The last supper denied
It would be reasonable to expect that by having a catholic god-daughter and a number of friends of the catholic persuasion we would have priority access to view The Last Supper housed in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, but not so. There is a waiting list of two weeks to view Leonardi Da Vinci’s masterpiece which seems quite unreasonable given that we didn’t even know the painting was there until the first of our two day stay in Milan (or Milano, as we Italians say). Like Catch-22, a two-week reservation system makes it impossible for the casual or unaware visitor and raises the question of whether there should be wild-card entries for wild colonial tourists, or even a daily allocation, such as for tickets to Henman’s Hill at Wimbledon. The only short-cut to see this work is by taking a 55-euro tour with one of the local sightseeing companies which seems like exploitation. We will write to the Pope.
If visiting Europe can be geographically and culturally confusing, Milan does not make it any easier. As northern Croatia looks Italian, Milan looks almost Parisian, with its earth-brown buildings and wide, tree-lined boulevards, street-side restaurants, shuttered apartments and dog poop piled high on pavements. Or perhaps Paris looks like Milan?
This city seems to have more SmartCars than people and they are parked everywhere, including on the footpaths and sideways in car parks. There is more graffiti than on the goods sheds at the old Christchurch Railway Station, and it must be a city ridden with thieves given the heavy duty security chains adorning the thousands of Vespas and other scooters parked along the footpaths. It is glamorous too, beautiful Italian women riding elegant bicycles in the hot summer sun.
This is the world’s fashion capital, and we are quite at home among the big names: Versace, Prada, Dolce Gavana, Gianfranco Freer, Machino, and Armani. Marty’s two pairs of Phuket copy-Prada sunglasses and one pair each of Ray-Bans for Marty and Kaelene have long since disintegrated, but Marty is right up there in his $10 specials with silver hot-rod flames along each lug brought several years ago at the Christchurch A & P Show. True class, although Kaelene looks the part in her pair of genuine Armani glasses, a gift from the proprietor of the Moodie Report.
Like all good visitors we went on the hop-on-hop-off bus which does two separate circuits around the tourist spots in the city. The Castello Sforzescoi, Teatro Alla Scala (the Opera House), the absolutely stunning marble Duomo, with its 3,400 statues and 135 pinnacles, and a number of churches. Most trendy tour books, including Lonely Planet, dismiss these tours saying you can find all of the sites using public transport at a fraction of the cost, but this does not paint an accurate picture. Tour companies usually know better than first-time visitors the places to see, and they also provide an excellent commentary and overview, although having now heard the origins of panettone, the cake, and saffron risotto, the meal, at least three times there is a limit to the amount of information which can be of use. We have done a number of these tours and, with the exception of Dubai which was overpriced and not particularly user-friendly, they have all been excellent.
The other handy discovery we have made is that restaurants provide little plates of aperitifs with pre-dinner drinks. It means that we have been able to wander from bar to bar drinking beer and eating the aperitifs, saving us from buying meals. It may be a false economy, however, as we’ve spent more on beer than we usually would on meals and drink combined, but it does provide a fine sense of having achieved a bargain.

Following yonder star
If there is a shortcoming of satellite navigation it is that it cannot predict the behavior of other drivers. Had it been able to do that then we would have been better prepared for our narrow escape from becoming road kill on a remote Croatian highway. Here’s the scenario: we were the second of two cars taking the exit from the highway out of Pula onto the on-ramp of the motorway to Rijeka. The car in front slows and pulls over to the right hand shoulder (remembering we are driving on the right hand side of the road), then as we are about to pass it, it suddenly lurches into a u-turn as if to go back up the on-ramp the wrong way. The problem is that we were the impediment to his planned route and, at speed, a coupling of cars was inevitable but for Marty’s lightening reflexes and until now unrealized ability to wildly swerve without rolling. This was whites of our eyes stuff, unbelievable close, a whisker away from certain death, and a realization of our vulnerability as we pondered the consequences of smashing a car in a foreign country with no common language, and hundreds of miles from the reassuring smile of the woman at the Hertz counter in Budapest.
