Look! Up in the Sky

Aah Monday, never short of something interesting. A fun race with some guy in an Audi on the commute in to work. I caned him because he just wasn’t brave enough over the speed humps, where I could fly past on the flat edges. He certainly flew between each speed hump though!
The next fun part of the day was the mice at work. First one small mouse was spotted a couple of times around the office before eventually being caught and released into the alley out the back. Later a second one was spotted a few times around the office creating some more entertainment for the afternoon...

Anyway, last week thanks to Lisa, who I met at Stonehenge, I discovered The Scoop. This is a smallish amphitheatre next to the London Town Hall on the south bank of the Thames. On Wednesdays, Thursdays n Fridays they have live bands there from 6.30pm onwards - for free. I cruised past on Wednesday evening after work and caught a funky 70’s band for a bit, as well as heading on down on Friday night for the Allstars. They are an eight piece band accompanied by four singers and went through a range of decades of music to have the crowd well and truly into it. Both nights were a great way to finish off what were rather ordinary days of work.
As a side to these two nights, I have now both run and ridden across Tower Bridge - nothing really noteworthy, but still pretty cool to do...

Saturday saw myself and my housemate Paul join Marty n Karyn in Fulham for lunch by the Thames before heading through the riverside parks to Craven Cottage football ground to watch Celtic vs Fulham. A preseason friendly that certainly had the Scots out in droves. The bulk of the supporters at the ground were the Celtic fans - green and white hoops everywhere. The pic on the right is just from the pub by the train station before the game. Funnily enough, Celtic’s ‘away’ strip looks suspiciously like that of the Australian national team - see the pic on the left and judge for yourself (Fulham, by the way, were in white and won 3-1). A decent game amongst the entertaining Celtic fans. The ground staff decided to put the sprinklers on at half time while some of the teams players were warming up or doing some drills on the pitch! Good for a giggle.
From the game it was off to a nearby pub for a few pints and the usual discussions of football and life in general.

Later, I headed over to Matt Beale’s for dinner and a fun evening of movies and some ‘guitar hero’ on the X-box. We needed an early start in the morning, and it was easiest to stay over, which meant that we were away just after 8.30am on our way to Farnborough. It didn’t take us long to get there, but the fun started with the banked up traffic and the messes of trying to get into one of the four large carparks that were in place for the Farnborough Air Show. To say this was a large event would be an understatement. We discovered just how large later in the day when we had to walk pretty much from one end to the other through thousands of people.
Now you may think that Air Shows are for planespotters and ‘anoraks’, but there were many other sorts of people there. This particular air show is a massive aviation trade show as well so there was much on display. We had an initial look around at the planes on display as well as a quick play on a helicopter simulator and a go on the Eurofighter ride, then it was time for the aerial displays.
It kicked off with the new Airbus A380 (left), which you’ve all no doubt heard of, and was it rather impressive to watch the world’s largest passenger airliner basically flung about the sky like a stunt plane (within reason). Okay, so it didn’t do anything as impressive as the fighter planes, but I never thought an airliner could be quite that entertaining. Next up were the fighter planes, which were not only VERY loud, but really what everyone was there to see. Great stuff too! Bit of a flashback to the flybys at the Adelaide Formula 1 Grand Prix, but alas no F-111’s with the massive afterburner flames. Bring out the kid in many of us there!
A good day out at something that is probably outside the norm...