Merry Christmas All!!!! (New and Improved - now with added pics)

First things first - Merry Christmas to everyone - We hope everyone spent an enjoyable time with their families. More on our xmas later....



Finally!!!!! We've got broadband at home, and our BT line. As if it hasn't taken long enough - we applied for our BT line on the 1st of November - it was finally working correctly on the 23rd December - good going BT - love ya work!

So at least now we should be updating the blog a lot more regularly. (Once I get on top of all the stuff that I've got to update - it's all a bit daunting at the moment.....)

We've been up to all sorts of things since our last entry here.

First, Tory decided to abandon us and go back to Australia. We think she may be coming back here sometime in the not too distant future, but we had a pretty big send off for her.... We went out for some Yum Cha in Soho at a place called Ping Pong and then went to a club somewhere near there.


Damo, Nikki and Tory out at the Club....

The weather has finally turned into what we've been expecting it to be - very cold, with very little sunlight - we can see how you could get a bit down with 6 months of this.... At least we're going to be heading off every now and again to check out some slightly sunnier destinations... It's still not as cold as we've been expectging - still no snow yet!!! We did have icy-fog the other day though which was interesting - it was sort of like walking through a thick cloud.

We went to Windsor Castle for the day a few weeks ago - it was great. It was quite easy to get to - we thought it would be further out of London, but it was only 1 train stop further than what Damo has to go to for work. It's a very stunning place - a little fact that we were unaware of was that it is the oldest inhabited castle in the world - something like one thousand years of occupation. Pretty cool really.

There were a couple of rooms in the palace that are so stunning that it is unbelievable - unfortunately no pictures are allowed within the palace, but here are some from the outside....


Windsor Castle


Us outside Windsor Castle

We've had Stevie Lee leave to head off back to Australia a couple of weeks ago too - it's like there's a mass exodus from the UK for all the aussies we know - hope Travis and Nicole don't bail soon or we'll be in trouble. Anyway, we headed out for a night out to the Shepherd's Bush "Walkabout" pub. WOW! What an experience that was! Shepherd's Bush is like Aussie Central over here in London, and the "Walkabout" is 'supposedly' an Aussie style pub - it was more like a zoo..... ;-)


Stevie, Nik and Damo at the Walkie

After they closed (as all the pubs over here seem to close at about midnight - it's crazy), one of the other people that was out at the pub (Olivia) knew of a house party happening at Chiswick Park - we all walked there, and we partied on and we ended up getting home at about 4.30am - it was huge. It must have been about a 4 bedroom flat, and it was packed from top to bottom. There were people flowing out into the backyard, and because we ended up turning up with no grog, we thankfully helped ourselves to some that had been donated by some kind person.... ooooopsss.....


Nik in the hallway of the houseparty

Damo went out to Soho for his work Christmas Party to a Spanish place called Mesa, and it was quite a big day/night, but Damo had been sick for a couple of days leading up to it, so probably wasn't quite as big as it would've been otherwise, which was probably a good thing. It was on a Thursday, and started at 12:00pm, and he ended up getting home at about 11:30pm, so it was quite a long time of boozing up - he ended up going out with one of the blokes he works with (Elliott) afterwards for dinner to a place called Wong Kei, which was a Chinese restaurant in Soho - they had dinner on a shared table with a couple of gay girls - Elliott was hilarious. Damo was the only one who ended up turning up for work on the Friday, albeit at the leisurely hour of about 11am.... No one else even bothered to make the trip and everybody ended up 'working' from home.

Just a couple of weeks ago we headed off to Germany for the Xmas markets - we went to Frankfurt (mostly due to the fact that there were cheap flights, and Damo is crap at research....), but regardless, we ended up having a pretty great time. There was all sorts of sensational food, and plenty of glüewein (which is basically the german name for Mulled Wine - it's a drink that they have over here in the colder regions - pretty much warm, spiced wine).


Us with glüewein

We both had a great time, and waaaaay too much excellent food. We ate Bratwurst and some other sausage that was called something like rhinesrindswurst or something. The grill that they had for cooking these on was great - it was suspended over a big flame, and swung over the top so that the flames weren't in one spot and burning things - here's a pic to illustrate a little better. They tasted fantastic!!!


Grill Pic

Damo eating Bratwurst

We also ate a giant chocolate covered pretzel, and when by giant, we mean giant - it took both of us an entire day to eat it, and it tasted absolutely exquisite.


