A blog a day until Christmas

Can I do it?
Aided by my iPhone and trusty software 'Blogpress' (forget the others, they're rubbish), I'll give it a go (!) Prepare for more banality than you ever thought possible.

Random thoughts for the day so far (8.05am)

1. In a scary likeness to real life, why do Circle Line trains always come when I want anything but? (Forrest Gump-like thinking)

2. I hate people being ill, especially when I end up covering for them.

3. It'll soon be the winter equinox, so it'll be getting lighter again soon. Yippppeee!

4. Will I be late for work today and have to walk into a meeting after everyone else has arrived?

5. When, exactly, will I feel able to take off my 2 scarves that I've been wearing for the past 2 weeks, off?

6. Doesn't winter sun on your face, even when it's not particularly warm, feel lovely?:

7. Will I get to work by 8.15am?
8. No.

Up and over Hampstead Heath

Having run out for my traditional Sunday morning coffee yesterday and seen how (almost) springlike the weather in London was, I decided to make the trek up to pretty much the highest point in London, Hampstead Heath.

Arriving there by tube for the first time, rather than the 24 bus that would have taken about 3 weeks to dodge past the masses at Camden, I emerged onto the rather nice Heath Street, which was full of baby shops, nice-looking Christmas wreathes on doors, and had it been a weekday morning, probably full of mummies looking to spend their money. I was really impressed by its villagy feel really, especially its quaint, traditional-looking street signs:

The Heath itself has no obvious entrance and so getting onto any 'main' bits was more down to luck rather than judgement. Deserted in parts, hugely muddy in others, this was dog walkers' heaven and I think I must have patted and stroked more friendly and overenthusiastic dogs than I have done for months. I also, easily got to see at least 3 seasons in one afternoon, being really autumnal in some parts:



and most definitely winter in others, with frozen ponds in the more exposed parts:



There were also quite a few signs of blossom and other flowering plants beginning to emerge, which although it looked nice didn't quite seem right somehow, we're miles from spring yet. One thing that I'd forgotten about however, that did make me smile was seeing this on the way out. I don't think the swans had much competition, to be honest!:

What to do with my exciting prize

So the comments from the last post flooded in.
Ok, well maybe 4 comments did anyway - and half (you do the maths) suggested I gamble my hard-earned £10.
Passing a Tesco on the way home, I ran in and grabbed 5 lottery tickets for Saturday and 5 scratchcards - which I've never actually bought before.

Anyhow, those lucky dips didn't do a lot of good for me just after I'd bought them - running up the steps at Turnham Green station to jump onto a train that was about to depart, I lost my balance and thudded onto the platform floor, twisting my knee and ankle, laptop falling on the floor, making a hole in the knee of my trousers and having the train doors close before I could crawl on it: all completed in one highly-elegant move. The train driver, to his credit, did reopen the doors so I could hobble on - which, Mr Driver, I do appreciate - thanks :)

Getting home and clutching a £1 coin - one of the new ones (which incidentally, Josh Russell blogged about the other day, spotting their accessibility problems) - I began to scratch away at my 5 cards:

Not having ever used these before, I wasn't aware of how they're designed to be really addictive: you scratch off 2 panels out of 9, and already you've got two lots of '£100,000', needing just one more to win the star prize, which, of course, never materialises. I did though, win £1 - wooooo (shall I buy another lottery ticket?!)

I'll now have to wait until Saturday to see if any of my 5 lucky dips come up...let's hope so.

In the unlikely event that absolutely anyone would be interested, I'll publish the numbers now - so if I do win, you'll know about it first ;) - think of it - a Londonstuff world exclusive :)

9, 12, 14, 38, 44, 47

2, 23, 27, 37, 41, 45

8, 19, 25, 30, 32, 47

18, 19, 30, 42, 46, 48

7, 12, 18, 24, 28, 41

You have won an exciting prize...

Imagine that. No, really.

