Our second attempt at Hello Dolly was more successful. It didn't rain so we actually got see the show at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. The weather was even nice enough for us to have a little pre-show picnic.

Our picnic spread included a teeny-tiny bottle of champagne. I picked up a four pack of these bottles from the Castellane Champagne house in Epernay on our recent visit to France. It didn't quite stretch to fill three glasses of champagne. I think you could drink a bottle of this all by yourself. It's the first bottle of champagne that I've seen with a screw top.

While we picnicked, I checked off another one of the items on my "things to do in London" list - sit in a deck chair in a London park. During summer all the parks in central London have deckchairs that you can hire for a couple of hours.


The show was fantastic by the way. Great songs, fantastic singing, fabulous dancing. Even some tap dancing... with lobsters.

The lease on our apartment is due for renewal at the end of September. It's at this time each year for the past two years that we've had to make the "to stay or not to stay" decision. Will we stay in London or will we move home? I can tell you now that my trip to the theatre other night makes that decision a little harder. In London, I can see a fantastic show like Hello Dolly for only 12 pounds. A few weeks back, it was La Cage aux Folles. Next week, I'm off to see Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Hrm, better review that pros and cons list again.

Rain seems to be a familiar topic around here. The other day, when Andrew and I joined the Flickr Photo Walk around Greenwich, we were soaked through again. We walked around 3km along the Thames Path from Greenwich to the O2 and it rained the entire time. At some point along the walk we had to shelter in some concrete pipes because the rain was so heavy. As a result, we didn't really take that many photos on the photo walk. Our camera doesn't like the rain.



After the sun went down we experimented with a bit of light painting. All you need is a tripod, a long exposure and a torch. While the camera is taking the photo, you draw a picture with your torch. The picture you drew shows up in the final photograph.

Here are some of our light graffiti attempts.


More photos on Flickr.

The other weekend, I headed north to a Pick Your Own farm with Nat, Gemma, Caitlin, Dino and Grant to indulge in a spot of berry picking. (Andrew was away on a man's weekend. So manly that I wasn't allowed to look at the photos when he returned.)

Pick your own farms are pretty popular in England. You can understand why too. It's a day out in the sunshine and you get to take home a tasty bounty of strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. Oh and an icecream at the end of the day doesn't hurt either.

I picked 3kg of strawberries and 1kg of blackberries and it all cost less than 5 pounds. Bargain! I'll be blogging later what I made with my berry bounty.




More photos on Flickr.

Sometimes London has the coolest events.

A couple of Saturdays ago we went to Secret Cinema. As the name suggests, there was a secret - the movie. We bought tickets to the event not knowing which movie we were going to see. The movie surprise is not the only fun thing either. The whole event is themed around the movie that you will be seeing.

While we waited in the queue, we were entertained by Jamaican drummers, a preacher wandered up and down the queue trying to convince us to turn away from the path of sin and some guy in a suit tried to sell us tickets to a dance hall. We tried to figure out what movie we were going to see. It was obviously Jamaican. From the style of dress it was set in the late 60s / early 70s. We had no idea what it was.



Finally we were admitted to the cinema where we discovered which movie we were seeing - The Harder They Come. I'd never seen it before; I'd never heard of it actually, even though it's a famous Jamaican film. It was the first feature film produced in Jamaica.

We struggled with the film. The language was English but the accents were so strong that half the time we couldn't understand what was being said. We just had to sit back and go with da flow man! So I give two thumbs up to the event and maybe a few bananas for the film.

So what did Oscar and Leo find most exciting about their ride on the London Eye? Not that it's a ride on a giant ferris wheel (albeit a very slow ride). Not that it takes you up very high in the sky. No, it was all about how many buses and trains you could spot from the top. Our ride on the eye was punctuated with transport related exclamations. "I can see TWO trains Jessie!". Oh well, at least they enjoyed it.



A few days before the ride on the London Eye, I had been wearing this t-shirt and Leo asked me to tell the story of the shirt. So I told him about the mouse and how the mouse had the job of making the ferris wheel go round and round.

What do you think the Leo's first question was when he saw the London Eye? He asked me, "Where is the mouse?".

More photos and Flickr.