sw’as

Ho hum. Probably naïve of me, but I had no idea how focused London is on the finances of the world. UK television, newspapers, current affairs shows every single day are dominated by news of all the bank collapses and money woes and recession talk. It’s all a bit doom and gloom at the moment, isn’t it? For the first time in my life, I’m also in an industry (recruitment of all things) where people lose their jobs and lose them quickly. No fat cats at all, but people like secretaries, accountants, help desk workers, consultants and techies I was friends with, were among those quite suddenly told that their jobs no longer existed. It’s really sad and has been quite stressful for a lot of people in a lot of places.

Simon and I have been really fortunate and certainly feel lucky about our jobs. Simon has done the opposite and told his design agency that he is, in fact, leaving them to come back to Oz. And I have been given a sort-of, kind-of promotion, which I was really flattered by and so grateful for. No pay raise, as it’s probably a bit cheeky to ask for one of those. But I have been given extra things to work on and I continue to work with lovely, laid-back people. I have even tried my hand at helping to create some web pages for our company’s intranets around the world. Fellow web developer Simon went through a range of emotions: horror, amazement, eventually a lot of pride and even a little envy at my two-day-old skills I think.

We have had a really great month. I celebrated my 25th birthday with the best birthday I’ve had in years. Lovely friends Geoff and Terri somehow found my office and had a bottle of Moet delivered directly to my desk the afternoon of my birthday. As is the custom in my office, I supplied my colleagues with treats, and my pricey imported Tim Tams were exceedingly well-received. I found a restaurant housed in a former chocolate factory in my favourite area of London, the Southwark and Bankside neighbourhoods. So I had some great food and several and various drinks with friends old and new. I also received so many lovely cards, messages and parcels from home. And a great big sloppy kiss from Charlie.

Our friends Ellie and Mary – we knew Ellie from high school – are on a fantastic two month trip through Canada and Europe and our lounge room. They’re now in Switzerland, but will be back again at the end of November. We’ve had a great time and have loved being able to show them our favourite haunts like the Borough Markets. Other wonderful friend Moogs left London for good for sunny Queensland (really, really sunny Blackall to be exact.) I already miss her. Moogs and I had a ball together here and she has always managed to remind me of home. Now we can’t wait to have Nathan to visit – only a couple of weeks til he arrives. We’ve figured out that we actually have less than three weeks left with just the two of us in the house. The rest of it is booked up!

One awesome show and one less than awesome one. The official Shakespeare’s Globe season ends in October when summer has gone, and the theatre is cold and darker earlier. After the season they put on a range of winter shows, including a show that I really, really wanted to be good! The Burial at Thebes is an adaptation by Seamus Heaney based on one of my favourite plays, Antigone. It was supposed to be great: the play made into an opera - my second one ever – the Globe, a cushion, maybe even a brownie, etc, etc. We also had two of the best seats we’ve had in our five visits to the Globe this year. You’ve probably figured out how this story ends and it isn’t happily ever after all the way home. Simon really didn’t like it, I tried to focus on the good parts (there were indeed some), but I found myself frequently surprised when the singing would start up. Why don’t you just speak it?! I yelled inside my head. It’s a really good play! Just play it!

At the other end of the spectrum is the big musical Wicked, which has been to New York and Melbourne among others, and is probably one of the most popular musicals in London. I’d heard all but one raving review of the show and the all but one people were right. If you get the chance to go, you must go! The musical is based on a novel that was written in 1995 as the ‘untold story’ of the witches in The Wizard of Oz. Oh my goodness, it just has such a clever script, amazing costumes, excellent performances and a good message that didn’t whack me over the head with its teachiness. It was a really intelligent and fun show and I wish I’d written it.

Another craving for the countryside and the scones it promises meant that we took a train trip (only forty-eight minutes) up to Cambridge on Saturday with Bec and Aaron. Simon and I had stopped in Cambridge when we were here in 2004, but in 2004 it was cold outside and I was in the thick of The Da Vinci Code, so we stayed inside instead. What a mistake. I was pleasantly surprised to find Cambridge to be even nicer than lovely Oxford. It feels more expansive, with lots of big green lawns, strangely called ‘pieces’ and with more to see in general once you get past all the regular Cambridge things to see. We found some cute shopping spots, our beloved cream tea, as well as fish and chips overlooking the punters on the river. A perfect sunny autumn day.

Sadly we missed seeing my handsome little cousin Daryl marry Terrianne in Redcliffe on the weekend and I am eagerly awaiting photos. A big happy birthday to the father of Charlie, my brother-in-law Tony. And sorry about the opera comments, Uncle Alan, who is surely furious at me from somewhere inside a mine in South Australia. Thinking of you all and hoping you’re happy and well. Much love, Laura and Simon.

