An invite from the neighbours!

No, not those neighbours, THOSE neighbours!

The Windsors wearing smart/casual?

As a pair of fairly staunch republicans, this has come as a surprise but, apparently, TH has been “recognised” no, not from that time where HM the Q and Prince Phil nearly mowed us down as we were out for a Sunday stroll, but apparently for services to building a cable car over the Thames, which certainly expedited the transit of spectators from the Exel Centre to the O2 (AKA the Millennium Dome) during the Olympics.

I have just been e-mailed by a shell-shocked TH, who copied me in on the e-mail he had in turn received from the Grand Fromage at TfL, telling him to advise The Powers That Be of the name of his nominated guest. I am taking it that the guest in question will be me, largely because he sent me the e-mail.  Yes, we are to keep a date in May free, as we’re invited to take tea in the garden at the neighbours’ pied a terre in London. Provided we pass the security vetting….

So, it looks like I shall have to press a frock and Google the hat protocol, as well as studying the art of the curtsey and forms of address. 

I’ve joked for such a long time that they’re really miserable neighbours, having never invited us over for drinks in the twenty-plus years we’ve lived practically next door. The big concern now, if course, is whether they'll expect to be invited back?

I’ll be nice. It’s only polite.

Hanging around....

Yesterday was a very proud moment indeed for the N-o-T household, as TH’s latest job came to an end, following months of running round like a headless chicken (him, not me) and a long series of business trips taking in such exotic locations as Switzerland, Austria, Scunthorpe and Bolton….

Yes, dear reader, for the last six months, TH has been managing the construction programme for this: London’s first cable car. Or, as some have billed it, “the world’s most expensive Cable Car”.. a slight exaggeration, according to inside sources. Well, according to TH, who has had his hand on the purse strings for much of the venture.

We’ve had our ups and downs. Again, not me, as I’ve remained on terra firma, but TH would insist on sending me scary photos such as these, just in case the full impact of dangling 90 metres above the River Thames might have been lost on me. 

No, the ups and downs were more to do with the fact that Messrs Johnston and Livingstone held diametrically opposed views regarding the value of the project to London’s transport infrastructure, and the whole project could have been left in mid-air (see what I did there?) if the Mayoral elections had gone the other way.

Yesterday, Mad Boris was transported across the Thames and waxed lyrical about the marvellous feat of engineering for the assembled press. Owing to a mess-up in arrangements, I watched this from the comfort of my sofa, because plans to meet TH in London and take a ride were scuppered by other commitments. In a way, I was quite glad, once I learned that the hardier types had started forming a queue at 5 a.m. yesterday morning.

Well, it’s over now, and we can relax, safe in the knowledge that anyone who needs to dash between the Greco-Roman wrestling and the Tae-Kwan-do events at the Olympics will not find themselves having to swim between venues if their timings are a bit tight. And you may mock, but in the lottery that has been the allocation of tickets, you can bet that more people than expected have been left holding tickets for those two events, having randomly applied for anything and everything in the hope of landing tickets for something far more exciting.

Bradford man goes mad with i-pad....

Before I fell into the payroll saga, I was lucky enough to enjoy a little R&R in the Big City. I was going to blog about it then, but I was too busy, so I thought I’d do it now.

Getting to London from Nowhere-on-Thames is usually easy, as we have a railway station at the end of the road. Getting to London on a Sunday, however, is an expedition of epic proportions, as they like to do engineering works every Sunday of the year, or so it seems.  I decided not to get caught out, and went to Slough instead. Slough has been much-maligned since John Betjamin made maligning Slough into a national pastime, but it does have the benefit of a fast train service to London. My carefully-laid plans were, however, scuppered on arrival at Paddington, because the engineering work epidemic had been extended to take in the Bakerloo line of the Underground, which, as is normal when my luck is involved, was the one I wanted.

I decided that, for once in my life, I would splash out and take a cab. This, reader, was a mistake I will not make again anytime soon. Yes, it was a comfortable and speedy ride that took me directly to my destination: The Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. The downside was that, for the pleasure of being whisked there in comfort in the least possible time, I was charged a mammoth 12 (yes TWELVE) of our English pounds. And that was without a tip, which made it even more expensive. If anyone wants any ironing doing, I might have to start offering my services….

On the plus side, I was met by son#1, who whisked me past the queue, which looked like this:

And into the David Hockney exhibition, which looked like… well, it looked like one of the best things I’ve seen for a VERY long time. (You’ll have to take my word for this, as no photography is allowed in the RA).  I’ve long been a fan of Hockney’s work, although I did go off him a bit when he started sticking Polaroids together to make a picture, but this was wonderful. Really, really wonderful. Give a 73-year-old man an i-pad under normal circumstances, and I imagine that he would probably use it as a drinks coaster. Give Mr Hockney an i-pad, and he will record a Yorkshire woodland scene DAILY for several months, in the most wonderful colour and depth you could imagine. It was breathtakingly good. The only negative aspect was the sheer number of people in the exhibition, and more particularly the number of people (seemingly with cataracts, judging by their apparent need to stand as close as possible to every painting) plugged in to audio guides, cluttering up the place for ages and blocking the view for everyone else. In the end, I thanked them, though, because viewing most of the pictures from an angle and a distance made me appreciate just how well Hockney captures the depth and perspective of his scenes.

DH got a lot of press coverage when this exhibition opened, not least because it’s shortly going to be going head-to-head with a Damien Hirst show elsewhere in the capital. Hockney’s publicity for his show features a comment that “all the works in this exhibition were made by the artist” – a dig at Hirst, most of whose works are made by an army of technicians. Most of Hockney’s work for this show has been painted in the last couple of years, and it’s a testament to his talent that none of it looks any less impressive for that.

I was so impressed that I bought my very own Hockney. OK, it’s a print, and much reduced in size from the original, but it is of one of my favourite pictures in the exhibition, and looking at it makes me smile. I’m not sure that makes me a proper art lover, but it’s a good start!

I got the tube back to Paddington, by the way.