So it begins

Waste of time

Published Date : August 17, 2004

“So sorry, but we can’t add pages to your passport because you haven’t used it enough yet.”

Huh?

I spent my entire lunch break today rushing over to the High Commission today only to be stonewalled with yet another dumb rule.  They’ll only add pages to your passport if you have only one or two empty ones left.  Right.  I probably could’ve argued my case, but I didn’t want to deal with it.  Ah, the joys of government bureaucracies!

Playing host again

Published Date : August 23, 2004

Gray’s friend, Tim, arrived in town Friday afternoon.  He’s spending 6 weeks or so travelling around the UK and Ireland, and he’s staying with us in London for the weekend.  We’ve all been having a really great time.

Friday night was a really late night of talking and drinking.  Mmmmm….home made Snakebites!  Catching up, getting to know each other, and talking about pretty much anything and everything.

On Saturday, the boys caught a football game, leaving me a rare afternoon off to do anything I wanted.  Being a touch hung over from Friday, I did a whole lot of nothing.  I watched TV, did some more reading for my scuba classes, and not much else.  We followed that up with a great night out at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.  The Globe is a pretty cool little place.  A few years back an American visiting London was horrified to discover that Shakespeare’s theatre had been torn down and forgotten.  A few years and a lot of donations later, he had a replica of the theatre built 200m from site of the original with an exhibition and history centre attached.  Every summer the theatre puts on a couple of productions of Shakespeare’s work – they only put on plays in the summer because it’s an open air theatre.  This year is the “Season of Star-Crossed Lovers” with productions of Romeo & Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Measure for Measure.  I’d done a tour of the Globe before, but I’d never seen a play there; Gray and Tim hadn’t been there at all, so we figured it was a perfect opportunity.  For £5 each we got tickets for the standing gallery to watch Much Ado About Nothing.  It was a fantastic performance put on by an entirely female cast.  The atmosphere was great – watching an original Shakespeare play in Shakespeare’s Theatre is a bit of a unique experience.  And the cast was fantastic.  The actress playing Benedict was incredibly sharp.  There was a bit of heckling and audience participation going on and she was just so quick on the improvisation and one-liners.  It was a lot of fun to watch.

We rounded out the weekend with a trip out toCamden Markets yesterday.  I’ve been there quite a few times before, but it was another first for Gray and Tim.  Camden Town is something to be experienced; it can’t be described other than to say that it’s unique.  And the markets are a great place to lose an afternoon, seeing what treasures you can find.  I wasn’t out to buy anything, but Tim picked up about 10 t-shirts (he went a little nuts, but at £5 a shirt you can’t really blame him!), and Gray picked up a new hat.

All in all it was a fun weekend.  I really liked Tim.  It was great to meet another one of Gray’s friends, and we all had a really fun time.

Notting Hill Carnival - Take II

Published Date : August 31, 2004

Yup, it’s that time of year again: Notting Hill Carnival weekend.  The largest street party in Europe and the second largest in the world.

To answer the next question:  Yes, it’s THE Notting Hill, like in the movie.  It’s actually a very nice district in North London.  And just like the movie, it’s got the street markets and the tree-lined streets and white row houses.  The carnival isn’t held in that particular area of Notting Hill, but it does wind its way through a fair amount of the district.

Anyway, I remembered not being particularly impressed with the carnival last year, but because Gray hadn’t been to it before I decided to give it another go.  We went yesterday for the final day (it was a Bank Holiday, so no work for me) and the main procession.  The general theme of the day is floats (mostly just rental trucks with sound systems thrown in the back) driving the circuit pumping out a lot of dance music, and there are supposed to be loads of great costumes and generally a good time is had by all.  It’s actually meant to be a Caribbean carnival, but you’d be hard pressed to guess that if you weren’t told.  The carnival is all about audience participation.  People are walking in all directions along the main parade route (mixed in with the trucks and floats instead of down the sides of the streets like a normal parade), some areas are so mobbed that you can barely breathe, others are completely deserted, people are out drinking and you can’t walk 5 feet without passing through a haze of green smoke.

I’m not a fan of crowds at the best of times, so I really struggle to find any enjoyment out of events like this.  Plus, a massive police presence is required to contain things, and that never lends itself to a party atmosphere.  To top it off, according to the news I’m listening to right this second, apparently it was a quiet year with only 64 people being arrested and 1 person being shot during the carnival.

But that’s not to say that it’s all bad.  Some of the floats were very good and had great costumes.  You could tell the people involved had put in a lot of effort.  I think the best way to do this carnival is to go with a big group of friends.   Find one a good float with good tunes and just follow them for the whole circuit.  But you’ll have to start early because the whole thing wraps up at 9:00pm unless you buy advance tickets to an after party.

So, in the end, we stuck around for about an hour and a half, got a couple of pictures, enjoyed a few brief moments of sunshine, and then got the heck out of dodge.  Bottom line: I wouldn’t go again, but it’s worth the experience.