Category Archives: UK

around home, London, UK

A month around London

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Crikey, it’s four weeks since I returned from Paris – so a little update is due I suppose. The days have got shorter, summer time has finished, there are lots of crunchy leaves to walk through & over, the weather is cooler (it got horribly cold for a day or two, but that turned out to be an aberration – October has been quite pleasant) & I have spent a lot of time tripping around London, walking tours, a weekend near & in Oxford (with a MTB ride thrown in), visiting friends & family, reading, watching the DVDs that turned up of The Big Bang Theory Season 2, sorting out insurance & slowly preparing for next week’s trip to Kenya. After that brief summary, here are a few more details. of the highlights.

About the time I was getting over my cold, Trish, a friend of hers & I went for a day trip in to Kent to visit Hever Castle. It was a particularly bleak day, thankfully the rain was quite light. Due to the weather we spent quite a bit of time in the castle, which was a good thing as it was really well presented as a museum. As it was the childhood home of Anne Boelyn, there was a lot of Henry VIII history there & I was able to brush up my knowledge of that period. More recently, the castle was owned by branch of the Astor family (as in Wardolf Astoria) that returned to England over a century ago. It’s always neat walking on a drawbridge over a full moat. The garden, which we went around in quick fashion, was also very impressive – one of the Astors had brought a lot of Roman & Italian sculptures back (they were huge & it must have cost a bundle) – & the numerous roses were still out.

The first Friday I was back in town, I went out to Earls Court for the cycle show. Basically it was an excuse to go & stare at bikes – & there was plenty of it. Of course everyone was exhibiting their 2010 wares & there was a lot to drool over – mountain-bikes, single speeds, uber cool fixies, road & track bikes, city bikes, regressive bicycles, touring bikes & a lot of retro styled cruisers (not the beach-type cruisers that were everywhere in San Diego. Thankfully I kept my wallet in my pocket, as I could have been significantly down on pounds;

it was also great to see a couple of NZ companies exhibiting – Ground Effect & Two-Stage. The highlights of the day were the couch interviews with various cycling personalities – of note Alberto Contador

& the Atherton siblings (Lee, Dan & Rachel), the world triathlon champ Alistair Brownlee & an Olympic gold medallist from Britain’s 2008 track team. There was also some diverting BMX dislplays.

Most weeks have two or three trips in to London (it’s most economical to buy a travelcard for the day, so I try to combine a few things at once). Amongst a lot of walking around I’ve managed to catch up for a meal or a drink NZ cousins, Palmy friends, a couple of schoolmates, family friends, a steel mill mate & some English riding mates. It’s surprising just how many people are around. Trish had a previously-unused book of London walking tours kicking around; so whenever the weather is agreeable & I’m in town I’ve trundled off finding out more of small areas of this most fascinating city. The first I did was from Westminster through all the central parks & in to Kensington – this was quite a long walk, but a gorgeous day (the squirrels were out in force – squirrelling away stores, funnily up) & as I wandered past Wellington Arch, I couldn’t help taking a photo as Trish & I had just finished watching the Sharpe series (like Hornblower, but in the army during the Napoleonic Wars).

The most amusing fact of the day was an elephant kept by James I in St James’s Park used to drink a gallon of wine daily.

There were plenty of birds & such like around the lakes & ponds (including one that thought I would like a little present).

As the walk ended in Kensington, I did the Kensington loop – this of course had a lot more houses in it (& quite nice one they were too); of note was John Stuart Mill’s (of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill). On the Chelsea walk, it was another gorgeous day & I spent a bit of time around the Royal Hospital & saw a few Chelsea Pensioners.

Due to a big marquee going up (on the site where they have the Chelsea flower show) I had a to do a big loop around, through a park & then found I couldn’t get out. So a lot of back tracking later I was back beside the Thames & walking past the former houses of Wilde, Whistler (whose mother I had seen not two weeks before, & this is where she sat for the painting), Sargent, Lloyd George, Gaskell (Cranford). Curious fact for that walk was the main street of Chelsea used to be Old Church Street, as King’s Road only became open to the public in 1830 – previously it was for royal use only on their way to various country retreats). Beer with Tori & Greg near Victoria after that & then a wonderful (“amazing”, if you’ll allow it) Moroccan dinner with Amy (flatted next door in Union St) in South Kensington.

On the day I was to meet my Pheasant cousins in the city, I did a couple of city walks (makes sense really). The first was around Fleet Street & St Paul’s; before I got to the Old Bailey I stumbled upon an exhibition of Royal Mail artists – there were a lot of landscapes & with all the pheasants in some of the pieces, it was delightful. Here is the best photo I could get of Old Bailey – without too much effort that is.