Last seen, the other car was stopped sideways in the middle of the on-ramp, and after a few universal gesticulations we continued, carefully.
We are converts to the marvel of satellite navigation and little wonder given the biblical analogy; wise people (that’s us) being guided by a shining star to an unknown place. For those unfamiliar with this technology, what happens is that the SatNav systems are loaded with digital maps; they then pick up signals from satellites, plot routes, and guide drivers to pre-determined destinations. These can be city centres, specific addresses loaded in by the user, places of interest along the way (including such things as ATMs and petrol stations as well as tourist attractions), post codes and even latitudes and longitude points. Driving instructions are shown on an on-screen map, reinforced by voice, and that’s where our friend Ken comes in. His is the only Australian voice (there are no Kiwis) on Anousheh’s SatNav which we have commandeered for our visit.
As we have previously explained, Ken is very patient. When a mistake is made, he simply recalculates the route and makes corrections, although he has been known to go quiet when completely ignored. For example, in preparing a route from Budapest to Turin(not that we did this), the SatNav analyses over 500,000 roads to determine the best routes and then gives options such as avoiding toll roads, limiting motorway use, taking scenic roads and, in the modern units, avoiding traffic congestion. Such technology, Kaelene remarked, is more liberating than a nudist beach, allowing us to drive with relative confidence through major cities and foreign countryside, and to places where we would never find using public transport or even maps.
We credit our friend Nanette Cormack with our conversation to the religion of SatNav; previously we had scoffed at the need for such gadgets; most of us have good local knowledge of New Zealand roads and traffic systems, and we can read the road signs. But if Nanette is to be credited with SatNav, she must also take the blame for Kaelene’s new habit (she says hobby) of number plate spotting. Having been shown how to establish from number plates the geographic origin and registration details of the vehicle, Kaelene now spends entire journeys working out the travelling and driving habits of different European ethnicities, and having Marty chase cars at high speed when she misses any necessary detail. Such behaviour is close to becoming certifiable.

Roadside revivers
We came across something rather curious on a highway just north of Siofok, and it took us quite by surprise: two young women, one on either side of the road, deeply tanned and scantily clad, wearing high heeled shoes and smoking. We thought one may have been waiting to cross the road to meet the other, but then it dawned on us that they were waiting alright, to see if they could provide roadside relief to passing motorists. Our hunch was confirmed just a little further on where there were more of these distraction. We thought it unusual that young women would be out soliciting on a rural highway, but then recalled that one of our children had told us of a similar experience in Germany’s Black Forest. It brings a whole new meaning to the term rendering roadside assistance, perhaps we should inform the Automobile Association.
On the shores of Lake Balaton, Siofok has been dubbed the Ibiza of Hungary and it is easy to see why. Lonely Planet says that nowhere else in the country parties this hard and stays up as late and we can vouch for that, our hotel is one block off the main party area and at 6.30 am the revelers were still streaming home, ready to sleep before getting back on the never-ending treadmill of afternoons at the beach and clubbing at night. This is hardly your stereotypical, dour, Eastern European place and its name alone should have been a clue. Almost every other town along the lake has name similarity: Balatonakali, Balatonfured, Balatonfuzfo, Balatonhenye, Balatonielle, Balatonoszod, Balatonujlac, Balatonmadi, Balatonbereny, Balatonboglar. Get the picture; there are a further twenty-six towns all with Balaton in their name.
As for the lake itself, it is unusually safe for swimming. Although seventy kilometers long and about two kilometers across at it’s widest, it is only 3 metres deep at most and even when 300 metres or so from shore the water is still only chest deep. It costs about $NZ10 to get onto the promenade at Soifok, but once inside there are artificial sandy beaches where you can loll about on loungers or play beach volleyball at Club Coke, hire water bikes or walk out onto one of the floating pontoons to sunbathe or dangle your feet in the lake.