Nikki with "The Pretzel" and mulled wine

We did a tour of Frankfurt on a bus - the tour guide was an Italian fella, and we were chatting to a South African bloke, and also another young Italian guy who was a designer. It was a pretty quiet tour - and there's not a lot to Frankfurt - thank god there was a Christmas market on - it would've probably been as boring as sin otherwise - it's a pretty picturesque place though - it's on the banks of the Rhine river, and has quite a nice foreshore, and a few really cool old churches, but little did we realise before we headed over there, it was 80% destroyed in the war, so it's a lot newer than we were expecting. It's also the investment banking capital of Europe and also has the 2nd largest airport, but unfortunately thanks to our fantastically cheap airfares, we actually flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport, and not Frankfurt airport. Frankfurt Airport is about 10 minutes outside Frankfurt - Frankfurt-Hahn is about 2 hours outside of Frankfurt..... If we were going for a week, it probably would've been worth it, but for a weekend, it definitely wasn't. To make matters worse, we're pretty sure that Frankfurt-Hahn is closer to Köln, which would have been an infinitely cooler place to go to than Frankfurt - but with all of this said, we still had a great time anyway!


The main square


From an angle showing the Christmas tree.....

On our way out on one of the nights, just around the corner from where we were staying we noticed an Aussie pub! In Frankfurt!?!?! Surely we had to check this out..... There was bugger all Aussie about it apart from an Aussie flag hanging precariously from one corner of the room, a couple of pieces of currency sticky taped to the wall, and a poster of Ayers rock - oh well, if it drums up business.......


Damo having a VB in Frankfurt!!!!! (Apparently it's export quality now..... In your face, Hendry boys and Daz....) heh heh


Nikki found the weather in Frankfurt to be a little chilly..... here's how much clothing was worn, and there was still the odd whisper here and there about how cool it was....

Since we got back from there, we went to a Christmas party at Claudine and Anna's place in Tooley St (where we were dossing when we first got here), and it was lovely - quite a bit more sedate than we were expecting, but it was good. And even better was that Damo got to 'work from home' the next day..... ;-)

We've just spent the last week or so getting ready for Christmas, and we ended up spending Christmas Day at Travis's and Nic's place - it was great - we got over there at about 11:30, and we didn't end up leaving until about 9:30pm. We watched a few movies on Sky, and sat around chatting and just generally having a good time!


Damo's beers on the windowsill in preparation for the big day....


Our great Chrissie tree with all the prezzies under it.....


Trav and Damo just before Chrissie lunch


Our huge Chrissie spread.....

We also spent a fair bit of time catching up with Family and friends on Skype on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day/Christmas Night and Boxing Day - it was great to see and chat to everyone, and we only wish we could've chatted for longer.

We leave to go to Hogmanay (Edinburgh, Scotland) tomorrow (Saturday) for New Years (Hogmanay is the largest NYE party in Europe), and we're travelling by high-speed train. We've got a few last minute things to do before we leave today.

Anyway, we really hope everyone has had a sensational christmas and we want everyone to know we were thinking of them.

Early November Stuff

We have finally moved into our own place - well it actually happened ages ago, but Damo is busy at work these days and doesn't generally get a chance to update the blog from there, and we don't have 'net access from home yet.

We should finally have a BT line (telephone line) installed at home now (only happened yesterday and we're waiting for it to be activated.....)

The place is great. Here are a few piccies of it....


Lounge/Dining Room



(Another different angle)

Our balcony!!!!! (YAY! You've sort of got to be a bit lucky to get a balcony in London!)

Our kitchen - That's about the full size of it too!!!!

So that's our humble little abode! We're pretty happy with it, and it's in a great location - we're equi-distant between Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush - we're really happy with it.

So after much rig-marole getting into the place and then having a few things not sorted out properly when we went in, it's turned out great - the landlord seems to be pretty decent - he bought us a new bed just because we asked for one, and pretty much everything else in the place was new/pretty new....

The kitchen is tiny, and the bedroom isn't huge (though bigger than one of the other ones that we almost took), but the lounge room is a great size which is a good thing.

We're just going through the finishing touches of getting utilities sorted out, but thus far it's turning out pretty good!

