Letters to friends

My Dirty Back Passage

April 9th, 2009

Today, for a bit of color, I thought I would share with you some photo from the back passage a few houses down from my place.

It runs through the middle of 16 blocks of houses, and allows for pedestrian (and dog) access from 1 side of Harringay to the other away from the hustle and bustle of the main thoroughfares. There are also about 3 schools directly adjacent to it, so presumably it offers a safe way for the kiddies to walk to school.

Harringay Passage

Back Alley

It also seems to be a popular place for people to take their dogs for “walks”. I can tell this because despite the availability of special containers every block, there are always dog “walks” all over the alley.

I don't think the dogs can read

People seem to be very worried about the squirrels getting into their yards, and will often put up extreme measures to keep them out.

Squirrels keep out!

No squirrels allowed

Londoners are very environmentally conscious, and every day you can find evidence of many fine individuals putting out furniture and household goods for impromptu recycling. Simply pick and choose from a cornucopia of delights, yours for the carrying off. (Blue leather couch not pictured)

Another man's treasure

Tags: England, London
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Killarney and Ross Castle, Ireland

March 25th, 2009

On the last day of our trip we begin the day by taking a horse and buggy ride through the Killarney National Park to Ross Castle.

Horse and Buggy

Magical Ross Castle

The rest of the day was a boring bus ride back to Dublin along the motorway, although we did stop off at the Rock of Dunamase for a look, and to climb about the ruins.

Tags: Ireland
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The Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

March 24th, 2009

Here are a few pictures from the Cliffs of Moher. They are around 120m tall, and quite impressive.

There is also a cafe / gift shop at the cliffs (built underground), but the prices are a complete rip off, so if you are going, pack a lunch, or snacks.

Cliffs of Moher

Cliffs of Moher with O'Brien's Castle

Tags: Ireland
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The Burren, Ireland

March 24th, 2009

On the way to the cliffs of Moher, we got to travel through The Burren, a rocky area some 250 square kilometers in area.

The Burren

Apparently during the potato famine the government made people build rock fences in this area in exchange for food, and those fences can been seen today, and were often build apropos of nothing, going 1 or 2 km up a hill and then abruptly stopping. Fields would often be divided up by the fences into lots about the size of a suburban house lot. I guess there was no shortage of rocks or people needing busy work.

Here is a good photo of some ridiculous fences on flickr.

The land is good for grazing cattle, who eat the lush grass growing in the cracks between the rocks.

We also got to see a few cliffs by the sea – precursors to Moher. They were only baby cliffs, at 20 or so meters, but they were enough to set off my vertigo.

The Burren cliffs

The two photos above were taken about 100m apart from each other, during a stop to have a look around. In the photo below I was facing away from the sea, and just over the ridge is where I took the top photo.

The Burren road

The Burren is an area of striking desolate beauty, and well worth seeing.

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Clonmacnoise, Ireland

March 23rd, 2009

One of the first places our bus tour stopped was at the old monastery at Clonmacnoise, in the middle of Ireland, on the banks of the mighty Shannon river.

It was founded in 545 AD, although the stone buildings are from the 10th – 12th centuries. It is starting to show its age a little bit.

Monastrey at Clonmacnoise, Ireland

Sarah liked it a lot, since the Chapel on the right of the picture above is the Dowling chapel, so there was a bit of familial pride to be had.

There was a visitor information center which had a 20 minute film about the founding of the place, but to be honest all I can remember was that whoever founded the place built a wooden church there, and then died of the Yellow Plague the next year.

There were also some old Celtic crosses on display from the graveyard. They had been moved indoors to reduce wear and tear from the elements.

Celtic Cross, Clonmacnoise, Ireland

There was also a castle across the road that was in even worse repair.

Clonmacnoise Castle, Ireland

Tags: Clonmacnosie, Ireland
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Dublin, Ireland

March 22nd, 2009

Sarah and I went to Ireland for 5 days. We spent the first 2 in Dublin, and then the next 3 on a bus tour of southern Ireland.

Dublin was a nice enough city, with a walkable center of town. They have a few main shopping streets which have been blocked off from cars, so people can have the run of them. Exactly like Cuba street in Wellington, or Cashel Mall in Christchurch.

The main sculpture in town is the Spire of Dublin, which is a large (120m) spike. The locals have given it many pseudonyms, such as:

The Poker near Croker (a suburb in Dublin)
The Stiffy by the Liffey (The main river in Dublin)
The Skewer in the Sewer
The Stiletto in the Ghetto
The Spire in the Mire
and many more

The Stiffy by the Liffey

It was in Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty, that I first set my eyes on the Tart with the Cart. I mean the Trollope with the Scallop. Actually, it was sweet Molly Malone, immortalized in song, commemorated in statue and nicknamed by the local wags.

Sweet Molly Malone

Personally, I think she got off lighter than two of Dublin’s famous sons – The Prick with the Stick and the The Queer with the Leer. Sadly we didn’t get to see their statues, as there was too much other stuff to do.

After shopping in Grafton Street, which has more buskers per block than anywhere else I have ever seen (U2 apparently got their start busking there), we went to the Dublin City Art Gallery, and the Writers Museum.

We were also going to check out the Wax Museum that the guidebook mentioned, but apparently it had closed down a few years ago. The guidebook had been published after the Wax Museum had closed down, but I guess they had a few extra pages to fill, or left it in for old times sake.

The gallery was pretty good, it focused on Irish artists, and Sarah particularly liked a series of Climate Shit Drawings by Yinka Shonibare (they were just paper collage). He also had a quilt made of eggs that was being shot by some headless manikins, which represented a scene in Gullivers Travels or summit. With art like that, it is no surprise he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004.

