Literary London...

For those of you who keep an eye on my literary forays - whether through The Book Nook or on Good Reads - you'll know that my Year in Books has gotten off to somewhat of a prolific start. Having set my yearly target at 54 books (that's one a week then bumped up to match last year's tally), I am already reading #24. That's right - three shy of the halfway mark and only 25% of the year gone. 

So I was walking up to North Finchley last week and noticed this street poster for CityRead London.

Intrigued I came home, googled and found out about this wonderful initiative.

Launched in 2012, CityRead London is an annual literary festival held in April each year which is designed to have us read a little something about London...together. Then throughout the month, the book is brought to life with literary events and talks in borough libraries all over the capital. This year it's Louisa Young's My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You, a love story set during the first World War. Released early in 2011, this book was short-listed for the Wellcome Prize, the Costa Novel Award and The National Book Awards that same year.

There has been a plethora of authors eager to showcase London and all of its charms over the centuries (think back to Charles Dickens in the 1800s who actually wrote part of Martin Chuzzlewit just up the road here in Finchley). So the choice must have been a challenging one with so much to choose from but for all its accolades, I had not heard of Young or this particular book.

I love reading about this wonderful city: its history, its place in the modern world or simply as a backdrop to a cracking story. One of my very favourite books of the last few years is John Lanchester's Capital so with all of this London literary love in mind, I have Amazon One-Click-ed Young's war tale to Audrey's lovely e-pages. 

What an inspired and clever way to promote reading (and to get me to download yet another book to my kindle this week).

A Skip In My Step...

So the great Chicky Adventure is done and my sibling partner in crime has arrived back on the other side of the world (and is working through her jet lag by all accounts). 

It was such an amazing two weeks - firstly for the unadulterated 'just us' time, secondly for the opportunity for me to introduce her to this amazing city I call home, and thirdly for our shared pilgrimage to Amsterdam, Dad's childhood home, and the delicacies we enjoyed in memory of our Oma and Opa.

I've been meaning to pick up the blogging 'pencil' again over the last few days but I have felt so full of everything we did that I haven't known where to start. The anticipation of Lil Chicky's first trip here. The pride in the sharing of my new hometown and experiencing its fabulous-ness through her 'new' eyes. The privilege of helping her celebrate her 40th birthday. The sheer intensity of spending 2 weeks - 24/7 - together for the first time since...well forever. 

All underpinned by a lifetime of sisterly memories, the effortless and uncomplicated recall of funny stories, childhood scrapes and sibling rivalry, and squilions of photos... 

...including a few selfies.

DAY 2: Fab Finchley - looking for coffee in the pouring rain.

DAY 3: Can't go to London without visiting the Queen.

DAY 4: Hamers do 'the henge' (squeezed between visits to Salisbury and Bath). Technically not a selfie thanks to a kind Aussie chap on the tour, but close enough.

There's a small selfie gap here while we undertook birthday celebrations (part one - The Mousetrap and dinner in Covent Garden - and two - Pret-a-Portea at The Berkeley)...

DAY 5: Fashionista food at the Berkeley

...Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Globe Theatre and a visit to Carnaby Street.

DAY 6: Yes, we bought these. Because we had to get out of the rain. And the Irregular Choice shop was just there. Really.

Then we went to Amsterdam...

DAY 9: Arriving at Amsterdam's Central Station about 2 minutes before torrential rain...

Waiting for our first poffertjes (teeny tiny pancakes served with butter and icing sugar and eaten with a toothpick) of the pigrimage trip in Dam Square.

(More on Amsterdam in a later post).

After 4 days, we returned to London, hired a car and drove first to Silverstone and then to Donington Circuits to tick a few things off Lil Chicky's motorsport bucket list. Looks like Day 13 was a lucky one...

The Winners' Podium at Silverstone - cheesy but had to be done.

We decided to take Day 14 easy with a visit to the Museum of London after the 'wild storm' had abated...and when Day 15 dawned bright and blue-skied (if a little chilly), there was just one thing left to do...

DAY 15: It endeth on The Eye - our last sibling selfie of the trip.

