Well, we have been busy over the last week. This entry will cover a few outings that we have made, so get a tea and make sure that the boss is in a meeting, or in other cases, reading over your shoulder.

There was a period when I attended the Toronto Animation Festival every year. What was likely to be there was not of the standard Saturday morning fare, but creative, artful animated movies from all over the world. As you might imagine, when I saw the listing for the London International Animation Festival in my morning commuter paper, the decision to attend was already made. One of the benefits of attending animation festivals is that these are the only venues that you are likely to have to see films of this nature. We set out Wednesday night for Piccadilly Circus on the Tube.

Piccadilly Circus is probably best described as London’s version of Times Square in New York. It is in the heart of tourist country, lit up with bright flashing lights and surrounded by chain restaurants designed to comfort and lure the out-of-towner. It is also close to the West End Theatres and Cinemas. Piccadilly Circus is a five-minute walk from Leicester Square, as featured in the last entry.

We watched the first half of the animation festival. It featured films from all around the world. Some were eerie and disturbing such as the first one. It was a dark claymation that was rife with biblical references. There was another film from The Czech Republic that told the story of a woman having a baby that was done in wide, joyous colourful washes.

Then, disaster, of an animation festival scale, struck. The host, who I believe was the organizer of the show, had the unenviable task of informing the assembled crowd that the second half of the program was jammed in the projector and would not play or come out. Who knew animated films suffered from performance anxiety?

Fortunately the folks that attend these type of things are not the folks who attend, say, an Alice Cooper concert. There was no rioting, chanting or throwing of chairs. Just the low groan of mellow art students that were probably already depressed anyway.

In order to make reparations, we were given a ticket for the next night’s presentation. This was the programme devoted to abstract animation. You may imagine that you heard the low groan of Joanne. The idea of abstract animation may have depressed her. Abstract animation you say; how bad could that be?

Actually, not all that bad. If you assume that the films at an animation festival will not be standard fare anyway, then it is not a huge leap to guess that the ones reserved as abstract will be a little out there. They were hit and miss, to my mind. Some were rather like free-form experiments of colour, light and sound but lacking any discernable narrative. There was a beautiful film that used only black and white stripes to show an entire undersea world. There were two that set their animation to pieces of music. One an Art-Deco inspired joy and the other a scratchy mess. There was a short piece called “Collision” that was a comment on the current clash between religious ideologies that used only three shapes: Crescents, five-pointed stars and six-pointed stars. Another successful experiment created a dark dream world of images that took on changing forms using grainy black and white lines. In all, there were more successful pieces that I had anticipated and it made up for the half programme we had missed the previous night.

Friday night, to celebrate the Bank Holiday long weekend, we had dinner at a lovely restaurant on the high street called “J”. It features Italian food and seems to be family run. It mixes good service and better food. Now that we are working (and earning) it was a welcome treat for us.

Saturday was an exploration walk. We got off of the Tube at Westminster station which is just on the north side of the Thames, near the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Our walk would take us along the south side of the river past some very interesting places.

As you might imagine, this is again tourist country. As we crossed the bridge, it was easy to pick up snippets of conversation in French, Spanish, Slavic and American. Everyone was taking the tourist photograph of loved one in the foreground with a recognizable building in the background.

Walking east from Westminster bridge took us past the London Aquarium, the Millennium Bridge, the Tate Modern museum and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

We stopped to watch a street performer. He had gathered a large crowd and was not too far into his act. He was disturbingly double-jointed and used this to pass his entire body through a regular wire coat-hanger. He then went on to escape, in under two minutes, from a straight jacket fastened on him by an audience member. A very entertaining performance!

Our walk ended up in the area of the London Bridge Tube station. This is an area of the City that we have not explored until now. Unfortunately, the shadows had gotten a little long and much of it was closed. There is the very interesting looking Borough Market, the Coffee and Tea museum and the Southwark Cathedral. The latter has been a place of worship for over 1400 years! This is an area we will be exploring more in the future.