Nagy Strand, the big beach area along Petofi Setaby, is home to dozens of bars and restaurants, most of which advertise cheap deals on cocktails or a flat rate for all the alcohol you can consume in an evening. Quite the party town, there are free shuttles to transport you to and presumable home from the various night clubs; amusement arcades and ice-creams to die for, out favourite a citron lemon with a texture that resembled snow-freeze. We didn’t try out the Texas Hold ‘Em Live poker hall and skipped past Club Hell and Renegade, opting instead for Brownies where the menu advertised such delicacies as Goats cheese, fresh one frying in almond bark; A salmon was frying in fresh grassy bar steak, grilled vegetables and buttery potato; A trout young one were steamed frying on his leather with citrus vinegar; A tendril frying sheet was frying in a furnace with potato and fruit stew with red wine; and A spicy drumstick was frying under iron, fresh one stirred salad. We opted for the safety of pizza and pasta.
While lost in translation, we had a funny conversation with the customs officer when re-entering Hungary from Croatia. He asked where we were headed and when we replied, Siofok (See-o-fock), he clearly couldn’t comprehend where that might be. After about five attempts at pronunciation we then spelled it out. “Ah, She-o-fock,” he replied and waved us on.

Throw them to the lions
We would not be so bold as to claim to have discovered or first identified a new species of human, but we think we can rightly claim naming rights, Homo Sapien Sealli. This species, and there are thousands in evidence, can be found right along the Croatian Coast, but we studied them only between Pula, on the southern tip of the Istrian Peninsula, to Valalta, just north of the ancient city of Rovinj.
Homo Sapien Sealli can be found colonising rocky ledges above the sea coast, usually they are bulky, allowing their gelatinous mass to fill small crevices and cushion them from the harshness of the rocky surface, some of them are adorned with small patches of textile covering parts their bodies, but as often as not there is no covering at all.
The likeness of this species with seals along New Zealand’s Kaikoura Coast is unmistakable. Having clambered onto a rocky outcrop or one of the few flattish surfaces available, they sprawl out without regard either to dignity or others of the species nearby and bask in the sun for hours on end, moving only occasionally, sometimes to cool off in the waters below. None returned to the rocks with fish between their teeth, this appears purely recreational.
Why this species heads to Croatia for holidays is easy to understand. It is charming with its old Roman towns nestled along a dramatically rugged coastline; there are clear blue skies and seas of aqua-marine, the vividness of which we have never previously seen. The country, war-torn just ten years ago, is becoming something of a playground of the rich; there are marinas everywhere with all sorts of floating real estate and all day long there are yachts and motor boats cruising the waters. Notwithstanding its natural beauty though it is hard to imagine why people go for the beach lifestyle. It is called a Karst landscape and looks like volcanic flows which have hit the water and solidified. The beaches are stony and, while spectacular, don’t make for pleasant swimming.
This was a first for us, a Roman Amphitheatre and it dominates the town of Pula. To describe it as huge is something of an understatement, and during the best of its days accommodated 23,000 spectators for matches of true gladiatorial proportion and rather uneven contests between convicts and lions. Record has it that such fun was brought to an end in the 5th century AD when gladiatorial bouts were stopped and from 681 when the contests between wild animals and mankind were forbidden. Political correctness was rampant then too it seems.
These days the amphitheatre is the only remaining one of its type in the world and the sixth largest surviving Roman arena, its glory confined these days to tourists like us and for opera concerts by the likes of Pavarotti, Carreras and Bocelli, and pop stars including Sinead O’Connor and Elton John.
It was for us quite a surprise to find that Pula and other towns up the coast are so completely Roman in origin. We wandered for hours around ancient ruins and through cobbled streets with such similarity to Venice it was breathtaking. So strong is the connection with Italy that day trips are run from there to Venice and the place crawls with Italian tourists.
