Rugby double header

Spent the morning helping my new workchum, Lynne, move house. follwoed by a massive double header - Australia vs Scotland and NZ vs Wales - at rugby.

Lynne, who grew up in Inverness and informs me that she is usually teetotal, knocked back a patriotic pair of single malts, but it did nothing to help her team's fortunes. The Kiwis steamrollered the Welsh - the Allblacks are well nigh unstoppable at the moment, and folk in the pub are starting to say that we might as well all hand over the World Cup now and go to the Bahamas...

Throw in the Aussie's win in the first Ashes test and it's been not a bad weekend for antipodaean sport, really.

Stonehenge to Southampton

W've just come back from a weekend of touring some really old bits of southern England - I took Anthony to see Stonehenge, the Roman baths at Bath, and the 3000 yr old white 'chalk horse' on a hillside at Uffington, on the edge of Oxfordshire.

He was suitably impressed, as well he might be... but what really floated his boat (sorry!!) was our random detour to the historical ships at the Naval dockyards down in Portsmouth.

We started with the HMS Victory - Nelson's ship during the battle of Trafalgar - which is still a commissioned and staffed military vessel! (Although she is in dry dock...) She seems huge - til you think of her three decks stacked with 800 crew, all sweating and stewing together from months at a time. No wonder men had to be press-ganged to serve...

No pix allowed on board this naval veteran, but our guide gives a riveting account of Victory's most famous battle, from the moment Horatio signalled his fleet: "England expects every man to do his duty", to the twin catastrophes marked by tiny brass plaques.

Here Nelson Fell.

Here Nelson Died.

What we wanted to see most of all though, was a lady only lately raised from her watery grave. The Mary Rose - Henry VIIIs flagship, named for his younger sister, which sank in 1500-something, is held in near darkness, her timbers sprayed for weeks on end with a waxy substance that will preserve them and enable folk to enjoy her in years to come. Eery.

Better yet, in salvaging her, she's been made to disgorge her treasures, now on display just yards from the a museum that displays the stuff found on board - everything from boots, games and clothing to 160lb longbows - some of which can still fire arrows! Not bad after centuries underwater.

It was only after we'd left that Anthony realised that he hadn't actually taken any photos of the bows... or the arrows.

Guess we'll have to go back then...

Jailbirds, submariners, exempt from smoking ban...

One of the most confronting things about living in England is that smoking is still permitted pretty much everywhere - in restaurants, shopping centres and, of course, in Ye Olde Poorlye Ventilated pubs.

Coming from Melbourne, where smoking was banned in restaurants and cafes years ago, seeing an ashtray on a restaurant table in Brixton was actually quite a shock.

In Ireland and Scotland, they've banned smoking in all public places, and England is set to follow suit next year, with bans for all pubs restaurants, train stations and workplaces... unless you happen to work in certain key industries where smoking is, apparently, still okay...adult care homes, hospices, prisons ... and submarines. Go figure.

Introducing... Eclipse!

Ever since the lovely Anthony arrived here 4 weeks ago, we've been busily throwing ourselves into Oxford's vibrant live music scene.

Anthony's talent with the bodhrain (irish drum) has drawn huge praise - he'd only been in town a week when, on joining him for a pint at Joe Ryan's Most Excellent Half Moon, I found him deep in conversation with three of Oxford most seasoned folk and blues veterans, whom I'd at best met in passing.

So we're singing at sessions a couple of times a week and have even been asked to do our first gig together! So we will be playing a slot at a benefit event for Amnesty in December. Allow me to introduce Oxford's newest acapella folk duo - Eclipse.

I've also scored another gig, working up a couple of numbers with my friends Guy, Sal and Barney, who together make up Strange Vintage. Guy would be the selfsame Guy Pearce with whom I made my gigging debut back in August, at the Marlborough House. He is also responsible for a moderate hangover today... not ideal for a Tuesday.

The world according to Tolkein

I watched the first Lord of the Rings movie (again!) on the idiot box on Sunday. I don't do much TV, so this was significant.

My life experience of Tolkien's series now looks like this:
-Swordfighting with my chums outside cinemas all over Melbourne in return for free tickets to the movies on their opening days.
- Touring through southern NZ with the lovely Anthony past the 'plains of Rohan', Milford Sound and several of the rivers used in the film. My nearly-brother-in-law Scott was actually in the films as an extra - he has pix of himself dressed as an Orc, an Elf and a rider of Rohan.
- Copious ciders in the Eagle and Child, the pub where Tolkien, CS Lewis and other literary legends used to skive off work on Tuesday to work on their childrens stories.
- Still haven't finished reading the book. D'oh.

A Warwick, a Warwick...

Warwick castle is reputed to be one of the best pieces of castle entertainment outside London. It's also just an hour from Oxford (as so many things are - lucky us!), so Ants and I hopped a train this morning and took ourselves up to see it.

It's VERY touristy, and cost a bomb, but I have to say it was worth every penny... The grounds are massive, even though they're right in the centre of town, and still walled in as they would have been in days of old. Walking in via the pedestrian entrance, we made our way along a steep winding path that might once have been a coach road in... certainly the moment when you round a bend and see the castle in all its grandeur is designed to impress, and could have come straight from a Philippa Gregory novel.

Said to have been first built by Alfred the Great, Warwick has seldom been a royal palace (except when it was confiscated after the fall of the Plantagenets and the demise of Dudleys in Elizabethan times). As it's been used almost continuously as a residence, there it's been continuously meddled-with and remeddled-with, but you can still follow the evolution of the place through the centuries. The towers are still lofty, the dungeon and torture exhibits chillingly creepy and the trebuchet (apparently the world's largest), really impressive, even at a distance. If the 'Kingmaker' history feels a little contrived, the waxworks by Madame Tussauds (who run the palace now), do a wicked job of bringing workchambers and stables to life.

The Kingmaker, by the way, is a big deal up here. The 16th Earl of Warwick - who won his title by marrying a chick who wasn't allowed to hold it in her own right - was a descendent of the house of York and is said to have been influential in swinging the crown from the red rose of the Lancastrians to the white rose of York. Later, he changed his mind and, such was his influence (he was the wealthiest man in britain, outside the immediate royal family, at the time) that he succeeded in bringing down Edward IV (over a woman, what else!, and having first beheaded the King's father in law) and restored Henry VI to the throne in 1470. The whole gory story isn't terribly well explained at the castle - I've borrowed once again from Wikipedia for this entry! - or maybe I just have a lot still to learn about this period of history...

We watched a pale wintry sun set from the top of the battlements and I defy anyone to find such a moment lacking in romance or beauty (except for the fact that it was only 4.30pm at the time!). We're contemplating making a return journey for one of their Kingmaker feasts... apparently friends of our from the Half Moon occasionally feature in the cast...