dripping cellars where a strange soundtrack played intermittent noises that supposedly recalled 'The Black Dinner', in which the Governor of the Castle in 1440 invited some arch enemies around for dinner, presented them with a bull's head on a plate (which is apparently a signal of imminent death), and then had their heads chopped off.

The Honours of Scotland (basically the Crown jewels) were very sparkly, but no photos allowed there. Ed and I both agreed that it's hard to really appreciate the age of things - the crown we saw is 300 years older than the Treaty of Waitangi. But it still just looks like a very nice crown in a glass case.

After Versailles, most palaces don't really seem very palatial. We saw the tiny room in which Mary, Queen of Scots, gave birth to James VI and some larger rooms that have recently been restored.

The walls of the Great Hall were covered in swords and what looked like pistol clocks. The Hall had little 'nooks' by each window, similar to another building in the Castle we'd been in. It seems the Scottish liked to sit by the window and have secret conversations.

The National War Memorial is big and sombre, some of the flags inside are so old they are threadbare. We had to lighten the mood on our way out with photos with the animals out the front.

After the Castle we went for a wander around some of the streets, saw Greyfriar's Bobby who sat near his master's grave in Greyfriar's churchyard every day until his own death.

For dinner we were lured into The Pink Olive by the promise of Sunday roast, only to sit down and find that the menu outside was the lunch menu and the roast of the day was no longer on the dinner menu. Apparently roasts are a Sunday lunch thing in the UK. So instead I had a salad with pickled eggs. I've never had pickled eggs before and I'm not sure whether they were pink because they were pickled or because we were at The Pink Olive.

That evening we went to Daniel Sloss' The Joker in the Spiegeltent. Alex, Ed and I saw Cabaret in a Spiegeltent in Auckland in December last year which was very similar. They are portable 'tents' with solid walls and booths around the edge inside as well as space for regular seating in front of the stage. Daniel Sloss is a bit of an up-and-coming comedy star in the UK, while in London I had seen him on a show called 9 Out of 10 Cats which is the British equivalent of TV3's 7 Days. He's only 20 and he milks his youth a bit, but he was very good. His show was really well structured, he had some clever jokes, and he seemed to be having a good time. A vast improvement on the two shows we'd seen the night before.

After the show we went to the Forest, which describes itself as 'a volunteer-run, collectively-owned, free arts and events space masquerading as a vegetarian café'. While sitting drinking cider and listening to a guy who Ed had seen working there the day before play Clash songs, complaining that it's actually quite hard to make friends with people, a guy we know from Wellington walked in and was then joined by some of his friends, so it was nice to talk to some new people.

On Monday afternoon I went to the highly recommended Anton's Uncles by Theatre Movement Bazaar at Bedlam Theatre, an old church that has been turned into a year-round theatre. Anton's Uncles has won the first of this year's three Fringe Review Outstanding Theatre Awards and I can see why. Based on Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and using only the male characters, it is strongly movement based. It's almost like dance mixed with theatre and illustrates how simple movements executed with perfect, synchronised timing can be really effective. It was really nice to see some theatre after having seen three comedy shows of varying quality, although I have to admit I started to get a bit drowsy half way through...I loved it most when they started singing which also, thankfully, shook me out of my sleepiness for the rest of the show. The trailer for the show gives some idea of what it's like, although it makes it seem like it's entirely dance when actually there's a lot of dialogue. The music was really cool though.

Afterwards I met Ed (I managed to find my own way to the pub he was at with only one wrong turn, for some reason I'm finding parts of the Old Town really hard to navigate) and we went and got tickets for an Australian comedian I had seen a wee bit of at a female comedy gala in Wellington two years ago and really liked. She reminds me of someone we know so I managed to convince Ed to come along by saying, 'I'm going to see Hannah Gadsby, aka Charlotte Bradley, do you want to come?' I think he was glad he did because we both really enjoyed her set. She started by making a cup of tea for herself and one person from the audience, because you can't drink tea alone. She is very deadpan but so likeable and, among many other things, talked about growing up in a small town in Tasmania where her best friends were two 70 year olds - because they fed her biscuits and she didn't have to talk much, moving to Canberra where she realised her social skills left much to be desired as a result of hanging out with two 70 year olds for most of her young life, being afflicted with sleep paralysis, and confusing her local butcher because of the way she dresses (he kept calling her sir, so she started trying to act more femininely when she went in there which only resulted in him thinking she was a very camp gay man).

After Hannah Gadsby's Mrs Chuckles we returned to the Forest because they have giant meals for much more reasonable prices than other places in town. Money in Edinburgh just seems to disappear. Food seems more expensive and the shows are definitely not as cheap as I imagined. In the Wellington Fringe shows are between $14 and $18. Here, the cheapest shows are 9 pounds (which is about NZ$18), although we have been lucky with some two-for-one deals.

We then walked down into the New Town for a look around, but after a hot chocolate and a sit, decided to call it a day. Seeing as we were in my part of town, it only took me a few minutes to walk home, accompanied by a very pink sky.

Journey to the Fringe

2011-08-23T21:52:00.001+12:00

On Saturday morning I opened the back door and saw one sandal sitting on its side in the middle of the courtyard (I had put the pair of them outside to air out over night). I was momentarily mystified, 'Why would a burglar only steal one shoe?' but then I remembered the fox that Chrissy and Piet had said sometimes visits the garden at night (when I heard this I was quite excited as I've never seen a fox before). Seeing as the one shoe in view was intact, I figured the fox must have just played around with them and the other would be somewhere in the garden similarly intact. I began a methodical comb of the small garden and saw the bottom of the shoe under a bush, I climbed into the bush only to find the fox had (very neatly, really) eaten the entire top of the shoe, including the buckle. I didn't even think about taking a photo at 7.15am, I just threw them in the bin. Surprisingly, I was more annoyed that I still hadn't actually seen a fox even though one had mauled my shoe.

I wish I could say that threw my whole morning but really it only wasted about 15 minutes and it's my own fault that I came to be rushing to catch my 11am train to Edinburgh. By 9am I was all packed, dressed, and ready to go, so I went down to Sainsbury's to get some thank you things to leave for Chrissy and Piet (they had gone camping for the weekend the day before). I had breakfast, checked my emails, and just before 10am went to close up my bag and leave. I realise now I had probably under-calculated how much time I needed to get to King's Cross anyway, but it didn't help that I went to attach my small backpack to the neatly packed big pack and it wouldn't happen. This resulted in a frantic rearranging and repacking of both bags and having to carry some presents in a separate shopping bag. That's right. Presents were my downfall.

Anyway, it was 10.15am by the time I got to the tube station down the road, bearing in mind I can only walk so fast carrying my pack, and of course, I had just missed the tube I needed. So I had to wait 7 minutes. This doesn't sound a long time but when tubes usually come every 4 or so minutes it seemed like a cruel trick. I then agonised through the four stops before King's Cross and when I finally go there tried to hurry to the overground part of the station but of course being Saturday morning it was packed, so moving fast wasn't really possible. Because I'd booked online, I had a booking reference but I still needed to go to the ticket counter to get my actual ticket. Naturally, the line was long when I got there and I had only fifteen minutes to go before the train left. Finally I was at the front and the ticket man was extremely efficient so I rushed to platform five (which was thankfully very close to the ticket office) and made it onto the train with just under five minutes to spare. When I sat down I felt like I'd just competed in the Olympic train marathon, but it was also quite satisfying, having been sure approximately 20 minutes earlier that I wouldn't make it (because I knew both the station and the ticket office would be packed), to have beaten the odds. I won't be making a habit of it though.

The train ride from London to Edinburgh was great. Some lovely scenery along the coast, lots of purple heather, and it was a bit of a shock to start seeing decent sized hills again. We went through a town called Dunbar which was cool because my great grandfather on my Mum's side had Dunbar in his name. I had a little sleep, listened to music, read my book, and the four and a half hours passed relatively quickly. I had been booked to stay at a hostel for the week (sharing a room with three others) but two weeks ago I got an email from a Scottish woman I worked with at PHARMAC for three months about five years ago. She had seen on Facebook that I was in the UK and said, 'You should come to Edinburgh, I have a spare room you're welcome to stay in.' I replied that I was indeed coming to Edinburgh and had booked a hostel. Being the lovely person that she is, Lisa told me to cancel the hostel if I hadn't already paid for it (which I hadn't) and come stay with her and her partner.

Lisa met me at the train and we walked to her house only fifteen minutes away from the station (my shoulders held up relatively well considering I was carrying a small house on my back) in the New Town. As we walked along one of the main streets she said, 'And there's the castle.' And so it was, on a giant rock right in the middle of everything. Much less castle-like than I expected, but much more central than I expected as well. It was really strange to be in a hilly city again after the flatness of London. It's amazing how quickly you get used to things.

She and Luke live on the top floor of an old apartment building (so I also had to climb four flights of stairs with the small house on my back), and their apartment is really nice (that's their front door from the stairs, the person who lives next door is into pot plants in a big way). Very light and airy with polished wooden floors. I have a whole room with a double futon bed and cute wee fireplace to myself. So much nicer than sharing bunk beds with strangers.

