Southampton

On Saturday night we went to Nat's 30th birthday bash. We had a great time - I had a chance to catch up with Harsha and Nat, and Luvena had an opportunity to meet some more of my colleagues. The music was great but we both drank a bit too much.

So at 8am we set off to Southampton on the National Express bus nursing our sore heads. Luckily we had a 3 hour coach ride to recover and were fine by the time we got there. Southampton is located in the south of England across from the Isle of Wight.


It is a very old town that was originally a walled city. The original town gates, known locally as Bargate, still stand and used to be shut every night at the ring of a bell.


A lot of the original town wall still exists. However, the rest of Southampton is very modern. There are a lot of large shopping malls and modern developments nestled in next to old stone walls and tudor houses.


This is the Tudor House museum, unfortunately it wasn't open when we were there.


We stopped for lunch at a 12th century pub called The Red Lion.




After lunch we wandered around the city for a couple of hours and ended up down by the marina at Ocean Village. Lots of expensive yachts and newly built flats lining the water.

Still alive

Not to copy my mate Al's blog or anything, but I'm also still alive. Yes, I realise I haven't posted anything since about this time last year, but, hey, I'm lazy. I have also been incredibly busy at work and the two don't go well together.

Here's a picture my parents requested today of the building site next door. We now get to wake up to heavy machinery every Saturday morning at 8am. Luckily we're usually out of here by that time on weekdays. This photo really doesn't do the crane justice - you can't even see the top of it! It's over 60 feet high though.



When I wasn't working over the past month, I was watching the snooker. Yes, I'm one of those sad people who enjoys watching it on tv. And yes, Luvena hates watching it, but if I can sit through wife swap she can sit through snooker. It's coming up to the world cup soon too, Lu! Yay!

Now that Thorks is back from San Francisco he's planned some big nights for the world cup in our work bar - reminiscent of the Euro 2004 series. Should be good fun. I'm just waiting for summer to finally arrive so I can head out to Cuba Libre and drinks cocktails until late in the night.

This post has probably pushed the post that Lu wrote announcing her parents' driving trip from Australia to London. We've had some updates and photos from them so check them out at www.drivingtolondon.com.

Well that takes the cake... err cheese

The merry month of May is host to some interesting festivals here in the UK and probably none more interesting (and frankly more than a little weird) than the annual cheese rolling races at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire.

Every year, at the end of May, people in Gloucestershire stand on top of a hill and roll wheels of cheese (Double Gloucester... what else?) down to the bottom. The winner gets to keep the cheese they risked life and limb to chase after. Second and third to reach bottom usually win a cash prize.

Cheese rolling 2006

Ahhh.... those weird and wacky Poms eh?

The best pizza ever

I've just been having a quick skim read of today's SMH online (as I usually try to do at lunch times to keep up on what's been happening back in Oz) and came across an interesting debate which has made me homesick - where to go for Sydney's best pizza.

This is the life...

Yes, another long weekend... I think we could quite easily get used to this long weekend, two weeks of work and then another long weekend cycle.

This time, however, it's just a 3 day weekend for May Day. On Saturday James and I did our usual domestic stuff and then we went for a longer-than-expected walk around the area.

For those of you who have visited our flat, you'll be familiar with the big building site that has sat threateningly empty for the past 2 and half years. But in the past few weeks, trucks have been arriving and there has been hammering and all sorts going on. Luckily it hasn't been too noisy but this weekend they are shutting off the street to build a 60-foot crane on the site and we're guessing this means that they're about to get down to some serious building. They are planning on building 6 big blocks of flats, each about 5-9 storeys tall, which will really impact our flat. Not to mention how noisy it will be coming into summer when we want to have our windows open.

So we are thinking of moving - either renting somewhere nearby or perhaps even buying a place. And we are heavily leaning towards buying a place as it seems a bit silly to keep paying rent when our mortgage repayments would be about the same.

So Saturday afternoon was spent walking around South Bermondsey which we'd both thought of as a bit dodgy but there seem to be some nice looking new-build flats there and all very reasonably priced. And well... let's say the area has lots of potential but it's not quite right for us as it is at the moment. Not to mention that the area only has a train station and no tube which makes getting around harder, especially as we don't have a car.

On Sunday James did some study, bought some bargains at Primark in the afternoon and in the evening we caught up with Karen and Dom who have recently bought a really nice 2 bedroom flat not far from where we live now. Their local pub does some nice Thai food and apparently it was used a set for an upcoming Mike Leigh film called Riddles (I think) a few months ago.

Today we've pottered around and just generally enjoyed having an extra day off.
I'm trying my hand at making falafels from scratch this afternoon :)

My parents are in the Esperance area and hope to be in Perth by Wednesday. Check out their website http://www.drivingtolondon.com