Although the temperature is still decidely on the cool side, it was nice to see that the flowers were all nicely in bloom in St James’ Park and Hyde Park. Here are a few pics from today’s walk:

… from the laughing Buddha.

No matter how many times I walk through Hyde Park and see the grey squirrels their little antics never fail to charm, even knowing that these little American creatures are possibly the reason for the declining number of the now endangered British red squirrels.

Seeing these squirrels always makes me think of that episode of Gordon Ramsay’s The Fword where food critic Giles Coren suggested it is the duty of every English[person] to eat as many grey squirrels as they can. Quite an entertaining little story. There is a write up of his experience here … and no, squirrels do not taste like chicken.

Quicker than anticipated the festive season has it and things have been going crazy both at work and in life. And I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way!

Good wishes to you all over this Christmas season – stay safe and eat well. 🙂

See you on the other side when I get back from Russia … when I will have some stories to tell about recent journeys through a cupboard and Vienna …

In an attempt to add a third to a current list of two libraries that I have joined but never seem to visit today I headed over to the British Library at St Pancras. The British Library is UK’s national library and one of the greatest in the world (we’re talking over 150 million items kids!) Its quite an impressive building and to a tourist would seem more museum than library, for example, as a general visitor I visited The John Ritblat Gallery where I saw many versions of the Qu’ran, the Magna Carta and Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest manuscript of the complete New Testament.

To access actual reading material (that is, the reading rooms) you must apply for a reader’s pass. I thought I had brought all I needed with me – my photo ID and bill with address. Unfortunately I didn’t bring the most important thing – an actual reason for wanting to use the library, that is, a research topic. I didn’t want to make up anything on the spot since that seemed against the spirit of the library so next time I guess!

Last week my brother and I queued at the Russian Consulate for over three hours (but probably closer to three and a half) to hand in our passports to get tourist visas for our Christmas visit to Russia. We had arrived before the appointed time of 9am only to find that there were about 20 people in front of us waiting for the gate to open. We were pretty relaxed at first as we thought it would simply be a case of people handing the passports plus applications in and then we would be off. How wrong were we?!The consulate is only open for a limited time including Mon-Fri but not Wed (what the?) 9-12 (accepting last applications at 11.45) or you can lodge between 3-4pm but you have to pay £120 or £180 for the privilege. Luckily for us we got in but we were absolutely the last people (at 11.44!) so we were relieved that our whole morning was not wasted. For the poor guy behind us this was his 3rd time lining up and he just missed out. Not sure why he didn’t make an effort to get there earlier and be first in line this time around. People are sometimes very strange like that. It was only later we found out that he was flying out the next day. Oops. So that was queuing experience number one.

Today I left work early so that I could pick up our passports/visas (again open only for a limited time 11-12 and 4-5) but to my dismay I found yet another line of people in front of me. Just as well that this time around I only waited half an hour to pick up our items but still … this was queuing experience number two.

I certainly hope that this trend of queuing is not what I have to look forward to in Russia …

… check out this. Too Wierd.

The crazy season begins:

… eh … what am I talking about. Its always like this!