So far this year I’ve managed to hit the shutter button more than 4915 times. Since not all of those clicks turned out well, I’ve made a selection of the photos I think are worthwhile looking at and uploaded some of them to my Flickr account. There will no doubt be more appear there over time, but this is a good start after being behind in uploading for most of the year.

You can find photos from England, of course, as well as all our trips to other European destinations. You can check out the sites of Belgium in the dead of winter where we froze in beautiful places like Bruges and Brussels. Take a look at Germany where we hung out with friends and visited cities including Berlin, Koblenz and Frankfurt. There is a small set of pictures from Paris in 2008 to expand on the much larger Paris 2004 set.

We also managed to see much of Ireland and Aarhus in Denmark before going on an exploration of Norway to wonderful places like Bergen and the spectacular Sonja Fjord. We have also just recently returned from Spain where we spent a relaxing few days in San Sebastian and visited the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Hope someone enjoys having a look at our travels.

So, we attended V Festival on the weekend. It was awesome. Here is a random assortment of highlights, lowlights and other shit.

Highlights

• Muse. Best gig of the weekend.
• The Presets. This was the first act we saw and the only disappointment was its extreme brevity. 25 minutes is not enough Presets. We were left wanting more, much more.
• The Hoosiers. Don’t think I’d heard of them before, but they put on an awesome show.
• The Zutons. After listening to their latest album You Can Do Anything a lot, I was really looking forward to seeing these guys. They sure didn’t disappoint. Their version of Valerie was amazing live and really highlighted how boring the Amy Winehouse gig was, as we’d heard her sing Valerie about 15 minutes earlier.
• The Kooks. I’d never really got into their music, but seeing them live was a treat. There was something about their gig which just screamed quality.
• Kaiser Chiefs. Closing the festival, they put a huge exclamation mark on the weekend. What a show.
• Friends. As always with these kinds of events, the friends we hung out with really topped it off. It wouldn’t have been as great without them.

Lowlights

• The camping facilities. The other three day music festival I’ve camped at a few times is Splendour In The Grass. The toilets and showers^[1] at V are seriously lacking when compared to Splendour. You definitely have to expect a degree of disgusting shit when you camp at a festival, but most times I visited the toilets at V there was very literally^[2] shit up to the rim of the bowl. They were simply unusable.
• Amy Winehouse. Boring! That’s all I can say, not that I expected or hoped for much.
• Line-up changes. Spending ages in the crowd working our way right to the front and waiting for Sam Sparro didn’t pay off when we found he’d been switched with Robyn, who was also cool, but we were there for Sam.
• Waiting. There is too much waiting between shows.
• Missing The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. I’d seen them both before so we chose Muse and Kaiser Chiefs instead, choices I don’t regret, but it would have been awesome to see them both again.
• Unidentified flying liquids. There was far too many unknown liquids being thrown around for comfort. I don’t mind a bit of water being thrown around a hot crowd, in fact I love it, but it’s simply rude to throw anything else. It’s very sad that people do because they can. An extreme lowlight was being hit (along with many people around us) with a distinctly warm liquid; much to warm to be a warm beer.

Other shit

• Extreme inebriation. Seeing a chick who had pissed her self and was left stumbling around looking dazed with soaked jeans was a bit funny - in a sad kind of way.

The whole weekend really was a blast, and it’s re-invigorated my love of (live) music. The other acts we saw were: Royworld, Alphabeat, Taio Cruz, Lost Prophets, Alanis Morissette, Lenny Kravitz, The Pigeon Detectives and Stereophonics.

1. Oh, wait, there were no showers at V. [↩]
2. I mean the literal meaning of the word literally, not the ‘I literally shit my pants’ kind of literally which is used far too often for comfort. [↩]

As far as I’m concerned we’ve got a good two weeks of summer left, but the past week or so^[1] has seen a decided - and somewhat unwelcome - swing to autumn. The English summer, all four weeks of it, was a glorious experience - but the leaves are now falling.

The long summer days of latitudes above 51° 30′ really are something to treasure. It’s a new and delightful pleasure - if only it wasn’t so fleeting - to get off work at five (or so) and have a full 4 hours of daylight left to play with. Picnics in London’s oasis where the bright blue sky and impossibly elastic twilight provide a catalyst for the friends, cheese and wine to coalesce into memories that should last a lifetime.

I must get around to taking some pictures of the estate we live in before the summer leaves disappear entirely.

The English autumn will be a new experience to enjoy, and the winter has its own charms which I can look forward to, but the summer will be missed. How time flies.

1. Excluding the weekend, which was amazing weather timed very well. [↩]