After sorting myself out, I went to meet Ed in town, at the Sir Walter Scott memorial which has a giant spire. There seem to be a lot of giant spires in the city. Lisa said it was the nicest day they'd had in ages so I needed to make the most of it while it lasted. I wondered why she was so eager to get rid of me, but when the clouds rolled in and the wind came up less than an hour after I'd left the house, I realised she'd had good reason. The weather does not last long in Edinburgh. Luckily I had had the foresight to take my merino top with me because it got pretty icy pretty quickly. Ed said no matter what the weather is like when you leave the house, you have to always take an umbrella and another layer or two.

We walked up into the Old Town, where the streets were packed with people. The Royal Mile, the Fringe hub, was shoulder to shoulder full, and crowds were already surging towards the castle for that evening's performance of the Tattoo. We managed to find a Middle Eastern restaurant that wasn't full (probably because they don't have a liquor license we realised after we'd sat down) and had dinner. When we emerged back into the street, we saw it had been raining. It rains at least once a day here. Someone handed us a flyer for a free (of course, nothing's free, they always ask for a donation at the end) comedy show just along the road and it sounded promising so we went in. I already write enough to complete a small novella so I'll try not to detail every show I go to. For 'No Less of a Man' all I will say is, it got off to a promising start but despite prefacing the show with, 'I was brought up surrounded by females', there ended up being a lot of stereotypical jokes about women. The funniest part was actually the drunk Scottish man in the audience who had some gems of unintentional wit. At one point he was talking to his friend and the comedian (who was Canadian) said, 'Hey, what are you guys talking about? You know you're not exactly whispering', and this deep Scottish voice replied, 'Dove for men.'

Ed then led us to one of the squares which have venues all around and inside them as well as beer gardens. On the way we got given a flyer by an Australian comedian who recognised we were New Zealanders. We had a bit of a chat to him and after we'd had a drink, we decided to go to his show that night. 'The New John Conway Experience' was definitely an experience. It was in the Billiard Room at The Assembly which is the old student union building of the university. I was almost asleep on my feet by the time we took our seats at 12.15am but I was well awake by the end. Flashing lights, random music (if he felt like his comedy was floundering he would push the 'emergency' button, a song would come on, and he would start dancing - not particularly well), a lot of interacting with the audience, and a lot of drinking from various cans and bottles. The few actual jokes he had written weren't that bad, but a lot of his set revolved around him talking to people in the audience and going off on tangents 'It's like Fruche...do you guys know what Fruche is or is it an Australian thing? Fruche is like the number one liquid in the world. What do you reckon the top ten liquids are? Let's list them...what about number seven? The sea? I like that. Eight? Blood? No.' He got more and more manic as the show went on and it ended with him inviting various people he'd talked to during the show up on stage where he made them run on the spot to music while green lights flashed. Again one of the best parts of the show was an audience member; at the very start of the show John Conway said, 'How are you guys all doing tonight? There are heaps more people here than I expected. Awesome. Hey man, how are you?' and this guy in the front row replied, 'I'm only here because there was nothing else starting sooner. So you'd be better to just crack on.' John Conway's response to this, after some initial incredulity and the audience member going on to say, 'I'm not trying to be funny, you should actually just get on with the show', was to start the whole show again from his entrance in which he announced himself and danced enthusiastically to German techno music.

After the show, I went home. It had been a very strange and slightly disheartening start to my Fringe experience.

Tootle pip to London

2011-08-22T22:42:00.000+12:00

On my last day in London (Friday), I met Hayley at Green Park station and we walked over to the entrance to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. We were a little bit later than planned but still over half an hour early. We were a bit surprised to find that already, the crowds looked like this:

We managed to get what we thought was a decent spot at the front right by the Palace and even managed to hold our ground when latecomers started trying to elbow their way through. When the new guard arrived and marched into the Palace grounds through the gate furtherest away from us, we thought, 'That's okay, surely the old guard will come back out the gates on our side and we'll get a better view then.' 45 minutes later, they didn't.

All in all, it was a pretty disappointing spectacle. It was so sporadic - first a small marching band, then nothing for a while, then some men on horses, then nothing for while, then the guards marching in, then nothing for a while, then music from inside the grounds, then nothing... They spent most of the time inside the Palace grounds which only the people right up against the Palace gates can see. The thing we enjoyed most really were the police on horses. They clearly have a 'say it firmly put politely the first time, firmer but still polite the second time, then just yell angrily the third time' policy. People can be so stupid and there's nothing like being in a crowd to illustrate that. It must be very frustrating, you tell people to do something for their own good, e.g. 'Cross now in front of the horse' and they do the complete opposite, then look surprised when they get yelled at because they're walking into traffic around the back of a horse.

After the non-event, we grabbed some lunch and sat in the park to eat it. Some pigeons started hanging around us and Hayley warned them that it probably wasn't such a good idea considering my recent pigeon eating experience.

We then hopped on an actual old fashioned double decker bus, they still have a few running on certain routes. It's cute because the driver is separate to the rest of the bus so there's still a ticket taker who announces each stop himself, rather than the newer buses where the tickets are all electronic and a recorded voice announces the stops.

A red phone box from inside a red double decker bus - all of the icons at once

We got off past the Albert Memorial and walked all the way back to Harrods, stopping to admire Albert and the very detailed memorial.

Queen Victoria really liked him. Which is nice.

I wasn't too bothered about specifically going to Harrods during my time in London, but because we were close we had to go in.

It was awful. It is so tacky - the Egyptian escalators felt like being on a theme park ride and the Princess Diana and Dodi memorial fountain (which we came across by chance as we went too far on the escalators) had people crammed around it taking photos. Some people were putting on sombre faces to have their photo taken beside it, and some were smiling. It was very strange. It turned out that the money thrown into the fountain went to a charity for traumatised children, and because I hate all the tiny change you end up with in the UK because of their ridiculous 1p coins, I decided to lighten my wallet by throwing some of my change in. I didn't throw far enough and it bounced back at me. Fitting really.

We called into Harvey Nichols, where there were some of the funniest displays I've ever seen in a shop, before getting the tube to Redbridge, so I could see where Hayley and Gareth are living.

The house Hayley and Gareth are living in is huge and really nice. Their flatmates are all teachers so most are away on holiday at the moment.

They have a lounge suite that looks like jam rolls.

After a cup of tea we went back one stop to Wanstead. As you get further out of the city centre the interiors of the tube stations seem to get older, as in, they haven't been refurbished for years. I loved the mint green tiles of this one. We went to a pub for dinner which was really big and quite nice with such cheap food! I had to have mushy peas to properly end my London times, and because they are actually really yum. I think I'm going to try making them when I get home.

Granted, they don't look particularly appetising but then neither do normal peas.

Then it was back to Archway, to collapse into bed with my alarm set for 7am to give me enough time to pack and get sorted before getting to King's Cross for my train to Edinburgh at 11am. Sounds sensible doesn't it? Well, the next installment shall explain how I came to spend the most stressful 45 minutes in a long time from approximately 10.10am to 10.55am on Saturday morning. The precursor to which was discovering that I am too nice and have bought too many presents, and that a fox mauled my shoe.

Cardiff calling

2011-08-21T01:17:00.000+12:00

When I woke up on Thursday morning it was pouring with rain. I hadn't decided what I was going to do for the day but the weather made hopping on a train to Cardiff seem like a good idea (little did I know of Wales' reputation for rain). All I can say is, thank you the rain of Bath.

I LOVED CARDIFF.

I have to admit, I was already positively predisposed to Wales thanks to the brilliant TV series Gavin & Stacey which I watched on DVD last year. The main female character and her family are Welsh and live in Barry; they are all great characters with the best accents. This was where I got the idea of going to Wales in the first place, and after realising how close it was to Bath it had been in the back of my mind as something to do before returning to London.

I knew I wouldn't really end up having very long there, because even though it's only just over an hour from Bath, I had already bought my return ticket to London so I had to go back to Bath and then on to London that evening. I started to wonder whether I'd made the right choice as we got closer to Cardiff and the rain got even heavier, but as soon as I saw signs in Welsh and English I was too excited to care about the weather. It might have been raining, but it was raining in WALES.

I got off the train, grabbed a map (which in the end I never used), and followed the sign to the city centre. I fulfilled a request for a child's All Black jersey as they're apparently much cheaper over here and the woman who served me had a Welsh accent. It was very exciting.

I wandered through a market and when I came out the other side I saw a little sign for 'St John's Tea Rooms'; I had a feeling I knew what it would be like so I went in. I was not disappointed. There were slices of cake for 40p on china plates, a cup of tea cost 60p, and there was a little menu with the sandwiches you could order.

I got a ham sandwich which came with a 'side of crisps' and a piece of orange. I sat in the tea rooms for about 45 minutes, had a second cup of tea, and listened to all the people's accents around me. I could have gone home then and been happy.

When I left the tea rooms it had magically stopped raining. I wandered along and came to the castle, but first I went into a little arcade opposite it.

