Category: London Day to Day

This should really be lesson number one if you’re moving to London: don’t ever see a movie at the Vue Cinema in Leister Square. Well .. unless you think it’s normal to pay 12.50 for a flick. yes, 25 Canadian Dollars!
Now the thing is, I get to the theater with only a few minutes to spare so when the price comes up, I pause for a split second, try to remember what I paid at the move theatre in Angel a few months back… unpause, no time for this, and I pay the surly teenager (nice to see that is a universal constant).
Anyway, i text a few friends about how expense it is, and it seems that EVERYONE knows that Leister Square is overpriced. But let me tell you how much .. DOUBLE!

One friend simply texts: That’s Central London!

Is this even legal??
Come on! Double!

Plus side, The Darjeeling Limited was good. Also, I’ve learned my lesson -won’t go there again.

Oh, and whilst on a rant … British tv sucks. Nothing good is ever on. It’s just Big Brother and reruns of Friends. And as I sit listening to crap Smash Hits Radio … radio is not winning any rave reviews from me either. Not a good day for entertainment.

This weekend is “fireworks day” in the UK. In Canada we reserve the privilege of lighting stuff on fire for some old hag’s birthday; here in the UK they use fireworks to celebrate terrorism.

The day is called Guy Fawkes Day (not to be confused with Gay Fox day, the celebration of the end of persecution of homosexual vulpini). Guy Fawkes was in a group of Roman Catholics who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I on the 5th of November of 1605. Basically they celebrate that a religious fundamentalist tried to kill a bunch innocent people – and it doesn’t seem clear that they’re celebrating that he got caught or that he was trying to blow up parliament. But regardless of the motives, it’s always good to see some greenhouse-gas-emitting explosions on a warm Saturday night.

Sylvia was out of town tonight so I attended the festivities myself by attending the free fireworks display in Blackheath. There were a hell of a lot of people out and the town was packed with police keeping people moving:

The fireworks show was quite impressive. Here are a few of the (many) pictures I took with a tripod:

Here’s a good picture of the big finale:

Several people had sparklers out:

The show was only about an hour long, and I spent twice that time getting there and back, but it was still an enjoyable outing. Let’s hear it for the war on terror!

I’m sitting at home all alone this Hallowe’en; Sylvia has been very busy with a project at work. Hallowe’en isn’t taken nearly as seriously here in the UK as it is back in Canada – here’s it’s pretty much just a kid’s holiday (though I did see a few students dressed up on my ride through Cambridge today). Now that we’re living in a house I have to hide inside to keep the kids away. I’m shocked that kids actually trick-or-treat around the King’s Cross area; I guess prostitutes and drug dealers have kids too.

But this is a special Hallowe’en for me tonight. Want to hear a really scary story? Sylvia and I have been sleeping on the floor (and more recently an air matress) for the past 3 weeks! Yep, since we moved into the new unfurnished house we’ve had no place to sleep! This terrible state of affairs came to a close today after our new mattress was delivered by Dreams. Here she is:

I cannot tell you how excited I am. We decided to go all out: a King-size (or as they say here, “Super King”) mattress with 6,000 luxurious pocket springs and a sweet, sweet layer of memory foam on top. That’s what I like to hear. They even provided it in a “split” mattress that zips two smallers mattresses together to fit it up the small stairway in our London home. That’s the miracles of modern mattress technology; is there anything they can’t do?

It’s going to feel soooooo good tonight. This is the best Hallowe’en ever.

1. Not being able to figure out new appliances.
Our slick stainless steal gas stove has been well loved. All the numbers and settings are rubbed out. How I managed to
cook a turkey on Monday I’ll never know, but cooking has become a retro experience. If the recipe says cook at 350F …
I cook in what feels like a hot oven when I stick my hand in to check.

2. Not being able to figure out new appliances, again.
After several hours of angry beeps from our washing machine Jason figured out the the cold water pipe connected to the machine had been shut off. Fun.

3. Getting screwed by moving companies and their supposed maximum prices

4. Trying to get the Post Office to forward our mail to the new address when postal workers are on strike and the post office is closed.

