Home for a Holiday? Hello all!

Yes I know it's been way too long between updates - and you were all such dedicated readers beforehand! Anyway, mustn't upset my reading public... will try and give you a decent summary of the last couple of months, OK?

So.... I last wrote around Easter - about perhaps going away for my holidays? Well - I didn't! I suppose I'm getting more settled here and tend to find things to do with my spare time these days! I have some crazy videos of my and my housemates spinning around in a fairground ride at Blackheath... may upload it once I make it a smaller download for you all. We also started lazing around in the sun, kicking around a soccer ball and drinking beers in Greenwich Park... so seem to be using the outdoors a lot better than I used to!

In the last couple of months we've got to know Sarah - our once quiet housemate – much better! Now she seems to party more than the rest of us! We've been out and about with different housemates here and there but still haven't had a full house outing – will have to be one before I leave!

I do have tons of piccies to upload – I went to the Greenwich Observatory with Frank, my friend from the science museum – so I had someone to take my photo with a leg on the left and a leg in the east and a leg in the west… on the GMT line :-) Our other friend Alex from the museum left to travel and work on the continent… which is really annoying!! I guess it's something you don't consider too much when you're the newest person "off the boat", but people do move on to the next place quite quickly! I suppose Alex isn't the first person that I've known to leave, but she was the warmest, kindest and most honest… All the best kiddo!

For Phil's birthday we went to "Up the Creek" the local comedy club, which was really entertaining – even the MC! Soon after that I went to Bronwyn's BBQ at Basingstoke, which is slightly outside of London – the first time I'd been out of London in quite a while! Forgot to bring my camera though :-( Travelling habits must be wearing out!

Have also had some interesting pub nights – I'll post a photo of us with the bar stool and the gaudy lamp, and you can ask me questions about that later!!

I visited Curtain Road recently – my ancestors lived there nearly 200 years ago! I was randomly snapping anything that looked kind of old…. I think the people eating in the restaurants and drinking at the bars must have thought I was a bit mad! So would have felt like more of a homecoming if I knew what number house they lived at, but was still quite interesting! Still quite a lot of that area of London seems old – the only problem being I don't really know how to tell a 100 year old building from a 200 year old one!

Moving into this month – it's been quite manic! It started with a great "fancy hat" house party at Claire's house, then we had a really tasty BBQ for Stu (my ex housemate's) birthday. Then I've had three road-trip weekends with Jeanne – she's another person that it will be sad to see leave! I teach with her at Langley Girls, and her husband was going to move here to live, but it turns out that his business is going really well so she's going back to South Africa! Grrr! Anyway, with only a month or two left in the country and being quite adventurous, she's been a great tour guide! Three weeks ago we went to Walmer castle (near Deal and Sandwich) to play croquet!! It took a good three hours to get out there, but it was great fun! The gardens were really nice – I have lots of snaps of me, Jeanne, Andrew and Esther all swinging big mallets! That evening when I got back I met up with Phil and Sarah at Clapham Common and watched Oceans Eleven outdoors projected ona a big screen – was quite a relaxing way to finish the day, and like usual in London, the beer was flowing…

Last weekend Beau was over! Which was great! Last time I saw him weren't able to party as much as we wanted to, as he was just post-contiki. We made up for it last weekend though! We started off going to a couple of places for food and a few drinks, then met up near Jeanne's house near midnight and left for stonehenge! It was midsummer's morn, and we watched with a few thousand people as the sun rose over the stones! Errrrr twas a bit crazy – and the other people there seemed to be a little dark and goth or bright and hippy – all of them "perforated" :-) So once the sun had risen at 6am we were in the countryside at 6am! So we zipped off to some white cliff horse carvings, and then to Bath, and then to a gardeny-thing, before returning to my place. We were supposed to sleep for two hours, but we ended up sleeping for over 4! Then we were really late and rushed to Beau's cousin's place, then back to the city to go to a nightclub that his cousin helps run. We stayed until closing at 3:30, then went and tracked down some crepes and coffee. So at around 5 we caught a bus back to where he was staying and I slept while he packed :-) Pretty soon it was 8am and we were off to the airport… Heathrow is annoying – but after the tons of queues and a quick drink Beau zipped off back to Perth!

Whoa, and that's about the briefest way I can summarise the weekend! I'm exhausted just writing it all out :-) I came home on Sunday and slept for about 13 hours. Surprisingly I was really awake on Monday!

This weekend has also been quite crazy :-) I went to "School Disco" on Friday. It was Louise's birthday… to get into this club you have to wear a white shirt and a school tie… which unfortunately I had to buy at the door for £5! But, to be fair, *everyone* had to wear the same thing, which was great, except it made people really hard to find in the crowd! It was an OK night, but I was already quite tired – I'd been too busy earlier in the evening drinking with colleagues at the pub near our school! Yesterday was quite relaxing – saw Matrix Reloaded at the cinemas, and bought some great CD's. Yepp I finally have a stereo! Got it a few weeks ago – it plays and records minidiscs as well, so it's quite nice :-) Was trying not to collect things that will have to travel with me, but that is one!

So today was a great day travelling as well! I got down near Jeanne's place around 10:30, and met up with her friend John. We went down to Brighton, stopping off at a really nice little town for lunch and then going on to Seafourth. We were walking around and found this (semi) secluded beach near some white cliffs – we clambered over some manmade erosion protection giant concrete things, then (after taking too many photos of seagulls on little wooden posts) clambered down onto the beach – and had a dip for quite a while! Twas really nice, but I've payed for it - looking a bit beetrooty! After that we went and met up with Jeanne's friends Tom and Audrey at Brighton, went on a roller coaster, then finished off the day by eating fish and chips overlooking the Suffolk south downs – almost Tolkein shire country.

*phew*

So, as you can see I do get up to a lot here! I know, still not an excuse not to call, email or update the site – I'm working on it! Should get my new laptop soon – the one I'm using at the moment used to be mine, but it got returned to the school, and I organised so my housemate could buy it ex-rental for quite a good price! It's a bit strange asking to borrow something that I use to be able to use whenever, but it's working fine at the moment!

I was going to post all the details of my visit back to Australia in August online now, but this is too long already! Here's just when and where I'm going, and what airline will get me there – I should be able to compare air service quite well once the trip's finished!

23/7	London – Amsterdam	BA
28/7	Amsterdam – Jakarta - Bali	Garuda
1/8	Bali - Perth	Garuda
13/8	Perth - Adelaide	Virgin Blue
21/8	Adelaide - Perth	Virgin Blue
24/8	Perth - Singapore	Qantas
29/8	Singapore - London	Qantas

Posted by Sam at June 30, 2003 12:56 AM