Self indulgent Sunday/Monday: last days in London

I've got a few bits and bobs to post about our last couple of weeks in England, which I'll get to eventually. In the meantime, these are just a couple of pictures from our last day in London when we went to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The last couple of pictures are a few random gee-gaws that caught my eye in the course of our perusing. The cow is from Egypt, and I believe it is about 3,000 years old, and I just liked it because it seems like the sort of thing you could quite easily see in a homewares store today, and I like the idea that I have in common with someone from thousands of years ago a love of cow-themed decor. The monkey thing is from Central America, and I don't really remember anything about it other than the fact that Jo had to physically restrain me from sticking it under my coat and taking it home. God I want that monkey thing.Why is life so unfair?

Keeping busy

And what have I been doing for the last few days, I hear nobody ask? Well, aside from looking for a job/aimlessly trawling the internets and alphabetising my DVDs in a scarily effective ploy to avoid looking for a job, I have been making ginger beer - behold! That's the real fizzy stuff right there.

It was very easy, and even better, very, very cheap to make. I used this recipe. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a bit of time on their hands. Now, back to writing begging letters to every publisher in Sydney. Eventually one of them will let their guard down, and that's when I'll make my move. I'll be established behind a desk with my own mug in the breakroom before anyone knows what happened. Suckers.

Happy Invasion/Australia Day (delete according to political preference)

Happy 26th of January! I'm not doing anything to mark this, the most sacred of all days. My husband has gone on a boy's holiday to Melbourne, leaving me with my sainted mother for the day. We are making ginger beer, washing the dog, and doing a bit of gardening. And since I'm off booze at the moment, and have returned to my vegan ways, I won't even be having the traditional sausage-and-beer combo for dinner. Instead, I'll be having mineral water and a salad. Wild, crazy days. 

In spite of the appalling humidity, it's a nice enough day. Jet lag is still getting me up pretty early in the morning, and today I had the pleasure of a still, peaceful couple of hours sitting on the front deck with a coffee and the very excellent Paul Kelly autobiography, How to Make Gravy, which I thought was a nicely patriotic gesture. It was a weird, hazy morning, and I had the company of a bunch of strangely subdued lorikeets. I don't know if it was the early morning or the mist, but they were much quieter than I've ever seen them before.

 And also this bird, not sure what it was, but it was much shyer than the lorikeets;

And it was all wonderfully relaxing, right up until the band down at the beach started up. We're about five blocks back from the beach, but because we're sort of perched halfway up the hill we get lots of noise bounced up here. When someone launched into a woefully off key rendition of 'Dont' Stop Thinking About Tomorrow', the lorikeets perked up again, and it quickly became deafening outside, so I retreated to the safety of the kitchen. Still, it was nice while the peace lasted, and I do feel that I've done my bit to appreciate living in Australia. Now I can go back to being generally discontented.

Edited to add a link to this article, which pretty much sums up how I feel about living in Sydney.

I am wrong about something and also a massive nerd about something

I take it all back. I love the London Science Museum. We'd been there a few weeks ago and I'd sneered all over it, but I later discovered that the Science Museum contains something very special. The working model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. Oooh. So we went back so that I could have a good nerdy perv at it.

Despite the fact that I am as hopeless with maths and science as it is possible to be without actually being in a coma, I am a massive fan of the concept of maths and science in general, and a massive fan Charles Babbage in particular. He's amazing. He spent almost all of his life (1791-1871) trying to construct a machine capable of performing accurate, complicated arithmetic, and though he came close several times, he never managed to make it work. In 1991 a working model was finally made from his plans, but it was a huge job even with the more advanced technology the engineers had available then. He's often called the father of computers, but this isn't quite accurate as what he was doing didn't really prefigure modern computers in any significant way. I mean, it did a bit, but it's a bit of a stretch to call him the 'father of modern computers'. 