The gallery also had Francis Bacon’s studio, which it had transported from London to Ireland after his death. It was just a big messy room, with a bunch of stuff all over the floor, but I guess it was interesting to see. We got in for free, but had read that they charged 7 euro for it normally, which would have been a huge rip off.

The last place we went to see in Dublin was Phoenix Park. With a total area of 712 hectares (1,760 acres), it is the largest enclosed urban park in Europe, and is apparently larger than all of the parks in London combined. There is a massive field where the Pope gave a mass in 1979 to an audience of 1.3 million people, which was about 1/3 the population of Ireland at the time. Because a photo of a huge empty field would be too boring for even me, here is a photo of the huge cross where the Pope gave the mass.

Papal Cross, Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland

Tags: Dublin, Ireland
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Glasgow, Scotland

March 12th, 2009

I went to Glasgow for a 3 day weekend, to visit my old flatmate Ginnie, and her husband Colin. They have lived in Glasgow for the last 4 years, and got married in New Zealand in January.

While I was there they had a ceilidh (which I guess is a sort of Scottish dance party) to celebrate their marriage with the people who couldn’t make it to New Zealand for the wedding. It was an awesome night, with much drinking and sweaty scottish dancing.

There was a 3 piece band playing, and before every song they would explain the steps for dancing in it. Mostly it was running around and spinning each other, which becomes more and more dangerous as the night goes on and everyone has more and more to drink.

Happily, no photographic evidence from the party exists, at least none that I’m going to publish.

The next day Ginnie and Colin took me for a driving tour around Glasgow, and we visited the Burrell Collection, which is a bunch of general museum-y stuff and some paintings that were given to Glasgow by some old guy. The best part was one of the rooms of stuff, which had huge bay windows that opened out into a view into the forest behind the museum. Having the forest behind the displays really gave it an exciting dynamic. It reminded me of the totem pole room in the UBC Museum of Anthropology.

On Monday, my last day, I went into town and had a look around. The Glasgow Museum of Modern Art had some Bridget Riley paintings up, and I got a free tour of the Glasgow Art School, thanks to Colins brothers girlfriend, who works there.

I also went up a scary flight of stairs, which did terrible things to my vertigo, and got a photo of the rooftops.

Stairs at the lighthouse, Glasgow, Scotland

Rooftops of Glasgow, Scotland

Overall, Glasgow was a nice place to visit. Even the dark alleyways are nice.

Alley by Central Station, Glasgow, Scotland

Tags: Glasgow, Scotland
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Art at the Tate

March 1st, 2009

In the last 2 weeks we have been to all the new exhibits at the Tate Modern, and the Tate Britain.

None of them were particularly awesome.

My favourite bits were at the altermodern exhibit at the Tate Britain.

One was a sculpture of a 10 meter high atomic mushroom cloud made out of silverware.

Subodh Gupta - Line of Control

The other was a sculpture and some drawings by Charles Avery. We also saw a huge solo exhibit of his at the Scottish Modern Art Gallery in Edinburgh when we were there at new years. This was more stuff from his island series, which is really impressive.

Charles Avery - Aleph null head

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Todays Groceries

February 27th, 2009

Here is my shopping receipt from Sainsbury’s.

They are the closest big supermarket, but their sales are always buy 1 get 1 free, which means you end up with twice as much stuff as you want, and makes carrying everything home a huge pain.

Right now Google says £1 = $2.80 NZ, or $1.80 Canadian

£1.73 Organic Whole Milk (2 liters)
£2.00 Garlic bread (4 sticks) – 2 for 1
£1.26 Tissues (90 sheets) – the type you blow your nose with
£0.89 Tomato Relish (300g)
£0.88 Onion and Garlic Sauce (500g)
£2.49 Sweet Clementines (2 bags of 8 – they are mandarins) – 2 for 1
£1.99 8 low fat pork sausages
£1.67 frozen peas (907g)

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Greenwich Prime Meridian, London

February 20th, 2009

Yesterday we went to Greenwich to have a look around.

First we checked out the view of the Thames

The river Thames

Then we walked under the Thames using the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

Greenwich Foot Tunnel

Once we got accross, and arrived in Greenwich, we stopped for lunch at Marks & Spenser (a posh grocery shop). £10 for a sandwich, a pasta salad, 2 small juices, 2 small bags of crisps (potato chips) and Sarahs English favorite chocolate, which I originally thought were called Original Walnut Whips, but now I think they might be called Walnut Original Whips.

Walnut Original Whip

For site seeing,we first went to see the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory. I got a photo taken with one foot almost on the East side of the world, and another foot well into the West side, and a third foot hanging out of my backpack, also on the West side.

Jake the Peg and the (Optimus) Prime Meridian

We also had a look at an interesting museum in the old Royal Astronomers house about clocks + seagoing chronometers, and how the first few royal astronomers had to spend 20 or 30 years mapping the moon and its exact position relative to the stars every night to help ocean navigation. One poor guy worked on it for 10 years, but his observations were to sloppy, and they had to be discarded. Sarah and her friend Jade were bored silly by this part, but I found it quite interesting.

Then we went to Queens House (a Queen from a few hundred years ago), where we looked at some art, a spiral staircase without a central column (the first of its kind in England!), and Sarah stood between some columns for a photo

Sarah and Greenwich park

And to round out the day we had a look in at the National Maritime Museum. My favorite bit here was the Stained Glass from the Baltic Exchange, which was moved to the museum in 1992, after a bomb attack destroyed the Exchange. The Swiss-Re Gherkin is built on the site where the Baltic Exchange used to be.

Tags: England, London
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