known infamously as the "the first lady of the sliding scale." She was a well-off, slightly eccentric, society woman from Philadelphia who created singing career for herself, despite having little sense of pitch or rhythm and being barely able sustain a note. Ms. Jenkins was once quoted responding to her critics by simply stating that, "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing." Maureen Lipmann (above) performed the lead role brilliantly, singing out of tune with great skill and conviction, generating more than one good belly laugh. All in all a fun evening.
Sunday we caught up for lunch with friend before hitting the stores on Oxford street. We found a coffee table that we both liked in John Lewis (their Tokyo range). Even better, the shop assistant found one in stock previously returned to have some minor damage repaired. It was marked down almost 50%. We agreed to take it, after being given the option to return it if we weren't satisfied with its condition. It arrives on Wednesday. The store even offered to deliver free of charge. What a bargain!Second, the last major house moving chores were completed. In particular, dozens of large moving boxes were collected on March 12, along with our old matress and an old fax machine. I installed shelving in the storage cupboard in our utility room over the weekend, giving yet more items a permenant home. At last, the spare bedroom no longer looks like a storage cubicle.
We're now making a few decorator touches to give the house a personal feel. Our latest project is a sunny nook in the main bedroom, by the attic-style window. This window faces south and receives regular sunlight throughout the day. We've ordered a new curtain to frame it and a cosy leather chair to relax in while grabbing a dose of Vitamin D. Both items should arrive this week.
Garry has also been contacted by several recruiters, including one woman who seems far more switched on than others he's spoken with so far. He has an interview with her tomorrow, plus another one with Sony. Fingers crossed that Garry will soon have a job.
Parts of southern England have had the driest two consecutive winters since 1920-22. Incredibly, the water authorities are considering garden hose bans in some areas. This sort of decree is certainly something we've become use to in Sydney, but to have same experience in damp, eternally green England is unexpected.
Figures released by the Met Office today show that South-east and central southern England have had:
The map below shows that London's average rainfall compared with averages of the last thirty years. You can see that rainfall is 60-70% below normal (that's the blue bits, while the white bits are normal and the brown, higher than normal).
These reports certainly explain why our first winter in the UK has been surprising free of rain. While the sky overhead is almost permenantly grey, we've had very little rain since arriving. In fact, in the last two months, I can only think of three days where we really received a good soaking. There's certainly been the occassional damp day where you wonder if rain will break-out, but in general, other than a light misting we've rarely seen a serious downpour.
Sadly, we bought plenty of umbrellas and expensive rain gear but have yet to give these items a serious workout. No doubt next winter will be a rather brutal shock to the system!
Food, glorious food
We ate at some wonderful restaurants. Our first night was spent in the narrow, exposed brick basement of a tiny local establishment called, Arte Divino, located on edge of Plaza de le Provincia. The owner was delightful and keen to meet our every whim and the wine cellar was stocked with some fine products.
Our second night in town was spent in the basement of Bazaar, a local dining institution that even Lonely Planet raves about. Here we found ourselves seated at a table, surrounded by an eclectic collection of stark white shelves, piled high with grocery items from the turn of the century. Despite the rather stylistic surrounding, the menu was surprisingly cheap and filled with tasty dishes.
Our final night was spent at the ultra-funky establishment of Calle 54 in Northern Madrid. It's a bar come restuarant. Here the walls to the kitchen were made of solid glass, connected to the main dining area by an impressive automated glass door. This fixture had an efficient swishing noise each time it opened, akin to something you'd find on the Starship Enterprise.
Shoe leather shuffle
We spent most of Saturday wandering the streets of Old Madrid, visiting such well-worn tourist sights as the Plaza Mayor, the recently completed cathedral (it's only taken 112 years to build) and the Royal Palace. We also stopped for tapas in the late afternoon near Plaza Sol, considered the traditional heart of the city. It was here we also stumbled across call girls doing a roaring afternoon's trade.
Perhaps the most perplexing highlight was a statue of the city's emblem; a bear climbing a strawberry tree. I'm sure there's a story here, but we were at a loss to explain it.