But this isn't the reason that I love the guy. On a superficial level I love him because he called his machines the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, which is brilliantly steampunk, but more than that I love him because he was such an interesting guy. He was acquainted with Darwin and Dickens, and was sought after for all sorts of fancy parties, in spite of his various eccentricities. He could be a bloody minded crank - he almost wasn't awarded his degree because he refused to apologise for making remarks that were thought to be blasphemous during a debate. He could also he a crotchety old bastard - he hated street musicians, and in his later life he launched a one man campaign to have them banned. He once wrote to Alfred Lord Tennyson to correct his poetry;

In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.

 ... If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,

Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

He was a proper mad genius. I mean, how many other Victorian-era scientists can boast of being the inspiration for a way cool web comic?

So I was very excited about seeing the Difference Engine. And it was pretty good.

But guess what else they had at the museum? His notebooks!

And his brain!

I was thrilled. I lingered for quite a long time over the case with the notebooks in it, along with a middle aged chap with a notebook. Neither of us said anything, but we exchanged looks that said it all; 'Babbage, eh?' But in a reverent sort of way. When we finally moved away from the case,a museum employee swooped in behind us, gave the case a little squirt with Windex and a wipe with some paper towels, then looked at us reprovingly. I didn't think I'd even touched the case, but apparently we had managed to displease him by breathing on the glass too messily. 

But officious glass polishers couldn't get us down. We weren't finished with the Science Museum yet, not by a long shot. 

We wanted to see the History of Medicine exhibit. Or, as we came to call it, the History of Human Suffering exhibit. It was pretty gruesome. But also fascinating. Doctors and surgeons in the past often did more harm than good (leeches and bleeding, for e.g.), but it was surprising to see how much they were actually capable of. For example, I wasn't aware that they had such things as prosthetic limbs and glass eyes. I also didn't realise that they were actually able to do things like bone setting and removal of bullets, and all sorts of surgery that, while it must have been pretty grim, must also have saved the odd life here and there.

The museum also had these on display;

Neat!

Lest you think that I'm some kind of weirdo obsessed with bits of famous dead people and trepanning, let me leave you now with some pictures of old-timey calculators. If these names don't make you smile, you're probably much better at parties than I am. 

The Adometer and Cordingly's Computometer

Totalisateur

The Arithmometer

Cheer up, there are still squirrels

I've got the post-holiday blues in a bad, bad way. For one, I'm really, really jet lagged, which is making all the little annoyances utterly unbearable. Such as the fact that it's stupidly hot and humid here. There's no good TV in this stupid country. And what's with the generally poor quality of weekend newspapers around here? 

I haven't got a job at the moment, which is stressing me out a bit.  I have been extremely happy as a lady of leisure for the last few months, and would be happy to continue loafing except that I haven't had a job since August of last year, and the tank is running a little dry. I have applied for the job seekers allowance, something that feels very odd to me. I've never had anything at all from the gov'ment (except for indirectly through Jo's student allowance), and it feels very wrong to ask for money. Much in the same way that I have trouble with the whole Facebook thing because I am basically incredibly socially awkward and given to endlessly dissecting my interactions with human beings, trying to determine whether I had at any point said or done anything offensive or that might have put me in a bad light. Being so forward as to ask someone to be friends with me goes against every perpetually ill at ease bone in my body, and asking for money, even when I am fully entitled to it, makes me even more uncomfortable.

Which means that I have to get a job as soon as possible so that I can go to Centrelink and proudly declare that I no longer need their money, because I am a good person who deserves a gold star. Job hunting sucks at the best of times, but right now I'm so tired that I can barely form coherent sentences, and  I'm also incredibly depressed at the fact that Dee Why stubbornly refuses to magically transform itself into Pamplona. Every day, same old suburb. Sadly, no one has as yet has offered to pay me to sit around reading and looking at the internet for hours a day, which is where I feel my talents lie. The kinds of jobs I'm going for generally have requirements along the lines of 'excellent communication skills' and 'attention to detail', and these are things that I am not really au fait with just at the moment. The last cover letter I wrote used the word 'skills' in every sentence, and ended with a long, rambling paragraph about how I am really good at saying stuff and things. No one wants to employ jet lagged Tash. 

