England – Page 35 – Where is Phil now?

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Saturday 05 January 2013 – Hackney, Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Brick Lane – London

London’s run of not too awful weather continued for a few more days so Saturday afternoon I met a friend up in Hackney to go hunt for some of the great street art that has been made in the area.

My friend knows the area quite well so it was more like a guided walk for me and it was a lot of fun – though I will never find some of the places we visited again, I should have paid more attention 🙂

We started in Hackney Central and walked down through London Fields to Broadway Market. The market is open on a Saturday and mainly sells food and drink, I had a nice risotto for lunch followed by a really nice proper Vietnamese coffee – complete with condensed milk, yum. The market and surrounding area is hipster central. Loads of skinny jeans, short beards and checked shirts, single speed bikes all over the place. Book shops and second hand shops lined the street around the market. I loved it here, in fact I was pretty much in love with all the places we passed, I could easily live here!

Now I have described it as hipster central, my photos show other wise, always happens.

There was a Stik next to the Vietnamese coffee stall.

The next stop was Regents Canal, there is a lot art and plain old graf along the tow path, it was a nice walk down to Victoria Park, the area has a kind of post-commercial bleakness to it, maybe bleakness is a bit strong, but it is a bit run down in parts, just my sort of thing. There were an awful lot of house barges as well, which will be a whole photo essay by itself one day.

I really like these small pieces by Bortusk Leer, there are loads of them all around here.

There was also an old Eric Monopoly as well.

After stopping for more coffee at another very hipster cafe we strolled down and around Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Shoreditch – I will confess to having no idea where one bit started and another stopped as I was too busy chatting and looking around at the sights – and spotting things to photograph.

I had one of lifes weird little experiences as we walked. A couple of years ago Sam, a friend of my daughter from Bristol came and stayed at my place in NZ while he was on his travels. He has been living in London for a while now and we have talked about catching up one day. I ran into him on the street. Very nice to see him and totally weird !!

There is some really good street art here, the area around Brick Lane is especially vibrant, I liked that some of the new boutiques have not cleaned up their walls.

Unfortunately we ran out of daylight so I didn’t get to photograph a ton of good stuff, but it does mean I get to go back sooner rather than later. It was a good afternoon !

After a quite delicious Vietnamese meal we went to look at a couple of Banksy’s and saw a guy painting on a wall outside a shop. We stopped to watch and say hello and it was Paul Don Smith, I said I had seen some of his work in Portobello Rd and we chatted for a while. He had recently been doing graffiti on a movie set for a coming Brad Pitt zombie movie – World War Z and was doing a small stencil for it. It was interesting to watch him at work.

I will be back for sure. A few of my favourite pieces.

This is my favourite ! Jana and JS

Ben Eine – according to a graffiti tour guide we overheard as he was leading a tour in Brick Lane he is the only British artist to ever have work hung in the White House…

Jimmy C, there was one amazing Jimmy C that was too dark to photograph – I just need to be able to find it again. His pictures are very detailed.

More street art. [edit] Hmmm, seems WordPress has changed and I cannot do a slide show any more. I don’t like the “gallery” mode, oh well. m[end edit]

Temples of Mammon

Thursday 03 January 2013 – London.

It was another reasonably fine day so it was a day to get out and explore a bit more of London. I decided to visit Canary Wharf; firstly as I thought it would be quieter on New Years week and secondly it is the centre for a lot of big business and a potential place of any future employment . So it seemed a good time to check it out, plus I have never been on the Docklands Light Railway!

I was completely wrong with “it would be quieter” ! Maybe not completely wrong, but the mall area where the lunch bars are located was just heaving with prople and as chaotic as any mall with New Year sales on. Ugly ! I did have a very nice laksa for lunch at Eat. I have lunched at three different Eats in the past couple of weeks and had three different types of international soup and they have all been pretty good value and very nice indeed. I think I will have a go at making laksa in the next few days.

Canary Wharf is a relatively new development, by that I mean it was built in the last twenty-thirty years and houses a lot of the big banks in its glass towers. From a distance it looks pretty good and it was not too bad close up either. What I like about it the most is rather than stick a whole bunch of modern high rises in the lovely low rise centre of London they have built it a few kilometres away and left the centre with its mainly old stone buildings alone. Wonderful forethought in central planning, something that Auckland City Council totally suck at !