Other highlights include the Black Friar & learning a bit of its history (there used to be a monastery there until it was dissolved); Stationer’s Hall – pretty much the home of printing & publishing in Britain; Dr Johnson’s house (couldn’t get Robbie Coltrane out of my mind) & hangouts (close to Hind Court). Great to catch up with & here travels stories from Chris, Sasha & Blair.

Somewhere in all this I took myself & my bike off to Wallingford for a couple of nights to visit & ride with a couple of English guys I had met in NZ a couple of years prior & then seen again in Somerset last year. I was great to be around real bikes & real MTB mad mates. The Saturday morning ride started late after a big cooked breakfast, but it was still quite cool when we headed out. Off on to bridleways and I quickly found how much bike-fitness (& probably altogether-fitness) I had lost since California in June as we were up a few rather gentle hills. Magically it didn’t rain for the whole ride & we got over thirty miles in with some pleasing downhills, with out too much more hard work. On the Sunday Richard took me the twenty minutes up to Oxford & dropped me off at Rob’s flat – Rob is a mate from NZ Steel, who started at the other end of the process a year after me. While his girlfriend was off studying at the library (Cat is doing her Masters – the reason for their stay in Oxford), Rob & I strolled around Oxford looking at old buildings, colleges, rowers on the Thames, the inside of too many pubs that didn’t have tables available for lunch & so on. Back on the train to Paddington, & home late Sunday night.

Last Wednesday Trish & I were well too cultured for our own good & hopped on the train & had dinner on South Embankment before heading off to the Royal Festival Hall to hear the London Symphony Orchestra. There was short piece from Bizet (The Black Gondola) to start & then Beethoven’s third piano concerto & Mendelssohn’s third (Scottish) symphony. They were not particularly well known (at least that’s what Trish said, so what chance did I stand?), but it was an amazing performance (I have never seen such long & sustained applause) & even though I’m not all that musical, it was enthralling. We had seats above & slightly in front of the orchestra & they provided a good view of the instruments, the facial expressions & fingering of the players, & the conductor (I think if the orchestra was not there & the conductor performed in an identical way with as much intensity, I would have been quite amused for two hours). On the way back to Waterloo, our large dinners had gone down a bit, so we stopped for hot drinks (I’m still resisting coffee, but after a horrible hot chocolate that may become harder) & dessert – the restaurant was in the arches under the railway, so from the symphony we were now listening to trains rumbling overhead – not an unpleasant sound actually.

Thursday dawned very nicely, so I was off in to town & did a great walk from Warwick Avenue to Little Venice, down Regent’s Canal, a slight detour past Lord’s, through Camden Lock, past St Pancras & into Islington. Plenty of interesting canal boats cruising up & down the canal & even more permanently moored; with all the leaves turning various shades of red & gold, it was a beautiful walk.

Walking through Regent’s Park I passed the London Zoo aviary & the hyenas were on the other side of the canal; after the brilliant San Diego zoo, it would take quite a bit for me to go to London Zoo as apparently it’s not as good. The history of these industrial highways between the factories of Birmingham & the dock of London was fascinating & in many places you could see where the iron work of bridges & so forth had been worn by the tow ropes over many years (“Oh, the tension!”). In a couple of places the canal disappeared in to a tunnel & the horses would have been unhitched & walked over the top while the bargemen lay on their back atop the barges & “walked” on the roof of the tunnel to propel the vessels through it. In other places main railway lines & tube line passed overhead & unseen rivers were deep below the canal. Near some of the overbridges, there were little ramps in to the canal where startled horses were rescued from the canal when they jumped in in fright of new-fangled steam engines passing overhead. Useless fact of the day was the concourse of St Pancras station is six metres above the ground so that it is level with the railway after it has passed over the canal.

I met Louis & Emma (they came down for the weekend from Ipswich) at the London Eye last Saturday & we slowly wandered out to Waterloo to get the train to Twickenham. The full train emptied of Kiwis & Aussies at Twickenham & they started marching off towards the Stoop (the smaller ground & home of Harlequins). We were off to my first live league in a few years & the second game of the Four Nations series; it was easy to see why this game was down in London – rather than the league heartland of the North – there was gold & green and black shirts everywhere. Just before the game & I bumped in to a school mate, Josh, & was able to find him & Kelly again at half time. Louis managed to get us pretty good seats, they were on the north goal-line looking across to the only big-screen in the ground. It was great game with plenty of massive hits, some good tries & we were unlucky to draw in the last two minutes. A win was so close & that would have been quite an achievement after the bruising defence the Kiwis pulled of for the first quarter & the ridiculously high penalty count.

