The Great CBA Part I

Hi all, this is my first time mobile blogging so let me know what you think. We're on the Grand Union Canal, just west of Milton Keynes, and are having an absolutely amazing time canal boating. This is our 8 berth hire boat "Splendid" and so far its living up to its name. We're becoming quite expert at the locks now but I'll blog more about it when we return. Meanwhile happy sailing!

The countdown begins...

Yep, that's right, 3 days to go until....

THE GREAT CBA!

That's "Canal Boat Adventure" to you... not some bank...!)I absolutely can't wait. 7 glorious (fingers crossed the weather stays good) days sailing the canals around Milton Keynes (at least that's where I think we're going!) in our 8 berth narrowboat wonder - "Splendid"!There's seven of us going from school - the Aussies, the Maple Leaf, the Saffa, the Pole, and the Pom (a.k.a. Coxy, Nic, Me, Erik, Quentin, Agnieszka and Michelle) - and it promises to be a fantastic time!To have a bit of a preview of it all, check out the website of the Wyvern Shipping Co. Ltd. Or click here to see a virtual tour of the boat most like the one we'll be hiring. But most importantly, stay tuned - same Bat time, same Bat channel - to hear about our adventures...

A Long Time Ago In a Galaxy Far, Far, Away...

Ok, so I know its not the most original title (seeing as its been used as the opening to some six films now...) but anyway, today I went with my friend Jude to see "Star Wars The Exhibition" at County Hall. I've been working real hard lately (yes, get your violin out, cue sob-story music) and decided to take a bit of time off from marking and go check out the exhibition. It was absolutely amazing, I'm so pleased I went.

The exhibition kicks off celebrations of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars (boy do I feel old now - although not as old as Jude, who remembers seeing the original movie at the cinema - me, I was only 5 at the time) and features original film props, models, art, vehicles and costumes from the entire Star Wars saga. The other really cool thing they have there is a Jedi school, where they dress you up in Jedi kit, give you quick training on how to use a lightsabre and then, with the green screen technique, they put you in the movie (how cool is that? you know I really wanted to do this hey - but the queues were too long - and full of little kids - major embarrassment). For £3 you can buy a DVD of your starring moment.

I was pleased that the exhibition didn't just feature stuff from Episodes 1-3 (because lets face it, they are nowhere near the calibre of the original movies - at a push you could rank bits of Episode 3 up there, but the others? yeah right). It was really good to see some of the original planning drawings, mock ups and models. My favourite was Yoda (he looks like he's in a fishbowl though). Although I was surprised at how big R2D2 actually is too...

Anyway, it was an interesting exhibition and I really enjoyed it. Here are some pics:

The date on this concept drawing of Hoth is July 1978!

Jude will kill me for putting on this picture of him and Han Solo!

Anakin's podracer

How can anyone be so incompetent?

Oh my goodness! How can any one company be soooo incompetent?!

If you look back at my blogs from March, you'll see the ongoing saga of the Iceland pics photo developing with Jessops on the Strand. And, just over 2 months ago, I picked up the re-printed films to discover that one whole roll was missing - negatives and all - and that I then went back to Jessops and asked them to sort it out. Their answer was to take the old CD (why the old one, with the crap prints, I don't know) and the old crappy prints they did - and somehow they were going to make negatives and brilliant prints for me as compensation for their stuff ups. Hm. Bit skeptical, but I went ahead with it because basically I have no choice, and I would rather have the negatives. So, I schlepped back up town, handed in the stuff, got the dude to make sure he put it in a safe place as this is my only copy of it all, and he put a special note on it for the developer. And then, nothing. Nada. Zippo.

So 3 weeks ago I phoned them back up to see what was going on. The developer tells me that I hadn't given them the CD yet. What? But I have a lovely blue receipt for that - quoting her the number, she miraculously finds the package - UNTOUCHED - locked away in the safe! Can you believe it? So she sends off the stuff, tells me it will take 7 working days to do.

