Olympic cycling in Richmond Park

Regular readers of this blog would kind of guess that I live close to Richmond Park, so when I heard that the Olympic cycling was passing through, of course I had to go, despite last time I saw a road cycle race, as a teenager on exchange to France, being bored to tears. Waiting for the race this time was a lot more fun, very relaxing sitting on the grass and with a long enough route, not too crowded. Even the police motorcyclists streaming past at regular intervals seemed to be enjoying themselves (the one below was doing high fives with the crowd).

And then there was the cyclists, in two main groups, they whizzed past in almost a blink of an eye.

Team GB were in the second group and they got such a cheer but the few riders that were lagging behind the two groups got even louder cheers.

After seeing the riders past I rushed home (which really wasn’t far away), hoping to catch the final sprint at the finish on TV and guess what? They beat me to it! By the time I switched the TV on the race had just finished! So it’s quicker for them to cycle into Central London from Richmond Park than it is for me to walk home!

PS I of course stayed up to watch the Opening Ceremony last night and I absolutely loved it, Danny Boyle is a genius and I loved in particular his support for the NHS. I know other countries may not have particularly got that bit but trust me, this was about Britain and although we may occasionally moan about our NHS (trust me I could say a thing or two about how long it takes to remove wisdom teeth right now) but it is a service that is very dear to all our hearts because all we have to do is see other countries that don’t have a free health care system and see how difficult it is for the self employed or low incomed and we love and appreciate our NHS even more (plus the people who work for the NHS are complete stars). And at a time when the NHS is under such attack by the incompetent ideologically motivated ******* we have the misfortune to have in power at the moment, to have someone say how much we appreciate the NHS, in such an extremely high profile way, was fantastic. I also loved the bit about children’s literature and Mr. Bean and oh the Queen, a Bond Girl! Absolutely fantastic. And oh the cauldron!  Stunningly beautiful, I really hope they display the cauldron somewhere like the V&A (or maybe still on site) once the Olympics are over. And oh the choice of the next generation to light the cauldron, just perfect.

Seeing the torch again

How lucky am I? Seeing the torch twice! As it happened it came through my home town for a second time today, as it journeyed by river from Hampton Court to Tower Bridge before heading on land for the stadium. This time it was on the Queen’s barge, the Gloriana, which we missed seeing in the Jubilee, so that was an extra treat. It was really impressive seeing at first three of the tourist boats that go up and down the river near me, side by side, leading the procession, followed by some police boats and then Gloriana herself, with the torch flame in a special beacon at the front of the boat. Following behind was a whole, long flotilla of more boats, it was pretty special. Unfortunately though all the camera gods were against me, first my memory card was full on my ‘proper’ camera, so I had to hurriedly delete some photos and then I got the battery warning light (which is always as frustrating as hell because you see it literally about a minute or two before the camera is about to die, so not much advance warning), so I switched to my iPhone and then the memory space for that filled up after just a couple of snaps! Still I managed to get something.

PS Whilst we were waiting we also heard the 8.12am bell ringing, to be honest probably nowhere near as impressive as it would have been to be near Big Ben or St. Paul’s, as it was just a few hand held bells in the crowd and a hell of a lot of that bell ring tone on the iPhone but hey, all in the community spirit!

A Mascot-y trip round London

We went into town today to meet my dad, we had originally thought to head to the Tower of London but we were torn because a new exhibit had just opened in Tate Modern and we had still yet to see the newly opened Tanks at the Tate as well. So we met up at the Tower of London anyway first, if anything to see the Olympic rings on Tower Bridge (which are pretty wow).

And where we got to spy on an outside broadcast of USA Today (ooh American reporters are a little more glam than ones on the Beeb). We walked past as they were also filming some crowd shots, Girl Lacer is very impressed that she may just possibly be on American TV and that very possibly an old (American) teacher of hers might see her.

We also got to see where the kids’ ancestor by marriage (Thomas More) got brought into the Tower of London (Traitor’s Gate) to have his head chopped off, which Girl Lacer was extremely impressed by but then we decided (after lunch) to head to Tate Modern instead of going into the Tower. We decided to head there by boat (even though it’s within an extremely walkable distance) and to be honest by the time we’d bought the ticket and then waited for the boat we could have walked there a lot quicker and a lot more easily, but it was fun.

Tate Modern was cool, after an initial hmmmmm about the new Turbine Hall installation, a performance / interactive piece by Tino Sehgal, I really liked it.

It may look like a bunch of people standing around but actually most (difficult to tell apart the performers from the visitors) are performance artists who stand round and tell you stories. One of them tried it on my dad, my dad ran a mile. For a while I thought that was it and it took some explaining to the kids, who although are normally massive Turbine Hall fans, were a bit bemused by this one. But then the light flickered out and at first we thought their lights had just failed, they came on again and we thought nothing of it and then they started fading in and out and then something happened which was rather magical and well, you’ll just have to see it (don’t want to ruin the surprise) but the kids went from bemused to impressed (well, I think at least Girl Lacer was).

