I omitted to mention in my last entry that we visited a franchise called the Angus Steak House for lunch on the same day we went to Lords. It was late for lunch (around 2ish) and we were famished. Well, I can tell you that Angus knows a thing or two about steak, and how to host guests in an eatery. The steak was delicious and the service was fantastic. Only about £25 a head!

Last night I tried out my new sleeping bag… for about half an hour. After that point I decided that it was unsuitable to be perspiring profusely inside my ridiculously expensive bag, so I rearranged my sleeping environment back to my old bag with the goal of switching the new bag over at Nomads today. They were exceptionally helpful, allowing me to swap over my bag for one rated 15 degrees to 5 degrees C and talking me out of spending any extra money on a liner I mistakenly thought I needed. Nomads rocks.

Following that Tim and I headed off to Leceister Square again to see The Constant Gardener, which we had missed a couple of days earlier. We grabbed our tickets early and took a closer look at the Square. We found a restaurant coffee shop selling Illy coffee, which I will rate as the best double macchiato I have had so far in my time away, although it was tending to be a little sour. The ice cream you see in the corresponding photos cost £4.75, but it was totally worth it. The blurriness is courtesy of the first use of the timer photography on my camera, which took three photos after 10 seconds. The others were really cheesy, so the blurry one gets the gallery spot.

I tell you, The Constant Gardener is a brooding and melancholic film, which leaves you grasping for some semblance of meaning in the banal drudgery of Americanised Western life. The movie is a character piece portraying the way heavyweight pharmaceutical companies bend statistics and destroy lives in third world countries to test drugs which have no chance of passing stringent Western requirements. Upon leaving the cinema, I remained quiet and reflective for the whole train trip back to home, which is nigh on an hour, simply pondering the self-conceived complexity of our self-important lives. Watching people filter through the Square or cram through the Underground was like looking at my own steadycam epilogue being cut into the film, a stark and fitting contrast to the thousands of Africans the film contained or alluded to. Having seen a movie depicting such deep intellectual and social issues it made other feature films such as King Kong seem plasticky and childish. Exposing and putting to shame the petty bickering which is Western capitalism also made me struggle to understand how any one non-conformist could make a difference at all. My conclusion was that I may not be able to solve a problem completely, but I may still be able to be part of the solution in a small yet significant way.

And now, we’re off to France. Well, more precisely, we’re off to France at 7am tomorrow morning, which means getting up at 4am. Ouch. And I’ll be away from net connectivity for about a week. At some stage I’ll do my best to get in to a net cafe and write something, otherwise I’ll find some fixation to mention when I get to Berlin on the 4th of January.

Until then, Happy New Year!

So it’s been a few days and I’ve only got a few bits and pieces to share with you. As lovely as it is being with family on Christmas day, the day began ridiculously early with the clamour of present-hungry rugrats, wore on not a little tiredly and lacked a lot of the lustre, glimmer and shine that it has in Australia. In fact, the whole lead up to Christmas seemed very bah-humbugged and lacked a true feeling of festivity. I did get a Mag Lite torch from our hosts, my Auntie and Uncle, which will, no doubt, come in handy in future camping ventures.

Had a lazy day on Boxing Day despite another early rise. Since then Tim and I have blocked the door to our lounge room sleeping place with two large toy boxes, with our hosts’ approval. This allowed us to sleep in until about 7 or 8am without too much disturbance. There was a little snow Boxing Day afternoon, which was cool to see.

The day after Boxing Day was yet a Bank holiday in London, but we braved the close-to-freezing conditions and the falling snow to venture out to the hallowed ground which is Lords. Our tour guide was a passionate older man who had obviously attended and/or worked at Lords for a couple of decades at least. The 1 hour 50 minute tour was extremely informative and a great photo shooting session, hence the “Keep off the grass” IOTM.

Today Tim and I took a train ride through Victoria station to Leceister Square, with the preconceived notion of seeing Les Miserables at Queen’s Theatre mid afternoon. After discovering that a ticket worth AUD$85 would provide only a partly-obscured view of the stage, we canned that idea and went to Pizza Hut at lunch instead. Thereafter we rode the train to Wimbledon in the hope of catching a movie, only to discover it was not screening at all. A couple of coffees which were either mediocre or average were also consumed during the day.