Today I get a phone call from her - the stuff is back, but, (and you knew there was going to be a "but" didn't you?) they haven't actually done the negatives, no, they've just reprinted the prints and the CD (same crappy quality)...

Truly, can anyone actually be THAT incompetent? Clearly, they can... Congratulations Jessops, you win the "Most Incompetent Photographic Developer of the Year 2007" award...

The "Saxophone Massive" - or should that be "massive saxophone"?

Tonight I performed with some 100 other saxophonists as part of Andy Sheppard's Saxophone Massive, at Marlborough House. The piece was performed as the opener for ARK's gala charity fundraising dinner and was attended by some 1000 VIPs, celebrities, and basically, people with money. People like Elton John, Liz Hurley, Bob Geldof... it was a pretty big deal. To read some news stories about the event, click here or here.

Despite the weather, it was awesome. Originally I was to be part of the group that would be performing on the roof (no mean feat, this involved climbing up a couple of flights of stairs, then climbing out a window onto some scaffolding on the roof - with saxophone in hand - to stand on a plank (with railings) and play for an hour and a half). Now let me clear up one little point - yes, I did have a saxophone in hand, yes, I normally play the alto, but no, I wasn't playing it this time. No, this time, I brought along the big kahuna, the grand-daddy of all the saxes - the baritone! We recently splurged on a baritone for school and I have, as Head of Department, had the honour of breaking it in. That thing is practically as big as me (ok, slight exaggeration, but it is pretty big, and was a bit of a pain lumping it about London on the tube and the bus to get to rehearsals hehehe...). Anyway, we did go up there and play for a short time, but drizzle turned to showers, which turned to deluge - this is England after all - and we had to go back down.

The performers on the ground had been placed under a marquee and so the roof team were redistributed amongst them. The acutal performance was 1 hour 15 minutes non-stop and featured some of the UK's biggest saxophonists, including the wonderful Denys Baptiste, whose music is simply inspirational.

Anyway, all in all it was absolutely awesome to be performing in such a massive group (and on such a massive saxophone too)... I won't forget it... and the event raised £28 million for the kids too...

The World Cup...

Ok, so I know that the world cup has been and gone, but I did start this blog post during it, and anyway, I've been a bit busy of late, sorry.

Anyway, I watched the cricket world cup when it was on recently. Actually subscribed to the extra channels on sky so I could catch, patriotic little so-and-so that I am. Nothing like an international competition to bring out your patriotic side, hey. For some of the world cup, Mum was still here - and on one of the days (when we played the Poms) we went to watch it in a pub. Fortunately none of the local poms obviously thought they would win, because they didn't turn up to the pub to watch and even the landlord wasn't aware that it was on. Just as well, because the last place you want to be when England are playing in anything, is in a pub. They can be real vicious. I remember watching Euro something or other with my mates Iva and Natali in a pub in Clapham, Croatia was playing (Iva and Natali are Aussie-Croats) and the poms were playing France afterwards. Some poms started calling Iva and Nat Serbians (memo to self: never call a croat a serb) so they decided to support France against England. The scenes afterwards (when France won) were nothing short of diabolical. They chucked beer over us, tried to spit in Iva's hair, challenged the bloke who was with us to a fight... smashed up French cars outside... Anyway. Fortunately for me and Mum we could eat our lunch in relative peace whilst watching a bit of the cricket - might've been a different story if it was soccer...

One of the things I've enjoyed about watching the world cup, other than the obvious fact that we won it (although wasn't that final a shambles in terms of organisation), has been watching the Aussie supporters. There's nothing like being a proud Aussie, in amongst the throng of Aussie supporters, particularly when we're doing well. It made me wish I was there, cheering them on too, and reminded me of the Athens Olympics. I went to see the Aussie women's basketball team play in the final against the Yanks. Surprisingly the game was not fully sold out and I managed to wangle a ticket (actually come to think of it, it wasn't so surprising that the game wasn't sold out because the Greeks shot themselves in the foot at the Olympics, by overpricing their accommodation so that no one could afford to go - at one point I paid £70 for a night in a youth hostel - seriously!).

