Found Him!

Yesssssssssssss! The day is here! We've waited so long, and now it has finally arrived.

About six months ago, Shelley and I were walking down Putney High Street when we spotted a man who looked strangely familiar. He wore thick-rimmed, round spectacles, a red and white striped sweater and beanie, and leaned on a walking stick as he waved. Sound familiar? It was Wally! And he was waving at the Google Maps car. We found Wally, and now we are on Google Maps street view!

Now in the first frame you can see us walking nonchalantly down the street, chillin' out, maxin', relaxin'.

And in the next frame you can see us standing not-so-nonchalantly behind Wally, looking in a store window that neither of us are interested in.

All those years searching, and it has finally paid off.

Bruges

From the movie, 'In Bruges':

Ken, I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin. If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't.

Perhaps Shelley and I are retarded, because neither of us grew up on a farm, and Bruges impressed us.

Sure, there is nothing to do in the city apart from walk, sit and eat, but it was some of the nicest walking, sitting and eating we've done in a long time. The weather was so nice (not a skerrick of cloud for two days), the waffles were so tasty, the beer was so fruity and delicious, and the hot chocolate had me waking up in cold sweats.

I see I got on a bit of a food rant there.

Medieval buildings and canals! (Balance restored.)


Despite all this, you would have to be retarded if you were amazed by Bruges for more than two days (conveniently enough, that was the length of time we were amazed by it). I'd be surprised if you couldn't count the number of things "to do" in the place on a three-beaded abacus - not counting the food, of course.

And now for some photos.

The canals; majestic one minute...

Decapitated head the next.

Here's an inanimate object trying to eat my waffle...

And here's Shelley, trying to eat an inanimate object.

Monument

This Saturday past, Shelley and I made a trip out to climb the Monument, a big, hollow, stair-filled column with a flaming orb on top. The Monument was built in the late 1600s to commemorate (the end of) the Great Fire of London, which destroyed most of the city. Some argue this should have been called the Counter-Productive Fire of London, but in the end, 'Great' won out.

The column is 202 ft high, and was built 202 ft away from the place where the fire started, at a bakers' house on Pudding Lane. From all reports, the baker was apologetic.

Still, tragedy is the mother of invention, and I think a few nifty ideas sprang from this one, the most notable perhaps being the oven-timer - though it is hotly pursued by the phrase, 'that's going to cost a lot of dough'.

Actually, I wish I could have been in London at the time of the fire to deliver a great one-liner of my own. Picture this: having just extinguished the tail-end of the blaze, the firefighters and I are sitting down to a well-earned meal. Now, taking hold of the bread basket, I lean over to a soot-covered comrade and ask, "Is it just me, or does this bread seem burnt to you?" POOF! Amidst the uproar of laughter I disappear back to the future, where, lo and behold, I find a memorial to my 'Great One-Liner' built in place of the Monument.

The Monument itself was OK; to tell the truth, it is not the tallest thing I have ever seen. When first built, of course, it was the tallest thing in London by far, but now it is fairly obscured by the surrounding buildings. Compounding this, London, though it has some nice land marks, can be quite ugly from high up.

But, it was some fun.