The Royal Palace was particularly memorable. Here we saw multi-million dollar Antonio Stradivari violins from the early 1770s, stunning gilded thrones in a red velvet lined room and a spectacular array of Victorian pharmaceutical equipment on display in the royal dispensary.
Sunday was spent at the Sophia Museum viewing the works of Picasso, Dali and other modern masters. Most note-worthy was Picasso’s famous Guernica, a dark and foreboding protest on the horror of war. The canvas itself is almost eight metres long.
UPDATE:
I returned to Madrid for another visit in September 2007. Click here to read this post.
In my last post, I shared a little history behind our flat. Let me share two further tales from the past.
Don't mention The War
On the south side of our street, stretching for several blocks, is a series of four drab, grey, concrete high-rise apartment buildings. In between each tower is a series of equally drab, low-rise apartment complexes. Picture this. Elegant red brick buildings on one side of the street, drab grey monoliths on the other. These buildings are so drab it actually made us think twice about moving into the neighbourhood.
We naturally assumed that these soul-destroying buildings were the misguided vision of a 1960s architect, or the result of some profit-seeking developer hell-bent on demolishing beautiful streetscapes. The truth is some what more sinister. It appears that our area was heavily bombed during the Second World War. Entire sections of our street were literally razed to the ground by German bombers. Effectively, the mismatch of housing on our street is long-forgotten scar of war. Not something you really encounter in Australia.
This photo shows you how it looked in 1906 before a century of death and destruction took hold.
From: www.images-of-london.co.uk.
A limo of ladies
Garry and I ran into our neighbour this morning. The same man that we locked out the day we moved in. He was pruning the roses in our front yard which, to our surprise, are already starting to send out early leaf shoots. Winter is almost over.
"I never hear you," he commented. "You're much quieter than the previous tenants. They were always partying and making noise. Up all hours, day and night. People were always coming and going. We'd watch limousines filled with beautiful women pulling up at 5:00 or 6:00am during the week, dressed in the smallest outfits. They'd disappear inside. Lots of noise. Later we'd find old joints lying around."
Garry and I feel quite dull when compared to endless limos of legless ladies.
Given this bulk, we used their measurements to help short list flats we could to lease. Basically, if we couldn't fit our sofas into a flat it was immediately struck from the list. All sorts of dimensions were considered, including access points to each house. Garry even measured up the stairwell in our Swiss Cottage building before we finally signed the lease. However, neither of us thought to measure the rigid, Queen-size, bed-base before moving in.
Needless to say, when moving day came, the base wouldn't fit up the stairwell and we were forced to abandon it. It was one of several items we discarded that day. Nobody lifted an eyebrow as it seems the removalists have this happen all the time in London. On the flip side, our move to London has proven well timed as we've managed to secure terrific deals on replacement furniture items thanks to the post-Christmas sales. Our home office was at least 40% cheaper than normal and the new bed, close to half price.
Now, I need to be careful here, as I'd hate people to get the impression that our sofas fitted into our new home with ease. They didn't. It took almost 20 minutes to work out how to get the first sofa up two flights of narrow, twisting stairway. In the end we asked our neighbours to open their front door before we successfully angled the sofas around a particularly tight corner.
In the midst of all this drama we managed to lock our neighbour out of his apartment whilst he was standing in his pyjamas, suffering a dose of winter flu. The situation was further complicated by the fact that his wife was out, he wasn't carrying a mobile phone and didn't have his key to hand. Even worse, a small child was locked inside. Imagine this scene; within minutes we're standing on the landing with a sofa wedged in the stairway, with a sick and bewildered man beside us listening to the sounds of his distraught toddler locked inside. Fortunately, we share the same landlord so I was able to make a call and relay a message to his wife, who promptly returned home.
It's great to have a real home again.
Now there's just the insurance to sort out, the broadband access to arrange, the off-street parking to find, the cleaner to hire, the UK credit cards to apply for, the driving licences to transfer and on it goes. How much further could modern life be from cavemen days?
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