We were of course lucky to be in Pula at all, we made two unpardonable mistakes travelling there from Heviz and at least one should have been predicted. We could not fathom just why the roads were so busy; it appeared that, as well as us, everyone in Europe seemed to be heading to Croatia. At the Hungary-Croatia border post and at toll booths further on along the way there were queues of cars resulting in lengthy delays. At several points as motorways merged, one around Zagreb and the other near Pula, traffic was snarled up and at a standstill and it dawned on us eventually that it was the first day of school holidays. Most of these cars were packed to the gunnels with holiday stuff and we should have known better as we had been discussing schedules with the Moodie children only days before.
The other mistake was over ruling Satnav Ken when he correctly attempted to direct us off the motorway two exits short of Rijeka which we thought we had to travel through. Ken knew best and instead of reaching Pula in a further hour and a bit, our decision resulted in us driving the narrow, winding coast road north up the Peninsula adding more than another hour to the journey. While it was quite nice to be exposed to such stunning scenery its charm diminished somewhat after seven and a half hours driving on a journey which should have taken four hours and a half, particularly in the heavy rain we had experienced.

Hanging out in Heviz
The town of Heviz, population 5,000, is nestled among undulating hills and countryside in the North-West of Hungary and is known for its four hectare lake of “natural biologically active sulfurous medicinal” water set among a forest park. The lake’s thermal waters are said to have unrivalled healing powers for the treatment of rheumatism, locomotion disorders and certain gynecological problems, though we are not sure which particular problems. What it means is that this is a popular town for the infirm to visit and the streets are filled with people of all shapes, sizes and physical disabilities wobbling to or from the lake, armed with flotation rings in order that they can just drift about for hours among the water lilies soaking in the mineral goodness. This is not Party Central, the average age of visitors is sixty years and, while almost the average age, hopefully we are still more firm than most.
The town itself is very pretty with tree-lines streets leading to the lake and dozens of guest houses and hotels, places offering therapeutic massage and probably more sets of swimwear on sale than there are people. The nearby countryside is quite beautiful and, given the high temperatures, surprisingly green and lush with woodland intersected by fields of sunflowers and others of corn. There are vineyards and roadside stalls with watermelons; quite the idyllic setting.
Perhaps here for the first time, however, we have stumbled with language. Hungarian is said to resemble no other tongue and it is almost impossible to even work out the hellos, pleases and thank yous. It would appear that Germans are the most frequent visitors and theirs is the second language, English languishing some way down the list. So our communication has turned more to sign, and trying to figure out menus is a challenge. We should have been alert to this as, although Hungarian Andrea reassured us that English is widely spoken, she did not speak a word of it herself when she arrived in England. That should have been a clue.
To make the most of the mid thirty degree daytime heat we headed for the cooler waters of nearby Lake Balaton, to a place called Balatonbereny which is billed as having the sort of beach where Marty could take his top off without fear of being arrested. It was hardly a beach we found, more a gap among the reeds where a wooden pier jutted out in to the lake to allow swimmers unimpeded access to the water. Surrounding all of this a nudist camp, and if the visitors to Heviz were of all shapes and sizes so too were those here, although the average age would have been younger and the suntans on display ranged from ghostly white to deep, deep all over brown.
When in Hungary, we thought, we should do as the Germans do and so we joined them for the afternoon, spread out among the families relaxing in the sun. If there is one observation to be made it would be that shaving is the fashion du jour for both men and women, so for Marty it is a trim leaving just a stylish little tuft and for Kaelene a heart-shape with the letter M lovingly sculpted in the middle.

Hungary pangs
Visitors to Memento Park on the outskirts of Budapest are entitled to one free “commie” gift, as long as they have the voucher from the City’s hop-on-hop-off bus. We did, and we got the gifts, for Marty a small sized “Three Terrors” (Lenin, Stalin and Mao) T-shirt, a takeoff of the three tenors, on the back of which are tour dates listing their various places of conquest, and for Kaelene a CD or DVD, we haven’t yet worked out which or of what.
