It’s been one hell of a windy day here in the UK. The photo to the right is a shot I took this evening in Finsbury Square, London, of a humongous branch that had been ripped off of a tree. It was so big that instead of it being moved, a small fence had been put up around it.
Earlier in the day, looking out of my office window I had seen birds being completely batted away as they tried to fly into the gusts of wind. Newspaper was flying high up into the sky and the fence around the building site opposite my office had come down. One of my colleagues told me that he had nearly been hit by a flying hard-hat that had been blown off of a site workman (which would have been quite an ironic tale to tell for years to come, I think.)
The journey home was a bit of a mess – lots of tube lines were experiencing delays and it took me a while to feed myself into the crowd slowly flowing into Moorgate. I’d been warned by a text message from Mat that the Silverlink trains at Euston had scrapped their timetable and were just waiting for trains to fill up before sending them on their way so I knew what to expect. The staff at Euston seemed to be prepared and have everything under control – as I descended the ramp to the usual Silverlink platforms there were a bunch of British Transport Police and Silverlink staff keeping everybody back from the platforms and only letting people through when trains arrived. I misheard what they said and wandered through with a crowd heading for a Watford local service so waited at the barriers and took a short film of the goings-on:
I’m sure tomorrow’s newspapers will be filled with pictures of the aftermath of the storm but if you want to see more, somebody has just set up a Flickr group to collect photos.
My brother-in-law is visiting us this weekend so we thought we’d take a drive to Spitalfields Market in London. As we walked over to the market, past Exchange Square, we noticed a load of trucks, lights and cables all being shifted around. On the way back we saw scores of people hanging around in smart business dress – pretty unusual for a Sunday – and on closer inspection we discovered that they were all extras standing around waiting to be filmed. The director was none other than David Schwimmer of Friends fame.
Not that exciting but worth a blog! The film doesn’t look that original but at this early stage I’m not sure I can judge. Would be cool to see the Exchange Square scene in the final cut, though.
Had a lovely night out at the theatre with my wife last night, despite the efforts of the restaurant to spoil it by giving us this pitiful side salad for the princely sum of £2.50! Okay, we’d eaten half of it but still – how small is that? I mentioned it to the waitress who gave me an apologetic look and said “erm, yes…I know…”. The food was good but expensive – if you’re going to the Old Vic then the restaurant may be a good choice as it’s very convenient and quite atmospheric, otherwise there are plenty of other places to eat nearby.
The play itself was just okay as well. We had paid £28 each for tickets right on the roof of the theatre and could barely see the characters’ faces. The reviews were very good but I didn’t really feel that I got into it – it didn’t help that as time went by my bum started to feel as though it was leaving this world behind and the heat from everything below seemed to be collecting around us. Bits of the play were enjoyable – Kevin Spacey was very good when he was having an angry rant and Eve Best was excellent as the Irish farmer’s daughter – but the script seemed a bit too ‘theatre for thespians’ for my liking. At times I felt like shouting down to the characters when they were playing dumb and couldn’t see what was going on around them – I felt as though it was so obvious as absolutely nothing else had happened during the play apart from the central plot so why couldn’t they see it too?
Still, for all my grumbling it was great to go out for a lovely night of dinner and theatre with my wife – hopefully we’ll pick a better one next time!
A few weekends back my wife, my dad, and a few uncles and cousins of mine all took part in the Chloe Catling Cycle Challenge to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on behalf of Chloe Catling, a relative of mine who has CF. We had a great day out and managed to complete the 25-mile course in under two hours, which I didn’t think was too bad a time.
Jez, the event organiser, had a problem when his tyre burst on the first mile so we all scooted past him while his friends hunted around for a bike shop that was open early on a Saturday morning. The rest of the ride was pretty much problem free. Jez had roped in a number of friends and family to help with registration, signage, marshalling along the course etc and they all contributed loads to a making it a really enjoyable event. It was great to get out and about; I’m tempted to try some more charity rides this summer – watch this space.
Thanks so much to everyone who donated to or sponsored the ride – it’s all really appreciated. If anyone still wishes to contribute some sponsorship money you can do so at the justgiving.com page. Thanks!
A few weeks ago my wife and I went along to the wonderful NFT to see Antenna 18, the latest in a long line of evenings where they present a number of music videos and have some of the directors and producers there to be interviewed and answer quesitions from the audience.
We had a great time – two videos that I would recommend viewing are New Me by Jamie Lidell and Geisterschloss by Oliver Laric – both fantastic. In fact, Oliver Laric can be seen in the first video as well – he’s the guy bopping along dressed in white – as it was directed by his girlfriend, Aleksandra Domanovic. Finally, if you haven’t seen the Plan B video to No Good, you should definitely take a look – it’s like Sledgehammer revisited!
It was fab to do something different – London offers so many great cultural events and we don’t go to enough of them. We may well be back!
Just a reminder about the 25-mile summer cycle ride on Saturday 24 June around West London for Cystic Fibrosis. The website – www.cycle25.org – is now live with lots more information on my cousin as well as a route map and a registration form. If you’re not doing anything that Saturday why not join in?
Speaking of cousins, one of my relatives has organised a sponsored cycle ride around West London on Saturday 24 June 2006 to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis. My cousin Chloe suffers from the disease and has to undergo a lot of physiotherapy, drugs and spells in hospital – by raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust we hope to help her and others.
If you’re not doing anything on the 24 June why not join us for a ride? If you’re not a rider you can still donate using the justgiving.com page. Every penny helps!
I’m glad we didn’t need to resort to this when we decided to move here.
Seriously, how would this work? Sounds like a raffle to me – does that mean you completely avoid stamp duty since you’ve not actually bought the house even though you win it?
Saw my first Critical Mass bike ride the other weekend as I was heading to the pub to meet Mik, Nick and Iain. It was very exciting – for a few minutes I felt that I was thrust into the middle of a premium blogging opportunity, armed with my trusty W800i camera and thoughts of what I would post, but it didn’t quite work out like that. It was fun for a few minutes – there were literally hundreds of bike riders and the car drivers were going nuts because they weren’t able to move – but unfortunately my photos and video didn’t come out that well.
I think the idea behind the Critical Mass rides is a good one – reclaiming public places in a peaceful way by using the sheer number of people involved. It sounded great to me since I read about the movement in the book No Logo by Naiomi Klien. It made me think of the photography exhibition on El Salvador I saw at the International Center of Photography in New York – people from El Salvador had no concept of land ownership until the Spanish invaded, which I find totally fascinating. It’s an important statement and one which I hope continues.
It’s been one hell of a windy day here in the UK. The photo to the right is a shot I took this evening in Finsbury Square, London, of a humongous branch that had been ripped off of a tree. It was so big that instead of it being moved, a small fence had been put up around it.
Posted by adoran2 
Posted by adoran2 
Posted by adoran2 
Just a reminder about the 25-mile summer cycle ride on Saturday 24 June around West London for Cystic Fibrosis. The website – 
Speaking of cousins, one of my relatives has organised a 