Anyway, back to the point. The Aussie supporters were all dotted about the stadium. This is not conducive to good Aussie atmosphere, so all the green and golds coupled together and we commandeered a heap of empty seats behind the basket. The Greek organisers tried to chuck us out on account of we didn't have a ticket for the area, but you try and move a bunch of determined Aussies from their seats. Not going to happen. The only thing they could do was prevent you from re-taking your seat if you left it - hence halfway through the 1st quarter some Aussie bird stands up and yells out "Does anyone have a ticket for these seats? I need a toilet pass..." to which one bloke replied, "Only if you'll bring us back a few stubbies!"

The atmosphere that day was amazing, and the crowd awesome. There was the dude dressed up as spiderman, the guys dressed up in women's basketball uniforms (one of the guys was married to one of the players and pilfered her wardrobe), the guys in the bright green and yellow wigs... but the thing that took the cake was the chants. The Yanks might have won that day, but we sure whipped some butt in the chants. All the Yanks had was "U-S-A, U-S-A" - seriously people, how inventive it that? But us, no, we had our top 5:

1. Oh to, oh to be, oh to be an - Aussie!

2. Six foot 2, eyes of blue, [insert players name here] we love you, we love you, we love you, we do!

3. Aussies here, Aussies there, Aussies, Aussies everywhere, with a knick knack paddy whack...

4. Waltzing Matilda (tied for 4th place with "We are one, but we are many...")

and, when all else failed, our piece de resistance was:

5. A-U-S, A-U-S!

Scots, Shocks and a Smoky BBQ Part III

Ok, so we move on to the final part of the trilogy. Phew, I hear you say...

I left you with Mum and Mal singing over the sea to (from) Skye. The ferry crossing to Mallaig was nothing spectacular, just very comfortable and surprisingly quite quick. From there we drove along some very windy roads (stuck behind a caravan for a lot of it too, rather annoying), past some lovely scenery and beautiful Lochs, back towards Fort William. From Fort William we headed across the country to Pitlochry. En route stopped at the House of Bruar, a kind of Scottish Harrods, in that it had expensive cashmere and interesting food halls - had lunch there, which was nice. Not far from there is Blair Atholl, our reason for coming to this area - but by the time we arrived the castle was closed, so we drove into Pitlochry and found a very pleasant B&B for the night, Annslea - the owners were extremely friendly and the breakfast the next morning was excellent. Mum and Mal had a little rest and I wandered off through the town, it has a hydro-electric facility attached to it complete with a fish ladder for spawning salmon (although not the season now for salmon), and some quaint little pubs and shops. We headed out to one of the pubs in town, The Old Mill, for dinner later that night, which was very enjoyable.

The next day, Monday, we headed out to Blair Castle. Mum and Dad tried to go to this castle when they visited the UK in 1982 on the recommendation of Nanny and Grandpa, but the day they went there it was closed. So it was really wonderful for Mum to be able to get the chance to see it this time. As we approached the castle we could hear the soft strains of bagpipes. The castle itself is very impressive, the entrance hall contains a spectacular display of armoury and weapons. The main corridor on the ground floor is decorated with the skulls of stags that roamed the grounds. I think the thing I liked best about the castle was that you got to see artifacts belonging to and pictures of the various Dukes of Atholl's family as they grew up, and the visitors they entertained at the Castle, including Queen Victoria. To see some pics of the interior of the castle, click here.

After our visit to the castle we started on our journey back to Stirling. Things were going merrily, until we went round a bend, and - you guessed it - our old friend the scraping noise was back. And getting worse. So we pressed on to Stirling and found the Kwik Fit - unfortunately it was right on closing time. We decided to stay the night in the Formule 1 at Falkirk and come back the next day. At least with the Formule 1, we knew what we were getting, right? Wrong...

We checked in, made our way to our rooms, and made plans to meet in an hour or so to go for dinner. I had no sooner started to make my bed, when suddenly, a high-pitched, shrieking alarm went off! And we could smell smoke!