And, just to top it all off, I got a letter from the tax office today informing me that I owe them quite a lot of money which is now very overdue, and if I don't pay it by the 1st of February they are going to take me to court. This was the first I'd heard of any of this, so I called the ATO in something of a tizz and had a little cry down the phone to the call centre guy who was obviously very uncomfortable about having a sobbing, wheezing woman on the other end of the line. It turns out that I have to start making HECS repayments because I earned $150 over the threshold in the last financial year. If I'd known this, I would have taken a day off work last year and wouldn't be in this position.

So I suppose the take away message from all of this is; I'm tired. I'm sad. And it's too freaking hot around here.

Luckily, I found something to cheer me up when I was browsing through some photos from our trip. On our last day in London we were walking through a park when we were accosted by a squirrel, which made Jo's day. I know that all English people are required by law to hate squirrels, but to backwards colonials like us they are the epitome of Beatrix Potter/Sylvanian Families charm. Ah. That's better. I feel much less like crying myself to sleep now. Thanks, adorable squirrel!

Home again, I think

Hi! We're home. I think. I've pretty much started to hallucinate due to extreme exhaustion. I haven't slept in...I don't know. I've lost count. Maybe 40 hours? Probably more, but in my addled state I start to whimper every time I have to think about the whole time zone thing. I've never been able to sleep on the plane, and we had a late night flight out of England, so it's been a while since I've managed to get some kip. Also, I'm trying to stay awake until something close to a reasonable bedtime, which is really only making it worse. 

But the important thing is that I managed to make it through yet another flight without having a total mental breakdown. Hooray!

We got home from the airport, had a shower, then made haste to the beach to get a coffee with the family and the dog.

(That's the dog, by the way). Now, back to real life. Or as close to it as possible.

Puts it all in perspective, really

I love staying at my Granparent's house. Partly because I get spoiled rotten and flattered like nothing else when I come to stay. I am not only the cleverest, prettiest and kindest person who ever lived, I am also to be fed in a way that suggests that I'm being fattened up in preparation for ritual sacrifice. More crisps? More biscuits? Another gin and tonic? Of course. The down side is that I never manage to get away without gaining a few kilos, but it's all part of the fun. 

I also love my Grandparent's house itself. It's a converted Queen Anne-era coach house, complete with stables (no horses, sadly, though my Grandma insists that it has a ghost. My Grandma is also fond of a drop or seven of whiskey in the evenings, though, so I don't know how reliable this testimony is). My childhood involved a lot of moving between countries, but visits to my Grandparent's house were always a constant and so whenever I come here I feel immediately at home in a way that I never quite have anywhere else.

 

And I love the town that my Grandparents live in. Wokingham, Historical Market Village (that's what they've got on the signs), though it is not as quaint these days as it used to be (there is the usual English blight of chain stores as far as the eye can see, which looks really odd, because they're all housed in buildings that look more like they should contain places called 'Ye Olde Tea-Shoppe') it is still a lovely place. It's all little old houses and pubs, and just enough country lanes to make it feel slightly rural. And the great thing about it is that it is only a few miles from the notorious Broadmoor Hospital (in the olden days before you weren't allowed to say such things it would have been called the loony bin). Why is this great, you might reasonably ask? Because every Monday morning at 10am they test the alarm that lets all of the surrounding villages know that there has been an escape. I asked my Grandma about it this morning, and she said that they've 'only' had two escapes in all the time she's lived here. But it does tend to add a tiny frisson of excitement to life around here. I mean, I don't know about you, but if I was going to escape from a maximum security prison that routinely tested their alarm at the same time every week, I would try to escape at that time. I think this every time I hear the alarm. It can't help but be a little unsettling.

But it's all part of the charm of being here. 

This is our last day here, and it's going to be really hard to leave, as I don't know when I'll be able to come back again. If I could I would love to stay and help my Grandparents out a bit, as they're definitely gettin gless and less able to do things for themselves. Though it does make me feel better that they have friends and family nearby - if they didn't have such a solid support group, I don't think I could leave. 

Anyway. We're just off to a pub lunch with the Aged Ones, which I plan to enjoy (once I get home this whole lunchtime drinking thing will be a thing of the past, which is probably for the best), then we'll listen to the radio and Annie (my Grandma) will tell me again about growing up in Australia, and Grandad will tell me a joke I've heard twenty times before, and I'll love every minute of it. 

