I'm doing a lot of travelling.
I took the train down the East Coast from Edinburgh to London, and finished my Scottish trip by taking pictures of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and seeing Brave at the movies. A day back at work, and then back on the train to Staffordshire!
I had another adventure getting the train, after my Oyster card ran out of pay as you go money and I made a few bad decisions about timing and catching trains, and ended up running at full tilt through stations to catch my Staffordshire train on time. And I'd left early! Next time I think I will be picking up my tickets the day before I leave.
I had a lovely time on my Staffordshire weekend, cycling through forests and 'moorland' with purple heather (I don't think it was a moor, but that's what I'm calling it), walking beside canals, visiting an ancient half-timbered house with a MOAT, and walking through Lichfield Cathedral with its beautiful ornate carvings, stained glass and hoard of ancient gold. So many ancient things, and such skill involved in making them.
And now I'm just about to get back into Euston Station, hopefully to a nice week ahead.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Edinburgh Day 6: The Scottish National Museum, Greek Gods and Japanese Imperial Dance Music
I'll try to keep this short.
(ha.)
I started the day with a nice breakfast and a bit of writing at the Elephant House, then went to get a ticket to a Fringe show I'd been eyeing up. Unfortunately it was sold out (for future reference: gotta be in quick) but that meant I could get a ticket to another show it had clashed with: Unmythable.
I still had some time to spare, so I went in search of the Scottish National Museum. I started with the ancient peoples section, thinking that the museum really wasn't that big for a national museum, though very well-designed and modern. It had artwork interspersed with the exhibits, and everything was beautifully presented with enough space and interest so that it didn't all blur together. I finished with the ancient peoples section and went to look for other exhibits, and realised the building I had thought was the entire museum was actually just the smallest wing. The main parts of the museum were still to come, housed around an incredible Victorian atrium. I didn't have enough time left, so I decided to make a return visit.
Unmythable was very good, with three guys playing a multitude of parts and encouraging the audience to join in as Argonauts. I especially liked the scene where two of the actors were staging an argument between Zeus, Demeter, Hades and Persephone, with part-changing almost every sentence. There were songs and free olives.
After another stint at the museum, where I saw Dolly the cloned sheep and some incredible silver ships used to hold cutlery, I went to a book festival talk about writing YA and saw my last Edinburgh International Festival concert: imperial Japanese music and dance.
It was very interesting, with all the musicians still and poised as they played their instruments. Men in beautiful costumes stepped in slow patterns that reminded me of tai chi, and later wore masks and added swords, spears and shields to their costumes. At one point an instrument played a few notes that sounded almost exactly like the beginning of the theme tune to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I wondered if the Star Trek composers had borrowed the notes.
I went back to the book festival for a bit to hear some audio compositions, and finished my evening just as the fireworks were going off over the castle.
(ha.)
I started the day with a nice breakfast and a bit of writing at the Elephant House, then went to get a ticket to a Fringe show I'd been eyeing up. Unfortunately it was sold out (for future reference: gotta be in quick) but that meant I could get a ticket to another show it had clashed with: Unmythable.
I still had some time to spare, so I went in search of the Scottish National Museum. I started with the ancient peoples section, thinking that the museum really wasn't that big for a national museum, though very well-designed and modern. It had artwork interspersed with the exhibits, and everything was beautifully presented with enough space and interest so that it didn't all blur together. I finished with the ancient peoples section and went to look for other exhibits, and realised the building I had thought was the entire museum was actually just the smallest wing. The main parts of the museum were still to come, housed around an incredible Victorian atrium. I didn't have enough time left, so I decided to make a return visit.
Unmythable was very good, with three guys playing a multitude of parts and encouraging the audience to join in as Argonauts. I especially liked the scene where two of the actors were staging an argument between Zeus, Demeter, Hades and Persephone, with part-changing almost every sentence. There were songs and free olives.
After another stint at the museum, where I saw Dolly the cloned sheep and some incredible silver ships used to hold cutlery, I went to a book festival talk about writing YA and saw my last Edinburgh International Festival concert: imperial Japanese music and dance.
It was very interesting, with all the musicians still and poised as they played their instruments. Men in beautiful costumes stepped in slow patterns that reminded me of tai chi, and later wore masks and added swords, spears and shields to their costumes. At one point an instrument played a few notes that sounded almost exactly like the beginning of the theme tune to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I wondered if the Star Trek composers had borrowed the notes.
I went back to the book festival for a bit to hear some audio compositions, and finished my evening just as the fireworks were going off over the castle.
Edinburgh Day 5: Famous Cafés, the Castle, Ancient Civilisations, Translation Duel and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo
Wow I stuffed a lot into yesterday.
I started with breakfast (coffee and build-your-own banana and syrup pancakes) at the Elephant House, where JK Rowling did a lot of her writing for Harry Potter. I did some writing too. It's a nice place, with soft jazzy music and huge windows and wooden chairs and tables with a history. I'm actually there again now as I write the next day. What? I enjoyed my pancakes.
Next I met some people at the Castle, and we wandered through looking at the cannon and the dog cemetery (it has headstones for the dogs) and hearing about the different layers of the castle and the sieges over the ages. The castle isn't the kind of singular building that's implied by the name - it's many, many buildings, with barracks and military buildings and chapels and restaurants (former cart buildings) and war memorials and shops and museums and the main royal buildings including the Great Hall and the room in which Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James I/VI of England/Scotland. We filed past the Scottish crown jewels, which were hidden in St David's Tower during the War, and saw a musketeering display in the Great Hall, where two costumed musketeers demonstrated how long it might take to prepare a musket (a lot longer than you might think, watching musketeer movies).
At one o'clock they let off a cannon from the castle ramparts, so we joined the crowd to watch. A female soldier marched out and stood incredibly still as everyone jostled for position with their tartan souvenir hats. We waited. And waited. I was watching the soldier to be prepared for the noise when she triggered the cannon, but she never moved! There was a huge bang and about half the crowd screamed. I don't think I was among them.
After inspecting the whisky boutique, I wandered through a few creepy rooms in St. David's tower and realised I had twenty minutes to get down to Charlotte Square for my Book Festival lecture about the anthropology of the New World and the Old World by Peter Watson. It was very interesting, looking at how the natural resources and atmospheric tendencies of each group of continents could have affected the development of civilisations. It made me think a lot about how you could set up the environment of a fictional world to affect the culture - for example, the New World only had three species of domesticable animal, none of which could be ridden for any length of time. Not every world has to have horses.
(One of the things I find difficult when writing about my own imaginary world is remembering that most forests in the world have animals other than birds and insects in them. I'm too used to the New Zealand bush. The lecture made me think: maybe I don't have to have large animals in my world. But then I guess I want horses, and if you have horses it's likely that you have a few related animals as well. Sigh.)
I had to charge my dead camera and find some internet, so I gave in and went back to the hostel. You would not believe how difficult it is to find wifi Internet in Edinburgh. Lots of places say they have it, but don't. In other places I'd get on and nothing would load (that may have been due to my iPad playing up, I'm not sure) and in other places, including my hostel, you had to pay. The book festival did have free wifi in its garden, but that was mostly a refuse-to-load situation.
So back to the story! I had another talk at the book festival that evening, a translation duel between two English translators from the French. They'd translated the same passage from the French and spent the hour discussing why they'd chosen which word, and all the things you have to take into consideration when translating: tone, voice, meaning, jokes which may or may not be translatable... The chair warned us that they'd spent ten minutes discussing the placement of a single comma in the Spanish duel the night before, and we should get out while we could. Translating is really a lot more complicated than it seems.
And then, the last event of the day: the Edinburgh Military Tattoo!
I joined the queue on the Royal Mile to have my bag searched (didn't have a bag, so straight through :D) and climbed the cobbles up to the Esplanade. Every year they construct huge temporary stands around the Esplanade that cantilever out into space (didn't really think about it too much...) just for the Tattoo. I walked in under the end stand and saw the castle lit with dancing flames in braziers around the walls. It wasn't yet dark, but the effect was still magical and got even more so as the dusk came on.
I found my seat and sat watching some of the performers get their photos taken in front of the castle. The announcer welcomed everybody from everywhere and got everyone to sing happy birthday to everyone whose birthday it was. At nine o'clock an airforce jet flew over and the Tattoo began.
Kilted men (and probably women) marched out of the castle, across the drawbridge and onto the Esplanade. They kept coming, and coming, blowing their bagpipes and drumming and marching all in step. I counted seventeen rows of thirteen and tried to remember my times-tables as they marched up and down, moving in and out of one another and making impressive patterns. I really like bagpipes, and there's nothing like a full 221 people with bagpipes and drums. And this group was only the kilted population of the Tattoo - there were many more unkilted performers to come later.
