Moving to London In Less Than 2 Weeks

After living in the beautiful Guildford for 8 months, we have decided to move closer to London so that we can have easier access to London to enjoy the london urban life. It will also make it easier to catch up with friends and meet new people.

So with our usual style, we found this lovely 2 bedroom flat in East Dulwich on our first day of hunting. Since we'd done the research on locations and knew where we want to be, it wasn't hard to make a decision once we saw the lovely flat, especially it comes fully furnished.

We are very impressed by the number of parks around us considering it's only 5 miles from the heart of London. The local landmark Horniman Park and Museum is only 2 minutes walk on the East side; to the west is the nice big Dulwich Park; to the North lies the Pecham Rye Park and to the South we've got the ancient Sydenham Hill forest.

 Horniman Museum

The local East Dulwich High Street is very lively and has great vibe, with a lot of shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants lining on both sides. The more posh Dulwich village is also within walking distance.

In less than 2 weeks, we'll be moving in and start a new life once again! We can't wait to explore the local parks and pubs and be part of the local community. Evidently the local online community forum is one of the liveliest in the UK, at least that's where we found our flat!

Looks like winter is over

Today it is sunny and 13 degrees - and I walked up to High Street without a beanie - the first time in about 5 months - so it looks like winter might be over.

Here is some blue sky to prove it:

St. Martha on the Hill - Guildford

Taken yesterday on a walk up our favourite hill to St. Martha's Church.

World's Smallest Cadillac - In London - in 1913!

Found this really funny old video of a tiny Cadillac driving through London in 1913. What a brilliant little piece, just look at the traffic even back then.

It is also great just looking at the old double decker buses running and the way the people were dressed - even the kids wore suits and hats.

Plus it all ends with some high quality silent film slap stick.

Bargains at Guildford Farmers Market

Every Friday & Saturday on North Street Guildford (runs parallel to High Street) there is a farmers market with stalls of fresh fruit & veg, local produce, cakes and flowers.

We tend to go there in the afternoon on the Saturday because they are trying to sell everything they can, so they have lots of specials for a pound, it is quite fun to hear the different stalls all yelling out "Everything in a bag only a pound" or "2 pineapples only a pound, fresh & lovely, come & get em before their gone" etc. The loudest of them all is a girl of about 20 - she is funny and always draws a crowd for her £1 bags of goodies.

You can get some seriously good deals - check out the bag of bananas we got for £1:

24 Bananas only a pound

We also got these satsumas for a pound and the 4 avocados for a pound.

All up we spend about £5 and get enough fruit & veg for the week. Bargain.

The New Forest, Hampshire

Yesterday Sue, Alex & Zoe were going to come around for a Guildford trip but couldn't make it - so we decided to take a day out exploring.

Ying suggested a trip down to the New Forest in Hampshire. The New Forest is the smallest of the national parks in the UK.

It was originally founded as a park by William the Conqueror in 1079, so it's not really a new forest in my opinion.

You can read a bit about The New Forest here.

It is different from an Australian National Park in the sense that it was full of towns, roads, ponies, cattle and loggers. But I guess they are trying to preserve the historical context of it as a working common that is pretty much unchanged by the millennia that has passed since being founded as the private hunting domain of of William.

It was a beautiful place with quaint towns, ponies wandering the streets, wide expanses of heath and actual forest.

The ponies are a special feature of the New Forest and are actual a recognised breed and are all actually owned by the commoners - read about the ponies here.

Highlights were the main town of Lyndhurst. This was a lovely town with a really cute high street, lots of interesting shops (like going to those places like Bowral & Katoomba). The shop that made the biggest statement about the town was their only car dealership just at the start of high street - Ferrari's and Maserati's. I guess thee New Forest commoner is not so common anymore.

After a Cornish pasty in Lyndhurst we drove to a parking place a few miles out of town and hand a walk in the forest. Probably not the best time of year as the trees were all bare and the ground was very soggy, but we walked for about 2 hours and enjoyed the quiet and fresh air.

After the walk we drove around to Beaulieu - a gorgeous little town with a beautiful old manor house, a ruined abbey and ponies wandering the roads. We didn't have long to stay there, but will definitely be back in summer to do some camping and further exploring.

Beaulieu has a French name (coming from William the Conqueror's time) but now has a very distinctly English pronunciation - bew-lew. Here is how to say it: http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=beaulieu (speakers on).