7am, just getting up, and an email pings through from the lottery:

We have some exciting news about your National Lottery Subscription. Please click .... and enter your username and password to view the details of your Subscription online now.
Kind regards,
National Lottery Subscriptions Team.


Blood pressure raises. Thoughts of calling in sick, going somewhere tropical and buying a bigger flat come to mind. Failing that, a few months off wouldn't go amiss.

Then, with a slight trepidation, I enter (after finding them scribbled on some paper somewhere) my username, etc. only to find:

So it's off to work after all, perhaps buying an extra coffee and pain au chocolate sometime this week to gobble up almost all of my winnings
:(

Is there anything else amazing I can do with a tenner, something original, different, and most importantly, make me smile rather than frown next time one of these should-almost-be-against-the-law emails comes through?! Answers on the back of a postcard please...

Ballet like you've never seen before

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to go to the Royal Opera House for one of their regular works of three short ballets. The final one of these was the world premier of a contemporary ballet by Wayne McGregor, called 'Infra'. Essentially, dispel any images which traditional ballet conjures up, and instead think moving LED screens, dark sets, mad, angular dancing, background interference-style sound effects and a haunting, but uplifting soundtrack. You've now got 'Infra'

Amazing on the night, and even better to watch again (turn the sound right up), it's now available for the next six days on BBC iPlayer - (note: there's a half hour documentary, followed by the half hour ballet) - really - believe me: watch it. By now, it'll probably also be on Youtube worth a check if the six days is up).

By the way, one thing I've remembered since starting to write this is that on the opening night, they were having a reception both during the intervals and after the show, for special guests, etc. Part of the main Floral Hall, where people watching the show congregate during intervals was roped off for the guests, with hospitality food, etc. This came with, however, its own security guard, obviously given the task of ensuring none of the 'normal' people there nabbed a free glass of champagne or salmon sandwich ;) At £12 for the glass of champers and £11 for the salmon sarnies, who could blame them?! :)

P.s. Watch it, you'll thank me for it.

Only England could have weather like this

Sunday morning, 8am (sih), the view in SW1, London, looking towards Westminster Abbey:

Yes, that's right, November and snow in the same sentence :(
Cue time to go back to bed, only to be woken up at 10am by the rain, lashing onto the windows. Potter about, go to Sainsbury's (getting the car out for the first time in months), come back. Step out onto the terrace to be greeted by this sight:

which looks alarmingly like several photographs taken in July.

Then, sure enough, this lasts for about an hour, when this decends:

I wasn't even bothering to venture out to take this one - this is taken through one of the upstairs windows...

So there we have it, one good reason to live in Spain, south of France, Italy, Thailand, or practically anywhere else to avoid the English winter. A Swedish friend of mine says that British winters are always worse than those countries further up north, because most of the time there, there's snow, which tends to reflect the light and make things brighter.

Foreign toilets

You try and tell the difference after 3 double gin and tonics ;)

-- Post From My iPhone

On the way home

So 2 weeks have gone in a flash, a week of Bangkok then a further week of slightly cooler Chiang Mai. Anything I say now is probably going to be through rose (or even alcohol) tinted spectacles: blagging my way into the business-class lounge with free wifi, peace and quiet, pizza, Oreos and gin and tonic that you can pour yourself. The plan is to make the most of this and then snooze the whole 13 hours on the way back :)

Thailand's been a mad mad place. The complete opposite to Singapore, where I went a few years ago: chaotic, dirty, polluted, but it's certainly got a charm to it that other countries don't. The people are probably the most friendly and hardworking that I've ever met, we've eaten in some amazing restaurants (a French restaurant that I went to yesterday was as good any I've had in England and easily a quarter of the price) and generally been made to feel completely welcome. It's also been humbling to stay in an enormous house, with enormous gardens, that in London only a multi, multi-millionaire could afford.