My favourite parts of the Tattoo were the first bit with all the bagpipes, the Swiss Top Secret band and the Swedish contingent. The Top Secret band only had drums, but they were absolutely mesmerising. Their specialty was mexican-wave style manoeuvres, where they would all stop drumming or turn or start drumming very quickly one after another.
The Swedish contingent, all of whom were doing their military service and had only been in the military for a year, were very good at marching around in patterns and hoisting their rifles in time to music. At one point one of the soldiers dropped his rifle and I felt quite sorry for him - it was just lying there on the ground and he was doing all the manoeuvres with an air rifle (like an air guitar. Not an actual air rifle). Then the rest of the soldiers all fired their guns, and I realised the gun on the ground was loaded! Not with an actual bullet, of course, but a blank might still do some damage if you stepped on the gun. After that I was extremely impressed with how the soldiers managed to march back and forth over the top of the gun without touching it.
The night ended with fireworks and Auld Lang Syne, and then it took twenty minutes to get out of the stands. It was past eleven p.m. by now, but the streets were as full of people as if it were daylight. This happens every night, pretty much, in August - the jet flyover, the fireworks, and the huge crowds. I wonder what the locals think...
I started with breakfast (coffee and build-your-own banana and syrup pancakes) at the Elephant House, where JK Rowling did a lot of her writing for Harry Potter. I did some writing too. It's a nice place, with soft jazzy music and huge windows and wooden chairs and tables with a history. I'm actually there again now as I write the next day. What? I enjoyed my pancakes.
Next I met some people at the Castle, and we wandered through looking at the cannon and the dog cemetery (it has headstones for the dogs) and hearing about the different layers of the castle and the sieges over the ages. The castle isn't the kind of singular building that's implied by the name - it's many, many buildings, with barracks and military buildings and chapels and restaurants (former cart buildings) and war memorials and shops and museums and the main royal buildings including the Great Hall and the room in which Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James I/VI of England/Scotland. We filed past the Scottish crown jewels, which were hidden in St David's Tower during the War, and saw a musketeering display in the Great Hall, where two costumed musketeers demonstrated how long it might take to prepare a musket (a lot longer than you might think, watching musketeer movies).
At one o'clock they let off a cannon from the castle ramparts, so we joined the crowd to watch. A female soldier marched out and stood incredibly still as everyone jostled for position with their tartan souvenir hats. We waited. And waited. I was watching the soldier to be prepared for the noise when she triggered the cannon, but she never moved! There was a huge bang and about half the crowd screamed. I don't think I was among them.
After inspecting the whisky boutique, I wandered through a few creepy rooms in St. David's tower and realised I had twenty minutes to get down to Charlotte Square for my Book Festival lecture about the anthropology of the New World and the Old World by Peter Watson. It was very interesting, looking at how the natural resources and atmospheric tendencies of each group of continents could have affected the development of civilisations. It made me think a lot about how you could set up the environment of a fictional world to affect the culture - for example, the New World only had three species of domesticable animal, none of which could be ridden for any length of time. Not every world has to have horses.
(One of the things I find difficult when writing about my own imaginary world is remembering that most forests in the world have animals other than birds and insects in them. I'm too used to the New Zealand bush. The lecture made me think: maybe I don't have to have large animals in my world. But then I guess I want horses, and if you have horses it's likely that you have a few related animals as well. Sigh.)
I had to charge my dead camera and find some internet, so I gave in and went back to the hostel. You would not believe how difficult it is to find wifi Internet in Edinburgh. Lots of places say they have it, but don't. In other places I'd get on and nothing would load (that may have been due to my iPad playing up, I'm not sure) and in other places, including my hostel, you had to pay. The book festival did have free wifi in its garden, but that was mostly a refuse-to-load situation.
So back to the story! I had another talk at the book festival that evening, a translation duel between two English translators from the French. They'd translated the same passage from the French and spent the hour discussing why they'd chosen which word, and all the things you have to take into consideration when translating: tone, voice, meaning, jokes which may or may not be translatable... The chair warned us that they'd spent ten minutes discussing the placement of a single comma in the Spanish duel the night before, and we should get out while we could. Translating is really a lot more complicated than it seems.
And then, the last event of the day: the Edinburgh Military Tattoo!
I joined the queue on the Royal Mile to have my bag searched (didn't have a bag, so straight through :D) and climbed the cobbles up to the Esplanade. Every year they construct huge temporary stands around the Esplanade that cantilever out into space (didn't really think about it too much...) just for the Tattoo. I walked in under the end stand and saw the castle lit with dancing flames in braziers around the walls. It wasn't yet dark, but the effect was still magical and got even more so as the dusk came on.
I found my seat and sat watching some of the performers get their photos taken in front of the castle. The announcer welcomed everybody from everywhere and got everyone to sing happy birthday to everyone whose birthday it was. At nine o'clock an airforce jet flew over and the Tattoo began.
Kilted men (and probably women) marched out of the castle, across the drawbridge and onto the Esplanade. They kept coming, and coming, blowing their bagpipes and drumming and marching all in step. I counted seventeen rows of thirteen and tried to remember my times-tables as they marched up and down, moving in and out of one another and making impressive patterns. I really like bagpipes, and there's nothing like a full 221 people with bagpipes and drums. And this group was only the kilted population of the Tattoo - there were many more unkilted performers to come later.
My favourite parts of the Tattoo were the first bit with all the bagpipes, the Swiss Top Secret band and the Swedish contingent. The Top Secret band only had drums, but they were absolutely mesmerising. Their specialty was mexican-wave style manoeuvres, where they would all stop drumming or turn or start drumming very quickly one after another.
The Swedish contingent, all of whom were doing their military service and had only been in the military for a year, were very good at marching around in patterns and hoisting their rifles in time to music. At one point one of the soldiers dropped his rifle and I felt quite sorry for him - it was just lying there on the ground and he was doing all the manoeuvres with an air rifle (like an air guitar. Not an actual air rifle). Then the rest of the soldiers all fired their guns, and I realised the gun on the ground was loaded! Not with an actual bullet, of course, but a blank might still do some damage if you stepped on the gun. After that I was extremely impressed with how the soldiers managed to march back and forth over the top of the gun without touching it.
The night ended with fireworks and Auld Lang Syne, and then it took twenty minutes to get out of the stands. It was past eleven p.m. by now, but the streets were as full of people as if it were daylight. This happens every night, pretty much, in August - the jet flyover, the fireworks, and the huge crowds. I wonder what the locals think...
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Edinburgh Day 4: Walking Tour, Censorship, Beatboxing and Ghosts
(I am writing this in The Elephant House! You know, the JK Rowling cafe! And feeling slightly self-conscious, writing... Out the window you can see the castle on its cliffs and a graveyard and an old school. Hmmm...)
I never really understand what happens to the morning. I wander around, and then suddenly it's time to go to something and it's nearly the afternoon. Yesterday I went to look at the Half Price Hut, where you get Fringe tickets for half-price, got myself a thick magazine book with 375 pages that lists all the Fringe shows (there are that many), and went up to the Royal Mile for a walking tour at 11am.
The walking tour was pretty good, going around a few closes on the Mile and explaining such things as punishment for small crimes in the middle ages (nailing your ear to a post), gardyloo (watch out, there's nasty stuff a-coming out the window) and the national animal of Scotland (a unicorn. No one mentioned you were allowed mythical creatures!). Some of these stories I'd heard before, but it was much more real when you could look up at the windows and stare at the ear-post and think that's where they did that.
We also walked through Greyfriar's Graveyard with the memorial to Greyfriar's Bobby (little dog who never left his master's side) and heard about the names on gravestones that appear in Harry Potter. I went back later and found McGonnagal, Black and Thomas Riddell, but couldn't find Crookshanks.
At 3pm I had a talk about censorship at the Book Festival. It was incredibly interesting, with Chika Unigwe as the chair and Patrick Ness as the keynote speaker talking about how, today in a Western society, we more often self-censor than are externally censored. He put this down to fear of consequences and offending people, but also talked about freedom of speech and the courage to say something that might offend someone, but that needs to be said.
Then the floor was opened up to discussion from the audience, at least half of whom were authors at the Edinburgh Writer's Conference. People kept standing up and introducing themselves as China Miéville or Melvin Burgess (well, only those two did. No impersonators) and saying what they thought. It was a bit disjointed at times, with so many people wanting to air their views and not really reply to the previous question, but I think the general idea that came out of it was that people have the right not to be punished for saying stuff, but that everyone should always be arguing about what you should say. Another interesting point was that the backlash against political-correctness is often a way for prejudice and 'repugnant' views to sneak back in.
I hadn't realised that the event would last two hours, so by the time it was finished I had fifteen minutes to get right across town. Google told me it would take twenty-four minutes. I ran all the way, round the bottom of the castle cliffs and up along to my first Fringe show: the Vocal Orchestra.
