A critical quiet week

Sorry, we have been a little quiet this week, and for a very good reason.
Bridgette has her exams on Monday and Tuesday next week, so is spending a ridiculous amount of time with her head in the books, despite the great weather outside today (talk about will power!).

The most amazing thing happened on the way home from work last night though. Upon leaving work I found a convoy of about 1500 cyclists cursing at snails pace along the road. The first thing that popped into my mind was 'bloody protesters', but as it turned out they were the best kind of protesters. It was London's Critial Mass.

For those of you who don't know about critical mass here is the basic rundown. In about 450 cities across the globe, on the last Friday of each month, cyclists get together and reclaim the streets promoting safe cycling. As you can imagine, i joined in, as i couldn't cycle past them anyway. It was an absolute hoot. There was a guy with a huge portable PA system on his trailer, blasting tunes out his ipod while riding along, Vagner featured needless to say.

The other amazing thing was the number of police cyclists making sure we didn't get run over in the Friday night traffic, very well organized indeed. There are two more before we leave London, and we will be there for both. The one in May is the day before we leave, so maybe we might be able to do a bit of publicity at the same time as well. Who knows!

Pete

Barbican Birthday with Aalto

Another year, another birthday.
This one happened to be 27.

Saturday saw us have a pretty boring day, although we did go and see the new David Lynch film, Inland Empire. At three hours long, it almost caused me to have a brain hemorrhage. Lynch is pretty tough going at the best of times, but this film was a complete Head-Messer. A single story, that looks like it is actually five, dream-like sequences, completely surreal/abstract in-between bits made it quite hard to follow, but it was visually and musically stunning, as all of his films are. It finished with a musical number that made you leave the cinema thinking you knew what actually happened, only to realize 10 minutes later that you really had no idea.......I think!

Sunday was my birthday, yeah! Spent the morning reading one of our papers of choice, the Times (the other is the Guardian). Then ventured off to the Barbican to see Alvar Aalto: Through the Eyes of Shigeru Ban.

Having not been to the Barbican previously, I was quite keen to see some early 80's brutalist, utopian architecture. To my surprise, as a complete complex it works very well and more importantly I liked it. At eight acres, it's absolutely huge. I think that some of the recent refurbishment work has dealt with a lot of the navigation problems that I had been warned about, but it's quite simple if you read the signs and follow the lines on the ground to actually get into the place! Bridgette shouted me lunch at the Balcony Bistro, which was very nice indeed. Fantastic salmon and a great veggie burger. Then it was off to the Aalto exhibition.

I had forgotten how beautiful and detailed Aalto's version of Modernism was. The exhibition showed his work through 14 key projects, covering housing, medical, government, educational, cultural and furniture pieces.

The most intriguing aspects of the exhibition was that it was presented by Shigeru Ban, a Japanese architect who creates really interesting buildings and structures with paper tubes. He fits into the 'Ecological Architect' category (what ever that is) but cites Aalto has one of his main influences. Personally I think his work fits nicely into more of an 'Ecological Modernism' category really.

We met Marine (fellow CF Møller employee) afterwards and had a coffee, in addition to a wonderful carrot cake that she presented me with upon arrival. Let just say that after smuggling it into the cafe, there was only a small slither left, I swear it wasn't me :)

The evening was spent at home, Bridgette studying in one corner, and me pulling our bikes apart in the other. Our forks are going off to Mojo Suspension to be serviced for the first time. Will let you know how that one goes in the near future.

Pete

Good german friends, smelly cheese and funk elctro

Welcome to London! Katharina and Marek arrived on Sunday, bringing the sun with them. Along came the fantastic German accents and glorious food too. Marek will be for ever known for asking for two pin-ts (pronounced like the pin you sew with) and for producing cheese that would challenge my 10 day old bush walking socks. But the cheese was soooo good. Also great wine!

Sunday was a fine day, blue skies. We set out to see the sites, taking in Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and the London Eye (although we still didn’t go on it). That night, due to Bridgette’s and Pete's fantastic organization, we had a traditional meal of baked beans on toast!

Monday, Katharina and Marek went off venturing and we met up in the evening to see the Good German. A rather surreal experience seeing George Clooney in 1940 and B/W. Very film noir, not liked by all, but a good experience. We ate some fine German Asian cooking and our visitors experienced our rather empty pantry! We now have soya sauce though!

Tuesday, once again the guest did play while the hosts went off to work. That night was a sumptuous banquet of Indian from our local Indian dinner with the cable TV in the back ground (Man U was playing to Pete's delight).

Wednesday was LCD Soundsystem night, what a night. The Astoria is a black rabbit warren, but cool venue. The mixing stage is in an egg shaped silver cage and the entire inside of the hall, is black. LCD SS was, as they were reviewed, very electro-funk. Review here.

Thursday morning saw us sleep in slightly, then head out for breakfast, slightly blurry eyed. Bridgette took the day of Uni and spent it wandering around with Katharina and Marek, until they had to leave for their plane home.

