Arcticterntalk.org

The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world

Archive for the tag “london”

04 Aug 2012
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Cycling from London to Istanbul for Charity. Please support these students!


A week ago on 26th July 13 students from the University of Exeter commenced a 4500km cycle to Istanbul. Why? To support Help for Heroes. Many of these students had just completed their degree and graduated 2 weeks before. Somehow they found time to train,organise and generally prepare for this strenous trip. Aside from the obvious physical aspects there were numerous other planning aspects to consider. For example how to spend as little as possible on the trip, as this would reduce the sponsorship amounts for the charity. So, they spend most nights in tents and some nights in cheap hostels. The van they were donated is not of the Formula 1 category and rather like a beached whale is not deemed well enough to migrate the Alps, so will go around and meet the cyclists on the other side. To date they have reached Lyons and are having a well deserved rest day. My son Charles Bushe texted that he had spent a good day but things like washing needed to be done. They will have finished and be back in UK on September 8th. They deserve as much support as is possible. Even if you can only donate £1 then please do so and also importantly please pass on this message so that others can donate.

They are all good folks and already it is clear that they have bonded well together and are supporting each other when needed. For example the first day of their cycle down to Folkestone the temperature was well into the 30’s C, and there were obvious heat problems. A couple of them have had minor injuries such as a fall and tendonitis but they all keep going.

The links are below.

http://www.justgiving.com/Charles-Bushe  for Charles

 

for the others they can all be accessed here.

http://www.justgiving.com/teams/London-Istanbul2012

 

So, even if it appears a very small sum of money do please donate and help them to collect a decent sum for Help for Heroes. Do not forget that all the weather we have had here they have had too and have continued to cycle! Even Charles 11 year old sister has donated 5£ of her pocket money. Charles also gave up his olympic tickets to see the weightlifting to go on this cycle. Many thanks and again please pass this on to all that you know.

Charles and his 11 year old sister, who donated £5 of her money!

 

 

 

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29 Jul 2012

A Final View on South Korea from Sherlock Holmes


There is no doubt that I would like to come back here. Based only on two days I would say that this is one of the most polite and pleasant nations I have visited. I saw no aggression nor irritation with two exceptions. A Korean man trying to check in for his flight before the counter was open ( the clue for him was a huge queue and the massive sign saying opening at 14.50) and a Korean man paying his executive level room bill with wads of cash. No smile, no communication. Deadpan face. No thanks either and no bowing. Everyone else in Korea bows to everyone else on every occasion. Let me give you an example. When the check-in desks did open at 14.47 the whole team of 7 check-in staff, stood up, said something together to the waiting travellers ( rather like one might address a church congregation ), bowed to us all, and then rapidly motioned for us to come forward. I will not criticise British Airways for not doing this, but maybe a smile instead of a bow? And not one of those sour mouthed ones either.

The other learning in South korea is that in two days with mostly affluent doctors and other souls, I saw only two overweight people ( out of hundreds if not thousands). One of these was a morbidly obese Korean man in the hotel ( BMI>30, maybe >35), and the other a slightly overweight young woman (BMI maybe 27-28). Why? Easy. They eat less. How do I surmise this? Am I Sherlock Holmes? Well, maybe….

The portions served at mealtimes are much smaller than western sized portions. The meal last night in a grand hotel ( Lotte Busan, if you want to look it up. It has a casino and theatre etc, to give context) was 4 courses. Four small courses. Fish as a starter with bread roll about half the size of UK bread rolls a la Co-Operative. Third of a bowl of asparagus soup. Small steak with side salad, other vegetables and small amount of potatoes. Dessert a small slice of a sort of light cheesecake. No alcohol served at all, and in fact only water and coffee. This was a meal served to a group of top physicians in Korea attending an important annual congress. My second observation was actually a secondary one. I was trying to work out why the airports function better and quicker than UK. The answer is essentially no shops ( certainly no unnecessary ones) and few restaurants. So the whole area is not clogged up by people rampaging for their ninth meal of the morning. Compare and contrast with any USA airport where it seems de rigeur to eat a massive meal even though one is going on a 1 hour flight. So, simple deductions,Watson. Eat less and do not get overweight.

I would definitely return here both in a professional capacity and for a holiday. And in fact I am quite taken with South Korea and shall be cheering them on in the olympics!

Busan from the 33rd floor

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22 Jul 2012
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England V South Africa Day 4. Oval test.


Test matches are always a spectacle and more so when England are playing at the Oval. A ground that although lacking the majesty of Lord’s has something of its own. A sort of “people’s ground”. Today the ground was packed with cricket fans paying their £60 to watch a day’s play and that is what they saw. South Africa dominated throughout. Scoring around 200 runs without losing a wicket, nor looking as though they might, to declare around 250 runs ahead of England. So the final session began with England needing to bat out 4 sessions to draw the game. The alleged best team in the world should be able to do that on a placid pitch. Wrong. England’s batting was appalling. A few good balls got wickets ( England got no wickets because they did not bowl any good balls) but Kevin Pietersen seemed determined to get himself out. A stupid cameo innings that gained the team 19 runs before his middle stump went cartwheeling out. Strauss was even worse, sweeping a harmless ball up in the air to square leg. Andrew Strauss has had a bad game all round. Bad batting and bad captaincy. The highlight of the day was seeing Hasim Amla score 300 not out. He looked like he might score 1000 if left there for a few days.