I was a bit late, but they let me in anyway. The Vocal Orchestra are beatboxers and singers - beatboxing is where you make noises into a microphone that sound like music or drums (for those who've never come across it). If it's really good, it can sound almost exactly the same as the original music, but it's all done with voice.
The Vocal Orchestra are really good.
Among other things, they did Teardrop by Massive Attack, got stuck in a time machine and came out in 1723 (Vivaldi), had duels both musical and physical, and used the audience as an instrument (we had to sing notes according to our section). It was great.
I stopped back at the hostel to drop my bag off, and went to meet the ghost tour on the Royal Mile. We heard about the curse of the North Bridge, went up to Calton Hill where witches meet in front of the unfinished Parthenon, wandered through a graveyard with a very scary headstone (weathered to look like someone screaming) and took lots of photos to examine for supernatural apparitions. I got lots of 'orbs', but that was most likely dust caught by the flash. It's amazing how wandering around a graveyard in the dark can make you jump at everything.
I never really understand what happens to the morning. I wander around, and then suddenly it's time to go to something and it's nearly the afternoon. Yesterday I went to look at the Half Price Hut, where you get Fringe tickets for half-price, got myself a thick magazine book with 375 pages that lists all the Fringe shows (there are that many), and went up to the Royal Mile for a walking tour at 11am.
The walking tour was pretty good, going around a few closes on the Mile and explaining such things as punishment for small crimes in the middle ages (nailing your ear to a post), gardyloo (watch out, there's nasty stuff a-coming out the window) and the national animal of Scotland (a unicorn. No one mentioned you were allowed mythical creatures!). Some of these stories I'd heard before, but it was much more real when you could look up at the windows and stare at the ear-post and think that's where they did that.
We also walked through Greyfriar's Graveyard with the memorial to Greyfriar's Bobby (little dog who never left his master's side) and heard about the names on gravestones that appear in Harry Potter. I went back later and found McGonnagal, Black and Thomas Riddell, but couldn't find Crookshanks.
At 3pm I had a talk about censorship at the Book Festival. It was incredibly interesting, with Chika Unigwe as the chair and Patrick Ness as the keynote speaker talking about how, today in a Western society, we more often self-censor than are externally censored. He put this down to fear of consequences and offending people, but also talked about freedom of speech and the courage to say something that might offend someone, but that needs to be said.
Then the floor was opened up to discussion from the audience, at least half of whom were authors at the Edinburgh Writer's Conference. People kept standing up and introducing themselves as China Miéville or Melvin Burgess (well, only those two did. No impersonators) and saying what they thought. It was a bit disjointed at times, with so many people wanting to air their views and not really reply to the previous question, but I think the general idea that came out of it was that people have the right not to be punished for saying stuff, but that everyone should always be arguing about what you should say. Another interesting point was that the backlash against political-correctness is often a way for prejudice and 'repugnant' views to sneak back in.
I hadn't realised that the event would last two hours, so by the time it was finished I had fifteen minutes to get right across town. Google told me it would take twenty-four minutes. I ran all the way, round the bottom of the castle cliffs and up along to my first Fringe show: the Vocal Orchestra.
I was a bit late, but they let me in anyway. The Vocal Orchestra are beatboxers and singers - beatboxing is where you make noises into a microphone that sound like music or drums (for those who've never come across it). If it's really good, it can sound almost exactly the same as the original music, but it's all done with voice.
The Vocal Orchestra are really good.
Among other things, they did Teardrop by Massive Attack, got stuck in a time machine and came out in 1723 (Vivaldi), had duels both musical and physical, and used the audience as an instrument (we had to sing notes according to our section). It was great.
I stopped back at the hostel to drop my bag off, and went to meet the ghost tour on the Royal Mile. We heard about the curse of the North Bridge, went up to Calton Hill where witches meet in front of the unfinished Parthenon, wandered through a graveyard with a very scary headstone (weathered to look like someone screaming) and took lots of photos to examine for supernatural apparitions. I got lots of 'orbs', but that was most likely dust caught by the flash. It's amazing how wandering around a graveyard in the dark can make you jump at everything.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Edinburgh Day 3: Arthur's Seat, the Tron and Kathak Dance
I am sitting in front of a ruined chapel on Arthur's Seat, looking out over a lake in Holyrood Park out towards the Firth of Forth (Arthur's Seat is a hill and the Firth of Forth is the wide mouth of the Forth River [I think I have that the right way round...], opening out into the sea. It pretty much is the sea). I'm waiting for the ball to drop in the tower beside Edinburgh's Folly, the unfinished Parthenon on one of the hills near the city, which will mean it's one o'clock.
I still haven't gone proper grocery shopping and forgot to get anything for breakfast last night, so I went out to find breakfast this morning, after which I was going to climb Arthur's Seat. After much walking I found a Sainsbury's and got myself some blueberries and Scotch pancakes (a.k.a. pikelets), as well as a pair of sunglasses - I hadn't realised I would need them in Scotland. Now I just had to get to Arthur's Seat, which you can see from most parts of the city with its crags and rocky head.
I found some tour buses and reasoned I must be getting close, stared through the bars at Holyrood Palace and walked past the Scottish Parliament, then found a track. It was a very steep track, paved by convicts in the mid-nineteenth century, and runs up below the Salisbury Crags, which are still quite high up and give an awesome view of the old town, the castle and the sea. I originally thought this was Arthur's Seat, but it turned out to be the larger hill in behind. A bit more walking up very steep paths and rock-faces masquerading as paths, and I was at the top, along with at least fifty other people.
The view is incredible. It's the highest point of the city and you can see in all directions, out to the Forth Bridge, over the Old and New Towns, out to Portobello Beach. I braved the midges and went right to the very top rock (the midges seemed to like this very top rock, a lot). The cliffs drop off on almost every side and it's a bit of a puzzle getting down, because so many people have climbed over this hill so many times that there are paths, or things that look like paths, everywhere. I took one that ended in a small chasm, so had to retrace my steps back up and find a better way down.
I think I'm going to have sore legs tomorrow.
I walked up the Royal Mile and stopped in a few shops and a museum of Edinburgh life, then was caught by the former church that is now called Tron, and was holding free music. It's an incredible venue, with exposed stone and ancient stained glass windows behind the stage. An accordionist was playing when I came in, but that soon changed to a pair of singer-songwriters on guitar and box. (I'm not sure what the instrument I'm calling 'box' actually is. It looks like the back of an old speaker, and you sit on it and tap/bang it to get a range of percussion. I will continue to call it a box until I find out what it actually is.) I'm pretty sure one of the guys was a Kiwi, from his accent. I really enjoyed the songs with harmonies.
By this time the previously-sunny day had clouded over, so I made a detour to the hostel to get my Kathmandu jacket. You may remember my ode to my Kathmandu jacket from some time ago. When I got back to town it was properly pouring, so I went to find a coffee shop close to the theatre to sit for the rest of the afternoon with my iPad. Writing in an Edinburgh cafe. Very JK Rowling.
The concert for the evening was the Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company doing both traditional and contemporary Kathak dance. After much thought, I decided that Kathak could also be called slap-dancing - like tap-dancing, but with feet slaps instead of taps. The dancers, both men and women, wore bells around their ankles in the traditional first half, stamping and wending their arms this way and that. The second half was the contemporary half, and I think my favourite. This is strange, because this half did not have bells, and usually I like bells. I think the percussion of the foot-slaps was easier to hear, perhaps, and it's amazing how fast they can do it. The movements also seemed bolder and more impassioned in the contemporary Karthak, and there was lots of diggadiggadiggadig chanting, which I really like and would love to someday learn how to do. I'm not sure if my mouth moves that fast, however...
I still haven't gone proper grocery shopping and forgot to get anything for breakfast last night, so I went out to find breakfast this morning, after which I was going to climb Arthur's Seat. After much walking I found a Sainsbury's and got myself some blueberries and Scotch pancakes (a.k.a. pikelets), as well as a pair of sunglasses - I hadn't realised I would need them in Scotland. Now I just had to get to Arthur's Seat, which you can see from most parts of the city with its crags and rocky head.
I found some tour buses and reasoned I must be getting close, stared through the bars at Holyrood Palace and walked past the Scottish Parliament, then found a track. It was a very steep track, paved by convicts in the mid-nineteenth century, and runs up below the Salisbury Crags, which are still quite high up and give an awesome view of the old town, the castle and the sea. I originally thought this was Arthur's Seat, but it turned out to be the larger hill in behind. A bit more walking up very steep paths and rock-faces masquerading as paths, and I was at the top, along with at least fifty other people.
The view is incredible. It's the highest point of the city and you can see in all directions, out to the Forth Bridge, over the Old and New Towns, out to Portobello Beach. I braved the midges and went right to the very top rock (the midges seemed to like this very top rock, a lot). The cliffs drop off on almost every side and it's a bit of a puzzle getting down, because so many people have climbed over this hill so many times that there are paths, or things that look like paths, everywhere. I took one that ended in a small chasm, so had to retrace my steps back up and find a better way down.