Self indulgent Sunday: Henley on Thames pictures

Self indulgent Sunday: London pictures

New Year's

I generally hate New Year's Eve. So much anticipation, and then you're either thaving too much fun to notice that midnight has come and gone, or else you make it to midnight and then start to wonder how long before you can respectably go home. Last year we ended up deciding not to bother with it at all, and had a nice steak, a good bottle of wine and a movie. We managed to stay awake til midnight, then went to bed before the fireworks on TV had even finished. 

I enjoyed that so much that this year I was quietly hoping that we might end up on the couch with my aunts and uncle where it is warm and where there would be sure to have been plentiful prosecco and snacks. But then Jo’s friend, the lovely Lindsay, mentioned that she was going to La Soiree with some friends. It sounded intriguing; a saucy cabernet show in a big top on Southbank. After the show there would be dancing until 2am, and the chance to watch the fireworks from an enclosed area outside. Luckily, there were still tickets available. 

And it was amazing. Dancing, sexy men doing gymnastics, comedy, singing. Hula hoops. Naked ladies doing magic tricks. More sexy men doing other kinds of gymnastics. Everything you could wish for. Oh, and the outdoor area had a nice big fence between us and the plebs who'd come down to watch the fireworks from the riverbank. We waved our champagne in their faces, naturally, and taunted then about the fact that we had easy access to toilets and more champagne. There was a minor riot, but it was worth it to feel superior for a while. Good times. I enjoyed myself so much that I might even consider trying to be sociable again next New Year's Eve.

More half hearted posting

Sigh. I've been moping around my grandparent's house, pining for Spain and doing nothing of any interest at all. Actually, that's not completely true. We did go up to London over New Year's, which was lovely. My cousin and her fiancé gave us the run of their pied a terre in South London while they were away, so we had four days of pretending to be trendy Londoners who know their way around the tube system and who quite often go to bars and do cultural things. 

We hit the Science Museum, which was heartbreakingly disappointing. It was all flashing lights and desperate ‘look, kids! Science can be fun!’ interactive displays. The best bit of the museum was the ground floor which is filled with all sorts of detritus that charts the development of cars, trains and airplanes. The rest of it was a sort of theatrical ‘welcome, to the world of tomorrow!’ theme park. I hate the idea that people need to be jollied into finding science interesting. I am a massive amateur science nerd, but I left in a mood of sneery disappointment. Bah.  

We then went to the Natural History Museum, somewhere I had very fond memories of visiting as a child. And I was thrilled to find that it lived up to every single one of my childhood memories. It is the best sort of museum, one that is packed full of stuff that is basically the legacy of an empire. Look, over there we have a stuffed dodo! And an complete ichthyosaur! And all sorts of differently coloured rocks! Oooh.  

The brontosaurus in the entrance hall is just as breathtaking as I remember;

Gosh, weren't they big, though?

The taxidermied animals were as morbidly fascinating as they’d always been, especially this warthog, which looks ecstatic to have ended up stuffed and on display for the enjoyment of the museum-going public;

 

Though this little antelope thing (in the bottom of the picture) looks understandably slightly miffed about its fate;

And there were some new friends to make. Behold! A bowl-clenchingly realistic depiction of a nightmare I have frequently had on nights when I have over-indulged in cheese too close to bedtime;

Also this room. I have no idea what it was, all I know is that it is now my goal in life to become whatever it is that allows me to introduce myself as having that job at parties.

I didn’t think anything could top the excitement of the Natural History Museum, but then we went to Pollock’s Toy Museum. Oh, joy of joys. If you ever get the chance, go there. It’s what museums should be. It’s like being in the home of a kooky elderly relative, one who has helpfully posted typewritten, laminated signs all over the walls explaining what it is that you’re looking at. It’s in an old house, and you traipse up and down the stairs. Each room is dedicated to a different theme of toy, and each successive room served merely to reinforce to me how sterile children’s toys are today. Why, in the olden days they were saucy...

terrifying...

and German. 

It was absolutely brilliant, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. So all in all a good day. Next up, what we did for New Year’s.