5. Not knowing where any of your stuff is. Problem is much worse when you have 3 floors to contend with.

6. Dodgy pipes that lead to leaking showers that lead to wires shorting out that lead to lots of sparking and arching that lead to small panic attacks, a mad (futile) dash to Tescos in search of a fire extinguisher and a quick call to the fire brigade.

7. Trying to find the cats after 2 trucks worth of firemen search the entire house for that illusive fusebox (in noisy boots I might add) and scare the ba-jesus out of them. Note, cats like to hide IN fireplaces.

8. Not having internet for almost a month while the internet muppets sort out how to hook us up again. Come on!

Well lets hope the new place is worth all this hassel.
At least this answers where Britlog has been lately.

Met up with a friend for Sushi dinner near St. Pauls Cathedral.
I know I’ve seen it a bunch of times now, including just last week, but as it comes to view it still makes me stop in my stop in awe.

Every day this week I’ve seen people reading the new Harry Potter book (Sylvia on the other hand takes the road less chav’elled and hasn’t seen any). With this being the last in the series, it may be the last season of Potter Spotting in England so I’m glad I had a chance to see it.

I saw this one on Thursday:

C’mon man, it’s been 6 days since its release! How slow a reader are you?

It’s not surprising that all the chavs have it. It’s available for only £5 at Tescos*:

* purchase of £50 of groceries required. Who the hell spends £50 at Tescos Express?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Harry Potter dies.

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum:

If you surf on any of the big photography sites you’ll know that photography is a tough business these days. There are more and more places that are banning photography. Usually this is chalked up to the increased threat of terrorism in this post-9/11 world. However my visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral has given me another reason to despise those freedom-hating photographers – respect for religion:

At first I was surprised. Why should they want to limit photographs of St. Paul’s Cathedral. a beautiful work of 17th century architecture? Could the creator of the universe really be concerned with my charge-couple device capturing free photons emitted from the church interior, converting them to electrical impulses and storing them in non-volitile memory? Surely that can’t defy the 2nd commandment? So I ignored the sign and snapped a few nice photos:

(Note: I can’t confirm it, but viewing these pictures may damn your soul for all eternity. You have been warned)

But then I started thinking: maybe the folks at St. Paul’s were right? Did you know that there are absolutely no photographs of Jesus? None! Not even after he went to America after his first resurrection. Of course, you may say, this is because photography wasn’t invented until after Jesus’ death. But let’s face it – Jesus was no ordinary man and was known for his miraculous abilities. While there have been primative pinhold cameras for many centuries, the first usable photography was available in the 1820 after the invention of chemical photography. Contrast this with Jesus, who lived in mortal form from approximately 0AD to approximately 30AD or 33AD. The undeniable fact that we can conclude from this: if Jesus wanted his picture taken he would have invented photography earlier.

So it’s clear that St. Michael’s has a a legitimate reason to believe that Jesus hates photography. However, if you still feel that you absolutely must have some photographs of the interior of St. Paul’s for your collection at home, fret not: there are plenty of photographs available for purchase at the gift shop:

I’m sure these photos are OK though: the photographers were probably ordained ministers and used cameras that were bathed in holy water or something. After all, banning photography to increase gift shop sales whilst claiming publicly that it’s for religious reasons would be blasphemous, and clearly that couldn’t be possible from the bless’ed staff of St. Paul’s.

London’s Tower Bridge, a beautiful summer day:

It’s amazing what good luck you can have.
It’s Thursday, Jason is out with his parents touring around London visting St.Paul’s Cathedral:

me .. I’m at work.
Dinner time rolls around and I suggest to Jason that we take his parents to something somewhat unique to London, a gastropub (high end food, but in a pub). I’d heard that this place called The Pigs Ear was good and it’s in Chelsea near Sloane Square which I thought would be a nice place to take the in-laws. We are after all trying to show them all parts of London, not just the touristy parts.
Well as luck would have it the gastropub happened to be on a very small side street that has nothing but houses … and the only Manolo Blahnik store in London. Actually, in the whole EU there is only two stores, this one and one in Spain.
It seemed a bit odd that I would stumble upon it this way.
But then I noticed a sign in the window: sale.
And a 2 day sale, starting tomorrow! What kind of good luck is this?!

Well that random Thursday night at the Pigs Ear is what brings me back to Chelsea on a Saturday morning:

.. and it was everything I hoped it would be.