So it’s Wimbledon time again, and the billboards and the newspapers and BBC2 in the evenings is all about the tennis.  Matt and I actuatlly made it to the SW19 courts ourselves last Monday – in the evening of the first day of play.  Matt had suggested that I dress up for the event, so there I was, in the queue that weaved its way through Wimbledon Park Golf Club for half an hour in a skirt and high heels. 

Still, it was great to be there, to be given the official booklet (A Guide to Queueing for the Championships) and the stickers that confirmed we had.  After 5pm, grounds passes are £14, which I thought was okay as at this time of year, there’s plenty of daylight (and thus tennis) left after 5.

Our grounds tickets didn’t let us into Centre Court, but we found seats around Court 18, where we watched the Australian Guccione lose to Bozoljac from Serbia and then the British Mel South lose to Alyona Bondarenko from the Ukraine.  Even after one day of play, the grass on the court was beginning to show a bit of wear and tear.

After watching the two games, we found a picnic table and shared an expensive burger with a bottle of beer and a glass of wine, while watching Lleyton Hewitt (who won) on the big screen.

The weather’s been surprisingly good for Wimbledon this year – though it did suddenly pour down for half an hour on Friday afternoon, as if to remind us not to get complacent.  This is England after all.

Tash

One of my goals for this year is to run 5km. I’ve already done that, probably 15-20 times since January, at the gym – and now I can go the distance on the treadmill without too much trouble.

The trouble comes when I go outside. Outside and summer doesn’t agree with me here in London, and I can only manage about 100 metres before my nose starts running and my eyes start tearing up. A couple of hundred metres later, I get a side-stitch, I’m out of breath and that’s the end of it.

So it’s kind of worrying that, in just over a month’s time, I’ll be running 5km in a Race for Life event at Regent’s Park. Unfortunately Regent’s Park isn’t a gym. It’s outside. It’s got grass, and given that it’ll be July, it might even be sunny. If you’d like to support me through this trauma, you can click on the rectangular ‘Sponsor Me’ button to the right here.

Perhaps the fact that I’m not only suffering, I’m also raising money for Cancer Research UK, will help me get through.

Tash

Last night, we celebrated Caitlin’s birthday at Abeno Too – a Japanese restaurant on Great Newport Street, near the Leicester Square underground station.  When I’ve thought of Japanese food in the past, it’s been sushi and tempura and restaurants like Feng Sushi in Borough. 

Abeno serves up a rather different fare.  The specialty here is okonomi-yaki: variations on the theme of omelette.  We shared a delicious Osaka mix, which included pork, kimchi (an old favourite from Korea!) and prawn, along with the traditional eggs, dough, ginger and spring onions.  We also got to sample a vegetarian om-soba (fried noodles wrapped in omelette), and some very tasty aubergine and squid side dishes.

Abeno Too isn’t a particularly large restaurant.  Arriving at eight o’clock on a Saturday night, we had to queue outside for a table for five to become available.  Bags and coats were stored inside the bench seats, and the omelettes themselves were cooked on hotplates in front of us.  Unfortunately the small space, the close proximity to other dinners and the hot-plates soon made the temperature inside the restaurant just a few degrees to high to be totally comfortable.

That said, the staff were lovely and the food was something quite special.  Starters, mains, dessert and a couple of glasses of plum wine squash came to about £20 per person.  Apparently the other Abeno branch (located near the British Museum and know as ‘Abeno’ rather than ‘Abeno Too’) is quite a bit bigger, so hopefully we’ll get the chance to check that one out sometime soon.

Tash

Last night was Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Globe. I have my photograph on a steward’s pass now, but the fact that we’re volunteering at such a famous theatre still seems slightly surreal. Then again, the fact that we’re in London still seems slightly surreal. I watched the semi-final of The Apprentice earlier, and there were all the people in suits and the Gherkin, and while I’m not looking for a £100K salary, I work in that city too.

I sold programmes at the Globe last night, and showed people to their seats. And between times, I watched Puck run on and off stage, and Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius fall in and out of love. There were bright pink flowers on stage and an inflatable moon suspended high above the groundlings.

When I took a break, I had to sneak down the stairs and back up again, trying my hardest not to let the heavy wooden doors bang. It felt kind of like sneaking out of class, or being somewhere you shouldn’t be when a lesson’s going on.

When I speak to the other stewards, some have been volunteering at the Globe for four or five years already. I’m beginning to realise myself how hugely addictive this could be.

