A Tale of Two Summers

Here are five differences between summer in London and summer in Sydney:

Temperature: There is a reasonable chance that the maximum temperature for a summer day in London will be similar to the maximum the same day in Sydney, where is it winter.

Day length: The sun setting around 9pm even a month after the solstice is one of the highlights of the London summer.

"Football": In Australia, the top soccer (football to the English) league now plays in summer. In England, summer is the time for professional rugby league (football to most Sydneysiders).

Ice Cream Vans: In summer, the ice cream vans come out no matter how warm it isn't, and here, that means many different tunes floating down the street. As I remember it, ice cream vans in Sydney generally all play the same tune.

Parks: While I have been pleased to see many people playing informal games of cricket, the parks in London lack public barbecues. Instead, whenever the sun is out for an hour, the locals seem to head to the park to strip down, lie down, and roast themselves.

I may as well give 10 points to the first person to name the park in the picture

Whispering pictures

On Wednesday night at Paul and Jo's, we played a version of Chinese Whispers involving writing and drawing, rather than whispering. Last time we played this, "A young boy is eating pizza on a train." became

which was described as "A man eating pizza on a jigsaw piece.", which was translated into

This was interpreted as "He stood on top of the giant hot dog." and became

giving our final result: "A man standing on a hot dog." I will leave you to imagine how a brass band and cricket game became a church with a music group and people standing in cakes. Then, while we were praying, we were interrupted by the voice of Yoda: "Message from the dark side, you have." from someone's phone. Quite a funny night.

When I started writing this, it was dark enough to be after sunset, and torrential rain was pouring down among the thunder and lightning. We almost needed a boat to get across the campus. Now, the sun is shining brightly and evereythign looks dry.There's nothing quite like a quick thuderstorm.

P.S. Not for the first, interesting weather in London proved much more serious in other parts of the country, with more floods and all sorts of travel chaos.

Guns on stations or bombs on trains?

The announcement of London as the host city for the 2012 Olympics wasn't the only thing that happened nearly two years ago. The next day, four bombs went off on the city's public transport, killing 52 people. After the bombings were unsuccessfully imitated two weeks later, police armed with large guns were stationed at many railway stations, watching passengers enter and leave.

Yesterday, after the recent car-bombs in London and Glasgow, I saw heavily armed police again at one station. It probably says something strange about how my mind works, but I'm instinctively more disturbed, if not scared, by the visible guns than the thought of possible bombs. I wonder whether it would be any different if Jean Charles de Menezes hadn't been shot 2 days before I first saw them.

(I could offer 10 points for guessing which station I saw the police at, but there are already points on offer for naming that station.)

Olympic preparation déjà vu

Just under two years ago, the city I was living in was awarded the Olympic Games for the second time in my life. This time round, I didn't participate in a basketball dribbling race at an event that was part of the bid process, although I did walk through a gateway supporting the bid at a Guy Fawkes' Night Display. However, we do live roughly the same distance from the site of the Olympic Stadium as the furthest part of the Olympic village will be.

As of today, the roads, footpaths, cycleways, towpaths and waterways in the Olympic Park area will be closed to allow for construction. Thankfully, the two main routes, the Greenway and the River Lee Navigation, are excepted from this, so it will still be easy to go off along the river or head towards Beckton. The Greenway will be partially closed at some points, but that's just as well, because that part of the Greenway could do with revamping. The Olympic Park should be quite a nice area by the time everything is done.

Of course, this is not the only "closure" that has just come into effect. Yesterday England "went smokefree". It is no longer legal to smoke in enclosed areas that are also workplaces. At the same time. the whole college campus has been declared a non smoking area. I don't think I've ever breathed in so much cigarette smoke while walking down a public road as I did outside the college this morning.

(Ten points for the best explanation of what the picture has to do with this post.)

Symbols: help or hindrance?

I don't know how much you have seen of the new London 2012 Olympic logo, which has attracted a lot of criticism. The biggest problem with the logo itself (as opposed the flashing promotional video which caused problems for some people with epilepsy) is that it doesn't really have any symbolism. It has the Olyympic rings, the word London, and the shape almost clearly spells out "2012". Apart from these bare essentials, there is... nothing.

From what I've heard, this is quite understandable, as the designers were given criteria that ruled out nearly every symbolism the logo could draw on. The 2012 logo could not look like any previous Olympic logos, ruling out anything resembling an athlete or the Olympic flame. The logo of "the UK's games" was not allowed to be too London-centric, ruling out a vast array of images. I'm not sure whether something reppsenting the whole of Britain would have been acceptable, but I don't think the Union Flag is subtle enough for that context, and no alternative springs to mind. There really isn't much left, is there?

A similar set of restrictions have appeared in the rules for the competition for a new flag and emblem of Kosovo. In this case, the brief is less restrictive, and much more reasonable anyway. Unwanted symbols in flags can easily spark all sorts of problems, and the political sensitivites in this area are more serious than worries that the Scots will resent the extra spending on a London event.

A new flag for Kosovo needs to be acceptable to both the Serbian and Albanian residents in order to avoid sparking tensions and dooming any peaceful settlement to failure. The flag must be neutral, combining symbology, or making references only to peace or the region itself.

Unfortunately, no matter how neutral the flag is, it will only succeed if there is an acceptable settlement to start with. Removing a symbol is only a skin deep change. The deliberately inclusive/neutral flags of Ireland and Cyprus have both ultimately become associated with one side of a conflict. It would be hard to find a more intrinsically neutral flag than the Cypriot map and olive branches, but in recent years plans for reuniting the island have included a requirement for a new flag.

Summer games

After the warmest May on record throughout much of Australia's east coast, it is now winter there. Despite some almost wintry weather here in London for the long weekend last week, it seemed like summer had finally come this weekend. The view on long train trips is that much cheerier after the spring growth, and the greenery combined with some warm sunny weather made it a great time to go walking, cycling or playing cricket.

The cricket was even more enjoyable because we won by 297 runs, despite starting late after waiting for the other team and reducing the match to 30 overs a side. It would have been nice if the opposition had had more than eight players, but when you need a net run rate of more than +3.3 from one game, you don't complain too much about a lopsided contest. The only thing that might have made it better would have been the short mid off holding on to the two near catches from my bowling!

Squirrels

Even if they are introduced pests, grey squirrels are great fun to watch, whether they are running around trees or scampering across the grass. They usually seem to be quite shy, climbing around to the other side of the tree trunk if they feel you are moving towards them.

However, in the garden in the centre of the park, it appears that people have been feeding the squirrels. After walking in, they crowded around expectantly. While eating lunch, the gathered round and beg. Some even try climbing up on benches, although they gave up on the bike after one couldn't get a grip on the metal and went sliding down. And then, suddenly they all dashed into the bushes, not to be seen again until the dog had gone.