Still here, I see?

Yes, well, so am I.

Today I did not take any pictures, so you will get another post full of Unrelated Photographs.

Today I woke up late-ish. Tottered around. Made my way towards Angel's Costumier. They provide costumes for film, television and theatre (and what ever you want to pay them for) for a LOT of people.

Their credits include such little known films as Titanic, Hugo, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Shakespeare in Love, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Gigi (yes, they're that old, and older).

AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR UNRELATED PICTURE!!

HOLY CRAP IT'S A MOTHERFUCKIN' HERON.

That's what I said when I saw that, until I realized that it's really only BLUE herons that are rare to see, and this park was COVERED in herons. Literally. Like a carpet.

Stupid heron.

Anyway. Costumes. I found the place with relative ease. Had the worst cup of vending machine tea I think I've ever had.

Our tour guide was a small grey and pink sort of man with a neatly pressed blue shirt and glasses made entirely out of clear plastic perched upon his nose. He was very funny, but made me stop answering the questions he posed to the group because I knew all the answers and ruined the surprise. (In my defense, he WAS posing a question...)

The warehouse was AMAZING. Seriously. I thought of all my theatre friends and thought how envious they would be of their eight kilometers of costume rails. They have a whole ROOM of badges, patches, and buttons, and a separate room for all their military uniforms. Amazing.

TIME FOR ANOTHER UNRELATED PHOTO!

Don't worry. They're not real horses. Just statues. (At Camden Markets, what used to be a stable, or so I'm told. Strangely, there were horse statues EVERYWHERE.)

So if you can get in to do a tour at the Angels Costumier, I would definitely suggest it. They have some pretty cool stuff.

Our guide told us a secret about the Titanic flick.

Apparently they had made all these jumpsuits with the Titanic crew logo/words/whatever on the front, for the 'crew' of the Titanic to wear. So they wore them, ran madly around the starboard side of the ship.

Then they changed into ones with backward text, ran around again, and they flipped the film in editting and pretended it was the port side of the ship.

MAGIC.

So as the tour was coming to a close, I got to chatting with the only New Zealander in the group. She also happened to work in theatre, as a costumer, and confessed to me, rather embarassed, that her real passion was reenactment.

"Hey, I do that too!" I confessed.

"What time period?" she asks.

"Early 16th century Florence," I say.

"ME TOO!" she says.

Turns out she was a SCAdian from down under. Needless to say we rode back into London together and exchanged email addresses. (Lookit me. Overcoming my fear of strangers.)

UNRELATED PICTURE! (By luck of the draw you get an 'artistic' picture of a pigeon.)

After that I headed to Paddington Station (yes, there is a statue of Paddington Bear) and met up with Miriam and David and we took a train out of London and now we are in a town called Cheltenham Spa. There are apparently roman baths here.

Why do I always forget my bathing suit?

Today I woke up late. Again. But at least it wasn't noon this time!

No, a mere respectable 10am. (I can hear my mother groaning from here.)

I did some chores about the flat, set the laundry to go, and decided to go find me a play to see.

Also breakfast. I keep forgetting to eat breakfast until I'm halfway to the tube.

Silly Rosemart.

Anyhoo.

To keep all you non-readers interested, I will inject a non-related picture here:

British Museum. Kinda makes a girl want to replicate it...

ANYWAY. Where was I?

Right. Morning. Show.

Went down. Found the theatre playing Matilda. Booked a ticket for next week. Found the theatre playing Singing in the Rain. Booked a ticket for next week.

Wanted to find something to watch that afternoon.

Found the theatre playing Les Mis, but no matinee. BASTARDS. Who only does a matinee two days a week? Really.

Oh. Right. Three hour play. I forget.

The helpful box office fellow at Les Mis gave me a pamphlet with all the shows and all the show times (HOW HAD I NEVER GOTTEN THIS BEFORE) and I noticed War Horse was playing in...forty-five minutes.

It's been having a sold-out run. But I thought I'd try my luck.

I lurked by the box office like some sort of haunt until some fellow popped up with a couple non-returnable tickets his co-worker couldn't use. Hooray! Me and a very nice, very old English man got seats. We also got a deal! The ticket was originally for fifty pounds, but the man sold it to me for thirty. We had ground floor seats, a bit towards the back, but near the center. Much better than I could have afforded on my own.

The show was good. I can see why it was gently mind-fucking everybody. The puppetry was really excellent. I got a bit frustrated with the birds on long poles, because the birds were so tiny and the poles were so huge. The crows landing on the corpses, and the goose in the farmyard were done really well, though. And the horses, naturally.

I got a bit frustrated with the acting. Or maybe it was the writing.

I find that the more people REALLY REALLY REALLY want me to care, the less I do. And the more chest beating they do, the more face palming *I* do.

So there was a bit of scene chewing, but overall, I thought it was a good production. Perhaps I've seen too much theatre to really get my mind blown anymore.

 

And to keep your interest...ANOTHER UNASSOCIATED PICTURE! :D:D:D:D

This was the only half-decent photo I took today, since I spent so much of my time inside theatres. (War Horse is THREE HOURS LONG. It didn't really feel like it, except around the middle of the second act when I was beating my forehead against the seat in front of me.)

After that I had to book it down to the National Theatre to meet up with Miriam and David. We had a very nice sushi dinner that was very artfully done, very expensive, and very sparse. (It WAS good, though. Very good quality fishes.)

And then we saw...Travelling Light! Yes, that was it. It had an interested forced perspective stage with a curved cyc. It looked like a pain in the butt to put up and take down (they change plays every five days), and according to the woman who hosted the backstage tour, it very much was.

Travelling Light was pretty good. I found myself getting bored in the second half again, and thinking about yogurt and cheese instead, but then, I might be a bit jaded. Overall I liked it better than Moon on a Rainbow Shawl.

Oh. Travelling Light had a man with THE WORST Bronx accent I have EVER HEARD. Ever. It was somewhere between Bronx and Australian and general bad American. That was hilarious for the first thirty seconds, and then made my ears start to bleed a little bit.

Awful. But otherwise a pretty good play.

And with that noise, I'm going to sleep so maybe I don't sleep in until noon...hmm....

Tomorrow is a tour of the Angels Costumier, some massive costume construction place just outside of London.

Ta!

I slept until noon today.

NOON!

WHAT THE HELL, BRAIN?!

I thought I was reading the clock wrong.

I lept out of bed. My intention was to get down to the West End for a matinee, if I could, so I hopped on ye olde double decker bus and kind of fumbled my way downtown.

Slid into Leicester Square just before 2pm (okay, I got a LITTLE lost), and checked out the ticket booths. Unfortunately, everything I wanted to see was either sold out, or the running time was too long for me to see, and then get down to the National Theatre for the backstage tour.

Oh, my life is so hard.

So I went to Trafalgar square and poked around like a bum. Ate a sandwich. Saw the oldest police station in London.

Next time you're in Trafalgar Square, keep an eye out for it. Nobody notices it.

Perhaps because I think it had a mop and bucket in it, and not actually any policemen.

 But there you go.

After eating my sandwich, I thought:

"What ELSE is there to do in London? ANYTHING?"

Besides napping in parks and the like, that is.

So I popped over to the British Museum.

It was fine.

I really only went to check out the viking stuff (which they always seem to have less than I expect, or want). Unfortunately, one of the major rooms was getting a big reno, so all the Sutton Hoo stuff was off display.

Bastards.

 Still got to see the Lewis Chessmen though. I like those guys. Came close to purchasing a souvenir one.

I probably would have if they had one of the berserker ones, biting their shield. Hurrhurrhurr. Them fellows.

Didn't stay long at the British Museum. Barely even looked in their bookshop!

Tore across town to the National Theatre, for the backstage tour.

It was quite informative. If you're interested in technical theatre, I'd say give it a go. The most hilarious part of the tour was passing the metalworking shop, where the welder had Vivaldi blaring so loud the tour guide couldn't talk over it.

There was also this little lady hanging out in the back hallway.

She had no legs, because apparently her legs were apprehended to be emergency backup legs for the show that's going on in the West End.

I may see it. We'll have to see if I can get tickets.

Anyway, after that I met up with Miriam and David, had dinner balanced precariously on our laps, and then saw 'Moonlight on a Rainbow Shawl'.

I don't really understand the title of the play, but there you go.

It was very well acted, and very depressing.

I didn't care for the writing much. I found the first half to be pretty interesting, but by the time the huge emotional climax happened I thought *YAWN*. I was not emotionally invested in the characters anymore.

Nice set though. Lighting was good too, and the actors managed to maintain their accents well through the play (I want to say they were Jamaican, but I could be wrong). They had a girl, who I'm not sure was actually a girl, but if she was, she was very convincing. Calgary doesn't get child actors that good.

In any case, afterward we all stumbled back to the house. Miriam and David are asleep, and since I woke up at noon, I'm rather wide awake.

Perhaps I'll try to sleep soon...

Slept in. Woke up to a text message from Miriam, inquiring about the location of lunch.

Insisted I'd been awake all this time.

Really.

The morning was wet and gross. I acquired some snackies from the market, and headed over to the V&A.

Now, I've done the V&A quite exhaustively before, so I decided not to do a long slog. I would just do the morning.

A lot of the rooms were closed, in any case. A lot of other things had been moved around.

I can only guess that was the case of this poor Jesus here.

I saw this fellow, and immediately thought of Kelly, though I'm not sure why.

It's okay, Jesus. This is the worst bit. It'll get better, I promise.

I could not find the plaster of the statue of David. I don't know where it went. A lot of rooms on that floor were boarded up, and a lot of things had moved around.

But I still poked aboot.

This is one of Leonardo de Vinci's notebooks. How cool is that! That's something I don't remember seeing last time. I wish I could have flipped through it. Apparently the V&A has three of them, I believe, but I think that was the only one on display.

Then I met Miriam for lunch and had a very nice fancy hawiian pizza. Then she went to...Newcastle?...for work. She'll be back tomorrow night, hopefully just in time to see a play with her man and I.

After lunch I decided not to go back to the V&A, but rather headed up to Camden Market. Last time I was there it was pissing rain and I had my huge backpack with me. I wanted to experience it better.

It was as I remembered it. I checked out some of the stores I remember liking, but did not buy anything. The only thing I almost bought was widely available in Canada, and I didn't feel like packing it around.

There was this store, which I remembered liking. It was a rave store, basically. Lots of neat fashion stuff, and weird household stuff. Highish prices though, and nothing unique enough that I HAD to buy it there.

SO.

 I took a moment to commune with nature.

Camden market was home to some of THE MOST MISERABLE looking pigeons I had ever seen.

I'm not sure whether it was because it had been raining that morning, or they ate nothing but churros and bad chinese food, but they were MISERABLE looking.

This fellow here was one of the better looking ones.

Rarely have I seen so unhappy a creature, as these pigeons.

 Do you remember this view?

The weather is better.

I had a layabout on the grass exactly here two years ago, and posted the same(ish) picture.

It's a good layabout spot.

(Miriam was teasing me for falling asleep in the park the other day, probably because I came home with the back of my sweater all covered in clover.)

Anyway.

After Camden Market I went up to Kentish Road to meet David for dinner.

Etheopian! I was good. I've never had Etheopian before. I think I'm spelling that right, but I'm very tired.

They give you many squishy dishes which you scoop up with a kind of rubbery, sour flatbread.

It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

After dinner, since we were so close, David took me on a walk up Parliment Hill to get a good view of the city. Unfortunately a rather dense smog was smothering downtown, so it was a bit hard to see, but it was still a nice walk. There was a dude singing Elvis songs on his guitar at the top. It's a bit weird to hear Elvis songs with the wrong accent, but at least the guy playing was good at it.

Then...home. And now...bed.

Sleep times for Rosemart.

Farewell, all!

I am TIRED. Though not as tired as I was yesterday.

Now I am only kind of tired.

Since I haven't posted any pictures yet, I give you this one.

Oddly enough, it was from the plane.

 
I know. You wouldn't have guessed that, would you.

The colours were even better than the picture shows, which was why I took it. It's still a pretty picture, I think.

Anyway.

Where was I.

 Oh yes. This morning Miriam tried to feed me everything under the sun. David has informed me that this is usual and she doesn't take offense if I don't eat everything offered to me. I had meusli, and it was nice.

Both Miriam and David left for their respective work places, and left me alone to totter off.

And totter I did!