Tash

Matt and I ‘discovered’ the Guardian newspaper on the Greek Islands, during the early days of our honeymoon.  A year and a half later, it remains my favourite British paper.  It’s got a great book section and podcasts, lots of new media jobs, and um, today in the online version at least there’s an article about volunteering, and work, and that ever popular back-of-the-book picture of… um… me.

One of my goals for this year was to be published in the UK.  This isn’t quite what I meant.

Tash

Since we’ve been in Europe, most of the travelling we’ve done has been surface-based (or, in the case of my day-to-day commute, underground) on trains, buses and the occasional ferry.  However, last weekend, we took to the air again, for an extended long weekend trip to Ireland.

Dates around a long weekend aren’t usually the best time to pick up cheap flight deals, especially when you wait till less than a month before departure to book.  But we did a bit of interneting, but and finally found some Ryan Air flights from London Gatwick Airport to Dublin on the Friday night for around £70 each.  And then, even better, we found some coming back from Belfast to London Stansted Airport for £0 each.  Yep, £0 – which is a total bargain, even when you consider that you have to pay for extras.  There’s an extra charge for checking in at the airport, for example.  There’s a separate extra charge for checking in baggage.  There’s another charge if you want to be one of the first people on the plane.  Still, even when Matt and I decided that we both needed to check ourselves and one bag in at the airport, that flight back only cost £12 for the both of us.  So I’m not complaining really.

There are, however, a couple of things that I would’ve liked to know beforehand, so those are going to be recorded here for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t yet flown Ryan Air and may in the future. 

• London Stansted and London Gatwick are both more than 45 minutes out of London.  The express train ticket to get there may cost more than your plane ticket.
• There might be a delay to the flight’s departure.
• If there is a delay, there are advantages to this, as the check-in process is sped up, and you can find youself getting through the queues and into the departure area relatively quickly.
• There might not be a delay to the flight’s departure.
• If there isn’t a delay, then you’re in luck: getting home and getting to bed at a reasonable hour is much more feasible.  However, it does mean that check-in staff have much more time to enforce the rules – such as the one that says checked-in bags are not supposed to be over 15kg.  Our hand luggage was quite a bit heavier on the way home.
• There are no assigned seats on the flight.  This makes it more important to not spend too much time in duty free.  It was bit of a free-for-all once people got on the plane, as they tried to find a couple of seats together.  In some ways, this was merely reminiscent of commuting (though everyone did get a seat in the end).  In fact, the whole experience was rather like flying across the Irish Sea on the tube.

Still, the great thing about flying is that it was all over relatively quickly.  And on Friday we were in Ireland and worried about finding our hostel, and on Monday we were back in the UK and trying to work out the quickest way home.  And while I’d always prefer to travel by train, there’s perhaps a good case to be made for taking to the air again on future European adventures.

Tash

So, I’ve decided to start a travel blog.  But Tash, I hear you all exclaim, isn’t it a bit late for that?  Well, yes, it probably is.  After all, I’ve been travelling on and off for the last seven years.  Korea.  America.  Canada.  Australia.  Back to New Zealand.  Europe.  The UK since November 2006.  And only now I decide to start a travel blog.  So be it.  There are stories to tell. 

It’s a rather grey morning here in London.  The summer weather of early May seems to have ended, and we’re unsure if it’ll return during the actual summer.  A perfect day then, for mucking around with Wordpress themes, and for my lovely husband to Photoshop one our travel photos into a header image while listening to a web stream of the AFL.  I’m hoping that he’ll be posting here too as time goes on.

Last Friday through to Tuesday was Ireland, a blur of history and culture and landscape which I’ll write about separately.  After that, it’s been back at work, a conference, commuting, catching up on emails. 

Yesterday, I tried spring cleaning our bedroom and marvelled again at how much stuff can be accumulated in a year and a half.  We arrived here with two backpacks.  Now, I doubt even our books alone would fit in two backpacks.  I’m sad to announce that I’ve had to part with two items of well-travelled clothing – the Barkers trackpants that were bought for my America trip when I was 17 and the Pukka T-shirt that I bought in Korea at 21 – finally got to the point where the holes and the fraying deemed them unwearable. 

After a year and a half, I’ve finally got to the point where buying new clothes is okay and where there’s a bit of money in the bank account that allows me to do so.  After a year and a half, our flat is getting too small.  After a year and a half, I’m still not used to commuting.  There’s a Samuel Johnson saying that is often quoted over here:  ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’.  London annoys me sometimes with its greyness, and its public transport, and the shear cost of everything.  But we’re going to the Globe tonight, and there’s still a lot of travelling to do and, despite missing home intensely at times, I’m not tired of this city just yet.

Tash