Full of our time together and tired from our two weeks of tourist-ing, we said our emotional good-byes at Heathrow last Tuesday. After I'd waved until she'd disappeared behind the security barrier, I made the long trip home to Gidday HQ. It's still my warm and cosy haven but a little quieter. And yellow banner of the Money Shop, which became our welcoming 'nearly home' beacon as we turned into my street each night, has now taken on a new and poignant significance. Another memory, meaningless to anyone else but enough to inspire a skip in my step...

...one that only Lil Chicky will understand.

Kindred Spirits...

Each evening as the 82 bus trundles north up Finchley Road and navigates the lights at Henly's Corner I find myself cheered by the thought of just a few more stops before I'm off for the short walk home. Henly's Corner can be a nightmare for the traffic if things go wrong but most nights, it's a fairly seamless crossing to deliver passengers to the bus stop on the other side so my optimism is usually well-placed.

As you reach the other side of the North Circular and start up Regents Park Road, there's a big green 'space' to the left. It seems an odd place to position a patch of nature, right next to the heaving flow of traffic. Even odder is the statue - a naked woman raising her arms to the sky, her sword in one uplifted hand. As the bus merges back into the traffic from the stop, her brazen profile stands stark against the urban 'wallpaper' behind her. A silent silhouette, triumphant and still, while I sit, usually oblivious, immersed in my post-workday literary feast. 

Image source: Wikipedia

But a few weeks ago, too tired to read, I spent the entire journey from West Hampstead gazing out of the window and as I saw her, arms uplifted, I wondered how she came to be there. What's the story here, I wondered?

So out came my trusty HTC One and before long I had the answer.

The Naked Lady (real name La Délivrance) was purchased by Lord Rothermere (the family of The Daily Mail fame) in 1920 and gifted to the district of Finchley. Initially local officials, in need of a war memorial, planned to place the statue - created to celebrate the first battle of Marne which prevented the Germans from capturing Paris in 1914 - at the entrance to Victoria Park. But our well-heeled aristocrat put his foot down - the current location or not at all - and so the statue was unveiled in its current location by Prime Minister David Lloyd-George in 1927.

The Naked Lady is the creation of French sculptor Émile Oscar Guillaume and stands, a bronzed 16 feet tall, at the southern edge of Finchley.

A bronzed goddess hey?

I always knew I'd find kindred spirits in Fab Finchley.


ps...speaking of kindred spirits, there are only 19 sleeps to go until my very own sibling kindred spirit arrives...la deliverance indeed!

London Love...Fab Finchley

It's been a little while since I shared a Fab Finchley foray with you so here's the post to remedy that.

Yesterday I was off for a visit to the physiotherapist. While not the first physiotherapist I have ever encountered, it was in fact the first visit to this particular one who lives a short stroll away on the other side of my local park.

So last night I set off in the warm sunshine (yes still very warm at ten minutes to six o'clock) and before long my strolling took me across Victoria Park. London has been blessed with a few glorious weeks of summer (the newspapers are calling it a heatwave *guffaw*) and the park was dotted with people making the most of the weather - kids, runners, families, dog walkers. It seemed that everyone was moseying around the paths, enjoying a moment on a shaded bench or sprawling on the grass beneath the bright blue sky.

I had walked almost entirely across the park when I was struck by how vibrant and lush it looked. It wasn't that there were loads of flowers out as there are at other times (I found my first daffs of the season here) but it seemed that everywhere I looked was literally vibrating with energy and colour.

Stopped in my tracks by the beauty of this scene, I turned around to see this.

 

I smiled quietly to myself. For a few moments I stood there, taking it all in, before turning back and heading on to my appointment.

And it reminded me once again how much I love living here.


ps...regular Gidday-ers maybe wondering about the lack of birthday posting since the big day on August 1st. It's been a busy ol' time but rest assured I'll be updating you soon...

Ye Olde Bucket List...Part One

It's been a busy few days since my last post and I've been having a rather splendid time enjoying some of what the English do best...namely Shakespeare and sporting banter. So you lucky, lucky Gidday-ers get two posts.

I know. Two for the price of one. That's got to be an offer you can't possibly refuse.

Macbeth came first.

To provide a little context for this rather tragic inclusion on ye olde bucket list, all of that 'double double toil and trouble' stuff has been running around in my head since High School when I studied the play as part of the English curriculum in Year 11 and then revisited it in Year 12 English Literature.