Went to the train. Miriam very kindly supplied me with an Oyster card.

I wandered around for a while. Topped up the phone that Allison lent me. Wandered around some more.

Then I came across Trafalgar Square and this fellow hanging out with Mr. Nelson!



Hilarious.

Also the National Gallery. Took a totter in. I forgot that they owned The Tailor. I like that painting. I'd put it on my wall. They had a few other pieces that I'd forgotten they had. A whole room of Rembrants! Good grief! A couple of Vermeers. A few of the rooms were closed up, which sucked, but there you go.

I didn't stay long. I lingered in the bookstore a little bit. Drooled on a giant tome of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, but I didn't buy it (but I DID write down the ISBN).

Went to meet David at the Google offices. Got lost. Everything in London is WAY closer together than I'm used to, so I keep overshooting things by a long, long way.

Eventually found David, but had to phone him to figure out where the hell I was ("Do you see the Starbucks?" "Yes." "Do you see the strange man in blue waving his arms like a rediculous person?" "....ah. Hello.").

Google's cafeteria is AMAZING. We were greeted at the door by one of David's coworkers, a very, very, very skinny computer engineer in a faded, holey rock and roll t-shirt, pants that were a little bit too short, and sock feet, and I thought: "MY GOD! It's just like hanging out with my friends!"

(I love you all, friends.)

We had lunch. I was very jealous the whole time. David gave me a tour of the Google offices, which included a coffee room with TWO baristas to make your coffee, a 'garden' with a napping capsule (WHICH I REQUIRE), a games room (darts, pool, and a large selection of console games), and a music room (with professional instruments and microphones and everything). Apparently they have a double decker bus on the third floor, which they use as a meeting room. It was, apparently, a sulky consolation prize after the landlords refused to allow them to install slides or firemen's poles.

They also have a life sized horse sculpture with a lamp on it's head.

Also this:

Why, that's just a bathtub! you say.

Why would Google have a bathtube in their reception area?

(Though to be fair, why would they have a horse with a lamp on its head in the cafeteria, but I digress.)

This, my friends, is Douglas Adams' bathtub.

Apparently some engineers saw it go up for auction and decided to buy it and put it in the office, and then the bosses heard and told them to spend what they had to to get it.

I understand that it used to be filled with blue foam balls and had a sign inviting people to have a sit in it and get some great ideas (as a great man had done before), but there had been some issue with people getting drunk on gin in it, and since it's in the reception area...well, they decided to slap some plexi on it and use it as a coffee table instead. (The red you can just see is a towel, in case you were wondering. The cards are quotes from the books. I don't know why the globe with the pirate flag was in there.)

Yep. So after that I left and went to Regency Park by way of Baker Street (passing 221b, if course). There I read my book and lay in the sun and watched the ducks and the herons and eventually fell asleep.

I'm not sure how long I slept for, but I felt a lot better when I woke up.

Wandered around the part some more. ALL the flowers are out. It's very pretty.

Then came home and wound down. Tomorrow I was hoping to catch a matinee in the West End, but everything I want to see doesn't have a tuesday matinee.

Who knows. Tomorrow is a mystery now.

Ow. My brain.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

I did not sleep at ALL on the plane. Not at all. I dozed a little, but no sleep.

There were so many screaming children on the plane, I can't even begin to tell you. There were these two girls which were really bad, but they were so adorable I couldn't loathe them. It was obviously their first time on a plane and they were SO EXCITED and poor mom had another baby strapped to her chest, so it was dad's job to chase them around the plane.

Anyway. No sleep.

So I land in Gatwick. Train it to London.

What do I do now? Look at the tourist map.

Head to Covent Garden Market. It's too early.

Find a McDonalds, because I know they have free internet. Manage to find the sketchiest McDonalds in the whole world. Relish in free internets.

Head back to the market.

It's getting busy. I have a huge backpack.

Stop and listen to this very good quartet. Two violins, a cellist, and a flutist. The guy who was kind of leading the group was one of the violinists. He was black and had teeth that had a space between every single one, and when ever someone dropped money into their hat he would scream: "THAAAAAAAANK YAAAAAAAAAOUUUUUU!!" as loud as he could.