I think I'm going to have sore legs tomorrow.
I walked up the Royal Mile and stopped in a few shops and a museum of Edinburgh life, then was caught by the former church that is now called Tron, and was holding free music. It's an incredible venue, with exposed stone and ancient stained glass windows behind the stage. An accordionist was playing when I came in, but that soon changed to a pair of singer-songwriters on guitar and box. (I'm not sure what the instrument I'm calling 'box' actually is. It looks like the back of an old speaker, and you sit on it and tap/bang it to get a range of percussion. I will continue to call it a box until I find out what it actually is.) I'm pretty sure one of the guys was a Kiwi, from his accent. I really enjoyed the songs with harmonies.
By this time the previously-sunny day had clouded over, so I made a detour to the hostel to get my Kathmandu jacket. You may remember my ode to my Kathmandu jacket from some time ago. When I got back to town it was properly pouring, so I went to find a coffee shop close to the theatre to sit for the rest of the afternoon with my iPad. Writing in an Edinburgh cafe. Very JK Rowling.
The concert for the evening was the Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company doing both traditional and contemporary Kathak dance. After much thought, I decided that Kathak could also be called slap-dancing - like tap-dancing, but with feet slaps instead of taps. The dancers, both men and women, wore bells around their ankles in the traditional first half, stamping and wending their arms this way and that. The second half was the contemporary half, and I think my favourite. This is strange, because this half did not have bells, and usually I like bells. I think the percussion of the foot-slaps was easier to hear, perhaps, and it's amazing how fast they can do it. The movements also seemed bolder and more impassioned in the contemporary Karthak, and there was lots of diggadiggadiggadig chanting, which I really like and would love to someday learn how to do. I'm not sure if my mouth moves that fast, however...
Edinburgh Day 2: The Book Festival
My first event this morning was a talk with Garth Nix, but I wasn't quite sure where it was. My plan was to go to a coffee shop and get some wifi (the hostel only has it in certain places, and you have to pay for it) but then I took too long getting ready and ended up using the very restricted Internet on my phone and staring at a street map. Charlotte Square gardens is where the Edinburgh International Book Festival is held, and it's at the end of George Street, the main street in the New Town.
The New Town has a very regular layout, with statues in the centres of the main intersections and beautiful tall Georgian buildings lining the wide streets. I found Charlotte Square and wandered through the festival foyer into the main lawn with its statue and deck chairs, and the tent venues and temporary bookshops around the outside.
Garth Nix spent the first few minutes telling us that, yes, Garth Nix is his real name, showed us all his book covers and talked about the importance of persistence, or 'being too dumb to give up'. He's currently writing a prequel to the Old Kingdom series called Clariel, which will be out next year. He talked about taking ideas and things that resonate, and making good stories out of them, and how Hadrian's Wall had directly inspired the Wall of the Old Kingdom - he saw a photograph with snow on one side of the wall and sun on the other and it started him thinking... He's a very good speaker, although he does like shaggy dog stories.
I met up with a lovely lady for lunch and we had baked potato and salad in the crypt of a church by the botanical gardens, then wandered around the flea market in Grassmarket, looking at all the antiques and bric-a-brac. My next talk was with SD Crockett and Caroline Green at 5, so we arrived back in Charlotte Square for that and had an icecream before going in.
The talk was on dystopias and their popularity today and in the past, as well as their impact on the world. Crockett has written After the Snow, about a boy in a future ice-age UK, and Green's book is Cracks, set in a dystopian society with mind reading devices and a pretty messed-up ecological system. Many dystopias share the idea of a central lie, making the supposed utopia into a dystopia, and have vibrant settings with huge conflict, which is maybe what makes them so popular. They said it would be nice if dystopian books had an impact on the world through making people think, and this has probably already happened to some extent with some books.
My last talk of the evening was Alain de Botton, in a packed main theatre. He was talking about his book 'Religion for Atheists', where he says that the secular world could learn a lot from the world's religions, and rejected 'the idea coming out of North Oxford' that religion as a whole is a terrible idea and should be scrapped. It was very interesting, and he made some good points including the secular world's emphasis on individuality and cool, dry education and the religious world's emphasis on oratory, community and beauty intertwined with life.
The sun was going down as I walked back to the hostel, casting beautiful silhouettes of the statues along George Street.
The New Town has a very regular layout, with statues in the centres of the main intersections and beautiful tall Georgian buildings lining the wide streets. I found Charlotte Square and wandered through the festival foyer into the main lawn with its statue and deck chairs, and the tent venues and temporary bookshops around the outside.
Garth Nix spent the first few minutes telling us that, yes, Garth Nix is his real name, showed us all his book covers and talked about the importance of persistence, or 'being too dumb to give up'. He's currently writing a prequel to the Old Kingdom series called Clariel, which will be out next year. He talked about taking ideas and things that resonate, and making good stories out of them, and how Hadrian's Wall had directly inspired the Wall of the Old Kingdom - he saw a photograph with snow on one side of the wall and sun on the other and it started him thinking... He's a very good speaker, although he does like shaggy dog stories.
I met up with a lovely lady for lunch and we had baked potato and salad in the crypt of a church by the botanical gardens, then wandered around the flea market in Grassmarket, looking at all the antiques and bric-a-brac. My next talk was with SD Crockett and Caroline Green at 5, so we arrived back in Charlotte Square for that and had an icecream before going in.
The talk was on dystopias and their popularity today and in the past, as well as their impact on the world. Crockett has written After the Snow, about a boy in a future ice-age UK, and Green's book is Cracks, set in a dystopian society with mind reading devices and a pretty messed-up ecological system. Many dystopias share the idea of a central lie, making the supposed utopia into a dystopia, and have vibrant settings with huge conflict, which is maybe what makes them so popular. They said it would be nice if dystopian books had an impact on the world through making people think, and this has probably already happened to some extent with some books.
My last talk of the evening was Alain de Botton, in a packed main theatre. He was talking about his book 'Religion for Atheists', where he says that the secular world could learn a lot from the world's religions, and rejected 'the idea coming out of North Oxford' that religion as a whole is a terrible idea and should be scrapped. It was very interesting, and he made some good points including the secular world's emphasis on individuality and cool, dry education and the religious world's emphasis on oratory, community and beauty intertwined with life.
The sun was going down as I walked back to the hostel, casting beautiful silhouettes of the statues along George Street.
Edinburgh Day 2: The Book Festival
My first event this morning was a talk with Garth Nix, but I wasn't quite sure where it was. My plan was to go to a coffee shop and get some wifi (the hostel only has it in certain places, and you have to pay for it) but then I took too long getting ready and ended up using the very restricted Internet on my phone and staring at a street map. Charlotte Square gardens is where the Edinburgh International Book Festival is held, and it's at the end of George Street, the main street in the New Town.
The New Town has a very regular layout, with statues in the centres of the main intersections and beautiful tall Georgian buildings lining the wide streets. I found Charlotte Square and wandered through the festival foyer into the main lawn with its statue and deck chairs, and the tent venues and temporary bookshops around the outside.
Garth Nix spent the first few minutes telling us that, yes, Garth Nix is his real name, showed us all his book covers and talked about the importance of persistence, or 'being too dumb to give up'. He's currently writing a prequel to the Old Kingdom series called Clariel, which will be out next year. He talked about taking ideas and things that resonate, and making good stories out of them, and how Hadrian's Wall had directly inspired the Wall of the Old Kingdom - he saw a photograph with snow on one side of the wall and sun on the other and it started him thinking... He's a very good speaker, although he does like shaggy dog stories.
I met up with a lovely lady for lunch and we had baked potato and salad in the crypt of a church by the botanical gardens, then wandered around the flea market in Grassmarket, looking at all the antiques and bric-a-brac. My next talk was with SD Crockett and Caroline Green at 5, so we arrived back in Charlotte Square for that and had an icecream before going in.
The talk was on dystopias and their popularity today and in the past, as well as their impact on the world. Crockett has written After the Snow, about a boy in a future ice-age UK, and Green's book is Cracks, set in a dystopian society with mind reading devices and a pretty messed-up ecological system. Many dystopias share the idea of a central lie, making the supposed utopia into a dystopia, and have vibrant settings with huge conflict, which is maybe what makes them so popular. They said it would be nice if dystopian books had an impact on the world through making people think, and this has probably already happened to some extent with some books.
My last talk of the evening was Alain de Botton, in a packed main theatre. He was talking about his book 'Religion for Atheists', where he says that the secular world could learn a lot from the world's religions, and rejected 'the idea coming out of North Oxford' that religion as a whole is a terrible idea and should be scrapped. It was very interesting, and he made some good points including the secular world's emphasis on individuality and cool, dry education and the religious world's emphasis on oratory, community and beauty intertwined with life.
The sun was going down as I walked back to the hostel, casting beautiful silhouettes of the statues along George Street.