(This can count as part of the 'Me in a Mirror' series, I'm in the second square from the right, down the bottom)

There were so many cool shops in the arcade. A button shop!

And a second-hand clothes shop you could hardly move in it was so packed with stuff. Great name too.

It was then over to the castle, where I walked along inside the exterior walls which were used as air raid shelters during WWII (it was pretty dim and a bit unnerving in there), climbed the 'keep' which was built on a 'motte', and had a look inside the mansion (which I initially thought was a church because the exterior is all gothic with a spire).

Inside the mansion was crazy, it was full of gold. The first room you see was where guests sometimes stayed...imagine sleeping in a room like that! Surely all that gold on the ceiling would keep you awake. Permanent sunlight.

The rest of the rooms were just as extreme.

Although the dining table is original and it seems pretty tame, the hole you can see in the middle is for a live grape vine, so maybe not so tame really.

After the castle I went and sent postcards proclaiming my love for Cardiff to various people, then visited the new little Cardiff musuem, housed in the old library. It was yet another very interactive museum so I really enjoyed it. My favourite thing was a doll's house that spun around and you could see into a different level on each side. Each level had two rooms illustrating a period of time, they showed how the interior of the house might have looked and what the occupants might have been doing in their time period. You could push a button for each level and the little wooden puppet dolls moved. In the late 1800s for example, the family were eating in the dining room while the maid was cleaning and the cook was rolling out pastry.

My favorite was the 1970s where big houses were divided into flats and more women began to live on their own. And what does a woman living on her own do? Hula hoop of course.

This model showed the docks of Cardiff. Around the edge of the model were pictures of and information about some of the important or interesting buildings, when you pushed a button next to each picture, the location of the building in the model lit up.

When I went to see if there was a comments book in the museum so I could write a note saying how great the museum was (because anyone who has ever applied for funding for anything knows that these things help and the museum seems very new with lots of potential), I found a beautifully tiled corridor. A sign said that back when the building that now houses the museum had first been erected it was Cardiff's first public library and a competition was held for designs to decorate the entrance hallway. The detailed tiles are the result of the winning entry.

However, Cardiff's population soon outgrew the library and when it was extended, the hallway fell into disuse so hardly anyone ever saw all the tile work. Sad.

While at the museum I watched part of a video about the history of some long standing local Cardiff businesses, one was Clarke's Pies. On my way out of the museum I asked where their shop was, apparently they don't have their own shop anymore, but they do supply to the indoor market. So I went back through the market on the hunt for a Clarke's pie. The man who served me when I bought one was so lovely, he told me all these things I should do and see in Cardiff...I had to admit that I unfortunately had to leave again in about an hour, but that I'd be back!

The pie was...interesting. The filling was yum (beef in a beer gravy) but the pastry was really thick and flakey. That's obviously their thing, but I don't know if it was mine.

I took my time on the way back to the train station, mainly because I was delaying leaving. I stopped at a jewellers in a lovely old corner shop in another arcade and bought a wee silver dragon necklace I'd seen on my way past the first time. It was a bit more expensive than some of more tacky looking ones in the Castle shop but I got such amazing service my choice was vindicated. I made friends with the assistant in the shop and we talked about the Edinburgh Fringe while the guy serving me cleaned the necklace, put it in a case, and then put it in a flash bag and tied it with a gold bow. All for 26 pounds. A bargain I tell you...I walked through the rest of the arcade and stopped for hot chocolate before finally dragging myself back to the train station.

I think I may have found one of the best hot chocolates in Cardiff. This is going to be very handy to know when I move there.

I can't quite say why I loved Cardiff so much, the accents were definitely a major factor. But also that it seems pretty unpretentious. There are really old buildings sandwiched in next to some quite ugly not so new ones (in the part I saw anyway), so it's not exactly the prettiest of cities, but the people I spoke to were the friendliest yet, there were lots of great little shops tucked away, it was busy but not crowded, and it's only two and a half hours from London.

I seriously considered buying a Welsh rugby jersey and lapsing my dislike of rugby just so I can come home and support Wales in the World Cup...think how many people that would annoy! The Welsh bar is just across the road from BATS Theatre in Wellington. It would be perfect.

Taking in Bath

2011-08-18T11:54:00.000+12:00

I'm in Bath! This morning I made my way to Paddington Station, which was exciting in itself being a fan of Paddington Bear when I was younger, and got the train. I love taking the train, you get to see all sorts of things. Mainly trees and houses, but some of the houses were very picturesque. And, being summer, there were big golden fields (not paddocks, because this is England).

When I arrived in Bath, it was a short walk to the place I'd booked to stay the night. Because I'd mucked around a bit, I didn't arrive in Bath until after midday, so I was able to check into The Griffin Inn straight away.

Because I've never stayed in an Inn before, and in fact, I've never paid to stay anywhere by myself before, I was quite pleased by everything. So, naturally, I took photos of everything.

This is my room, it is on a giant downwards slope and a lean. Blood rushing to my right foot as I sleep may prove restorative to it, who knows. If it's cured of blisters when I wake up, I'll let you know. I just want my sister to note the backpack on the bed: this is the full extent of my luggage. Some people would say that's to be expected when you're only going away for one night, but if you've seen what she packs for one night, you'll appreciate why I'm pointing this out. The white bag is from the Paddington Bear stand at Paddington Station; Hamish, Maggie, and soon-to-be-born are being well looked after.

My room was the cheapest because it has an 'external bathroom.' I figured this would mean I would have to share it with people, but actually, it just means I have to walk across the hall to it. It's still just for me. Another exciting fact: one of the doors in the hallway is so tiny I only just fit through it without ducking, and you can see how warped the wall is to the right of it.

Anyway. Bath. After checking in, I went to get some lunch, but first I had to buy an umbrella because, as you might expect from a town named for water, it was raining. And I hadn't brought a jacket with me. I concede I may have gone a bit far with the packing light thing. Then I had lunch at the Jazz Cafe, where I discovered the amazingness of warm goat's cheese. The cafe was really busy and the two young guys running it were doing an impressive job of keeping up with taking orders, running down to the kitchen to place the orders and collect food, deliver food to tables, make drinks, and man the till.

Then it was off to the Museum of Costume and Assembly Rooms. To get there I went through The Circus, which is like the Martinborough Square except it's round and only has three streets coming off it...so not really like the Square at all. But the middle is grassy with trees so that's what reminded me of it. I noticed that the architraves that run above the line of the doors and windows of all the houses around The Circus are all different.

I wondered if they reflected the interests of the people who lived in them, but probably not because no doubt the houses would all have been built first and then sold to people to live in. So then what do they all mean?

The Assembly Rooms were very impressive, they were gutted by bombing in WWII, but have been restored beautifully. In the Ball Room there's currently a display of costumes from films, the above are from The Duchess.

The Octagon was originally used for gambling, it has an extreme chandelier in it. You can only see part of it in the mirror.

I spent quite a while at the Museum of Costume, there was a great exhibition of wedding dresses through the ages, my favourite was a flapper-style one from 1928.

As part of the section about under garments, you could try on a corset and crinoline. I think I would have done quite well in the corset days with regards to my waist - I couldn't even get the crinoline to stay up properly, it wouldn't do up tight enough to fit my waist, even when a nice lady tried to help me. The top part of the corset kept popping open, however, so I had to breathe very shallowly while taking the photo. I am loving all these museums with interactive bits, lots of people were trying the crinolines on, two teenagers and their Mum had all just had a turn before me.

After the Museum of Costume, I decided I needed to keep my energy up with some scones with jam and clotted cream. At the rate I'm eating my way around the world I won't be able to be smug about the size of my waist for much longer.

I stopped at Number One Royal Crescent, where the house has been restored with authentic 18th century decoration and furniture. Each room has a volunteer minding it and each of them was very eager to offer the laminated guide sheet for their room and talk about it.

The curve of Royal Crescent is pretty impressive, as are most of the houses on it from what you could see through their windows strolling past.

Making my way back towards the centre of town I saw this great band rotunda, although surely it's a band curvetunda because it's really only half.

Next stop was the Roman Baths. Supposedly the main attraction in Bath (funnily enough), but I wasn't really a fan. I think it's because the centre/museum itself is so modern and flash, it seems like a clinical layer over top of the ruins of the baths. I know there wouldn't be much to see otherwise but I do think you can go too far in trying to make something that it's not. Hence, I have very few photos from the baths.

After the Baths I wandered around in what I now realise to be circles trying to find the spot from which the Bizarre Bath comedy tour was to depart at 8pm. I wanted to make sure I knew where it was before I got dinner. Getting lost did mean I passed this yarn shop and was able to call in and have a look as it was their knitting circle night. There were about 10 knitters crammed into the small shop and they kindly offered me a piece of cake but didn't really talk to me after that.

