Snow Again

So it’s the weekend before xmas and London is experiencing something that doesn’t normally occur here - snow. And snow in December is even rarer, so I’m told.

This time, I’m prepared - I have the mountain bike(mtb) now and with 2inch wide knobbly tyres instead of 23mm slick road tyres, life should be much easier to ride through it. I can confirm this to be true now as well.

We had a small bit of snow on the Thursday night which made life a little interesting for a few hours as it didn’t settle for long before melting. There was some left by saturday morning, which is what you can see in the pic above.

Then, on Monday afternoon, we watched from the windows at work as the next batch of snow “dumped” on London. Suitably equipped, (as you can see below), I headed home in it while the rest of the roads and trains ground to halt and chaos ensued (right).

With many stories of people taking up to 4 hours to get home, I cruised home in around 45 minutes and included a few stops to take pictures. As you can see, the sides of the roads were fairly clear as the buses were moving extremely slowly and the snow on the roads was just slush - much like the old icee’s from the deli, only not coloured red or blue.

Once home it was time to have some fun in our quieter snow covered streets. Like being back on our bmx’s as kids! Great fun!

And speaking of home, this is the view from home...

Work and Santas

Well, as “silly season” rolls on it has been a bit of a busy time with xmas “functions” of all sorts...

Life at QBE has continued to be an improvement upon ‘life at Axa’ on both the work front and it’s party front. Three of our biggest offices combined for one large xmas bash in London that was (mostly) black tie. I have to take my hat off to the venue’s staff as they catered for all of us and were very timely with the service of what must have been a massive task to prepare so many meals! After this and some presentations and speeches, nearly a thousand people kicked on well into the evening after our three course sit-down meal.

The following day contained its usual round of hangovers and funny stories, with the official photos of the night doing the rounds on the company intranet. I appeared in only one pic and am happy to say that it was neither horrible nor embarrassing in any way.

A few days later, was our divisional luncheon, which included “secret santa” and other gag presentations. It was a fun luncheon that then progressed into the bar section of the restaurant and continued into the evening. I was warned that Qbe were good to their staff in this way am I’m glad not to be disappointed.

With the work xmas do’s out the of the way, it was time for a social xmas gathering for another fun night - The Santa Crawl. The basic jist is that entry to this event is open only under the following criteria:

1. you MUST wear a santa suit

2. you donate upwards of £5 to the British Red Cross

Once you meet the entrance criteria, it’s “away you go”. We began in The Feathers as the Santas gathered. Shar, Katrien, Jess, Stella, Belinda, Tim and Rosh started here with me and well over a hundred other santas. After some time and a few drinks, it was time to move on to pub no.2, The Slug and Lettuce, where Marty n Karyn joined us all. We all continued on and eventually reached pub no.3, The Jugged Hare, where the night continued until the end.

One notable event of the night was a small group who had stopped at the first pub while doing the Circle Line pub crawl and were amazed to see it filled with Santas. It took almost no coaxing for them to join our pub crawl as some of them bought the few spare suits that had been brought along. Two of their members decided to make this a scavenger hunt type night by trying to buy/aquire their santa outfits from other santas already doing the event. All monies went straight into the pot for the British Red Cross, and to their credit, they both had their outfits completed by the end of the night.

At the beginning of the night, it was a bit of a running gag that if any unsuspecting five year old should pass us in the street, they may be somewhat confused or even traumatised by so many Santas. As luck would have it, we encountered such a child out the front of the Jugged Hare. Her rather amused mother had her line up with about twenty of us for a photo. This poor little girl really did not know what to make of the scene around her, so I told her that we were really just his elves and that Santa had given us the day off from the North Pole. At this, she smiled and asked “what did you make for me?”

I simply said that she would need to wait til xmas morning to find out. This didn’t go down too well as she wanted to know now. Thanks to her mum wanting to move on, we weren’t interrogated any further.

Later in the night, with the last tube trains approaching, those of us with a bit of a distance to travel, or not wishing to pay the exorbitant cab fares, headed for nearby Victoria station. We certainly attracted attention as a band of about fifteen Santas converged on the Burger King there for a bit of a feed before dispanding towards our respective tube platforms...

Ps. We managed to raise several thousand ££'s for the British Red Cross

Walking the Thames II

Thinking of you, Aunty Judy... and Uncle Allen...Ah, the joys of English public transport... Is it any wonder I prefer to ride everywhere?

The day started well enough, with blue skies punctuated with plenty of clouds as I made my way to Paddington Station for a train to Culham. I was meeting Pani, Nell, Helen & Heather for another leg of the Thames Path.

You may recall the group of us that did this back in June/July this year. Well, it’s no longer summer here, and with the xmas silly season fast approaching we didn’t have as many takers. “The Plan” was to head out from Culham and head north up through Oxfordshire to Oxford itself.

The first hiccup came when the ticketing machine gave me the wrong set of tickets, which meant that I had to line up again to collect the right ones. (I had pre-bought other train tickets for later in December and it gave me them.) So now with the right tickets, it was time to wait for the boards to show me which platform - 13 as it turned out. I made my way there only to find a train that had it’s lights out and no doors opening. Strange...