One of the other council initiatives I like is “Boris’s Bikes”, Boris Johnson is the current mayor of London, love him or hate him, but he is into bicycles and was instrumental in the setting up of a hire bike system in London, which is loudly sponsored by Barclays Bank. There are bike racks everywhere and the bikes are cheap(ish) to rent. This is the first time I have seen a full rack.

I had a good walk around the area for an hour or so, it is not large, but it has been well designed and there is plenty of space between the towers and it is surrounded by water, from the Thames and canals. I could work there.

The temples of Mammon !

Back to the Tate Modern !

Wednesday 02 January 2013, London.

Wow, two posts in a row in a supposed period when not much was happening. Not that I did anything particularly post worthy, though I did leave the house with the trusty Canon in my bag and that is always a good start.

I wandered along the South Bank for a bit.

Found one piece of street art, not the most likely place for it, so a pleasant surprise.

And this very cool sculpture called “under the baobab tree”.

Of course a walk along the South Bank has to include a visit to the Tate Modern, and I was pleased to see some things I had missed last time I visited, or the permanent collection had changed a bit.

There are a few nice Picasso’s here and I particularly liked “Bowl of fruit, violin and bottle”.

And “nude woman with necklace”.

While I really enjoy all the carvings and sculptures I have seen in temples and cathedrals I have never been a fan of sculpture in a museum setting. However I did really like this Matisse, I am wondering if it is because of the Picasso influence on my tastes ?

Sadly the weather had turned when I left and I had a damp walk across the Millennium Bridge over the Thames in search of soup for lunch and a train home.

It was another good day !

A new year street art hunt

Tuesday 01 January 2013, London

Posting will be really sporadic for a while, I will only post when I have taken some photos or done anything that is even remotely interesting.

I guess the rolling over of another year, especially the successful rolling over of another year when the world was supposed to end, is worth recording.

New years eve was not exactly riveting, not that the last few have been either! I had been pondering walking down to one of the bridges over the Thames to watch the fireworks, but lost interest as it got closer to midnight and the thought of a forty five minute walk there and back in the cold just was not tempting enough. So I spent the night in as usual, though I did make it to midnight and watched the spectacular ten minute fireworks display on TV.

So, it is another new year, what does it hold for me ? at this stage who knows !

The first day of 2013 was by English winter standards, lovely, clear skies and not too cold – to start with anyway. I decided I had to go out and do something so caught the tube up to central London to watch the London New Year parade. I managed to get an OK spot, though the guy next to me kept up a non-stop inane monologue to his family that finally drove me to leave – and I had headphones on, he was loud too ! As it turned out virtually all my photos were crap, I was shooting at far too low a speed to get anything good and I deleted most of them as soon as I got home. A beginners mistake and I should have known better.

I loved this wee steam truck.

On my way out of the parades route and away from the supposed 500,000 people who came to see it, I came across this marching band getting ready to merge in, they played a more funky style of music to the traditional English style and were quite good.

I had decided to walk home via Portobello Rd.

I had visited there on a rainy Boxing Day to try and find the Rough Trade record store that is a feature in a book I bought myself with some money from my mum (thanks mum 🙂 ), however it had moved. So I did the smart thing and looked up the address this time and found it easily. Unfortunately it was closed !

The second reason I visited the area was to try and find some street art, as the west of London is slowly being gentrified the street art is slowly disappearing and is quite rare. I knew there were a couple of pieces around so was keen to find them, and I found more than I expected, including this lovely wall at Notting Hill, I do not know who the artist is but I loved it.

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Up Portobello Rd I found

A Banksy, yay 🙂

A CODE FC

An Alec Monopoly

A couple of Paul Don Smiths

This one commemorating the slaying of two police women last year.

And some others.

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I enjoyed the hunt, and seeing some of these pieces as I am sure they will not be there for long !

St Albans – A day trip

Monday 17 December 2012, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.