And the fun didn't stop there. Lo and behold, Macbeth was also the Shakespearean text in my first semester of literature at University. That's three times in three years. The Merchant of Venice the following term was a breath of fresh air.

Anyway I've never actually seen the play. Ever. Not even a movie adaptation.

So on Saturday night I settled into my seat at The Phoenix Cinema (my lovely local) and watched a live transmission from the Manchester International Festival. Kenneth Branagh co-directed (with Rob Ashford) and took the leading role with Alex Kingston (of ER fame) as Macbeth's lady wife by his side.

The set wasn't a theatre but a deconsecrated church so the live audience sat either side of the central aisle and watched the action unfold...on the grassy verge in the middle. The rains came down, battles were won and lost, murder most foul committed and vengeance served in the end.

It was absolutely brilliant, Branagh was breath-taking...

...and Macbeth finally got ticked off the bucket list.

But the weekend wasn't yet over.

Tomorrow I'll let you know what else got ticked off.

Cut To The Heart...

I love my street. It is a wonderful street to live in. It's chock full of old semi-detached houses with amazing architecture, intricate decorative detail and gorgeous leadlight windows which come alive when I walk along the footpath at night.

During the day, it's a leafy avenue lined with a magnificent array of trees that signal the passing seasons with their colour and bloom. And there's a particular tree that signals the entrance to Gidday HQ. It's verdant boughs cast a familiar shape across the sky as I gaze out of the window from my lazy-weekend-morning pillow and I've watched it transform from stripped bare to a riot of pink blossoms to its recent coat of rich, deep red.

So I was devastated to arrive home one evening last week to find this.

Finchley Council...not so fabulous!

Your 2012 Five A Day - November

Well October, Halloween and British Summer Time are behind us and chilly mornings, darker evenings and cosy nights in are here for the foreseeable future. And both November and this month's Violent Veg pay tribute to a great British tradition.

Bonfire night on the 5th November celebrates the capture of Guy Fawkes, he of the infamous Gunpowder Plot. In 1605, 13 royally disenchanted men planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I. Fawkes was caught below the House of Lords with his fingers in the barrel, so to speak and was taken captive, tortured and executed. To celebrate the safety of their King, the people lit bonfires and burned effigies of Guy Fawkes and in doing so, guaranteed every British kid's expectation of November 5th celebrations - fireworks.

Unfortunately it seems that Eddie's enthusiasm for tradition has been a little misplaced...

This time last year, I was unpacking boxes here at Gidday HQ, hoping to get my new pad sorted before returning to work. I heard the crackle and hiss of local fireworks nearby and upon standing at the back door to check things out, was delighted to find I could watch the lot from the warmth of my new kitchen. Just another Fab Finchley bonus.

Hope you find something that lights your fire this November.

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Trickle Trickle...Splash Splash

Exciting news here at Gidday HQ.

I've had a new boiler installed. 

For those of you who don't know - like me before my migration north of the river and away from electric heating (in the ceiling no less) and hot water - the boiler is an essential piece of kit in one's house here in the UK. It not only supplies the hot water but also fuels the gas heating.

And with the temperatures dipping into single figures this weekend, these two 'objet d'omesticity' have grown particularly close to my heart. Especially as, after arriving home earlier this month to a chill indoors, I had to break out the bedsocks twice in the space of a week.

So last week, the pipes were fitted and the new combi-boiler installed. Gidday HQ is toasty warm and ready for winter.

But there's been an unexpected bonus. The water pressure is amazing.

No more shimmying around under the dribble from the shower head.

No more waiting 20 minutes to run a bath.

And the kitchen sink is full within a minute or two. (Let's face it, the quicker I can get washing the dishes out of the way, the better. It's not my favourite chore but there are not many other options when there's no-one else to blame nag cajole ask.)

It's gone from a trickle to a veritable torrent.

I didn't think it could happen but Fabulous Finchley just got even more fabulous.

I am one happy little Vegemite!

From The Cheap Seats...

It would appear that my first 43 years on the planet have been so bereft of cultural pursuits that, as I am wont to do after a birthday, last weekend found me looking around for a new thing(s) to experience. Two years ago it was baking, last year it was polo (the pony kind).  And this year it's opera.

