Snow Worries

I found it weird that when it snowed the other day it affected the tube trains (underground) but I had no worries getting to work on the overland trains. Go figure.

View of our back yard from my bedroom

It snowed a good 4 inches (10cm Raq) on Thursday morning, as you can see. I’m sure it made for some good fun for the kids that did go to school that day.

Our Street at 8am

In other news, a group of us celebrated Waitangi Day last weekend by going on the Circle Line Pub Crawl. Basically it’s thousands of mostly Kiwis drinking on the streets of some classy parts of London from 10am in the morning, loosely following the stops on the Circle Line from Paddington around to Temple. We didn’t make the 10am start, instead joining in about 1:30. It was a great atmosphere where everyone is your friend if you’re standing beside them. I do feel sorry for whoever had to clean up the streets that day – I was embarrassed that our tidy Kiwi image was not evident that day. But being drunk is an excuse for anything right? Anyway, it was a bloody good craic and I’ll be sure to do it again.

Crowd at Westminster where everyone congregates to watch the Haka

Last night I went where this Scott has never gone before; Scottish dancing. Justin’s flatmate Patrick decided to do something different for his birthday by going along to this night up in Camden, so I thought why not? Umm, why not could have been that I’ve never done it before, am not known for my coordination and I didn’t have a kilt! But I didn’t really consider all that when I accepted the invite – I was just up for something new. I did consider all that though when we got there and started watching the first dance. There was a live band on stage – maybe 7 piece with a guy at the mic who step-by-step goes through all the moves e.g. “stand in a circle of 8, all hold hand, dance to your right for 8 beats…” before letting the band play and let the chaos begin. And boy did some of them get complicated. I needed another Guinness… How that would help me concentrate I’m not sure, but I used it more to relax. You generally needed a partner for the dances, but that was never a problem as there were more girls than guys (should have come Turtle), so I found one or she found me - I forget, and gave this malarkey a go. I pretty much had to concentrate the whole time through all the dances, on which way to turn next, which way to spin the partner, who is my partner next? And so on. As well as being mentally demanding, it was quite a work-out. Some dances had us all over the dance floor, which was quite big to accommodate several hundred people. It’s all or nothing with this dancing; either you’re on the side watching or you’re up there doing it giving 100% - there’s no “St John’s shuffle” where you can hold a beer, move your feet a bit and bob your head and you’re dancing. Sorry I don’t have any photos of it, but you’ll have to imagine a hall of people stepping and spinning in lines and circles to Scottish music while trying not to fall over or crash into others. It was quite a laugh and some good ‘wholesome’ fun. Thanks for organizing that Patrick – Happy Birthday.