Well, I know I sort of wrapped up most of December in one post earlier in the week and hinted that I had not actually done a heck of a lot since, but I have not been a complete bed potato – I have no couch, so no couch potatoing!

Jackie was one of the great people I met on the Cape Town to Livingstone leg of my recent Africa trip and lives not too far from London. We had arranged to meet in the historic town of St Albans for a walk around and lunch.

One of thing I hadn’t mentioned in my wrap up was I had a bad head cold for most of a week, and the start of it was this day ! I work up with a very sore throat and had to spend some of my dwindling funds on various medicines as the cold worked its way from being a sore throat, through a very runny nose and down to a horrible chest cough. One medicine does not conquer all anymore !

I got the direct train from St Pancras to St Albans, very fast and very smooth, and only twenty or so minutes. St Albans is twenty or so miles from London and, I have said this before, I cannot believe how much green space there is between the city and the surrounding towns, for such a crowded country it is incredibly rich in green space – long may it continue!

Jackie picked me up from the station and we drove into town and a bit closer to the cathedral, it is a lovely clear day but quite cool.

We had a brief walk around some of the older parts of town and stopped for a look at the old clock tower, built in the early 1400’s, I loved the side door : )

Some of the houses are incredibly old, but still in use today, I have no idea of the history of this building but I really liked the way if kinda sags in the middle – I know how it feels, it must be middle aged !

We next had a look at the old great gateway of the long gone monastery, the gate was built in the 1360’s and has been used as a monastery, has housed the third oldest printing press, was a prison for three hundred years and has been part of a school since 1871. Amazing, I just so love these things.

From there we walked up to the cathedral and spent a good thirty or so minutes looking around. The cathedral was started in 1077 (Man that is old !!!) and has been in constant use ever since, it is a stunning building with some very well preserved sections. One of the things I do love about some of these old buildings, especially the churches / temples/ mosques, is that they have never stopped being used for their original purpose and visitors are welcomed.

The cathedral is huge, and standing in the oldest section and looking up the length I again marvelled at how places like this were built before the age of large cranes and other machinery.

There was some good detail in the cathedral, including some old wall paintings that I liked as they had not been restored, though I guess they will have to be at some stage !

I really liked this eighteen century poor box – that is of course, still in use.

After the cathedral we took a walk around the outside, Jackie had recently done a guided night walk here and pointed out some of the haunted houses, like this one next to the graveyard….

After a walk up to St Peters church at the other end of town we stopped in for a drink in a pub and then lunch at an Italian place before Jackie dropped me back off at the station and I returned home.

It was a really good outing, nice to catch up with Jackie and see somewhere new.

Mono @ The Village Underground in Shoreditch

I have been a fan of the Japanese post-rock band, Mono for quite a while now and have a few of their albums. They are currently touring their latest album “for my parents” which I own on lovely vinyl – though I have seen it yet as it was delivered to my nephew in New Zealand. I do of course have the download and while it is not my favourite album, I still love it and it got played an awful lot while I was on the truck in Africa.So, I was very excited to see that they were playing in London a couple of days after I arrived.

So, on 8 December I went to see them perform at The Village Underground in Shoreditch. I arrived at the venue about thirty minutes after the doors opened and was disappointed to see there was already a good sized crowd in front of the stage, which meant I was going to be a good five rows back, which also meant it would suck for photos. This was a lesson learnt, get to a gig on time. In fact a further lesson was learnt the following week when I decided to go and see another band, Male Bonding at a pub in Hackney – it was sold out! I am glad I checked first, but from now on I will book tickets first and then get there early.

The venue itself is fabulous, I would estimate it held about three hundred, high ceilings and brick walls with arched entrances to the bar area. I loved it. The sound was not too bad at the front, but very good at the back, it was sold out.

I bought a drink and made my way as close as I could get to the stage to see the support band, “Physics House Band. There were not really my style, like Mono they were an instrumental act, but too funky for my liking. Though the drummer was phenomenal.

Mono played for about an hour and a half and a mix of tracks off of “for my parents” and the previous album “hymn to the immortal wind”. They did not play either of my two most liked songs “com(?)” or “16.12”, but they did play “pure as snow” which is close behind.

