This has to be the most extreme experience I’ve ever heard about. Makes me feel tired just reading it. In fact I think I’m going to go and make myself a bowl of hot chocolate before I read it over again, I think you should do the same. But it’s worth reading it, I think it absolves me of actually having to do it myself…
Is the sun hiding from us? Or is it just not putting the effort in? Either way, the love-hate relationship we have always had with our weather seems to be erring towards the latter sentiment now, as the so-called Summer draws to a close. Could it be time to accept that having our umbrellas violently inverted by rogue gusts of wind and our lower regions sloshed with tyre-propelled puddle water is a sign that Autumn has come early? I for one have relinquished my sandals and am planning for the season of mists and other inclement conditions. Here’s my list of where to find mellow fruitfulness!
…And just when I thought I’d found the most unique experience of the day, the Baby Jumping Festival comes along. Yes, grown men dressed as devils jumping over tiny babies… Bet you have to have a read of that one…
World Reviewer is a constant source of surprise and mirth to me – there are frankly some unusual things going on in the world which without this site I may not have ever heard about. So I would like to share one of my latest finds with you here: the Festival of the Pig from France. It’s not just about eating - they also race piglets and even more fantastically have competitions to mimic pigs both in appearance and sound. You have to believe it - there is no way anyone would make up anything so outlandish.
Inspired by Borough Market, here’s a new WR article about slow food: ‘Life’s too short to eat Supermarket tomatoes’.
Here’s the latest in my series of lil’ London docs., The Science Museum in South Kensington. I’ve always been a fan of hands on exhibits and the Science Museum does a pretty good job of it - which you can see from all the people in the background who were seriously hampering my ability with the camera! I got a bit involved with the idea of seeing the grandparents of all the technology we take for granted today - even I understand enough about how things work to know how a steam engine works but when it comes to things like computers and MRI machines it all gets a bit magical. One of the highlights had to be the HUGE computer with the hundreds of blue wires making all the connections like synapses in the brain of something…makes me see my laptop with a renewed sense of magic.
The Natural History Museum is planned for this weekend.
I did make it down to Borough Market as promised so I could help you get your fix of organic food via remote - like a kind of fast serving of slow food? Grab some fresh organic popcorn that has chosen to become popped and eaten and enjoy.
World Reviewer gets asked some unusual questions but though no one has been popping that question to me I have been asked to suggest some potential proposal backdrops. The top of the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building are pretty packed out with men on bended knee and a gondola in Venice is a bit unoriginal and fraught with potential mishap, so I came up with my own list (take heed boys), and called it ‘If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two’ after my all time favourite romantic song lyric.
Being an Australian living in London it should be more obvious to me than most that this city has so much in the way of entertainment and appeal. Yet it’s taken me this long to realise that I can do you all a bit of a favour by making little films of some of London’s highlights so you can see them for yourself. Last weekend I took on the Victoria and Albert Museum (they call themselves the V&A now), and captured some of the highlights into a quite serious and factual four minutes of moving imagery. This weekend I’m off to Borough Markets for a spot of luxury food shopping.
Feel free to capture your own favourites in the same way if you’re more a chatter than a writer…
In the interest of learning something new every day, today, one of our Contributing Editors, John Johnston, brought to my attention a new kind of spectator sport: Dog Surfing. As first I thought this might be a bit cruel, but John was quick to show me a video of it, and the plucky pup clearly looks like he’s enjoying himself.
Like I said, you learn (or see) something new every day in the World Reviewer office…