I think I spent about as much money today in one hit as I’ve spent the whole time I’ve been here to this point. We’re off to France on Friday and I’ll be sleeping in an annexed outside room which may actually have no heating at all. This prompted me to take the step of investing in a 3-seasons sleeping bag for about £70, rated for comfort from 5 degrees C to -5 degrees C. Here’s hoping it’s not too warm for use in Australia during the summer time, otherwise it’s a lot of money to spend on a couple of isolated winter expeditions. Still, I do enjoy the odd backpacking or low-impact camping adventure, so maybe it’ll be a catalyst rather than a deadweight.

Today’s the first day I’ve actually felt normal, and actually been in my right mind, after the joys of shunting my body clock backwards 10.5 hours. Yesterday I awoke feeling downright groggy, with a hint of a headache and an inability to properly stomach my glass of milk after breakfast. The cheese on my sandwich at lunch time felt equally disturbing, but all remained where it should and I decided a nap was in order.

Fully two hours later I awoke, at last with a clear head and the ability to think straight. My left knee, which had been troubling me due to the combination of cold, additional walking and my long fast stride, had eased sufficiently for me to manage stairs without a limp too.

It’s interesting to note how badly I was actually doing while under such a cloud of haziness. Today I got back into the normal routine of things. With my sleeping patterns no longer dictating my brain’s inability to function, I was thinking at normal full speed and even anticipating stuff properly. Hoorah.

This, unfortunately, means no new photos. Tim and the parents went to the Tower of London and did the tourist thing inside. Given my distaste for the monarchy and its apparent uselessness in a Western capitalist socioeconomic structure, I was somewhat glad to have had the “misfortune” of being laid up at home. We’ve messed around with our further plans in England and France, with my Germany jaunt being pushed forward to Jan 3 and our trip to Bath relegated to Jan 11. Hopefully this means we’ll take a day trip to the university town of Oxford sometime after Christmas and before New Year, and possibly visit the English Salisbury too.

Today, then, was excellent. Amazing how improper sleep just makes everything else totally insufferable. It hit double figures today: yes, 10 degrees. This meant that Tim and I could walk around outside in our usual winterwear, with the stylish yet practical addition of a manscarf each.

It was the perfect opportunity to jump on a train to Wimbledon with the grandparents, with the express purpose of visiting the Odeon theatre to see Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It was, succinctly, fabulous. The opening half hour is totally emotive, and I was on the edge of my seat with excitement as all my most vivid imaginations of Lucy’s “Lamp Post” meeting with Mr Tumnus were rendered in motion picture before my eyes. Disney is to be credited with remaining faithful to C.S. Lewis’ original text, matching the dialogue almost word for word (as I recall it, no less). As soon as we saw Aslan, I did whisper to Tim that he’d better have a good voice talent behind him. Fear not, he is brilliantly rendered, with an excellent voice performance by Liam Neeson. The beavers are great too, with some light comedy between Mr and Mrs to keep amused the parents of kids in tow. I did wish that the White Witch was a little more ferocious (a la Galadriel’s transformation in LOTR:2, which, incidentally, I found quite anomalous), and that the story didn’t proceed quite so quickly. At times Peter looked precocious with his sword, and unfortunately we flicked quickly from duty-to-parents-to-protect-siblings to must-save-Narnia-ahhhhhh. Still, this was no epic of the trilogic scale of LOTR’s proportions, so we will forgive these shortcomings and say bravo.

There was a glaring omission in my previous entry – we actually visited Westminster Abbey and went inside. The place is huge, both in prime real estate area and height. Strewn throughout are memorial stones and tombs dating back to the 1200s. So many of the early English royalty are actually buried there, including a couple of “firsts” (King Whatsisface I, etc). After spending an hour or so inside, you pop out again into bustling London. My first comment to Dad was that you kind of forget about the rest of the world while you’re inside. Remarkably peaceful, if a little bewildering.

Here’s something I found amusing. On the first night we were blowing up our air matresses in the lounge room and discovered the pump nozzle fitting was cracked. Rather than pumping the air into the bed, it was just escaping around the nozzle. My first reaction was “Got some gaff?”, which I asked aloud directly to my Auntie, fully expecting the typical “Erm, gaff?” response. But she just said “Yep! In the cupboard.” and I doubled over laughing. [For the uninitiated, gaffer tape is commonly used in construction and audio/production, where it'll stick to anything and fix anything.]

