An evening at the BBC

Last week we went along to the BBC TV Centre in West London with Kevin and Davina to be part of the audience for an episode of the comedy series 'That Mitchell and Webb Look.' It was good fun - the show is very funny! - and a fascinating glimpse into how sketch shows are recorded. They had four sets in the studio although we, the audience, could only see two of them so we had to watch the sketches in those sets on a monitor. We were sitting opposite a Newsnight-type set which they got round to last and used for three different sketches.

The series will probably be transmitted around autumn. Look out for the Welsh padlock art show in particular!

Here's me at the BBC:


and here's a rather random picture of me and Kevin with a Dalek. You never know who you'll bump into at TV Centre!

So long Harry!

Sara and I have both avidly followed the Harry Potter saga and so at midnight on Friday, along with our friends Emma and Will, we went along to the bookshop in Dulwich Village to buy our copy of the final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

We arrived at 11.30 but the queue already very loooooongggg....the shop opened up at midnight (prompting cheers from some people in the queue) but we didn't get into the shop until nearly 1am with so many people ahead of us. Despite the long-ish wait, it was actually good fun. Lots of kids were dressed up as wizards and witches and we had to cover our ears as people would lean out of passing cars and shout out the ending! But we eventually bought our copies and Emma read the first page out loud to us as we drove back home.





Sara finished reading the book on Saturday evening and approves ;-) I'm still in the early chapters so don't tell me what happens!

By the way, Will's wife Clare went to the Natural History Museum in the early hours to get her copy and meet JK Rowling herself. Cool, huh? But that's another story...

Excuse the mess...

No doubt you will have noticed we've revamped the look and layout of the blog. Still a few things to work on, especially the picture at the top - St Pauls' isn't in actually in SE5, but it's close and anyway I took the picture and wanted to show it off! It'll do for now...

What do you think so far?

Edit: Obviously, I've now changed the picture from St Paul's to a new piccie of Ruskin Park which really is in SE5. Hurrah!

Saxon Is Your Man!

Because what this country really needs right now is a Doctor... ;-)

A busy summer

Been a bit slack on the blogging front recently, we have been busy, honest!

• Our big summer project is we're in the middle of moving home. We've found a buyer for our flat and have found a home we like in Forest Hill ( a few miles from where we live now, but still in south east London). So far things are going well, but we'll post more details when things become more definite, you know how these things can turn out...

• Dave has now finished the first year of his MSc Human Resources degree, his last exam of the year was at the beginning of June. He's waiting for the results to arrive, but in the meantime enjoying having free time again!

• Sara managed to obtain a discount voucher to the new Skylon restauarant at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank so went along with some friends. It's very swanky and stylish! How did we get in?

• Our cats Poppy and Tilly are doing very well and are quite used to us now! They're very active and love running around the flat which is usually OK except when they do it at two in the morning. Here's a recent piccie of them in/on their 'tower' (a sort of bunk bed for cats):

Fancy a punt?

We went up to Cambridge to see Tori and Andy for a weekend recently. Sara was one of Tori's bridesmaids. It was a gorgeous sunny day so it seemed only right to try out a but of punting on the river Cam. Dave and Andy took turns at the punting although Andy had done it before which frankly was cheating!

Up in the Lake District

We had a great holiday in the Lake District last month (above is a piccie of us on top of Hellvelyn). It was terrific to spend time off just climbing a few mountains and enjoying the scenery. Dave learned how to use his GPS (thanks mum!) and now has a new favourite toy.

Here's a view of where we stayed:


And here's a road sign we came across that you don't usually see in Peckham!

This was a non-league ground for the day...

Dave went to the new Wembley stadium this weekend with a couple of friends to watch the FA Trophy final (Kidderminster v Stevenage), the first cup final at the stadium. Although it was a non-league game, 53,000 people attended! And the game turned out to be a bit of a classic. Kiddermister led 2-0 at half time, but Stevenage got two goals back in the second half and the winning goal in the 88th minute. The stadium is very impressive, apprently the second largest in Europe only Bracelona's ground being bigger.

How will 'Life on Mars' end?

We love Life on Mars. Along with 'Doctor Who', it's been appointment-TV that we'll stay in to watch each week. And on Tuesday it finishes, it will be the last episode. And the big question is - how will it end? Has Sam been in a coma or has he really travelled back in time? I suspect the answer isn't going to be quite that simple...

Although we'll be glad to finally find out what happens to Sam, we're going to miss the show. For once, this is a drama show that really is quitting while it's at the top of it's game.

Meet Poppy and Tilly

The latest additions to our household - Poppy is the one on the left and Tilly on the right. We found them thrugh the Celia Hammond Trust. They had previously been living with around sixty other cats (yes, sixty!) in an old lady's house and CHT persuaded her that she needed to give some of them away. Tilly has a bit of a gammy eye which will hopefully clear up soon. They are still very timid but we're spending lots of time with them and reassuring them we're friendly.

ps - there's lots of new pictures on Flickr of family, friends and places we've been recently. Just click on the Flickr pictures on the right to see them all.

Comics are a boy's best friend

This is a picture of a pile of old 2000AD comics I found in my mum's attic over Christmas. I bought them all in the mid-80s and there's about three year's worth there!

