...and back at work. For some absurd reason, that goes against the laws of the universe, I was actually really looking forward to getting back to work. All the promise of a new year, clean slates, new accounts, fresh ideas and opportunities and all that. Im sure the novelty will wear off quickly enough.

This is my first day back at work since the trip. I was supposed to return on Monday but I had complications that went pear-shaped with a cold and throat infection from hell. I owe Ian a huge thanks for taking me to the doc and putting up with the miserable, awful, crying mess I had turned into. My throat had swelled so much that the pain was excruciating, it was a struggle to speak and breathing had become an issue because the throat was swelling shut. Got put on a nebuliser, got jabs in my ass and a healthy dose of adrenalin and after throwing up the meds a couple of times at home, I eventually succumbed to a happily drug-induced sleep.

Paris was cool. Disneyland was great. I'll have to post some pics of that. The trip as a whole was pretty brilliant. We did something, went somewhere and took a million pics virtually every day. Next on the agenda is Israel for about August. But in between that we have to pull our pennies together for moving in together. Next month is flat hunting and furniture shopping, which Im really excited about. And I think Im up for my review next month so hopefully that will result in a couple of extra bucks in the bank, which will help a whole lot.

We are off this morning to catch the Eurostar train at Waterloo station to Paris, where we will be Until mid next week. It's 7am here and still pitch black! Not even a smidgen of sun.

We've been really looking forward to this part.

My being a fan of theatre I was super keen to see at least one West End play. And I was even more keen to see a play with on-screen actors because it would be cool to see if they could actually act. There are no fancy camera angles, clever editing, special effects or making mistakes.

So we booked tickets to go see Love Song with Cillian Murphy, Neve Campbell, Kristen Johnston and Michael McKean last night.

Unfortunately, Kristen Johnston was "indisposed", whatever the hell that means, and her understudy took over her role. The play itself was quite good, with Cillian Murphy & Michael McKean being really really good on stage but the treat of the evening came after the play ended. We went outside and the cast were coming out the backstage door and agreed to sign some autographs. So we got to meet Cillian Murphy and Neve Campbell and I got their pawprints on my play program!!!!!!!

Thanks to my stupid bladder, I had missed McKean but thank goodness the other guys hung around!! I have to say that Cillian is very polite, very nice and friendly and patiently grinning at us kooks and answering our daft questions and making an effort to respond to any comments he recieved. I was really impressed. After he was done signing he politely asked to be excused to go home and walked off down the street.
Miss Campbell wasnt anywhere near as friendly, which was a bit of a disappointment, and made the time to growl a bit at one person before she ducked into her cab. Maybe she had a rough day. But I got her pawprint anyway so I should just be grateful and shut up.

Unrelated sidenote: we also finally made it to Forbidden Planet prior to the play and cleaned the store and our wallets out. Those bastards know all of my weaknesses.

PPS: I can't sleep.

Shirley, Gareth and I decided to do an impromptu trip up to Oxford yesterday (okay, I decided and whined until I got my way).

The architecture of the place is incredible. I took hundreds of pics and they weren't enough. It's just a shame the sunlight is so damn shy in the UK. Look at the vines growing up the side of that building-very Shakespearean, hehe.

We walked around aimlessly for a bit and then happened upon a 1000-year old church selling maps and guidebooks.

This pic and the one above are of a massively huge college called Christ Church. We thought the place reminded us of Hogwarts and Harry Potter and it turned out that this is precisely where some scenes from the HP movies were shot.

This dining hall should look familiar to the Harry Potter fans.

Although it is a LOT smaller in real life, it's no less stunning. There are the original paintings up of Queen Elizabeth I and Henry VIII

We climbed another tower in St. Mary's church to see the rest of Oxford from above.

I havent participated in illo Friday in too long. At work, however, they've started a similar concept that they call Blank Canvas and last week the topics sort of coincided. So this is my submission for both.

I was thinking more along the lines of sleep because that's the only time some people ever get any peace! I wanted to to bring in the tactile aspect-the pillow & blanket so I scanned in some textures and incorporated them into the image. It was done in Photoshop CS2.

PS Happy Holidays!!

I couldn't type up a proper entry earlier because uploading the damn pics took so bloody long. Anyway, here's the breakdown so far:

Our flight from Durban was initially delayed by 10 minutes but by the time we took off it had been nearly an hour. This meant that we ran, like maniacs on the amazing race, from Terminal A in Jhb International to Terminal B, which felt like 500 metres away. We ran a lot. We panicked more. By the time we hit passport control, the lady informed us we had 5 minutes until the gates closed. We made it with 1 minute to spare.

The first few hours of our flight were cool. Im used to cramped spaces and dodgy food with El Al. But when it hit 6 hours into the flight it became challenging. We flew Olympic, so the cabin crew were all greek. Surprisingly, they spoke very basic English and responded in Greek. Also, they were rude and disinterested, but I was prepared for that because that's pretty much how they had been described in every entry on airlinecritic.com . A passenger next to us asked for a glass of water. The steward told him it was in the back and he could go fetch some. The passenger was Greek too so I was surprised he wasnt getting better treatment. But he refused to fetch it himself, insisted on the Steward getting it. Good for him. I just irritated the steward by going to the back and taking as long as possible-I picked up one ice cube at a time, slowly, relishing the space I had to stretch my legs. He got annoyed and took over, hehe.

