Working and Playing

Hi everyone

Yes I'm still alive in case you were wondering, but am back to reality now with having a job and rent and bills and all, so that's why I've been a bit quiet lately (and also the fact that I can't access my personal email from work). I'm working for an insurance underwriting company called Limit in central London, not far from "The Gherkin" for those of you who know that building. Click below to see a pic if ya want

http://www.citythemes.co.uk/

It was only meant to be for a week but I started on the 8th of August and it's now mid September so I must be doing something right. It's not the most stimulating (or the highest paying) job in the world - filing, scanning, archiving etc but it's nice to do a job with not much responsibility for a change (although I certainly won't want to do it forever) and it came along at just the right time, as the finances were getting pretty thin.

I work from 9-5 (what a way to make a living) with an hour for lunch, which I often have down opposite the Tower of London. I stumbled across this by accident one day when I first started work, I just started walking to try and find a nice spot to sit down and have lunch at. I finally found a bench and sat there reading the paper, when I looked up I saw a large bit of old stone wall (about two stories high and about three metres wide) which I correctly figured must have been part of the old London Wall. I then gazed further afield on to "an old building", which took me a moment but then I clicked as to what Iwas looking at, having only seen it in pictures before, I was staring at the Tower of London. It's this kind of experience that makes London such an awesome place to live.

I've been doing a bit of domestic travel, mostly around London but I went up to Lancaster (a small city with a population of 46,000, top North West of England) about a month back, with some friends and we met up with some other friends that we'd made on the Scandi trip. Jane, who lives in Lancaster, looked after us for the weekend and drove us up to the Lake District which was great. The weather was perfect and we went to William Wordsworth's grave site, and bought gingerbread from the world's oldest gingerbread shop and then sat in bracken covered hills in the sun and ate a picnic lunch. Then we drove around these tiny country lanes skirted by stonewalls - very picturesque before heading back to Lancaster. We went out that night and then saw a bit more of the city the next day before hopping on a train back to London. The trains are great, it only took 3 hours to get from London to Lancaster and they are really nice and new and travel at 160kph with banked turns even. It's quite amazing actually that you can be in London, a city of 8 million, and then within about 30 minutes be out in the countryside which is very scenic.

I've done a few more touristy things as well. Craig, Marsha and I went to Kew Gardens (400 acres of gardens, history and culture) a few weekends back, and then on the bank holiday Monday I caught up with some other friends (Big Mal and Bridget) and we did an open-top bus tour of London (it's really very compact) which included a Thames River cruise (not on the bus) all for £16. It was such a nice, clear day that we did the London Eye as well. As you can imagine we were fairly exhausted after 8 hours of all this in the hot sun.

As for things that I have planned, well Big Mal and I are going to the inaugural round of the A1 Grand Prix at Brands Hatch and will be proudly supporting the New Zealand team (I've requested a silver fern flag from home so hopefully it turns up in time, hint hint). Just click on the links below if you want further information:

http://www.a1gp.com/main.php?hf=Yes

http://www.a1teamnzl.com/

Besides this I have a British friend in Birmingham, yes another one I made on the Scandi trip, who is going on a working holiday toAustralia in October. So I'm keen to head up there for a weekend and take advantage of his local knowledge before he jets off. I'm also going to catch a few concerts over the next few months, the amount of acts that tour here is just unbelievable and there is something on every night of the week so I won't ever get bored (or save any money) that's for sure.

So yeah that's me for another email, I'm sure you've all been suffering withdrawal symptoms from my lack of emails lately (yeah right) (I miss Tui billboards), so until next time keep cool till after school.

Ian