12/07/07: Legal London

As part of the London Summer Law Program, we were invited on a ‘Legal London’ tour. Which was quite informative. It basically involved being taken around the four inns of court. I won’t go into the details here. They can all be read on Wikipedia. And I’ve posted comments on all my photos anyway. So get the details there. Very elitist, very exclusive, very erudite, very not-me. The whole place eeked of snobbery and social class extremes. Reminded me of a lecturer at the law school I’m attending who pointedly said to me (don’t forget to use the nice thick Queen’s English accent) ‘let me guess, you like camping don’t you?’ to which I had replied ‘…uh yeah. I love camping’; and she: ‘yes see I thought as much. Anything less than five stars and 24 hour room service is camping to me’. Anyway. That’s all neither here nor there. A good little tour.

10/07/07: Regent’s Park

It was a lovely day today, which had been rare recently. After class, Ash collected me from uni and we walked to Regent’s Park. A truly lovely day: the sun was out, the sky was blue (well, London blue anyway), the clouds were fluffy, the birds were singing, and there were cute little duckies everywhere. We hired a row boat and rowed around the lake taking photos of this and that. Well. I sat there like the Queen of Sheba taking photos, Ash rowed me around the lake. Unlike most days, it wasn’t particularly crowded either. Nothing grand or exciting, just… nice you know? Check out the photos.

08/07/07: Nottingham & Sherwood Forest

Ash arrived from Perth yesterday, and today we decided that since both our mothers had regaled us with stories and photographs when we were younger of the wonderful times they had had at Nottingham and in Sherwood forest, it was going to be our excursion for today.

One really should have learnt by now that it’s times like these, when you’ve got some fond, cherished memory or some childish expectation of poignant settings that you’re actually going to end up with a crushing slap across the face followed by a dousing of icy cold water from the reality monster.

The slap hurt and the bucket of ice water was cold indeed.

The day started as it was going to progress and end. We had decided to start off early, booking a car online and tubing down to Marble Arch to pick it up. Only to find, when we got there, that the place doesn’t open until 10am. So we waited. Along with everyone else who was waiting. And when the place finally opened there was the queue. Which was long. And the wait was long. And I kid you not, Ash waited in line for 40 minutes. I couldn’t take it. I had to go outside to breathe. Finally, when we got to the counter, I handed over our booking number written in my diary. Only to be told it wasn’t on the records. I tried to stay calm, truly I did. Ash was remarkably patient, suggesting that we find an internet café to double check the details. So we did. And the details were fine. The company just needs 24 hours to process all online bookings. So far, 24 hours hadn’t elapsed. I sent the company an email telling them to cancel the booking and we returned to the place. Stood in line. Again. And waited. Again. And finally got to the counter. Again. Where we hired a car. Again. By the time we got out of there, it was midday (not kidding either! It was exactly noon when we drove out of there).

The drive to Nottinham was long and frustrating. The traffic out of London is enough to try any Saint’s patience. It took us about three hours to finally get to Nottingham, and when we did, it was severely disappointing. Nothing was opened on account of it being a Sunday, and Nottingham castle turned out to be one big touristy trap, completely refurbished and shining with a tea garden where you can enjoy scones and cakes.

Quite disturbed, we decided to head towards Sherwood Forest. But upon closer inspection of the map, we realised that it, too, wouldn’t be as we expected since it was completely fragmented, shown only as small patches of green on the map. There were wood plantations and industry galore in the region.

Ash’s mother had told him all about Major Oak, which she had seen when she was younger. We made that our destination, finding it in the early evening. Ash was quite pleased at finally seeing the old tree, but I nearly cried it was so sad. Though probably not as sad as the tree that was fenced off behind a sign telling of its precious old age chain-sawed to pieces. Major Oak was also fenced off, surrounded by a pool of tanbark and propped up with a circle of steel poles. It was so depressing. I know I’m anthrophomorphosising, but the poor old thing! Imagine being that old, only to be isolated from all the other trees in the forest, tanbark all around your feet instead of grass, screwed and punctured with steel bolts so that you could be propped up by heaps of cold posts. How pitiful.