Moving was quite an interesting experience though - we couldn't believe how much crap we had accumulated in such a short period of time since we've been here - but it was a lot!!!! We ordered a taxi (we asked for a people mover), and they sent a small-ish one called a VW Sharam - the driver looked at us, looked at our crap and shook his head - we convinced him we'd make it worth his while, and he gave us a hand to load the car up - we weren't going far, but his car was packed to the absolute brim - Damo ended up riding with him to show him the way, but the car was so full that Nikki ended up having to catch the tube.... :-)


The shamozzle that was our apartment when we first moved in....

Damo had his birthday a while ago and ended up having a great day. Nikki really spoiled him with lots of nice gifts, food and drink - he enjoyed it immensely - there was Beer, Pizza, Chocolate Cake, much F1 artefacts and numerous other gifts which made his day really special.

During this week, we went out to a place called Cafe de Paris in Central London one night during the week to see a production called "Benobo Presents...." - Now this was an interesting experience.

We went out with some people from Damian's work, and while that was all fine, the show itself was positively strange - there was a mixture of stand up comedy, some of which was good - some not - there was a burlesque performer who was strange and came on far too often, there was a particularly old trapeze artist who looked like she had been in cirque de soleil about a hundred years ago and had developed a crack habit in the years since - there was a mime who gave birth to an extremely large balloon - and the pièce de resistance was a guy with a mohawk wearing no shirt and leather pants with a whip, and a chick wearing a dress made out of red crepe paper - he proceded to whip the dress off her - now this sounds like he may have been some sort of master with the whip, but alas - NO - he just whipped the shit out of her - you should have seen the welts on her afterwards - she was bleeding and everything - it was full on - Nikki saw her before the performance up at the bar downing drinks at an alarming rate, which is no surprise considering what she was about to put herself though.....

Anyway, we went downstairs after the show and continued having a few bevvies, and we ended up catching the night bus home (we were still at earl's court at this time), and we got home at about 3am - which wouldn't be that bad except that it was a Thursday night and we had to go to work the next day - we were wrecked.... but all in all we had a good night (albeit strange...)


Mime giving birth to a balloon


Our group at the table (Left to right - Brendan, James, Wendy, Angela, Elliott, Damo, Nikki)

Soon after this was Guy Fawkes Night - this is the celebration of a complete failure, which is quite interesting. Apparently Guy Fawkes was the guy (pun intended.... *groan*) who tried to literally blow up British Parliament a couple of hundred years ago. He failed, and bonfire night is the result.

We ended up hooking up with Elliott from Damo's work and went on a road trip down to Lewes where there are about 8 different bonfire associations (true!!!) to watch the fireworks and bonfires. So we met up with Antony, Karolin and Ian, along with Elliott, Nikki and Damo and started off on our road trip down to the south coast.

We ended up having a scheduled departure time of 18:30 and ended up leaving at about 20:00. These guys drove like maniacs - it was hilarious - it was like we were 17 again! We were in a Rover Metro and the other car that had Elliott, Antony and Karolin in it was a Peugeot 307. About halfway down there we noticed that the Peugeot was blowing a bit of smoke, so after they continued revving the ring out of it for a while, they decided to pull over and find out what was up.

Antony decided that it was probable that he'd forgotten to put the Oil Filler cap back on properly and that the smoke was probably just some leaking onto the exhaust.

But alas, it was not to be - turns out that he'd fried the head gasket.


Nikki standing in ABSOLUTELY FREEZING conditions next to the broken car!

Anyway, after a while of stuffing around with filling up oil, filling up water, waiting for the car to cool down, driving a couple of mile, and repeating it was decided to call the AA guys (RACQ/V/NRMA guys) to get sorted. He suggested that there was a pub car park not far down the road that we could park the car in, and we could continue on our journey.

Only problem here was the fact that we had a two-door Rover Metro, and there were 7 of us - oh well, no matter - we'll just shove Kate in the boot, Nikki on the floor in between Damo's legs and the other 5 in normal seats.

We continued like this and made our way to Lewes - quite a few of the boys were quite drunk by this point in time, and unfortunately we'd missed most of the bonfire/fireworks by this point in time. We made it for about the last half hour - it was still pretty cool, and made for a good story!!!! :-)


PINK!!!!!

GREEN!

So we enjoyed our short time watching the fireworks from the top of the hill instead of actually being amongst it, but then we decided that we might as well head into Brighton for some fish and chips on the beach and a few beers in the pub.

And this was at about midnight. So we ate our fish and chips, we went to some club in Brighton called 'Hayes' (or something like that) and we did it all while 7 of us were piled into a Rover Metro.