The New Town has a very regular layout, with statues in the centres of the main intersections and beautiful tall Georgian buildings lining the wide streets. I found Charlotte Square and wandered through the festival foyer into the main lawn with its statue and deck chairs, and the tent venues and temporary bookshops around the outside.
Garth Nix spent the first few minutes telling us that, yes, Garth Nix is his real name, showed us all his book covers and talked about the importance of persistence, or 'being too dumb to give up'. He's currently writing a prequel to the Old Kingdom series called Clariel, which will be out next year. He talked about taking ideas and things that resonate, and making good stories out of them, and how Hadrian's Wall had directly inspired the Wall of the Old Kingdom - he saw a photograph with snow on one side of the wall and sun on the other and it started him thinking... He's a very good speaker, although he does like shaggy dog stories.
I met up with a lovely lady for lunch and we had baked potato and salad in the crypt of a church by the botanical gardens, then wandered around the flea market in Grassmarket, looking at all the antiques and bric-a-brac. My next talk was with SD Crockett and Caroline Green at 5, so we arrived back in Charlotte Square for that and had an icecream before going in.
The talk was on dystopias and their popularity today and in the past, as well as their impact on the world. Crockett has written After the Snow, about a boy in a future ice-age UK, and Green's book is Cracks, set in a dystopian society with mind reading devices and a pretty messed-up ecological system. Many dystopias share the idea of a central lie, making the supposed utopia into a dystopia, and have vibrant settings with huge conflict, which is maybe what makes them so popular. They said it would be nice if dystopian books had an impact on the world through making people think, and this has probably already happened to some extent with some books.
My last talk of the evening was Alain de Botton, in a packed main theatre. He was talking about his book 'Religion for Atheists', where he says that the secular world could learn a lot from the world's religions, and rejected 'the idea coming out of North Oxford' that religion as a whole is a terrible idea and should be scrapped. It was very interesting, and he made some good points including the secular world's emphasis on individuality and cool, dry education and the religious world's emphasis on oratory, community and beauty intertwined with life.
The sun was going down as I walked back to the hostel, casting beautiful silhouettes of the statues along George Street.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Edinburgh Day 1
There are hills! And cliffs! And bridges everywhere that you don't realise are bridges until you go to the edge and look down - they just seem like normal streets. And there are lots and lots of pointy buildings, you know, with spires and intricate stonework. There's a medieval building just down the road from me that they've built onto in glass, and I really like the clash of the old and the new.
I've probably said this before, but it's strange walking around places that you've heard about but never been to. Sometimes you don't connect where you are until afterwards, and other times you feel you're following in the footsteps of a character or a writer or a king. Street names jump out at you, and you realise that this is it, this is the street where that happened, or in the case of London, one of the actual train stations on the Monopoly board. In Edinburgh, for me, it's been the Royal Mile and Fleshmarket (I've walked through that alley twice today). I've read about Edinburgh in books, and now here it is.
Things I approve of: I can see the sea from the road outside my hostel. Aforementioned pointy bits on buildings. Cobbled streets. Bridges. Tartan, everywhere (the seats on the buses are tartan. Actually, I'm not sure I approve of this...). Bagpipes (they're meant to be here! This is the home of bagpipes!). Cliffs and hills. I'm going to walk some tomorrow, if my itinerary lets me.
I got to my hostel at about a quarter to three, settled in and checked what I'd booked for myself tonight. I'd made the bookings about three months ago, and I couldn't quite remember what I'd booked myself and just how much I have to go and see. The thick wad of tickets should have given me a clue, I guess, but I forgot that I'd booked not one but two things for tonight. And I had to find the Hub by five o'clock, wherever that was.
The Hub turned out to be just down the road from the Castle, and there I enjoyed a lecture about the Classical world's influence on modernity. The lecturer pointed out that classical-style buildings were originally built for a Mediterranean climate, and are actually quite out of place in colder cities. He also talked about the perception that the Classical world was perfect, and the way that it is idealised to contrast against the 'ugly' modern world. Very interesting, especially a bit about how Classical learning and thought has been slowly moving away from the direct influence it had in the Renaissance, to the more removed, subtle influence it has today.
I walked back through Fleshmarket and got a jacket potato filled with vegan haggis for dinner (this is another thing I approve of. I can have 'haggis' without having to think about sheep stomachs). My next stop was a dance production called 'And then, a Thousand Years of Peace' which I absolutely loved. The dancing was incredibly dynamic and emotive, with lots of repetition and percussive movement. The music was strange and rhythmic and built in intensity. Chains fell in silver darts from the ceiling, and there was a long scene in which first the women, and then the men, wrapped themselves in plastic and I was a bit worried about their access to oxygen.
I was trying guess the themes as I watched: love and war, control and relinquishing it, following orders, free will, compromising yourself in the name of your country (they used flags as costumes in a few scenes). At the end the flags were washed and wrung out onto the floor, and then two sheep were brought in! Actual sheep, that baa'd!
It was awesome.
I've probably said this before, but it's strange walking around places that you've heard about but never been to. Sometimes you don't connect where you are until afterwards, and other times you feel you're following in the footsteps of a character or a writer or a king. Street names jump out at you, and you realise that this is it, this is the street where that happened, or in the case of London, one of the actual train stations on the Monopoly board. In Edinburgh, for me, it's been the Royal Mile and Fleshmarket (I've walked through that alley twice today). I've read about Edinburgh in books, and now here it is.
Things I approve of: I can see the sea from the road outside my hostel. Aforementioned pointy bits on buildings. Cobbled streets. Bridges. Tartan, everywhere (the seats on the buses are tartan. Actually, I'm not sure I approve of this...). Bagpipes (they're meant to be here! This is the home of bagpipes!). Cliffs and hills. I'm going to walk some tomorrow, if my itinerary lets me.
I got to my hostel at about a quarter to three, settled in and checked what I'd booked for myself tonight. I'd made the bookings about three months ago, and I couldn't quite remember what I'd booked myself and just how much I have to go and see. The thick wad of tickets should have given me a clue, I guess, but I forgot that I'd booked not one but two things for tonight. And I had to find the Hub by five o'clock, wherever that was.
The Hub turned out to be just down the road from the Castle, and there I enjoyed a lecture about the Classical world's influence on modernity. The lecturer pointed out that classical-style buildings were originally built for a Mediterranean climate, and are actually quite out of place in colder cities. He also talked about the perception that the Classical world was perfect, and the way that it is idealised to contrast against the 'ugly' modern world. Very interesting, especially a bit about how Classical learning and thought has been slowly moving away from the direct influence it had in the Renaissance, to the more removed, subtle influence it has today.
I walked back through Fleshmarket and got a jacket potato filled with vegan haggis for dinner (this is another thing I approve of. I can have 'haggis' without having to think about sheep stomachs). My next stop was a dance production called 'And then, a Thousand Years of Peace' which I absolutely loved. The dancing was incredibly dynamic and emotive, with lots of repetition and percussive movement. The music was strange and rhythmic and built in intensity. Chains fell in silver darts from the ceiling, and there was a long scene in which first the women, and then the men, wrapped themselves in plastic and I was a bit worried about their access to oxygen.
I was trying guess the themes as I watched: love and war, control and relinquishing it, following orders, free will, compromising yourself in the name of your country (they used flags as costumes in a few scenes). At the end the flags were washed and wrung out onto the floor, and then two sheep were brought in! Actual sheep, that baa'd!
It was awesome.
Train to Edinburgh
Okay, that was stressful.
I am now on the train to Edinburgh.
I am facing backwards, because people took my seat I booked and they're fully installed with laptops and are not getting off until Milton Keynes. I have some vague idea that that's not too far away.
***
I was right! It was the next stop. But still not particularly close to London. I'm now sitting in my proper booked seat with a table and a window. We're waiting at Birmingham New Street Station until our scheduled departure time, and I've spent the last hour talking to a lovely lady from Northern Ireland who has family in New Zealand and has now left the train for a quilting exhibition (though she told me I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that).
The stress of my day could have been slightly reduced if I'd left the house earlier, but not by much. I got the bus to the tube to the tube to Euston Station and arrived with twenty minutes to spare, but realised I hadn't written down my reservation number, and the email with it wasn't cached on my iPad. I had to access the Internet to get it off my email account, which is supposedly possible at tube stations, but yu,re never in a tube station long enough for the email to realise it has Internet and download stuff. So when I got off at Euston, I was madly trying to load emails and failing terribly. When I got up to the ticket hall I was going to go up to the ticket office and talk to someone, but then I got Internet (after typing in about three wrong passwords/email addresses) and found my reservation number. Success!
So I went to the ticket machine, which, unlike the ticket office, had no line, put in my debit card and my reservation number only to be told that I had to present the original card I'd used to book the ticket.
Problem: the original card I used to book the ticket was later copied and used in Mexico, so I cut it up.