Opera has been one of the few 'Arts' that I have not readily subscribed too. I love classical music but the combination of singing I don't understand and high prices has been a particular deterrent. That's where a bit of community clever-ness came in from my lovely local The Phoenix Cinema.

Being an independent arthouse cinema, The Phoenix doesn't need to subscribe to the wants and desires of a head office and experiments with its schedule to inspire the local community. In partnership with Glyndebourne 2012's Opera Season, it's running two live screenings of the performances there this weekend. Tomorrow is a double bill of two 1 Act operas from Ravel. The other - Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro - was screened last night and that's where I was.

As cinema lights dimmed, the camera lit on the empty stage with its 'Moorish Palace' backdrop, the familiar strains of the overture began and soon the space was filled with hustle and bustle, music and colour...and a vintage red and cream Austin Healey.

Glyndebourne's re-telling of this famous tale is set in the Seville of the swinging 60s. If you don't know the story, it follows the trials and tribulations of Figaro and his lady love Susanna as they plan their wedding. There's lots of hi-jinx and trickery, cross and double-cross in the tale (a bit like a Shakespearean comedy such as A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night) and with the aid of English subtitles, the familiarity of the music (I love Mozart's music and it wasn't until I sat through this that I realised how much of his musical bounty I had actually heard before) and the captivating performances, it made the whole experience a really enjoyable one - although as an opera neophyte, I could not tell you one aria from the other.

So in short, I loved it. And I paid £13.00 and was home 20 minutes after I'd left the auditorium.

I am sure that experiencing opera live, and especially in the gorgeous surrounds at Glyndebourne, is fantastic. But for someone who wasn't sure it would all be worth it, getting a taste from the cheap seats was a perfect way to dip my proverbial toe into the water.

The other thing to say is this: I really admire Glyndebourne (and some of the other companies that will feature over the coming months) in their vision of bringing opera to the masses. While I'm a known champion of the written word (and quite frankly anything that promotes it), having access to art in all of its myriad expressions is such a wonderful opportunity and one of the things I love about living in London and more specifically, the ecclectic and fabulous Finchley.

The Marriage of Figaro actually follows on from the story in another Mozart opera, The Barber of Seville - the protagonists have grown older by the time we see them in 60s Seville and rather than lead, form backdrops (and a few barriers) to Susanna and Figaro's impending nuptials - so you can guess what I'll be keeping an eye out for in order to dip my other toe.

And as ever, I'm hopeful that my search will all turn out in the end - just like the marriage of Figaro and Susanna - with a joyful celebration and me drifting off into the warm and hazy night, humming a little Mozart to myself on the way home.

Summery Sundays...

It's Sunday.

A lazy, mooch-about with A-used-to-be-down-the-hill Sunday.

And it's a gloriously sunny Sunday here at Gidday HQ.

Yes, you heard read right.

The sky is brilliantly blue, the sun's rays fierce in their determination to make up for lost (British Summer) time.

And there have been a couple of squatters on the back patio for the second time in as many weekends.

We even had to put the umbrella up to protect our delicate Australian  hangovers skin!

Don't look now but it might be summer at last!

Shhhhh....wouldn't want to scare it away again...

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ps...and there's only 10 sleeps to go 'til the big day peeps. That's right - only 10. You can count down using only your fingers now...

Gidday Soiree...A Hat Trick Of Birthdays

The inaugural Gidday soiree is done. My guests have left replete with good food, an indiscriminate amount of wine and feisty yet flowing conversation.

Le outdoor setting (or patio furniture as my American compatriate at work calls it) did me proud and the skies, while not exactly blue and sunshine-y, kept to themselves with not a drop of rain falling. That's a minor miracle in itself given the past few weeks.

(Although as I woke this morning after yesterday's intermittent and torrential rain, I do believe I closed my eyes and whispered 'oh please just let it be dry!' Maybe someone was listening.)

It has inspired me to do more of this. I have to say that I rather enjoyed having visitors to fuss over, deliberating over the menu during the week prior to strike the balance of both the 'right' quantity and trying out some new things.

(There was a chilli, cheese and corn loaf and some savoury rolls - basically a soft cheese mixture and some other ingredients wrapped in pita bread, chilled overnight and sliced - which were both newcomers to the party.)