We also went to see the new display space The Tanks, which were fantastic. Basically The Tanks are where they used to store the oil for the turbine and they have now converted them into a space for performance related art (dance, film etc) and it’s perfect. The all enclosing concrete, with the lack of natural ligt is womb like and it allows you to be really enveloped into the piece. We saw some experimental ballet rehearsals which were a bit hmmmm but then we saw some short films and they were fantastic, not so much the films themselves but how they were displayed, in darkened rooms with some excellent sound systems. I particularly liked the two larger rooms (linked by a glass wall in part), they displayed several screens with different films and little areas of soft carpet and weird things to sit on and odd things propped up against the walls, I loved it, the kids loved it.

But they particularly loved all the mascots we bumped into.

The Olympic Rings at Richmond Park

Me and Girl Lacer went to find the Olympic rings in Richmond Park today (warning there’s going to be a whole slew of over excited Olympic posts from me this summer). I had spotted the photo of the rings on Facebook and as we live so close, I just had to go.

It was an adventure in itself finding the rings, going just by the Facebook photo, I recognised Penn Ponds, so headed there first to orientate ourselves. Then there was lots of squinting at the photo on my phone and going “well there’s the small pond and there’s the Royal Ballet School, so that must mean the rings are over there,” but we spotted lots of great wildlife on the way, the park really is blooming at the moment.

When we found the rings, understandably from ground level you don’t get the greatest of views but it’s worth having a stroll round them and then heading up to the nearby ridge of small hills, to get at least a slightly better idea of what they look like (middle photo was taken from the aforementioned hill) but really, you need to be on a plane going into Heathrow, to get a really fantastic view.

Once we had found the rings, that meant we had to make our way home again, via Kingston town centre as Girl Lacer wanted to spend some pocket money. So I’d looked at the map and thought that the gate at Kingston Hill (called Robin Hood Gate) would be the best place to exit the park and then we could get a bus down the hill and into town. Hmmmm, this is where my “oh look, I can see the exit from here” skills trip me up. You see Richmond Park is a fantastic mixture of woodland and open fields and when you’re in an open field bit, you can see quite a distance (which is an amazing feeling, it’s only when you see what you’re normally missing, i.e the ability to see more than just the building across the road, do you realise, or at least I realise, how restricted your line of sight is living in the city, Richmond Park is one of those places where you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself that you’re still in London). Anyway, so I was standing in a field, could just about see an exit in the far distance and I assumed it was Robin Hood gate . . . nope, I only realised it wasn’t when we finally, after a lot of walking, got to it. I actually, until just now when I looked at the map, assumed we’d gone through Roehampton Gate instead, but no looking at the map, we not only missed the right gate by one, we missed it by two gates, we had left through Sheen Gate instead and considering we had entered through Ham Gate, that meant we had just literally walked across the park (it’s a very big park). No wonder it was a long walk to get to the bus stop in Roehampton!

So, the moral of the story is, don’t trust me to know where I’m going in Richmond Park (it’s not the first time I’ve got lost there) BUT the rings are a definite must see, specially if you’re in a plane

Image sources

Richmond Park photos – me! (see my Flickr stream for bigger, brighter, better photos)

Map bastardised from Google.

PS Please do not use any of my photos without my permission, thank you kindly

Sketch club

(Oh I am such a Fight Club fan, I can’t see any phrase ending in club without wanting to insert it into some Flight Club lines, right I will control myself).

I’ve joined the sketch club at work (they’ve let me in wielding needle and thread). Every week we all contribute three words and then one of those sets of three words get chosen and we all sketch (or *ahem* embroider) something to do with those words. I’m not going to say what the three words were this week, but the above was the first thing that popped into my head (although I will say that London 2012 are selling some really cute (probably plastic) ducks at the moment). I think a better message on the duck’s billboard would be ‘Everyone take public transport to the Olympics’ but I couldn’t fit it in because can you imagine everyone cycling? Nope. Me and the kids will be going and it won’t be by bike, put it that way

On a side note, this was my first bit of embroidery done with pearl cotton, I ordered some on a ‘I really must get round to trying some new embroidery materials’ whim when I was forced to go online the other day to get myself some black embroidery floss as I can not buy it anywhere at the moment in the real world (so I bought 24 skeins on line, a lot lot cheaper than buying in a shop and ooh it should last me a few months at least). And the beauty of ordering online is that floss etc can be very very cheap if you buy in bulk *ahem*.

As pretty as it is I will need to find a better place to store it as it’s going to get dusty plus it’s one of my two main mixing bowls.

And my opinion on pearl cotton? It’s thicker obviously, a feature I liked when fill stitching the handle of the billboard and when working the black lettering, I don’t think it’s very subtle though, so it will get lots of use (just racking my brains to think of the last piece of ‘subtle’ embroidery I did) but I’m not about to abandon floss any time soon, I think I will use it in more brighter, bolder abstract(ish) pieces. I think it also might be interesting using in cross stitch, it would give a thicker more chunky feel. And as someone who suffers from ‘my floss is about to run out 2/3 of the way through the piece’ anxiety, I do appreciate the greater quantity of the stuff. And heck, just looking at the balls is pretty.

And going back to the duck, my opinion on that? It was my own pattern and I’m not happy at all with the eyes and beak of the duck but I did say didn’t I that I wanted to do more of my own designs, so it looks like sketch club will be a good place to try some of that out and I do quite like quick and dirty stitching, I did most of this whilst waiting for my shift at work to start today, whereas some of the other pieces I’m working on at the moment, taking forever.