In the last week I’ve stepped back from full time employment to concentrate on finding a role in wine tasting and education. This is the part of my recent and previous roles that have given me ‘the little buzz’. Still to do so during a recession – is that not a little mad?
Only time will tell; but a pleasant side effect is having the time to attend wine tastings again. Of late my wines have tended to be solely Pinot noir and Riesling – a consequence of working with dedicated specialist. So when a friend invited me to a Rhone tasting, I jumped at the chance.
The 2008 vintage is not reputed to be as exciting as the previous years in the Rhone, but in this day and age one must be careful of judging the wine before it has been tasted……
With several altercations with cars and motorbikes this summer – why oh why are motorbikes allowed in bus lanes with us – I’d been starting to fall into the ‘Us vs Them’ mentality of cycling in the city.
So I was biking along the inside of stationary traffic this afternoon – oddly with the lyrics of ‘Go West’ whirring round my head – when the car directly in front of me cut across the cycling lane and up on to the pavement narrowly avoiding my front wheel as I screeched to a halt.
With the radio blaring, he didn’t hear my indignant cries of “Hey” nor the less polite cries from the two cyclists behind me. He also didn’t seem to see the shocked look from the man pushing his pram on the pavement. Unfortunately, the traffic picked up and he moved off before the three of us could do anything more than fume at his rear window.
But London being London, I caught up with him two minutes later at the next lights and knocked on his window – yes I am that type of cyclist, cut me off and you’ll know about it.
At the sight of the 6 foot guy in the drivers seat, turning off the loud rap and winding down the darkened window to see me, my courage did wobble as I realised how nasty this could get. Still I had to go on….
“Excuse me, but did you realise that when you cut up on to the pavement back there, I was on the inside of your car?’
‘Oh god really? I’m so sorry’ as a look of surprise flashed across his face.
‘Yeah, so just a reminder to have a quick look ok?’
‘Sure, yeah and sorry.’
Faith in drivers slightly restored.
Its August in London, the weather varies between thunderous downpours and scorching blue skies, England is being thumped in the cricket, the population is consuming Pimm’s at an incredible rate – so it must be time for the ‘Worlds Greatest Classical Music Festival‘!
So it was off to the Royal Albert Hall with a few like minded music lovers to take in a matinee performance what proved to be a super Sunday afternoon. As I arrived too early for the prom, but had plenty of time for a stroll in the sun round the Prince Albert Memorial in Hyde Park. Armed with an icecream I meandered while avoiding the rollerbladers, cyclists, horseriders and melee of families out enjoying the sun – lovely start to the afternoon.
Soon the time came to gather together and file into one of my favourite buildings in London – and we had a pretty good view. With a fuller certified piano player in the group it was a concert filled with Piano duets. The final piece ‘Carnival of the Animals’ even and a lovely cello solo for me – (though the cello is sadly neglected and has had only 3 strings for at least a year.)
One summer tradition fulfilled for the year, now its time to look at a trip to the Globe.
Filed under: London
A lot of people will be fed up with hearing how cold it is over here. Tomorrow is going to be sunny and warm up a few degrees … to 5°C. I can’t remember the last time the day warmed up to more than that and I’m fairly sure it was before Christmas. But equally I’ve been listening to the people in NZ complaining about how hot it is and how hard it is to sleep when night only gets down to 22°C….
Enough, I cry. Enough of the complaining about weather, as Billy Connelly said there is no such thing as the wrong weather, only the wrong clothes. (I realise how hypocritical I’m being as I shivered in the office today in 3 layers of wooly clothing.) But still it must be time to stop complaining and to pick ourselves up and have another cold beer, or in my case a hot bath.
Admittedly that will be my third bath this week, but so far its the best way for me to cope with the cold. Plus the real reason for so many baths is Lush bath stuff. I’m working my way through the set, favourite so far is the Rainbow Worrier but its only occasionally available in their Retro line. Tonight, in honour of Valentines, I think it will be this pink frothy number, wish me luck.
Filed under: London
My garden has been thriving of late, with the tomato plants growing so big their bamboo stakes were useless and I resorted to propping them up with chairs. Flowers have been appearing on the sweet peas and the two gigantic tomato bushes (calling them plants is doing them an injustice). Aphids were plenty but so were the wee ants which seemed to be keeping damage to a manageable level and I was day dreaming about the salads I could make with my home grown lettuce and toms.
But disaster has now struck. This week has been a pretty punishing one, with several late nights and early starts thanks to work so the plants had been forgotten. This morning I opened the door to the outside world and found the neglect had taken its toll.
The once flourishing deep green lettuce has wilted to brown limp shreds, the coriander is yellow and my one producing tomato plant was unhealthy and limp. There was frantic splashing as water was hurriedly applied and I hope some of the damage may yet be undone.
Maybe it is too soon for a puppy……
Filed under: London
After visiting Dona (James’ mum) in April and eating the fresh veges from her garden, I decided it was time to grow my own. A fine idea, but more difficult to put into practice when you don’t have a car to carry things back in. Especially as the small outside area in my flat is fully tiled, meaning for the first time in my life I would have to buy soil. I seem to have spent most of my childhood moving it, growing in it, shaping it, forming it and even rolling in it (football). But never before have I ever been so short of soil that I needed to buy it.
I did look at getting plants delivered and found you can basically have an entire kitchen garden delivered to your door (link). But decided it would be better to start small and actually have room to move outside. So a trip to the local DIY superstore beckoned – well I say local but the main aim was to find one near a Tube or rail station. I roped James in and we braved odd looks in the carriage to return with bags of soil and some very small seedlings to plant – tomato and lettuce plants at about 5 cm high.
