England through the eyes of a Frenchman - London Part 1 (Camden Town & Tower Bridge area)

A Sunday morning and we were woken up by a red Birmingham’s sunrise (broken curtain rail), which eased the hangover pain. I had pre-booked our train tickets weeks before at £8 each one way with London Midland and the train was on time and there were no delays during the journey.  With the French train services being so perfect  I was so happy this particular train lived up to Monsieur X’s French standards.
 

I love London and it’s been a long time since I’ve done the touristy places.  Usually it’s go straight to the concert/ sporting event/ theatre and then come straight back home. This time I could take in the sites. Sunday afternoon we went to Camden Town (I’ve never been there before and Monsieur X visited Camden 20 years ago), it was so busy and hot, we couldn’t move. For him it brought back memories for me it gave me a headache and couldn’t wait to get the tube out of there. I’m sure a colder day there would have been less people and I could have had a good look around the stalls. For lunch it was another Wetherspoon's, the Ice Wharf and Sunday dinner roast and a drink for £10 - Bargain!

Camden Town: C’est Bon - 'ah oui the market is a lot bigger than in 1988.'

After escaping the market and the hassle of Camden tube station and our particular line to the hotel being closed. We checked into our hotel The Ibis Budget Whitechapel hotel, the room was basic; there was no separate bathroom just a door to the toilet.  The shower was next to the basic bed (with a door) and the sink next to the shower.  The photos on the Internet don’t do this hotel any favours, before we arrived I thought we would be sleeping in a box with everything cramped together and we would bump our head of the sink when we got out of bed, but there was enough room for two people and the shower and sink wasn’t too close to the bed. Not bad for £55 a night in central London (plus £5 each for buffet breakfast).

Now Tower Bridge is my favourite building in London, no particular reason I just like the walk over it and around that part of the Thames and the Tower of London. I have good memories during the 2012 Olympics watching the games on a large TV screen outside the City Hall while waiting most of an evening for Tower Bridge’s lights to change colour (they didn’t until we walked away).  I knew our hotel was close to the Bridge but wasn’t sure of the route and didn’t want to look an idiot following my maps app, so I guessed if we headed toward the Gherkin there should be signs for Tower Bridge along the way.

 

 

That plan didn’t matter this French photographer was very impressed with these glass office blocks especially the Gherkin, so when we walked down another side street and could see the Tower of London and Tower Bridge at dusk he sais ‘Bon bon excellente, merci’. I took that as an approval.

A stroll around the Thames ‘block’- past the Tower, across the Bridge, past City Hall, have a few drinks in The Horniman bar and steak and chips for late dinner/supper at Cote then across London Bridge and pass the Monument before finding our way back the hotel. Somehow it seemed to be easier to our hotel after a few drinks.

 

Tower Bridge: C’est Tres Bon… (for me -not so beautiful without the Olympics rings).

 

England through the eyes of a Frenchman - Birmingham

There is no place like home, back to Birmingham for one night.  It was a sunny busy Saturday in the City Centre much better conditions than Monsieur X’s first visit three years ago when the weather was terrible and there was a political party conference in the city so police and security checks everywhere – he was not impressed back then.

This time there was no security blocks and the new library was open.  It had only been open a few months and there were more tourists (including fellow Brummies) than bookworms. There was a bigger queue for the lift to the top outdoor garden area than the queue to take out a book. I could show the Monsieur X the main parts of Birmingham in one place, ‘there is Broad Street where all the drunks come out at night, there’s the Cube and the canal where there are good and pricey restaurants and bars, that’s the hall of remembrance, to the right is the ‘Crap building’- my office and behind it is the Rotunda and that’s where the Bullring is. Et Voilà Birmingham in a nutshell.

The Biggest Library in Europe

One of many view from the first outdoor level

 

We stayed in the Premier Inn Waterloo Road, very central surrounded by bars and shops and only 5 minutes’ walk from the train station. ‘This is ze best room all trip’ he said, for our room on the seventh floor of this converted office building.  It was massive room compared to the ones in Liverpool and Blackpool and I would also say spacious if I don’t have other hotel rooms to compare it to. The bed was so comfortable I could have stayed in it all night, but I was on tour guide duty and had to show my friend more of my city.

Premier Inn Waterloo Street

Sunday morning sunrise hotel room view

 

It was an unplanned Wetherspoons chain bar crawl. First the Briar Rose for a £5 beer and burger meal, then the Temple Street Social Club and the Trocadero (both non-Wetherspoons) for another drink before heading towards Broad Street. We stopped off at a bar in Paradise Forum, a good tip sit out Wetherspoons and listen to the music coming out of the Yardbirds bar next door.  Good music from one bar cheaper drinks from the other – bargain! We finished off the night with few more cheap gins at the Lloyds Bar on Broad Street before walking back to the hotel.

Two bars for the price of one

 

Birmingham: C’est Bon, but I think he was being polite.

‘How can you be bored here, there are lots of place to go and things to do’.

England through the eyes of a Frenchman - Blackpool

I thought while we were ‘up north’ a night in Blackpool to see the illuminations, tacky souvenirs and dated Guest Houses would be funny and make him smile.  I think they did in a scary kind of way. Monsieur X likes to talk a lot but after a morning with his fellow art lovers the shock of driving though Blackpool town centre left him speechless.  No more Picasso lots more pound shops. 

His first (shocked) Blackpool observation as we drove around the back of the tower trying to find our Guest House and a car park: ‘I don’t know the English word for it, errr maybe cheap’ ‘tacky?’ I said, he agreed.

 

A positive point was the Guest House, the Carlton on Albert Road, great position behind the Tower (a few minutes’ walk away) and it looked like it was recently decorated, no 1960s gross wallpaper and a flat screen television but it still had some Blackpool personality.  Monsieur X is more used to the Carlton Hotel in Cannes and the next morning when his breakfast was served by a man wearing shorts and t-shirt he said ‘this would not happen in France’.

I know Blackpool looks better in the dark but I wanted this Frenchman who lives in the beautiful South of France countryside near the coast to see why so many English people visit the Mediterranean Sea in the summer.  Still shocked we walked to the end of the North Pier a perfect location for any zombie/end of the world films to be made. There was just the two of us, an elderly couple and man ‘working’ on the carousel, it wasn’t a surprise he had no customers on this cold and windy day. Monsieur X said ‘It’s like I’m back in ze 1970s’ and looking down onto the brown sea ‘ah ok I understand why the English go to France and Spain for holidays no blue here’.

I think we had only been in Blackpool for an hour and he needed a Guinness and a siesta to reduce his fear factor level from 10. But in a hotel bar opposite the Carlton, we witnessed two drunken old ladies showing Monsieur X that the drunken young English people he has seen in Spanish beach and French Ski resorts don’t actually grow out of the binge drinking habits. Old Lady A fell over in the bar and has she was helped up by other people in the bar, her friend Old Lady B said ‘watch her hip, she’s just had a new one’ – this was at 4pm. He fear level went back up a few numbers.

The evening opened his eyes to many sights mostly unsightly, yes the illuminations was interesting ‘just like Christmas lights in the street but lots of them’ he said, but the hen do groups dressed in onesies, a middle-aged large women wearing a teenager’s summer short dress or the ‘pièce de résistance’ would have to be the six women still in their leopard print pyjamas with unbrushed hair sitting on the step outside their hotel having a cigarette the next morning.

 

I’m finding it hard to remember if Monsieur X enjoyed any of this time in Blackpool.  He liked the tower and the ‘comedy blanket’ on the sea front.  I introduced him to the world of money waterfalls, where you waste your 10p or 2p coins hoping to win and you can’t go to an English seaside town and not have fish and chips on a Friday, so Harry Ramseden’s was a must and he did finish off his large portion and the bottle of wine.

Has we left the town behind, he said ‘Please don’t bring me back here’. Ah oui at least Birmingham will look good now.

Blackpool:  Merde!

 

England through the eyes of a Frenchman - Liverpool

My last trip of 2013 wasn’t very far and it wasn’t somewhere I haven’t been before. It was home and it was cities I had visited many times, but this time I saw them from a French point of view.

Five nights with my French friend Monsieur X, I was excited and nervous because every time I visited him he showed me beautiful areas of France.  I couldn’t walk him around the Bullring and Brindley Place for 4 days so I took him to a different part of England every day including Birmingham.

Monsieur X took a Ryanair flight from Marseille to East Midlands (no flights to Birmingham), and then my out of date Sat Nav took us to Liverpool.  We were only 10 minutes away from our  destination when it took us though a derelict part of the city, closed factories, industrial estates and a corner pub with smoking tracksuits and dirty hair puffing smoke outside – not a good start.

Luckily for us our hotel for one night didn’t have this view and was on our tourist walking route. The Dolby Hotel was clean and basic and the size of bathroom was what we paid for at £44 a night, yes the bathroom was very small.  The selling point was free parking and position as it is by the docks.  For Monsieur X he didn’t feel like he was in England until the heavy rain storm started when we just parked up outside the hotel.

I personally think English Cities are all the same, same shops, same bars and restaurants chains.  But Monsieur X likes lots of types of music so I thought he would find the Beatles story interesting. He did enjoy the Carven which was very busy on a Thursday night (full of tourists) and the singer played ‘Here Comes The Sun’ his favourite Beatles song, so that was gold stars for me.

 

His observation on a wet Thursday night ‘no one goes out in Liverpool’.

Next morning we had a full breakfast outside the Gallery café, Albert Docks so he could smoke and after the waitress took our order outside and asked me to go in to pay first, his second observation was ‘you English trust no one’.  A few hours in the Tate gallery, seriously what is so special about a few folded blankets and video of couple of hookers having a tattoo?  At the time there was a Chagall exhibition which to me was nice paintings to Monsieur X it was amazing works of art.

Liverpool:  C’est Bon

Fear of 40 - 18 months until leave the 30s group

Not a great start to this 18 month plan. I’m typing away crying my eyes out, so excuse the bad grammar and thank God for spellchecker. My glasses are steamed up and eyes full of tears. My cat passed away at the weekend, my car’s back window smashed in  and one of my few friends (and my French crush) has gone all distant on me without any reason and I know if I called him again so soon after our last pleasant conversation on New Year’s Eve I will officially be his pathetic stalker.  Ah oui give him space, offer my hand of friendship later on in the year.  Oh Come On! Don’t lie to myself, maybe call next month.  But it bloody hard when I’m so upset about my cat, my boss is driving me crazy and all I want is someone to talk too.

Anyway onwards and upwards! This is the first day of the rest of my life…etc etc blah blah.

Every Monday morning I dread my day of work, of course 99.9% of the population probably feel the same but it’s not so much the being overworked underpaid problem.  It’s the question that always gets asked – ‘what did you do at the weekend’.  I did this, I did that, we went here, friends came to visit etc. Then it’s my turn to answer ‘Nothing watched a bit of TV’.   I knew I would end up a lonely old cat lady living in Birmingham but I never imagined reaching this milestone at 38.

I long for the Mondays I can give a different answer or for the Mondays where I actually enjoy going to work. I just got to find that job – being chained to a desk, man managed and my work timed and documented is not the life I want. I’m very lucky to have a job but settling for any job isn’t good enough.  I have hope that the day will come when my situation will be Monday Blues free, but I want it to come sooner than later.

Have you ever seen Eat Pray Love starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert it’s an OK film nothing special but it did make me think about my situation. I’ve been back home (and single) for 6 years and was looking for some inspiration.

I like eating (and Italy), I only pray during football games, lottery draws and when my boss says ‘can I have a word’ before I get a bollocking and as for love, I can’t remember what that is. However the freedom to travel the world and experience new things and meeting new people makes my feet itchy again.  But where do I start?  Write my things to do before I’m 40 list and follow Elizabeth Gilbert example.  She started her journey by learning Italian, so maybe I should get the dust off my French books and give learning the language another go, well it will be my 4^th attempt after school, French best friend, and then evening classes.

Winter TV Fitness Plan

One of my horoscopes this month said ‘travelling overseas is a no-no this month…there are things you can do to keep busy at home’ and another (yes I read them all) said ‘if you make a fitness promise to yourself, you’ll keep it’.  So I made a promise to get my flat stomach and thighs back in time for the spring because at the moment my abs is covered in fat. 

Saving for next year’s unplanned travels and waiting for so many of my favourite shows to return (so glad Walking Dead is back) I have no excuses not to get off the sofa, I’m broke and exercising at home is free.  The summer can be a terrible time for me and probably other lonely TV Addicts, there is nothing to watch apart from re-runs (Do TV channels think everyone is going out every night during the summer? Firstly some of us are Billy No Mates and secondly it’s the UK it rains!).  However the winter can be worse, yes there is a lot of amazing programmes to watch but this usually results in chocolate and crisps and maybe an ice cream if I’m feeling really bored and greedy.

So where do I start with this winter workout plan?  Every time I switch to the Fitness Channel it’s always adverts (remember I’m broke).  Weight loss reality shows are boring and I think excess skin should come with a ‘scenes of a stressing nature’ warning at the start of the show. Health magazines often state no eating after 8pm which is difficult when I’m watching the Hannibal box set or Walking Dead.  I did start my fitness regime with a few hours of sports this weekend…the ATP Tennis World Finals on Sky Sports and now I have BT Sport and ESPN this means I can now watch Ligue 1, for the quality of football not Frenchmen in shorts. 

No seriously I have started (honest) with the no eating after 8pm, step ups while watching 30mins sitcoms, squats when I’m waiting for the kettle to boil and a few yoga stretches and sit ups while watching the box. Some mornings before work I’m roll out of bed and try and convince myself going to the gym is a good thing. I go to the cheapest gym in Birmingham and use the bike and cross trainer and when I flagging and ready to give up on comes the Smash soundtrack or maybe my Sky Go/News app to take my mind off the pain for another 10-15 minutes.   Not sure its helping but my mood is clearer for a dull day in the office of rude and demanding emails and sitting down exercises. 

No pain no gain!

Glee v Smash: Battle Of The Singers

Glee series 5 is on then off again (tres annoying) and Smash has come to an end for good.  I wish it was visa versa and Smash could continue for a few more seasons.

I’m officially over the Glee thing. The first few soundtracks were great, and the first season was fresh and original as Fame was before downloaded music but the sickly sweet taste of American all singing school kids isn’t my bag.  My Movie Mate doesn’t have Sky TV and if I didn’t have to record it for her I would have gave up after series 2. Let’s face it no series based in an American school will ever be as good as ‘Saved by the Bell’ and they didn’t even sing.

With Smash, there are big similarities, all singing Americans chasing their dreams of stardom. The adverts for the first season looked like Glee for adults which made me think twice about watching it. However there wasn’t anything else to watch on that particular night so I gave it ago and loved it, probably because I realized I too am an adult with dreams (luckily for the world my ambitions does not involve singing) not a teenage misfit.  It’s not cheesy, it’s classy and there isn’t many covers mostly originals and the soundtrack is excellent especially ‘Let Me Be Your Star’.

In Series 2, it seems American Idol rejects Katharine McPhee and Jennifer ‘blink and your miss her’ Hudson have more success in their careers than the actual winners of the British X factors. I can’t imagine Miss Hudson imprisoned in the Big Brother house or the Australian jungle or Miss McPhee saying ‘you want fries with that’.  Its more unlikely to be one of our British wannabes Pop Stars due to the fact these American singers actually do have the X Factor. 

So who would win the battle of the vocal chords? The girl next door chasing her dream of performing on Broadway, two great singers and Karen Cartwright doesn’t have much of an ego unlike Rachel Berry. So Rachel would kill for a part while Karen would concede defeat. Ivy Lynn might put up a good fight but my money would still be on Rachel. 

The leader of the packs Derek Wills is more Sue than Schu; maybe if Will Schuester and Tom Levitt teamed up together, the nice guys might not come last and bring down the Dirty Derek.

Then there is the final fight – the heavyweight round, not in size but in attitude and not with punches but with sharp tongues and excellent pull downs. Maybe Eileen would win on points knocking Sue down with her cold stare.

So as the curtain falls on Smash, Karen and Co you will be missed and hopefully not long before Glee goes too…or my friend gets satellite TV installed.