On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is a lager top and 10 is a flaming Lamborghini, I think that, in a Fat Boy Slim styleee (as in right here, right now), I am pretty much a snake-bite and black after last night / this am.
Firstly there was a beer to with Beer Cellar Utd FC to celebrate the fact that we had won the EspZen league and then it was back to Dave’s (Coolies’ Centurion golfer) for a nitecap. Before deciding, at 4:30 am, that it would be nice to go and meet at Sarah at the airport, as her flight was getting in from NY at 6:30.
Nice gesture, I am, sure you’ll agree. Though half my thinking was that a) I could grab a maccy d’s there and b) I was no doubt going to get awoken anyway when she strolled in at 7’ish, so may as well get some browny points with my hash browns.
However, whilst looking at the flight indicator board, I saw a flight that had just landed in from NY (out of Newark, which, we all know is an anagram of an onanist) – at 5:30, while another one was due in 6:24.
Before, I stumbled off for my egg mcmuffin brekky, I thought that I should just sms madam to see if her flight had landed . And, as if my magic, she replied straight away that she was just clearing customs. And when I looked up, she was there. So forewent (if that’s such a word) the brekky and met the missus.
And, even though she had just endured an 18 hour flight from the states, Sarah was full of the joys of spring. While my ‘beer’ had made me somewhat tired and getting up this am was an awful struggle!
Still – get through to lunchtime and I am sure that I can wing it from there!
Friday, July 29, 2005
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
While I Recall
A brief summary of our fortnight in the UK (and Ireland) went something like this:
Sat 18 - Arrive in London and are met by Holly - which was nice surprise.After a coffee and a chat, Pete and Pam arrive to whisk us away to Church Lane, Chessington. Suitably fed and watered for the rest of the day
Sun 19 - Meet up with a gaggle of friends in Kingston for eats and drinks.It was great to see everyone and even more a surprise for me when it turned out that 'my lot' (ie the Thornes, Thomases and Devereuxs) had been waiting in a different part of the bar!
Mon 20 - Golf with Pete at Horsham Park ? Violet's Birthday dinner iClaygate
Tues 21 - Eats and sleep over with/at Holly and Hugh's [and (scottish)Iain]
Weds 22 - Bushey Park with Wally and Violet. Beer with Thomas in Wimbledon
Thurs 23- Flights to Cork, car to Waterford and ferry to Wexford. To see my dad, Trish, their new house and their two cats (Lady and Dylan)
Friday 24- Toured around my dad's new manor - including Hook Lighthouse(Europe's oldest - nearly 800 years)
Sat 25- Met my cousin Charlie & Robbie (and his folks Eddy & Pauline)
for the drive upto Cork. Met Thomases, Thornes and Devereux again for late lunch. Then to IBIS Hotel before Doylah's Birthday Boat Trip to Cobh for a few ales, bites to eat and general mayhem
Sun 26 - Into Cobh to see Maritime Musuem (as Cobh was last port of call for Titanic and the Lisuania was sunk a few miles away) and then some late brekky. Evening spent at Doylah's for impromptu barbie
Mon 27 - Flight back to London.
Tues 28 - Golf with Pete down in Kent with Iain. Train upto Crystal Palace to see Danny and Laura, before seeing ColdPlay at Athletic Stadium
Weds 29 - Saw Joseph in Raynes Park, before 5-a-sode footy with the boys (Thomas, Lace, Barbier, Spud, Vic & Matt), followed by some beer and a Korean meal. (Vic kindly dropped me home)
Thurs 30 - Met old FSA and MAFF colleagues (Mike, Matt, Steve, Brian,Joti, Sean and Andy) up at Pimlico. Back to the Swan in Wimbledon Village for the Quiz (gaggle of people - including the Hargreaves, Thomases, Plattens,Barbiers, Holly, Magnus, Martin and Cass). Return of the No-Hopers winners on the last question!