Now about 1 month later I have a flourishing garden to defend from the local slugs and snails, and lovely cherry tomatoes which actually have taste! My ‘beefsteak’ and ‘italian’ tomato plants have flourished from 5cms high to about half a metre and have flowers so hopefully not long till we have some large toms too!
Filed under: London
Following the torrents of bad weather through June and July, summer finally arrived with a vengeance this weekend. After sweating through 27 degree heat yesterday we saw the forecast for today was over 30! So I forced James out of the house and off to the traditional seaside home for Londoners – Brighton.
Seemed like everyone else in London had the same idea so the train was packed this morning. So much so that James had a chance to do a little first aiding as someone fainted in the heat. Typically though, after shouting frantically for a first aider they then ignored everything he said so it was with relief we were finally released from the sweltering carriage.
First stop was the ‘Royal Pavilion‘ built for the playboy Prince Regent who was later George the IV. Its a fantasy of Indian architecture which was all the rage when the villa was being rebuilt. An odd sight in the midst of the city, and one can see why it wasn’t a favorite of the conservative Queen Victoria. She sold it to the town in 1850. James took a few photos of the exterior (the interior was £8 entry and the beach was beckoning.)
After a meander along the pier – taking in the ride which inspired the Beatles hit ‘Helter Skelter‘ we made camp in the shade of the ruined ‘West Pier‘ for swimming. It was fantastic to be in the water again and beach filled up ridiculously quickly. The heat sent us back into the town for a huge lunch at a nice wee Italian before sweltering on the train back to London to investigate my sunburn (whoops).
Filed under: London
The exhibition of the Heart is on at the Wellcome collection here in London. An eccentric millionaire, who James hopes one day to emulate, collected thousands of medical curios and some of Sir Henry Wellcome’s collections are on permanent display here in the Galleries on Euston Road.
Last Sunday, James and I took a break from the thunderstorms of the current English summer to have a nose. And it was well worth the look. The ‘Heart’ exhibition was a collection of all sorts of things, brought together as they had something to do with that organ. From early Greek teachings that the heart and lungs were separate, to a film about open heart surgery (I didn’t manage that one for too long.)
There were Arabic and chinese teachings from the dark ages in the same room as films of MRI scans showing a healthy and diseased heart beating away. It wasn’t all about teaching though. This guy had managed to collect an original Aztec knife and alter used for their human sacrifices. These were displayed opposite a 1960′s newsreel about the first heart transplant and the South African doctor – oddly it fitted.
Aside from the operation video, set to bloody ranting of some American evangelist, the other other object to give me a turn was also fascinatingly grotesque. They were two large tables from northern Italy circa 15th century. The veins of an unnamed person had been painstakingly extracted and laid out on the table in position before being varnished down. That these men had done this to further their understanding at a time when the all-powerful church condemned dissection was admirable, the result was fascinating and disturbing all at once.
Upstairs, the random collection continued, from torture masks and chairs to models used to teach early obstetrics. There were shoes for people with bound feet next to scarifying kits and Victorian snuff boxes hiding erotic scenes.
An odd and fascinating collecting, well worth a look on these damp, Sunday afternoons.
Today I was a happy cyclist. My rides to work and back felt the safest and fastest yet. This is because I rode in the middle of the road and made drivers think about me. The fact I was there and made myself an issue on the road meant they had to allow for me as they drove.
Up till now I’ve been tucked away as far to the side as I could. I thought this ‘Don’t mind me I’m not really here’ attitude when biking would make me safer. But today drivers had to account for me on the road and I forced them to make way. It made for a much more enjoyable ride as drivers waited behind me until they could pass. Most of them did at a much slower pace and giving me more room than they did when I was tucked away at the side.
Why the change of attitude? Its all come out after an study was leaked from TFL (Transport for London) about the risks faced by cyclists and female cyclists specifically. It was shown to me by a fellow, though far more experienced, London cyclist with whom the discussion about safety on the road has been on-going.
The report was on the e-zine for bike couriers – ‘Moving Target‘ – before being picked up by the Times. For any cyclists and drivers, indeed every road user out there, its worth a read. There was an interesting interview with a bike courier and a member of the TFL on Radio 4 which unfortunately has gone now. It was this interview that changed my mind.
Scarily, the report suggested that those who waited patiently in the designated cycling lanes at the lights were more likely to be killed. Those cycling lanes, where the cyclist wobbles and plods their way up the left hand side of traffic, trying to avoid drains, side mirrors and careless smokers thrusting their cigarettes out the windows, are known to the professionals of Moving Target as ‘Suicide Zones’. Now there’s an attractive name.
Women cyclists were being killed by lorries turning on top of them at the lights, and it was revealed that unless there is an independent witness to the crash the police will not prosecute. They still might not even if there is one. Even more scary, if a lorry driver turned on top of me, there was an independent witness, the police did prosecute and they won a conviction, that lorry driver would face nothing worse than a fine and a few points on the license. A slap on the wrist for taking a life?
So all this has sparked the new, assertive me. Watch out for me driver, I’m not hiding in the ‘suicide zone’ any more.
Filed under: London
Yes another birthday to add on to an ever increasing number. James and I have been celebrating by eating copious amounts of chocolate. Apparently the Montezuma shop close to James work had a sale on Friday and I am certainly not complaining. Beautiful, if normally expensive, dark chocolate.
So on a warm day in London – not hot but decidedly warm for those doing the marathon – we’re off to see the Blue Man group. Not quite sure what to expect, when booking tickets I decided not to go for the really cheap seats at the front – apparently you get splattered with paint from the stage and ponchos are provided… Should be good.
You may notice this hasn’t been updated for quite sometime. March turned out to be a very hectic month. Filled with sleet and sun and holidays and stress. I claim to still be relaxing after it, but really I’m just lazy and like reading books in the sunshine on a Sunday. Can you blame me…?
