Up in the a##hole of Timo!

Not related to London in any way, but it made me laugh so hard I almost wet my pants...

The STARs Were Out Tonight

Last night was Jamie's big cabaret night with STARS - the musical theatre training program she's in, run by our friends Ken and Christie and featuring instructors who are currently working in the West End theatres (mostly as either actors or dancers). Her and the group of students have been rehearsing for the big night for weeks, and it certainly paid off.

Jamie headed straight to the venue after work - it was held on a converted barge on the river near Battersea. I stopped off at home to take care of the kiddos before making my own way over. The barge itself was actually really nice, with a fantastic view and a fully stocked bar and kitchen.

The show was completely sold out and the audience was treated to a few hours of song and humour from some really excellent performers (Jamie, in particular, stood out) - two to watch out for are Abigail who really should be on the West End stages already and Daniela, who despite being only 15, has the most amazing voice.

Pubcrawls, Theatre and pints, oh my.

It's been a busy few days for Jamie and I since my last post. We've been for a curry, we've done a pubcrawl which I organized, and we went out to Earl's Court to see Ken's show "Ordinary Days."

I have to admit, one of our favourite things to do in London is go for curry. As much as Vancouver is a sushi-heaven, London is with indian food (well, a British interpretation of Indian food, anyway...). The best curry we've found in London so far is conviently located just down the road, called Haweli's. They LOVE us there, possibly because we go so often (for a while, it was once a week minimum - Jamie's completely addicted to chicken vindaloo, which is chicken in a hot sauce. And when I say hot, I mean burn your eyebrows off hot (lets not even go into where the burning one experiences the next day is...). So Thursday night we met up with our American friends Clay and Kelly and celebrated Obama's victory with a vindaloo, some tikka masala (my favourite, invented in Glasgow as all good curry should be), and some jalfrezi. So tasty.

One of the things I enjoy doing is organizing pub crawls - the latest was centered around London Bridge and was on Saturday night. I met up with Jamie, Ken and Christie out at Goodge Street after their musical theatre class (Ken and Christie run it, Jamie's a student) for a preperatory pint. After a few drinks Jamie and I made our way over to London Bridge on the tube to meet up with everyone and start our crawl.

There are a few things to keep in mind if you want to ensure a successful pub crawl:
- make sure the pubs are all fairly close together - no one wants to spend half the night walking between pubs, this takes away valuable drinking time.
- make sure you know where the pubs are - again, no one wants to waste time while you frantically look for a pub.
- make sure the pub actually exists - I learned this one on the last pub crawl I organized - I neglected to check to see if the pubs I'd picked were still there...

Fortunately I'd ticked off all the boxes in the planning, and the first pub was exactly where I thought it was supposed to be. We started our evening at a pub next to Borough Market called The Market Porter. It's fairly small, however it has a fantastic selection of Real British Ales, not just the usual pub ales you get in the chain pubs (such as London Pride and Greene King IPA). I had a tasty pint called Stonehenge Brewery Heelstone Ale - very tasty. Jamie went with a cider black, which is apple cider with a shot of blackcurrant syrup. Next on the list was just up the street - The Southwark Tavern (pronounced suth-ark). Not such an extensive selection of ales, but they do have a fantastic cellar with little private stone rooms - an excellent venue for an interesting evening. The third pub was up just off Borough High street - called The Old Kings Head. I'd seen this pub before but had never been - I don't think I'd go again to be honest - decent pints but crap atmosphere. Finally, we ended up at our old favourite The George (those who have visited us here before will know The George).

As London pubs close early (11 o'clock), we managed to make it home at a reasonable hour, which suits me fine - I used to be able to stay up all hours at parties, but I'm getting old - anything past 12:30 and I pay for it the next day.

Monday night was Ken's show - he's starring in the London production of "Ordinary Days", a musical from the US about four people living in New York. We met Ken, John, Christie and Steve at the Finsborough Pub/Theatre at Earl's Court and enjoyed a pint and some ridiculously expensive chips (£4 for a small plate of chips - this is Earl's Court for cryin' out loud, not Knightsbridge!). At 7:30 we went upstairs to the tiny theatre - I think it was the smallest theatre I've ever been in - enough seating for maybe 70 people at most.

The show was fantastic. Ken stole pretty much all the scenes he was in, although I have to admit we were a bit biased. It was really funny in some parts, and *really* sad in others - at one point I think a good half of the audience was crying (not me- I'm a manly man who wouldn't cry even if I got my arm stuck in an industrial woodchipper).

We ended the night at The Troubador - a famous Earl's Court pub were a good number of relatively famous bands played some of their first shows - The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix...you get the idea...

Tonight is Jamie’s theatre school Cabaret Show where she’s performing on stage! I’ll bring my camera and post some pictures in the next few days…

The Big Bangs

Another Bonfire Night has passed, and the smell of cordite has almost left the common.

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, November 5th is known in the UK as “Guy Fawkes Night”; a night where they light bonfires and set off large number of fireworks to celebrate the death of a certain Guy Fawkes, who plotted to blow up Parliament and thus strike a blow for the cause of the downtrodden Catholics of Britain.

The plan was very nearly flawless – they’d rented a flat which had a large cellar right next to the parliament buildings, security having a slightly different meaning back then (actually, it had much the same meaning, they just weren’t quite as concerned about it as we are, not having Terror Level Alert Systems etc). They filled the cellar with high-powered explosives and set the date.

The night before the planned bombing, a member of the conspiracy had an awkward attack of conscience and wrote a letter to a Catholic priest (it could’ve been a bishop, I’m not sure). The following is not an exact extract from that letter, but it would have gone something like this:

Dear Priest,
If there was a hypothetical Catholic plot to blow up parliament (which there isn’t), tomorrow would be a good day (but there’s no plot) to NOT go anywhere near the parliament buildings. Did I mention that there’s no plot? Also, don’t go to parliament tomorrow.
Yours,
Not A Conspirator
ps. If there was a hypothetical plot, I wouldn’t be involved.

Evidently the details of the plot somehow got out, and when the conspirators (and Guy Fawkes) arrived in the morning to set off the bomb, they were surprised to find a rather large number of guards etc waiting. Things rather went downhill from there for them.

Clapham Common is a large park over the road from us, and is known for (among other things *) its extravagant fireworks display on Bonfire Night. They were certainly loud, although I’m not sure Charlie and Hamilton appreciated them. I’ve only ever seen that many people in the park on the sunny day this summer (the singular is intentional). I suspect that The Windmill had it’s biggest night of all time with a veritable horde of drunken revellers lurching around, pints in hand.

This morning, the Lambeth garbage collectors were out in full force trying to clean the common of the several tonnes of trash left by the thoughtful celebrants, who evidently can’t think ahead to bring a trash bag along with them, and so are forced to leave all their crap all over the place.

* the Common is also known as a place to go for illicit gay sex. I don’t know this from experience, I’ve just heard.
** this explanation may not be entirely historically accurate, and in fact I may have made it all up, but it’s a good story…