Finally finding where I needed to be at 8pm, I went around the corner to Sally Lunn's for dinner. Supposedly the home of the creator of the Sally Lunn bun and the oldest house in Bath. I had very nice dinner despite the older man at the table next to me complaining about everything. I don't know how his wife could stand it. 'This soup's quite sweet for soup isn't it? I prefer a much more savoury soup. Is it the potatoe? Well it could do with more salt I say. And I'd rather a normal bread bun than one of these Sally Lunn buns.' YOU ARE AT SALLY LUNN'S, WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU'D GET? I didn't realise a Sally Lunn bun could be savoury as well as sweet but it makes sense, we're just used to them having icing on them. My chicken came on one and it was yum.

Then it was round the corner for Bizarre Bath. Chrissy had recommended it to me from years ago and sure enough, it's still going 20 years after starting. It's by no means an historical tour, but it is funny and you get taken on a stroll around the streets of Bath as evening falls. By then it had stopped raining and had turned into a very nice night.

As well as jokes like, 'Here's Bath Abbey...

...and if you look to your right...

...there's the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Clearly one knew more about advertising than the other because I know which one I'd choose.'

There were actually amazing magic tricks! A Houdini bunny tied in chains, put in a sack with weights, and thrown in the river only to magically surface moments later. The inconspicuous boat that passed by just before the bunny was thrown must have had something to do with but I still can't figure out how they did it.

It was definitely worth 8 pounds, some of the comedy was pretty cheesy but out of the group of about 50 people, I'd say everyone had a pretty good time.

I actually can't believe how much I did in the space of 10 hours, and I wasn't even rushing. Everything is pretty close in Bath though so it didn't take long to get from place to place, plus I knew the Baths were open late so I went to the Museum of Costume first. I must be tired because now I'm just rambling...

More museums

2011-08-17T19:22:00.001+12:00

After a very slow start (much wine was consumed last night), I met Hayley at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington.

This sculpture in the Grand Entrance reminded me of lots of those bendy balloons twisted together

It was cool, but so big. We decided to take a free tour and the one about to start when we arrived was of the Theatre and Performance section. Turns out, this collection used to be housed at a separate museum at Covent Garden which I'd forgotten I'd visited in 2005. It was great seeing lots of set models, costumes, and posters and hearing some stories you wouldn't have heard just wandering around. But it wasn't quite as useful as one of the general tours would have been, because at least that would have given us some direction in terms of what sections we might be interested in. After our tour we went to the jewellery section and the tapestry section (kept in a heat and light controlled room which smelled like vinegar) to protect tapestries from the 1500s.

In this tapestry they're apparently playing a game called 'Le Main Chaude' (the hot hand), in which someone was blindfolded and had to guess who was slapping their hand. Strange.

Unfortunately, the fashion section that I had been looking forward to was closed for rennovations. So was the furniture section that also seemed interesting. It was nice just wandering through the giant museum, though, and there was some cool furniture in the modern section.

I had something to eat in the cafe before we left and this was the view if you looked up.

Both Hayley and I had seen posters advertising the Museum of Childhood on our separate ways to the V&A and thought the Judith Kerr exhibition looked interesting as we both know her books, so we asked how to get there. Turned out it it's on the other side of town and closed in two and a half hours. We decided to risk it and jumped on the tube.

On the way to the tube station we saw the above on one of the V&A's exterior walls.

It was so hot on the tube and we had to go all the way to Bethnal Green, but it was worth it, the Museum of Childhood was great!

The Judith Kerr exhibition was one of the best I've been to. She wrote and illustrated The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the Mog picture books, and novels such as When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, based on her own life in which she and her family had to escape from Germany in 1939 as her father was a well-known journalist and screenwriter who was an early critic of the Nazis. One of the most amazing parts was that despite having to move through four countries in seven years, Judith's mother had kept some of Judith's stories and drawings from when she was younger and these were on display. There were also lots of the original illustrations from her picture books and interviews with her about her drawing and writing process.

The museum overall was so well set up, geared towards adults and children. In the exhibition there were lots of things for kids to do, like a little kitchen with a big tiger toy so they could act out the story of The Tiger Who Came to Tea, suitcases and a toy box so they could choose which toys to take like the girl in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, a table with colouring pencils and pictures from Mog to colour in, and a giant cat basket with cushions in it for sitting in like a cat.

We had a quick wander through the rest of the museum before the bell rang to say it was closing time. I loved the dolls' houses the best (even though I don't like dolls, and there were definitely some creepy dolls in the museum, it makes me shudder just thinking about them, I'm so glad they were in glass cases otherwise I probably wouldn't have wanted to stay at the museum). There were some incredibly detailed dolls' houses, some copies of actual houses in London made for rich children. There was a dolls' house donated by Queen Mary that she had furnished herself.

I would definitely recommend the musuem to other people, especially people travelling with children as there is so much for them to do. Every section had something for kids to play with or do.

Then it was home on the hot tube for a somewhat early night, which included ringing Nana and Tricia for a baby update. Sounds like the snow at home has been very eventful - I can imagine a Judith Kerr story about a family having to get taken off the farm through the snow on a tractor in case the baby decides to come!

Bikes and statues

2011-08-16T23:40:00.000+12:00

Yesterday Hayley, Gareth, and I arranged to meet at Queensway to hire bikes and bike around Hyde Park. Hayley text me when they were leaving and we knew from going to Notting Hill the other day that while they live further out, by the time I change lines twice, it takes us about the same time to get there. I got on the Central line after my two changes, and who should be sitting in the exact carriage I got on but Hayley and Gareth! It was almost too coincidental to just be a coincidence.

Gareth said we should get out at Marble Arch so I could see the statue of the horse's head he'd been telling me about the other day, and thus began the morning of strange statues.

The jelly babies are opposite the horse's head; apparently they were put up last year and were only supposed to stay up until April. I don't know if the fact that they're still there in August means they're now there permanently, but they are strange. I do really like the horse's head though.

When we got to Hyde Park we had to go to three different bike hire stations to find one that was actually working, and then when we found one, Gareth and I couldn't work out how to get the bike out. It took Hayley to come along and unlock hers to show us both up. The bike hire system is pretty cool, there are stations all around the central city and the first 30 minutes are free, then it's a pound an hour after that. You just put your credit card in, it takes your details as a guarantee and then charges you for however long when you return the bike.

Hayley biking was like me punting - not very steady. But we were only in a park so she was able to go slowly and came to like it by the end. She was very impressed that I was able to take a photo while biking. It was a good way to see Hyde Park, we did a big loop and being all flat we were able to chat as we biked. It was strange not wearing a helmet, we felt like rebellious children. I don't understand why helmets aren't law in lots of European countries. It's not like accidents don't happen - the girlfriend of one of the guys at Cambridge had a decent sized scar on her face and had spent 2 months in a wheel chair after being knocked off her bike by a car and smashing her hip.

We returned the bikes near to the Serpentine and went for a stroll, past the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain where lots of little kids were running around in bare feet, and over to a statue I wanted to a see.

Peter Pan! We studied Peter Pan in one of my Honours children's literature papers and I wrote an essay on J. M. Barrie so I was happy we were able to find the statue he donated to the park. Surprisingly, there was quite a group of people gathered around it having their photo taken, I was reluctant to join the bandwagon but I relented and Hayley and I had our photo taken with the boy who wouldn't grow up.

On our way out of the park we saw the third strange statue of the day.

The plaque underneath says, '1859 - 1939 Presented By The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association To Mark Its 80th Anniversary.' We'd seen a big stone trough on another side of the park that had Metropolitan Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough Association written on it. What any of this has to do with hugging bears, I have no idea.

On our way to get some lunch at Covent Garden, I hit the wall. Not literally, as I had to explain to Piet when I used the phrase that night. I was just so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, so Hayley and I shelved our plans to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum and I came home, collapsed on the bed, and fell asleep straight away.

When I woke up to the sound of the little boy next door negotiating an obstacle course he has made with chalk arrows and bricks in their tiny back yard, I got up and set about booking somewhere to stay the night in Bath, which is where I'm off to on Wednesday. Then Chrissy and Piet had a friend come for dinner whose Dad is over from Adelaide for three weeks. He was a bit of a character, very talkative, told me all about his days as a Ford service rep when he had to cover the South Pacific and South East Asia. He's never been to New Zealand though. He's had three wives and 'countless girlfriends.' He currently belongs to a singles' club in Adelaide and said he was seeing a lady before he came over but she started talking about wanting to come on holiday with him so he had to give her the flick, 'even though she was pretty good in bed if you know what I mean.' He also told me about how the same woman was now seeing another guy in the club who had a dog that always sat in the front seat of the car ('note I said sat, and I said it on purpose'), and the woman would get very grumpy because when she and this man went for drive she would have to sit in the back seat. How did she remedy this problem? She poisoned the dog.

Apparently she was boasting about it to one of the ladies in the singles' club, but no one has had the heart to tell the owner of the dog so she and he are still driving about, with her in the front seat. It's so ludicrous it's funny, but that poor dog! Apparently singles' clubs for 70 year olds are where it's all happening in Adelaide.

Weekend Update: Bonus Edition

2011-08-15T12:08:00.000+12:00

* And by bonus, I mean really long.