You often hear a lot about the problems of getting boys to read and their subsequent poor literacy standards. Personally, I loved reading as a kid and comics played a big part in helping me learn to read as I absolutely devoured them. I remember reading the Star Wars comics in the late 70's and trying to understand the words in the speech balloons (which will be a big shock to my mum who always thought I only looked at the pictures!). I think it's a shame when kids are discouraged from reading comics, especially boys.

In case you were wondering, yes, I've just re-read all those 2000ADs and they were great! Now what do I do them? Anyone out there fancy taking them off my hands?!

Begone, the lot of you!

I have decided to delete the links to local councillor's blogs that I used to include under 'local issues' (on the right-hand menu). All of them, to a greater or lesser extent, were regularly posting entries that were nothing more than petty point-scoring over other local councillors and politcal parties. There were some genuinely interesting posts about local issues, but I was getting increasingly fed up with their misguided belief that we the 'ordinary' voters give two hoots about how they are so much better than that lot over there. So I have expunged them from SE5 (ha, if only!). Oh, I also expunged a Peckham blog because the author only ever writes scare-strories about the proposed tram link and frankly it was getting boring.

I can't say I have a very high opinion of the calibre of politicians and councillors in our local area. Our MP is none other than Culture Minister Tessa Jowell who is rather infamous for not having a home in the constituency or even in south London. I went along to one of her surgeries in the summer to ask her about the never-ending saga that is phase 2 of the east London Line. (I had to take a day off work as she doesn't hold surgeries outside working hours). Delivery of phase 2 would finally bring the tube to the Camberwell / Peckham area which has long been badly-served by public transport. I was amazed to discover that I knew far more about the latest status of the project than she did, although I had to show her a Hansard transcript of the Transport Minister's question time (2nd question) to prove her information was wrong. She promised to write to Ken Livingstone to share my concerns. A couple of months later, her office sent me a copy of Ken's reply which simply confirmed phase 2 has no funding, and they hoped this addressed my concerns. I gave up.

Now I certainly wouldn't advocate not voting. I think we all have a moral duty to use our vote. But the health of our local democratic politics depends upon how much we trust our politicians to have our best interests at heart, irrespective of which party they belong to. Unfortunately I think the Southwark political scene is far too bogged down with petty feuding and cross-party fighting to inspire this trust. Perhaps the way out of this mess is for more independent councillors and MPs? I'm not sure, but given the current mess I think it's worth a try.

Better late than never

January was busy month which is why we haven't been blogging recently!

Dave completed his MSc exams and is now awaiting the dreaded results...

We spent Christmas in Leeds and Warrington and were back in London for the new year. The big Christmas event was the wedding of Sara's brother Chris and Gillie. You can see some pictures from the wedding at the official photographer's website here. Incidentally, this is the same photogropher whom we hired for our own wedding!

Belated happy new year to everyone.

Rockin' around the Christmas tree

Yes, our Christmas tree is now up! We debated whether to get a real or plastic tree considering the eco-benefits of each. Eventually the real tree choice won, probably only because it was my job to go out and bring a tree home while Sara went out ice-skating at Tower Hill. Now all we have to do is open the presents... :-)

I paid £19 for this view

Another Tranmere away day with Matt last week. We went to Brentford which is the nearest League 1 ground to where I live. Griffin Park is quite famous among away fans for being the only football league ground to have a pub at every corner, although technically this isn't really correct as a couple of the pubs are opposite the relevant corner, but really, who cares? We felt duty-bound to try out a couple of the pubs which were OK but hardly the kind of places you would choose as your regular.

Griffin Park is a relic of the so called "good-old days" when football grounds were architectural disasters. Here's a pic I took. Note the charming pillar-blocking-my-view feature:


Final score was 1-1. Every game I go to now seems to finish 1-1!

A Weekend in Prague

We went to chilly Prague earlier this month for James and Almut's wedding. (congratulations guys!) The wedding was certainly the most international we've been to with English, German and Czech all used and translated accordingly- at times it reminded us a little of the Eurovision Song Contest!

We decided to catch a late Sunday flight back from Prague so that we could see a little of the city before we left. We walked around the old town and nosied around the Christmas fair in the town sqaure. In Where's Wally style, can you spot Sara somewhere below in the fair? ;-)

Our decision to get a later flight cost us dear though. Scheduled to take off 7.45pm we didn't eventually leave until nearly 11pm...eventually getting back home at 2.30am. Urgh.

Overdue football post

I went to watch Aston Villa v Tottenham recently with my Best Man, Mark (his dad used to play for Villa). As a neutral I very much enjoyed the game and Martin O' Neill has really shaped Villa into a tighter and more attacking side than they were under David O'Leary. The big talking point was when Juan Pablo Angel - Villa's main striker - missed a penalty and then scored an own goal all within a couple of minutes!

The final score was 1-1 . Here's a couple of pics I took at Villa Park:

"What I reckon is..."

Here's a couple of great articles I read on t'internet recently:

John Nicholson on how lower league football offers something better than the Champions League

Stephen Tompkins says that Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' has got it half-right

Party Part 3

And finally...

We booked the upper floor of 'The Phoenix' pub in Camberwell to round off the birthday celebrations.

Party Part 2

More piccies from Sara's 30th....

Loads and loads of thanks to Ellie (below) who helped Sara bake all the cakes for the afternoon tea party. (Look at the state of that kitchen!) It was a bit of a squeeze, but we somehow managed to cram in several families including a dozen kids into the flat!






More party shenanigans to follow...