loughborough is a modest little college town with all the usual accoutrements of small-town england (but no marks & sparks!). just about everyone we asked about the school mentioned how it's top in sports (both play and research). and it shows.
connie and i both thought these were grass courts until someone pointed out that they're astroturf. (astroturf?!)
one of manymanymany pitches (or playing fields). this one as viewed from connie's window.
campus housing. man, the english are really into shrubbery. everything in loughborough was pruned into these tidy little shapes. (neep!)
one of the RAs (called "subwardens" there) inherited this amazing airplane seat (first-class, natch) from some guy who had done his phD work on, well, airplane seats. is this not the most badass computer chair?
we made it into london a couple days later and stayed at a large hostel near hyde park. unfortunately, due to lack of foresight, we didn't realize that just because it's near hyde park does not mean that one gets off at the hyde park tube stop. we had to schlep our shit through the park the longway, horizontally, all under the too-warm midday sun. there are a whole bunch of decent hostels along inverness terrace, including ours, and they're all actually a block or so from the bayswater tube.
on the balcony outside our 12-person room. the legs behind connie's belong to one simon, an edinburghian who related this truly crazy story to us about his travels (travails are more like it) through canada. after making his way through vancouver, toronto, banff, and the whole bit, he somehow made it all the way to alaska, only to get stranded there without any cash. his father had to fed-ex him some money (since, apparently, they don't seem to have atm machines there), and he only received enough to take the greyhound to toronto. and from wherever he was in alaska, this turned out to be an eight day trip. yes, eight days on the bus. the other travellers along the way would take pity on him (with some encouragement from the sympathetic bus driver) and buy him food. besides having to sleep in a sitting position for eight days, there's also this policy of stopping every four hours, so just when he'd get to sleep, he'd be woken up by the lights and people shuffling off to the loo or whatever. when he finally arrived in toronto, it was too late to call his friends there, so he leaned against the bus stop sign to finally catch a much-needed nap, only to be approached by a guy (with police officer in tow) telling him to shove off, move along. simon replied, "dude, i just got off the bus from alaska." guy: "you're shittin' me!" simon: "no." guy: "jesus. well, stay there as long as you like then!"
the cheese nerds at neal's yard dairy in covent garden (the place for cheese in london). the very charming john (center) helped me pick out some montgomery cheddar, kirkham's lancashire, a bit of the lovely irish gabriel cheese, and some goat cheese i can't remember. the smell when you walk in the door is wonderful: biological and musky, like the very air is alive and full of cheese pheromones.
also in covent garden, kenzo had put up a field of paper poppies to promote their flower perfume.
at the tate modern, my favorite room featured bruce nauman's work. he's very multimedia, marrying alot of performance in his visual art. here, one of his great neon signs.
here, a series of television monitors show scenes of a couple having dinner with the timing staggered. they start off having a lovely, civil time, but this quickly degenerates into a brawl: lots of groin-kicking and fork-stabbing. hilarious. in another tv installation, a monitor is placed upside down on top of another monitor, and both show a clown angrily jumping up and down, shouting, "no! no! no! no! no...!". (and of course, the one on the screen above is upside down.) weird, but also funny..
if only the busking in nyc and boston could compare to london's: here, a girl reproduces botticelli's "birth of venus" on the street across the thames from the tate. it looked pretty damn good.
connie in front of the millenium footbridge outside the tate.
view from the footbridge (eastward, i think).
connie's feet in hyde park.