A Royal Wedding Special

There are a few photos we took in St. Andrews last weekend which I was saving for today!

I brought my friend Z. these Kate & Wills masks as a present. She is one of those people who couldn’t care less about the Royals, so I bought it as a joke. The party shop I walk past on the way to the Tube every day was selling them and I thought this is just the right gift for my host up in Scotland. I was a bit embarrassed walking in and asking for them … I didn’t want the owner to think I am some sort of Royal Family Fan Club Manager.

It turned out to be a very good gift indeed. I had no idea it would turn into such a hilarious evening; we took photos of Kate & Wills in various poses and situations and spent hours giggling ...

Who would have thought five pounds could buy you so  much fun … :0) I know it’s very fashionable right now to say you find the Royals ridiculous and the wedding is costing the tax payer too much money etc. etc. but it’s really just an opportunity to have a bit of a laugh.

Enjoy!

Scotland

I took three days off during the Easter weekend to visit Z., one of my old friends from home. She’s doing a master’s in St. Andrew’s, so that’s where I went. (I feel the need to explain this right at the beginning. No, I am not a massive Royal Family fan, and no, I didn’t go to St. Andrew’s on a Wills & Kate pilgrimage.)

My trip started with an overnight coach journey to Dundee (my first overnighter in the UK!). It was packed and I didn’t sleep quite as well as I had hoped. Earplugs and eye mask definitely helped, though. Now if only my legs were shorter. Those seats were definitely economy class. But hey, 500 miles for a mere £33 (return!) is an offer you can’t refuse if you’re a student like me.

I was greeted by this thick fog coming from the sea which covered everything for two days. The Scots called it the Haar.

Some guy practising his guitar performance in Younger Hall.

Speaking of music, we went to watch some live bands at the student union at St. Andrew’s University on Saturday night, which turned into an unexpectedly amazing experience. It started off with a folk band called Young Farmers’ Disco – cool, chilled out guitar tunes. And then! Soul Food, a kind of big band (very big band, in fact … like 14 people on stage?)… jazzy, funky, feel-good music … not sure how to describe it, but their Facebook page sums it up well, I think: “We return to you this year with more soul than you can shake your booty at, more funk than your body can handle and more groovalicious beats than are morally proper.” It was a show like a show should be, a show that makes you forget everything and just dance, dance and sing along. Everyone was having such good fun. The lead singer, Catriona MacLeod was just unbelievable. She sang perfectly, for over two hours with so much energy and enthusiasm. She was totally the soul of the party.

I did my best to unwind over the weekend, but to be honest I felt kind of tense the whole time. I couldn’t quite get those creepy crawly exams out of my head. Now I just want to go & and have that massive fight, kick the crap out of those papers and get it over with.

St. Andrew’s is the birthplace of golf, it’s where all the rules are decided, yada yada … so Z. insisted that I must go to the driving range at the Golf Practice Centre and do my 50 golf balls. I sucked monumentally, but it was kind of fun as I started improving towards the end.

Like proper ladies, we had tea and sandwiches at the Golf Hotel. Lovely view of the sea.

We visited the St. Andrew’s aquarium, where I met this blue lobster. Blue lobsters are blue because of some genetic defect which makes them produce too much protein. When cooked, they turn red like normal lobsters, apparently. But why would you cook such a cute thing?

Z. had this knitted bunny on her bed. I love how she decorates each place where she lives. She’s moved a lot in the last couple of years, but she has this talent for making it feel like home each time.

I know those foggy pictures make St. Andrew’s look like a very gloomy place, and it was … for two days. On Sunday, the weather Gods took pity and treated us to a gloriously sunny day. Then, after half an hour of taking photos, I realized there was no memory card in my camera. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it earlier? I swear I’m not normally so dumb. We cycled to this quiet beach with a rock called Maiden Rock and had a jolly nice time enjoying the sea, sun and solitude. Perhaps such good moments shouldn’t be spoiled with the clickety-click of cameras. It’s not like I will need pictures to help me remember. Awesomeness stays.

