Still...

This is a phone photo so forgive the quality but it's the stage at the Barbican Centre with the Dirty Three on it. Oh, and a completely unannounced dude at the piano: Nick Cave. Great gig, quietly.

London, I think, is a reluctant city. As reflected in shows like East Enders, there are those who hardly venture from their small patch and think it a great deal to go across town. It’s like a whole lot of little villages inside a ring road and it’s the foreigners or London adoptees who travel most. It’s not a criticism at all; merely an observation of some weeks and through talking to others.

When I visited the dentist last week she picked up my file and said “ooh, you’ve come a long way!” and I thought she was referring to Australia but it was that I took two trains and a bus, which only took an hour, to get there. Which I had found quite exciting really.

The best selling book in London must be the A-Z, a street directory. You see people clutching them everywhere, a life jacket in the sea of London. They have a tube map on the back cover. And as there are often the same names for streets in near neighbourhoods that aren’t obviously connected, it’s important to get the postcode for any destination as they cover a quite small area. And make some kind of geographical sense: SW9 is in the south west, W12 in the west, N7 in the north etc. But it’s almost a curse having been brought up on a grid – nothing is on a grid here, streets meander crazily and even if you think you’re heading in the right direction, you can find yourself miles away in no time. No wonder no one seems to know where anything is.

I thought it would last longer but as police sirens are at least a thrice daily occurrence on Brixton Road, I no longer have The Bill theme running through my head every time one goes past. I have also finally stopped dreaming that I was back in Adelaide, had used my plane ticket and couldn’t get back to meet someone or play netball. Anxiety much?

There has been a little rain but not as much as I thought there would be. The days are getting noticeably shorter and the wind chill is certainly picking up. It’s definitely not as cold as Scotland though when Steven and I drove up there the other week. More excitement and fear in the small things: I had to go the hire place to pick up the car on a Friday afternoon and find a park somewhere closer to the flat. Again the curse of the grid!

We left London around 6am on Saturday morning, a few hours later than we had planned. It was about a 7 hour drive to Irvine on the west coast of Scotland, around a half hour drive south west from Glasgow. While the purpose of the trip was to see Steven’s grandmother who was in hospital, we did manage to get in a little tour of the area before heading back to London on Sunday afternoon. We went to Paisley where Steven was born and to Saltcoats where he spent much of the rest of his childhood before coming to Australia. Here is a pic of us in Saltcoats: we are on a turret (c1650) at the far end of a dock in the Saltcoats bay – the line behind us is the houses facing the bay. And as you can see it was very windy and bloody freezing! We lasted up there about as long as it took to take the photo.



The other week we participated in the anti-war demonstration which organisers said drew 100,000 people and police said drew 10,000 (ain’t it always the way) and while the chants don’t vary much (1-2-3-4 we don’t want your bloody war 5-6-7-8 stop the killing stop the hate) I did find this one amusing: George Bush, we know you, Daddy was a killer too. Some pics:







I’m reading about the longest case in UK history: McDonald’s Corporation (First Plaintiff) and McDonald’s Restaurants Limited (Second Plaintiff) v Helen Marie Steel (First Defendant) and David Morris (Second Defendant). I’m reading about it in a book called ‘McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial’ by John Vidal. I do vaguely remember news items about this case which was decided in 1997 after running for two and half years. Essentially McDonald decided to sue two activists for libel over a pamphlet laying out the evils of their food, business practises and the environmental and cultural affects thereof. These guys weren’t even the authors of the pamphlet but had participated in handing it out. It’s a fascinating read, an obvious David and Goliath story (QCs v litigants in person, unlimited resources v a postman and a gardener) and I don’t yet know how it ends but I don’t think anyone actually wins overall. There’s a link to a website (see links on sidebar) that contains the story (spawned at the time of the trial) as well as heaps of other info on current campaigns and on other industries etc. I think non-vegans/vegetarians are allowed…
I’m beginning to think of volunteering at The Guardian newspaper as a proof-reader. Their reputation for typos and mis-edits is such that a great magazine here called Private Eye (think Media Watch in a weekly magazine) refers to them as The Grauniad (geddit? It took me a while I admit!). And irony, in the non-Alanis sense, is a section in the Guardian Weekend magazine last Saturday called OUCH. Yep, poking fun at ‘misprints, mistakes and misfits’ in other papers that readers have sent in. I wonder if I could still get the £15 book voucher if I sent one in from the Grauniad…