(Antony, Elliott, Karolin, Damo)

Now if this didn't already sound like an interesting night, it only got better from here - on the way home from Brighton to London (about 2 1/2 hr drive) we managed to get pulled over by the local constabulary.

EXCELLENT!!! We're buggered now, we thought - so Ian the driver jumps out, marches up to the police car, and explains the situation - the police open the boot and find Kate looking out at them and so they announce that they understand our situation, and rather than issue us with a traffic offence, he will just take our names and addresses and say that we were pulled over under the Terrorism act so he doesn't have to fine us.....

So he proceeds to get all of our names and addresses, but the funny thing was that Nikki was in a black jacket with her hood over her head crouching down, and he didn't see her, so he thought that there were only 6 people in the car - we reckon they would've thrown the book at Ian if they had have realised..... Glad that they didn't because he seemed like a really nice bloke.

We ended up getting home at about 5 am - it was a huge night, but we had a ball!


In the club in Brighton!

Things we've been doing while we're waiting.....

for our apartment!

Well - the biggest thing that we can possibly say is that we've managed to reach a new plane of enlightenment thanks to some help from our new mate.....



Walked past his house, popped in and he gave us the path to enlightenment - consequently we're now sorted. ;-)

Actually we just walked past his place on Baron's Court Road while we were flat hunting. He was almost directly next door to:



Which Damo thought was almost equally impressive - anyone who can design aeroplanes has got to be a bit of a champ....

This week we had a bit of drama with our flat mate - she had her handbag stolen on Tuesday night, and we both get a phone call from her telling us, and also informing us that the handbag had her house keys, and also the address to our flat..... Great thinks us....

Nikki was all the way at the other side of the city, and Damo was still at work, so we were pretty much resigned to the fact that our flat would be ransacked when we got back to it.... Thankfully it wasn't - we had a bit of money floating around at that time (which we've sorted out now), but we had our 2 months rent for the new flat in cash in the flat, so we were packing it.....

Speaking of flats - hopefully we've finally sorted a place out to live - we're waiting to hear back about our reference checks, but we're a little worried at the moment because we are basically starting from scratch as far as credit history goes, so it makes things extremely difficult.

The flat itself is not too bad a place - we're based at a place called Hammersmith Grove, Hammersmith (go to http://maps.google.co.uk and type in 'Hammersmith Grove, W6' and select aerial view, and we're about halfway along the street - up from the Hammersmith undrground stations.)


(This pic of Damo was taken at the Design Museum in London....)

It will, however, leave us absolutely mollified financially. But on the plus side, we absolutely positively can't wait to get into our own place. Damo is pretty happy too because it's probably going to put him about 10 mins closer to work too, so that's a good thing.

Nikki's facing a bit of a dilemma at work at the moment because they're wanting her to go full time, and she is about to tell 'em to go jump (well not in so many words..... but you get the point), so it's going to be interesting how they take that... even though it shouldn't be because she's only temping, but they treat her like she's a full-time employee.

We went out on Friday night with Steve (Damo's mate from his old work - he just got back from 2 weeks around Italy and France) down to Fulham and grabbed a bite to eat and went out to a place called the Havana Club - we had a pretty good night, though not without the usual bull-shite of trying to get the last tube home. So far it's always turned out to be a bit of a nightmare trying to get one of the last tubes home. But we had a fairly decent night anyway.

Last night we decided at the last minute to go and see a stage show we'd heard about called 'The Vegemite Tales' starring Blair Mcdonald (ex-neighbours, ex-big-bother runner-up), and as it turned out, it was it's final night, and it's been running for about 5 years. We hadn't pre-booked and we figured that if we couldn't get tickets off a tout (the name they use for scalpers over here), we'd be pretty much stuffed - Nikki had called earlier and they said that sometimes there might be bring-backs, but we weren't really holding our breath being it's final night - anyway, we went up to the box office at about 7.40 for an 8.00pm start, and asked if they had any tickets and they told us that they had a couple that we could have - we were stoked.



Went and watched the show and it was absolutely hilarious - about a share-house in london of a bunch of aussies - it was piss-funny.


The set...

Anyway - we had a blast - it made Damo a bit nostalgic and miss home a bit, but it was great!

Today (Sunday) Nikki took Damo to a F1 design exhibition at Shad Thames (near Tower Bridge) for Damos birthday to have a look around - he his was in element and loved every minute of it - it was sensational, and it finishes up in a couple of weeks time too, so twas good to get in when we did.