They played classical music, but it was very excellent. They could do schtick and play at the same time, which always impresses me.

The opera singer that followed them was not nearly so well attended.

Left there. Went to the British Library. Discovered the manuscript room was closed on sundays, and anyway, I wouldn't be able to handle them because they require government ID plus proof of address in order to get a pass to handle the manuscripts (let that be a lesson to you all).

I am disappoint.

But only a little disappoint, because let's face it, I'm in London. Life is pretty awesome.

I found I could not stay awake any longer while I was in the library. If I stopped moving, I was nodding off.

So I pulled a Dad and found a bench. I didn't want to stretch out entirely, because the security guards were like bad tempered cats, and I didn't want to look like a hobo. But I leaned against the wall.

All told, I think I had about four half-hour naps, all on different benches.

I feel like I can last until tonight, even though I am still very tired.

I resisted most of the things in the bookshop, even though there were some interesting books on the Lindisfarne Gospels (which the British Library owns; I saw it!), and a massive tome on medieval dress as depicted by illuminations...but I resisted.

Until I found a DVD of illumination-how-to, using all period materials. I ALMOST passed it over, and then I thought: "WHAT THE HELL ROSEMART? WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIND SOMETHING LIKE THIS AGAIN?!" Especially with all period materials.

So I bit the bullet and bought it.

And now...I am stealing internets from McDonalds again. Gonna go meet my lovely cousin Miriam soon. Perhaps I should go find an adapter so I can actually plug in my computer...

LONDON?!

What the shit?

I'm in the airport AGAIN?

How the hell did that happen?

Oh. Wait. $300 round trip ticket to London.

NOW I remember.

Anyway. I never did my last post about Paris and Amsterdam, did I?

Well, no time like the present.

These here are my favorite pictures. They're not great pictures. They're not like Miss Kelly Shpeley's photos (www.kellyshpeley.com), though even if you follow that link you won't see any of her photos because SOMEBODY won't do a show of her photos even though they're FABULOUS (you can also see them here: http://floconsdejambon.blogspot.ca/ )

Yep. So. Some are 'artsy'. Some aren't. They're not great, but I like them, so what ever.



Awww. It's a dove in the blossoming trees in the garden of Notre Dame. It was giving me the hairy eyeball. Probably because I said its mother was a chicken.

 Oh HAI! It's a swan! In the Red Light District in Amsterdam! I like swans. I apparently like birds, since there are three photos of birds in my favorites.

 It's a canal. I'm standing on a bridge. Or possibly hovering over the water, but you'll never know for sure. It was in the same area as the swan.

A seagull gazes quietly out to sea, pining for her lost love, what flew off with a whaling ship some five years before. (I don't remember where I took this. Probably Amsterdam. I only ever saw one seagull in Paris.)

Did you know that Amsterdam became such a powerhouse because of their fleet of flying battleships? TRUE STORY. I wouldn't lie to you, because you're my friend. (This was in the Old Church in Amsterdam.)

Ah, drugs. Aren't they great? (Another shot in the Old Church in Amsterdam. All the chandeliers had these magnificent giant brass balls hanging from the bottoms. I would say they were trying to compensate for something, but I'm pretty sure they weren't.)

A 'what the hell is around the corner' mirror along the canal in Amsterdam. Can you see me?

Sparkling canals, bicycles, and sunshine. That pretty much sums up Amsterdam.

A window of Notre Dam, with the flowering trees. Artsy, or 'artsy'.

The sun coming up over Notre Dam, with a different flowering tree. Did you know there were lots of rats running around the grounds while I was taking this picture? Try not to think about the rats while you look at this.

The sun coming up over the Seine. It was very quiet in Paris at this time. 

You've seen this one already, but I like it. It's in the gardens at Versailles. I like the way they prune the trees over thar.

Stained glass window, in one of the little building thingies, in the Cemetary at Montemartre.

The sun through the Eiffel Tower. Again, 'artsy'.

The sun coming out over Sacre Coeur. I told you I took a million of these.

An angel in the ceiling mural at the Pantheon. I mostly liked the expression on the angel's face.

Yep.

That's about all.

Those are all my favorites.

And now I'm going to England, bitchezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

zzzzzzzzzz...

SEE YOU ON THE FLIP SIDE.