So we quickly gathered our valuables, checked the emergency evacuation poster to see where to go, and opened the door - to see the woman from the room opposite, with her door open, smoke thickly streaming out, calling out "It's alright, its just our BBQ". She had one of those disposable bbqs in her room, and was cooking up her dinner. Come on, seriously? A BBQ in a hotel room? What planet is this woman from? And what planet is the hotelier from, that they didn't chuck the woman out? Oy...

apologies for the jumpy video - but it was an emergency fire evacuation...

It was too smoky in our room so we headed out there and then to the pub for dinner. When we got back, the smoke had cleared and everything had calmed down, which was a relief. I tell you, there's nowt like the Formule 1's for a bit of excitement and action...

Tuesday. On the homeward stretch now. Oh hang on, no, we have to go and get the shocks sorted out. So Mum and I head back to Stirling real early to get the car fixed. Only, when the bloke has a look at it, he says the shocks don't need doing at all. I asked if the bit of tyre rubber had fallen out, thus causing the scraping noise again. No, its' still there - but there's a hole in it. His solution is to remove the bar that the muffler was scraping against. Ok. Oh, and as we're there, there's a few chips in the windscreen - so an hour and £25 later, we have no scraping noise and no chips in our windscreen. We headed back to get Mal and then basically hit the motorway for the day, aiming for Liverpool.

Why Liverpool? Well, its roughly a couple of hours from London, so our last day's drive shouldn't be too stressful, has a Formule 1 there - oh and my brother in law is mad about the football club and would like a jersey, and Beck would like a hat, oh and rompersuit for Marcella... so off we go.

Mal wasn't too well and decided to skip the Formule 1 this time and stayed at the hotel next door, where we had dinner that night.

Wednesday - our last day. Mum met Mal for breakfast at Mal's hotel, whilst I hoofed it into the city centre looking for the jersey and other Liverpool FC items for Beck. Do you think I could find a jersey that would fit Demo? Not in the colour he wanted - went to about 8 shops and finally found one for him. Phew. You be the judge of how it fits - Beck sent me this pic.

So that's pretty much it. After I got the jersey we basically hit the motorway back to London after a really lovely holiday. No more Scots, no more shocks, and certainly no more indoor smoky BBQs...

Scots, Shocks and a Smoky BBQ Part II

So we woke up Sunday morning to the glorious smells of breakfast cooking - that's what I love about staying in B&B's - I've never yet had a bad breakfast in a B&B and again, the one at Strathgorm did not disappoint. It's interesting, being in Scotland, you're not offered a full English breakfast, but a full Scottish. Now to my mind, I couldn't really tell the difference between the two because, although at first observation, the obvious difference seemed to be the exclusion of baked beans (hallelujah for that!) and the inclusion of black pudding, however I do seem to recall once having black pudding served during an English breakfast somewhere on the South English coast. So I'm not sure that having black pudding included is enough to constitute calling it a "full Scottish breakfast", especially as you can find variations of this in many European countries - blotwurst in Germany, boudin noir in France... Hmm. Apologies to the Scottish nation for bursting your bubble. Although I will let you have your haggis. In fact, you can keep it...

Actually it was very interesting observing the Scots. I don't know that I can get my head around the fact that if you're British, it doesn't necessarily mean you're English - and I think if I was in the position of the Scots, I would be like them, doing all I could to make sure people knew there was a difference. To illustrate this, I quote to you a story I read in a souvenir shop at Armadale, Skye. The story was that God went missing for six days, and archangel Michael found Him resting on the seventh day. He asked God where He had been, and in answer, God proudly showed him His latest creation - Earth. God explained that the Earth would be a great place of people and balance.

"Balance and peoples?" inquired Michael, confused.

God explained, pointing to different parts of earth. "For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, but cold and harsh, while southern Europe is going to be poor, but sunny and pleasant. I have made some lands abundant in water and other lands parched deserts. This one will be extremely hot whilst this one will be very cold and covered in ice."

