Coffeehouse.co.nz

Thursday the other week I was working at home and kept hearing this loud buzzing noise. Kind of like a massive weed-eater having a go at a large flax bush. Hanging out on the balcony to see what was going on I spotted little planes twisting and turning up the Thames. Not very far away from the Thames at all really. Height wise, that is! Practice for the Red Bull air race was going on right on our doorstep! Entertainment for a while, and I didn’t even have to leave the house!

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, these guys race time-trial style through a course of blow up cones. These cones sit on the ground, or on the Thames in this case, and they have to go through them. At up to 400kph. Madness! The official site is here, if you want more detail.

As a bonus, on the Saturday we managed to get some spare “Local Residents” free tickets that meant we could sit in the grandstands right on the river and see them all up close, as well as put up with the pretty awful commentators. (They should really have done more homework about London and the area. Would have made them seem less like muppets!) As well as the racing, there was a neat display by a helicopter doing all sorts of things that helicopters were surely not meant to be able to do, like loops and rolls etc. Impressive. Mighty impressive.

A good day out, but I wouldn’t pay for a ticket, I think.

For some reason (presumably to do with large amounts of cash) the Tour de France started in London this year.  And, just like the marathon, all the mad guys on bikes came pretty much past our house.  Well, not quite as close as the marathon, but close enough so we felt we had to go down and have a look.

A lot of standing around in the hot sun (for a change!  yay!) and then they raced past in a few minutes.  Not that they were actually racing at the time, merely heading down to the start at Greenwich.

That all started a good day of sport.  British Grand Prix, Tour de France stage, and Wimbledon mens’ final.  All on a sunny day that we should be outside in the sun, but what can you do?!

Whenever a Kiwi band makes the effort to come over this side of the world it would be a bit rude if we didn’t make the effort to go and see them. This year Crowded House were playing on the Saturday of the Hyde Park Calling gig, so we popped along.

Good set from the guys, as you’d expect, but it was just a pity about the weather! Massive downpour towards the end of their set that kind of put a bit of a dampener on the whole thing, but we coped. Just. At least we’d had a little bit of sun before then to warm us up for it.

Peter Gabriel played after that, but to be honest, after a couple of songs we realised just how wet we were and decided to toddle off home to warm up again. Still, it was possibly better than being stuck at Glastonbury this year though!

Sunday just been saw another 10k run, and this time it was the Norwich Union City vs. City run that cost 10 quid to enter. Not sure why I pay to put myself through the pain when I could just go out and run 10k anyway. But it goes to a good cause, apparently this one is for 200 initiatives nationwide. And I guess it gives me a goal to work towards and gets me off my lazy butt to do a bit of training – but never enough, as I always seem to leave training till the last minute.

The run itself was hard work. It was hot and I can now see why they said it was an undulating course. The hills were very hard work for someone who trains around home, and I have to say it’s as ‘flat as Holland’! But I’m glad I did it and I have another medal to add to my running medals – no I didn’t get a place, the good thing is you get a medal just for finishing.

But the best part of the day was looking forward and having a great pub lunch and a cheeky pint afterwards – now I know why people join harriers clubs!

It was a brilliantly fine morning this morning and as we manged to wake up at about 6:30 this morning we decided to go for a walk.  Actually, Bec decided, and then managed to harass me into it.  Glad she did though, it was a stunning morning for it.  We decided to walk down to Tower Bridge to get some breakfast.

On the way down to the riverside, we found that the birds that had been camping on the life-preserver had been lucky enough to have their chicks hatch.  Six of them!  Good luck feeding that lot!  Seemed that half the neigbourhood was out having a look too.

We did have a bit of a problem when we got to Tower Bridge though.  We were too bloody early for brunch anywhere! Not that it worried us too much.  We just sat in the sun and watched all the tourists arrive and take their photos.  And then had an average brunch by the riverside in the sun. Yay Sunday!

As it was a long weekend here and we thought the chances of us just wasting it sitting inside were pretty high we decided to make a bit of an effort to go out and see another of the free London museums. This time the Science Museum.

