London visit, museums, and a cinema trip

We went to London on Friday morning of last week, and stayed over until the next evening. Carla was attending a conference on tarot card reading all day Saturday, so I went along with her for the two days as we planned to do stuff together the day before. We wandered around for most of Friday, mainly in the Temple/City area, and visited The Temple Church (famous for the it's Knights Templar history), Dr. Johnson's House Museum (he wrote the first English dictionary) and Sir John Soane's Museum (bizarre!) and lastly the fantastic Muesum of London. We did that in mega quick time as we got there in the last hour of opening time. I really liked the display on the great fire of 1666. We spotted a few other things of interest as well whilst wandering around, such as a possible sunken Roman bath. In the evening we met up with our friends Julie and Pat for an Asian-fusion meal - I managed the chopsticks this time!

I had a long wander around central London the next day, and popped in and out of a lot of interesting little shops. My pal Sarah was in town so I met up with her first and I showed her a couple of film/TV collector shops: Vintage Magazine and The Cinema Store. We spotted ex film director turned restaurant critic Michael Winner and his Mrs. get out of their expensive car! Later, I met up with my pal Gary in the afternoon and we went to the Empire Leicester Square cinema to see "Back to the Future", recently re-issued for its 25th Anniversary and on the back of the blu-ray release. Very pleasing to see it on the big screen at last! The film remains an all-round two hours of top entertainment from Spielberg and Zemekis, film makers working at the top of their game. A very enjoyable experience helped by seeing it in a digital cinema.

I popped down to the lovely Stratford-upon-Avon recently for a two day work related conference - on all things mapping/GIS. That went ok, and it was nice to see the town again. The improvement work to the canal basin and theatre area has nearly been completed. The tourists will be happy!

I'm loving watching Terry Jones "Medieval Lives" on DVD, an irreverent look at the individuals that lived in the era. He covers people such as knights, peasants, minstrels etc. This gives Mr. Jones carte blanche to dress up in every episode, in fun little 'Monty Python' style animations as well! Another top TV show that's turned up on BBC4 is "A History of Horror", expertly presented by lifelong horror fan Martin Gatiss. Episode 1 was excellent, covering the horror classics of the 30's and 40's - can't wait to see the others. Also, we saw recently the latest offering from Ridley Scott, "Robin Hood". Not bad at all, although the accents were a bit muddled. Looked great though!

I see that American Football has returned to Channel 4. My goodness, it's been a while since that channel covered NFL. Back in the late 80's the sport was *essential* viewing for me, as C4 screened a fab clips show of that week's games on a Sunday teatime. I also see they got Gary Imlach back as well.

Family vist and a cinema trip

I always seem to be catching up with this silly blog! You may have noticed that I have severe apathy when it comes to updating it. Sorry!

Still, here goes with what's been happening of late…

Carla's family visit (Saturday 21 - Monday 30 July.)

Carl and Ethan, Carla's father and son, came over for a visit. We met them at Birmingham airport a full day later than planned as they ran into some trouble with connecting flights in the USA. Oh well, it was raining and grey all that Friday so they didn't miss much! The first weekend was spent at home doing stuff locally, as was the second. I was at work for two days into their holiday but one of those days Carla took them into Birmingham city centre to look around the shops. I think they got as far as doing the Bull Ring centre and china town. Ethan decided he didn't want to see the new "Harry Potter" flick, even though it was showing in 3D at the Imax cinema. On the Wednesday, we all went down to London to do touristy stuff there: The Tower of London, a trip on the DLR out to Greenwich, then a boat trip up the Thames to Embankment (near Westminster.) We didn’t have much time at the Tower, after getting to London at lunchtime and having a bite to eat, checking into our hotel etc. Still, it was a nice if brief visit. The place was full of scouts! Onto the river trip, which was wonderful! You get some fantastic views of the city from the river - even when it is grey and windswept. I really want to do that again! To finish off the day we had a meal in Wagamama (yummy noodles and vegan nosh!) and then went to Namco Station arcade in County Hall, so Ethan could play video games until his credits ran out!

Thursday was spent out at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey. What an impressive place this is! We had time to explore a great deal of the palace and its grounds. The staterooms are opulent and a little overwhelming. The whole place is very interesting. I particularly liked the display about King Henry VIII and the Tudor kitchens with plastic re-creations of 500-year-old food! haha. Great stuff. The gardens are beautiful as well. Very scenic, especially as the Thames flows right by there.

In the evening we went back into Central London and went bowling in Bayswater (as it was close to Paddington station) and then we got the train to Bath, so we had a few hours doing more touristy stuff there on the Friday. This included the Roman Baths museum (the commentary playing machines now include added comments from author Bill Bryson!), a tour on one of those hop-on hop-off buses, a nice lunch by the river, and a quick trip to the fashion museum. Bath is a grand city of primarily Georgian architecture, set in a picturesque valley of the river Avon. As the weather was nice that day, it was a great visit.

Over the holidays, I dug out my old Nintendo Gamecube system, which kept Ethan happy! He played my various "Star Wars" video games on it for quite some time. Its amazing to think that five years ago, this system was state-of-the-art, and now everyone treats it like its from the Noah's ark!

Oh, and on the last full day of their visit we went to see….

Transformers at the Nuneaton Odeon. Yep, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg's big screen version of the 1980's toy and cartoon finally got released that weekend. I'd been buzzed about this film since it was announced, being a big fan of the robots in disguise. Well, I have to say I loved it! I came out of the screening with a big smile. Excellent sfx, remarkably funny script, good lead actors, particularly Shia LaBeouf. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially ILM's special effects guys. The only downside is my standard criticism of any Michael Bay film…his editing style takes some getting used to as everything moves at a cracking pace. Anyway, I think this is his best film, and we all enjoyed it so let's give it 9/10! I hope to see this again before it ends its run.

Oh, I have completed (yes! actually completed!!!) my Merlin "Transformers" sticker album. This was achieved by getting a few packs last week, some doubles from friends at work, and then buying a complete box on Sunday! Now I need to try and complete my "Star Wars Episode 3" album (oh where are you no 154?!)

Anyway, it was fun to see Carla's family, being hosts and do touristy stuff with them. Thankfully, all seemed to go well!

I will cover Park Meet, our annual fun day out at Green Park, in a few days time!