The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a country and said, "What's that one?""Ah," said God. "Scotland -- the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful beaches, streams, hills, and forests. The people from Scotland are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent and humorous and they are going to be found travelling the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking and high achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as diplomats and carriers of peace."
Michael gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed, "What about balance, God? You said there would be balance!"

God replied wisely, "Wait until you see who their neighbours are”.

Hehehe...

Anyway, we set off after breakfast to do a bit of a drive around Skye before taking the ferry back to the mainland from Armadale. Even though this was the first day of overcast weather, you could still really appreciate the beauty of the Island. Actually, I hadn't realised it was as large as it was, and if we'd had more time we could have ventured north and seen sights and places relating to Flora Macdonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie, but alas, we hadn't the time.

Didn't stop Mum and Mal though from giving us public vocal renditions of the "Skye Boat Song" on the ferry crossing back to Mallaig...much to my chagrin...

Scots, Shocks and a Smoky BBQ Part I

Well we headed off on the Tuesday of the Easter break for our Scottish jaunt (jig?).... all 4 of us - Mum, Mal, Me - and - Ruby! (the car)...

On the first day we managed to get as far as Newcastle, spent the night there at a Formule 1. The Formule 1's in England are a step up from their French counterparts in that they actually have sinks in the wc's so you don't have to go back to your room to wash your hands (yay)... There was a Toby Carvery next door, these pubs are awesome, you get a generous serving of meat and then its all you can eat vegies and (most importantly) yorkshire puddings... yum!

The bad thing about the Newcastle Formule 1, like the one in Lille, was that at about 2am some dipstick starts banging on our door. The banging eventually stopped, but by that point I was wide awake, so I got up for the loo, when the next thing I know, I run into the bloke who had been knocking. He was completely off his head, thought our room was the managers room, and kept going on about trying to find his mobile phone. I certainly gave him a piece of my mind!

The next day we continued north to Falkirk, via Hadrian's Wall. Mal, intrepid explorer that she is, walked the wall... well, she walked the bit at Chester's Fort.

It was very interesting there, they have a great little museum of artifacts and Roman remains that they've discovered in the area, plus a model of what the fort would have looked like.

After our visit to Chester's, we continued on north to Scotland, bypassing Glasgow, and saw signs for a more scenic route to Edinburgh, which we took (A701 - very beautiful scenery). This brought us to a great little woollen mill (which actually was a big shop, rather than an actual working mill) in Moffat. Only meant to stop for a few minutes, but there were so many cute things to see (especially things that would fit my niece Marcella) that we were there for a while. Fortunately the cute things stayed on the shelf and the purse stayed in the pocket.... Finally made it to Edinburgh, via some very beautiful scenery. I can safely say (about Edinburgh) that I don't want to go back there. I've been before, and we were really only popping in, rather than doing a full day sight-seeing, but do you think we could find a single road sign that told us how to get to the Castle (let alone park anywhere near the Castle)? No, sir-ee, we did not. And after we finally made it to the rough vicinity of the castle (which by this point was closed as it was coming on for 5pm after driving aimlessly around Edinburgh), had our coffee and a look around, do you think we could find a sign that would lead us to the correct road out of there? Yeah, right.

So we did more aimless driving, getting more and more frustrated - poor Mum and Mal, I didn't envy them as they both had maps and were doing a fantastic job of trying to navigate - but where there are no road signs to where we want to go, this is pretty tricky. We ended up back in the centre of Edinburgh about 3 times, and luckily on the last time managed to see the right sign (by chance, and by looking for it in the rear view mirror) and made it eventually to Falkirk, where we stayed at the Formule 1 there. This time we requested a "do not disturb" sign for the door. Obviously did the trick too, as we managed to avoid any disturbances.