We had a pretty good wander around, but we’d have to say that it’s probably 3rd on our list so far after the Natural History museum, and the British museum. Not that there wasn’t some interesting stuff, but it’s just that I think you have to really be into some things before the exhibits really make too much sense to you. Even some of the descriptions of the items seem to assume quite a level of familiarity with the topic. But still enough cool stuff there to keep us both interested for a bit.

As it was a nice day we decided that we’d walk for a while once we left there. Hyde Park isn’t that far away, so we walked up to there and through the park down towards town. At the corner of Hyde park there is a new memorial to the Kiwi soldiers from the world wars. Although we’d been past it on busses now and then, this was the first time we’d had a close up look. Pretty impressive really.

We were going to catch the tube from there, but it was still so nice that we just kept walking…

And walking….

And walking!

And we walked all the way home! I’m guessing that most of you have no idea just how far that is, but believe me it’s quite a way. Mostly down the river, so it winds up and down as you go nominally east. We must have walked for about 3 1/2 hours, including the couple of pub stops we required in order to rest our weary feet! Good though.

Sometime last year some stupid pillock decided it would be fun to throw some of the life-preservers that are dotted around the pond thing into the water. Good one. Really good fun, I’m sure.

But the birds that come and breed in there every year seem to love it! (I think it’s the same pair as last year, but who knows. They all look the same to me!) They’ve got a big steady base for their nest that floats casually around the pond giving them a different view all the time. Location, location and more locations!

They seem to build their nest out of just about anything too. I have no idea how they manage to drag some of the twigs they do across all the water, and dragging plastic bags up onto it has gotta suck when you’ve only got a little bill to help!

Everytime I walk that way I always have a wee chuckle. It’s the little things!

First up: NO, neither of us ran it! Just have to make that clear after seemingly nearly causing various heart attacks around the world the last time we put up a blog entry about a run.

The course for the marathon runs around the main roads about 500m from our place, so if we’re around town when it’s on we go and have a look and add our small bit of encouragement to the clapping and yahoo-ing that goes on hopefully motivating the nuts who decide it’s a fun thing to do on a Sunday to go a bit further.

We had a bit of a disaster though. For some reason Bec thought that the race started at 10am, so even though we got up well before 8 this morning we were just pottering around doing stuff… Then we finally turned the TV on only to realise that the women’s race was just going past our place, and the guys were getting close. PANIC!! But we managed to get out there in time for the leaders of the guys race to come through.

You won’t see any photos of them here, though, as Bec had a bit of a nightmare and pushed the self-timer button with her nose and missed them. She seems to do that quite a lot. You don’t get a second chance to get a photo though. They’re off! Not sure I could run that fast for 200m, let alone for a marathon!

Once the really serious guys have gone through in little clumps, you just get wave after wave of people coming past, all with various looks of pain and concentration on their faces. Sitting on the wall watching them all stream past actully made us feel a bit dizzy and ill, like travel sickness. I think I can understand how animals like Wilderbeasts avoid being attacked by predators when they all just stream along together!

But good on everyone that did it. I hope you all finished, and may your pain tomorrow all have been worth it!

We were lucky enough to get the work box at the Royal Albert Hall, it’s a fantastic venue. So on Friday night we went to see the Kaiser Chiefs. It had been a great Friday which made the concert even better. Bec’s work had had some great news as they gained accreditation to the national IIP standard, so they were all on cloud nine. When we arrived there was a warm up band playing that were so loud you could probably hear them in France – we’re not being old, honest! Anyway the concert was great, which was helped along by all the champers Bec’s MD kept buying to celebrate. Anyway from memory they were pretty good and the singer jumped around the stage like he was having a great time too. A great night is always followed by a very long, tired and recovering Saturday, but it was worth it!

After a really, really, really mild winter to date (for which we’ve been very thankful!) it’s finallly got cold this week. Brrrr. But the good side of that is that we’ve finally had a dump of snow!

Yippee! I like snow!!

Not that we had that much, but enough to turn everything nice and white for a bit. And enough to be able to listen to it making the great crunch, crunch, crunch sound as we walked along the road to the tube. I guess the middle of a big, heat producing city isn’t the best place to get snow, but I’ll take what I can get.

I’m hoping for some more tonight, but it doesn’t look that likely here. Boo hoo. Still, a couple more months of winter yet, I guess…