As this is the August Bank Holiday long weekend for us in England, there is an annual tradition in London. The Notting Hill Carnival! It is the celebration where everyone gets to be from the islands for a weekend.

As London’s population was becoming more diverse in the 1950’s, large numbers of people from the Caribbean settled in Notting Hill. At the time, it was an area of low-rents with most of the terrace houses having been split up and rented out as flats. There were race riots in the late 1950’s between the working-class that lived there and the immigrant population that was settling there.

Notting Hill has only recently become the des res (desirable residential) area in the last few years. Its elevation was aided in part by the rubbish movie of the same name. There is constant moaning by the long-time residents that their neighbourhood has been usurped by the trendy and well-heeled, causing skyrocketing real-estate values.

There are many residents who leave the neighbourhood during Carnival and many businesses post signs telling that they are closed, reopening on Tuesday. It is common practice to board-up front windows in the busiest areas, even for shops that remain open.

No doubt, Carnival is busy. Crazy. Mobbed. Nuts. And it is a lot of fun. The parade runs right around the neighbourhood. The floats, bands and masquerades just keep passing all day. There is also the endless food stalls and sound systems.

The food stalls were amazing both in quality, variety and sheer number. There were a huge number of families that had setup their front yard as food stands. They were selling anything from Jamaican Meat Patties to Jerk pork and chicken to fresh fruit and juice to Red Stripe beer and rum punch guaranteed to add to your enjoyment of the Carnival. You could also use their loo for a quid.

There were entire streets that were set up with one food stand after another. All Caribbean dishes. Rice and peas, goat, ackee (salted fish), curries, fried plantains, Brazilian doughnuts, spring rolls and chow mien. Everywhere you looked, there were queues in front of stalls smelling of delicious barbeque smoke. The split oil drum is the cooking appliance of choice.

There are sound systems located all around the carnival area.
These are impromptu stages set up with gigantic towers of huge speakers. The MCs shout unintelligibly over booming, bass-heavy reggae tunes. The music is infectious and just walking past makes everyone want to dance. There are large crowds pressing up against each of these stages, all singing and dancing and jumping in unison.

The parade that circumscribes the Carnival area is amazing. There are huge steel bands that ride past on big, open trailers. The costumed dancers follow in huge groups. Everyone from groups of kids to local committees to vast groups in elaborate costumes writhing in unison to booming sound systems.

The Carnival is a fantastic event. The neighbourhood comes alive, everyone, old and young, joins in and it is a terrific party. Not what I expected to find in London, but as I am learning, this is a very diverse city and at every turn is richer for it.

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Some notable birthdays to post:

Happy birthday Gary Nurse! He's 29 again.

Happy Birthday Alex van den Berg. Arrived Aug 18th 2006. Looks cute as a button in the photos we received. Congratulations Heather and Dave!

At some point in the playoffs, Don Cherry will tilt his head to the right and put out his hands as if to stop Ron McLean in his tracks. “It’s good for guys to play a little tired. LetshearitforDouggie GilmourgoodCanadianbo yfromKingstonreallytoughguyalwaysplayedal
ittletired.” And he is right about that.

On Saturday, Joanne said to me that she thought she was getting a cold. Sunday, she proved her point. She had caught a roaring cold. Joanne spent Sunday doing two things; throwing the Kleenex in the wastebasket like Meadowlark Lemon and expressing her displeasure at catching a cold just a day before her long-awaited starting day.

As you have probably experienced, it is hard to sleep when you can’t breathe out of either nostril. There was tossing, turning and sweating but not much sleeping. Sunday morning found a very tired Joanne dragging herself perpendicular to the floor. All of this was due only to having a roaring cold.

