A relatively quiet week was meant to beckon, but stupidly, very stupidly, well I just can’t explain how stupidly things happen. On 27 April 2011, Scott and I signed up for ….. the 2012 London Marathon, well the ballot for a spot anyway. Of course knowing my luck I will get a spot and Scott won’t and let’s face it, without somebody pushing my lardy ass I won’t do it. So I spend the rest of the week in shock and listening to Scott coming up with a training plan for 12 months away. Hmm need chippies and wine to contemplate all this.
29 April 2011
Monumental day for some. Whereas Scott and I decide to spend the royal wedding day sightseeing. Figured everyone would be watching the wedding. And were we right. At 11am we were on the London Eye just watching all the crowds, whereas we just wandered through the streets, going against the stream of people. The London Eye is actually quite good, you get a map that tells you what all the buildings are and really gives you your bearings. Should have done it earlier. It is meant to be cheaper to buy on the internet, but it doesn’t save you much and you still need to pick up the tickets inside the ticket office.
After the London Eye, we head off to the Imperial War Museum. This has a Holocaust Exhibition on at the moment and I thought it was incredibly moving and we ended up spending most of the afternoon there. The exhibits are well maintained and vary from WWI through to more current wars.
We headed back to the Morpeth Arms for lunch and a quick energy booster. We found this pub just after we arrived in London and it still has a nice feel, good food and good staff. We head back to Victoria and get a tube to Hammersmith and walk home along the river If we had our time here in London again, we would live in the Hammersmith area as it is nicer, cheaper and more lively than Chiswick.
30 April 2011
Up early to pick up our hire car from Avis (Fiat Punto Evo Dynamic 1.4) as we are heading off to see some friends in Winchester (Susie, Jeremy and Alfie), but decide, as the weather is nice, to take a detour to the New Forest. Seemed like a good idea – but in hindsight a bit stupid. It was sunny and there are only a few roads in and out, these were the roads that everyone else was on. Eventually we pulled off into a small village, found a pub (Waterloo Arms) with a beer garden and decamped there for a bit. We then did a quick visit to the seaside (Lymington/Lindhurst) so Scott could dream about finding a girlfriend who liked packing up everything and buying a yacht to sail around the world in, before he came back to reality and we headed off to Winchester. It was fantastic to catch up with Susie after about 15 years and meet Jeremy and her adorable 2 1/2 year old Alfie, who introduced me to Dr Seuss. We were spoilt with food, drinks and company and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
1 May 2011
Well the beginning of May, omg the time has flown by. We decide to visit the Submarine Museum near Portsmouth this morning and head off there. There are three submarines to view – don’t know the details (Scott’s forte this section) but we do a tour inside one of the submarines and then wander around the other exhibits. Afterwards we head to the Historic Dockyards in Portsmouth to see HMAS Victory, HMAS Warrior and Mary Rose. Getting onto the boats is expensive, so we save our pennies, instead wandering around the outside and through the dockyards. Fascinating place and I felt it was a shame that so much of it was taken over by shops and restaurants, the shops sell the same old trinkets that don’t have much to do with the things you even see there. Anyway Scott loved it and we then went to a local pub for something to eat and to watch the world go by before heading back to London and dropping off the hire car. I think we should soon be premier Avis customers, although would never hire or buy a Fiat Punto, very uncomfortable car to drive in and generally lacking in any performance capabilities.
2 May 2011
I am sure most people by now are getting sick of all the bank holidays, running out of things to do. We decide to go for a walk along the waterfront and see what is happening, but things are very quiet. Even though the weather is sunny, seems a lot of people are either further afield or at home. We watch a couple of lasers ailing up the Thames and generally meander through the streets sticking our noses into some of the gardens and houses along the way.
4 May 2011
Off to see Rocket to the Moon at the Lyttelton Theatre at The National. Been looking to this play for a while, gets a good right up and also stars Keelie Hawes from Ashes to Ashes. We grab something to eat and head into the theatre. The seats here are a 100% improvement on the last theatre, unfortunately the play was very long and quite boring. We had purchased last minutes reduced price seats and it seems like they had put all of us in the middle section surrounded by nobody, very strange, you would think they would spread people out so the theatre looked fuller. I am sure Scott nodded off at one point. It also takes us ages to get home, so bit of a fizzer night really.
