I was surprised to hear from Mirela that her celebration of Easter was going to come after a few weeks after when I thought everyone else celebrated. The difference in timing apparently due to the uses of different calendars – the Greek the modified Julian calendar and the Western world the Gregorian calendar.

Normally in Athens, Mirela says, Easter is very important for the Greek Orthodox and is a great time for feasting and celebration. Its also a time when Mirela is used to be being surrounded by friends and family. I think this year is the first time she’s spent it away from home and, to be honest, it seemed she really missed the celebrations from her home town. Hard to imagine but she actually felt lonely in the sea of Greeks that greeted us both times we arrived at the local Greek church. Probably because she was missing her friends and family.

Last night, for Good Friday, we went to Aghia Sophia Greek Cathedral about five minutes walk from the house. I’ve only been in the Cathedral once before I must say it’s a bit of a hidden gem – a very beautiful church. When we arrived the police had cordoned off the road from all oncoming traffic. Greeks spilled all over the sidewalk and street to the sidewalk to the other side. There were easily a few thousand present tonight. Getting into the Cathedral was not even possible during the ceremony. Traditionally this is the day for mourning the death of Christ as represented by the procession of a decorated coffin carried through the streets by a select few. A similar thing happened tonight except that the journey was literally out of the church up and down the street and back again. Mirela says in Athens that the procession generally makes its way over all the streets in Athens and not just up one street. When the whole celebration finished we made our way into the Church so Mirela could kiss I guess the representation of the coffin. This was quite a challenge. Considering this day was about respect and mourning those around us were extremely pushy. At one point Mirela even had an argument with one of the girls.

Then tonight we returned to the church for Holy Saturday – the day for celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. After our very late dinner we turned up at the church. Tonight’s event was even busier than yesterday with the crowd I’m sure numbering at least five times Friday’s event. I’ve never seen so many Greeks gathered in one spot – not even when I was in Athens in December last year! LOL. A few Greek celebs were even present and we were standing right next to them. My stalkarazzi skills got a chance to be exercised once again. 🙂

We all bought giant white candles from the “black market candle seller” (some dude who took the opportunity to make some quick money from unprepared people like us who didn’t bring their own candles.) At midnight the priests apparently announced that “Christ is Risen.” At this point in Athens Mirela says normally fireworks are set off etc. In London the only indication that this declaration had been made was the ripple in the crowd and the subsequent passing on of the lighting of the flame. The flame of the Holy Flame taken from Christ’s nativity cave in Jerusalem apparently.

We unfortunately didn’t continue on with the tradition of cracking dyed red Easter eggs (which is meant to symbolise Christ breaking out from his tomb). Each person gets an egg and in conker styles goes around cracking the eggs against another’s. Whoever has a whole egg still at the end of the process will have all the luck.

It has definitely been interesting to witness this Greek Easter. However, it makes me wonder exactly where I’ve been for the last three Easters – how could I have missed such a gathering of Greeks in the past!

Afterwards we went on a massive walk to meet up with Mirela’s uni friends at a bar on Portobello road but by the time we got there the bar was closing! I think for Greeks they are probably thinking that by the time things shut here in London things are just starting for the Greeks!

My good friend Elvira is expecting a little one in June so on this fine Sunday I trooped over to her house for a baby shower. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a baby shower (if I’ve even been to one before) so I wasn’t sure what fun and games to expect when I got there. In fact it was rather civilised – some drinks, a very nice meal, some dessert, more drinks and then the baby talk and reminiscing!

Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been and actually its interesting to find out what’s new in the baby world. For example, did you know that these days you can actually freeze your umbilical cord blood. Why you ask? Certainly not to unfreeze and have for dinner one day! Apparently “umbilical cord blood banking” is becoming a little more main-stream these days as it allows you to keep something that is basically a perfect match for your newborn should he/she come into a health problem in the future. Saves you having to make a baby just to save your other children. Of course this is just another way for hospitals to make money .. then again it does make some sort of practical sense.

Its kind of hard to believe that this is the third year in a row that I’ve ventured down to witness the running of the London Marathon. It felt like a bit of deja vu as both Sandra and I repeated essentially what we did in 2006 to go and see Jules run this 26 miler. Don’t they say that the more things change the more things stay the same??

This time around however, unlike in 2006 when Jules actually ran for Martin, Jules managed to get a spot in the Marathon of his own through his running club. Wee James, along with the rest of his family, also joined our little support group as his sister was running her very first marathon. As in 2006 we started off at Bermondsey before making our way to Embankment. Our only concern was that Jules has been running much faster in the last couple of years so we couldn’t afford to dilly dally too much getting between the two sites. I must admit however we did have time to eat a sneaky sausage roll. Heh heh. (This actually saved us from an apparently horrendous downpour of rain. Thankfully for the runners this was the only spot of bad weather all day.)

We met up with Amelia and Andy, newcomers to London, at Embankment where they had a prime spot for a view of the race standing atop some fences. I wasn’t quite limber enough to get up there so Sandra and I settled on finding a spot by the railings opposite to them, safely on the ground. After seeing Jules go steaming by (there were too many runners this time and too much cheering for him to see or hear us) we rushed off to the end of the race where an unfortunate decision by me took us on a nearly 3 mile detour. Oops. Poor Jules was waiting for us for ages!

I was impressed with his time for the marathon of 3:00:42 which was frustratingly close to him breaking the 3 hour barrier. That pit stop half-way through the race really cost him. Still it was an extreme improvement of cutting his marathon time by 40 minutes in two years. James’ sister also clocked an impressed 4:39:49. Now if only I could find inspiration in their running …

Some photos from today:

Waiting for the runners	The Papp	The Women Leaders

The Wheelchair Leaders	Hope they can see each other	The Male Leaders

Elvis!	Its Jules!	Amelia and Andy

Amelia and Andy again!	Elvis again!	Jules again!