Someone who got there before me, and had his camera in front of me all night, you can see him in some of my photos. I could not get a shot of the far guitarist as there were some tall people in the way, gutting. Not bad video though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQajzFOlhq4

It was all lit in red or blue with strong down spots so I shot everything in B and W. Being five rows back and to one side was pretty hopeless, and there was no way I was going to get any closer. I took a few photos and then put my camera away after Pure as Snow and went to the back and stood on some steps and just enjoyed the music.

They were really good, a great show !

December, well most of it anyway.

27 December 2012 – Kensington, London, England

I have not achieved a lot or taken too many photographs since I arrived in England so I am just going to summarise the whole last three and a bit weeks in one, probably too long, post.

One year ago today I left New Zealand to start my travels, I cannot believe a year has gone so quickly – or that I lasted so long, largely outside my comfort zone. I remember telling people I would blog my travels, but to be perfectly honest I never actually expected to be writing, almost daily, twelve months later.

Until I get back onto the road again, my posting will definitely become more sporadic, unless I do or see something worth recording. I have now accepted that if there is nothing to say then I may as well not say it.

Right where was I…. Oh yep, back at the start of the month.

I had an opportunity to stay in Africa for a bit longer but I wanted to come back to England to see my daughter before she and her boyfriend went to India for three months, just in case I decided to go back to New Zealand while they away and I missed her. They left England on the sixth so I had arranged to meet them in Swindon on the fifth. I was up early on the day and looked out the window and there was snow on the ground – not a lot, but definitely snow, I was very excited !

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Though less so when I got to Dartford train station and had to wait for a train : )

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The trip to Swindon went without a hitch and I met Mel and Dickie at the station. We had lunch in a pub and then went and saw Skyfall, the new James Bond movie, which we all really enjoyed. After the movie Dickie went to a family dinner and Mel and I went to a couple of pubs and had a drink or three and some more food. It was very very nice to see her again and I am so glad I came back in time to catch them before they left. Stupidly I lugged my camera around, but did not take any photos.

The following day I met up with my friends Phil and Kevin. I am moving into Phils room in his flat in Kensington while they are in Sri Lanka until the end of January – taking a long break away from the cold – I don’t blame them. We went for a full day breakfast lunch, I soooooo miss a proper greasy spoon full English, I even ate the black pudding- which was a first!

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The next day I moved into the flat. I have a great large room, with a good working desk, as it is a basement flat I have a garden outside my window which is lovely. I also have a decent spec laptop with a keyboard I can type on, nice to not be using my little travel netbook, though it has been a faithful and fabulous travel companion, plus it had Lightroom on it, and it looks like I was editing photos from the Mono gig !

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Location wise, it is perfect – two hundred metres from Shepherds Bush tube station and an hour stroll into Trafalgar Square. Conveniently it is also close to some friends of mine as well.
I worked out a great little run up Kensington High Street, through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park and back down through Notting Hill. Such famous places ! I am feeling incredibly unfit at the moment, the food, drink and sitting in a truck round Africa has certainly let me get a bit soft round the middle and the runs have been a real struggle. I can barely do an hour, and to think three months ago I did fifty five kilometres…

I have taken a few trips around London, I caught the train up to Camden markets as I needed to get a couple of bits of clothing, but nothing appealed to me there and I left a bit disappointed – mainly in myself as I suck at shopping. I loved the brothel creepers but would never where them. I ended up in the mall near where I live…

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But mainly I walk as much as I can, London is easy to walk around and I need the exercise and want to spend as little as I can. The first week was bitterly cold and a walk up through the royal parks was beautiful but frosty !

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Visited Wellington and his boots.

I wandered up past Buckingham Palace – that place is huge…

Along Whitehall

Past the Institute of Contemporary Arts (it was closed).

And into the National Portrait Gallery, where I visited a really good photography exhibition. I am not normally a fan of portraits, but some of these were excellent. The gallery is just off Trafalgar Square. There are plinths with statues on each of the four corners of the square, the fourth plinth has an ever changing piece on it – and I really liked it !

I have also finally managed to drag myself into New Zealand House to get a certified copy of my passport so I can send all the forms off to NZ to get a replacement to the drivers licence I lost in Laos way back in May! NZ house is possibly the ugliest building in historic central London.

