Well, England is out of the Euro 2004 here now, and man do they bitch and complain about it. I swear there whole society revolves around soccer (sorry 'Football') and the pub, preferably together. One of my work collegues should be quoted for saying, 'England loves to lose, it's what we do best! We are just waiting for Tim Henman to be out of Wimbledon and for someone to take the Rugby World Cup back off us...'

Anyhow, thought this picture was pretty good... The England rugby tour to NZ and Oz is something else, the English would prefer we don't mention.

THE PRESS STORY

I pocketed a $2000 prize. But I believe the big congratulations go to Andrew Rudge.

Struggling to think of something to do on Sunday, out flatmate (Kate) suggested we go down and look around Greenwich, it is only about a 20-30 min walk from our flat. The weather was a tad 'iffy' so as we arrived in Greenwich it started to rain, so we dove into an undercover Sunday market. Just your normal array market goods, over priced junk, which as Kate said before we left, "You'll regret anything you buy". We did not buy anything.

As the rain slowed to drizzle, we made towards the Thames. There is a tunnel, which links Greenwich to the Isle of the Dogs. It was made about 100 years ago which is quite impressive for an under river tunnel.

Once we had walked under the river, looked around and come back under the tunnel, we had a whirlwind trip around the Greenwich navel museum. We are going to go back to have a good look around. It was getting late and I really wanted to see the Royal Observatory, which is basically the home of all time. It is situated on sizeable hill, which gives good vistas of the surrounding areas. There is a lot of history in the observatory regarding time and navigation. It was interesting to read some of the history of time and stand on both the East and Western hemispheres.

On Tuesday (last week - Yes, I am getting slack. But we are getting the Internet in our flat in a week) We decided to take in yet more of the local sights and sounds. We started with Shakespeare’s Globe. Obviously, we have all heard of the famous playwright, but I for one, knew very little about him and the Globe. I was very surprised to find that the Globe was a reconstruction and only 8 years old. It is the third globe, the first being destroyed by a live canon on stage firing and igniting the building, the second was in London’s great fire due to the straw thatch roofs.

The current one was built about 300 years after the second when an American actor came to London and went to pay homage to Shakespeare but found that there was no building, no monument, only a plaque on the ground. So he decided to rebuild the Globe, it is a fully working theatre (they put on plays twice a week) and built completely by the old methods, from tools to using wooden dowels instead of nails. They even got special compensation from the City Council to install a thatch roof (which were made illegal after the great fire). All and all, a very impressive building, and a great place to go and see.

We tried to go see St Paul’s cathedral, but it was under-wraps. They are doing renovations, which are meant to last until 2008. So it was a real let down, we couldn’t see the inside either as there was to much scaffolding and plastic wrap.

Marble Arch was next. We didn't have a clue why it was famous, or a stop on all the tour bus routes, but we jumped on the tube and headed their anyway. We discovered that it used to be the main entrance to Buckingham palace, then moved to be the main entrance of Hyde Park, and now resides in the centre of a large round about. Wasn't all that exciting.

We have JOBS! It is good to know we will both have an income and slow down our spending of New Zealand dollars. I have 3-6 month contract at the Environmental Agency (Government Org.), I can't really say what I do (its top secret, so secret no one has told me what I'm meant to do. And I've already started!). Carmens jobs looks a tad more promising (i.e. interesting), she starts on Wednesday at a large Oil company. I will let her fill you in what she is doing, as I wasn't really paying much attention when she told me. :+) We are earning £10 an hour (+ travel, + food allowance), so its pretty good. To be honest we can't see what everyone complains about, living costs aren't outrageous over here. It is VERY expensive to visit or go on holiday, but once your earning, rent + bills + food is going to cost about £100 a week each. Which leaves about £200 a week for travel, entertainment, saving etc. PLUS when we leave the country we will receive 10% of everything we earned from National Insurance.

Great to see people leaving comments and filling in our guest book. If you haven't already, get in there!!! Also, note that you can view old entries that have slipped off the bottom of the screen in the 'Categories' and 'Archives' sections on the right of this page.