Meanwhile the sun shone, 30 degrees at least, the food selection was poor and expensive. We settled on a pastie for £4.50. No alcohol is allowed in the ground, cycnical. But we all enjoyed the occassion and no doubt will be back next year.

Oval

Oval

Oval

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21 Jun 2012

Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho London and Dr Who


I can make no apologies for re-visiting how wonderful this venue is to listen to music, although I struggle to consider the Lucinda Belle Orchestra as jazz, but maybe that is my jazz knowledge limitation. A few photographs to go with the many I posted last week really just to demonstrate how close to the music one is. There is also something that I disagreed with all of my party over. For me the pianist is an almost exact copy of Matt Smith AKA Dr who. Enjoy.

Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho

Lucinda Belle

Lucinda Belle

Matt Smith ?

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14 Jun 2012
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Lucinda Belle Orchestra. Magical evening and magical music


Occasionally one gets lucky with music. About a year ago my eldest daughter told me ( as she usually does) to listen to a CD by a band that I had not heard of. The drive home was about an hour and I listened, and listened and have not really stopped listening. Her presence on the social media front has been sporadic and the occcasional tweet sometimes informed that a gig was imminent. A month ago we were lucky to see her at the TurnerSims concert hall at Southampton university and there we learned that she was playing a 3-night residency at Jazz Club Pizza Express in Soho. Last night for a mere 15£ we went along. Just to be clear that this is the downstairs of a Pizza Express that has a club that unsurprisingly sells pizzas. The furthest table away is maybe 15 metres and the nearest literally less than a few inches. Acoustics are great, atmosphere is buzzy and prices not at all exhorbitant, bottlw of wine 17£ ( central london prices are often far more).

The music. Magical. She played a lot of songs from her album and a couple from her new EP, and a few new songs as the band are currently hovering in a studio somewhere and after the concert Lucinda told us that towards the end of this year we can expect more gigs. This girl is not just good but special. Her music is original and enchanting and varies sometimes to the pop end and then back down to what she called something like ” gypsy rock”. I am not sure why we have not heard more of her. She is 38years. Are her concerts and albums well marketed? In my humble opinion, no. When I compare the plethora of tweets from artistes like Tim Minchin and Kyla La Grange, who flog their concerts easily and then of course get the online social media feedback, her presence is minimal, but can be corrected.

All I can say is go and buy her album and follow this band online. Although Lucinda Belle fronts the band, and plays harp on most songs, she does relax and do vocals only on a few. Her band line up does seem to change but last night they totalled 7 members including Bass, guitar, keyboards ( a Matt Smith look alike), drummer etc.

Photos all taken without flash using ISO speeds of 12500-25000 so grainy shots as you expect.

 

http://www.thelbo.com/

 

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09 May 2012
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Tim Minchin and Band. A priviledge to have been there.


Sometime last week a tweet from Tim Minchin advertised a concert at 100 Club in London for which there were 42 tickets remaining. Two were purchased. The gig was advertised as a humourless affair just music. The venue was a quaint throwback maybe 30 years. A basement under Oxford street with few chairs and two bars, but most importantly a stage. A curious entry procedure which led to a wait of 30 minutes in a slow moving queue due to each person being ticked off a paper list. Beer was 4£ pint, very reasonable. The venue is constructed like a rectangle meaning that it is impossible to be far from the stage.

Tim Minchin came on and announced that this gig was more of an experiment and that they only had 7 songs, he then confessed that he had written one more this afternoon, so eight songs. The music began. The music was simply amazing, enjoyable, whatever…..I felt privileged to have been there at the start of what might become big. No ego’s present. The band and Tim drinking afterwards with the few crowd members remaining and happy to shake my hand and briefly chat, with no eyes-rolled-to-heaven kind of look. Humourless ? I don’t think so. No humour intended but he is just a really funny man. Lots of humour but none that overshadowed the music.

My photos are rubbish taken with the I phone but no-one minded those who brought proper cameras along. I shall spend tomorrow looking to see when he is playing again . This might be big and we were there at the start. That I like.

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30 Apr 2012

Boris and my I-phone. Bogus or Virus or Both


I now know why I like my I-phone. Apart from the obvious when travelling it keeps me company, tells me who is calling me and who to avoid, acts as my alarm clock, when the hands have fallen off my alarm clock proper, allows to do e-mail, allows me to do Facebook and Twitter, but most of all it amuses me. SIRI really does have a sense of humour that is vastly superior to any Heathrow airport employee, but it makes things up to amuse me when I am either bored or glum or both. Today I was having various Facebook discussions with members of family and friends over Boris. I am not a fan of his. I don’t like the way he looks, the way he behaves and I see nothing useful he has done for London. I will freely admit that my vote has gone to neither Boris nor Ken, and frankly I could have used Bingo to select my votes this time. So, to the point, when typing in Boris into my i-phone the first alternative it gave me was BOGUS and the second was VIRUS. Now that made me laugh. 

