How to have a Friday night out on 10 quid

1. Eat a big lunch, that way you can skimp for dinner.

2. Walk to first destination. On the way, buy a Cornish pasty for the lad and a macadamia bar for the lady.

3. Watch "Blood Wedding" at the Scoop open air theatre near London Bridge, which is awful but at least free (I thought the acting wasn't so bad but the script and storyline was repetitive and dreary. There was only 2 emotions (anger and distress) and what actually happened in the play could have been condensed into 30 min. Also, there was some wierd scenes involving a talking moon, death (assumed) and red wool which seemed completely out of place.)

4. Walk to the Southbank Centre. On the way, enjoy the Thames, happy people from pubs spilling out onto the street, buskers, and white and blue lights in the trees.

5. Watch a free burlesque show on the theme of the Wizard of Oz. Buy 1 beer each. Appreciate that there are both female AND male performers, and that the boys are much better. Admire the compare's green full body paint as the wicked witch of the west when she does the last dance. Watch lindy hoppers (including one fantastic lead with only one arm) do their thing between sets.

6. Walk home, satisfied that for once you pushed yourself to go out on a Friday night.

70 feet and 12 tonnes of steel

It was a mantra oft repeated, as we cruised the canals around Broxboune in our 12 person solid steel boat one weekend in July for Joyce's birthday. Now I could be lazy and just link to Joyce's blog ....

*apologies in advance for the shameless copyright infringement of other people's pics.

It started off a bit rainy and cold.
Captain Brett getting some lock advice from an old hand.
I have never seen so many swans before. Apparently the collective term is boring old "flock", although you can use a "wedge of swans" when they are flying in V formation.
The boys using their muscles to open one of many locks...

...with some help from the locals. The kids, when they saw the boys jump off the boat without any shoes starting yelling "pikies pikies". I've been informed, though I've not looked it up, that it's a derogatory term for gypsies.

Happy birthday Joyce!
The men at mission control.

The best bit - sunning ourselves on the canal.

A long break between blogs

Sorry. Life is passing by at a rate of knots and it's hard to keep up, particularly now that Brett's abandoned this blog for his own high brow writings.

So this will be more of a photo depiction, more than anything else, just to get through it all (and likely to be more interesting in any case).

So first, and now a number of weeks ago, was Nicole and Andrew coming to visit from HK and we were finally able to return the favour of accommodation and tour guide. we managed to cover tate modern, british museum, national gallery, natural history museum and V&A, as well as squeeze in The Revenger's Tragedy at National Theatre (I really liked the Revenger's Tragedy - it was written by Thomas Middleton, "the other Shakespeare" and he's a bit more direct, edgy and before his time than Shakespeare).

First night outside Tate modern.

Brett examining the (fake) Rosetta Stone in the library of British Museum


The Gay and Lesbian pride festival, stopping us from getting to St James' Park.

The magnificent facade of the Natural History museum.Is it glass or plastic? A quick google search revealed that it was a blown glass chandelier at the entry way to Victoria & Albert.


One of V&A's more interesting souvenirs - a soft toy Vincent Van Gogh, complete with detachable ear!

On Westminster bridge.