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Sunday, 15 March 2009 - Irish parades - they're just weird!

With St. Patrick's Day coming up this week, Trafalgar Square played host to the annual London St Patrick's Day bash.		Every Irishman and his dog were out for a good old sing song!

Being an Irish thing there was obviously a bar within spitting distance, so Katie and I grabbed an Irish cider...

...found a good spot by the fountain and did a jig.		Neither is most of London.		Katie got lost in the crowd at one stage, but I found her again ;)

Sure to be sure!		There was a St. Patrick's Day parade through town as well, including Grandma pushing a kid in a pram.		A lot of the parade consisted of marching bands and big trucks with random stuff on the back:

Irish dancing...		Irish music...

Ummm, a lot of Irish people standing around holding signs...		And some old Irish people, and a kid. Alrighty.

An old Irish cop car showed up - fair enough...		But the American cop car from Prince William County, Virginia seemed to be at the wrong prade.

St. Patrick made an appearance...		And then some pirates turned up, and I'd seen enough - Irish parades just confuse me!		I'd hate to see their Santa Parade, although I think that was him there.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 - St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Paddy's Day all :)

Thursday, 19 March 2009 - 100 Personalities
Something here if you're bored, and want to find out how cultured you are. Something similar here too, for if you're really really bored. And, if you're watching paint dry, there's always plenty of shit here :)

Friday, 20 March 2009 - Google unites my family

Here's a heart-warming story for you all. A couple months back my Nana (who was born and raised in London) asked if I could maybe somehow track down her sister, Elsie. They had become separated back in the 50s when Nana migrated to New Zealand and Elsie remained in London, and subsequently lost contact with each other. Nana wanted to find out what had become of Elsie, and all I really had to go on was a name and a date of birth. My first port of call: Google hehe. I ran a search for "Elsie Nash", and the very first search result was this hahaha (read the story - it's pretty funny)! The Elsie Nash in the photo does have a striking resemblance to both my Nana and my Aunt on that side of the family. So, I'm pretty certain I've managed to track down Nana's long lost sister in all of about five minutes - thanks Google!

Saturday, 21 March 2009 - London in a nutshell

Davydd (flatmate) and I are planning to ride around The Netherlands over Easter, and so I took a ride into town to visit a good cycle shop I know of for some advice, and because I'd heard about big protests in this area (I forget what about - it's something different every day, there's much to protest about here hehe). Sure enough, when I got there the roadside was packed with cop cars and paddy wagons, but...		...it was because this crowd at the pub were getting rowdy over a football match. What a let down!		"I'd rather be at a protest. It's easier to get away with giving people the bash."

Afterwards I went for good burn around north London, and over the course of the ride I think I captured London in a nutshell. Big ugly council estates dotted all over the show (imagine spending your life living in one of these)...		Beat-up cars parked out the front with windows and other bits missing...
Dodgy park nearby (full of dodgy people)...		And some estates and parks combined into one hehe.
Then, just a couple blocks over, you're back in a border-line nice neighbourhood again! But before too long there's another council estate to be found, and that's London, in a nutshell.

Another common sight around London are these woodlands. This is 21-hectare Queen's Wood, 10kms north of central London. Pretty, and a nice change of scenery!

Sunday, 22 March 2009 - Hallelujah in Hackney

My girlfriend for last nine months, Katie, is a good Christian girl (which begs the question of why she's with me, but that's another conversation ;) Anyway, since we moved down to London she's yet to find a church to her liking (more new-school than old).		So today she says, "I'm going to try this church in Hackney tonight." No girlfriend of mine is going to be walking around fucking Hackney after dark - they all know how to use a knife around there, and not just for cutting up 'chicken' for the donor kebab.

Needless to say I don't frequent too many churches myself (try none), but hey there's a first time for everything hehe. Plus if it meant Katie didn't come home with a new orifice or two then all the better.				I got a little excited when I noticed the apparent DJ set up, but the drum & bass never came :(

In a nutshell it turned out to be an 'old-school' church and about as stimulating as Coronation Street. But we did our good deed for the day by buying some tooth-rot to help send some brats get to summer camp.		A magical story of an unlikely and forbidden friendship between a dirty old man with wings, and an unsuspecting young boy, in Hackney.