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30 Apr 2012

Heathrow airport is the Worst Airport in the World


This is becoming like a mantra. Each time I visit I forget how foul the whole experience is. This ranges from the awful signage, the expensive food, the sour-faced staff, the delays but mostly the cynicism of it all. Today I saw a huge advert outside a currency exchange bureau that said ” great exchange rates”. This intrigued me as in the pharmaceutical industry where I work, this kind of claim would firstly not be allowed but if it ever were watered down, there would have to be clarity over what exactly ” great” meant and compared to what. On my I-phone I have been following the euro exchange rates as soon will be heading off to Spain. Recently the rate is around 1.22 euro to the pound. This “great” exchange was more akin to the great train robbery, if I were to give them 1.38 euros they would kindly repay me a pound. However if I were to give them a pound they would give me 1.11 euros. A disgraceful exchange rate that does not even stop there as there would be a minimum £3 commission. This equates to something like a 20% mark down in their favour. This is not great and in fact should be considered illegal practice. The end result as usual is that not only would I not ever make this exchange at any UK airport but feel the need to stop others. It is the same story with the food, expensive prices for ordinary dross. Long queues to get what most travellers want, a cup of tea and sandwich, but no queue for the silly restaurants with stupid names like ” giraffe”. The staff generally are miserable and unfriendly, the queues for security are somehow always longer than their alleged BAA surveys claim. Today there was a grand claim on the departure boards that 95% ish of people clear security within 5 minutes. This is clearly not true. The only way to achieve this would be to pole vault over the top. End of rant. In contrast today, Glasgow Airport. Civilised, tidy and what I wanted was readily available. Result,  I spent money there. 

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06 Apr 2012

A visit to The Menagerie or maybe a Private Zoo


All days have things which were not planned, but today there were long odds against visiting a house in Croydon crowded with animals. The story goes like this. A close relative was asked to house sit and then invited us around to sit in the garden on a nice sunny day. In fact a very nice sunny day. The house though cannot be described as average. A large house on four floors, including a basement that functioned as a room.

Around 7 cats roamed the house and the environs, all that i viewed being ginger or marmalade coloured. Some friendly and some not. What our relative had not been fully briefed on was that one of the cats was pregnant. So today when the cat was missing, she went searching for it and found it plus one kitten under the duvet in an upper floor room on the top of a bunk bed. The kitten and mother were doing just fine. I am not an expert on ageing kittens but guessed that this one was around 12 hours old, looked well, did some squeaking and was feeding from mother, so all was well. Photographs below. Mother did not object to the paparazzi there.

In the actual garden there was a rabbit run with two rabbits, each allowing folks to pick them up for 10 seconds before they engaged in a kind of rodeo effort to remove themselves from your arms. All fine, until they managed to escape. Now luckily a pair of Crocodile Dundee like 11 year olds were in attendance and caught the two miscreants before they run out of or burrow out of the garden and make a rapid escape from Croydon environs. Next entertainment was the chickens in a huge run who were making desperate attempts to escape, around 6 of them and not stupid either. Lastly, there were 3 hamster cages. One contained a tiny hamster that looked more like a field mouse , and was apparently a Chinese Crested Hamster/ Russian Dwarf. Another contained a hamster without exaggeration as large as a guinea pig, and the final cage seemed to contain nothing……….worrying. All good fun on a sunny afternoon.

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12 Mar 2012

Help For Heroes


Every so often one of your children does something so surprising that it was beyond the probablity of prediction. In this case 21 yr old son who during his 3 years at Exeter University has become head of their charity operations was successful in obtaining a place in the Bike ride London to Istanbul in aid of Help for Heroes. My small job is to try and get as much sponsorship for him as possible. Hence this post.

In short why not click here and donate something. Does not matter how small.http://www.justgiving.com/Charles-Bushe

This is his description of what he is doing.

 

My name is Charles and i am a student at the University of Exeter. I am part of a team of 14 cyclists who are going to cycle over 4,400 km, through the heat of the summer, across Europe from London to Istanbul.  Although some people may suggest we are mad to attempt it, we are doing it for a very worthwhile cause.

We are raising money for ‘Help for Heroes’ charity and aim to raise at least £20,000. I stress that this is our minimum aim, as we hope to raise as much as possible and hopefully much more than this. We will be raising approximately 34p per cyclist, per km.
We will be cycling around 120km every day, and going through 8 different countries before eventually reaching our desination in Turkey.
We are in the process of raising money by doing a multitude of events; for example in the next few weeks alone we have a 100 hour cycle, many evening events, and even a team leg wax! However the money we hope to raise is a large sum and as such we would much appreciate any money that people are willing to donate.
Any sponsorship that you could donate would be much appreciated not only by myself, but by the entire team and the charity itself! The link below is to my ‘justgiving’ page and as such goes straight to the charity.

http://www.justgiving.com/Charles-Bushe

If you would like to find out more about our trip then visit our website at:
Thank you,
Charles Bushe
University of Exeter RAG International Event Team Member 2011-2012
University of Exeter RAG Hitch-Hike Coordinator 2011-2012

The Bike Rider

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