I ventured in to new territory on Tuesday near The Oval and came away with three holes in my arms, nine malaria pills & £150 poorer. Still, better than getting sick with some horrible disease. After my packed lunch (I was organised for once) & a stroll in Kennington Park (I did well to resist running through the massive piles of leaves the council workers had make), I was heading out to Kew Gardens when I got a message from Kelly so I diverted to Acton Town for a second lunch & a big catch up; I especially enjoyed tales of their recent van tour of Europe in “Munter” – a horribly purple, but inconspicuous, Leyland DAF van. Once I was in Acton, I realised it was really pretty close to Kew; so on leaving Kelly & Josh I strolled down to the Thames & took a little look around Kew before it got dark. The Public Record Office is also in Kew so I popped in as it was late night Tuesday & Mum occasionally asks me to do a little family history research; the place is huge & full of people beavering away finding ancestors & there was a cool little museum all about record keeping & I was pleased to see the two Domesday Books.

Two days ago I made it to St Pancras just in time to see most of a Eurostar empty before (even when I rode it, I had no idea there were so many passengers on it) easily recognising Megan – despite it having been ten years (we think) since we last saw each other. The fact that she & Alex both had fully loaded touring bikes was also a bit of a give away. Megan is the daughter of a good friend of my mother’s, & most times we visited Mum’s family in Sydney we would make the very long drive down to rice-country in south NSW & visit the Dunns. Megan & Alex have just done five months & over ten-thousand kilometres of cycle touring in Japan, Britain & Europe. I was somewhat jealous, but I don’t think I would ever be able to handle that much ride roading, slick tyres, fully rigid & loaded bikes. They were in London for two & one days respectively before flying out to Australia & Canada. In another of the series of coincidences Megan is going on to NZ with her mother in a couple of weeks to visit my family & do a bit of hiking before returning to Canada where she & Alex live very close to where Adele & I are going in January. After negotiating the tube & trains back to Sidcup, we made use of what daylight remained cleaning, dismantling & packing the bikes in to Tardis’s (the same bike bag I use for my travels, but they were in much better condition & the adjustable shoulder strap of the new version looked quite good) . It was great to hear various touring stories & have bikes to tinker with & scratch knuckles undoing tight bolts, get covered in grease & brake dust (just another thing not to miss of vee &, would you believe, cantilever brakes). Trish cooked up a storm & heroically volunteered for the drive to Gatwick at half-past four the next morning. After being the geeks we are & having a Trivial Pursuit quiz, there wasn’t much time for sleep before we were all up again & off to the airport – I was very surprised that a Tardis fitted in the boot of the Micra.

Friday started again at about ten o’clock for the rest of us (Alex was in the air by then) & Megan & I continued the cleaning & packing of her bike – it got called off the previous night when I dropped a bolt on the pavers & couldn’t find it – trying to shed as many parts as possible due to QANTAS’s stingy baggage allowance for bikes (we managed to discard most of the drivetrain as it was showing the signs of a very long trip – the chain was almost as bendy crossways). We also worked out that Megan’s grandparents knew Trish’s parents from the cycling club they used to belong to – my grandfather was also part of the same club & I assume that is how Mum & Gill met; somewhere along here Trish was showing me photos & documents relating to my great-great uncle Stanley who was killed at Passchendale & we came across many Christmas letters that my Mum had sent from just before I was born & spanned over twenty years – they were fascinating & quite amusing in parts & brought back a lot of memories of growing up on the orchard in Papamoa & then later in Te Puke. My attempts at learning to swim & participation (a euphemism) in sports through school were recurring subjects! We are just back from dropping Megan at Heathrow at the more respectable hour of nine-thirty & after two nights of a full house (Trish’s sister Jan also stayed last night), it’s a little quieter now – which is useful as the last five paragraphs of this discourse had been left unwritten for a few days.

around home, bikes, family, friends, London, MTB, UK

Ipswich, Canterbury & the most cyclists I have ever seen at once

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It’s been most of September since I got back from Edinburgh, so I must have a few little trips & events to write about. Hopefully the blog editor behaves itself this time. I’ve now worked out how to work around the annoying changes to Blogger – apologies to those that receive this twice.