Back to the ticket office. Twelve minutes to spare. Wait in the line, only to be told I was at the wrong ticket office and the right one was up in the main hall (I hadn't realised that this was not the main hall). Run to the main hall. Find the ticket office, with queue of ten people. Nine minutes to spare, and I see a sign that says train doors shut two minutes before departure so it was really only seven minutes to spare.
I asked the ticket man if I could jump the queue, and he said I had to ask everyone in the queue (fair enough, I guess). So I did. I asked every single person if I could go in front of them and they all said yes! One man told me I should have gotten up earlier, but he still let me past.
The man at the ticket desk was very nice and understood my situation very quickly, took down my reference number, looked at my ID and gave me my ticket as well as instructions to get to the platform. I ran all the way and got there just in time, hauled my suitcase onto the train and tried to find my seat. Which I think is where I came in at the beginning of this post.
The train is a Pendolino that sways so it can go around corners really fast, and it will take just over five hours to get to Edinburgh. I'm excited.
Impressions of the Lake District haiku:
Soft, knuckled green hills.
Full brown rivers, drifting mist.
Strangely no lakes yet.
Ooh! And now I've heard the infamous Virgin Train beeping noises, the ones no one knows the purpose of.
And I guess I must now be in Scotland. Only five minutes until our destination... Where did the last two hours go?
I am now on the train to Edinburgh.
I am facing backwards, because people took my seat I booked and they're fully installed with laptops and are not getting off until Milton Keynes. I have some vague idea that that's not too far away.
***
I was right! It was the next stop. But still not particularly close to London. I'm now sitting in my proper booked seat with a table and a window. We're waiting at Birmingham New Street Station until our scheduled departure time, and I've spent the last hour talking to a lovely lady from Northern Ireland who has family in New Zealand and has now left the train for a quilting exhibition (though she told me I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that).
The stress of my day could have been slightly reduced if I'd left the house earlier, but not by much. I got the bus to the tube to the tube to Euston Station and arrived with twenty minutes to spare, but realised I hadn't written down my reservation number, and the email with it wasn't cached on my iPad. I had to access the Internet to get it off my email account, which is supposedly possible at tube stations, but yu,re never in a tube station long enough for the email to realise it has Internet and download stuff. So when I got off at Euston, I was madly trying to load emails and failing terribly. When I got up to the ticket hall I was going to go up to the ticket office and talk to someone, but then I got Internet (after typing in about three wrong passwords/email addresses) and found my reservation number. Success!
So I went to the ticket machine, which, unlike the ticket office, had no line, put in my debit card and my reservation number only to be told that I had to present the original card I'd used to book the ticket.
Problem: the original card I used to book the ticket was later copied and used in Mexico, so I cut it up.
Back to the ticket office. Twelve minutes to spare. Wait in the line, only to be told I was at the wrong ticket office and the right one was up in the main hall (I hadn't realised that this was not the main hall). Run to the main hall. Find the ticket office, with queue of ten people. Nine minutes to spare, and I see a sign that says train doors shut two minutes before departure so it was really only seven minutes to spare.
I asked the ticket man if I could jump the queue, and he said I had to ask everyone in the queue (fair enough, I guess). So I did. I asked every single person if I could go in front of them and they all said yes! One man told me I should have gotten up earlier, but he still let me past.
The man at the ticket desk was very nice and understood my situation very quickly, took down my reference number, looked at my ID and gave me my ticket as well as instructions to get to the platform. I ran all the way and got there just in time, hauled my suitcase onto the train and tried to find my seat. Which I think is where I came in at the beginning of this post.
The train is a Pendolino that sways so it can go around corners really fast, and it will take just over five hours to get to Edinburgh. I'm excited.
Impressions of the Lake District haiku:
Soft, knuckled green hills.
Full brown rivers, drifting mist.
Strangely no lakes yet.
Ooh! And now I've heard the infamous Virgin Train beeping noises, the ones no one knows the purpose of.
And I guess I must now be in Scotland. Only five minutes until our destination... Where did the last two hours go?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Northern Ireland: The Giant's Causeway, Titanic Exhibition and Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge
So I'm actually back in London now... But I had a great few days in Ireland! Despite forgetting to take my camera with me...
On my first afternoon my lovely hostess took me out to the Giant's Causeway on the north coast. The cliffs are amazing here, with moss and grass clutching onto the rock in a way it just doesn't seem to in New Zealand. But more amazing on this coast are the hexagonal, octagonal and pentagonal volcanic stones leading away into the sea towards Scotland.
This is the Giant's Causeway, built by the giant Finn McCoul to create a path from Ireland to Scotland. Or it's leftovers from a volcanic eruption, whichever you choose to believe. The day was absolutely beautiful: very still with wisps of cloud the sun was painting gold and peach and, later in the night, scarlet. We went to the new visitor's centre, a very modern building set into the hill with black pillars as a facade on one side that I quite liked, and then walked down the gravel path to the stones.
I'd been there before aged 12, and it was strange to be walking these same rocks again, reminded of what it felt like to be 12. I walked all the way to the end of the causeway, and all the way to the top, just because I wasn't allowed to last time. A bit further on we saw Finn McCoul's duck and his boot, and his organ up in the cliff. It's incredible that these stones were formed naturally - they look so strange jutting up side by side and marching down towards the sea.
We walked back along the cliffs, which was quite a climb, and saw the sun going down in its bed of clouds.
On Friday we went to the Titanic Exhibition in Belfast. The exhibition is in a purpose-built building set approximately where the Titanic was built in dry-dock, a silvery four-prowed square with reflecting pools at its base. Inside, some of the walls and ceilings are clad in rough iron panels and an atrium soars up five floors. The exhibition takes you through the early days of Belfast, and then the making of the Titanic.
I never really understood just how much work went into building such a ship. A five man team could do 200 rivets a day, and there were many hundreds of thousands of rivets in the Titanic. A little ride takes you through a mock-up of the shipyard with all its hammering and ringing metal, and then you watch the actual floating of the Titanic out of its dry dock on video. At the end of the video, the frosted glass of the window behind goes unfrosted, and you can see out to the dry dock where the Titanic was actually put to sea more than a century ago. I'd love to know how they can frost and unfrost glass like that.
Next was the furnishing of the ship - when it was put out of dry-dock it was really just a floating shell. The exhibition had mock-ups of first class cabins, which were very much smaller than the one Kate Winslet has in Titanic, as well as those in second and third class. There was also a very good fly-through of the ship where you stand in a room and screens on three walls show what it would have been like to be there.
The next space had the original morse code SOS (or CQD) messages on the walls and the voices of survivors describing the sinking. After seeing all the work that had gone into the building of the ship, and getting to know a few of the people who'd been on board through information panels, the loss of the ship was all the more real and heart-breaking. So many lives lost, so much work swallowed by the waves.
We drove about Belfast for a bit after the exhibition, seeing the City Hall and Victoria Square as well as the beautiful university.
On Saturday I braved the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which is strung across a chasm over the sea and is not good to cross in a high wind. It was originally made by fishermen hundreds of years ago (though the current bridge is quite modern) to get across to an island to catch the salmon migration.
It was quite windy the day I crossed, windy enough that I could stand holding my jacket out like wings and lean into the wind. This made crossing interesting, with whitecaps rippling happily twenty metres below and the rope handrails swinging to the extreme left. I did wonder how many people have fallen to their deaths here. Hopefully none. It was worth it, though, for the thrill alone and for the reward of wandering around the island with its cliffs and little cottage. Then I just had to make it back across... The wind was still as strong, and this time I thought a lot more about my jewellery and how many pieces might spin off into the waves below. None did, thankfully.
We spent the evening at a country barbecue where I won a bar of chocolate for my unparalleled ring-throwing skills (well, almost unparalleled. I was joint first) and eyed the bouncy castle, which was unfortunately full of small children. We drove into Belfast after church on Sunday for a beautiful Sunday dinner, and then I had another more in-depth tour around Belfast, including going up to the viewing platform in the Victoria Square glass dome. You can see out across most of Belfast from here, though the rain was coming in fits and starts and it was a bit misty. The viewing platform is on a pillar and shudders as you move around, but didn't fall over as I'd feared.
And that was my Northern Ireland adventure! My last day was filled with getting the plane, which was quite tiny and attracted turbulence. Arrived safe in London, though. I think I shall have to go back some time soon...
On my first afternoon my lovely hostess took me out to the Giant's Causeway on the north coast. The cliffs are amazing here, with moss and grass clutching onto the rock in a way it just doesn't seem to in New Zealand. But more amazing on this coast are the hexagonal, octagonal and pentagonal volcanic stones leading away into the sea towards Scotland.