Fri 1 - Met Pat Walters for a beer at Kew
Sat 2 - Live 8 on the telly before flights back to Singapore
Although am sure that I played a third round of golf somewhere and does not include who Sarah saw. Plus does not even scratch the surface on the number of times Pete and Pam cooked for us, gave us lifts etc
for the drive upto Cork. Met Thomases, Thornes and Devereux again for late lunch. Then to IBIS Hotel before Doylah's Birthday Boat Trip to Cobh for a few ales, bites to eat and general mayhem
Although am sure that I played a third round of golf somewhere and does not include who Sarah saw. Plus does not even scratch the surface on the number of times Pete and Pam cooked for us, gave us lifts etc
Friday, July 08, 2005
Yesterday
I was going to say something about yesterday’s shocking bombings in London but, after reading this article by Ian McEwan in today’s Guardian, I thought that it said it all:
The mood of a city has never swung so sharply. On Wednesday there was no better place on earth. After the victory in Singapore, Londoners were celebrating the prospect of an explosion of new energy and creativity; those computer-generated images of futuristic wonderlands rising out of derelict quarters and poisoned industrial wastelands were actually going to be built. The echoes of rock 'n' roll in Hyde Park and its wave of warm and fundamentally decent emotions were only just fading. In Gleneagles, the summit was about to address at least - and at last - the core of the world's concerns, and we could take some satisfaction that our government had pushed the agenda. London was flying high and we moved confidently about the city - the paranoia after 9/11 and Madrid was mostly forgotten and no one had second thoughts about taking the tube. The "war on terror", that much examined trope, was an exhausted rallying cry, with all the appearance of a moth-eaten regimental banner in a village church.
But terror's war on us opened another front on Thursday morning. It announced itself with a howl of sirens from every quarter, and the oppressive drone of police helicopters. Along the Euston Road, by the new UCH - a green building rising above us like a giant surgeon in scrubs - thousands of people stood around watching ambulances filing nose to tail through the stalled traffic into the casualty department.
Police were fanning out through Bloomsbury closing streets at both ends even as you were halfway down them. The machinery of state, a great Leviathan, certain of its authority, moved with balletic coordination. Those rehearsals for a multiple terrorist attack underground were paying off. In fact, now the disaster was upon us, it had an air of weary inevitability, and it looked familiar, as though it had happened long ago. In the drizzle and dim light, the police lines, the emergency vehicles, the silent passers by appeared as though in an old newsreel film in black and white. The news of the successful Olympic bid was more surprising than this. How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen?
The mood on the streets was of numb acceptance, or strange calm. People obediently shuffled this way and that, directed round road blocks by a whole new citizens' army of "support" officials - like air raid wardens from the last war. A man in a suit pulled a Day-Glo jacket out of his briefcase and began directing traffic with snappy expertise. A woman, with blood covering her face and neck, who had come from Russell Square tube station, briskly refused offers of help and said she had to get to work. Groups gathered impassively in the road, among the gridlocked traffic, listening through open windows to car radios.
On a pub TV the breaking news services were having trouble finding the images to match the awfulness of the event. But this was not, or not yet, a public spectacle like New York or Madrid. The nightmare was happening far below our feet. Everyone knew that if the force that mangled the bus in Tavistock Square was contained within the walls of a tunnel, the human cost would be high, and the rescue appallingly difficult. Down the far end of a closed-off street we saw emergency workers being helped into breathing equipment. We could only guess at the hell to which they must descend, and no one seemed to want to talk about it.
In Auden's famous poem, Musee des Beaux Arts, the tragedy of Icarus falling from the sky is accompanied by life simply refusing to be disrupted. A ploughman goes about his work, a ship "sailed calmly on", dogs keep on with "their doggy business". In London yesterday, where crowds fumbling with mobile phones tried to find unimpeded ways across the city, there was much evidence of the truth of Auden's insight. While rescue workers searched for survivors and the dead in the smoke-filled blackness below, at pavement level men were loading lorries, a woman sold umbrellas in her usual patch, the lunchtime sandwich makers were hard at work.
It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past. But once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult. We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?