On the walk on the way there, we went past some old stomping ground - this was all the area (over the road from...) where we were dossing when we first got here...


(This picture is particularly for Leigh - Nikki thought she'd be interested to see how much concrete there was here, with one small amount of water running through the middle of it - naturally Nikki dropped her phone in the water.....)



*Damo speaking*The F1 exhibition was sensational - there were definitely times when I was getting goosebumps - hearing Senna talking about the way that he used to concentrate prior to going out qualifying, listening to a Honda V10 getting tuned etc.

It was sensational to read a bit about the history of ground effect and actually hearing some of the people that came up with these ideas talking. Seeing Colin Chapman, reading a bit more about Sir Jack Brabham - there was so much cool stuff to see - it was a bit overwhelming. *end Damo speaking*


Mario Andretti's JPS car...


Nigel Mansell's Championship winning Williams...


Damo next to the Ferrari F2004.... One of (Perhaps the) most dominant F1 cars of all time....

There are a lot more photos but we won't bore you with the details. (Well any more than we have already...)

*Nikki speaking*Bore with the details? You guys didn't have to go to the thing! ;-) *end Nikki speaking*

Anyway, things over here are going swimmingly at the moment, and it would appear at this point in time that we've brought the good weather over with us - they are having one of the mildest October's recorded - there's been all sorts of weather records set since we've been here - Damo reckons it's because we're so hot.... ;-)

Then again it could be global warming from all of the crap that comes out of his mouth.....

Nikki is really loving getting to see her neice and nephew on Skype video - Damo wishes he could say the same.... ;-) *Damo speaking* I know, I know - yeah I'm easy to reach on it.... *end Damo speaking*

Stay safe all, and we miss everyone heaps!

Moving House

OK - sorry we've been bad with our updates lately, but we've had to start looking for new accomodation.

Damo has started his new job too, and it's out at Stockley Park, which is out at Middlesex. On a bad day, it can take 2 hours to get to work, and the same back home.... but on a good day he can do it in 55 mins.... it's crazy. 55 mins isn't too bad for a commute time, but 2 hrs is bad.

We've finally found a place, though our house exploits have definitely not been without drama. We've been screwed over by a couple of landlords twice already, and we're not even into one of the places yet.....

But we got confirmation today that, all things going well, we'll be moving into our own place at Hammersmith on the 21st October - we are sooooooooo looking forward to getting our own place. It's all been a bit of a drama thus far, but we're reasonably happy with the place we've ended up with. We're at a place called Hammersmith Grove. It's about a 5 minute walk to Hammersmith Tube station, which is a fairly good spot for us.

We're toying with the idea of getting a car, so we're probably going to get a rental car for a week to see if it's going to be worthwhile.

Anyway, we haven't got many photos this time around, because our life for the last couple of weeks has consisted of little more than going to work, coming home from work to go flat hunting, coming home and cooking dinner, cleaning up, going to bed - rinse and repeat..... We've been teeing up appointments for every night, and also both days on weekends. If nothing else, it's been good to get out and about to check out the neighbourhoods!

It certainly hasn't been that good viewing the apartments though - we've seen some pretty dodgy places, and our budget is even reasonably fair - for £250 a week, we went to one place that looked like it should have been on a horror movie set - the bathroom was like something we'd never seen before! It was hilarious - a dude answered the door half-naked, closed the door again, asked us to wait, we're pretty sure that he went and extinguished his bong, and then came back and asked us in - the lounge room had a bed on the floor. I'm reasonably certain that we hadn't seen such a dodgy toilet and shower in our lives....

There've been all sort of different places that we've seen. Some good, some not so - but it's finally over now, thank god!!!!!!! It has been an interesting experience though - one day, we had a 6:30pm viewing at Hammersmith, and Nikki had to get from Liverpool St (the other side of London), and it was raining, cold, windy - she had no credit in her phone to ring Damo and tell him that she was running late - which wouldn't have been any good anyway because he was stuck on a tube for an hour and half on the way back from Heathrow... we still ended up making out appointment somehow!!!

The next day, was almost more or less the same, only this day it was capped off by being stood up by the Real Estate agent - they pulled a no-show. We were pretty happy, that's for sure.

