This weekend, we had nominated Benjamin Franklin House as the new museum to visit for our Explore London project. A London Walks guide had once pointed it out as an interesting place to visit. Benjamin Franklin (one of the founding fathers of America, signer of the Declaration of Independance, flier of kites in electrical storms... you know the one) lived in London for 16 years between 1757 and 1775. His house in Craven street is still there and is decorated and furnished as it would have been when he lived there. When you visit the house you are given a guided tour by Polly Hewson, the daughter of Ben Franklin's landlady (or at least a tour by a staff member dressed up as Polly).

Unfortunately, when we arrived, the museum staff told us that the audio visual elements of the guided tour were not working. We could still do the tour but we would miss out on the extras. We were given the option of rescheduling, which we decided was the best course of action. We live in London after all, it wouldn't be hard to come back and do it at another time. This means, the Benjamin Franklin House part of this entry stops here. It's a post for another day.

Instead, I thought I'd write about fanlights. The same London Walks Guide who pointed out Benjamin Franklin House, also pointed out the fanlights on Craven street. A fanlight is a small window set above the door. They are often decorated with tracery (iron ribs holding the glass in). They are often semi-circular with tracery radiating outwards, like a fan (I guess that's where the name comes from).

On Craven street, the fanlights are all unique in appearance (mostly). The London Walks Guide mentioned that in the olden days, fanlights were used to identify houses (before house numbers were invented.) When inviting people over for a dinner party, you would use the design of your fanlight to decorate the invitation. Even at night it would be quite easy to find the house using the fanlight. Especially as a lantern was often placed just behind the window. It would be a beacon lighting your way.


Then they started to number houses. Definitely not as pretty as a fanlight.


(Before I write up these trivia tidbits on fushmush, I like to research and verify the information. However, I have not found any information on the web about fanlights being used to identify houses. My googleFU was not up to the challenge. So, I was unable to verify the authenticity of the story and I just have to trust the London Walks Guide. Any fushies out there know if this story is true?)

It's the last week of Movember and your last chance to sponsor Andrew before the Mo disappears forever (yay!).


Today, Andrew went to Mo's Emporium to have his moustache professionally trimmed and styled. Mo's is a special barbershop set up just for Movember. There are 4 barbers chairs and 4 male stylists all sporting impressive moustaches. The walls are covered with snapshots of men with moustaches who have been to Mo's for a bit of mo flavoured TLC. There are also framed photos of Movember Mo-dels: Burt Reynolds, Borat, Groucho Marx, and Charlie Chaplin.


After 15 minutes in the chair, Andrew's mo is now a little bit less scruffy (I still can't use the word attractive though.)


Thanks to this week's Mo Bros and Sistas: Anne, Ivan, Paddy, Dav and Matt. Thanks for the donation guys!


Don't forget to sponsor him.

Another round of Sydney mornings and London evenings.

"So, yes, we are at home on a Saturday night. Relaxing on the couch and watching Monkey. We did make it out of the house today. But it was not what you would call a successful day. Our tour at the Benjamin Franklin House was cancelled and our lunch at the National Dining Rooms never arrived. We did manage to meet Natalie and the Londonist Group on a Blue Posts Pub Crawl, but we didn't complete the crawl (a crawl of only 5 pubs, we're a bit sad.) We skipped out at pub number three and headed home via sausages and mash at S&M. Monkey is the perfect end to a mixed but still fun day."




Check out Sue's morning at noodlebowl.net and her photos on Flickr.

When travelling, everyone likes to collect souvenirs from the trip. It's nice to have something that you can look at that will evoke an instant memory of another place, another country, another culture. Of course, what do you collect? Sometimes you can go a bit over the top and before you know your house is full of crap. Crap that reminds you of some place else, but it's still crap.

One of the first trips we went on was to Oktoberfest in Germany with Nat and Teshie. While we were there Natalie mentioned that she collected pins from the different countries she has visited. A little badge of the country's flag or maybe something that the country is known for (like a bull for Spain or a windmill for the Netherlands.) I thought that was a pretty good thing to collect so I started to do the same. In the beginning I just collected a pin for the country. Then I started collecting pins for the cities. Then I started collecting pins for the museums I visited, and pins for the musicals I've seen on the West End. I have quite a collection now.


(I have missed a couple though. I didn't get one in Granada because I sprained my ankle. Anyone going to Granada soon? I'd like a Pomegranate pin please. I didn't get one from Cinque Terre because they don't make them. That's a niche market they are missing out. Don't they want my tourist dollar?)

So in the beginning, I just collected pins. Now a few other things have started to creep on to the list. We've been collecting the Euro coins from each country. I also have a few squashed pennies.


After visiting the Christmas markets in Vienna, I thought I might start to collect Christmas ornaments from the countries we visit. I thought that these would be nice to hang on our tree (when we get a tree when we get a house when we return to Australia). This is a smaller collection as most countries don't have Christmas ornaments out when you visit them in the Summer.


What do you collect when you travel?

On Wednesday evening, Andrew and I were lucky enough to go and see the opera, Monkey: Journey to the West. The opera is based on a famous Chinese story, Journey to the West, written in the 16th century. The 100-chapter story has been condensed a bit (luckily): Monkey is born (from an egg on a mountain top), achieves immortality and then causes a ruckus in Heaven at the heavenly peach party. As punishment for his mischief, Buddha says he must accompany Tripitaka (the boy priest), as he travels to India to get the heavenly scriptures. He is joined by the Pigsy, Sandy and the Dragon Horse Prince on the journey. They face many obstacles along the way but emerge triumphant.

It's an opera but not a traditional opera with fat women and period costumes. It's brand spanking new, created by Damon Albarn (Blur / Gorillaz), Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz) and Chen Shi-zheng. It has animated sequences, funky costumes and the choreography is amazing. It includes martial arts, acrobatics and circus tricks. There are girls with diablos, soldiers that ride unicycles, spider woman doing tricks on ribbons hanging from the ceiling. In the final scene a group of 12 girls spin plates on long thing poles while doing rolls and the splits. They finish with a pyramid, including the spinning plates of course. (Because 1 girl spinning plates isn't impressive enough. You really need 12 girls to make it impressive.)

Of course, most of us know of the story of Monkey from the television show, Monkey Magic, which used to be on the ABC of an afternoon. I can remember playing "Monkey" in the backyard. Alice was Monkey (as the oldest), Annie was Tripitaka, Edward got to pick whether he was Sandy or Pigsy. I was stuck with the leftovers. Patrick was still in nappies. Andrew also played Monkey too, although Simon always got be Monkey.

If the opera makes it to Australia you MUST go and see it!


(Unfortunately, the venue was less than impressive. The opera was performed on a custom stage at the O2. When we got there we discovered that our seats were at the very edge of the tent. About 5m to the right of the END of the stage. To see the action on the stage we would have to sit at a 90 degree angle to our seats. Luckily, it wasn't sold out and when the lights went down we were able to relocate. If we hadn't been able to do that I might have written a different review to the one above. My review probably would have read, "I'm sure it was a great show but we didn't see much of it!" Why do they even bother to sell seats like that? And they weren't cheap either!)