Right, so currently I'm staying Clapham after a week in Raynes Park.
Tim and Kelly are away so I have a bed, which makes continues my pretty good run of sleeping spaces. So far, I'm yet to really sleep on couches very much at all. Nice.
Haven't done much lately - gone for a few runs, caught up with a few friends and watched the Australians lose every sport they play.
Last week, I caught up with Katherine, a friend of mine from Australia. She was in London for a few days before heading to Germany, Austria and other former Nazi regions for a two week motorbike trip. Took her around the sights of London (Westminster, Big Ben, Buckingham palace, St James park) and saw the sights again. Was a really good walk around and the weather turned up too. After that she was meeting a friend and they invited me along to go to the theatre.
I was a bit nonchalant about the theatre to be honest, as it was 45 quid although if there were tickets still available after 7pm, you could get them for 20 quid. Once again, I used the 'don't turn down the invitation to try something new when traveling' mantra and it turned out to be a good choice.
We saw a production called "Warhorse" -- a story about a boy who has a pet horse that ends up getting sold to the army at the onset of WWI. The boy fakes his age and enlists to join the English army to find his horse which has been caught up in enemy fire and deemed lost. The horse ends up being found by the Germans while the boy fights in the trenches looking for his horse. It was a really cool play actually. The horse was a puppet, but only in the loosest sense of the word. Animatronic would be a better description. It (the puppet) was about 7 feet high, and manned by 3 actors, who wore clothes that fit into the production. One controlled the head with a pole-like contraption, one controlled the forelegs and the other controlled the hindlegs. The horse 'costume' sat over the two actors controlling the legs and they also had a system of pulleys that manipulated the various joints of the legs.
Look here for a better picture of what it looked like: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/45507/about-the-show/image-gallery.html It's an image gallery from the site.
So yeah, now I can say I've been to the theatre. Apparently it's not only for toffs and twats after all.
Other things of note have been going to Regents Park with Mike to watch the Ashes on a big 30 foot screen with thousands of people. It was a really cool day and well organised. Lots of booths around and plenty of space to sit on the ground and watch. England won too, so it was nice to see the Aussies lose. Not sure how they did though -- they dominated the bowling and batting stats (6 of the top 7 runscorers were Australian). The series was characterised more by bad performances rather than good ones. Still, a good win for England but the quality of cricket was not as good as the 2005 win. Perhaps a higher calibre of players back then (Warne, McGrath, Vaughn, Pietersen). Unsurprisingly, the British media are going on about how much they've always loved cricket and how brilliant the team are. No wonder the Aussies love to beat them so much.
Right, well that's all really. Jones has made progress on my site, so I guess the time for job hunting will be coming sooner rather than later. This weekend is the Notting Hill carnival which is supposed to be the 2nd best street festival in the world, with over a million people apparently. I have friends in Notting Hill, so might have to pay them a visit... Also have had an opportunity to go see Wales on a camping trip, but the Notting Hill festival only comes around once a year, so will do that, I think. Wales won't be getting invaded anytime soon, I don't think.