Today was the long awaited day. Jo started her new job. When she left for her new job today, she didn’t notice the poppy seeds between her teeth from breakfast. After lunch, not seeing the spilt food down her shirt, she used the washroom and walked out with her skirt tucked into the top of her nylons that by now had a ladder down the left leg. None of this was noticeable as she had snapped off the heel of her right shoe and was limping on her split level footwear.

Of course, none of this happened. She had a great day and probably due to being a little tired and under the weather, there wasn’t a lot of nerves. Her first day was spent in orientation and tomorrow is her first day at her desk. There is a very happy Joanne here tonight she had a great day at work and is eager to dig into her job. And her cold seems a little better.

This Sunday did not dawn hot and sunny like last. It was grey, rainy, overcast and cool. In fact, it alternated between bright sun and heavy rain all day in roughly equal proportion. More like we expected to find in London. Our trip this week was not as far-flung as last. We went into the City to Covent Garden. For an added dimension, we took the bus.

The decision to eschew the tube was made to get an above-ground view of the City. Our intention was to see how the various areas joined together. Taking the Tube is somewhat faster but you loose the sense of what is between point A and point B. Descending into the station in West Hampstead and emerging at Charring Cross leaves the impression that all that is between looks like the inside of a train.

The buses has changed here over the last few years, but the one that we took was still a double-decker. We sat on top and got a bird’s eye, or tourist’s eye, view of the places between where we live and Covent Garden. More about the buses in the future.

We are realising how close we are to the centre of the City. Our bus ride took us past the Abby Road studios, Baker Street with all of the Sherlock Holmes exhibits, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus and the Strand. All in about forty minutes which is about a third longer than the Tube.

Covent Garden is the sightseer snare, the visitor ambush, the tourist trap. It started out as a market where farmers and merchants brought their wares. Now it is what can be affectionately called the acre of tat. It is a place to get you name in Japanese in a frame, wallets made of something called Laether for three pounds and vintage pottery made last week.

There are buskers to entertain the crowds. We watched an acrobat doing uncomfortable looking manoeuvres between two chairs. There was also a juggler who elicited some sarcastic applause from a group of kids during his warm-up.

We walked out of Covent Garden and past some of the theatres. There is a production of Dirty Dancing on now. Based on the movie starring Patrick Swayze. Who is in town starring in Guys and Dolls. I wonder if the high point in the musical Dirty Dancing is the song “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”. This would be important if I was interested in lavish musicals.

Tucked in near Leicester square are about three streets that comprise London’s Chinatown. I was surprised that in a city as diverse as London that Chinatown is so small. Although it may just be put out in place for the tourists.

In between rain showers, we walked to Leicester square which, after seeing some of the beautiful squares laid out in London, is quite unremarkable. It is surrounded by cinemas whose claim to fame is that they are the earliest to open the first run movies. The only features are plaques in the ground that tell the distances to the capitals of the Commonwealth and a less-than-life size statue of Charlie Chaplin.

The number 139 bus was good enough to bring us back home after all of the walking around. Despite having to duck into stores a few times to avoid some heavy rain, another good day out.

Late last week, the authorities shut down London airports due to the terrorist plot of which you have no doubt heard. It has, as course, been widely reported worldwide and as much or more here in London as anywhere. The reaction, overall has been to me, somewhat peculiar. In a lot of ways the reaction has been exactly not what I expected.

It is difficult to cover something that didn’t happen. The story refuses to develop. The focus of the news has to be the back story. The news focus was then two pronged. Delays in the airport and those arrested. There were pictures of stranded tourists waiting out in the rain and blurry High School yearbook photos of alleged terrorists.

The coverage started on the front page on Friday and by Sunday had slipped off the front page. Granted that it was a four page section that was almost a pull-out. The focus shifted after the first day. It is hard for the news to cover something that didn’t happen. The story refuses to develop.

The papers were full of pictures and quotes from the airports. Stranded travellers sleeping on the terrazzo floor and close ups of clear plastic bags that are now the carry on bag de rigueur. The stories featured pull quotes from frustrated people who had lost sight of the fact that they were still around to give quotes.