On Saturday, Hayley and I met at Notting Hill Gate to make our way to the Portobello market. We got there about midday, which may have been a slightly silly thing to do as it was absolutely packed. In the main stretch of the market on Portobello Road we couldn't even really see the stalls as the street was shoulder to shoulder full from one side to the other.

I saw the sign for a Hummingbird Bakery (which I felt like I'd heard of for some reason) so we fought our way into the shop and were not disappointed. I got a giant whoopie pie (which was like a massive ginger kiss) and Hayley got a red velvet cupcake.

We both got a takeaway glass of cold milk (which was cheaper than buying a bottle of water - crazy) and pushed our way through to a side street where we sat in the gutter to eat our treats. We are all class.

Some of the shops in Notting Hill clearly know their market, some had the Notting Hill movie poster hung in the window and one even had the exact same lettering from the movie poster as part of its signage.

The fringes of the market weren't quite as busy and some of the streets around the market have really lovely houses.

Palace or prison? You decide.

After the market Hayley and I walked through Kensington (which also seemed to have lots of nice houses and shops) to the Kensington Palace gardens. The grounds of Kensington Palace (home to Lady Di after she and Prince Charles separated) are being re-landscaped, but even still, it's not the most attractive of palaces.

Then Hayley headed home and I headed into town. Being a Saturday evening I felt like I should do something, so I decided to see if there were any tickets left to Blood Brothers. I thought about The Lion King, but I love the music of Blood Brothers (having played my step-Mum's tape of the 1988 cast recording many a time) and wanted to see a proper production of it (not that the Wairarapa College school production of it a few years ago wasn't excellent...). There were still tickets left for the back rows of the stalls so I got the second cheapest and then had about three hours to kill. With part of those three hours I decided to go to Liberty.

When I first came close to Liberty I walked straight past. I looked down into the street it's on, saw a giant white building that reminded me of the Globe, thought, 'That's quite a pub,' and kept walking. Then I realised I'd gone too far, consulted my Lonely Planet, and realised that giant white Tudor-like building was actually Liberty. For all its over-the-topness, I kind of loved it. It's insanely expensive but the building is quite funny in all its strange (and not original - it was built in the 1920s) Tudor splendour.

I especially loved the fabric and art and craft section - mostly because there was yarn!

After Liberty I head back towards the theatre, I was very proud of myself because this time I had managed to keep my sense of direction and was able to cut across a shorter way, which also meant I got to pass through Soho Sqaure. Consulting my Lonely Planet bible, I learned there was a highly recommended Hungarian restaurant called 'Gay Hussar' nearby, so having enough time, I popped in to see if there was a table. After much consultation with the bookings book, the waiter informed me he could fit me. I sat next to a Hungarian man and his American granddaughter, she kept complaining about how the English call things 'pudding' when they're not actual puddings, they're cake or pie or some other kind of dessert.

Sadly the light was too dim to take good photos, plus it's a pretty small place so my 'I'm just looking through my photos from the day, oh look at that I pushed the button and took a photo of my food' was a bit obvious and I got too self conscious after a photo of the cute plates and gave up. However, you can picture for yourself delicious venison ragout with red cabbage and 'tarhonya' (I still don't know what that is, it was kind of like couscous). The restaurant seemed very popular, everyone who came in after me had booked, but it wasn't that expensive. I feel like food over here generally isn't.

Then it was on to Blood Brothers. I'm so glad I decided to see it on the West End. It was amazing, the set was clever, it was surprisingly funny, the lead roles were great singers and I particularly liked the actors who played the two brothers. There was no one else sitting in my row (which was third from the back, the rest of the stalls and the upstairs were full) so I got to move along to where I could see best and sing along very quietly. I even cried at the end, despite knowing what happens. I didn't sob, however, unlike this woman sitting in front of me who obviously did not know the story. As we were walking out she was still collecting herself and saying to her partner, 'It was just so sad. That poor mother.' I think one of the things I love most about it is that it has a really strong female lead; the woman who played the mother was really good, I thought her voice sounded a bit tired in one particular song but I think it's also a bit unfair when you know a recording of a show really well because you judge all the songs against it.

This morning, because there is no rest for those on holiday, I was up at 7.15am and off to Cambridge. My friend Greg, with whom I went to high school and Victoria University, is doing his PhD in Chemistry there and had agreed to show me around for the day.

The chapel of one of the Colleges

Yet again, giant old buildings on a scale that is hard to comprehend even when you're standing right in front of or inside them. I still don't quite understand how it all works, but all the students belong to a college and a lot of them live in the college or flats associated with them. Greg showed me around the three main colleges, although one is mostly closed for rennovation. Each college we saw has immaculately manicured lawns and some have amazing gardens.

Entrance to a college

A mere corner of a college

One of the 'smaller' dining halls

A cool clock, unlike a very expensive and strange beetle clock that one of the colleges commissioned, photos of which do not do justice to the horrificness of it. It's just so weird and disturbing, the beetle is crawling/moving on a giant gold shell and it's really hard to actually tell the time due to the system of seemingly meaningless blue lights.

Having a current student as a tour guide was great as it meant I could go into all the parts of the University open to the public for free, whereas for some parts tourists usually have to pay. Some areas, though, were strictly private.

One the places we visited during the day that I liked the most though was called Kettle's Yard, which describes itself as 'neither a gallery nor a museum' (although there is a separate gallery space).

In the 1950s an ex-Tate Gallery curator and his wife bought four cottages in Cambridge and rennovated and restored them to house all the art, sculptures, and furniture they had aquired over the years. While they lived there they opened the house once a week to visitors and in the 1970s they donated it as-is to the University of Cambridge. The house is beautiful. The rooms you first enter into are quite small, so you have to ring the bell outside and a minder will let you in when there's enough space. Upstairs though it's all open plan and you can look down into another big open plan downstairs section. The floors upstairs are a light coloured polished wood and downstairs they're big flagstone tiles, all the walls are whitewashed and there a lots of windows and sky lights, there are shelves and shelves of books, and beautifully arranged objects (like a whole lot of small round grey stones arranged into a spiral on a table). I want to live in a house exactly like it when I grow up. Unfortunately you can't take photos inside unless you pay but their website has a virtual tour. And here is a window from the outside looking in.

Right next door is a mysterious looking church, which, it turns out, the owners of Kettle's Yard also helped restore.

After touring around, we met up with another guy I went to school with and hadn't seen in about seven years. Turns out he's doing a PhD at Cambridge too - there must be something in the water at Wairarapa College. The college Greg belongs to has punts the students can use, so Greg, Matthew, his girlfriend, and I went for a punt along the river. Apparently an essential Cambridge experience. I was very jumpy to begin with, the punt was not very steady and parts of the river were packed with professional punters and tourists who had hired their own punts and were giving it a go. We crashed early on and I was sure we were going to tip over but Matt turned out to be an expert punter and Greg wasn't too bad either, Apparently the trick to learning to punt well is a lot of beer. At first I had been very reluctant to take the giant pole and try my hand at driving the punt, but when we got to a quieter part of the river I very unsteadily climbed up onto the platform.

As you can see by the look on my face, I was not a calm, graceful punter, however, I managed to do pretty well steering us and I didn't fall off, unlike another guy we saw. So it was actually a success. I was glad to get back into the passenger's seat though. There were swans on the river that we passed just gliding along at one point, but when we passed them again one was chasing another and, having never seen a swan at pace, I could not believe how fast it went. Matt was driving the punt by then and pushing us along at a pretty steady pace but the swan raced past us and out of sight at lightning speed. I would not want to be the subject of a swan chase.

After punting we went to roof top bar that not a lot of people seem to know about, because instead of paying three pound fifty to climb some spire for the view, we got a view, less tourists, and a seat for as long as we liked, all for the price of a gin and tonic.

The train home was a non-stop to King's Cross and it was incredibly fast, the one on the way out to Cambridge had been pretty quick, but this time we were hurtling along and back in London in 50 minutes. Pretty quick for a lovely day in heart of Cambridgeshire.

It's hip to be Shoreditch

2011-08-13T20:55:00.000+12:00

It took five days, but I think I found the hipsters. Not that I was looking for them, I just knew they had to be somewhere and that somewhere appears to be Shoreditch.

I met Hayley and Gareth at Liverpool St Station and we first had a wander around Spitalfields Markets. We also had lunch at a yum place called Leon's.

We then wandered out into the streets and started seeing vintage clothes shops every five minutes. I've never seen so many second-hand Wayfarers in my life, and we all know that where there are Wayfarers, there are hipsters.

We took a stroll down Brick Lane, one end of which is full of Indian restaurants with guys standing outside trying to tempt you to come in. The other end has shops, cafes, and bars. I decided Shoreditch was my favourite place so far. Hayley said it was like a 'little Wellington'. If so, it would be like Newtown and Cuba Street had been mixed together.

All the street signs are translated into (what I guessed was) Arabic underneath. On one part of the street we passed a whole lot of men who seemed to have just come out of a mosque and were milling around talking to each other.

