Hello Everybody,

I don't have time to write in everyone's email address.  If you could forward this on to people you think might care that would be sweet.

I'm now in sunny England.  The weather here is fantastic - sunny and warm.  I like.

We flew via LA and NY, and I can tell you there's nothing like a 30 hour flight with only a few hours sleep to get the blood pumping.  Qantas has free SMS messaging for September and October, but sadly it wasn't working for our flight, otherwise I would have been going SMS crazy.  I saw quite a few films over the course of the flight.  For those who care, I'm pretty sure the seagulls are saying "mine", not "mate".

We got in to Heathrow Thursday morning, checked into a B&B in a nicish accessible area of London, and spent the whole day seeing the sights.

I saw a lot of things which I hear of in James Bond films, The Goon Show, The Goodies, The Russia House etc., so now I know a bit more of what they're talking about when they say the Home Office or whatever.  We saw pretty much everything with a name in Westminster and the Leicester Square type area.

Some of the highlights:
- Went to Trafalgar Square.  We didn't have a bath, but we were sprayed when the wind picked up, so that's close enough.
- Saw an Angus Steak Houses (one of my pet hates, really).
- The crazy London taxis.
- The National Gallery.  I saw a few Spanish acquisitions, which was quite unexpected.
- I have a better understanding of why eskimos invading the Serpentine is funny.
- The Tube is a brilliant transport system.

We were asleep by 8pm, but it was a pretty epic day coming off that helluva flight.

Friday we did a little less walking about, and instead spent most of the day in the Tate Modern.  This was a pretty crazy art gallery.  The good stuff was better than normal galleries, and the bad stuff was far worse.  The best thing was probably 5 videos of people in water, and the worst was possibly a video of a naked man in a mask and boxing gloves with tomato sauce on them beating himself about the head.

Tumbles - I put in some effort to see your future wife, but sadly she wasn't there on the day.  I have put a review of Les Mis at the bottom of this email though.

Saturday we caught the train out to Swanage, Dorset, where we are now staying with Jo's cousin Lucy.  Our visit coincides with a folk festival.  There is more Morris Dancing than I could have ever hoped for.  There is stick dancing, hanky dancing, hoop dancing and rope dancing.  The craziest bunch of all are the Morris Dancers covered in black, with pentastars, Nirvana shirts, "Keep music evil" etc written on their hats, and an article stuck on the fence with the headline "Morris Dancer denies eating rat during performance"

Swanage is a sweet place.

I have given myself a challenge - to have a drink at as many pubs named the same as those I drink at back home as I can.  I'm starting tonight at the Crows Nest.

I'm getting kicked out.  Must run.

Cheers,
Wally

Reveiew of Les Miserables

We went for €15.50 discount tickets, so we were right up the top of the balcony of the Palace Theatre - a long way away from the action.  The thinking types gave us the option to hire binoculars for 50p, which we did.  'Twas a worthy investment.

It was a very good production.  S Club 7 boy surprised me and did an excellent job as Marius, and Valjean and Cosette were also very good.  I was a bit disappointed with the voice of Enjolras, and Javert, even though he had a top voice, seemed to cut everything a little short.

Our seats were too far away to see any of the subtleties of expression of the performers (or any expression at all, for that matter).  However, we were right next to the bang machine, so we got the full force of Gavroche's death.

I don't think I've ever seen Grantaire drink as much as in this production.  I'm sure he normally takes up a gun, but the only fighting this Grantaire did was throwing a bottle at the oncoming soldiers as he died.  I'm not sure if he was supposed to have been shot or his liver carked it.

I was very pleased with the Thenardier's.  They lacked the usual raucous laughter, which often grates on my nerves a little too much, and instead went for a lot of "woopsy daisy" looks.  I enjoyed the wedding scene more than I have in the past.

All in all it was a very good production, although possibly not as good as the Sydney production I saw in 1998.  Maybe if I'd had better seats I would be thinking otherwise.