P.S. Apologies for yet another post NOT about London on this London blog. There’s one thing that became apparent to me on that lovely beach. I don’t really like London. I kind of really want to leave. I want to move somewhere where I can be closer to nature and spend more time outside. Somewhere with a bit more space. Somewhere where you can look out into the distance and not have the view obstructed with buildings, buildings, endless crappy buildings. What could we humans possibly build that is so much better than nature? A shopping centre? A housing estate? An office building? Meh.

How to waste time. (Episode#1 from an infinite series …)

Here’s a video I made today when I should have been revising for my exams instead.

Little Venice

I’d been wanting to go to Little Venice for a long, long time. With the perfect weather we are having right now – I feel like I’m in a different country! – I arranged to meet a friend at Paddington and off to Venice we strolled. Okay, so it doesn’t look anything like Venice, not that I would know, I haven’t been to Venice … but it’s a nice place to go for a walk if you’re around Paddington.

I spent my undergraduate days in Birmingham, which is all about the canals, so it was really lovely to see these canal boats again. I remember my last days in Birmingham, back in the summer of 2007, walking around Brindley Place and the Gas Street Basin, hand-in-hand with my then-boyfriend and feeling so sad about leaving. It was late July, sunny and warm and the three years of my student life in the city were over. They had been happy years (mostly). Important years, growing-up and discovering who I was as an adult. And I didn’t want to see it end… So today I had a little flashback of those happy old days.

“You could sell your flat and buy a boat to live on,” my friend B. said as we were passing through here.
“Yeah, I could sell my flat, except I don’t own it, you muppet!”

The hall of residence that I lived in during my first year at uni overlooked a canal and I would always look at the boats dreamily, thinking how cool it would be to live on one. In the summer at least.

The Grand Union Canal connects London to Birmingham. Apparently you can run an ultramarathon (145 miles) along it. “It’s on my to-do list,” my friend B. said, “I hate myself, so I like to do things like that to my body.”






I like this lady’s dress!

Free Space Gallery

Last week I had an interesting experience. I went to visit the Free Space Gallery at the Kentish Town Health Centre. Mel, my old friend from high school is an arts manager & curator there. If you are vaguely interested in the arts scene in London, go and peek at her excellent blog. The event last week was showcasing work by Sybella Perry, who was an artist in residence at the Freespace Gallery for 9 months, sponsored by the Arts Council England. When I was in boarding school, we had an artist in residence there too, and I think it’s just wonderful that such things still exist in our silly cash-obsessed society. During her residency, Sybella made two films: Workshop I and Waterfall I. Workshop I features some kind of therapy dance / movement / music session held at the health centre. (Read: old people going wild, crazy and letting their hair down.) The second movie was a landscape exploration of the wonderful Falls of Clyde under show. The movies were screened both at the same time, with those old fashioned 16-mm projectors humming in the background. It created an interesting mood.

The Kentish Town Health Centre is very funky and colourful, for a health centre, if you know what I mean. There was also a performance by Sing for Joy, a choir for people with Parkinson’s disease. Now, this is not something I would normally go to see out of my own initiative. Knowing Mel, I had somehow been imagining young, artsy people and all things hip and cool. Parkinson’s really isn’t top of my list of hip and cool things. So I must admit that, at first, I felt really uncomfortable standing around in a room full of old people with various disabilities. But they sang really well and you could really see these guys come alive when they were making music. Like they were showing the world, “Hey! Don’t write me off yet. There’s still lead in my pencil!”

There was free food – Mel arranged for this wonderful Lebanese food from the Phoenicia Food Hall. (Note to self: must visit this place some day.) There was Greek salad, grilled chicken, falafel, hummus, pitta breads, grilled potatoes, stuffed grape leaves, various sauces …  and various other things that I don’t know the names of, yum, yum. The choir people apparently didn’t like the food much. I guess that was probably a bit of a clash of generations.

There was also free wine, which attracted one homeless guy from the street who just came in for the booze. He downed many, many glasses quickly and eventually sort of collapsed to the floor. Ooooh, the perils of serving free alcohol in public places.

P.S. Among other happy news, I have been accepted as a writer on Technorati. I should really be concentrating on my exam revision, but lately I find myself drawn to writing a lot. It’s just rewarding to share my thoughts and words with other people.  Now … need to mull over my first Technorati contribution. What will it be?