A day or so after I got back I was off to Ipswich for a long weekend staying with Te Puke & Palmy friends – Louis & Emma. They have been in the UK for a little over a year & seem to be quite enjoying living in Ipswich. It was great to catch up – & quite like I remember flatting: generally eating, watching sport & a bit of mountain biking. Louis & I loaded the two bikes (it’s good to know bikes can fit in Micras with the seats down) & set off north-east for Thetford forest. My first singletrack in the UK this visit. I see now why Suffolk is known for being flat – we didn’t exactly have a lot of climbing to do. There were four different trails, apparently of varying difficulty, & we did the two “hardest” ones. It was great to be out riding in the forest & there were plenty of people out & about (but not too many on the tracks). We managed to occupy ourselves for three hours & Louis did heroically when the seat on his borrowed bike worked the bolt loose & kept tilting up at the front. There were some nice little bits of flowing singletrack, but these were few & far between & generally the trails seemed poorly designed. I got quite excited when I saw these signs –

– warning of almost certain death, but in the end it was less challenging than the Diamondback/Dipper in the Redwoods & one small part of it was quite fun. Nonetheless, it was great being out & I more than happy to go out for some doubletrack around some woods closer to Ipswich on Sunday afternoon.

The two weeks since then have been spent organising things, brief bike rides (two hours) locally & the odd trip in to London to see sights (National Gallery & Portrait Gallery were very good – must go back to see the majority of exhibits that I didn’t have time for; back to the Imperial War Museum; really enjoyed poking around Campden Markets & wishing I had a budget that extended a bit further) & friends.

Two weekends ago was a big family get together for Trish’s (the second cousin I’m staying with) birthday. It was great to catch up with quite a few people – most of whom I had met last year. I have since seen photos of our trip in 1987 to the UK that I have not seen before – the infamous Renault 11 makes an appearance & I was a lot cuter.

Saturday last, Trish & I took a pleasant little day trip to Canterbury (a certain line from The [real] Office keeps coming to mind). After lunch, we took a look around the Cathedral (didn’t see Blackadder around or Baldrick trying to sell dubious relics). In some respects it was another great big cathedral (more of which I’m sure I will see) – but I was surprised at how it kept on going, it was a lot larger than I expected on first sight. Afterwards we took a stroll along the river in part, & then around a lot of the old walls of the city. It was warm close day & there were plenty of people out enjoying the weather & I was surprised at how many teenagers & students were around.

Yesterday was the Mayor of London’s Skyride. For six hours in the middle of the day, a loop was closed off that went from Tower Bridge, along the Embankment to Trafalgar Square & down The Mall to Buckingham Palace. Coming back the other half of the loop split off & took in St Paul’s. I biked from home in Sidcup & met up with a small group three and a half miles down the road. From there we set off for Greenwich & met up with hundreds of others. Biking from there & over Tower Bridge it started to get chaotic with so many on bikes taking over the roads. It was great joining (as it turned out) sixty-five thousand other cyclists in the city on what was a beautiful day. Of course, it was rather congested & slow going – but no one seemed to find as there were bikes everywhere, not cars, taxis & murderous buses. A great range of bikes on display – fixies, roadies, a few mountain-bikes, town/city bikes, unicycles, penny-farthings, even a pedal-powered piano, clown bikes & best of all – kids everywhere on little bikes, trailing bikes having a ball. Six hours & thirty-odd miles later, I was pleased to make it home exhausted.

friends, travel, UK

Shows & the highlands

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On the long way back to London from Edinburgh now, so here I am again. I think I last added to this the day after the tattoo (saw it on TV last night, was still a spectacular show). I started to get a bit more organised in determining which shows I was going to see about this time & since then have seen plenty of comedy, a bit of theatre, some music performances & a circus & I wasn’t disappointed by a single one of them. But more of some of them later.

Monday last week was of course the twenty-fourth & being so far from home & friends & family was a little strange. But it turned out to be a great day (it didn’t rain at all for starters) – I tagged along with Thomas as he went to visit his mother up near Inverness for the night. Thomas was great at showing me little things off the beaten track as we went through the highlands; it was particularly nice to spend a bit of time checking out the estate & village nannied for Thomas’ family quite some years ago. The heather was out in full force & it smelt divine. Managed to fit in a bit of a walk up a hill to get a cracking view of Newtonmore & the surrounds.

After dropping in on an old school friend of Thomas a little further north at Aviemore (which apparently has very good riding, I must return some time in the not too distant future) we arrived at Sally & Alan’s in time for a great venison dinner. Sally & I hadn’t seen each other for over twenty years (so that of course means I don’t remember too much from then), so it was great to catch up & share stories of our family (stories set presently or in the past) & travels.