6 May 2011
I am actually taking my Friday off work and as the weather is nice we head into central London and go to the British Museum. I went here years ago and can remember a huge egyptian exhibition, so am keen to see that and compare it to Paris and The Louvre. The good thing about London is that most museums etc are free, so we wander into the fantastic opening for the museum, it is covered in glass and is just so light and airy, has a great feel. Scott likes the fact that there are plenty of places to sit around, have something to eat and even get a beer! We head into the egyptian galleries and Scott is disappointed with the Rosetta Stone – apparently was expecting something huge. Whereas in reality it was tiny. We then go through the exhibits and towards the end he asked when we were going to see the Elgin Marbles, I had to remind him we saw them at the beginning – again he was disappointed in the size of these. We both agreed that the museum was lacking a little bit in some of their exhibts and after all these years I was disappointed. We did find a lovely place called PJ’S Grill and had something to eat. We walked down to Tower Bridge and caught the Thames Clipper (riverboat) to Greenwich.
We are seeing Proof at the Greenwich Playhouse tonight and after the theatre on Wednesday hoping it is a better showing. On arrival it doesn’t bode well, the theatre is tiny and the box office isn’t open. We had to go back a few times before we could get our tickets. On going upstairs to the Playhouse there are two rows and the scene is amongst the audience. I am sure Scott is going to kill me one of these days. Anyway we settle in for a fantastic time, the play was good, the story good, it was great to be so close to the actors. We were very pleasantly surprised. This theatre has some great reviews of the productions they stage and would definately recommend it to anybody that is visiting London and wants to see fringe threatre at its best. We were then not very pleasantly surprised at the 2 hour journey to get home on the tube. Ridiculous.
7 May 2011
We are catching up with one of my oldest and best friends this weekend, but first head off to Cambridge. The traffic is a nightmare and every road we go on is full of roadworks, make it a long and tiring drive. We get to Cambridge to find that parking is at a premium, but eventually find a spot and walk into the old city, visiting several of the colleges (same set up as Oxford). However, some of the universities I really wanted to visit are closed to examinations – very inconvenient, so we head along the Backs and watch people trying to punt – it looked bedlam. We both felt that the town lacked the charm of Oxford.
We got back into the car and headed to Earls Colne to visit Nancy, Marc, Harvey and Mary. We arrived to a fantastic welcome and loads of hugs and catching up. It has been 11 years since I have seen Nancy in Australia and it felt like yesterday. Scott was soon the big favourite by carrying the kids around upside down – he thought the novelty would wear off (hah!). We spent the afternoon chatting, drinking more bubbles than good for us, having a great Indian takeaway and generally relaxing.
8 May 2011
Up late – this area is so quiet and the kids were obviously worn out and slept in as well. We got up, played some more. It is a lovely day with sunshine, although it did rain overnight, and then headed into the village to play in the park and have a walk around with Marc and Harvey while Nancy watched Mary pass her dancing exam.
After some great fun on the swings, we headed to The Five Bells for lunch. This was a lovely lunch spot and the staff were excellent. So after eating our body weight in food, we walked back home and did some more playing. In Scott’s case more walking around with the kids upside down before having to drive home. Very sad.
11 May 2011
Back onto the culture trail tonight and we head off to the Globe Theatre to see Shakespeare’s Alls Well That Ends Well. We have hopefully booked a seat with a cushion so with trepadation we finally get to the Globe, have a glass of wine and find out that yes we have a chair and cushion. The Globe is designed around the original configuration so you either stand or sit on wooden benches. I seem to have become accustomed to some sort of luxury, so am pleased I got the seats right. However, we are at the side of the stage so that is a bit weird. Wish we were in the box next door as the staff from HSBC were having champagne and canapes – things can’t be too bad in the banking sector.