We landed at Athens at 5:50am. The airport was dead silent. There were passengers passed out on benches all over the place though, quietly sleeping away. That should have been a sign because we werent in the general airport area, we were sent directly to the transfer lounge, which is beyond passport control.

Gareth was dead on his feet, we hadn't managed to get any sleep on our 9 hour flight fom Jhb and the last time our heads rested on a pillow was the previous morning. We found a McDonalds that served coffee and had a few cups. We walked around, grabbed something to eat (EUR11.10 for two sarmies and an orange juice. That's over a hundred Rand for the uninformed. Yeowch.). We walked some more, shot some pics, I bought some souvenirs and more coffee and found that the electronics at Duty Free was cheap so I bought a new memory card for my camera. Then we found some benches and went to sleep until it was time to go through to the boarding gates.

At 12pm we checked into the boarding gates area because our flight was due to board at 12:30. The time came and went, the waiting lounge filled up and nothing happened. Then at about 12:45 there was an announcement in Greek that made the entire lunge groan collectively. A fellow passenger (with awesome shoes, damn) translated for us that the flight was delayed indefinitely due to bad weather and they'd let us know as soon as they knew. Only ever second or third announcement was given in English as well which became annoying.

At 2pm the news was that boarding would happen at 3. At 3pm we were told the flight would board at 4pm. At 4pm, it was delayed for 5pm. I think we finally boarded at 5:50pm, exactly 12 hours later. The airport gates were packed to mob proportions with irate passengers. The alarms kept getting set off, who knows why. Outside was madness, I made the mistake of stepping outside because I was looking for a phone card. I started getting squashed in the masses of people (started having an anxiety attack, I was literally getting crushed and couldnt find a way to squeeze out at that point and because I look Greek, all airport staff kept speaking to me in the language and the one security dude got highly ticked off that I was not responding to him but I was too busy hyperventilating at the time to explain that I speak English.)

Anyway, turned out that Heathrow had been under heavy fog for days and it had not relented. We were one of only 4 flights permitted entry, every other flight to London was cancelled. BAA suffered something like GBP28 Bill in losses. Terminal 3 in Heathrow (I think it was 3) was full of people who had been forced to camp there, some for days. 12 hours didn't seem so bad anymore!!

They changed our plane to a giant one and boarded everybody. Half the people boarding had been waiting for over an entire day for their flight as it had been cancelled the previous day and again that morning. So we were very lucky were were boarding at all.

The flight was meant to be 3 hours but lasted over 4 because we had to circle Heathrow and wait for clearance. The fog was so thick that visibility was 0%. When we landed on terra firma, the blanket of fog was just as heavy on the ground. It was amazing.

We went through customs, no hassles (I had been really worrying abut that) and everyone was amazingly polite and freindly. And then Shirlz met us at arrivals and it was home from there.

Anyway, so far it's been really awesome here. Taking the tubes is a novelty that wont wear off for a while. I love how organised this place is. And it's quiet and safe. And it's bizarre, but it feels like after 5 pm all the grown-ups and parents recede into the darkness and it's just one huge party until the last train home. Tesco's is awesome, they have an entire aisle dedicated to food from Israel that I haven't seen since my childhood. They also have Ben&Jerry's ice cream, Haagen-Dazs and Krispy-Kreme donuts (YUMMY!!). Ian would love this place because it's Pepsi everywhere. Pepsi & 7up. You really have to hunt for Coke.

Everyone here dresses very stylishly. There are not just bookstores here but dedicated Design Bookstores when in SA you are lucky to find a single design book in a shop. And Art bookstores. And Film bookstores!! People here are also very friendly when drunk and if you go partying in a club with a girlfriend and no accompanying male it seems you are free game! Shirlz and I weere partying it up at the Walkabout and the boyfriends were having drinks on the other side of the place and we were pestered by some very (VERY) detrermined guys. Boyfriend is not a word in the English dictionary apparently.

Waiting at Athens

Our plane, ready to board but the weather at Heathrow resulted in hundreds of flights being cancelled. We were fortunate to only have to wait 12 hours..

Foggy streets in Harrow. The thick fog had been around for a few days apparentky and was the reason for the chaos at Heathrow.


Christmas lights on Carnaby Street, near Piccadilly Circus

Hamleys, biggest toy store ever had some amazing lights up too

Piccadilly Circus

A funfair on Leicester Square. And I love those phone booths.

Taking the underground home after spending all day in London. The evening was spent first at a pub with an awesome name, the Slug and Lettuce, and the rest of the night was at a huge Aussie pub/club called Walkabout. We ate Kangaroo kebabs for supper. Seriously.

Shirlz, Gerhard and I

One very tired Gareth