Thursday: we headed off via the scenic route (taking in Stirling Castle, complete with the free tour around the castle - our guide was absolutely excellent) to Tarbert, where we would spend the night in a Castle. We seemed to be driving for ages, but it was well worth it, we had some beautiful views of Loch Lomond and Loch Fyne enroute. Had to hop out of the car a bit for a bit of a paddle in the Loch, and Mal treated us to a demonstration of her stone skimming technique.

Made it to the Stonefield Castle Hotel, this was a gorgeous castle by the side of Loch Fyne. The interior is really nicely decorated and the grounds are beautiful - and it was reasonably priced which was good. The dining room overlooks the lake, gorgeous views, which we were able to enjoy both at dinner that evening and breakfast the next day. I have to say I really liked this place - the grounds were lovely and I enjoyed a couple of nice little wanders around them.

Friday: we decided to have a bit of a rest day. We'd enjoyed the previous evening so much that we decided to stay an extra night in the castle, and then spend the day driving around the peninsula. This, however, was the start of some interesting car issues. See, yesterday I went for a bit of a walk around the grounds and found this cute little bridge over a stream leading down to the Loch. So as we headed off on our drive, I took a detour to show Mum and Mal the bridge - which caused us to go over a bit of a bump. This I negotiated badly, smacking the underside of the car, and setting off a series of strange scraping and dragging like noises as we drove along the windy roads. Great. So we headed into Campelltown Loch, and tried to go to a mechanic there. Do you think we could find one who would have a look at the problem? Unusually these blokes were not the friendly Scots we had encountered throughout our travels, no, these blokes were a bit rude actually and wouldn't even take a quick look. They kept telling us to come back later (or tomorrow), but there is NOTHING TO DO IN CAMPBELLTOWN LOCH!!!! Finally found an ATS and the dude had a bit of a look, reckoned there was nothing wrong, and bent the exhaust down a bit. Drove off, no noise - yay - went round a bend - alas the noise returned. No more mechanics enroute to Stonefield though, so couldn't do anything about it. Went for dinner in a pub in Tarbert - walked out of the pub because the landlord was so rude he couldn't even manage to remember to take our order - found another pub and had a quiet dinner. Except that at that pub, we asked for the bill, the barman forgot to get it and when he finally did, he forgot to include our dessert and drinks. Cheap meal for us, then!

Saturday: Set off with no real plan today other than get as far as Fort William and hope someone can fix the noise in the car. Made it as far as Oban and just happened to see a Kwik Fit. The guy there was sooo nice, he drove around in the car to hear the noise and figure out what was wrong. Put the car up on the ramp, couldn't do anything to change the position of the exhaust but put a piece of tyre rubber in to stop the noise, and then he had a look at the suspension, which he also said was clunky. Now this is where the shocks come in. I had had the shocks replaced the other week, but the blighters had only replaced the drivers side ones - although apparently you're supposed to replace both shocks, not just one. So the Oban dude reckoned that the passenger side might be the reason for another noise - yet they didn't have those shocks in stock (least that's what I thought he said, he had such a broad Scottish brogue. He said it should be ok for the rest of our journey, but gave us the number of Kwik Fit in Stirling because he said that if we made it there we should still get the shocks fixed for he journey back to London. Anyway, his solution for the scraping noise was to stick a bit of tyre rubber in between the muffler and some bar on the underside of the car. As the car sounded good, (AND he didn't charge anything for it) we were pretty happy and pressed on, past more breathtaking scenery, to Eilean Donan castle, dubbed Scotlands most Romantic castle.

We got there just before closing time - so we were lucky to be able to go in for a quick visit. This was very interesting, the castle is owned by the MacRae clan, and what I really liked about it was that inside the castle, there were lots of family photographs of different generations of the family, which made it feel a little more homey, somehow.

The castle is on the main road to Kyle of Lochalsh, and from there its a hop, skip and jump to Skye, across the bridge. We decided, after some deliberation, to take the plunge and go speed bonny Ruby, like a bird on the wing... over the sea to Skye... where we found a wonderful B&B for the night.

Watched the sun set over Skye...

Mum tries haggis....