Category: London UK
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Back in London, August 2015
Judith at Gabriel’s Wharf We’re back, but we almost missed the plane! We arrived at the airport three hours before departure, pre-booked tickets and boarding passes in hand, checked in our luggage, and went off to have something to eat. They’d closed the Swiss Chalet in Terminal 3 (something to do with the PanAm Games)…
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Cycling in London, with Boris Bikes
Boris Bikes at Hyde Park, photo by ZanMan (from WikiMedia) This visit, I decided to try cycling in London. When I first went to London, many years ago, the traffic was scary. The streets were filled with cars tearing around corners at high speed, especially cabs. And, of course, for a Canadian visitor, these cars…
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Ensemble theatre company Idle Motion: Shooting with Light
Shooting with Light. Photo by Richard Davenport Our biggest surprise in our recent London theatre binge was a production by an ensemble company called Idle Motion, at a small space called the New Diorama Theatre near Euston Station. The play was Shooting with Light, “devised, written and directed collaboratively by Grace, Sophie, Nathan, Ellie, Juian…
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Lullingstone Castle and the World Garden
On a whim, we visited the ancient castle of the Hart Dyke family, with a pedigree going right back to William the Conqueror. Our friend David Hart Dyke, Green Party Candidate for Stoney Creek, would sometimes mention (after I had served him a beer or two) that in England he was a Baronet. “Our castle is in…
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Neo-nazis on the tube
We had a chilling experience last night on the London Tube Circle Line. A noisy, drunken crowd of men, and one woman, piled on the train, singing and shouting. They had extreme east-end accents, so that even my relatively well-tuned Canadian ear could hardly make out anything that they were saying. I assumed that they…
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Arcola Theatre: Shrapnel
Arcola studio 1 Our first night in London this visit: we’ve slept off our red-eye flight jet lag, and it’s time to get out! Why not go to our favorite alternative theatre, the Arcola, in wonderful, multicultural Dalston? Dinner first at the Mangal Turkish restaurant, lamb spare ribs (yum) and then a short walk to…