I looked around for some sort of train staff, to see one at the other end of the train wave and suddenly blow a whistle. I then had the joy of watching the front half of the train pull away from the platform... Next train to Culham... 4pm, which makes getting to Culham by 10am somewhat difficult.

Nearly an hour later, after a coffee and bacon n egg sarni, I was on the next train to Oxford , which stopped at Appleford - one stop before Culham. From memory, the path of the Thames went slightly south west from Culham past Appleford then turned north towards Oxford. Problem solved and I’d meet the others as they passed Appleford.

As it turned out, Pani and Nell met me at Appleford as Helen and Heather were running late. With cars parked, we finally set out along the Thames Path.

The Thames itself was rather full considering the rains that we’ve had recently and in some points it had a good flow. It did make it hard on the rowing crews we passed enroute to Abbingford (above). Plenty of green on the way to Abbingford, which is quite a picturesque village/township.

We crossed the river at the Abbingford lock to discover that the Thames Path itself continued on the other side - and not in particularly appealing conditions as you can see here (right). I didn’t mind as my hiking boots were brilliant (again).

Continuing along, things became somewhat browner than green at times. I guess late autumn has that effect. The path itself improved for the next few miles until we got closer to Sandford-on-Thames. We could tell we were getting closer to civilisation as there were some large powerlines interrupting the countryside as well as more obvious farming. Oh, and the ‘occasional’ manor was being replaced by more riverside housing.

Across the lock at Sanford-on-Thames is the Kings Arms (pictured below), and thanks to the weather, this is where were finished the day. A warm fire in a pub, ales and hot dinners will always out do the lure of the evening dark closing in with the rain...

A bit of a pity as we only had a few miles left to reach Oxford, but there’s only a limited amount of daylight in the English winter with the sun setting at around 3-3.30pm!

It also turned out that Pani and Nell lived “up the road” from me, so gave me a lift home. (And by “up the road”, I mean about a half hour’s ride away...)

Moving right along...

Bit of a catch up thanks to things being so busy in the last month and for a very good reason - a new job. This meant that Axa were trying their best to get their “pound of flesh” before I left, making things rather busy. Nothing like being given new work up to and including your last afternoon!!

On top of that there was a lot of paperwork to sort out with the new company: QBE European Operations - Casualty Division. I’ve now been with QBE for two weeks and things are going well. I’ve been to the Lloyd’s Box twice now, which has been an interesting experience. Lloyd’s of London is a fascinating set up and the whole “inside-out” building is quite something (left). By the way, the ‘box’ is more of a cubicle on a very open floor. Each underwriter has a ‘box’ or several boxes, while all the brokers move around the floor from box to box with their business. That’s the basic rundown.

I’ve also attended the first of three QBE Christmas parties. This one was black tie, and I received my invite to it the day before. Time to get a tux. I had no time during my lunch break on the day, so with the party starting at 6.30pm, I was ducking into Marks & Spencer where they have mix n match dinner suits. £49 later and I had a full dinner suit. Shortly after this I was at the party with the entire casualty department and many of the brokers we deal with. A great night for meeting people. And the bonus is that I now have a tux for the main QBE Christmas do, which is also a black tie event.

Off the subject of work, a Halloween party was the first other event of any note, but it didn’t quite go to plan. Thanks to the mail strikes, Row, Mark’s and my costumes did not arrive in time. At least we weren’t the only one’s affected by this for the night. Marty n Karyn made quite an entrance as Morticia Adams and Hannibal Lecter (right). We still managed to have a good night despite some of us not having costumes.

Speaking of Marty n Karyn, we had a bit of an Aussie night when Karyn made chicken parmigianas. I picked up some Coopers, both pale ale and sparkling to go with it. (all pictured here) I also brought desert, which was chocolate brownies from Hummingbird - the rather famous cake shop on Portobello Road.

[In case you’re not aware, the only way to get a chicken or veal parmigiana in the UK is to make it yourself.]

Why had I bought brownies from Portobello Road? I’d spent the day there with Jules, obviously...

Jules had been over from Melbourne to visit her family in Italy before spending some time in Ireland and the UK.

We caught up on the Sunday and after a spot of brunch headed along to Portobello Road. Perusing the shops, we came upon a small bakery that Julia had told me about months ago - Hummingbird. They are famous for their cupcakes of all things, and they are very good. Their presentation is not quite as you’d expect from a humble cupcake, but the actual cakes themselves are impressive.

After indulging, we continued along Portobello road and into a smaller market that was opposite the Kombi Cafe (pictured right), which is effectively just a coffee machine in a Kombi van. We poked through some old vinyl records having a good laugh at some of the atrocious old covers, and then some of the other stalls before returning to Hummingbird for seconds (and the brownies). At the time, they were closing so takeaway it was to then enjoy the cakes in a nearby cafe that was open. It was then “see you later”s as I went for the tube to Marty n Karyn’s while Jules headed for Heathrow.

The rest of the time has been fairly busy, but not with too many notable events or happenings. Nice afternoons or evenings in pubs with Shar or with Row n Mark (on Guy Fawkes)...

A trip out to Aston in Birmingham to watch Aston Villa v Tottenham, where I spent some time keeping my head down in an Aston Villa pub. If they’d known I was Spurs, I’d have been lynched! The match was great to watch, but the getting drowned waiting for a train afterwards could have been better...