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Well, it was hard, up and down and a very long way…… 13.1 miles to be precise. The 2006 Windsor half marathon that is! On a very nice sunny Sunday afternoon and in the heat of the day I took part in the half marathon, with about 5000 other participants.

The winner completed it in 1hr 6mins – not a bad effort. And let’s just say that, well my time was not even close to that! But I must say that it was an achievement and I am proud to say that I completed it!

My body is feeling it today though. I can’t help but wonder how far I have got to go in order to even attempt the London Marathon – something I want to accomplish before leaving here. Let the training begin!!

(note: those of you that know me will guess that it was Bec that posted that. All us boys sat in the pub and watched the golf while the girls ran in circles… But we were all very impressed!)

An early Saturday afternoon stroll along the Thames ended up at the seafood fair at London Bridge to indulge in some seafood – yummy. Just a little festival but it attracted a lot of people in quite a small space.

We tucked into some Paella, Thai fish cakes, prawns etc and we saved the best till last – some oysters. We tasted Scottish oysters and Rock oysters, the Scottish oysters were suppose to be the pick of the bunch, but somehow we preferred the plain ordinary rock ones, but they all went down like a wee treat.

And what better than to be eating seafood accompanied by some good ole NZ Nobilo vino blanco. The food and wine was also really well priced, good value for money. It was a great afternoon out.

A pretentious Friday night dining experience for a complete change of pace, Gilgamesh Bar & Restaurant (but don’t visit their site unless you like big, slow loading, Flash sites). We made our way up to Camden to a flashy Asian restaurant, and I must say after visiting the restaurant we feel that its location leaves something to be desired. For the type of restaurant it is and the market it is trying to capture I am not convinced that its location is quite right, and that’s not helped by the fact that when dining you are sitting beside a freight rail line.

The restaurant and bar itself are big spaces and I would say it is posey Asian – the décor is all carved wood panels with dim colour changing lighting. A little bottle of coke costs £2.50 and get this, they pour it into a glass and don’t give you what’s left in the bottle. Now I don’t know about you but when I have paid extortionate money for a drink I want the whole lot! The menu was pretty thin on mains, which seem really pricey, but there were quite a few nice dim-sums that we pigged out on, and the food was good.

We’re not sure how long they’ll be able to sustain the way they run the place either. There seemed to be more staff than patrons and the majority of them seemed to have nothing to do other than stand around at the kitchen waiting for food to be cooked.

I can’t say we’ll be going back in a hurry. But we’d have to say that all in all if you like pretentious places then I’d give this one a go.

Every year I get really surprised by how quickly the summer fades here. The days get noticably shorter every week, and we start pulling the curtains earlier and earlier, giving up on the last bit of sunlight that we’d normally try to grab through the summer.

I don’t know why it catches me by surprise every year. I’d think I should be used to it by now, but no. Every year it still gets me.

I think there is a bit of a deliberate block in my mind though. You know once you start getting to this time it’s not too long before the real slide into the long, dark winter sets in. All I can hope is that the winter this year is as mild as my memory tells me that last year’s was.

Maybe I’ve been away too long, but I don’t remember feeling like there was quite the same marked change in seasons in New Zealand that there is here. I guess one day I’ll be able to see again.

Toast – a favourite food of the British……. Also the name of the NZ Wine and Food Festival in the UK. A fine sunny Saturday and what better way to spend it than heading off to one of London’s great parks, Regents Park, to indulge in some fine NZ food and wine.

With the wine selling opening at 12pm and it being really, really hot we set off to find a nice glass of vino blanco. But as it was so hot and the glasses were so small we had to have a few more…. The majority that we tasted were from Central Otago. Not sure we can remember what any of them are anymore! But the one we really wanted to try somehow managed to sell out in 40 mins, so there was either not much of it or it was extremely popular!

To break up the day and escape the sun for a while we went and watched a cooking demonstration – sushi skills. We learnt that fresh grated NZ grown wasabi is really yummy! It’s quite different to the normal paste, and I guess the best description would be the wasabi paste flavour without the really sharp bite. Good fun to watch, but we didn’t learn that much that we didn’t already know. Nice to know that we aren’t really that bad at making sushi!

Oh yeah and we made sure we used the food vouchers you get when you get your ticket by eating 2 lots of salt and pepper squid, some very expensive seared tuna, some fantastic green lip mussels and of course nothing better than to finish off with some boysenberry cheesecake!!