Now that we are semi-settled, the next exciting bit is TRAVEL. I'm after suggestions or ideas or tours or websites that might help us narrow down the best places to visit to start with (keeping in mind that the money situation is still pretty tight)...

So post your comments with advice or stories of where you've been before or where you are dying to go (that way we can post photos and stories and make you insanely jealous...) and hopefully we will have some good travel stories coming your way soon!

We started Saturday by meeting Carmens Aunt, partner and couple of their friend at Green Park, next to Buckingham Palace. It was of course the Queens birthday. And they hold their annual 'Trouping the Colours'. Unlike in New Zealand there is no public holiday for her birthday here. The 'Trouping' consists of a parade of a few hundred soldiers all dressed in old ceremonial military costume, i.e. plate armour etc, all riding horses, pulling old canons with some of the royals in tow. They pile out of Buckingham palace in file, do a parade around some streets and then go back, before Queenie stands on the balcony and does the royal wave to us minions. We got to see her and the rest of the misfits, before watching a demonstration of how quickly the cavalry could dismount, undo and arm the canons and fire a few rounds. Of course I took my camera, with the full intention of taking hundreds of photos, but managed to forget the memory card rendering it useless =(

After the Trouping, in true English style, with nothing to do, we followed our group of people to a pub. The general conversation goes along, person 1: "what shall we do now?" person 2: "I don't know" anyone else: "lets go to the pub". This seems to be the trend no matter what company you are with. So we caught a tube to Covent Garden, this is the Art centre of London, apart for the fact it is infinitely larger. Many loony people doing acts, trying to make people laugh, children cry and generally entertain the masses, all in the name of begging for money. After partaking in a few drinks at 'The Punch and Judy' pub established in 1778, we strolled down to watch the D-Day celebrations at Leicester square.

As the evening drew closer, we remembered one of flat mates had 'booked' the lounge and kitchen for a curry party he was throwing for some of his friends. We feared both his friends, and the after curry bowel rebellion. SO looking for something to do, we strolled towards the West End in search of a production to watch. There are approximately 30 different productions on at any one time, we they all generally start at 7:30, and it was nearing 7 we couldn't be to picky. We went for the first and cheapest one we could find, Fame. Our tickets cost us £15 each and we were in the restricted viewing area. The tickets only cost a tad more then a movie in this area of town which were going for £10. There were about 10 - 15 seats from the good seat area which weren't filled, so as soon as the curtains drew back, we were off down to some of the best seats in the house. These tickets were being sold for approx £50 each. So we had a fantastic evening. The show was very good, and was much more entertaining than a movie.

Just a quick note to keep you all updated... By the way - I hear it's getting cold in NZ? We had a sweltering 32 degC yesterday, but have been warned that the brief spell might be the only summer we get.

Went to the Rugby 7's at Twickenham on Sunday, and managed to drag Gary along, even though he wasn't that keen on rugby. Unfortunately he came out a whole lot keener about rugby after England beat us in the final, and took the 7's World Cup. The day was overcast but warm, and there were a few people dressed up, but not as many as I would've thought. It was definitely good to see lots of NZ flags waving in the crowd.

We moved into our new flat in London on Monday night. It's really nice, as are the flatties (Kate and Richard). We even have a backyard complete with our own wildlife (see pic). Still getting used to figuring out where everything goes in the kitchen, but it is definitely nice to come home to a space that feels like it's your own. The room has a bed and shelves, and Kate's promised us a wardrobe and some drawers, so we're on the look out for things like lamps and linen at the mo.

On the job-front, I went for a 4.5hr long interview yesterday where they asked lots of difficult engineering questions that I know that I used to know the answer to. Got a couple more interviews tomorrow, and then it's just a waiting game (which will involve temping to keep the money rolling in). Aaron has got a 3 day temping job at the moment being an office slave for a marketing research company, and an interview on Monday. We will keep you informed.

Contact details:
We now have a cell phone and an address, but I won't post them here as we'll get every freak and his dog harrassing us. If you do need to get in contact with us, or may need to in the future, send me an e-mail and I'll send you the details.