The area was well maintained as a nice park more so than a forest. Many people were walking their dogs. We went off the path for a bit to explore the forest, but it was quite thin and, well, ‘managed’. We don’t really have climbable trees in Australia. Not big chunky oaks like they have here. We had so looked forward to coming to a nice English forest. But this? All the images of thick, bushy, leafy green forests where you could climb the trees and hide in the foliage… gone. Check out the photos. A couple of the shots say a lot about Nottingham and Sherwood.

Don't even get me started about the drive home.

30/06/07: Around London

After coming back from the museum, I took a walk down to the Thames with Jess, a girl I had met from uni. Just yesterday there was an attempted bombing just around the corner from uni, but no one seemed particularly fazed at all by any of it. The uni is actually called the Notre Dame London Law Centre, and it's quite centrally located next to Trafalgar Square. There were a couple of enjoyable moments, but you can read all about these under the photos. A good day had anyway.

30/06/07: British Museum Day I

It had been raining all week. And I was poor. So very poor. So I had to limit my outings to no-entry-fee locations. Like the British Museum! So on went my Gortex and out came the Kathmandu brollie and off I went. It was jam-packed. There are over a hundred rooms at the British Museum, and with my usual ‘Pffth! What’s a hundred rooms?!’ attitude, quite determined to see all of them, I started at room number one.

Two and a half hours later I got to room three. Absolutely knackered. I couldn’t quite figure out how that was possible. All I did was walk around and read up on the history of collecting, clocks, and Egyptian statues. Still. I guess what that essentially meant was that it would take me around 100+ hours to do the whole place. That’s about five days without sleep…

It was amazing how humongous some of those stone slabs were. And they’d somehow managed to drag them all back across the sea from Egypt and into this building. The photos don’t really capture the sheer size of some of these things. And I guess it just goes to show just how big the actual museum itself is as well.

My favourite of the day? The little seals! Not the pinniped kind, the signature kind. There was a small collection of casts and moulds used for making individual seals, and the itty bitty details were quite impressive.

Recommended. Well worth a visit. Details and photos here.

24/06/07: Apsley House and Wellington Arch

Apsley House was one of the few places around London where my free-entry card could be used. So, having discovered the hard way that I’m probably claustrophobic (the hard way encompassing my having to run out of a tube train because I couldn’t breathe only to find that the underground itself was not enough, and on top of that, that I couldn’t actually face the lifts, so having to run as fast as I could up 177 steps – It’s 177 even though the sign says 175 steps – at Russell Square Station and then the 193 steps at Covent Garden) I took a nice long walk from Tavistock Square to Apsley House today, which is at Hyde Park Corner. Hyde Park looked fairly ugly from the outside. There were panels up everywhere, overgrown grass and slushy gravel; so I walked along the outside perimeter of it rather than through it.

You can read about the history of Apsley House here. It’s basically famous because it’s the first Duke of Wellington’s House. It was certainly a grand old place. And I took some shots willy nilly until a couple of security guards chased me down to let me know in very slow, loud and clear English complete with missing articles and some pidgin sign language that there were ‘No photos allowed in here’.

There were some very handsome paintings in Apsely House, including ones by Correggio and van Dyck. The opulence that surrounded the place was a little overwhelming, especially walking through the ‘China Room’ where the fine china were housed. There were gold gilded dinnerware that commemorated every aspect of this man’s life. Quite scary actually. There were soup tureens there big enough for me to bathe in. And that’d be big even if I wasn’t that small! The detail and intricacies engraved and painted on some of these pieces of dinnerware were certainly awe inspiring. There was a tiny part of my artsy soul that cringed at the thought of someone smearing their boar’s head pie gravy and cutting roast fowl and tongue dinners all over a painting I had laboured for hours over.