I was also really lucky to visit an elephant sanctuary a few days ago, feeding them bananas and sugarcane and getting close enough to them to be able to stroke them (their hair is as wiry as a wire brush)



I also managed to fit in a visit to a temple in the hills and to Carrefour (pick a fish swimming in a tank, they'll kill it, deep fry it and package it in about 10 minutes - quicker than queuing at the post office back home)

I'm always glad to be going home at the end of a holiday, that's why I live there, but Thailand's certainly a place I'd come back to, especially when the thought of landing at Heathrow in 14 hours, in the cold, on Halloween with little tw*ts throwing flour bombs/bricks/whatever they can get their hands on at the passing Piccadilly Line train come to mind.

Oh well, time for more pizza, gin and a sleep. Night all. Xx

Mosquitos and motorbikes

Two more days in Chiang Mai down, 2 more to go. During the last two days I feel like I've really seen the place, doing lots of weird and wonderful things:

Exploring Chiang Mai on foot, through into the walled city and exploring the various temples there. A full orchestra was playing in one of the temple complexes, and when the daily thunderstorm came (torrential like you wouldn't believe), they became really very good shelter from the elements.

I also managed to gulp down my first really good latte in a couple of weeks (I can almost smell Caffè Nero getting nearer - roll on Saturday morning!). Free wifi at coffee shops seems almost ubiquitous here, although I noticed at one of the Starbucks I saw you still hve to pay there. Plus ça change and all that. When ordering a tea or coffee anywhere, they'll always ask you if you want it hot or cold, cold drinks, naturally enough, are really popular here.

On leaving the centre of Chiang Mai, we took a tuk-tuk back to the house where we're staying, which is a cross between a taxi and an Alton Towers ride, one foot off the ground and handlebars like a bike rather than a steering wheel. As they're so close to the ground, it really does feel like you're going at a tremendous speed. I was genuinely worried at first, but it soon became fun, except for the fact that we were exactly level with exhaust fume height.



We also visited a brilliant restaurant, within the D2 hotel, which was right in the middle of the night market - the crème brûlées were as good as I've had: even the grim-sounding 5-spice flavoured one was delicious. Galloping to the night market afterwards, it was much calmer than the equivalent would be in other countries, for example, the el- Fnaa Square in Morocco. People also took no for an answer much more readily and a smile always went down well.
There were though, more counterfeit goods here than I've ever previously seen in my entire life, including, bizarrely enough, right next to the 'tourist police' building. Watches, bags, purses, sunglasses were the most obvious, but Wii games, software like Photoshop CS4 (has it even been released yet?), fake flip flops(!) and wooden frogs that make a frog sound by rubbing the wood (whoever though of this had a better brain than me!). The list could go on forever, but I was pleasanly surprised by the respect that the sellers had and the fact it didn't decent into a horibble tourist scrum with people being conned left right and centre.

Today was Doi Souket, a temple high high up into the sky, almost at cloud level. A good 30-minute vertical drive followed by a funicular to get to the very top was rewarded by a view of the whole of Chiang Mai. The ferrol dogs that wander around knew exactly how the funicular worked, dashing in before the door closed, waiting patiently, then dashing out again at the top: almost exactly like the pigeons that use the tube (check YouTube).

Starting to get tourist fatigue now, but still enjoying it immensely.

Other points to note:
There are thousands of mobile shops around, either on motorbikes or from the back of vans. The way everyone drives here, I'm sure some people could legitimately say that they'd been run over by a coffee shop.

There's a huge amount of construction going on here. Female builders working on building sites are as common an occurance as men and it's viewed as completely normal (as it should be).

Whereas American Express seems to be hated by everyone in the UK, who'll only take it as a last resort (apparently they charge double the commission and take ages to settle up), here it seems to be the preferred method of payment. The other day I was even offered a 10% discount for paying with it.

Lots more mosquito bites, even my face isn't immune. I knew there was one of then in my bedroom last night, and sure enough, I woke up with about five new bites. Searching the room, I eventually found it and managed to squash it. On opening my hand, one very squashed and dead mosquito had leaked my own blood all over my hand. Blughh!

And with that lovely image, I'll finish!