This is the Giant's Causeway, built by the giant Finn McCoul to create a path from Ireland to Scotland. Or it's leftovers from a volcanic eruption, whichever you choose to believe. The day was absolutely beautiful: very still with wisps of cloud the sun was painting gold and peach and, later in the night, scarlet. We went to the new visitor's centre, a very modern building set into the hill with black pillars as a facade on one side that I quite liked, and then walked down the gravel path to the stones.
I'd been there before aged 12, and it was strange to be walking these same rocks again, reminded of what it felt like to be 12. I walked all the way to the end of the causeway, and all the way to the top, just because I wasn't allowed to last time. A bit further on we saw Finn McCoul's duck and his boot, and his organ up in the cliff. It's incredible that these stones were formed naturally - they look so strange jutting up side by side and marching down towards the sea.
We walked back along the cliffs, which was quite a climb, and saw the sun going down in its bed of clouds.
On Friday we went to the Titanic Exhibition in Belfast. The exhibition is in a purpose-built building set approximately where the Titanic was built in dry-dock, a silvery four-prowed square with reflecting pools at its base. Inside, some of the walls and ceilings are clad in rough iron panels and an atrium soars up five floors. The exhibition takes you through the early days of Belfast, and then the making of the Titanic.
I never really understood just how much work went into building such a ship. A five man team could do 200 rivets a day, and there were many hundreds of thousands of rivets in the Titanic. A little ride takes you through a mock-up of the shipyard with all its hammering and ringing metal, and then you watch the actual floating of the Titanic out of its dry dock on video. At the end of the video, the frosted glass of the window behind goes unfrosted, and you can see out to the dry dock where the Titanic was actually put to sea more than a century ago. I'd love to know how they can frost and unfrost glass like that.
Next was the furnishing of the ship - when it was put out of dry-dock it was really just a floating shell. The exhibition had mock-ups of first class cabins, which were very much smaller than the one Kate Winslet has in Titanic, as well as those in second and third class. There was also a very good fly-through of the ship where you stand in a room and screens on three walls show what it would have been like to be there.
The next space had the original morse code SOS (or CQD) messages on the walls and the voices of survivors describing the sinking. After seeing all the work that had gone into the building of the ship, and getting to know a few of the people who'd been on board through information panels, the loss of the ship was all the more real and heart-breaking. So many lives lost, so much work swallowed by the waves.
We drove about Belfast for a bit after the exhibition, seeing the City Hall and Victoria Square as well as the beautiful university.
On Saturday I braved the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which is strung across a chasm over the sea and is not good to cross in a high wind. It was originally made by fishermen hundreds of years ago (though the current bridge is quite modern) to get across to an island to catch the salmon migration.
It was quite windy the day I crossed, windy enough that I could stand holding my jacket out like wings and lean into the wind. This made crossing interesting, with whitecaps rippling happily twenty metres below and the rope handrails swinging to the extreme left. I did wonder how many people have fallen to their deaths here. Hopefully none. It was worth it, though, for the thrill alone and for the reward of wandering around the island with its cliffs and little cottage. Then I just had to make it back across... The wind was still as strong, and this time I thought a lot more about my jewellery and how many pieces might spin off into the waves below. None did, thankfully.
We spent the evening at a country barbecue where I won a bar of chocolate for my unparalleled ring-throwing skills (well, almost unparalleled. I was joint first) and eyed the bouncy castle, which was unfortunately full of small children. We drove into Belfast after church on Sunday for a beautiful Sunday dinner, and then I had another more in-depth tour around Belfast, including going up to the viewing platform in the Victoria Square glass dome. You can see out across most of Belfast from here, though the rain was coming in fits and starts and it was a bit misty. The viewing platform is on a pillar and shudders as you move around, but didn't fall over as I'd feared.
And that was my Northern Ireland adventure! My last day was filled with getting the plane, which was quite tiny and attracted turbulence. Arrived safe in London, though. I think I shall have to go back some time soon...
Taekwondo and Flying to Ireland
I'm sitting on a bus to the airport in traffic near Baker Street. Hopefully the traffic will go away soon.
I got up early this morning after about six hours sleep, made some last minute packing changes (though I'm still pretty sure I've forgotten my camera and my glasses...), decided I had no time for breakfast and ran for the bus, only to find it absolutely full at 6.50 in the morning. It was a double decker bus. So I had to wait for the next one.
When I got to North Greenwich Station I began to realise that this is the last time I will see soldiers and police and purple-shirted games-makers and tourists wandering around for the Olympics, and felt a bit sad. There's still the Paralympics, but that's in a few weeks and I don't know if it'll be the same. I've enjoyed living in Olympics London - there's a kind of excitement in the air, and the predicted transport apocalypse never eventuated. In fact, my trains and buses were pretty empty.
I guess I know why: everyone had packed onto buses at 6.50am.
Now I'm at Lord's Cricket Ground. I'm amazed at how many statues and sculptures I'm seeing as we wend through the streets of London. Of course I knew there were lots, but on this particular route there seem to be hundreds.
When I boarded my tube train, it hit home that this actually wasn't that early in the morning - even though I still felt half asleep and I hadn't had any breakfast (I always have breakfast), these were normal commuters on their way to work. They got up this early every day.
So really, you probably want to know about the Taekwondo. It was really good, despite the changing of the draws so I wasn't watching any New Zealanders and the terrible directions and fences everywhere. Okay, so maybe some of me getting lost was due to specifically passing through the 'no exit' signs and refusing to do what everyone else was doing, but there was one very important place where there should have been a sign and THERE WAS NOT. After a ten minute detour and a pause at security (apparently my glasses case looks like a bomb when it's empty), I got into the ExCel Centre, which is ginormous but has no Olympics shop where you can buy T-shirts. I know, I walked its entire length.
This may be a ranty post.
I'd taken the gondola/cable car across the river from North Greenwich (after standing in two consecutive queues to get a ticket and then board) which was amazing, and not as scary as I'd been led to believe. You get beautiful views of the O2 and the buildings of Canary Wharf and The City, as well as the Olympic Park and a whole swathe of London. If you can, take your pet dog with you - it means you get an entire car to yourself.
Next came the journey from the station to the ExCel, to which I have already alluded.
Once I got into the Taekwondo arena, it was great. Apart from the unenthusiastic family beside me, where the father was at times reading the paper. There were a few seats empty so I moved closer to the action halfway through, and sat among much more interesting people who shouted and cheered satisfactorily.
We saw a demonstration from WTF, the World Taekwondo Federation, where the group of them did a few fighting patterns and broke lots of boards, sometimes three held 1.5m, 2m and 2.5m off the ground in one go. I feel I should learn to do this. I wondered if the floor was bouncy, considering how high they were jumping, but it didn't look like it was.
Then the actual fights started. The officials and athletes were announced, and they all marched out from the backstage area looking very impressive to music. The fight is held on a raised platform in the centre of the room in three bouts of two minutes with a minute's rest in between. The athletes were mostly using kicks to get points, each kick resulting in 1-4 points depending on complexity. I don't remember them mentioning that a spinning kick to the head gets you four points when I was in a tournament, but possibly they didn't want lower-belt teenagers trying to spin-kick each other in the head.
I was watching the quarter-finals and the semis. Some of the opponents were very closely matched, and two fights ended in sudden death rounds, but others were decided almost from the start. It was actually relatively relaxing having no Kiwis to watch - I could pick and choose who to support and not be too invested when they didn't win. The semi-finals were exciting: they decide who will go through to the gold medal fights, so 75% of the athletes we were watching would get a medal. As the pressure built, there were more and more appeals from the coaches or the athletes, asking for a kick to be reconsidered by slow motion video. At this point, the Who Wants to be a Millionaire music came on while the judges deliberated, and the appeal was deemed successful or unsuccessful.
I should really check up on who won the Taekwondo, seeing as I've actually seen it all now.
You've probably guessed from the title that I'm spending a few days in Ireland. The flight wasn't all that interesting, so I'll put the rest in a future post.
I got up early this morning after about six hours sleep, made some last minute packing changes (though I'm still pretty sure I've forgotten my camera and my glasses...), decided I had no time for breakfast and ran for the bus, only to find it absolutely full at 6.50 in the morning. It was a double decker bus. So I had to wait for the next one.
When I got to North Greenwich Station I began to realise that this is the last time I will see soldiers and police and purple-shirted games-makers and tourists wandering around for the Olympics, and felt a bit sad. There's still the Paralympics, but that's in a few weeks and I don't know if it'll be the same. I've enjoyed living in Olympics London - there's a kind of excitement in the air, and the predicted transport apocalypse never eventuated. In fact, my trains and buses were pretty empty.
I guess I know why: everyone had packed onto buses at 6.50am.
Now I'm at Lord's Cricket Ground. I'm amazed at how many statues and sculptures I'm seeing as we wend through the streets of London. Of course I knew there were lots, but on this particular route there seem to be hundreds.
When I boarded my tube train, it hit home that this actually wasn't that early in the morning - even though I still felt half asleep and I hadn't had any breakfast (I always have breakfast), these were normal commuters on their way to work. They got up this early every day.