It was a great day out and good to taste some NZ favs again. But we were left wondering a little just what it meant for the exhibitors, and who the target “guest” was. The whole place was packed out with mainly young Kiwi’s, quite a few of us just there to enjoy the day and have a few drinks. It doesn’t really seem like a show where the products are getting introduced to a new audience, and I reckon you could count the number of people who can remember what wines they were drinking.

But it didn’t seem like the sort of show where everyone exhibiting was out to make a killing either. Most of the food and wine was relatively resonably priced (in fact, compared to some shows it was pretty cheap).

But I’m sure that for the Kiwi’s coming across to show off their stuff, a weekend in the London summer has to beat all the cold and snow back in NZ!

The organisers had also made a good decision (in our minds at least) of shutting the bars at 4pm. 4 hours was long enough for everyone, I think, even though some would maybe not admit it. We didn’t see anyone who was in a very messy state, but I think closing them one hour later and there would have been quite a few.

All in all, a grand day out.

After the real experience of Wimbledon, queueing, it was great to be able to wander stright up to the gates and get in with some preorganised tickets. I’m not sure where they came from, but Bec managed to get 2 Centre Court tickets through her work. Much quicker and easier (and meant we could have a much longer sleep in that morning), but not the same as Friday’s effort.

Which was probably just as well, as it was a LOT hotter than on Friday. Too hot! We were melting all the time, and couldn’t last watching a full game from the seats. There was just no air at all moving in the court, and no shade all day where we were sitting, so we had to get out now and then for a bit of shade and try to track down any breeze that was around. There wasn’t much of that!

On a fine summers day in London, where better to be than at Wimbledon watching some tennis? We didn’t have tickets for the day, but they run such a wonderful system where there are always a large number of tickets available on the day for those that are keen enough to try their luck queueing.

After our disastrous effort last year when we got there a bit late, queued for ages only to find that we were about 20 people away from the front when they had sold out of on-the-day tickets and we had to wait until people left before we could get in only to have it rain about half an hour after we got in, we got there just a bit earlier this year at about 8:30am. The queuing took about 2.5 hours, so we were done with the queue and through all the security well in time to see the start of the days play. Whew!

Because so few of the courts are ticketed, you can wander around and see all the players you can find. And you can always spend a lot of the time up on the hill watching the big (huge!) screen there if there is a good game on one of the main courts. Which we did. Great place for drinking Pimms in the sun too, although there is not a lot of shade for when it gets just that little bit warm. But then you can go off and find some shade for a while.

A great day out.

It finally happened! A sunny, warm, relatively windless day. And on a weekend day too! Yippee! Summer might have arrived at last. Which, considering it’s really only the first week of official summer time isn’t too bad!

So we had to make the most of it. A big walk (ok, so it wasn’t that big) around our local area, looking at all the pretty flowers that have sprung up. We followed that up with a BBQ in the local park. Vege sausages (hmm) and baby squid stuffed with feta and chorizo for me, and feta and peppers for Bec. Very posh!

Only thing that would have made it better would have been to get rid of the 14 yr olds drinking their alcopops nearby…

Well, looks like I can remember enough stats from a book to be considered for UK citizenship. 

Before you can put forward your full application for naturalisation here you have to do a short multi choice computer based test covering things that are really useful for living in the UK. Like knowing who it is that opens Parliament every year, how many people live in London, how much lower average women’s pay is, and where the most immigants to the UK have come from, etc, etc, etc.

All really essential stuff for life here!

But at least I remembered enough to reach the 75% pass mark out of 24ish questions, but they don’t tell you what your mark is, or what you got wrong, so I might still be misguided on a few things.

Now just to deal with the Home Office here for the rest of the process.  If anyone there is actaully doing this kind of work, and not out firefighting on all the other Home Office issues that have blown up in the papers lately.

Expect an update in 5.14 months, going by the average application times on the site!

A night at the opera?! No thanks, I’ll take a night at a David Gilmour concert at the Royal Albert Hall over large lasses in viking helmets any time! And thanks to Bec winning the work tickets, we managed to have a perfect view from one of the boxes as well.

Absolutely cracking night. Superb music, songs, sound and lights (even the obligatory laser). And the special guests were a bonus… Rick Wright, Crosby, Nash, and err… Bowie!

After having been to see a couple of gigs at the Royal Albert Hall, it’s so hard to go drag myself to any other venue for a concert now. It’s just such a nice, cosy venue for the size.