Switched On London aims to highlight sustainable lighting design for the evening in an urban setting. This Festival of Lights is running for a week finishing on Valentine’s Day. Various sites around the Thames (between and around the areas of London Bridge and Tower Bridge) have been lit in various energy efficient ways – each project is the result of the combined effort of unique pairings of a lighting designer and manufacturing company. The sites will then be audited for energy consumption. This festival also happens to coincide with The ARC Show at the London Design Centre (finishing tomorrow) where lighting manufacturers unveil their new products to lighting designers and architects.

The photos in the SOL brochure are much more impressive than the ones I was able to take but here are my efforts anyway for what its worth:

Maya House	London Bridge Post Office	Hay’s Galleria	Bermondsey St. Car Park

Southwark Cathedral	London Bridge	Hay’s Wharf

HMS Belfast	Design Museum	HMS Belfast again cause its pretty

Tower of London	Tower Bridge	Garden Of Light, Potters Fields Park

Breathing Trees, Potters Fields Park

What I like about this festival is its emphasis on finding more energy efficient ways to light up our neighbourhoods rather than coming out right and saying we should turn our lights off and live in the dark. This kind of thinking should be applied to all our lives – its inevitable that we will engage in some sort of environment-destroying activity (such as flying) so what we should be focussed on is not trying to eliminate it from our lives but finding more efficient and less damaging ways to fly etc.

As the Director of Switched On London says “It is essential to illuminate better, not less.”

On our way to Yo Sushi, that’s right second time in a week for me 🙂 , Pat and I noticed that there was something going on near the London Eye. In fact, this something had completely taken it over. Turns out it was the Fiat 500 Launch. I didn’t notice it at the time but apparently as part of their launch a Fiat 500 is going to occupy one of the pods for a couple of weeks.

Clearly we didn’t have tickets but on the way out after dinner we could hear The Feeling performing (and later across the river Mika performaing.) And then apparently at 8pm, exactly 500 hours into the new year, there was a bit of a light show. I’m not sure about lighting up the whole of the Thames but from the other side of the river, when we were walking back to the tube station, we did see lots of flames go up into the sky.

Just near the entrance to the event they also had the little Fiats sitting in a nice long row. They were so cute! No photos however. I also tried to take some footage of The Feeling performing but it was so windy that the audio was completely wiped out by the raging winds.

Months and months and months and months ago Sandra floated the idea of going to see this thing called the Race of Champions (ROC). All I knew about it was that it involved watching racing around a track at Wembley and that wasn’t like the traditional motor sports racing that I know Sandra is keenly interested in. Before today’s event I’d been meaning to look it up to see what it was all about but for some reason or another I never had time so I only really found out how it worked when Sandra was showing me the programme!

The ROC is run at the end of each year with a number of countries represented by two drivers – one racing and one rally. This year’s event involved two competitions a Nations Cup (country basis) and Champion of Champions (individual basis.)

The two events are run elimination style with the winner of each heat proceeding to the semi-final and then the final. Or in the case of the individual event the winner proceeding to a quarter-final, semi-final and then final.

To make things more interesting James, the perennial gambling man, proposed a bit of a wager with each of us selecting two teams and a bet of £10 each – a fiver going on each event. James currently has a wicked winning streak on wagers and by choosing my team purely on good looks I wasn’t sure I could break the streak! Sandra was in with a chance however having chosen the team with Schuey in it. These are the teams selected by us:

– Sandra – Germany and Scotland
– James – Finland and France
– Me – USA and Scandinavia

Before the start of the ROC, however, we all had an event we had to master ourselves – LUNCH! James was kind enough to volunteer, well actually kind enough to accept Sandra and I volunteering him, to make lunch for us – a delicious roast chicken and stuffing baguette and fixings accompanied by chocolate mudcake, crisps and fruit. Here we are enjoying the meal. I’m sure those around us were well jealous:

I must admit, not being the biggest motorsports fan, ROC was a lot of fun. The actual racing itself was surprisingly exciting – probably because of the track itself when you couldn’t tell until the last few 50 metres who was going to win. Plus it was fairly short and sweet and you got to see the real skill of the drivers on the entire track. Between races and events we also had entertainment in the form of cheerleaders, stunt bikes, stunt cars etc. No wonder it took nearly seven hours!

And the results. Well, good news all around. Sandra took out the Nations Cup with Germany triumphing over James’ Finnish drivers. She also generously gave me her Scotland team for the individual event but turns out I didn’t need it as I ended up taking out the Champion of Champions when Mattias Ekström of Scandinavia took out her Schuey in the final. Poor James. Here are the pics of the winners:

Oh I forgot to mention the cars which were pretty cool. This year’s event featured five cars: a dune buggy, a high power sports car, a world rally car, a large touring car and a Super 2000 specification saloon (this I got from wikipedia – heh heh.) The dune buggy was definitely my favourite car.

The Bankside Frost Fair apparently celebrates when Londoners took to the ice as the River Thames froze over during winter hundreds of years ago with 2007 marking 400 years since the first ever Frost Fair. I was promised ice sculpting but could only locate one such ice sculpture as per the pic to the left. Still, there were other things to entertain including various street theatre, the winter market, and going inside Shakespeare’s Globe.

The Undercroft of the Globe was also transformed into a winter-scape and filled with small stalls and traders and their unique crafts. The most entertaining thing about the Globe was the various performers wandering around performing little skits which could involve the public at any random moment. Hilarious.

My favourite aspect of the Frost Fair was, of course, the Husky Dogs. I wanted to steal one of the little fellas. So cute.