Monthly Archives: March 2010

Spring cleaning bikes at the farmers market

Spring is here and it’s time to get the rust and spider webs off the bikes. I’m helping out in a local organisation called Cycletastic that promotes cycling by fixing bicycles, teaching how to navigate the streets, organising workshops etc. There are some really cool people involved and I enjoy taking part in the events put on. I can do the basic maintenance but still got plenty to learn so this way I get to help other people while I learn more about bikes; a true win-win 🙂

This Sunday we set up a booth at the farmers market in Queens Park and held the first “Dr. Bike” event of the year. Here is one of the guys from Cycle Training UK helping me out with a kids bike.

We had Ann to help manage the queue and with six fixers we had our hands on 41 bikes in four hours. Busy times but it was great to help people get their bikes back on the road.

The cycling culture in London is still not that widespread but there are a lot of initiatives from the city and from non-profit outfits like the Cycletastic, Cycle Training UK and London Cycling Campaign. The people I meet from these organisations are really passionate about getting people to bike and it is great to see the grass-root spirit involved.

The Top London Travel Blogs

The travel agency LastMinute.com has started publishing a monthly top 50 list of travel and lifestyle blogs in London/UK. To kick that off they organized an event they called Oh You Lucky Bloggers at Planet Hollywood. It’s not like Ann or I has made it into the list but it’s always fun to get out and meet other bloggers. The event was great, mingling with the cool crowd of London blogosphere.

I’m not sure how the list is compiled but there are some really cool blogs on it – go have a look yourself.

There is a couple of my favorite London blogs that hasn’t made the list so I figured I’d give them props here:

IanVisits – Ian is constantly on top of what’s going on under and over ground in London events.
London Cyclist – Andreas is really busy creating resources for the biking crowd in London
Ghost signs – Not exclusively a London site but very interesting nonetheless with old painted signs on house.
From The Upper Deck – Another quirky blog where Przemek drives around on the double deckers of London and takes pictures out the window as London life goes by below him.
Georgian London – excitingly writings about life in London in the 18th century
Scandinaivian Kitchen – for everything homely on London

Justice or peace?

Last night we went to a screening of the movie Storm (DK: Hannahs Valg) which tells the fictional story of a trial at the tribunal in The Hague and how the prosecutors struggle to ensure evidence, witnesses and at the same time make political bargains with the local government of the Balkans.

The conflict of the Balkans is not easy to understand – yet I think it is important that we try. This is a war that happened in our lifetime, right in the middle of Europe and with horrible war crimes of ethnic cleansing, genocide and rape camps.

I found the movie very interesting and it displays some of the dilemmas of trying to achieve justice for the atrocities while trying to rebuild the stability of the region and what one persons sacrifice mean in a bigger political game.

After the movie there was a panel debate with the former diplomat Charles Crawford, journalist Rajeshree Sisodia, Elena Wasylem from a rape victim help group and Lisa Gormley from Amnesty International. They all had some interesting inputs to the different themes of the film and put it into context. One of the things that they mentioned in the debate afterwards was that the bargaining and some of the actions of the barristers were quite unrealistic.

The film is a great example of European collaboration as it was created with funding from three countries and cast from at least eight.

Check out Ann’s blog post about the night as well 🙂

Update March 29th 2010: Charles Crawford wrote a nice piece on the film and the debate afterwards.

St Patrick's Parade in Willesden Green

We live in the borough of Brent which is the most ethnic diverse in England and also the place with most Irish people in London. Wednesday last week was the real St. Patrick’s day which meant they put on a parade right down the street from us.

Around 6000 people came out and celebrated everything Green, Guinness and Irish and it was quite a show. It was great to see not just the Irish but everyone celebrating. Like these kids which looks anything but Irish playing the BodhrÃ¡n.

I also enjoyed the fact that the lineup before the actual parade was in front of the local mosque. Here with a truck with the title of an Irish rebel song called “Follow me up to Carlow” which is a celebration of an Irish victory over a 3000 men English army.

Peter Marshall the photographer was also in Willesden Green and as a lot more photos from the event.

Chalk Farm Tube Station

The tube station at Chalk Farm is my favorite of the ones I have come across in London. It’s a big red triangular building on the corner of Adelaide Rd and Haverstock Hill.

It was opened on June 22nd 1907 and like a number of other stations built at that time it has ox-blood red glazed terracotta blocks on the front to provide it’s very bold unique look.

Have a look at other people’s pictures of the station on Flickr.

St. Patrick's Day in London

Spring has arrived in London and so have the green people of the St. Patrick’s Parade.

Yesterday the sun was out and the bagpipers where filling the streets of central London with Irish tunes.

Not all of it was particular Irish. For instance the most cheerful act was Hare Krishna worshippers playing, singing and dancing down the street.

Other than that it was a parade of big hats, green cars and white legs.

Ann had four Maltese friends staying over this weekend and the parade was the Sunday out event before they all went back home.

Bloggers passing through and the story of the lost rugby tickets

A couple of weeks ago David from Malta was at a conference in London and with phones running out of credit and communication through his wife back home we managed to meet up in central London one evening. David is a thoughtful guy – as you can tell from his blog – and I always enjoy talking to him about politics, life and anything in between.

The week after we had another blogger passing through. This time it was Karen from Wisconsin. She had to leave Prague prematurely due to visa issues but was heading back to try again. On the way back to Prague she was making her way through Europe and London was the first stop. We had some entertaining days with Karen who was excited to be here. Here she is at Covent Garden with a Jack Sparrow look-a-like (and smell-a-like).

This weekend we again should thank a blogger for the entertainment. At the Blogger Meetup in February there had been a competition for rugby tickets and although we didn’t win (Ann got really close). However Peter – one of the winners – wasn’t going to use his tickets and gave them to Ann. I was soo excited about the chance to see a rugby game and had been looking forward to it for weeks. But yesterday as we were starting to get ready to get out the door we couldn’t find the tickets… We looked everywhere and got the room cleared out but the tickets didn’t appear.

I grumped about the lost tickets for a couple of hours but luckily enough we had an alternative event to go to. Instead we went to The Barbican for a show called the The Manganiyar Seduction where a group of 43 folk musicians from Muslim region of India was sitting in boxes as they played. A very impressive show as you can see in the clip below – but still a poor replacement for a rugby match.

Anyways big thanks to Peter Marshall for the rugby tickets, that was a nice gesture. He blogs about photography at Re:Photo and writes about the many protests and walks he photographs in My London Diary. Peter has been walking around London taking pictures since the 70s and has some really interesting stories and observations.

Michael Carøe Andersen

Sporadic blogging by Gelle