The Daily Star newspaper today made clear its editorial stance. They ran an article on page 4-5, complete with quotes from marginally official people, that felt profiling would solve the congestion problem at the airport. They were clear that, to them, the blame rests with the Muslim community. Division and segregation is the solution. To put the Star in perspective, as if perspective is necessary, they run a picture of a topless girl on page 3.

In conjunction with this the coverage centres on the young men arrested. They are from the East end of London. I think that my train stops at a station near where many of the arrests took place. The underlying message seems to have an element of “they” to it. As in “How could they try to kill us”.

The air carriers have been ordered to cut flights in and out of British airports by 30% until further notice. There has been publicly aired backlash from the air carriers. Cheap airfare is almost viewed as a birthright. The biggest insult does not seems to be that terrorists tried to explode planes. The biggest insult is that travel is not convenient right now.

Letters to the Times have run to topics such as the image of England and the effect of the cutback of air flights. One writer was appalled that a flight containing a New York based symphony orchestra had to be cancelled. An Olympic level rowing team was unable to reach England in time. “How will the world view Britain?” the writer asked. We turn back orchestras and rowing teams. Is there no civility?

There is a saying that all politics is local. It would appear that these events seem to bear that out. Despite the enormous issues that an event, or non-event, like this raises, people seem to see the effect as far as the end of their day. The question raised should not be so much how does this affect me, but how do I affect the world?

Now that I am working, I thought you might like to see a picture of me at my new job.

Click HERE to see me.

I am just to the left of the centre of the screen, in a white shopcoat carrying a clipboard.

Sunday was bright, and sunny and in the height of the day, just a touch too humid. With the recent calming of tensions in the Wingate household, a reward was in order. What better than a trip? It was decided that Cambridge would be appropriate and on Sunday, we went to King’s Cross station and we were off.

A point of interest, for fans of the Harry Potter movies. Harry boards the train to Hogwarts from platform 9 ¾, I believe, which we had to pass to get to our train.

Cambridge, named for the River Cam which arcs around the town, is an area that is steeped in history, both great and small. It, like so much of England, can trace its history back a long way. The road that passes through the centre of town was built by the Romans in 2 or 3 A.D. The churches, colleges and houses are tangible guides through history.

It is a popular pursuit for people to proceed to punt in Cambridge. Punting is done on the river in long, rectangular wooden boats. The punter, using a pole to propel the punt, places himself on a plane deck at the posterior of the boat. With a push on the pole, your punt proceeds.

There are two choices, within the purview of punts; you can be taken down the river by a guide who is proficient in the sights and history as well proper punting procedure. Or you can plump for a DIY punting adventure. For those on the river, professional punters provide the proper perspective of the proceedings. For those of us standing on the shore or one of the plentiful bridges over the river, tourists not properly proficient with protracted poles and even longer punts are positively the more entertaining of the pair.

One of the things for which Cambridge is famous is the bridges over the river. There is the bridge that crosses from the back of St John’s college. It is made as a replica of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, Italy. There is the mathematical bridge that crosses from the President’s Lodge of Queen’s college. Rumour also has it that the wooden bridge was designed and assembled by such that it was held together without using any bolts. They were only required after less talented builders dismantled the bridge for repairs. Sadly, also false.

Cambridge is, of course home to Cambridge University. The University is not located on one campus, but is made up of many colleges. There are 31 colleges and each is a separate institution and are governed by the University. Some of the colleges have been recently established, but some, such as King’s college and Pembroke college date from the 14^th of 15^th century.

Although the colleges are still in operation as institutes of higher learning, they permit visitors in to the grounds. It is felt like stepping back in time to walk around the immaculately manicured grounds of the colleges. It’s amazing what a few dozen generations of lawn maintenance can accomplish.

