A Day In London

Rain was forecast for today and so I decided to go to London as there was nothing pressing to do at home. I had been planning to visit two exhibitions and decided to do this while I still had time. I had some calls to make so I didn't leave home until late morning and got to Waterloo just in time for lunch.

There is a restaurant/gastro-pub near Waterloo called "The Fire Station" (yes, located in an old fire station). Their restaurant menu is quite expensive but the bar menu was more reasonable. I ordered a bacon and chicken baguette and looked at the beer selection before settling for a pint of Staropramen - "beer from Prague" it said on the blackboard. It tastes different in London! The beer has a sharper flavour and is slightly darker than the usual. Almost like a Granat, but not quite that dark. It was definitely worth trying it, and sufficiently different that I wasn't overwhelmed with homesickness for Prague.

The first exhibition was at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank. Antony Gormley is one of my favourite artists and sculptors and the Hayward has a new exhibition of his work. Much of his work is too big for an indoor venue, such as his Angel Of The North, a gigantic metal sculpture outside Gateshead, near Newcastle and Another Place, an installation of sculptures over several square miles of beach, so I was curious to see what would be exhibited.

One exhibit was called "Allotment" and consists of

300 Reinforced concrete life-size units derived from the dimensions of local inhabitants of Malmö aged 1.5 – 80 years.

Each unit is rectangular and the whole thing reminded me more than anything of a war cemetery.

The flagship of this exhibition is a work called "Blind Light" which is a glass-walled room filled with water vapour, like the inside of a cloud or a very heavy fog. I walked inside and was disorientated almost immediately. I couldn't see my own hand at arm's length and lost site of the entrance within a few metres. I didn't dare lose contact with the wall as I walked around inside, hearing voices of other visitors and not seeing anyone.

There was an external exhibit, too, called Event Horizon which consists of more sculptural figures standing on rooftops in the South Bank area, all looking towards the Hayward Gallery. A more typical Gormley work. I won't write any more about him, but take a look at the exhibition website if you want to know more.

I then went to the Imperial War Museum to see their temporary exhibition on camouflage. The exhibition shows how avant-garde artists contributed to the development of camouflage during the First World War and discusses developments since, including the use of camouflage clothing by anti-war protesters and fashion designers. It was interesting, but slightly superficial as it was intended to appeal to a mass-market.

I just had time for a latte at Waterloo station before getting a train home in time to avoid the rush hour.

Back In The Saddle

Yesterday I had my tasks under enough control and the weather was dry enough for me to go out cycling. I went on one of my favourite local rides which is about 21 km and normally takes me about an hour, altough I was expecting it to take anything up to 80 minutes. I was expecting to take it quite slowly but as I rode along something in my brain kept putting the pressure on until either the legs ached or I got out of breath.

It was lovely to get back out into familiar countryside. I got home feeling quite tired and aching in a few places - my bike has a fairly hard leather saddle and my behind has to get accustomed to it again before I can ride for any great distance, but I'm sure that won't take too long. When I got home I realised that I had finished the ride in about 70 minutes.

In the evening I dismantled the framework of an old greenhouse and put it into the skip, thus freeing some time for today and a trip to London.

Extreme Gardening

Anyone who knows me knows that I hold passionate views on gardening - I hate it with a passion. Nevertheless, we have a fairly big garden at home and although Sue enjoys doing things in the garden it has got out of control over the last year or so. I was working in Prague and Sue was coming out most weekends so we had no time to work in the garden and couldn't afford to pay a gardener.

Once we got back from Prague it was obvious that we had to do some major work quite quickly, so last weekend was earmarked for garden work. Apart from the unkempt lawns we have lots of shrubs and climbers at both the front and back of the house, and these were overgrown. We needed to hire a skip (US dumpster) which arrived at 7:15 on Saturday morning, although the hire company said it would come between 8:00 and 12:00!

The weather forecast was not promising, but we made a start. Sue was in charge of cutting back and my job was to fill the skip and to do any trimming which needed ladders or a long reach. The neighbours, who had been making little comments about the state of the garden, were impressed to see the skip which was quite a big one at 8 cubic yards (just over 6 cubic metres).

On Saturday we worked until about 4pm, with breaks for drinks, lunch and rain, and then resumed from 5:30 until we finished at 8:00. Starting again on Sunday was hard as we were both tired and aching from the day before, but we worked through until 4pm, again with a break for lunch before we were both too tired to continue.

The skip still had a bit of space in it, which I can use for some other rubbish which we have accumulated, but we had only cleared the front of the house and part of the side. We still have a lot of work to do and need to hire another skip for two weeks time. Although it was a hard couple of days it had to be done, and it was good to see the results. I did think wistfully about our relaxed weekends in Prague with no gardening responsibilities, though!

One for the Business English teachers

In the light of Google's quarterly figures yesterday, and the subsequent drop in stock price, I was amused to see the article linked above (just click on the title of this post).

Those of you who have to teach vocabulary of trends and rate of change of numbers may find their examples useful. :)

Have a good weekend!

Friday Thoughts

Greetings from sunny but damp Hampshire. The weather forecast promised a wet day in Southern England, and they weren't wrong! It rained solidly, with thunder and lightning, all morning and most of the afternoon. I wasn't too worried as I had too many things to occupy me indoors today. I now have two pending job applications, so fingers crossed. I have spent the afternoon refreshing some of my Solaris and Internet skills so that I will be on firm ground in any interviews for IT jobs.

Earlier this week I was working on my CV and had to deal with various administrative chores as well as buying two new tyres for the car. When we were passing through Belgium last Saturday, Goodyear had people in the motorway services checking tyre pressures and tread. They told me my tyres needed replacing immediately, this wasn't strictly true as the tread was still legal, but it was definitely time to renew them. I need to get a job to keep up with the bills.

It hasn't all been work, though, I have put some photos from Prague onto my Flickr site and I have made time for this update to the blog. I will make some time next week to start writing up our holday in North Bohemia.

I'm still thinking of my friends in Prague, and good luck to Alasdair on his gig at Noel's!

Safely Home

We got up at 4am on Saturday (which was hard work after a final meal with friends in prague the night before) and managed to pack the car for a 6am departure.

The journey went smoothly apart from a 1 hour delay due to an accident on the motorway near Wurtzburg, and we arrived in Calais at 6:30pm. We stopped at a motorway services on the M20 for some food and managed to get home at 9:30 - just in time to get some food for breakfast from Tesco.

Yesterday we managed to get to Watford to see an exhibition of photographs which our friend Janice had organised in memory of her late partner, Malcolm. We saw some of our old friends there and I was really pleased that I was able to get home from Prague in time to see the exhibition.

I started job-hunting today, as well as catching up with some tasks at home.