45 posts tagged “uk”

Been a while since I've posted on this blog, so I'm going to quickly publish a few entries to get myself back in the habit. I'm not sure why you stop doing something like writing in a blog - it's been sitting there annoying me for quite a while. In any case, a while back I decided to go to the cricket with 3 guys from work - this may sound like a NZer's idea of hell - going with 3 poms to a test match at Lords, when our top 4 batsmen tended to average around 22 - but in any case, going to Lords was something I'd wanted to do since being in the UK.

After another looong London winter, it had finally started to warm up - with the week before the game being particularly steamy. However, the day before the test was due to start the weather broke - leading to many jokes about "was that the UK summer this year?". Couple of days patchy play ensued, with the Black caps well on the back foot (although having recovered from being 100/5 in the first innings).

 

 

Predictably, day 3 dawned grey and although it wasn't raining when we got to the ground, the signs were ominious. After around 10 overs of off and on again play the heavens opened just in time for lunch. We waited for a while, and when it got heavier, headed to a local pub and watched the FA cup final between Portsmouth and Cardiff.

The rain continued, so we didn't even go back to the ground. Annoyingly, the following morning dawned sunny and fine - so looks like we picked the wrong day. Nevermind, at least I crossed Lord's off my list of "things in London I must do before leaving"!

With my bike being broken (brakes getting rebuilt), I've not been doing much riding. What I have been doing is a lot of sitting around drinking, and even more watching of rugby. I travelled up to Edinburgh (so much for this being a French World cup) late on the Saturday night and caught up with Korina and Branko. However, the fact that I still had my bag with me and was dressed in a pair of shorts really ended the evening before the night clubs.

Probably just as well, as Saturday saw Korina and me take a walk up Calton Hill before meeting Branko, Megan and Will for another drinking session in preparation for the match.

 

 

After a few drinks we headed down to Murrayfield to watch the match.

 

40-0 was a fair result, given that the All Blacks forward destroyed their Scottish counterparts, and several of our backs seemed incapable of catching the ball. Hopefully things will improve on this front for Romania.

 

 

Quick post - travelled down to St Tudy in Cornwall to see Johnny Manor's wedding to Lara. A bloody long drive on a Friday afternoon which included being stuck in Slough (where the Office was filmed) for about an hour in traffic.

Brad had arrived over that day on his whirlwind tour of the UK, departing on the Monday following the big day.

 

We stayed at a cool B&B in Washaway, about 5 miles from the wedding. It was a nice sunny day, so we watched Portugal get destroyed by the All Blacks in the rugby and spent an hour or so drinking out in the sun before the wedding. In addition to the drinking we were also stalked by the owner's kids and forced to play fetch with their dogs for several hours.

 

 

The week before the wedding we had a particularly debaucherous stag night which included a few shots of Absinthe and bottles of Vodka bought over the bar - whose great idea was that particular combination?

The result of this mix saw me feeling pretty unwell most of the Sunday following, but I fared better than Johnny B who proceeded to throw up in our kitchen sink, then ring Reena at 4am to come and rescue him. It was like we were 16 again...and of course I wasn't the most popular person in the world...

Well, Korina is finally starting to be a bit more mobile following on from the dreaded spleen incident. Although I'm not that fond of tennis, the chance to do something with Korina after all these weeks persuaded me to accompany her.

In the weeks leading up to Wimbledon, the weather has been, to put it nicely - shit. Day after day of rain. So we were not that confident of seeing a whole day, but having purchased the tickets we headed along anyway.

 

The day started off at the Walkabout in Wimbledon where we watched the ABs choke in the second half. About this stage I started to wonder if wearing my All Blacks top was such a great idea. Nevermind, it was too late now. So after a pie and a couple of snakebites for breakfast (the staple of any good antip living in London) we stepped out of the pub. To be greeted by a ferocious rain squall. The chance of play was looking bleak.