A very enjoyable few days, and hopefully we will et the oppurtunity to visit them in Germany as we pass through later this year.

Bridgette.

LCD Soundsystem are playing at our house, at our house!

It really has been the fortnight for live music, last week it was Jet, last night it was New York outfit, LCD Soundsystem.

We've had a couple of friends staying with us for a few nights while they visit London. Katharina and Marek got some time off work in Friburg (southern Germany) and came to visit us. Katriana did an exchange to Australia a few years ago, and her host family was Bridgette's. Anyway things have been a little cozy in the shoebox the last few nights, but it's all good when it comes to friends.

We wanted to take them to a concert while they were here, we tried the Arcade Fire but they sold out in about 10 minutes, so we settled on the LCD Soundsystem. We didn't really know much about them, apart from "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" but with a quick bit of internet searchery I was able to find samples of all of their songs, which convinced me that they would be good, if not great, live.

If you were to classify them, it would be in a dance/rock/punk genre if such a thing exists. Their studio work is very dancey and polished, while they are a lot more rock when performing live.
What can I say; the four of us loved them! They absolutely pumped out the tunes, with a bass line that cut through the crowd like a hot knife in butter. The venue was absolutely packed to the brim, and Marek commented that it was one of the fullest gigs that he's been to in years, very much like when he was in his twenties! Check out a review of the concert.

Our guests are flying back to Germany this evening, so we went out for a breakfast at the cafe in the same building in our gym, which was quite good. I ordered a large latte, only to find that the large comes in a mug bigger than a pint glass, for £2.70 it was great value.

I think we will be paying the two of them a visit on our travels, as Friburg is near the French/Swiss/Austrian border. Conveniently, Stuttgart is also on the way, so I might get to see UN Studio’s Mercedes Benz Museum, happy days indeed!

Pete

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.....

The two highlights of the past few days would have to be my first experience of bicycle theft, and seeing Jet play.

Thankfully my bike was securely chained to the fence, so they only stole the brake pads and mounts. It was quite funny actually, after being on our good bikes all weekend with disc brakes I did the usual thing on a Monday morning and reminded both of us about our brakes, to which Bridgette normally responds "what brakes".

So I jumped onto my bike and started rolling down the driveway, only to find that I had no front brakes and little hope of stopping before I got to the builders van that has taken up permanent residence at the bottom. We both had a bit of a chuckle, and I continued to ride to work, much slower than usual. I almost sideswiped a Porsche gt3 turbo, which would have been expensive! The thing that annoys me the most about it is that the theft didn't occur because someone wanted to sell my bike to buy drugs, they stole the brakes because they were too lazy to go to the bike shop and buy them, buggers!

Last night saw the fearsome foursome venture to the Hammersmith Apollo again to see another Australian band, this time Jet. Got to say it straight out, they rocked hard, with an onstage presence and sound that I haven't seen for quite a while. this time they got the volume and mixing of the sound spot on, so we could actually hear what they were singing about. If anyone gets the chance to see them live, do it!

Also just found out that the Beastie Boys and the Killers are playing at Roskilde Festival in July, which we are going to. They join the Who, Chillie Peppers and Basement Jaxx, along with a heap of other great Scandinavian bands. there are still heaps to be announced, so if anyone is interested they should get there tickets now!

Pete.

Mud Biking/Bishop Shortford

Great weekend, visiting friends, mud biking and Bridgette's family heritage.

Saturday we jumped on the tube and headed out to Epping. Beautiful day, lots of sunshine. So much so, we almost didn't pack the rain coats. First stop was Sawbridgeworth where my father grew up. Visited his old house, the church where my grandparents are buried and walked around the river Stort. Those who have seen Hot Fuzz, may appreciate the small town feel of Sawbridgeworth. I am sure those ladies fundraising for daffodil day were hiding semi-automatics under the daffodil selling trays. Stopped off at a cafe that was run by the equivalent of the CWA, a bikers paradise of baked goods!

Then off to Hatfield Broad Oak to visit James, Kym and wee Hazel who is only 4 weeks old! This took us through some beautiful English scenery. We went off to Bishop's Stortford for a game of ten pin bowling in which Pete starred. He finally admitted at the end to being a closet bowling fanatic from his youth not surprising considering his heritage (Moonah boy!). We then had a beautiful dinner which was a dual performance of fish cakes (Kym) and flourless chocolate and prune cake (James).

The next day, slightly bleary eyed we headed off in the drizzle to Olgar which came recommend by Lonely planet for mountain biking. The drizzle progressed so after finding the site of the SECRET nuclear bunker we decided to head back to a bakery for some warmth. Then off to explore Epping forest which was impressive. Lots of single track joined by formed walking tracks.

Lots of mud, lots of rain, lots of fun. We then headed back home feeling slightly weary and cleaned everything we owned in our wee bathroom.

To see the complete route that we took, follow this link to our bikely site.

Bridgette