Finally, something truly random. While we were at the cafe yesterday I happened to discover a small fragment of tooth loosely embedded in my gum where my bottom left wisdom tooth has surfaced. This small fragment irked me no end, and I fiddled with it indecorously until finally dislodging it and extracting it. It was no larger than a sesame seed, and oddly enough, had the look of a miniscule tooth, with a crown and a root. If this is a fluke, it was an ironically well shaped fluke!

Since Mum didn’t care too much for the cold open-top Big Bus company ride around the sights in London, I took advantage of the second day of her ticket to join Dad in a hoon around the east side. Victoria and Regent, Trafalgar and the Thames. Fortunately I managed to hit the shutter on my camera at just the right moment when passing the [clock tower commonly known as, and containing the huge bell called the] Big Ben, and despite the postcardish look of the shot I’m glad to have been there and captured it myself. Tower Bridge (yep, the one with towers on it) was an enjoyable sight too, as was the London Tower. I got a decent couple of pics of most of the sights to see.

Our tour guides on the buses were absolutely hilarious. The first was just funny and laconic, but the second was a one-eyed sold-out born-and-bred London monarchist. He was loud and abrasive and indignant, heaping scorn on dispassionate tourists when passing quintessential London landmarks and attempting to incite some emotional display. Quite informative, he was, and listening throughout enabled me to have a better understanding of the sights and sounds around the place. I now feel satisfied that I have been a tourist in London.

To be in London and not visit Harrods would surely be a cardinal sin. Furthermore, my idea of what Harrods would be was totally incorrect. I had assumed it was a boutique niche store serving only the most exorbitant of tastes. Nope. It’s huge. You pay a premium to buy anything with the Harrods brand on it, apparently up to 20% over normal prices. Fortunately I was wearing my good jeans (yeah, I know), because visitors have been known to be turned away if their dress was deemed inappropriate. As it was I was asked to carry my backpack in my hand. Didn’t buy anything but had an average quality coffee at Illy on the top floor for £3 (about AUD$7.50).

The younglings who live here at our accommodation – my cousins, aged five and nine – manage to rise every morning at an unearthly hour. I have not slept past 6am in my time here so far, and the prospects of this actually occurring but once during my time here are bleak. Add to this the unfortunate reality of totally destroying my body’s perception of regular sleep cycles and you have a red-eyed zombie each day at about 4pm. They eat at about 6pm and retire at about 7pm, whereas the rest of us don’t eat until 8pm. This is odd. My mind gets it but my exhaustion says otherwise. It is remarkably frustrating for this choleric that I can’t function half as well after mid afternoon than before midday.

Perhaps we are becoming accustomed to the cold. It seems less piercing and it’s too much of a hassle to remove jacket and scarf at every indoor location. The heating here is as prevalent and effective as Australian cooling, allowing us to wear only one layer inside.

Today we managed a couple of hours of solitude while the rest of the crew were at a school breakup do. Tim and I were totally overtired and we were laughing at both our languid attempts at normal motor skills and the hilarity of a hopping international calling card. To celebrate Tim’s success with his SACE/TER we visited the local delimart called the Co-op and a chip shop for typically British hot chips.

Thereafter we visited Wimbledon, which is a thriving mall centre not far from the tennis mecca. First time to try a Quiznos sub, and while it wasn’t insubstantial, I didn’t find it worth the 4 quid I paid. Tim got an eminently British Big Mac meal for not much more.

There’s a cafe at the Plaza in Wimbledon called Costa Coffee. The coffee was, surprisingly, outstanding. Not only in quality but also in quantity too – we got medium drinks which would have easily been 600mL. My additional macchiato was delicious and I was only sorry that I quaffed it so quickly. I may have mentioned that coffee is everywhere, with no shortage of independent and other franchises in addition to the green-branded mermaid.

I like Wimbledon. It’s much less frantic than Oxford Street and the focus seemed to be more authentically social than the need to be seen in the right place wearing the appropriate ensemble of brand apparel.