We returned to Edinburgh the next day, on a different route to which travelled north – calling in at a couple more friends’ houses. This was a tiki-tour that Dad would be proud of – we stopped when we saw things of interest & we went for a couple of walks. I don’t really remember the path we took home – but I think it was east of the previous day’s roads. I do remember that we went to Balmoral, but didn’t get invited in for tea in biscuits. Also early in the day we checked out the historic battlefield of Culloden – very interesting to see it & learn a little Scottish history – this was the site of the last battle in the Jacobite Rising in 1745.

The rest of that week is a bit of a blur of a lot of shows & late nights & walking to & from the flat (my only nod to exercise for a while). Two of the theatre showing I went along to were hour long soliloquies. Both were retrospective from the end of each of the characters’ lives. The first was in the shoes of Richard Burton, a very-well known (I had never heard of him) Welsh actor – who was one on the list of “has been married to Liz Taylor”. Not being able to convey what it was like – I’ll just say it was a great performance & an hour of just one person talking flew by. The second was in a very small room with about fifteen filled seats in one of them most out-of-the-way venues I had been to yet – well out of the normal venue district, up many floors & unusually we were fed tea, coffee & biscuits while waiting. I digress, we were sitting in a small dark room with the door shut, when who should charge in ranting & raving at 10.30 but some one bearing an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler (we did know this was coming, but I like a bit of build-up)? For over an hour, we had Hitler in his final moments underneath Berlin pretty much summarizing his dreams, achievements, failures & thoughts on many subjects & people – on a factual side it was a very good summary of all that he did (except for the obvious bit of it being in English – thankfully). On a dramatic side (not that I can pretend to know much about the arts) it was a moving performance & as well as the megalomanical tyrant, we could see at times that Hitler, somewhat disturbingly wasn’t completely different from the rest of us – a time to consider how it all happened & could it happen again. Talking about the rest of the comedy & the Moscow State Circus (no animals – but I was impressed by the show & acrobatics) that I saw seems a little bit frivolous after that – but I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the festival.

However, I was all show-ed out by the weekend – so doing a little family history research for Mum was a welcome change. I was looking for anything on one of my fore-fathers (I’m not even going to guess how many “greats” are involved) – on Mum’s maternal side – who was originally from Italy but was in Edinburgh for a decade or two or three at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I went to four different archives, enjoyed the hunt & looking at documents that looked as though they hadn’t seen the light of day for a hundred years. I had moments of discovery (I am waiting the report of how much worth they had), walked around quite a bit of central Edinburgh where my ancestors lived, worked & hopefully had a bit of time for play (I don’t think they had mountain-bikes back then, poor souls) & managed to find the church where some of them were baptised & married. It was nice to be doing something different & putting my brain to work for the first time in a while).

The break for the archives was on Sunday, when Thomas & a mate of his, Brinky (who had recently spent the best part of a year in NZ – good stories), were going kayaking. I was happy to tag along & get out in the wilderness & be shuttle-driver (good karma, do unto others & all that) for them. We drove north to the Linn of Tummel (Thomas & I had stopped here on the way north the previous week). The guys put their kayaks in just below a hydro dam & just before about fifteen whitewater rafts went in & I had about an hour to kill before they would go over the falls of the Linn. On the drive down, I saw another group of rafts & kayaks just before I got to the Linn, so I enjoyed going down & seeing them go over the falls. The rafts went over the ~two-metre falls OK – except when the guide standing on the rocks before the falls twisted them around; then they all fell out & capsized & was most amusing & made for some decent photos.

While I was waiting for Thomas & Brinky, I wandered down the road a little & picked some more delicious chanterelles (Thomas & I picked a lot of these delicious yellow mushrooms on Monday). Eventually, the rafters, an earlier group of kayaks & Thomas & Brinky came down the river. I enjoyed being warm & dry as I watched many go over the falls & quite a few end up in the drink. I had my camera on multishot & ended up with way too many photos – here are some of the better ones.

city, travel, UK

Rebus & the Ta-too

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This must be about my fifth or sixth day in Edinburgh by now & I am pleased to report that yesterday it didn’t rain once! It’s a little like Auckland in that it seems to try & rain at least once a day – not much & often only drizzle, but precipitation all the same. It’s also decidedly cool – but I expected as much & have found it pleasant. Thomas’ flat is about twenty-five minutes walk from the centre of the city, so I’ve been doing the return trip once or twice a day in a bid keep some semblance of fitness – at least that’s the excuse I give for the big sleep-ins (doesn’t make much sense as I write it).