13 May 2011
Well it is Black Friday and things have turned into a disaster. After spending the week on the phone to Citibank, we find that because we don’t have a landline in London they won’t transfer our (yes our own money) to the company we are meant to be buying the campervan from. It has taken them 5 days to tell us what the hold-up has been and understandably we are furious. Instead we are now relying on ANZ to do the transfer over 4 days, so it looks like we may be homeless. So as we then spend the morning cancelling bookings and tickets, I went to work for a few hours. In the afternoon we decamped to the Bulls Head for one too many drinks to bemoan the uselessness of banks in Australia. Even more annoying is that we have had to incur car insurance/breakdown insurance for nothing and we can’t change them, so fingers crossed the money eventually gets where it is meant to get and we soon have something tangible.
14 May 2011
Off shopping for the last bits and pieces of clothing etc that we think we will need over the coming months. Things like Merrell, North Face, Mountain Hardware are very cheap here, so we stock up as we have a box going back to Australia, so replace a lot of things that were wearing out with some new stuff and sending back all my workclothes etc, so we have plenty of space in our bags.
15 May 2011
Back on the tourist trail and off to Hampton Court Palace, the home of Henry VIII. We spend the morning trawling through the Palace and the huge gardens. The weather was so nice yesterday, but alas today it rains and is cold – we certainly won’t miss this weather. After hours rambling around the palace, the gardens were disappointing, there are loads of aphids and bugs on the roses and some of the other plants, don’t seem to have been tended very carefully and weeding seems to have been ignored for a considerable length of time. Eventually due to the cold, we decamp back to Kew and head to the Coach & Horses for a Sunday Lunch. The pub is packed and they must have some new staff and it was a disaster getting the right food and drinks, very disappointing considering how many good meals we have had there in the past.
19 May 2011
Officially my last day at WorleyParsons, so now I am unemployed. Can’t believe it has been nearly 5 months. To celebrate the end of my working days I have a horrible cold and head home to bed.
20 May 2011
Yeah finally the money trickled through to our motorhome company and we head down to Kent to pick it up. We spent ages with Graham from Select Motorhomes going through the home and how everything works, before we are given the keys, signed all the paperwork and now officially have a roof over our heads until Christmas 2011. We tenatively leave the car yard and drive off to a local pub for a meal and a drink before tackling the UK roads and the motorway back to London. Luckily with our apartment we have a parking bay in a secure complex, so we park the 6.3m long motorhome into a car space and start going through what we have and making a list of things we need to arrange and purchase. The list seems daunting, but more daunting is actually finding the shops to buy things in – there isn’t a Bunnings here.
21 May 2011
We hit the shops with our list doing several trips back and forth to the apartment, shops and motorhome stowing and moving things around. We have also had to pack a box which is being collected on Monday for Australia, so are taking the opportunity to sort out the huge amount of stuff we seem to have collected since setting up home. Anyway many trips to the recycling center also follow and we eventually sit down at the end of the day exhausted.
22 May 2011
Up early as we are off to Twickenham for the London Sevens. Scott has been looking forward to this for so long, I hope it is going to be good. The theme for the games is “beach” but we give up as today it is cold and a bit drizzly. However, there are many games played very quickly and plenty of things to look at and see. It is quite a fun atmosphere and like previous Twickenham games is very biased towards the English who have a cheer squad (of the ugliest cheerleaders you can imagine who didn’t realise that the orange tan look isn’t no longer fashionable, if it ever was). Anyway we stayed to the bitter end to watch Australia play awful rugby and deserve to get beat.
23 May 2011
Our box is being picked up for Australia today, and we decide that we may as well give the motorhome a trial run, so we head off to Chipping Norton about 2 hours north of London to a lovely little campsite where we park up the campervan, unpack all our stuff and head on the bus into the local town to try out the local beers. Scott is very taken with Hook Norton, so after one too many pints we stagger back to the campsite and have some dinner and gently chill out for the evening. It has been a very windy, wet and blustery day.
24 May 2011
Heading back to London as the UK Visa agent has called and all Scott’s paperwork is being couriers to the apartment ready for our departure to Ireland. So we can’t enjoy much more of the local scenery.
25 May 2011
Last day in London and it is apartment cleaning time. Scott and I firstly head off into Holborn to help our my cousin and fix his computer if Scott can, before heading back to the apartment to do the final cleaning. We are only eating in the apartment tonight and will be sleeping in the motorhome, so everything can be cleaned with a final inspection tomorrow. Sad to leave our little apartment, we have got used to it and it is going to be a bit nerve wrenching giving up any form of stability and abode.