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I also visited Piccadilly circus while I was there.

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I quite often walk up to High St. Kensington, there is an organic coffee shop that I quite like there – and one day I was sitting at a table next to Jimmy Page, the Led Zeppelin guitarist. I should have said hello! I also love the old buildings around Kensington – as well as the rest of London of course.

I love that Denton have been making hats since 1703 !!!

I have also visited the Natural History Museum which was holding an exhibition of the Wildlife Photographer of the year winners works. WOW !! I really did feel inadequate when I saw the work on display. A lot of the pictures were taken on Canon 5d MK2s so maybe it is simple as an upgrade from my MK1 – I wish!
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There was no photography allowed of course, which was cool, but you are allowed to take photos in the rest of the museum. I didn’t really enjoy it that much, lots of dead versions of things I had recently seen running around in the wild, so it was all a bit sterile. I did like the Dodo…

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And dead things in jars.

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And it was good to see an original print of Charles Darwins “The origin of Species”, and of course there was a statue of the great man himself.

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I went to the dinosaur exhibit but it was packed of children and adults wielding prams as dangerous weapons so I got frustrated and left!

I guess time passes this guy quite slowly.

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On the walk back home I passed the Royal Albert Hall.

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And I liked this house with its old and new cars.

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There are so many contrasts around here, old and new, rich and not so rich, English and foreign all mixed up in a big mess that seems to work just fine. I do love it here. When I came to England I really wanted to avoid getting stuck in London again, and damn it I think I will be, I have stopped looking for jobs outside already. This is such a magnetic city.

I was lucky to have some friends from New Zealand here playing tourist for a few days, great to see old friends after time on the road and David is one of my oldest. We went to see Madness at the 02 Arena. It was huge ! I go to lots of gigs but always in small venues, I think this was the biggest place I have been to since I saw U2 at Wembley stadium in 1986 !

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I also haven’t seen Madness since they came to NZ in the very early 1980’s so it was a lot of fun, and they really did put on a good show, marred by appalling sound where we were sitting right up the back.

Apart from seeing Mono – which I will write about separately, I have not done a lot else with my camera. The last couple of weeks have seen leaden grey skies with showers and rain so do not venture to far. I have been trying to get into some sort of working routine with getting up early and sitting at the desk working on the computer, it hasn’t always been successful of course. But it does save me money.

I have applied for seven jobs and not heard a thing from any of the recruiters, it was expected but still disappointing. I am yet to be disheartened though, I will save that for mid-January ! there is not a lot happening on the job front now until after the new year when I will hit it with renewed vigour. I have given myself until I move out of here to find a job and will then re-assess the situation then.

I was going to spend Christmas with family up in Brentwood in Essex, not too far away, but too far when there is no public transport, which is the case on Christmas Day. I was very fortunate to get invited to share Christmas with Pip and Lyall and some other Christmas “orphans” at Pip’s sister place in Chiswick. I used to work with Pip a few years ago and they live about a fifteen minute walk from me. It was a great Christmas and I naturally ate way too much food and enjoyed the red wine a lot as well.

And that pretty much wraps up the last few weeks, and almost 2012 as well.

Family, shopping, a cathedral and Africa tomorrow !

Day 263, Sunday-Wednesday 23-26 September 2012 – Dartford, Canterbury and London

I am rushing this post out as I have a burning head ache and I am not entirely sure what internet access I have once I get to Africa.

I am off tomorrow, my flight leaves at 9:15 PM Thursday – that is tomorrow, wahoo !!!

I stayed in Dartford over Sunday and Monday, good lie ins on both days and a general overall relax. On Sunday Jim took me down to the Dartford Conservative Club where he is a member and we had a couple of pints while watching the formula 1 and some football on TV. It was a good afternoon and we didn’t do a lot more than that, which was great as I finally caught up on blogs while waiting for the football highlights to come on TV.

I leave for Cape Town in South Africa on Thursday and I need to take a substantial sum of cash in USD. As my most of my money is in NZ I am going to have withdraw cash from ATM’s every day before I go to get enough. It seems that I will be getting most of it in 10 pound notes – almost 2 inches worth. Not exactly designed for a sneaky money belt!