The first day in town was a very domestic day, with a walk in to town to have a look around & get orientated – masses of people around of course for all the festivals & street performers tend to attract large crowds of course. The last few days have been a mixture of wandering around checking out this wonderful city, its architecture,

windy cobbled streets & closes, street performers,

a bit of stand-up & some Rebus walking tours. I have a new appreciation of just how hard stand-up can be after seeing four acts in one day – only one of them really made me laugh. And that was probably because I’m a geek – it was called “Control Alt Delete” & was pretty much about computers & being a computer nerd. Admittedly, I only learnt to write in one language (C in case anyone is interested) & not the eighteen that the comedian had learnt in his previous life – so can’t really claim to be a computer nerd, but I’m still enough of a geek to have found the show funny.

I love how Edinburgh Castle can suddenly come in to view when you are wandering around the city – you see it down a skinny alley way, over the top of a building & so on. This photo taken from the top of the National Museum of Scotland.

I then went to see a Kiwi comedian, just to hear the accent really – the title, “Life after Divorce”, didn’t do much for me; it was nice to hear the accent, but it was a real struggle for the guy. There were only six in the audience, he paced a lot over a small spot (I hate this) & was sweating when he couldn’t get much out of us; I think it would have been better titled “How crap life was when I was married”, as he talked a lot more about this than post-divorce. The best part of the whole act was a young guy in the audience spoke up in a broad Scottish accent – “is it always this bad?”. That was pretty funny, we then got in to a discussion of why it wasn’t working & how unfunny it was – very bizarre. Also popped along & saw Raybon Kan (because I had heard of him) – he had a better audience, with a fair smattering of Kiwis, in a small sauna of a room; he was much better, but like the previous guy seemed to like beating up on people. I’ve had a few days off comedy, but tonight off to one that should be better.

As I was half through the Rebus novel I picked up for three quid in Cornwall, yesterday I went & did a couple of Rebus walking tours (didn’t have time to do them last year). As these novels sparked my love of Edinburgh & its history I was pleased to be able to be shown around some of many places described & pick up other snippets of history. I crammed two tours into the same day as it was a beautiful sunny day & I didn’t know if this would happen again. After four hours of walking around, I was a little sick of it – but got home to cook a nice steak up & prepare for the tattoo (which really just meant put on as much Icebreaker & other warm clothes I’d bothered to bring up from London).

The Tattoo had sold out many months ago when I started thinking of coming to Edinburgh for the end of August. So I was particularly pleased, stoked in fact, to get a return ticket for the late Saturday night show (this one has fireworks too) in a good seat at the end. I went along thinking that this would be one thing to cross off the list (it’s a figurative list) & not go again; I left thinking that I would love to come back & see it again another year – it was fantastic. The rain stayed away, the castle is a wonderful back drop (the light show & animation projected on to the castle ramparts was impressive, I thought) & music & choreography of all the different performers was incredible. The compère did a good job of getting the crowd warmed up (my NZ cheer was rather pathetic compared to all the Americans behind me) & he quaintly pronounced ‘tattoo’ as ‘ta-too’ (& on a trivial note, welcomed the guest of honour – General Petraeus of US Central Command). The show started off with ten different Highland bands strutting their stuff (one of the bands was from the Auckland Police) & it was great. The groups from Tonga & then China were obviously quite different, great. The two consecutive Swiss groups were one of the highlights of the night. The first was a band from the Swiss Army (conscription must really help the recruiting for band members) & they were well choreographed, had brass instruments as well & played a pretty cool part of “Hey Jude” that had everyone singing along. The second group for Switzerland was the Top Secret Drum Corps from Basel – a group of about twenty drummers & flag-bearers. Their drumming was like nothing I had seen before – the climax of it (coming after twelve or so had stood in a line beating each others’ drums & swapping drumsticks by throwing them at each other, all the while keeping a magnificent beat going) was when the lights dimmed & the drummers some how ended up with flaming drumsticks – the visual side to this part of the performance was quite something to add to the audial experience; I was conscious that my mouth was wide open in wonder for much of their performance. As is so often the case, my words don’t really do justice to the whole event. The show closed with all the performers on stage & pretty good fireworks display.

And I’ve forgotten to put the photos in the text, so here is a bunch from the last few days (yes, I could go & put them in the text, but I can’t be bothered).