We also walked north, up the road through the centre of town.
It changes names about five times and brought us to a side street that led into a neighbourhood. There we found the house in which my Mother and my Uncle grew up. It was an interesting connection with my past, and I could picture my Mother riding her bicycle up the hill, home after work.

The train ride home took about an hour. The way home always seems shorter as was the case on Sunday. Despite the short length of time it actually took, it seemed like we were coming back from the past.

We are learning that there are many ways to spot a Londoner. For instance perpetual use of mobile phones and a guerrilla attitude to walking. A Londoner can also be identified when you spot The London A-Z Guide in their hands. It is the essential map book in the City. We were discussing a particular neighbourhood with my uncle, a lifelong Londoner. He reached behind himself and conjured up an A-Z that was literally falling apart to determine the streets in question.

Left with little to do in the evenings, Joanne and I took to looking in our A-Z Guide and picking a place, route for our walks. Just owning an A-Z makes us feel like we belong in this city. Often we would aim our feet towards parks within walking distance of our flat. When you are unemployed, that can be a large arc.

One of the places we ended up was Primrose Hill Park in the North West. The greatest feature of the park is the spectacular view from the crest of the eponymous hill. From the summit, you command a sweeping view South. You look down the hill, over the park full of picnickers and games of pick-up football.

Past Primrose Hill, across Prince Albert Road is Regent Park. Visible over the tree tops is the green copper roof of the monkey house and the netting of the aviary in the London Zoo. The canal with its brick tow paths leads all the way to the Camden High Street and beyond. Here, inside the concentric ring roads, Shakespeare is performed in the Open Air Theatre. This is where we saw the memorial ceremony for the victims of the 7/7 attacks.

Beyond Regent’s Park is the London skyline. What is clear is the contrast between the old and new. The dome of St Paul’s cathedral was built after the Great Fire that destroyed vast areas of London in 1667. It can be found amongst the modern counterpoint of the Swiss Re building (also known as the gherkin) and the London Eye.
[The gherkin can bee seen in the very centre of the picture. It peeks out through some non-descript office buildings.]

We put together a picnic lunch on our last Sunday of unemployment. We sat in the shade of a huge plain tree in Primrose Hill Park. With our sandwiches and Sunday Times and London spread out, it was just the place to be. As you can tell, this was written earlier and was going to be posted through the week. Larger, more pressing news elbowed its way past however. London is great city full of surprises like the ones this week.

[You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them.]

I love baseball. It may not surprise you to learn that I have thought out the reasons why. In my opinion, the World Series is the most exciting sporting championship. At its best, baseball is as much a chess match between two managers as a sporting contest between athletes. And the main reason is that any game, even one that seems lost, can change with one stroke of a bat.

Yesterday morning, Jo and I walked up the High Street, got fresh bagels from Roni’s bakery, picked up a Times newspaper and coffees from Costa coffee. The weather was warm, pleasant and sunny. We stopped, looked in shop windows, pointed at cafés where we would like to eat and decided to go to a lecture at the used book store. When we got home, we traded sections of the paper and ate our breakfast. It was very relaxed, very pleasant and very unemployed.

We were deciding what we would do to fill the day when the phone rang. It was the employment agency with whom I had been dealing. I had interviewed for a position in a claims department last Friday. They had been impressed with my interview, and could I start on Wednesday? Well yes, I suppose I could do that.

With that, I had a job. I started today in the claims department of a large insurance company.

I returned from my first day at work to find none other that my beloved wife waiting for me at the train station. Never one to let the grass grow under her feet, Jo hugged me and reported that she had gone for a second interview at a large law firm in the City. And landed the job that she had really wanted out of all of the interviews that she had done.

With that little turn of events, we are both employed. Jo and I agree that that last, large piece, having jobs, has really made us feel settled here in the U.K. We celebrated with a bottle of wine from the store on the High Street and a plate of spaghetti. I daresay that today was a home run!