We jumped on an old London bus which took haf an hour to fight its way through the rain and crowd to the tennis stadium.

About the stage we dismounted the bus, the weather started to look a little brighter.

We quickly found our seats and opened a bottle of cava to be greeted by the news that it would be another half an hour or so.

 

The crowd was just starting to get restless (or perhaps drunk) when they announced play would resume.

We watched Sharapova vs Sugiyama. Sharapova won in straight sets which was lucky as immediately upon the game's conclusion the heavens opened. Under an hour was the sum total of the tennis we saw.

 

Again, as I am not that fond of tennis I was not that worried.

We then decided to make our way to the hospitality tent (courtesy of Korina's friend who works for Tennis Scotland).

Being England, we of course cued for another half an hour or so to get in. Once we were in we realised that the lounge was full of pensioners, and even worse, you actually had to pay for drinks! At £4.50 for a glass of Pimms, this had the potential to get expensive!

 

No matter, having nothing else to do, we proceeded to drink. Me heavily because I was bored, and Korina lightly - because of her spleen.

 

Eventually they called the tennis off for the day, so we headed off home to the news that some guys had tried to blow up Glasgow airport and Team New Zealand had also lost again...

Well, last night proved somewhat terrifying. Korina and I awoke at 3am by someone in our bathroom. Someone who was not one of our flatmates.

 

I looked around for a suitable weapon, but forgetting my camping knife the closest thing I could find was an innocuous looking book of human nutrition. I ventured out into the bathroom to find the lights on but no one there. So I then crept out into the kitchen…to find no one. But the lights were on, and the front door was ajar.

 

So I found a more effective weapon (a knife) and called Bret’s mobile phone. As we didn’t know if the person was still in our flat we then started a room by room search – Korina and me from the bottom, Bret from the top floor.

But they were gone.

 

Luckily they had not taken my bike, my GPS or Korina’s car (the keys were right where they were fossicking around). The next morning we found that they had taken something out of Korina’s handbag, thinking that it was a wallet – but they had ditched it outside when they worked out that it was a makeup purse containing a scarf.

 

So, pretty scary, didn’t make for an easy night sleep. I am very glad that Bret is off on study leave today so Korina is not alone in the house. He’s also getting the locks changed – our place will resemble pretty soon.

OK. Simple plan.

The first May Bank holiday would see Korina and I travel down to the North Downs in Surrey, staying at a traditional British pub and spending the weekend relaxing, mountainbiking and hiking. Idyllic. Korina had been working really hard, so some time chilling out together was just what the dr ordered.

Unfortunately, this simple plan did not go, ah, as planned.

Started well enough, with a picnic near Coldharbour before heading up into the hills mountainbiking. We were really just pottering around on the Saturday, as I had been racing the weekend before and was still pretty sore. Save the harder stuff for Sunday and Monday. We thought.

 

So anyway, we were meandering down a path near the end of the day when Korina had a bit of an off. She fell into what looked like a rather forgiving clump of undergrowth. However, under this forgiving layer was a rather unforgiving tree stump. Which she was impaled upon.

She was obviously winded, so we waited for a bit to see what would happen next. Afterwards she was still sore, and we thought that she may have cracked some ribs. But she was still able to ride out, so that is what we did for around 30 mins. Back at the B&B for an hour, still looked like she may have cracked some ribs. Sore, but managable.

 

Then it all went down hill. Korina is tough, but I've not seen someone in that much pain before. All the same she insisted on driving to the hospital because I was not insured for her work car. A somewhat scary ride later and we arrived at East Surrey hospital.

The next three days were spent with Korina in a surgical critical care unit as various doctors and surgeons debated the relative merits of taking out her spleen (or not), which had apparently ruptured and was bleeding internally into her abdomen. However, not taking her spleen out won through, as she was otherwise fit and healthy, and young.

So that is where Korina remains.

She's been there a week now. Fortunately every day she looks less like needing surgery and looks a little more healthy.