Someone it seems had the good sense to save a number of statues and monuments at a time during the 1990s when many of the symbols of Eastern Bloc communism were destroyed in a fit of liberation or to expunge the recent political past. At Memento Park are displayed, not only a decrepit version of the Trabant car, but also some pretty impressive works; a monument representing Stalin’s boots, a cubist statue depicting Marx and Engels which was originally positioned in front of the Communist Party Headquarters in Budapest, a six metre tall statue of a soviet soldier carrying hammer and sickle in one hand and with a cartridge disc pistol hanging from his neck, and Lenin with outstretched hand, this statue originally ordered by Soviet party secretary, Nikita Khrustchev. It was an impressive line-up, but treated with some degree of disrespect. “The way it was, Comrade,” the advertising leaflet reads. “Go back to the good old days when Hungarians drove Tabants, lived in Block flats, stood in banana lines, had two passports, coupon books, no TV on Mondays and no freedom of speech!”. Another: “Mammoth communist statues are presented in a stark and powerful manner to really drive home the horror and brutality of the period”. Really?
We did not have any idea of what to expect in Hungary. We were persuaded to visit by the Moodie’s current child career, Andrea, who hails from somewhere in the West of the country and insisted on its beauty, inexpensive cost of living and party scene. So off we went confidently armed with a downloaded SatNav map of Central and Eastern Europe.
We discussed our perceptions of Eastern Bloc countries and they were predominately stark and bleak, of a grey landscape with dull people. So Budapest was a surprise. To start with it is hot and sunny, 35 degrees the day we arrived and expected to reach 40 later in the week. The sky was clear and blue and the people friendly and service excellent. They are champions of culture, although composer Strauss must have been blinded by lust when he described the Danube being as blue, it is as brown and muddy as any other flat-land river. For the contemporary music fans there are festivals galore and bollards with posters advertising impending concerts by BB King and Leonard Cohen. We just missed both as we will the Formula One Hungarian Grand Prix, on here the weekend after we leave.
It could be that proper tourists take weeks to discover a city like this, but for us it was a reversion to speed tourism. Into town, on the bus and past Parliament, Heroes’ and several other squares, down big tree-lined boulevards, past the old Nazi Party Headquarters (now the House of Terror Museum), other museums and the Opera House, basilicas and the Central Market Hall. We did stop at the Citadel on Gellert Hill with its 1956 Freedom Monument and offering spectacular views out over the city (Buda on one side of the Danube, Pest on the other), and then Castle Hill. This is a remarkable area with the Fishermen’s’ Bastion at one end and Buda Castle the other. The Fishermen’s Bastion is described as a limestone edifice with seven towers representing the seven tribal leaders who conquered Hungary in 896. Although built as a fortress, the description continues that, despite its immense beauty, militarily speaking, it is pretty useless.
From Castle Hill it was down the funicular and across the bridge to pick up our car. Budapest is done, it is now on to Lake Balaton and then to Croatia.

An airport observation or two
On old friend once said he would never join an airline club which would take him away from the public areas of airports and into the sanctuary of a lounge. People-watching, he claimed, entertained him during those long waits when planes were delayed or there were hours to fill in, and he may be right. As we sat at London’s Gatwick airport waiting for our delayed Malev Airline flight to Budapest, we discovered where those groups of young people come from who travel abroad for pre-wedding stag and hen parties. We had seen them in Dusseldorf, these groups of revelers, roaming from bar to bar, dressed alike in pre-nuptial uniforms, but hadn’t given much thought to their origin.
To an anthropological eye it would appear that they may be a UK species migrating through Gatwick, south to exotic places like Ibiza, Mallorca, Malaga, and Tenerife. Gaggles of young men or women typically identified by costumes and looking every bit like they are flying not only south but also into trouble. One group of young males which took our attention had bright yellow singlets, pink shorts and socks of different iridescent colours. Each of their singlets was adorned with a number and nick names like Goosey and Loosey (Donna and Blitzen?). They may have been heading into trouble but as one man behind us in the queue observed, probably the only real danger was to themselves. Interestingly there looked to be more female groups than males, although it would be fair to observe that some of the women looked more apprehensive than their male counterparts.
If there was a hint, however, that we are becoming travel weary, airports would be a dead giveaway. Not only can whole days be lost getting to and from airports, checking in and out, waiting, and transferring between flights, but security measures are becoming more and more absurd. Gatwick is the fourth London airport we have used since our May arrival and, in our view, the most frustrating. Given the interminable transport delays in London, we always allow a hefty margin to get to each airport (three hours usually as, aside from Heathrow, it generally takes around two hours from home to Stanstead, Luton or Gatwick). The drill is then that check-in opens two-hours from departure time, inevitably just in front of us will be someone who doesn’t have the right documentation as was the case for our flight to Hungary. With just two check-in attendants, one had a passenger it took more than twenty minutes to process. We waited impatiently.
But that is not the problem. The queue to get through immigration and security at Gatwick was about 100 people long (which can be bypassed on the purchase of an express security ticket, but we have discussed this appalling capitalization of the airport’s own inefficiency before) and it is stultifyingly laborious. Laptops out, belts off, everything out of pockets and, in some cases, shoes off as well. Security is one thing, but having insufficient staff to handle the through traffic is another.
There was a time when we thought that people who had checked in and missed flights were simply careless. It may be that this new phenomenon of delays being caused by airports having insufficient resources to handle their own security measures may be the reason so many passengers are being paged warned through public address systems that their flight may be leaving without them.

Hallelujah, the real one
At first we hardly noticed the light drizzle but as the night grew longer and darker the weather set in, quite how hard we only realised as the spot lights lit up the sheeting rain between us and Leonard Cohen and his band. But it didn’t seem to matter we had our plastic raincoats and warm jackets.
The Mercedez Benz World in Weybridge, Surrey, just outside London, may seem an unusual concert venue and it was. Mercedez Benz World is described as the company’s UK flagship, with its own race track for test driving their latest model cars in one of their “driving experiences”, restaurants, a movie theatre and conference and outdoor concert facilities. The term facilities may be too strong a description, what should have been a forty minute drive to get there took two hours and forty minutes such was the traffic congestion, the queues to the food and drink concessions forty-five minutes from start to end and then, after Martin succeeded in getting to number four from the front, they ran out of wine, which perhaps was just as well given the queues to the toilets seemed equally long. While we managed to get out and home afterwards without delay, we have read reports on the web today of people saying it took one hour and forty-five minutes just to get of the car park.
While the venue may have lacked soul, the same could not be said of Leonard Cohen, the man with the gift of a golden voice. It is the first tour in fifteen years for the seventy-five year old, made necessary by being fleeced by a former manager or partner, probably both, but that dark cloud for him had the silver lining for us of seeing him for probably the first and last opportunity ever. And what a sublime performance, a selection of his greatest songs performed over more than two hours and a half with, as would be expected, an exceptionally good band. He was charming and self-effacing, donning a scarf to keep out the summer cold for the second half of the performance and then returning for three encores. The greats were all there: Dance me to the end of love, I’m your man, (the original) Hallelujah, Bird on a wire, Suzanne, Everybody knows, Tower of song, Famous blue raincoat, Take this waltz, First we take Manhattan, Closing time, and finishing in cute fashion given it was the third encore with I tried to leave you.
Highlights of the band included the bandurria (a “plectrum plucked chordophone”) and twelve stringed guitar of Javier Mas which added a Spanish feel to the musical arrangements, and Dino Soldo dubbed by Cohen as the master of breath on a variety of wind instrument. As an illustration of the immediacy of the digital world, background singers Charley and Hattie Webb, from just down the road in Kent, have already posted to Facebook a comment about singing their hearts out in the rain at the Weybridge concert.
Back in the land of the more ordinary, it was to Montpelier School on Friday, this time for the infant sports watching Samira Moodie display the more competitive elements of her genetic makeup. And it would be fair to report that she excelled, hitting a parent’s camera with her sponge javelin (she had told him to keep back from the infield), won her heats in the bean bag throwing and running, missed out on a placing in the soccer dribbling, fell over the line for a photo-finish win in the sack race and managed to balance the quoit on her head for the required distance. All completed in under an hour and a half.