The mood of a city has never swung so sharply. On Wednesday there was no better place on earth. After the victory in Singapore, Londoners were celebrating the prospect of an explosion of new energy and creativity; those computer-generated images of futuristic wonderlands rising out of derelict quarters and poisoned industrial wastelands were actually going to be built. The echoes of rock 'n' roll in Hyde Park and its wave of warm and fundamentally decent emotions were only just fading. In Gleneagles, the summit was about to address at least - and at last - the core of the world's concerns, and we could take some satisfaction that our government had pushed the agenda. London was flying high and we moved confidently about the city - the paranoia after 9/11 and Madrid was mostly forgotten and no one had second thoughts about taking the tube. The "war on terror", that much examined trope, was an exhausted rallying cry, with all the appearance of a moth-eaten regimental banner in a village church.
But terror's war on us opened another front on Thursday morning. It announced itself with a howl of sirens from every quarter, and the oppressive drone of police helicopters. Along the Euston Road, by the new UCH - a green building rising above us like a giant surgeon in scrubs - thousands of people stood around watching ambulances filing nose to tail through the stalled traffic into the casualty department.
Police were fanning out through Bloomsbury closing streets at both ends even as you were halfway down them. The machinery of state, a great Leviathan, certain of its authority, moved with balletic coordination. Those rehearsals for a multiple terrorist attack underground were paying off. In fact, now the disaster was upon us, it had an air of weary inevitability, and it looked familiar, as though it had happened long ago. In the drizzle and dim light, the police lines, the emergency vehicles, the silent passers by appeared as though in an old newsreel film in black and white. The news of the successful Olympic bid was more surprising than this. How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen?
The mood on the streets was of numb acceptance, or strange calm. People obediently shuffled this way and that, directed round road blocks by a whole new citizens' army of "support" officials - like air raid wardens from the last war. A man in a suit pulled a Day-Glo jacket out of his briefcase and began directing traffic with snappy expertise. A woman, with blood covering her face and neck, who had come from Russell Square tube station, briskly refused offers of help and said she had to get to work. Groups gathered impassively in the road, among the gridlocked traffic, listening through open windows to car radios.
On a pub TV the breaking news services were having trouble finding the images to match the awfulness of the event. But this was not, or not yet, a public spectacle like New York or Madrid. The nightmare was happening far below our feet. Everyone knew that if the force that mangled the bus in Tavistock Square was contained within the walls of a tunnel, the human cost would be high, and the rescue appallingly difficult. Down the far end of a closed-off street we saw emergency workers being helped into breathing equipment. We could only guess at the hell to which they must descend, and no one seemed to want to talk about it.
In Auden's famous poem, Musee des Beaux Arts, the tragedy of Icarus falling from the sky is accompanied by life simply refusing to be disrupted. A ploughman goes about his work, a ship "sailed calmly on", dogs keep on with "their doggy business". In London yesterday, where crowds fumbling with mobile phones tried to find unimpeded ways across the city, there was much evidence of the truth of Auden's insight. While rescue workers searched for survivors and the dead in the smoke-filled blackness below, at pavement level men were loading lorries, a woman sold umbrellas in her usual patch, the lunchtime sandwich makers were hard at work.
It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past. But once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult. We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Nice to See You, To See You ...Nice
Will shortly get around to writing up about the past fortnight in sunny London (and Surrey) as well as sunny-ish Ireland.
But just wanted to say big thanks to Pete and Pam - who acted as our chauffeurs, hoteliers, chefs, wine and beer sommeliers, golf couch, newspaper delivery boys & girls, lotto ticket buyers, official time-keepers....
And to everyone else that we saw on our travels - in various pubs, bars, eateries, golf courses and fooy pitches: nice to see you, to see you nice
Pix and write up to follow anon. Honest.
But just wanted to say big thanks to Pete and Pam - who acted as our chauffeurs, hoteliers, chefs, wine and beer sommeliers, golf couch, newspaper delivery boys & girls, lotto ticket buyers, official time-keepers....
And to everyone else that we saw on our travels - in various pubs, bars, eateries, golf courses and fooy pitches: nice to see you, to see you nice
Pix and write up to follow anon. Honest.
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