It's certainly been a fairly traumatic experience, that's for sure - Damo said that he didn't have anywhere near this much stress on either of the houses that he bought, so it's odd that it's so full on just for a bloody rental place!

Anyway, unless we get screwed again, we'll be in our own place in 2 weeks time! We're having the flat warming in 3 weeks time if any of you want to come over for it.... ;-) We've even got a spare bed!

We saw Ree and Bruce and the kiddly-winks this morning on Skype - it was great to see them!!! Ryan was hilarious - when he could see Nikki on the screen he was trying to hug the screen... It was so nice to see them all. We also found out this morning that Nik's dad, Adrian, has gone and bought himself a fancy-schmancy new car with a sports kit on it - Damo asked him when they were going to go cruising for chicks - he told him that he wouldn't want to show him up now!!! :-)

It was strange today - we were walking along past Earl's Court tube station, and we heard a buzzing noise coming from a bin straight outside the tube - needless to say, we were a little concerned, so Damo mentioned something to a London Underground worker who was standing right near there, and his response was "We don't deal with that sort of thing - that's not our area - we just look after the tube" and then he left it alone. We headed off at a fairly brisk pace thinking it might be best to get out of there sooner rather than later.....

We've had a fairly domesticated day today, catching up on washing, cleaning the unit, and we've pretty much finished packing ready to get out of here when we can. We haven't given notice yet, but we've got to give 2 weeks notice, so we'll probably have a bit of overlap but it won't be too bad.

And now that we've got the unit sorted out, our next trip shouldn't be too far off either! (Thank god.......)

Anyway, we hope you're all well - we miss you all heaps and we've heard whispers that some of you might be coming over here, so we are looking soooooooooo forward to that excessively.

A lot of Australian legends have been dying lately.

We just thought we'd better post to let you know that we're both OK.

2 in a row coming up - Damo only just realised that we had only saved the last posting as draft and not published, so you get twice the boredom this week!!!! :)

Damo heard back about a new contract this week, and he got the job! The biggest drama is that it's located out of London a bit, but it shouldn't be too bad - it's out near Heathrow, so we may be moving a little further out that way - not heaps, because we don't want to live too far out of London, but possibly Hammersmith or somewhere near there (2 tube stops closer to Heathrow than where we live at the moment).

He'll be working for BP, so he's now the one that you get to blame for the high oil prices!!!! It was a pretty painful interview process, with 1 telephone interview, one face-to-face interview out at Sunbury (which is miles away) and 1 more telephone interview.

Damo went for a wander in his lunchhour the other day and went and saw Westminster Abbey. It's only a fairly short stroll from his work, so that's pretty cool!



We caught up with Travis and Nicole for Trav's birthday on Friday night. He was heading off to Russia on Saturday morning, so it wasn't a big night, but it was great to catch up with them. So a big Happy Birthday to Trav..... and have a great time in the big Russki! We went out to a little Turkish restaurant just around the corner from Trav and Nic's place.


Trav.....


and Nicole.

On Saturday we went out to the Portobello Road Markets to have a look around and also to take a couple of piccies of it - it was great.



We didn't buy much , but we had a good afternoon anyway. Saw the house where author George Orwell lived.....



After the markets we headed home to get changed because we were going to meet Tory at her place at London Bridge and then head on down to a little bar/club at Clapham.



We were at Tory's house for ages and we didn't even really end up heading out until about 10.30 but this wasn't that bad because we were all on a budget and we ended up drinking a bottle of Vodka between the 3 of us.... We were both pretty shattered before we headed off to Tory's for the night though and it wasn't looking likely to be a big one, and Damo only went downhill from there and developed into a full-on flu. We only stayed out for perhaps an hour or so and decided that we'd try and get the last tube home - and we literally did - we had to change 3 times on the way home, and each one that we got was the last one on the line, so we were really lucky.

Today is Sunday and we're having a much deserved day in bed, just chilling out with Damo trying to recuperate from the flu. We've got to go over Steve's place at 4.30pm for a bbq, but that's about the extent of the day.


Steve....

Anyway, we miss everyone and hope you're all kickin' ass!

(*Damo speaking*)First and foremost, Vale Brocky! You were a hero of mine for my entire life, and this was only enhanced many years ago when I got the opportunity to meet you.