On Monday I went to one of the local malls with my uncle, my English relations gave me a voucher for my birthday and I was off to use and start the big pre-Africa shopping spree. I am going to take my Canon 5dmk1 camera rather than the smaller GF1 and want to get a lens extender to try and get some of the animals closer and I need to get some legs for a tripod head I shipped out from New Zealand. I didn’t get any of those, but I did get a second memory card and a new nifty fifty – Canons awesome cheap 50mm lens that is a whole 99GBP, it is such a great lens.

After shopping I went around to see my late dads brother and sister in law. In was so nice to see them and it was very a pleasant couple of hours. I also got the address of my dad’s sister who lives in Canterbury as I am heading there tomorrow.

I have been suffering from a really sore ankle the past day or so, not uncommon in the cold and damp, but I didn’t think it was that cold, but it is quite painful.

I slept OK Monday night, I tried some herbal sleeping pills and they seem to work pretty well, lets hope that continues to be the case when I am the tour and sleeping in a tent for the first time in twenty five years! I did wake up feeling exhausted and with a sore lower back to add to the ache in my ankle, I am wondering, even hoping, it is just a side effect of the yellow fever immunisation I had last week. At least it would explain it all and mean I am not getting sick two days before getting on a long flight – I definitely do not want a repeat of Hong Kong !

Against predictions the day is glorious when I start walking down to the train station, though it is 18 degrees I am feeling quite cold, but turns to form later in the day with a few showers – I was glad I decided to chuck my raincoat into my bag, a very last minute decision.

It was a two change train ride from Dartford and Canterbury though only an hour and half ride. My main reason for visiting was of course the cathedral but I wanted to try and visit my aunt as well, though she was not answering her phone.

I really enjoyed the Cathedral and the town was pretty good apart from a lot of the old buildings have had their frontages changed into nice shiny new McDonalds, Starbucks or H&M. Guess that is progress.

The Cathedral is stunning, under a bit of renovation – seems to the e trend every where. But I still loved it, home to the tombs of kings and bishops over hundreds of years.

After the Cathedral I wandered up to the retirement home where my aunt is living and she had just arrived home with the other aunt i have not seen since the eighties so i got a two for the price of one deal. It was very cool to see them both, but soon enough it was time to get the train back to Dartford.

On Wednesday I went back into London to shop and change my pounds into USD. Shopping was only semi-successful, but I did get all the camera gear I wanted including some very groovy Manfrotto carbon fibre tripod legs, cool… Massive fail on clothes for Africa, but no surprises there – and I have the morning tomorrow. After shopping I stayed the night at Kevin’s flat, and here I am typing when I should be in bed resting my burning head.

Yay – Castles !

Day 261, Friday 21 September 2012 – Rochester

Comfortable as my bed is here I had an awful sleep and ended up not dragging myself reluctantly out until almost nine am. Pretty much when we left to go to the supermarket for the weekly shop. I picked up a few things for my Africa trip as well as a couple of bottles of cheap red to sup on over the week. Back at Jim’s I had a late breakfast, soon followed by lunch – I so love eating!

It was a nice day in Kent, cool but clear and I was keen to visit castles so Jim and I visited the town of Rochester a few miles away. I am reasonably sure I have never been there before, though I am sure mum will correct me if I am wrong!

The castle was started in Roman times and was built on extensively until Norman times in the early 11th century until it was involved in a series of sieges and rebuilds up until the early 14th century. Being quite close to London it was the scene of a number of minor historical events until it fell into disrepair late in the 18th century.

It is quite cool that it has not seen much restoration.

From the battlements there was a great view of Rochester Cathedral.

The old part of Rochester town was quite nice as well and well worth a visit. Jim and I stopped for a cup of coffee, or in my case a hot chocolate as I am not a coffee drinker in the afternoon (or it seemed to my complete ignorance in the morning ) .

I was deeply tired with a cracking headache and yawned my way back to Dartford and had to go and have a lie down when we got home.

I cooked a basic pasta meal for dinner and we watched a bit of TV before I went to bed.

it was nice to get out into the Kentish countryside.