It was also an opportunity to use my 'stuff'. You know the stuff I mean. You have some of this yourself. For me it was my Oma's crockery, my Mum's tea set (for the coffee) and, being a cup short, even a lone Royal Doulton cup and saucer for the fifth of our party.

Having the room at the new Gidday HQ for all of this to have been unpacked from the boxes that were their home for 6 and a half years is absolutely brilliant. Now it's all just an arms reach away on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard.

I'm extremely proud to say that the only thing not Gidday-Made was the chocolate cake, collected from the local Polish store round the corner this morning, to celebrate our three birthdays.

Which brings me neatly to a reminder that there are only 17 sleeps to go until my big day. Celebrations may have started today at Gidday HQ but this doesn't mean you're off the hook peeps.

Not by a long shot!

Inspired By...Local Colour

This afternoon I have been cosied up on the couch with the Diamond Jubilee River Pageant on telly in the background. The banks of the Thames are alive with cheering folk and British-themed bunting, adding a whole lot of local colour to an otherwise grey and drizzly London day.

But this is not a Jubilee post - having already given a nod to Her Majesty just last week - but rather a celebration of local colour right here in Fab Finchley...at our local railway station.

Finchley Central station is on the Northern Line (High Barnet branch) of the London Underground. It was originally opened in 1867 as Finchley & Hendon on a line that ran between Finsbury and Edgware. In 1872 a branch line to High Barnet was constructed and in 1894, the station was renamed Finchley (Church End). It was incorporated into the London Underground network during the 1930s and took its current name - Finchley Central - on April 1st, 1940.

Last night I went into London to see The Duchess of Malfi at The Old Vic so I set off to catch the tube from Finchley Central as usual. The early evening sky was traditional bank holiday grey and I whizzed through the ticket barrier, down the stairs and on to the open air platform hoping that the skies would not see fit to open upon my arrival there. (Contrary to popular belief, parts of the London Underground are not, in fact, under ground.) And not for the first time, I gasped softly in delight.

You see, Platform 3 (for trains travelling south to London) had been transformed into a riot of glorious Spring colour. I've seen this testament to green thumbed locals before but the last few weeks of rain - sun - rain has brought forth vibrant purples, bashful pinks, delicate whites and golden yellows in abundance. And as a picture paints a thousand words, here's a little photo tour for you that I prepared earlier (I love my HTC Desire):


This was my first glimpse - look at all that glorious colour!

Here's a little nod to the Olympics - but keep this under your hat. We wouldn't want the organisers to know!

There was some Union Jack-ery in evidence too...

...and a sweet attempt at prettying up 'Bill Steamshovel'.

There were also a few quirky critters dotted around.

There were a few of these piggy planters...



...a bee who'd come to see a man about a dog...

..and some sheep (a big 'un and a lil 'un).

And what's this hiding in the grass? More quirk-ery perhaps?

It looks to me like a bunny with ears made of carrots!

Isn't it pretty? There's real sense of pride - not to mention fun - evident as you walk along the length of the garden and I caught myself smiling as I discovered each of its quirky inhabitants.

So it's a big (green) thumbs up to the folk at Finchley Central Tube station for making my damp, grey evening just a little less grey. Well done old chaps!

Wired For Sound...

This weekend I was back at the lovely Phoenix Cinema for another From The Archives screening, this time to celebrate this particular local's 100th birthday on May 9th.

Every From The Archives follows a theme and as The Phoenix was the first cinema in the area to show a 'talkie' - The Singing Fool starring Al Jolson - in 1929, this afternoon's theme was the advent of cinematic sound.

The first clip set the scene - a 'trailer' for The Jazz Singer. Not a trailer as you and I know them but rather an earnest young man describing and then cutting to footage of the film and the opening night itself. In that day and age, cinema goers were astonished - the man's lips moved and his words came out! Extraordinary stuff when you put yourself in those shoes.

The second film was Walt Disney's first foray into sound and his introduction of the world's most famous mouse. I had read about Steamboat Willie a couple of years back as part of a biography on Disney - the movie is only 7 minutes long, but features Mickey and Minnie and big cheerful dose of that irrepressible Disney magic.