Anyway Beaulieu also houses the National Motor Museum which is supposed to house the biggest collection of vintage cars in the word.

After Beaulieu, we popped into Buckler's Hard for a butchers, but found you had to actually pay to get into the village - serious. With time short we gave it a miss, but this was an important ship building area with the close proximity of logging from the New Forest supporting the industry there. It was one of  the ship building towns that supported Nelson's ship building program.

From there we took the one & half hour drive back home.

Very much a beautiful part of the country and we look forward to doing some camping there in summer.

Dad suggests a book called The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd which is one of those historically based novels that follows life in the forest over the last 1,000 years. I haven't read it yet, but will do so soon.

Ponies resting in the open just near Lyndhurst

Brad and a beautiful old moss covered tree in The New Forest

Ying modelling on a great fallen tree.

Brad re-living the dragon riding scene from Harry Potter 

Just a Few Tickets

I had a 2 day trip up to Blackpool on Thursday & Friday last week going exclusively by train.

Left home at 5.30am on Thursday and got picked at 10.30am at Poulton - so with changes & waiting times, about the same as if I had driven. I did have the luxury of a first class ride on Virgin trains. In first class you get tea & coffee for free plus free use of the wireless internet and they have power points so you can plug in the laptop. So this 2 hours from London to Preston was much better than driving - I could actually get some work done.

Virgin have a funny pricing policy - when I booked my tickets, the first class ticket was only £4 more than standard, and for the return trip, first class was cheaper than standard - go figure!

All up in the 2 days of train trips I had a total of 12 train tickets (not to mention the Oyster card trips on the Underground) and 1 Oyster card receipt.

All up a good trip - but tiring.

Pyjama-Wearing Crackdown in the UK

I thought only the Shanghainese wear Pyjamas in public. But that's not the case, it's apparently quite a universal scene!

A welsh woman was kicked out Tesco supermarket because she was wearing her PJs. Here is what she has to say: "“I’ve got lovely pairs of pyjamas, with bears and penguins on them. I’ve worn my best ones today, just so I look tidy,”

Tesco should give her credit for wearing her very best PJs shopping in their supermarket :)

With the upcoming 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, PJs are also being one of the crackdown targets by the government. Just like crackdown on spitting in Beijing before the Olympics, I"m sure PJs will come back sooner than their disappearance.

Here is the link to the article on TimesOnLine about the PJs crackdown: the article

Best Political Cartoon Ever

He speaks the truth.......

iPlayer - Free TV Viewing in UK

As previously mentioned, the UK still clings to the wastefully outdated TV License regime. So what is a law abiding citizen to do when they want to watch something on telly - like Doctor Who - but they don't have a license (or a telly for that matter)?

Simple - head on over to the BBC iPlayer. This has a majority of the TV shows and movies available to watch after the live broadcast that you can watch on demand for up to 7 days after the original broadcast.

So why can you watch that without a license? well, in the TV Licensing law it says that you must have a license to watch TV programmes `as they are being shown' - in other words - Live to air.

To get around the licensing rules, you just watch it a bit later on iPlayer, which is more convenient anyway because you watch it when you want to - and you don't need a TV License - the BBC say so on their iPlayer site.

Channel 4 (not BBC 4) even have a version as well called 4oD (4 on Demand).

The picture quality is really good as is the sound when streaming - if you have a slow or patchy internet connection, you can even download the TV shows and watch them later in the new iPlayer Desktop whether you are connected to the net or not.

So bugger the telly and the license - watch iPlayer for free!

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The Great UK Freeze Begins to Thaw

I woke up this morning about 6am to the sound of some rain on the windows, "that", I thought to myself "is the end of the snow".

Sure enough once the sun was up enough to shed some light, you could clearly see that the tyre grooves in the compacted snow & ice were showing the road surface.

At lunch time Ying & I had a walk up the street and stepping on what had been deep, firm, dry snow was now soft and very wet slush. Everywhere you walk your feet slip as chunks of semi solid ice give way under foot. Ying saw a young lad of about 6 go for a tumble.

Without gum boots (wellies as they are known here) your feet are wet very soon.

With the temperatures expected to get as high as 6 degrees tomorrow and the following 2 days, we shall soon have no snow left, but plenty of water flowing into the Thames water system.

At least life will get back to normal and the fair weather flyers from Gatwick can get back to normal.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying