Let’s go this way

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments

Piccadilly Circus

Today it was time for some neighborhood exploring and I took a walk passed through:

  • Maida Vale which has beautiful lanes with big green trees. And if it has to be a Starbucks to get your cup of tea then the one in Maida Vale/Kilburn has to be one of my favourite ones in London. It is a 2 minute walk from here and they sell this great book: Inspired by Music is The Prince’s Trust new book featuring personal accounts from celebs of how one piece of music became their inspiration.

    Not only does this book contain contributions from your favourite celebrities (Bill Nighy (worth to buy the book for alone), Tony Blair, Ozzy Osbourne, Michael Sheen, Richard E. Grant, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey – just to name a couple), it also contains fantastic portraits by award winning photographer Cambridge Jones.

    You might want to get your copy for the coffee table. (The above pic is the book being advertised on Piccadilly Circus spot the man with the funky specs! And yes it was nice weather today.)

  • St. John’s Wood. This is a very posh area (and a celebrity hotspot) but very nice too. It feels like a small village with a cosy (but very expensive) High Street and some beautiful parks too and it is just around the corner of Regents Park.

    I had no idea it was the area of Lord’s Cricket ground until I suddenly stood right beside it. I think there was a game going on as they were selling tickets for it at the tube station.

  • And then there was Marylebone which has the same village feel but is not far from Oxford Street. Again, the high street was realy nice and I tried to find this, ehrm, Oxfam shop and succeeded. (And no he wasn’t there anymore)

    This a rather large Oxfam shop specialised in books, film and music. And seeing as they were looking for volunteers to help in the shop in weekends I am going to be on a try out there next Sunday. I have long been wondering if I could use my weekends for something a little bit more useful than hanging about in the cinema, so this seems worth a try. Let’s see how it works out.

What way are you going?

Sing us a song, you’re the piano man

thegirlinthecafe 4 Comments

Thirty street pianos have been installed on streets, in public squares and parks, train stations, and markets in London, they are a part of the Play me, I’m yours project which is currently visiting London. “Like a creative blank canvas, the pianos are there for any member of the public to play and engage with. The pianos will be in place until July 13th, after which time they’ll be donated to local schools and community groups.”

I stumbled upon the first on on Leicester Square where girl was playing a classical piece, and when I visited Portobello Road last week there was an older man playing a beautiful piece of music. He had parked his glass of beer on the piano and went for it, impressing all bystanders. What a wonderful idea.

Sing us a song, you’re the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we’re all in the mood for a melody
And you’ve got us feelin’ alright

And so he does

More Living art

On another note, the Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square has been turned into a living Art work. In stead of having a statue or sculpture there, living people, one at a time, one hour at the time, are taking stand on the plinth and do whatever they want to do making a living portrait of the UK.

There is a live webstream here: One and Another website. Or if you are in London, go visit Trafalgar Square, the event will continue until September. You can also apply for a place on the Plinth, should you be interested!

The live webstream is kind of fascinating.

A first timelapse experiment – and how to do it

thegirlinthecafe 8 Comments

After my Adobe Premiere course last week I really needed to go and use it for something. I have long been wanting to experiment with time-lapse photography, so I took a couple of test shots around Trafalgar Square and glued them together into a time-lapse sequence.

Just a couple of notes:

1. It feels good to make something again, even if it is just a simple thing like this.

2. The photos

The camera I used for this is my small pocket camera (Panasonic Lumix TZ4). It was handheld so there is some shaking. It also doesn’t have a built in timer so I used the “burst” option in stead. Also – not all photos are sharp.

If you want to do this properly you will have to use a tripod, and to make things easier for yourself, a good camera with a timer.

I am going to try it again with my Nikon D80. This camera should take better pictures. It doesn’t have a timer either, but I bought an external timer which can be connected to the camera. This sort-of remote control will then take pictures every x seconds. (where x is the interval you have set it to).

But basically what you need to do it to take lots of pictures with very short intervals of the same subject. (And that subject should, obviously be moving/changing etc.)

3. Editing
It was really easy to turn this into a video clip in Premiere. It was a breeze to add a bit of music to it and adding some titles is very easy too.

I set the duration for each photograph at 0.2 seconds. (one fifth of a second, 5 photos per second)

(Note: you don’t need Premiere for this, you could probably do the same thing in Windows Movie maker.)

And I can hear you think – why did you not just shoot a video clip in stead?
Well I kind of like the quirky way in which people or things seem to move in time lapse videos, there is an odd look and feel to it. So I want to experiment with it a bit more.

To do some more practising with the editing – next weekend I am going to visit those two lovely dogs again and I will try to shoot some video clips of them to cut together some sort of “A day in the life of …” clip. Stay tuned.

Update: Uploaded a new version. It is slightly longer with some more footage of people on Trafalgar Square. And I put in transitions between the different sections. And it is slighly better quality.

Cool down

thegirlinthecafe 7 Comments

Swim - anyone?

A heatwave has arrived in London.

I wonder if this is typically British, a heatwave warning with different levels and all.

Sounds like the perfect weather for a move to me. Good thing I hired removal men for it.

I used my weekend to pack everything and I am ready to go. Tonight I will meet up with Angus and the first time with Paolo, my other flatmate and we will get the keys. I hope it is going to be a smooth move, and that I will be happy there.

How is the weather where you are?

The it’s summer, let’s do a meme – meme

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Yes, these are my Kermit sneakers

I got tagged by Vanillasky for this questionaire, so here we go.

What is your current obsession?
Uhm. Going to the cinema and watching Last Chance Harvey. Have seen it 4 times now. Last Chance Harvey is the new Dan in Real Life for me. I love it.

What is your weirdest obsession?
Notebooks. Pens. Visiting light houses. And Bill Nighy. Or, wait a minute – is he a weird obsession?

What are you wearing today?
Jeans, very green Converse sneakers, a blue checkered shirt.

Read More

Download free Coldplay album and sing

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Now I am not a major fan of Coldplay, but I do love some of their songs.

The friendly chaps of Coldplay have just released a FREE live album. Yes you read that right, FREE and LEGAL.

You can download it here (for as long as it lasts).

And even though you might not be their greatest fan, it is worth downloading for the live version of Viva La Vida. If that huge crowd singing along on this song doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what does.

The album is in MP3 format.

Some Friday afternoon entertainment

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

All these stop motion short films make me:

1. Smile big time
2. Want to make one myself

Now there are quite a lot of them there, but I will point you to the ones I like best:

1. Her morning elegance
I love love love this film. And I also really love the song, it is called Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie, who also made the film. (More info about how they made the video here).

2. Firekites – I love how the birds fly from blackboard to blackboard.

3. Deadline which is made entirely with post-it notes!

In case you are wondering what stop-motion means: Stop motion (or frame-by-frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small amounts between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames are played as a continuous sequence. (from wikipedia) Basically it is a film made of photographs.

I have actually taken the photographs for a short first stop motion video, but I have been majorly struggling with all kinds of crappy editing programs to turn it into a film. I didn’t succeed and gave up. Maybe my editing course ext week will push me in the right direction to finish it.

I have also bought a timer for my camera, as I also really want to try to make a timelapse video.

There are some unbelievably cool examples of those here and a more basic one here. It must be possible to find some interesting London-by-night spots for my camera. It is basically just setting up a tripod and have the camera take a picture every 2-3 seconds.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mooooving

thegirlinthecafe 6 Comments

Moving house ...
I told you I was going to move right? And that one of my flatmates was going to be Angus, the 39 y.o. friendly Kiwi.

Well that still is the case. I have packed more than half of my things in boxes, booked a removal company and sent out the first change-of-address notifications.

However I have now found out that my second flatmate is going to be of the male type too. That was not really something I considered could happen when I said yes to Angus, but somehow I will be sharing a very nice three bedroom flat with two men!

Does this worry me? Not really. The new guy (I am calling him Paolo, which isn’t his real name) is Italian, 34, working in an Art Gallery in the West End and very quiet, according to Angus. So I think we will all be fine. And to be honest, generally, I do get along better with men than with women. There just need to be some rules, you know, things like the toilet seat down and things like that. But it is going to be new and exiting, the flat and the area are great, and who knows Paolo might be a brilliant cook of Italian food!

So yes, two weeks from now we’ll have a coffee the three of us and me and Paolo will get the keys. And the next day I move in. I will keep you updated.

Besides moving, I am also going to be social, I will visit the following events:

For all those three things – I have no idea what it is going to be like, but I will give them all a try. I am not looking forward to the Ghost Bus Tour though – as I am not a fan of anything spooky, but I got invited so I will give it a go.

Tonight I will watch two delightfully talented actors in Waiting for Godot. Next week I will go on a two week video editing (Adobe Premiere) course in Leamington Spa where I hope to learn some new tricks regarding video editing. And when all that is done I will soon be closing the door behind me in my current flat, moving on to a new chapter in my life.

Did I tell you already that you really should go and see Last Chance Harvey? Utterly utterly charming film. Actually.

And what are you all up to?

Notebook addict

thegirlinthecafe 6 Comments

Notebooks

It is quite amazing how much stuff I have collected during my 3 years in London. I arrived with two bags, but my possesions will now fill quite some boxes. One of those boxes will contain some notebooks …

I like notebooks. I buy them as souvenirs in places I visit: the two ones with hearts on it are both bought in New York for example. Or if they have really funky colours I will be tempted. Or when the paper has nice patterns on it.

My problem is that I have turned into a serious notebook addict and during packing I found …

Read More

What to do in London

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Bill, Bill and Priscill
First an update from the moving front:

I had planned to meet quite a lot of people tonight who wanted to have a look at the two rooms available in my current flat, but I fear that the planned tube strike from 7pm tonight might mess things up a bit. Just when I started to worry about that, my Italian landlord called, he is currently in the UK and said he was in no hurry at all to get the rooms filled. So I guess that means I will stop looking and he can sort it out himself. Which is good news – no more effort required from me then, me thinks.

My IKEA sofa bed has been sold and will be picked up on the 28th of June.

I sent 2 letters of recommendation to my new landlord for my approval (should not be a problem at all according to Angus)
I have ordered moving boxes and will start packing soon.
I need:
to find a reliable man with a van who can move the boxes to the new place on the 1st of July.
to sort out a Royal Mail auto mail redirection for my post
to quit all bills and send a change of address to a long list of companies

Moving date still set for the 1st of July which is 22 days from now. It can’t go fast enough for me.

This weekend I had my good friend over and we have been enjoying London. Here are some things that we can highly recommend:

  • Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Decent chick flick rom (and a bit of com) and recommended. Out now.
  • Yeah it is still on, so we couldn’t help ourselves.
  • We visited the Camden Stables (market). I had been to Camden before but I never made it to the stables section and we liked it. They also have a very nice area where you can sit down with your coffee and get something to eat from one of the many food stalls around. We opted for a pancake with nutella/banana. Not bad we can tell you!
  • We saw Priscilla Queen of the Desert – the musical And can be short about this: go see it! It was fantastic, great music, fantastic cast and an evening full of fun. An absolute joy to watch.
  • On Sunday we went to see immensely mad, crazy, hilariously funny Bill Bailey in the Riverside Studios. He did two tryouts in London before going on tour in the rest of the UK and I laughed my socks off. He is so funny. Catch him if he comes to a place near you.
  • We also enjoyed the view from Parliament Hill (Hampstead Heath), had a coffee in the cafe with the most incapable staff on Leicester Square (All Bar One – please don’t go there they are totally rubbish), had lunch while having a nice view over the Thames in Greenwich, and checked where Lord Sandwich hung out in the National Maritime Museum (free entry).

We had a great weekend! And you?

Ear and flathunting and Daniel Craig ice lollies

thegirlinthecafe 11 Comments
  • Firstly – and this will be the last time I write about it – my dizzyness is gone. I am not quite sure how well my ear is hearing, but I do hear with it. I just tried to listen to my iPod for the first time in weeks, and it seems that the music is more evenly balanced and true stereo now. (Don’t worry I am playing it on low volume!)

    They removed the packing from my ear yesterday (so nice because it itched like mad) and I need to return for a full hearing test six weeks from now.

    Even if my ear seems to hear better than it did before – I am not sure if I will ever do an operation like this again. My other ear has the same issue (but it is not bad enough to operate yet) and I have to be pretty deaf before I even consider going through this again. But all is good now, and I hope it will stay that way. Thank you for all the concern and thoughts and comments regarding this!

  • When I came back from Holland, I heard that my current landlord is contemplating about what to do with his appartment (the one I currently live in that is). I have decided that I no longer want to live like this – not knowing when he feels like raising the rent or quickly having to move because he suddenly wants to sell it (we don’t have a contract) . So I am now a full time flatshare searcher and am looking for another place to live. I have some potential rooms on the radar and will check them out – but if you happen to know someone who knows someone who has the nicest room ever – then please do get in touch. I won’t stop searching until I have found a nice place.

And here for some good news:

  • Summer has arrived, not only in London, but all over England. I found myself having a lovely freshly made milkshake at the Rinky Tink beach cafe in Lyme Regis last Saturday and it was marvelous just to be able to sit outside without having to wear a coat. Long may this weather continue – wherever you are.
  • The Boat That Rocked is still on in London! Rock on! I think I will catch it tomorrow, just to see what it sounds like with two normally functioning ears.
  • And oh dear – they have made Daniel Craig popsicle ice lollies … Enough said.

And you – how have you been?

The small things in life

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

When my head started to feel a little bit less dizzy, I started to make some small walks in my hometown IJsselstein, and noticed that the small things in life are very worth noticing.

I am slowly getting better every day and I am back in London now. I am still having some trouble reading a book, or staring at a computer screen for too long, but I am sure that will all get better too. On Monday (1st of June) they will remove the dressing from my ear and have a look. But even with the dressing still in, sounds are coming through already, which is a good sign.

A helicopter

The young ones

Young swans

Mother and child

Pink flowers

Dexter in da house
My brothers dog – not at all pleased with his outfit and waiting to bite someones nose for revenge.

Very slow recovering from Stapedectomy

thegirlinthecafe 10 Comments

It is very slowly getting better after my stapedectomy operation. My dizzyness is not completely over yet but the good news is that it is now slowly getting better. It has taken nearly two nervewrecking weeks which is much longer than the couple of days they mentioned in the leaflet I received from the hospital.

I am still having trouble reading and staring at a computer screen for more than 10 minutes, but I am now able to walk around without having the feeling that I am wearing a huge heavy space helmet on my head. It is a big relief and I am sure all will be fine some time from now.

Another good thing is that there are moments where my operated ear opens (it is still stuffed with the dressing and cotton wool – that will be removed on the 2nd of June) and in those moments I can definitely hear things with it. It is hard to say how well I will hear with it until after the 2nd of June but it seems promising.

I am still in Holland but will return to London on Friday.

A big Thank You to all the nice people who left those very nice comments on the previous post! I am sure it helped!

Temporary on hold (I hope)

thegirlinthecafe 13 Comments

I am on my way to Holland (with bus and ferry because I am not really allowed to travel otherwise). Things are not how they should be with my dizzyness and I just need to be with my mum.

I don’t know if this dizzyness will ever disappear, I am still hoping it does, but until it does – I won’t be writing much here. There are more important things I have to worry about at the moment.

Be good readers, and I really do hope to be back soon with a steady head.

Otosclerosis and Stapedectomy

thegirlinthecafe 19 Comments

No you didn’t accidentally ended on a medical website. I have a funny ear which suffers from Otosclerosis, which means I am not hearing very well with it.

Tomorrow they will operate it and that type of ear operation is called Stapedectomy. I had the same type of operation done five years ago, and that did improve my hearing dramatically – it was close to being normal again. However, somehow I lost a fair bit of my hearing again last summer, so they will operate in order to see what is going on. The tiny prosthesis (and it really is incredibly tiny – look at the photo of it next to a 10p coin!) they inserted at the time might have moved, causing my hearing to become worse again.

Because this is the second time they operate my ear this is treated as a revision surgery, which means they will do it under full anaesthetic. And in stead of doing it all through the ear drum (like last time) they will make a tiny cut behind my ear too, so it is a bit easier for them to work.

Normally these revision operations have a good chance of restoring the hearing too.

Needless to say that I am pretty nervous for it. I have to be in the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital at 11am tomorrow, the operation will take between 30 minutes and 2.5 hours, so cross your fingers for me.

After the operation I will be off from work for some time and I will have to avoid flying, sneezing, and heavy lifting. They will insert a thin ribbon like pack in the ear canal after the operation (in order for the ear and ear drum to heal properly) and that will be left in for two weeks. I remember that it felt like having a football in your ear, but hopefully after a couple of days I should be able to experience some slight hearing improvement, even with the football still there.
After that it should continue to improve steadily day by day. When the pack is removed I will have to do a hearing test again to see how my hearing has improved. I will twitter when I have woken up after the operation (if there is a signal in the hospital and it is allowed to use mobile phones!).

Me and my ear hope to be back soon, and I can’t wait to write something like – yahoo I am back and they didn’t cut my ear off.

Beat the credit crunch: Five cheap ways to get books

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Book exchange in Lympstone (Devon)

I like to read and I used to buy my books new in the many book shops London seems to have. I normally don’t really want to keep books after I read them so I found some better and cheaper ways to get books and to get rid of them again.

And in these times of credit crunch: here are five cheap ways to get books:

  • 1. Exchange with a friend.
    Probably one of the easiest ways to get fresh books to read and to get rid of some of your own books. You could organise a little book meeting and discuss a book over tea. Nice and easy!
  • 2. Charity shops
    The UK is a haven for charity shops (Oxfam, Red Cross etc), and most of them have a book section. I have bought several books in charity shops, they are cheap (ranging from 50p to £2) and often in good condition.
  • 3. Readitswapit
    I use the readitswapit website a lot. You can list your books there, and exchange them with other users on the site for the price of a stamp. It works brilliantly.

    The site is aimed at the UK though and I don’t know if there are any international equivalents out there, if there are, please add them in the comments!

  • 4. Ebay
    There are loads of books on sale on ebay, and it is certainly possible to grab a bargain there. In order to keep postage to a minimum, i is a good idea to buy them from someone who lives in the same country as you do.
  • 5. Lympstone book exchange
    And there are places like the book exchange in Lympstone. Lympstone is a tiny village near Exmouth. We had a wander through the small streets and accidentally stumbled over this outdoor book exchange. The idea here is that you can take any book you like from their shelf and leave the amount of money you find reasonable for the book in the post box beside it. You read the book and if you like return the book the next time you are there. (The money they get for the books goes to RNLI (Royal National Lifeboats Institution – which is a charity in the UK).

    I picked up Tony Parsons – The Family Way and left them £1.50. The stack of books looked great and I really liked the fact that people are still trusted. There were no people around to guard the book shelve nor the money. Lovely.

Other possibilities (which I haven’t tried myself):
Book crossing – leave a book for someone else to find, and register the book’s travels on the website
The new London based Choosewhatyouread, an attempt to get people to read books in stead of the free newspapers messing up the bus and underground.

Do you have any tips on how to get cheap books? Please add them to the comments!

La Cage aux Folles – Playhouse Theatre, London – review

thegirlinthecafe 4 Comments

I wouldn’t have picked it myself, as I thought it would just be another silly musical. But I went along with a friend and yes it was a musical but it was far from silly. La Cage Aux Folles (which first was a play then a film, then a US film with Robin Williams (The Bird Cage) and now a musical on the London West End) was uplifting and touching.

The idyllic existence of Georges and the dazzling drag artiste Albin, star of the La Cage aux Folles club, is threatened when Georges’ son announces his engagement to the daughter of a right-wing politician, who wants to close down the local colourful nightlife! With a visit from the prospective in-laws imminent, they all decide to take drastic action to hide their lifestyle… but can they keep it up?

Worth seeing alone for Graham Norton who gave a surprisingly steady performance as Albin, drag queen extraordinaire. (But be quick as his last performance is next week. The show will extend its run though, just with another cast).

If you like a feel good musical with a good story then this is your thing. It’s also very watchable for the incredible dance performances of the rest of the male dragqueens. I think I might have to see the Priscilla Queen of the Desert musical now too.

Official website for La Cage aux Folles
[Rating: 5/5]