One of the shops we passed had these shoe boxes outside with old maps and black and white photos in them, most of the photos were old wedding photos. Old photos in second hand shops always make me sad, why didn't the family of the people in the photos want them?

Being Brick Lane, there were obviously a lot of bricks on that road and in the area in general, but there was also a lot of graffiti and street art to keep things interesting.

On the recommendation of Chrissy and Piet we went to a 'coffee house and bar' called The Bridge. I had my 50th strawberry tart of the week and a nice cup of tea. The Bridge was very cool, kind of dim and shadowy so hard to take photos in, but full of interesting things.

We sat upstairs in a room covered with fabric and full of paintings, lamps and ornate mirrors. Conveniently, I had a lounge on a chaise lounge, however, the dim lighting started making me a bit sleepy...

After Hayley and Gareth and I parted ways, I took a wee detour and went back to a couple of the vintage shops (and actually, like NZ, while they call themselves 'vintage' a lot of the clothes are just well picked second hand items, some probably aren't even 10 years old). Out of the kindness of my heart, I hadn't wanted to force Gareth to endure hours wandering around in musty shops earlier in the day. I ended up buying a skirt and a dress, but actually from Urban Outfitters and a place called The Laden Showroom where the work of small independent designers is showcased. Both places were having sales and I justified my purchases by reasoning that they could both be worn to work as well as just around. It's tricky though, because I still see things and go, '22 pounds! A bargain' and then have to stop and think it's actually more like NZ$44.

On the way back to the tube, I passed this bar, which, if I lived in Shoreditch, I would definitely go to. How could you not when Frida and Diego are hanging out on the walls!

Animals in various forms...

2011-08-12T22:37:00.000+12:00

At about midday yesterday I turned up at the New London Theatre in Drury Lane and got an amazing ticket to see War Horse that night. Right in the middle of row I. It was the perfect distance from the stage, smack bang in the middle.

I then had seven and a half hours until show time, so I did a bit of wandering. I bought my cousin Maggie the cutest dress in Monsoon that fulfilled the request that it be 'good for twirling', I wandered through Covent Garden but much like last time I went there, I wasn't all that taken by it. I liked Pollocks Toy Theatres though, it made me think, imagine if your parents were rich enough that they built you an actual working theatre in your house to play in when you were little? Like a Wendy House but a Wendy Theatre. That would be amazing.

I wandered so much that I found myself near the British Museum, so went in for a sit down. I got a map but that museum is massive and to be honest, a whole lot of things in cabinets gets a bit boring. The atrium is amazing though.

So I sat for a while, went and looked at a collection of clocks (one from the 1500s or something crazy like that), a library-type room, and then went to meet my friend Hayley, who I haven't seen for six months and who just got back from holiday in Ireland.

We stopped for a drink at a pub just down from St Paul's Cathedral. I didn't go inside but the outside is impressive enough. Even the slightly ill looking statue children in the grounds to one side.

After a cider (am becoming quite a fan of Bulmers, don't know if we have it in NZ) and lots of talking, I made my way back to Drury Lane to have some dinner before the show. I checked to see if Lonely Planet recommended anywhere nearby, and sure enough, they recommended a place just a few doors up from where I'd sat down on Great Queen Street.

Obviously I am fine doing things by myself, and that's how I've spent the majority of my time in London so far, but for some reason it felt a bit weird being inside (as opposed to a table outside where you can people watch a bit easier) more of a restaurant-type place than a cafe having dinner by myself. On the plus side, I think the waiter felt a bit sorry for me so I got very well looked after. And because I felt like trying something new, I ordered the pigeon. I don't know whether the following is going to make Alex regret asking for food photos, but she hates birds so maybe she'll love it. Vegetarians may want to opt out of the next paragraph.

That's a whole pigeon. With butternut squash and 'sticky' shallots. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't a complete bird. An image of rabid-looking pigeon I'd seen on the way to St Pauls kept popping into my head. I didn't even know where to start. I wish someone had been secretly filming me try to eat it because it would have been extremely amusing. I had been given a sharp, steak-like knife, so I started out semi-successfully trying to carve it like a chicken. But that technique soon deteriorated and after a while I was kind of hacking at it like some desperate mad woman because it was really yum and I didn't want to waste it but it was so difficult to get any meat off. I had expected the meat to be white, like a chicken, but it was actually red and had a quite a distinct taste, it reminded me of venison, not so much because of the taste just the type of meat. The squash and shallots were really yum and overall it was a delicious meal, but I was slightly distracted by feeling like everyone was watching me struggle with this freaking bird that didn't seem to want to be cut and kept slipping all over the plate. It was an ordeal. I walked out half expecting to be spattered with pigeon juice.

Anyway. War Horse. Amazing. Someone had seen it over two years ago when it was first on at The National Theatre and had come home and raved about it, so I'd seen some footage of the puppets and listened to the music. Seeing it live though was something else altogether. Overall I thought some parts were a bit long and the music got a bit same-y, but those puppets. It's almost beyond imagination how alive they become. The horses are operated by at least 3 people at any one time, two inside the body and one operating the head. They way they move the heads, make the ears twitch, the tails swish, and their chests even rise and fall like breathing, is magic. There's a video here but it's hard to see how the puppets are actually operated in it. If you watch it and then select the one called 'War Horse montage' that appears underneath when it's finished playing it gives a much better idea. It's just amazing, the actors can sit on the horses and 'ride' them and some clever staging can even make it seem like they're galloping along on them. The other puppets were mainly birds, including a very funny goose were very cool.

I had a bit of a cry at the start and again at the end, because the music is very moving and the horses are so alive. The guy who played the main character, Albert, was great. The overall design and staging was impressive, although the theatre wasn't as big as I'd imagined it to be. I sat by an American guy who said, 'Pretty good for last minute seats a? Whoever the couple was who were supposed to be sitting here missed out' (because it was obvious I also had a single seat). It was momentarily awful to wonder what had happened to allow these two amazing seats to become free, but as with many things, one person's misfortune is someone else's very very good fortune. I hope whoever they are, they're okay, and thanks for the seat!

The Queen's English

2011-08-11T21:45:00.000+12:00

I don't know if Alex's request for more food photos still stands, but here is yesterday's lunch. It was really yum, from a place on the South bank.

I should really take a photo of my delicious breakfast smoothies. I'm getting 5 star service at Chrissy and Piet's - my homemade fruit smoothie was delivered to me in bed this morning!

Yesterday I got the tube to Waterloo and headed to the National Theatre to see if I could get any on-the-day tickets to London Road, which has excellent reviews and an extended sold out season. I was very lucky to get one of two returned tickets for 32 pounds. And while I was looking through the National Theatre's programme I saw that James Corden from Gavin & Stacey is in a show there at the moment, it's sold out for the next week or so too, so I will have to try turning up and getting a ticket for that on the day as well.

The South bank is officially my favourite place. Being right in the city is just annoying as there are so many people, whereas along the river bank it's busy but not crowded and at the moment they're having a cool summer festival with little beach huts, sand, outdoor performers etc. These two little girls were too cute not to take a photo of.

With many many hours to kill until show time, I walked over Westminster Bridge (where a couple of buskers dressed in brightly coloured gowns with hideous masks of the Queen were dancing to catchy foreign music), past St James park, and up the Mall to Buckingham Palace. I recognised the Mall thanks to the Royal Wedding - I don't know if they have these Union Jacks up all the time but I recognised those as well. Those are some big tassles.

While I was sick at home the week before I left Wellington, I watched The King's Speech (which I really enjoyed, I loved Helena Bonham Carter and the portrayal of the Queen Mother as a bit sassy), so I had more appreciation for these statues of the Queen Mother and King George VI. Interesting choice of giant feather headwear for the Queen Mother.

The British are clearly into these 3D things at the bottom of their statues.

All around Buckingham Palace was teeming with people. I took a photo of The Balcony just because I could and half expected the Devil Child from the Royal wedding party to pop up at any moment with her hands over her ears.

However, I did not get to go into the rooms that are open at the moment while the Queen is on her summer holiday. The tickets were sold out for the rest of the day and the next day. Can I be bothered buying some online and going back? I would quite like to see The Dress in real life - not that you could get very close with so many people there.

My feet hate me, so after my Buckingham walk to and walk by, I went and sat in Green Park, next to the Palace, took my shoes off and snoozed for an hour. Weirdly, museums in London are free, deck chairs in the park are not. I had been sitting in one half asleep for about 10 minutes before a man came along and said, 'The chairs are one pound fifty for an hour, please.' For a moment I thought it was some kind of scam, but then I realised it explained why so many people were sitting/lying on the grass when there were empty deck chairs all around them. I was too comfortable to get up so I paid the ridiculous fee and continued sitting in the sun (wearing sun block of course, don't worry Mum) for an hour.

Then I wandered along Picadilly and turned down some interesting streets, tried on a very Kate Middleton dress (navy blue, cowl neck, tiny waist) and nearly bought it except it seemed pretty poorly made, realised I was in Soho which made me feel like Kate Moss, and then realised I had completely lost my sense of direction. I ended up on Charing Cross Road which annoyed me because I'd been there the other day and I would rather be walking along a street I hadn't been down before. Anyway, after one of the best strawberry milshakes and burgers I've ever had at a place called Byron, I crossed back over the river ready for some theatre.

Photo from here, where there's also an interesting article

No wonder, London Road is sold out. It's in a pretty small theatre by National Theatre standards. Having done a backstage tour of the National Theatre and been to a show there in 2005, I was expecting it to be one of the giant ones. But it was nice being so close to the actors, it probably works better that way than in a giant theatre.

But aside from the small venue, it's clearly also sold out because it's a great piece of theatre. Turning verbatim theatre (which is created with the actual words from interviews with real people, and in some cases with the actors mimicking exactly how the people interviewed have said things) into musical theatre sounds kind of impossible, but it works really well, even with every 'um' and 'you know' included. It makes you realise how musical people's everyday speech patterns are anyway. The show is about people who lived on London Road in Ipswich during and after the murders of five prostitutes who worked on the street, by a guy who had recently moved to the street.

Because the show is made from actual things people said, some of their opinions can be pretty controversial. In the second half one character was saying how she didn't feel sorry for the murdered prositutes because they had been a nuisance when they worked on London Road (rude to residents etc) and were a blight on society, so they were probably better off ten feet under (I don't know why she said ten feet instead of six feet). This American woman began yelling out, 'Shame on you! Shame on you for saying that, you are heartless!' and at first I thought it was part of the show but the actress seemed momentarily taken aback and then just started repeating parts of the previous lines, so I think it was entirely unexpected. The American woman didn't stop, she kept replying to the bits of the lines, 'You don't say that, you might think it but you never say it out loud, shame on you!' until another actor came on and the scene changed (luckily I think it had happened at the end of a scene anyway). It only lasted about 2 or 3 minutes all up but it was pretty uncomfortable. I guess in one way it's great that the American woman was so engaged in the show, but in another, it was just a weird thing to do because the actress wasn't speaking her own personal opionion, she was truthfully recounting someone else's exact words. And being verbatim theatre, you can't just start making up new lines to respond to some hecker. Or can you?

All the actors were amazing. They all played a number of different characters but each had a core London Road resident they returned to. I kept wondeirng whether the interviews had been video as well as audio recorded because every single character had really strong physical characteristics as well as strong speech ones. Or whether the physical traits grew out of the speech ones.

The set was simple but really effective and sometimes very surprising. The lid of a hot water urn from the Community Watch meeting in the first scene suddenly lifted off and rose up to reveal a hanging basket of flowers as the second scene began which was set during London Road's street garden competition after the murders.

The feeling after the show and the mesaages behind it were complicated, because obviously the opinions of a group of people are complicated and it's not easy to create one overarching theme. Prostitution is still illegal in Britain which seemed archaic from a New Zealand point of view. But the show was more about the residents of London Road than the situations of the women who'd been murdered. And for London Road the murders ended up being a positive thing because it brought the residents together, which is both awful and nice at the same time.

I bought the CD of the show because the technique was so interesting. Some of the songs are catchy but they're pretty bleak so I don't think I'll start listening to it all the time. Actually, all this talk about murdering young women at night didn't make the tube trip home by myself seem so appealing, but actually Waterloo was really busy and there were lots of people still around at 10pm on a Wednesday night so I felt fine. I even saw two women waiting on the platform I'd meet through barbershop a few years ago, so chatted to them on the way home. Small world. I also saw a mouse scurrying around right by the edge of the platform. I guess tube stations are rich pickings for mice, as long as they mind the gap and stay away from the tracks.

Bus-ting a move

2011-08-10T22:02:00.000+12:00

After another slow start yesterday (which doesn't even involve sleeping in like you'd think on a holiday, just mucking around heaps), I took the bus from around the corner to London Bridge. I love London busses! I sat up the top and had a great time seeing all sorts of things go by, including some good looking op shops not too far away that I will have to investigate.

I was just thinking, 'I could ride the bus for hours around here' when I realised I had actually been on the bus for about half an hour and we still seemed ages away. It got a bit old after that. Especially when some woman stormed downstairs to the driver and went off her nut, 'Are you purposely trying to make me late for work, mate? You could have made those lights but you slowed down. What the hell are you playing at? You might be on time for your shift or early or whatever but you're driving a London bus here, not Sunday driving.' She went on and on at the top of her voice. I was waiting for the bus to suddenly stop and for the driver to kick her out. I would have.

When we made it to London Bridge (I wonder how many people get hit by busses in London every year, like Wellington people just run out in front of them like it's impossible they'd ever actually get run over), I wandered along the South bank of the Thames towards the Globe and the Tate Modern. I love that area, maybe just because I remember bits of it, but also because it's not quite as crushingly busy as the centre of the city. There are random little gardens and parks, like this herb garden out the back of the Southwark Cathedral.

Going back to the Globe after six years was strange. The buildings seemed smaller and more complicated than I remember. I went in to see if I could get a ticket to anything this week but the shows I wanted to see have all sold out. I am a fool. I should have booked before I came over. I asked if I could turn up an hour or so before the show to see if any tickets had been returned and the box office said I could but seemed very unenthusiastic about my chances.

Then I wandered to the Tate Modern for some afternoon art. I love the Tate Modern's building, a giant old brick power station.

I saw the Frida Kahlo exhibition here in 2005 (which is still the best exhibition I've ever seen, purely because I am a Frida fan), but didn't get to look around the rest of the gallery.

After the Centre Pompidou and the Poetry and Dream section of the Tate Modern, I think I've had enough Surrealist art now to last me a while. There were lots of other cool things though.

An exact replica of the artist's stairwell, made from a gauze fabric and suspended from the ceiling.

I really liked a whole lot of drawings by David Shrigley.

'Venus of the Rags'

This made me laugh, after all my 'Me in a Mirror', this piece of art was actually just a mirror. I'm pretty sure the people around me when I was taking the photo thought I was a loser because it was obvious what I was doing. Well, too bad. It clearly had to be done.

My favourites were a whole lot of posters by feminist art activist group, the Guerilla Girls, who started in the 80s (if you click on the last one it will take you to a bigger version and you'll be able to read it all - because I know everyone would love to be reminded about all the barriers faced by women, not just in art).

While at the Tate I got a text from Chrissy saying to avoid Waterloo, so I got the bus home again from London Bridge, which, while on the bus, I began to think may not have been such a great idea. One of the areas we went through, Angel, had police everywhere and people sitting around me were saying helpful things like, 'Yeah they reckon it'll happen here tonight, maybe even in the next half hour or so.' Then when I got off the bus at the stop near Chrissy and Piet's, the shops including the supermarket had been closed. Apparently Chrissy and Piet had been sent home early from work. Piet had had to cancel some drinks with friends and notes, 'This is just annoying, it's ruining my social life!' We sat around watching the news but it seems the thousands of extra police in the city did the trick for London, and it's Manchester and other places around the UK that are flaring up now.

This made me smile on the way home though, people have drawn all different faces on a line of bollards that seem to have built-in jewels just asking to be made into eyes.

London calling

2011-08-09T23:33:00.001+12:00

On Sunday I made my way to the Eurostar (the customs person who checked my passport asked me how long I would be in UK for before I went back to South Africa, I was not impressed) and stupidly hadn't thought about there being a time difference between Paris and London. So I got on thinking it was an hour and a quarter trip, but realised when an hour and a quarter had passed and we still hadn't gone through any sizeable tunnels, it was actually a two and a quarter hour trip.

Still, so quick! I tried not to think about the fact that we were in a tunnel under the sea. It's too freaky. How does the weight of the water not make the tunnel collapse? The train is really long and goes super fast. We should have a tunnel from the North to the South Island, it would be way better than the ferry.

In London I'm staying with a family friend, Chrissy, and her husband Piet who's Dutch. Chrissy arranged to meet me at 'the giant lovers statue' at St Pancras. How giant is giant? This giant.

It is so cool. There are more little 3D pictures (I don't know what else to call them) around the lovers' feet.

The sculptor obviously has a sense of humour.

We got the tube to Chrissy and Piet's house, right near the Archway stop on the Northern Line, and just hung out there for the rest of the day. Their house is so lovely and cute and it was nice to be able to just sit on a couch, drink a good cup of tea (and later some glasses of good NZ wine), and chat for ages.

In fact, I like their house so much it's making me a bit lazy.

I didn't go out until about midday yesterday. I got the tube to Leicester Square and then just wandered the streets. I decided to get the London version of the Paris Lonely Planet that had been so helpful, so went to a big bookshop and both they and next closest branch at Covent Garden had sold out (the guy behind the counter was very helpful, he rang all these places) so I went to Oxford Street via Charing Cross Road and actually despaired a little at ever finding the shop. I passed so many second hand bookshops (which I have to try really hard to stay out of, they are too tempting and I cannot carry a million books to Edinburgh and home again, my pack has hardly anything in it as it is and I still felt like I was carrying rocks on my way from the hostel to the Eurostar). I finally found the shop, got the book, and had to have a lemon tart and some Earl Grey to get over the ordeal. Although actually, it was fine. I find the London A-Z maps really hard to read (hence why I wanted the more manageable Lonely Planet) but there are so many well known London things around and tube stops and the river you don't really feel like you can ever actually get lost.