Back to London

Days 258/260, Tuesday – Thursday 18-20 September 2012 – London and Dartford.

I was a wee bit jaded when I got up on Tuesday morning, another early start as I wanted to say goodbye to Mel and Richard before they went to work and I was on the 9:30 bus to London again. I did enjoy the coffee and bacon sandwich at the bus station before though and, as always, uneventful journey into Victoria bus station.

The good news is I am not feeling any ill effects from my run, I do not have any aches and pains and apart from running out of puff halfway up stairs with my pack on my back I almost feel like I could nip out for a run. I was expecting day two or three to be quite sore as it is usually the case after a decent run. It must be a sign I should have gone harder!

For the next two nights I am staying with a friend near London Bridge station in Borough – about two hundred metres from the Shard, the latest tallest building in London. I met Kevin at Dan and Van’s wedding in Da Nang, Vietnam way back in April, Kevin is an old friend of Dan’s and has been living in London for many years. I arranged to meet him at McDonalds which gave me a good excuse to trough a couple of chicken cheese burgers!

Kevin lives on the twelfth floor of a twenty storey tower block and the views over Tower Bridge are stunning, especially at night.

Kevin and I spent the afternoon catching up and then went round the corner to a local pub for a pint or three, it was quite cool out of the sun, but a glorious day to be sitting in a garden bar. This area of London has really gone up-market since I worked around here in the mid-1980’s, lots of young white collar workers striding home from work, young hipsters with beards on single speed bikes, in the pub there was an actor who I have seen recently on TV or in movie, but I could not place his name damnit!

Early evening Kevin and I caught the tube to his partner Phil’s place in Kensington. Kari, a young Norwegian woman they met in India a while back is staying the night and cooking dinner. It was a good night, Kari cooked a good risotto and talked almost non-stop the entire time, it was very hard to get a word in, a very passionate woman.

On Wednesday, after a monster lie in and a massive breakfast Kevin cooked, I went for a walk out along the Thames for a bit. I had intended to walk down to Greenwich and back up again, but did start to notice the effects of the run, no soreness – just tired legs. I also planned on going to visit the Tower of London, which is one of my favourite places in London so needed to save some leg for that as there can be a bit of walking involved.

So, that was what I did next. The new quarter between London and Tower Bridges is quite stunning, all new glass and chrome buildings, but tasteful and heaps of open space. I really liked it, plus of course they left the access to the river bank.

It cost 20 pounds to get into the Tower, outrageously expensive IMHO, but it is a great place to visit if you are into castles and the old English history of kings and queens and battles and plots, which of course I am.

I visited the white tower and its massive collection of arms and armour – I have fond childhood memories of walking round the armour.

And then the crown jewels, my memory of this is massive crowds – not so bad today!

And a general walk around the site for a couple of hours.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed the afternoon, though I was disturbed by the amount of people who voted yes to this!

After the Tower I took a slow walk back along the bank of the Thames and snapped a few shots of the Shard – I just cannot help it, it does dominate, but it is a stunning building.

I had dinner with Kevin and Phil in the flat and for a change watched a bit of TV.

Thursday was a not quite so long lie, but I still didn’t rush out of bed. Today was shot day and I was off to the London Travel Clinic, for what turned out to be two rather than one shot. I was expecting Yellow Fever but I also need a booster for hep A and B, those along with 100 anti-malaria tabs meant it was an expensive morning. But better than being really ill in Zambia I expect.

I took a short walk around Borough market before heading back to Kevin’s and saying my farewells before heading off to my uncle Jim’s house in Dartford. It was great to catch up with Kevin and Phil again, I will probably stay there again the night before I fly out to Africa as well.

Dartford is 35 minutes away by train, conveniently from London Bridge station so no faffing about catching tubes between stations. Both my parents are from Dartford and I have visited numerous times over the years and have pleasant memories of Jim’s. Jim lives in the house he was raised in and I haven’t been here since my nana passed away many years ago. All my stuff had been moved there from my other uncle and aunts house so I spent the afternoon and evening chatting to Jim and sorting my stuff – there is more than I remember!