Saturday, 28 March 2009 - I'M HOME-SWEET-HOME, HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY MUM!

Entirely unanounced, I am currently back in New Zealand for a surprise visit! Mum had no idea I was coming, and so for obvious reasons I haven't been able to say anything until now. 13 hours on a plane from London's Heathrow to Singapore, four-hour layover and then another 10 hours to Christchurch! On the way back I land in Singapore on Thursday afternoon and don't fly out again until Friday morning - sweeeet! It's been almost three years since I was last home (July 2006) but I'm only here for a week - the reasons why I'll explain when I get back to London but for the time being London no longer exists to me, and Singapore here I come! :)

Saturday, 04 April 2009 - Back again, wish I wasn't

London.		Christchurch (and Singapore). All the photos and stories of my childhood (yup, the history of Aaron) when I get around to sorting them :)

Sunday, 05 April 2009 - The history of Aaron
Right, that didn't take long - photos and stories here from my week back home and my night running around Singapore :)

Thursday, 09 April 2009 - We go to Holland, ja!

Dav and I are heading to the Netherlands for Easter, ja! It's going to be good, ja! We take the bikes, ja! We go biking, ja! Three full days and about 300kms - fuck ja! The only downer is we have to sleep on a ferry tonight between England and the Netherlands. I've done that once before between Italy and Greece - not comfortable! In a nutshell, we leave the ferry terminal near Rotterdam first thing tomorrow (Friday) and head north, aiming to spend the night up in Haarlem. Saturday we head east through Amsterdam, and south to Utrecht for Saturday night. Sunday it's west back to Rotterdam for the night, and Monday it's back to dirty old England! As you can see, the poor bike is fully laden with crap, as is my backpack (must resist the urge to pull wheelies hehe ;)

Tuesday, 14 April 2009 - 275kms later...
It's midnight, we're back, we're knackered, and we're going to bed (not together of course hehe)! Photos to come later in the week as always :)

Friday, 17 April 2009 - Who's hungry?

This particular area of central London is always chock full of tourists. The London Eye is nearby, you've got Westminster Abbey here...		Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament across the road, and in between the two...		...you've got this bullshit :)

Parliament Square barely goes a day without hosting a protest for one thing or another, and lately it's been protests over British involvement in all the hoohar going on in Sri Lanka at the moment.		A number of protestors have staged hunger strikes, with one guy now on his 11th day of eating nothing (apparently)! I heard yesterday that he was expected to slip into a coma within hours, but he somehow still appears to be trucking along. How long can a human survive without food?

Sunday, 19 April 2009 - Crystal Palace

Finally, at long long last, I think spring has arrived in London. The trees are greening up, the days are warmer, and we've even had a sunny('ish) weekend!		The parks were packed, town was packed, and the Camden Markets were packed with the usual colourful characters hehe.

This is the 200-acre Crystal Palace Park in (believe it or not) Crystal Palace in southeast London. I read somewhere during the week that this area was apparently quite nice; can't say it really turned me on. The park was nice enough, but of course - just like everywhere else in London - they've got to spoil it with a damn ugly council estate. The park itself used to be home to The Crystal Palace - a huge cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park back in 1851 and later relocated here (hence the name of the park and surrounding suburb). The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire however in 1936. The area itself includes one of the highest points in London (and hence was a real ball-buster of a place to cycle to).

Among old ruins of the former palace, Crystal Palace Park has a Sphinx...		A headless statue...
And dinosaurs hehe - very random place. I went a few other places as well, but southeast London is hardly the most picturesque part of the world.

Monday, 20 April 2009 - Cycling Heaven in the Netherlands!
Photos are here, enjoy! By the way, the route we took can be viewed on Google Maps here.

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