While trying to find the bookshop, I had passed the National Portrait Gallery, so after my wee break I decided to go back there for the afternoon. After having to pay for everything in Paris, I was surprised it was free and then remembered that lots of museums in London are. Thanks London!

I think I must have spent about two and a half hours there, I got a bit over the Tudors etc but some of the more modern portraits are really cool and the BP Portrait Award 2011 exhibition was on, which was really busy but very worth squeezing amongst people for. I wasn't a huge fan of the winner, it seemed much like lots of other portraits in the gallery, I thought there were some much more innovative ones in the competition that really told a story and would have been more deserving of winning. There was also an exhibition called 'Glamour of the Gods', full of Hollywood portraits from the 1920s to 1960s. If it wasn't for classic movie Sundays over the past year, I don't think I would have appreciated the exhibition as much. There was an example of an original negative and then the final retouched image - it's amazing the difference between the Joan Crawford untouched and the Joan Crawford with glowing flawless skin.

Then I went and sat in Trafalgar Square for a while, before wandering in the direction of the river. The sky made everything from the Trafalgar Sqaure lions to Big Ben seem very moody.

While wandering the banks of the river, I got a text from Chrissy asking if I wanted to come to a pub quiz near her work. I managed to navigate the craziness that is 6pm at Waterloo station and get the Jubilee line to Kilburn. I was quite excited about my first real English pub quiz, I even ordered fish and chips to really keep it authentic, but I hadn't even finished my mushy peas when some police came into the pub and spoke to the bar staff. We didn't really take much notice but then bar staff came around to each table and explained that they were having to close the pub in the next ten minutes as the police had advised them it looked like there might be trouble coming to the area that night. I had seen a little bit about the riots on TV the night before and the Tottenham Court Road stop was closed when I took the tube in the morning, but I hadn't been worried about it until the pub incident. Making our way home was a bit freaky even though we didn't see anything. Chrissy and I got the train home via a pub closer to her house, which is in a different area of London, for a calming glass of wine. Then we watched the news on TV till about midnight. It's crazy. Last time I was in London they had just had the undergound bombings - it seems I am not a good luck charm.

We'll always have Paris

2011-08-08T22:55:00.000+12:00

For our last full day in Paris we got off at Les Halles and had a look around some shops. I had quite a few Euros left so I bought a highly impractical, slightly frou frou black dress that could only be worn of an evening. I thought it was actually quite appropriate for my only Parisian clothing purchase.

I had been pining for a cruise along the Seine and Ed valiantly agreed despite not liking boats. On the way we seemed to walk along Rue de Pet Shops and Garden Supplies. It was kind of upsetting seeing rows and rows of small cages with five puppies each cage. The garden shops were nice though.

First, we decided we needed some fuel for the boat journey so stopped at a cute Salon de The (once again my inability to work out how to do accents on here is really annoying, 'the' should have an acute accent on the 'e'). Hardly any places in Paris, except bakeries, have cabinet food like we're used to at cafes in NZ. So we were unnaturally excited to be able to see what we were ordering. The girls behind the counter didn't speak English though and when I tried to order a panini-type thing, rich looking cake, and a drink they decided we wanted the full 'brunch'. This is what we got.

That's right. Iced tea, hot chocolate, panini, cake, a friand-type thing, and last but not least, note the soft boiled egg. It was so much food...but all of it was good. Even the egg. The hot chocolate was hot milk and a chunk of chocolate on a stick which you stirred in. It was one of the better hot chocolates I had while in Paris. I had foolishly thought every hot chocolate in Paris would be amazing, but being a hot chocolate connoisseur of the highest degree, I have high standards, and actually only a few Parisian hot chocolates met them. I guess in one way it's nice to know that Butlers and Scopa hot chocolates in Wellington are just as good as the best of Paris.

Cutely, one of the girls who served us recognised us. She couldn't speak English but I managed to understand her when she told me she'd sat at a table next to Ed and I in Montmarte on the first night we were in Paris. In my very broken French and her non-existent English we managed to cover that we weren't English, we were New Zealanders (which she seemed quite excited by and told the other person working there), we were staying at a hostel in Montmarte, we had been there for a week, we were leaving the next day, and we had had a great time. She was lovely.

Then it was off to the Batobus. It was nice seeing Paris from a different perspective and, after a week, knowing what a lot of the buildings were as we passed them. It was like a Paris greatest hits from the water. It was also good seeing some things we hadn't seen before.

We spent about an hour sailing along and singing the 'Cruising on the Interislander' song. Then we got off and walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg. To get there we walked along Boulevard St Michel, the start of which is right by the river and across from Notre Dame so was absolutely heaving with people.

The gardens were great. There are so many nice gardens and parks in Paris and, like the Tuileries, this one had heaps of green chairs scattered around that people were sitting on, just hanging out. You don't seem to be allowed to sit on the grass in any of these parks though which felt a bit weird.

Lonely Planet had told us that there was a marionette show at the garden every afternoon. I was determined to see some kind of theatre while we were in Paris, even if it was a children's puppet show. The theatre was founded in the 1930s and it was like walking back in time...

The show was almost an hour long, all in French (obviously), and, despite it being a children's show, we had no idea what was going on. The first half was set on a boat, the second amongst ice bergs. During both the first and second halves, some new random puppets came on, did a wee dance and then left and the story continued. The first time it was sailors, the second time penguins... The kids seemed to love it though - calling out answers to the main puppet's questions, laughing, calling out 'Behind you, behind you!' when the extremely scary polar bear kept sneaking up behind the puppets. It was an experience, but not one I'd rush to repeat.

We then went for a wander around St Germain. We came across the oldest church in Paris, apparently part of The Da Vinci Code is set there. I wouldn't know.

We think there must have been a wedding there earlier in the day as the floor around the entrance and exit doors was covered with little pink and white paper hearts.

By about 6pm we decided were were hungry and need some end-of-week celebratory drinks. We headed to Les Deux Magots, a former favoured haunt of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Ernest Hemingway. On the way we completed our French experience with a protest.

We have no idea what they were protesting about, their flags were waving around too much to read them properly, we think we saw a word that looked like 'indigenous'. Their song was very catchy though and we sang it as we continued along down the street.

Les Deux Magots was very full but our waiter was very good. So many times over the week we would order and then I would remember I wanted some water, or butter with our basket of bread (why does it not automatically come with butter? I thought the French were all about butter), so I'd ask the waiter and he/she would say, 'Oui, oui' and then NEVER RETURN. It became a bit of a running joke actually.

We had one of the strongest cocktails I've ever drunk. About half way through his Ed said, 'I think I'm drunk already.' It was great. Being our last night and having a bit of money left over, we went slightly all out. I got a salad with duck and foie gras. The foie gras was amazing. So amazing I was prepared to ignore the fact that a duck may have had a tube forced down its throat to achieve such yumness.

Alex has requested more food photos, so here's our dinner, even though it's not a great photo. Ed had chicken with 'exotic chutney'. I asked if the chutney tasted exotic and he said, no, it just tasted like chutney.

We stayed for quite a while at Les Deux Magots as the rain that had been threatening since the late afternoon did indeed pour down and our decision to again not attempt to go to the outdoor movie was validated. I had another extremely yum tarte aux fraise and then at about 10pm we moved on to have a drink somewhere else, but somehow we managed to end up at a place that started playing the soccer on a giant tv really loudly. Apparently we managed to find the only sports bar in Paris...Then we went home via a macaron shop.

The next morning there was a power cut - when Ed checked out the extremely attractive Sebastian behind the desk tried to tell him it was all through Paris, 'maybe even all through Europe.' Then winked at him. I was only a little bit jealous. I had already left by then to get to the Eurostar. So it was goodbye Paris.

On reflection, some things I learned about Paris while I was there that I haven't already mentioned:

*The crossings are fake. They look like the white striped NZ pedestrian crossings, but unless they're at traffic lights and there's a green man, cars will not stop for people trying to cross.

*Sometimes, it stinks. Especially some of the corridors of the Metro and outside the Sacre Coeur. And actually even just on some of the streets. It's like they wash them with urine.

*We are so used to cafes where you pay at the counter when you order, leaving cash with the bill on a table outside is really hard to do. Twice we put the money on the tiny tray with the bill and then looked around in vain for our waiter to come and take it away, got up, hesitated, then went and stood a few metres away, watching to check he came and got it. I guess if someone walked past and swiped it before the waiter came along, it would be their own fault for being too slow. Still, we couldn't just leave money sitting on the table without weirdly loitering to watch that it got picked up by the right person.

*I loved Paris, and I'd like to go back one day and do some of the things we missed out. But first I think I'd like to go somewhere else in France. And somehow, I don't think I could live in Paris. That smell...it might not be everywhere or all the time, but when it hits you, it is horrific.