I visited Wellington Arch, which was informative, but the wow-factor was missing somewhat. The view offered from the top of the arch left something to be desired, and the walk around the statues memorialising him in the garden made me somewhat uneasy. There was finally one statue that made some sense amongst all the hero-worshipping sculptures. An unknown soldier laying down, his trench-coat covering his shattered body, revealing only a small portion of his face. This is war. These are the people who need to be remembered. Mind you, this should not in any way take away from Wellington his achievements. From all that I’ve read about him, the man was a good and great man. But surely in amongst all those statutes, there’s room for the faceless soldiers?

A walk home in the rain through Hyde Park revealed that the panels that had been put up were there because Aerosmith was playing. There were scalpers everywhere. It was amazing that they were so blatantly yelling out to anyone and everyone who was passing buy ‘Buy or sell! Aerosmith tickets to buy or sell!’. A good day was had, but I did go back to my dorm room feeling a little… dunno. Disenchanted. Details are listed with the photos here.

23/06/07: Connaught Hall

The dramas at the school finally behind me, I moved into Tavistock Square yesterday. I had somehow managed to pack all my belongings and then some into Chris’ old suitcase. Talk about a science lesson in the difference between volume and density. I spent over four hours packing and repacking everything until I eventually squeezed as much as is physically possible into the case. And had four shopping bags and a tea-box of stuff left over. Thank goodness I had Thad there to help me lug the case while I carried the shopping bags. Which were in themselves pretty darn heavy. When we got into town I ran into Woolies and bought another little trolley case and squeezed all the other stuff in there. I didn’t realise how heavy the big case was until Thad left me at the station. And I couldn’t roll it – at all – let alone try to carry it over the gap between the train and the platform. A nice conductor came along quite quickly to be a hero, until he tried lifting the damned thing, which had an amazing capacity to induce the calmest and sweetest looking of people to blurt out strings of expletives. Poor Thad. To think he had dragged it from the house to the bus stop, onto the bus, off the bus, and over brick paving that spanned over half a kilometer to the train station. When I got into London, a quick study of the tube map indicated that I had to pull my two cases of what must be equivalent to one of the stone blocks of the pyramids not only around the tube stations, but on and off four different lines before I get anywhere close to where I should be. With a deep breath and the help of my mate Will Power I got off the train and made for the first change of train. And got to stairs. And had to ask for help. And got down the three steps. And got to escalators. And the bags started to topple over me. And I had to try to prevent it from pushing me over, which would have caused a domino effect down the entire escalator, and some random stranger had to come to my rescue again. And got to the bottom. And there were more stairs. And I had to ask for a lift. Take the right. Go right again. Straight down the road. And there’s a lift. Use that. Oh-kaaay. So there I am, trying to weave my way around the crowd – and it’s a big crowd – I could swear my humerus was somehow no longer connected to my glenoid cavity – trying to find this lift that supposedly exists somewhere down the hall to the right and to the right again and down the road… and ended up in suburbia. Let’s face it. I’ve been called many things, but I’m no ant. I’m not designed to lug around 10 times my own body weight let alone what I must have been lugging – I swear it was 20 times my body weight. I was hot. I was frustrated. I was tired. I was sore. I was calling a cab. Which I did. And he came out of the car to carry my bags into his car. And he swore under his breath. And he took me very promptly to my accommodation. And I unpacked. And I saw everything that I had done and, lo, it was very good. And I was pleased. And on that sixth day I rested by taking a slow walk around my area of town to relax. Nothing particularly exciting to report, except for a very amusing plumber who called himself ‘The Singing Plumber’, who drove up Oxford Street in the very, very slow traffic singing songs out of a very, very loud speaker in his work van while bubbles were blown out of his car by a machine. Great singing, and brilliant advertising strategy. It was rainy, but nice.