I've finally had the chance to catch up- this trip really does sound like fun! You're making me want to be in London. I would have loved to have seen the Firebird (off topic but I'm also already feeling sulky that I'm missing Blur's reunion dates this summer)

Hugh Laurie is nicer than Jude Law I think. And I'll have to check out In the Loop. I love this:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm909740800/tt1226774

Looking forward to reading more!

Hi, Apres. I want to be in London, too, spoiled brat that I am.

Mara Galeazzi was great in title role of The Firebird. I loved the costumes.

Do check out In the Loop, though as CW warns it is amazing sweary.

Sweary by UK standards must be very sweary indeed.

Tis.

I just watched the first episode of The Thick of It on youtube and the Alastair Campbell guy is hilarious. I love the faces he makes.

I'm not a huge fan of the shakey make-me-sick-up cam style but it had the perfect amount of sweariness I thought. And apparently one of the actors/comedians was busted for downloading child pornography a couple of years ago? (not the Alastair Campbell guy with the lovely funny faces though)

Sorry for going off topic- looking forward to the next installment.

I need to figure out how to watch things on YouTube. I suppose the film must have been released in the US, since the NYTimes reviewed it, but it won't be coming to my burg probably. Normally I can get more movies than I have time to watch at our local library, but not everything I'd like to see.

Hi stokebailey,

Watching stuff on youtube is easy- all you have to do is search for whatever it is you're looking for (and hopefully someone has been kind enough to upload the program episodes or movie you want). Stuff gets taken down all the time due to copyright violation but you can often watch quite alot this way.

(and do you know about torrents? It's very easy to download stuff for free- try googling or if you've got a somewhat tech savvy person around ask them)

Here's a link to the first part of the first episode of The Thick of It (the other parts and episodes should easy to find from here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIzx_Z-TGe4

There are clips up of In the Loop on youtube but not the entire film. I won't suggest downloading the film for free on a torrent because...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRxfz_6E7o

Thanks, Apres. I'm no pirate.

Today Google.co.uk has a firebird flying through the G in honor of Stravinsky’s birthday.

BRIGHTON: BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA

We monitored the weather forecast for maximum sunniness, and chose Friday for our Brighton day trip. The day stayed fine, and we later heard a newscast calling it a “scorcher” at nearly 25 degrees. (Swing by St. Louis next month and we’ll talk about scorchers.) We also later learned it was the end of school half-term holiday week. More people had headed to Brighton and Hove, making for an even livelier seaside town.

Trains leave Victoria all day for Brighton, and after purchasing from an electronic kiosk by the ticket counters we jumped on a train that left soon, and promptly at the stated time. (What a country.) Three stops and ~45 min later, the rolling Sussex landscape opened out into surrounding white cliffs, and we pulled into Brighton station.

A couple of the guide books, including Fodor’s excellent one, recommend Nia Café. We walked down the street to check it out before proceeding to the shore, and liked the looks of it. It has a few tables on the sidewalk of fairly busy Trafalgar Street. We walked past the west side of the Royal Pavilion, one of the world’s amazing residences,
www.royalpavilion.org.uk/
and down and down streets lined with shops and cafes.

At last we can see the sea, and I begin to hum the song from Mr. Bean’s Holiday: La Mer. It’s still early, so not many people on the pier or the beach. A bicycle path stretches for miles along the shore. Pebbled beach and hardly any surf. Walking out on the long pier, we see that it hasn’t begun to stir into action yet. www.brightonpier.co.uk/indexflash.htm
Rides, amusements, mechanical bulls, try your luck and win a prize! Cotton Floss! We'd like to watch someone fresh from the pubs try the bull. The roller coaster is running, but empty.

MC would like to find a summer dress, and it’s getting towards lunchtime, so we walked back past the eastern side of the Pavilion, decide that touring it would be a fine thing to do on a less lovely day, and make our way up the hill past more shops. We ended up eating at Tootsie’s on Meeting House Lane, attracted by their quiet sunny courtyard and a chance get away from the bustle. The staff was friendly and the food was just fine.

We split up then, and MC went shopping. I found an internet “café,” the upstairs of a candy and newspaper shop where I suppose you could buy coffee if you wanted to. (The going internet rate here and in London is £1 for 20-30 min, except in the 24 hr one just west of Warren St Tube stop, where you get an hour for a pound. This compares favorably for our purposes with the £19/day Grosvenor House charges to use the large flat screen in their room.) Checked my email and some reservations we had made, then headed down towards the shore.

Lots of people on the streets by this time, carrying shopping bags. I was tempted to buy wildly impractical hardware store items like a stainless steel garden fork, or a flat of lobelias, or a really fine looking dustpan and broom.

