I an I Rastafari

ST LUKE'S: Two people got shot at the Notting Hill Carnival over the weekend as I celebrated my first bank holiday weekend in Londres for a year. I can safely say I wasn't one of those two people. But I did brave the crowds to hit up both days of the carnival, trying the jerk at two different stalls. As a connieseur of the stuff though (it helps living around the corner from half a dozen Carribean takeaways in Brixton), I have declare that it wasn't quite up to scratch. But then bad jerk chicken is like bad pizza, it's never that bad.

Most of Sunday's session was spent chilling at the church. Flo, Louise, Joe and friends had their stall on again and in exchange for first class views of the parade from the specially erected balcony, I hawked the odd can of Coke here and the odd icy water bottle there. But that did leave me with plenty of time to check out the parade. The children's parade seems to be an ad-hoc, rambling affair full of wide eyed children in costumes being chaperoned by their parents. The main parade on the Monday is a much more corporate affair. For instance we saw a Corona truck complete with promo girls, prize winners and dancing Corona bottles. The rest of Sunday was spent chilling out to sound systems, while on Monday I mounted another ill fated attempt to see Flo's band Burn Brothers, though after spending almost an hour fighting my way from Notting Hill to Westbourne Park I discovered that the performance was cancelled. Something to do with the pedal powered stage, literally, being unable to compete with the zillion watt sound systems parading past.

So that's another carnival gone. It's my last one, on this trip at least, and come then end of next August when I'm cowering inside trying to dodge the horrid westerlies that plauge Brisbane in it's coldest month, I'll look longingly back at this feast of jerk chicken and dub rhythms and shed a tear.

Escape, at last

ST LUKE'S: I've booked my escape. At 6:10 am on Thursday the 18th of October I fly out of Stanstead to Brussels in pursuit on fine art on my way en route to a boys weekend in Amsterdam for some fine... other things.

Charlie's been telling me I need to update my blog more often, and I do, so I'll add a few words about my adventures in Norwich this evening.

War and Splash

ST LUKE'S: More sort of summer on the weekend. More working too - but that happens every weekend. Did the usual summer things, got drunk with Flo on Hampstead Heath on Friday night, barbie at Joe and Anna's on Saturday night, overtime on Sunday morning but pepped it up with a visit to the Brockwell Park lido in Brixton. For the un-English, a lido is an outdoor swimming pool designed for leisure rather than, say, racing and training. Most of the ones I've heard about have grassy areas to sit on. Brockwell Park, unfortunately, doesn't. Still it was good to swim outside and it was another quintessentially London experience I could tick off my list.

On Sunday afternoon I visited the Imperial War Museum again in an attempt to finish the thing off. Unfortunately, or wonderfully, the museum is so interesting and comprehensive that after three hours all I'd seen was the film on genocide, the spies and SAS exhibit and three quarters of the wars since 1945 section, leaving D-Day, World War 2, the merchant Navy and the large objects for another day. Some of the best things included a full range of guns (Sten Guns, AK's, M-16's, Berettas, Uzis, etc.) and the films including one featuring all the best Cold War soundbites ("Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall!") and another detailing the Iranian Embassy siege from 1980.

The King of Spain

BEDFORD ROAD: The story goes that English offspinner Ashley Giles was having a testimonial event and his county ordered a whole lot of coffee mugs to commemorate the event. But rather than reading "The King of Spin" they read "The King of Spain". Well the Quixote of the arm ball retired today and the headlines were unanimous in describing him as one of England's Ashes winning heroes. What they should have called him is one of England's Ashes losers. Of the four Ashes series Giles played against Australia he was only successful in one of them. And in the most recent campaign they went down 5-0. He took 20 wickets against us at an ant's nut better than 2 a game. Real legend. This celebration of mediocrity, and a desire to bask in the dimming glory of single, isolated successes, are two of the reasona for England's persistent failure. It would be like shedding tears for Greg Matthews and even his record outstrips the King of Spain.

Tuesday's Clouds

ST LUKE'S: The post strike is making work chaotic but at least summer has arrived. Well it did briefly. It seems to have run off just as quickly but we did have plenty of time for Pimm's on Hamstead Heath on Saturday, a BBQ on Anna and Joe's terrace followed up by a day on the beach at Sussex by the Seven Sisters. Wonderful. If only all my weekends where this good.

Summer's Here Kids

ST LUKE'S: Looks like summer might finally be arriving. I'm sitting inside at working finishing off the last off my six hour Saturday before heading down to the local food markets to grab some Welsh cheese, Basque cider, possibly a Chorizo sausage sandwich, a couple of tins from the offy and then off to Hampstead Heath. The last three months of shit have evaporated like water on Wivenhoe.

Last night I finally got around to visiting the Tate Britain to check out the fantastic Turner watercolours. The unfinished sketches and paintings in a backroom are, even if unintentionaly, on a par with anything Monet ever did. We also saw the the wonderful piece that recreates Brian Haw's protest at the front of Westminster.

Anyway I have got too much more to say other than the London Poetry Library is now open and I saw a Chadian film on Thursday night called "Darratt". It was nice to finally see a movie about Africa made by Africans.