And then it was time for the main event, the completely joyous Singin' in the Rain. For those of you who have been living under a rock (and shame on you if you have), the story revolves around the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 and the scramble of the major studios and their leading men and ladies to survive the rise of the talking picture.

But it is the combination of wonderful music, show stopping routines and the chemistry of Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor that has you leaving the cinema humming 'Good morning, good moooorning!' and generally feeling that life is a pretty wonderful place to be.

And all of this for free.

Finally as part of the nod to 100 years of local cinema history, we had our photo taken in the auditorium before the show to be put in a time capsule for future generations to find. Just imagine what someone might think of us in 100 years' time!

And since I have been to three Phoenix freebies now, I decided to put my money where my feel-good is and become a Friend.

It's just a whole lot of unmitigated feel-good really.

On The Move...

It's Sunday again and I have been sitting here wondering what to post about.

Should I take inspiration from this week's train reading and have a little muse about the lack of female role models?

Should I have a little rant about table manners and that the situation has become so grim that London's Kensington Hotel has taken it upon themselves to educate the nation's little savages with Petite Etiquette?

Should I express my incredulity that during the week, I learned (via a translated snippet from April's 'Emballages', a French Packaging Magazine) that in February the French Ministry of Ecology decreed that teabags were not packaging? (It may surprise you to know that there was quite a debate at work over this.)

Or should I convey my wonderment and excitement that the sun is indeed shining this weekend. All weekend. That includes yesterday when I spent a couple of hours outside and accomplished this...

Aaaah...such pretty paws!

All riveting stuff I can assure you...or it would become so under my fleet-fingered tap-tap-tapping.

But the birds are singing and the sun is out (did I mention that it's sunny?) and I have removed myself from my usual blogging locale in the Gidday HQ lounge room to here...

...because I have a bright shiny new laptop!

I can't decide what I am more excited about.

That I don't have to pedal hard to coax the old desktop into doing what I want - quite frankly, the number of times it has given up the ghost three quarters of the way through a post and made such a mess of what was saved that I've had to type it again. You guys should think yourselves lucky I'm addicted to sharing this blogging caper.

Or that I can surf from the comfy couch. Or anywhere in Gidday HQ for that matter (although the wifi signal did just drop out...)

Or that it goes fast. Really fast. Like 6GB fast. With lots of tabs open and stuff.

So I am tap-tap-tapping away as the birds sing and the sun shines through the french doors into the back room at Gidday HQ today...

...just because I can.

And for all of you doubting Thomases (is that the correct pluralisation for more than one doubting Thomas?), I would like to draw your attention to the date/time stamp on the photos to prove that it is really sunny today. Gloriously so...with a forecast top temperature of 19C.

So I'm off into the great outdoors again before it all disappears...

I Feel Pretty...

I was out and about earlier and while there's still a nip in the air, there are blossoms everywhere, leading me to believe that Spring might have finally arrived.

Early in March I was delighted to see some scattered daffs under a tree in nearby Victoria Park...

Then we had a couple of weeks of gloriously sunny weather (remember that time when we were warmer than you beloved Melburnites?) We were all delirious over here and there was even a breathy mention or two...could this be the year that we have a 'good summer'?

Then it rained for a few weeks and I had to resort to bringing the outside in...

Bunches of daffodils are cheap here at this time of year and last between 10 days and two weeks

But today's blue skies and spring-like 14C (I know, my expectations have lowered considerably on the temperature front over the last 8 years) have brought forth a veritable tour-de-force of blossoms...

I was crossing the High Road in East Finchley today when I snapped this glorious spread behind my bus stop

I noticed these buds on my side fence from the kitchen window last weekend which are now in bloom. I don't know what they are so if any less horticulturally challenged than me can advise, I would not look stupid in my own garden be grateful

These are growing in random plastic buckets in the back garden. Haven't a scooby what these are either. They live without much input from me. This makes me look good happy.

London is so unbelievably pretty in the Spring - I actually think it's one of the things where it beats Australia hands down.

Even Google is getting in on the act!

Google 22nd April 2012

But lest you be misled, I should let you know that after a glorious t-shirt and light jumper walk this morning, it's now raining...

Yes indeed, Spring has definitely sprung.