Well it's Monday again and come tomorrow, we will have been here 2 weeks. There is good and bad news (isn't there always). The good news is that we have found ourselves a new home, so we can stop taking over Gary's study and having to make ourselves scarce for his romantic interludes. The bad news (which will hopefully soon be resurrected) is that British people seem to have a hard time recognising our talent and hence, giving us a job.

Saturday was spent in a state of confusion as we were continuously late in getting to appointments to see flats. Now, I can tell you first hand that when you hear horror stories of peole living in flats with a billion other people, and only 2 feet on either side of the bed - they aren't joking! Before looking at these places, we'd politely declined about half a dozen others that involved living with more than 5 other people.

On the way to the first flat we looked at, Aaron almost got mugged in broad daylight by some guy who asked him if he could give two 10p for a 20p. Aaron has learned a very important rule about trusting big, black, homeless, scary looking guys. The flat itself, was ok I guess. Two reasonable sized bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, but it was wildly obvious that the inhabitants were a bunch of hippies, and when we asked about local shopping facilities - the girl pointed out the 'After-hours' (kiwi translation: liquor store). We walked back to the train shaking our heads at each other (and Aaron kept his wallet tightly closed).

The second place, the girl never showed up to meet us at the tube station, so we had a brief look about the area - the conversion of balconies into rooms and the bars on the ground floor windows put us off that one. Oh, and the graffiti on EVERYTHING!

A friend of a friend of Gary's was next on the list. Aaron had already talked to her on the phone, and said she sounded pretty cool, but the proof is in seeing the place. It was such a relief to see that the place was normal and actually really really nice, as was Kate. It is a 4 story terrace house, with a self-contained flat on the ground floor, and 3 bedrooms in the top 3 floors. The kitchen and bathroom are less than a year old, and it has a backyard perfect for BBQ's. Our room is pretty big, and we'll post photos later in the week. Kate also has all the episodes of 'Sex in the City' and 'Friends' on VCR, so I'm set...

After promising Kate that we were pretty much sold, we thought it was only fair to show up at the last flat we'd arranged to see. Afterall, we were only a little over 2 hours late. Daisy, 'a 45 year old, spiritual lady' who was most worried about the 'vibes' she got off her soon to be inhabitants managed to talk to us for about 2 hours and take us on a tour of the town in her tiny little car. Her definition of a double bedroom was a bit of a stretch, yes there was a double bed in the room, but god knows how they got it in. The kitchen was the size of my wardrobe, and Aaron hit his head on the windchime thingys hanging over every door.

By this time it was 4ish, and we hadn't even got around to having lunch. We jumped on the train and texted Kate to confirm, before heading all the way home to Staines on the train.

Well, as some of you loyal 'slowlane' watchers may have noticed, 'slowlane' has been a bit under the weather lately and you haven't heard much from us. It all has something to do with the web-hosters and a lot of big words I don't understand, but Aaron's got us up and running again.

The problem is that we don't really have any news... we are in the process of waiting to hear back from jobs while we outstay our welcome at cousin Gary's place in Staines. Hopefully, (fingers crossed) we'll be out of here and into a flat this weekend - however, we don't know whether it will be in London or somewhere else until we get a phonecall today. Vague enough for you?

Meanwhile, we are still on holiday I guess, but itching to get money (I mean jobs) and a flat and unpack! The advantage of not having jobs is that we can have a bit of a look around while we wait. I've managed to show Aaron a few of the things I remember from when I was here 5 years ago (strangely enough, not much changes in England in 5 years) and we've just about got the tubes and trains sorted (next step is the buses).

Aaron: We have managed to see a little of London. One of the many museums, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the underground, and a few other places. Nothing here is to daunting, and things don't actually appear to cost THAT much. Well it wouldn't if we were earning pounds and not spending dollars. I must say however, that british weather is as bad as they make it out to be. Although it hasn't really rained since we have been here, it has been overcast almost every day.

We are planning on going to Twickenham this weekend to watch the England league of the World 7s