 

 

However, the past week has not been without other dramas. Such as Korina reacting badly to an anti-nausea medication, sending her (and probably my) heart rate up to 160 and her blood pressure up to 155/119. Not great considering her family history.

Hopefully she will be out in the middle of next week, with another week or so of complete bedrest to look forward to at this stage.

When Darren invited me to fill in for a night race I wasn't sure. I'd never done one before, and I was not that confident that I would be up for it.

As it turns out my concerns were for nothing. It was a great challenge and nice to race in a team situation - as I find mountainbike racing to be generally quite individualistic.

 

The only scary thing was when my lights crapped out half way through one of the laps, and I had to ride for 5 km using only "the force". Interesting this went OK, although I did hit a tree on my next lap when I did have light.

So my lap times were '40, '45 (light problems), '40, '39. Interesting that my blind lap was only 5 min off my regular pace. Also interesting that I got faster each lap (ignoring the blind lap).

 

Although we took a pasting, it was good fun. We're talking about doing another race soon.

Getting home wasn't so good though. Major rail delays at Reading station turned a 2 hour direct train into a 5.5 hour, 4 change epic. Not what I was after after 2 hours sleep and carrying my bike and camping gear! Bloody National Rail!

Korina was working over in Belfast one Monday, so we decided to take the opportunity to take a look around Belfast. Megan and Branko, who is living in the Isle of Man at the moment decided to come across and see us. As they had lived in Belfast for about a year, they were to be our "local guides" for the weekend.

We got in late Friday and quickly found our hostel. Megan and Branko's room smelt like someone had died in it, and although Branko assured us that it had smelt that way when they arrived, I remain unconvinced. The heating was also broken in the hostel, so it was reminiscent of a shoddy Dunedin flat. The only way you could keep warm was by having the panel heater on all night, and the light was broken in the bathroom - making aiming somewhat difficult.

The following morning we arose and went and found a warm cafe to unthaw in. About this time I realised that I had a booking with my return flight - I had stupidly managed to book it under Dad's name as I still had his passenger profile set up under my www.expedia.co.uk account. This meant I needed to pay a further £140 to return the following day.

After a leisurely breakfast we grabbed a black cab tour of the Protestant / Catholic neighbours at the middle of the Northern Irish conflict. The Protestant estate in particular had a bleak and very aggressive feel about it - which was accentuated by the murals of snipers and other such lovely things.  Both neighbourhoods were clearly very poor - and it made me wonder what role the lack of education and money had in inflaming and maintaining the conflict over time.

 

What I had failed to realise was that the two neighbourhoods are actually physically separated by a big fence, the gates of which close at night to keep the more aggressive portions of the community separate. We were told of molotov cocktails which were sometimes hurled over it, explaining why people close to the fence used cages over their back yard to keep safe.

After the tour we ended up in the pub for the night. Despite the aggressive nature of the communities near by, Belfast as a drinking destination was very friendly - and it was not long before we had kind of been adopted by a couple of different Irish groups.

The following Sunday, a bit worse for wear and it was clear that the weather was not going to play ball. We spent the day avoiding the teeming rain, so it was pretty quiet. What we did manage to do was to book a booth at "The Crown" for lunch. This pub is famous for still having separate areas for Catholic and Protestant drinkers - complete with at table service to avoid any interaction with the other group. A quick Irish stew, and then it was off to the airport for the flight back to London.

 

Here is a ride that I did in the weekend with Darren in Bracknell Forest. We had to pick our way around the Gorrick race that was happening that both of us were too lazy to enter!

 

If you want to see a fly-through of this trail, then post a comment and I can send a Google Earth type .KML file - long live GPS! If you want to download .GPX of the ride, then Download .gpx from here.

OK, so its been a really mild winter - but we have had a couple of cold snaps recently, including this morning. When I woke up there was about 5-10 cm on the ground...