We were walking around outside the circuit down at Indy one year, and I spotted Peter sitting in a gutter talking to what I think were a few of his mates. Anyway, we went up to him, excused ourselves for interrupting, and asked whether he'd mind posing for a photo with us. I was soooo nervous, because I was worried that one of the few people on the planet that I idolised would turn out to be a complete dick by saying something like 'get stuffed' or other, but instead he replied 'Of course not! You guys are the ones that make me who I am. I wouldn't exist without you'.

I think this story sums up how much of a legend he really was, and also sheds light on not only was he one of (the?!) best Australian racing drivers ever, but also that he was a real human being with a very down-to-earth outlook on life. Notwithstanding the polariser times, he was a shining beacon in Australian motorsport, and I have no doubt that his legacy will live on.(*end Damo speaking*)

The last week has been a combination of busy and not so. Damo had a work drinks thing organised by his Agency on Thursday night. Needless to say that it turned very shabby - out of about 20 people, they drank £1500 of alcohol. They were smoking £20-£30 cigars!!!! Damo ended up in a terrible state of affairs by the time he got home, but he obviously fared a bit better than others because there were a number of them who didn't even make it into work the next day!!!!


This was early in the night - it went downhill from here.....

We went out on Friday night for dinner to Zizzi's at Earl's Court and then we went and saw another movie - it's funny - we very rarely went to the movies when we were back home, and here we have been 2 weeks in a row! Anyway, we went and saw The Break Up with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. We thought that it was only ok, and not quite as side-splittingly funny as we would've hoped! Well that's 2 from 2 now - we might leave the cinema go for a while perhaps!

Ended up going home after that on Friday night, and we woke up Saturday morning with the intent of starting to look for accommodation (we've got to find a new place in the next month or so), so we had a look on the Gumtree and went up to Kensington (Olympia) to have a look at a Lower Ground floor flat, and Wow! What a dump! We were intending to try and get our own place, but based on what we saw, we may end up sharing again yet - we'll have to wait and see. We did a spot of shopping on Saturday morning at an Oxfam shop (an op-shop) near where we live, and Damo picked up a brand new shirt (from an up-market store over here called Zara - it still had the label on) and a pair of almost new Merrell shoes for a grand total of £14!!! Bargain. Of course, Nikki got nothing!!!! :-( We also ended up buying a heap of travel guides for about £0.99 each too, which was a hella bargain!

After this we headed into Westminster and got out of the tube station. It's right where Big Ben and Parliament are, and just across the river from the London Eye - which was our ultimate destination for that afternoon/evening anyway! This was after Nikki had realised that she had bought her spare phone battery instead of her camera battery and we had to head home to get it.....




We took the opportunity to take some more photos of Big Ben and Parliament and also of the London Eye itself.



We wandered across the bridge and Damo queued for tickets for the London Eye for approx. 1/2 hr.

Once we got the tickets, we went and lined up (again) to get onto the Eye itself. Thankfully this line wasn't that long. We were quite amazed to see that after the capsule's are emptied of the previous passengers that the capsules are security screened prior to boarding again - some security guys go around them with mirrors under the seats etc. It was pretty cool. The ride itself takes about 1/2 hr (All up we were in line for longer than what the ride went for),
and we managed to watch the sun set while we were up there - the timing ended up being quite good - as we were coming down the lights on Parliament were turned on, and it makes the building glow like it's made out of gold - it looks spectacular.


The view from the top



and a nighttime view of the Parliament building....




After we finished here, it was about 19:45 at night, and we had heard from Tory that she was heading out to Putney Bridge a bit later on and that we should go along - we headed home, got changed quickly and caught the tube down to Putney Bridge. (It's only a few stops further out on the District line than where we live.)



This is what we though was Putney Bridge, but actually turned out to be the Putney Bridge rail crossing - no wonder we were curious as to why people had been saying that it was a lovely bridge (well as you can see above, the view is quite nice, but the bridge was nothing to look at)..... We were in the wrong place - little did we realise. Anyway, after much confusion we ended up finding the place we needed to go to (It was a club/restaurant called Thai Square) right on the banks of the Thames at Putney Bridge, and by this time, we were both starving, so we met up with Tory, but we pretty much headed straight upstairs to get a meal. The food was quite nice, and the wine was sensational. Finished our meal, met up with Tory and Dave and a few others next door at some bar, and by this time is was getting on to be about 11:30 so we thought we'd better try and get the last tube home.

Damo had to work on Sunday, so Nik ended up doing a heap of housework and went out to the shops to have a quick look around.

We hope everyone is well over there, and we're always thinking of you all!