One hotel had a sign painted on the side: “Assembly Rooms, Suitable for Balls.” I wanted to rent one and invite the county.

Back at the shore a man on stilts plays the tuba: The Entertainer, written by a St. Louisan. I throw him some coins and lie back on the warm pebbles at our rendezvous spot to watch the sea and the seagoers, smell the sea air, listen to the tuba.

MC joins me, having found a pretty sundress, and we linger and enjoy the scene. Children bungee jumping, teenagers pretending to throw each other into the water.

A fine city, a fine beach, and a fine day. We dawdle, miss a few trains, and get back to town later than we'd intended for our evening out.

hi stoke,

I have some great pics of my two kids aged about 5 & 2 on the grass by the pavilion covered in icecream. My strogest memory of the inside is that with huge originality, prinny had the kitchens put close to the dining room, so the fod was stil hot when the diners got it. this apparently was revolutionary!

no wonder he ended up the size of a bus. hot food for te hgentry - who'd have though it!

Prinny must have had some good points surely. (though he was not very nice to poor Caroline of Brunswick) He certainly left quite a seaside cottage behind, even if he had to max out dad's credit cards to do it.

I usually like the kitchens best when we tour palaces. Clearly I belong belowstairs.

Would love to see photos of your dairy-covered kids.

sorry about the tyosp in the above.

the pics are pre-digital I'm afraid, but I do get to look at them everyday which is better than just having them on some disc.

i like the kitchens too. funny how people always imagine that if they'd lived in earlier times, they'd have been one of the toffs. me, I'm sure that like you, I'd have been a pleb. imagine all that washing up, and no rubber gloves.

regards, ann

>>Prinny must have had some good points surely<<

Hard to find, especially under all that blubber. Selfish, extravagant, vain and vainglorious. He wasn't very nice to Mrs. Fitzherbert, either.

I like his dad a lot better.

The Prince Regent's bedroom looks like a girly boudoir - all oriental silk and lacquer. The dressing table is covered in brushes, jars of cosmetics and perfumes. He must have been an extremely vain man.

Did you spot the 60 course menu on a board in the kitchen, and the stuffed rats on the jelly mould shelves, Stokebailey?

"I like his dad a lot better."

Too right.

If it wasn't for him, we'd never have needed to colonise Australia. Without him, the damn Yanks would have ruined cricket, Dame Edna would be politically correct and Her Maj would be spending half the year in the Hyde Park near Poughkeepsie.

Mind you, without him, slavery in the American colonies would have been outlawed in the early 1800s. And - unlike in the French colonies - stayed outlawed.

So we wouldn't have to listen to everyone going on about St Obama all the time. The Dominion of North America would have got its first black Prime Minister (no doubt living in a city named after the great patriot, Benedict Arnold, though not of course in a White House since we'd not have had to burn it down to teach the Yanks manners, so it'd never have needed to get repainted.) about the same time the first Jew moved into 10 Downing Street.

Now wait. You can't lay that all on poor GRIII. For starters, cricket isn't ruined. Furthermore, you only gutted and charred the White House. Thirdly, we never learned manners.

Hi, RM67,

60 course meal? So soon after the French Revolution? Or ever? No wonder he got plump.

We didn't go into the Pavilion, since it was so pretty out and we wanted to spend our time on the beach. I will keep my eyes peeled for the rodent décor next time.

Flanner, are you counting Disraeli?

THE MAJOR GENERAL’S REVIEW

Saturday morning we got up early and went to the Patisserie Valerie in Soho for breakfast. Good tea and latte, artistically made pastries, a pleasant room, and they undercharged us somehow – maybe forgetting to add extra for eating in the shop. We liked everything about the place.

We lingered maybe a tad too long, and it took a few minutes to get the check underpaid and the server overtipped, so we had to walk briskly down the hill towards the Horse Guards Parade. Our tickets for the Major General’s Review said we must be seated by 1000. We tried to enter by the park side, but a helpful red coated guard directed us back up towards Trafalgar Square to enter by the other side of the building. Lots of people were still streaming in with us, and we were seated by 10 minutes past. We sat in the stands where those in their Morning Dress would have been last Saturday, backed against 10 Downing St. garden. This is similar to our viewpoint:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=marPGfyYTTA

Splendor, gleaming helmets, horses, bagpipes. Irish and Scottish guards, maybe Welsh for all I know, in their kilts and capes. A mounted band. A dapple grey horse that backed respectfully away from the reviewing stand all the way down the parade ground. Lots of families, old men in blazers with regimental crests I suppose.

We had another glorious day for it. It was a fine spectacle.

He was charming and knowledgeable, didn’t seem too very dangerous, and was probably more fun to talk to than Jude Law would have been anyway>>>

Sounds like a pooodlefaker to me.