So really, you probably want to know about the Taekwondo. It was really good, despite the changing of the draws so I wasn't watching any New Zealanders and the terrible directions and fences everywhere. Okay, so maybe some of me getting lost was due to specifically passing through the 'no exit' signs and refusing to do what everyone else was doing, but there was one very important place where there should have been a sign and THERE WAS NOT. After a ten minute detour and a pause at security (apparently my glasses case looks like a bomb when it's empty), I got into the ExCel Centre, which is ginormous but has no Olympics shop where you can buy T-shirts. I know, I walked its entire length.
This may be a ranty post.
I'd taken the gondola/cable car across the river from North Greenwich (after standing in two consecutive queues to get a ticket and then board) which was amazing, and not as scary as I'd been led to believe. You get beautiful views of the O2 and the buildings of Canary Wharf and The City, as well as the Olympic Park and a whole swathe of London. If you can, take your pet dog with you - it means you get an entire car to yourself.
Next came the journey from the station to the ExCel, to which I have already alluded.
Once I got into the Taekwondo arena, it was great. Apart from the unenthusiastic family beside me, where the father was at times reading the paper. There were a few seats empty so I moved closer to the action halfway through, and sat among much more interesting people who shouted and cheered satisfactorily.
We saw a demonstration from WTF, the World Taekwondo Federation, where the group of them did a few fighting patterns and broke lots of boards, sometimes three held 1.5m, 2m and 2.5m off the ground in one go. I feel I should learn to do this. I wondered if the floor was bouncy, considering how high they were jumping, but it didn't look like it was.
Then the actual fights started. The officials and athletes were announced, and they all marched out from the backstage area looking very impressive to music. The fight is held on a raised platform in the centre of the room in three bouts of two minutes with a minute's rest in between. The athletes were mostly using kicks to get points, each kick resulting in 1-4 points depending on complexity. I don't remember them mentioning that a spinning kick to the head gets you four points when I was in a tournament, but possibly they didn't want lower-belt teenagers trying to spin-kick each other in the head.
I was watching the quarter-finals and the semis. Some of the opponents were very closely matched, and two fights ended in sudden death rounds, but others were decided almost from the start. It was actually relatively relaxing having no Kiwis to watch - I could pick and choose who to support and not be too invested when they didn't win. The semi-finals were exciting: they decide who will go through to the gold medal fights, so 75% of the athletes we were watching would get a medal. As the pressure built, there were more and more appeals from the coaches or the athletes, asking for a kick to be reconsidered by slow motion video. At this point, the Who Wants to be a Millionaire music came on while the judges deliberated, and the appeal was deemed successful or unsuccessful.
 |
| Tied at 10 points with 4 seconds to go... |
I should really check up on who won the Taekwondo, seeing as I've actually seen it all now.
You've probably guessed from the title that I'm spending a few days in Ireland. The flight wasn't all that interesting, so I'll put the rest in a future post.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Gymnastics, Athletics and Triathlon
In twenty years I will look back on these blog posts and say "Why? Why didn't I write more during those heady days of the London Olympics?" Answer: hmmm. Have been spending all my time watching the Olympics.
So a return to blogging! I haven't actually been to see any ticketed events yet (that's tomorrow) but I have wandered around the North Greenwich Arena while the gymnastics was on, and I saw the cycling leg of the men's triathlon today.
I went to North Greenwich firstly to go on the bouncy castle Stonehenge that looked like it was life size, but IT WASN'T THERE. I was very disappointed, but decided to make my way through security and into the arena anyway. The North Greenwich Arena is also known as the O2, and I have mentioned it before. It's the giant white circus tent that James Bond once slid down. The actual seats and stage are in the middle, and there are lots of restaurants and a cinema around the outside. You can get to them without a ticket, but you have to go through x-ray machines and have all your water bottles, hair gel and deodorant confiscated.
The elderly lady after me had a walking stick that set off the beeper, so they had to search her with a wand. One of the soldiers on the x-ray machine got out the rubber gloves and Vaseline, then murmured to me that she probably wouldn't appreciate the joke and put them back. The next guy through the x-ray was wearing jandals/flipflops and the soldier told him he wasn't allowed open-toed shoes and was very convincing for at least a minute. The x-ray soldier confided to me that they were a bit bored.
Inside the arena it was packed. I've never seen so many people, and Olympics signs and t-shirts were everywhere. I wandered through, enjoying the atmosphere, and came right to the end where guards were stopping people going behind the scenes. I heard one tourist talking to a security guard, asking if there was something going on in here. He seemed very surprised to find out the Olympics were on.
I was looking for a big screen, but there wasn't really much. The screen outside by the queue shows adverts and nothing else. Apparently there'll be a festival on there soon, but it hasn't started yet.
On Saturday we went to Blackheath where they do have a big screen set up, and watched a lot of sailing (a big cheer went up when they finally changed the channel) and then the Super Saturday athletics with its three British Golds. So much cheering my ears were hurting.
And then today the triathlon was on! It went past Buckingham Palace at lunchtime, so at noon I ran (literally) all the way to Buckingham Palace and joined the crowds standing around the track. I got a really good position right by the fence, and ate my banana while I waited for the next lap.
First came the whistle. The stewards who were lining the pedestrian crossing hurried everyone to the sides, and the first two motorbikes came past, followed by the breakaway group moving very fast and a few more motorbikes. Everyone waved their flags and flashed their cameras and cheered. A minute later the peloton arrived in the same way and then we were back to waiting for the next lap.
It was a lot of fun, and great to actually see all those athletes close up. When the last lap had gone past, I ran back to work to catch the end of the race on the BBC live video. I was afraid that the triathletes would be able to run ten km faster than I could run two, but I was back in time to see the last lap of the running track Unfortunately the New Zealanders weren't quite up there with the medals, but it was fun to see it anyway.
Tomorrow I'm off to the Taekwondo. They changed the draws of the matches so I won't actually see any kiwis, but I guess it will be good anyway. I will report back!
So a return to blogging! I haven't actually been to see any ticketed events yet (that's tomorrow) but I have wandered around the North Greenwich Arena while the gymnastics was on, and I saw the cycling leg of the men's triathlon today.
I went to North Greenwich firstly to go on the bouncy castle Stonehenge that looked like it was life size, but IT WASN'T THERE. I was very disappointed, but decided to make my way through security and into the arena anyway. The North Greenwich Arena is also known as the O2, and I have mentioned it before. It's the giant white circus tent that James Bond once slid down. The actual seats and stage are in the middle, and there are lots of restaurants and a cinema around the outside. You can get to them without a ticket, but you have to go through x-ray machines and have all your water bottles, hair gel and deodorant confiscated.
The elderly lady after me had a walking stick that set off the beeper, so they had to search her with a wand. One of the soldiers on the x-ray machine got out the rubber gloves and Vaseline, then murmured to me that she probably wouldn't appreciate the joke and put them back. The next guy through the x-ray was wearing jandals/flipflops and the soldier told him he wasn't allowed open-toed shoes and was very convincing for at least a minute. The x-ray soldier confided to me that they were a bit bored.
Inside the arena it was packed. I've never seen so many people, and Olympics signs and t-shirts were everywhere. I wandered through, enjoying the atmosphere, and came right to the end where guards were stopping people going behind the scenes. I heard one tourist talking to a security guard, asking if there was something going on in here. He seemed very surprised to find out the Olympics were on.
I was looking for a big screen, but there wasn't really much. The screen outside by the queue shows adverts and nothing else. Apparently there'll be a festival on there soon, but it hasn't started yet.
On Saturday we went to Blackheath where they do have a big screen set up, and watched a lot of sailing (a big cheer went up when they finally changed the channel) and then the Super Saturday athletics with its three British Golds. So much cheering my ears were hurting.
And then today the triathlon was on! It went past Buckingham Palace at lunchtime, so at noon I ran (literally) all the way to Buckingham Palace and joined the crowds standing around the track. I got a really good position right by the fence, and ate my banana while I waited for the next lap.
First came the whistle. The stewards who were lining the pedestrian crossing hurried everyone to the sides, and the first two motorbikes came past, followed by the breakaway group moving very fast and a few more motorbikes. Everyone waved their flags and flashed their cameras and cheered. A minute later the peloton arrived in the same way and then we were back to waiting for the next lap.
It was a lot of fun, and great to actually see all those athletes close up. When the last lap had gone past, I ran back to work to catch the end of the race on the BBC live video. I was afraid that the triathletes would be able to run ten km faster than I could run two, but I was back in time to see the last lap of the running track Unfortunately the New Zealanders weren't quite up there with the medals, but it was fun to see it anyway.
Tomorrow I'm off to the Taekwondo. They changed the draws of the matches so I won't actually see any kiwis, but I guess it will be good anyway. I will report back!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)