july22

Saturday 22nd July. My first weekend away not that the working week means too much while you are away. I am staying with Sandra at Neil’s house. It is a good thing I went into central London the other day or I could believe I am still in Australia. The days are hot and so are the nights. Every night since I have been here we’ve spent the night outside with drinks. We even had a bbq the first night I was here! That may have been for my benefit> you know, we aussies just need a whiff of a sausage cooked on a BBQ to feel better. Know what I mean Gov! Don’t worry I’ll give them all a warm beer or a pork pie just to make them feel welcome if they’re ever down under .

So, it is the heat and the untypically English backyard culture that makes me feel like I haven’t really left home. The front page of the Evening Standard yesterday had the headline, ‘Desert London’ and a large photograph of Hyde Park. To say it looked stark is an understatement. Last time I was here Hyde Park was what you thought of as so typically English; green lush and abundant. It now looks like the grazing paddocks you might see in the wheat belt of oz, dry brown and parched. The whole of London is under extreme water restrictions and everybody’s garden is wilting or dying. You see I feel quiet at home here up against the elements.

It seemed to take me two or three days to get over the jet lag thing. I think your body arrives and everything else catches up later.

Neil’s place is really cool. Sandra and Neil are fairly social people and they seem to have a bit of an open door policy here. I haven’t stepped out of London yet, and well, hardly out of Neil’s backyard but it has been interesting meeting their London friends. Funny, coz they are all actually from Wales. Anyway conversation here is not unlike a football match in the way it goes all over the paddock. I don’t really know how to explain it. It is like everyone is trying to be more witty than each other, like they are all trying to be Ben Alton. I think humour is a very English thing. Well, at least real humour, witty humour, not the slip on a banana skin type humour of America. Most of it is all rather amusing yet at times it all seems rather competitive. But then perhaps I have just been too long up in the mountains. I am sure, like football, I’ll improve my footwork with practice but it will take a bit longer with the humour.

I am off to Brixton tonight with Sandra and a group of people. It is so cool being with locals with local knowledge especially in a city to size of London.

London boiling

~this is going to be a short post. London is a warm 36c today!!!!! It feels like oz with wall to wall blue skies and high 30's temp. Trouble is there is little air con in London. (hardly surprising) I am sitting in an internet cafe in Leicester Square and I am actually glad for once that my one hour online is close to and end and I can escape into the street.

I am going to try and find my way down to the Tate Gallery this after this. Praying for a thunderstorm. Flight over was fairly eventless but it did take me two days to get over the jet lag. Today is the first day I've ventured out of Balham. Or should that be Balhammmmmm mannnnnnn! Sandra is dragging me and a heap of others off to some regae thingo this saturday. No doubt I'll see lots of rasta man. Stopping at Neil's house is really cool. He has a house right on the edge of Tooting Common and there is no road out the front, you have to walk in. How cool is that! I'll post some photo's up when I get a spare moment. So it is off to the Tate and maybe if I'm feeling energetic I'll slip past HM place down there at Buckingham Palace. (I'll pick some scones up on the way!)