We have updated our tour schedule and it may take some by surprise. It is to the Caribbean Island of Barbados for five weeks from 7 September and then a return to Thailand on 16 October. Why Barbados can be simply explained. Fleur has landed a teaching job and heads there at the beginning of August, so we are allowing her a month to get set up before the first of the hordes arrive.

A sporting life
Montpelier school, that’s the one with thirty-four first languages spoken by its pupils, had its senior sports day last week at the Brentham Club just down the road and we were there. With these thirty-four different spoken languages it may be fair to assume some of the children cannot understand each other’s native tongue, but it appears that competition is a universal language, particularly with parents.
It would be fair to report that Ali Moodie’s interests are more intellectual than sporting; although while we thought he won his egg and spoon race he was judged to be only second, and he would have been placed in the sprint had he not pulled up lame with a groin injury with only ten metres left to run. Such are the trials and tribulations of top-level sport that Ali performed with distinction in the sack race but struggled with the skipping-rope-dash, managed not to drop the tennis ball balanced on the racket, and maintained superb control in the soccer dribbling. We felt he was at a disadvantage in the foam-tube-javelin throwing, some of the rocket-shaped javelins, including his, sagged in the middle resulting in unsound aerodynamics. The final race, which we are ashamed to confess to missing, was the one with competitors running while balancing quoits on their heads.
For our cerebral and cultural nourishment it was to the Victoria and Albert Museum we went, passing all twenty-one Rodin sculptures for the theatre and performance section, a star billing being the remains of a Les Paul Goldtop Delux guitar used and smashed by the Who’s Pete Townshend believed during a performance in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It was a rather vague description, clearly unable to identify the actual destructive event the museum lists Townshend as the first guitar-smashing rock artist. The original art work for the Sex Pistol’s God Save the Queen was on display but not so the artwork for the Rolling Stones lips and tongue logo which the museum brought at auction for $US92,500. Also on display a fine collection of performance memorabilia, costumes including a tiny 1972 jump suit worn by Mick Jagger, posters, one advertising prices to a Led Zeppelin concert at £2.10, original musical scores and even a replica dressing room from a Kylie Minogue tour. There are more than 3,500 pieces here, ranging from the eighteenth century to the modern day, covering drama, opera, ballet, musicals, pantomime, rock and pop, music hall, cabaret and circus.
Then there are the overseas works, most of which we didn’t see as it all gets a little overwhelming. Chinese, Islamic, Japanese, Korean and South-East Asian sections, there is a huge European section with medieval exhibits going back as far as 300 AD. Intriguingly there are plaster copies of Roman columns and monuments including a thirty metre high column cut in half, the pulpit from the Pisa cathedral, and Michelangelo’s three David’s
The V & A, as it is abbreviated, is billed as the largest museum of decorative arts and design in the world and houses more than 4.5 million pieces within its 12.5 acre complex. There seems surprisingly little written about the building itself, but like all of these grand London places it is quite stunning. Even the cafeteria has ornate columns and tiled floors and ceilings, and sometimes it is easy to become so absorbed by the beauty of the architecture that the exhibits seem almost secondary. It is one of those places, like the Louvre, that require a number of short visits so as not to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of exhibition.
It took more us than forty minutes last night to load SatNav Ken with the latest maps of Central and Eastern Europe in preparation for a drive, starting next week, from Budapest to Lake Balaton in Hungary and on to the Istrian Peninsula in Croatia. Then, at the end of the month it is to Northern Italian lakes with the Moodies as we’ll need a holiday by then to recuperate.

Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive O
To New Zealanders there is something insufferable about the English rugby team which is perfectly illustrated by the example of the time they performed a victory lap at Twickenham after drawing a match it was expected they would lose to the All Blacks. A draw, it seemed, was tantamount to a win. It was with some relief therefore that, after the British and Irish Lions won the last test on Saturday but lost the series against the Springboks, the Lions’ captain rejected the claim of the English TV interviewer that it could be considered they had actually won the series on moral grounds. The proposition was that, despite losing two tests to one, they had scored more tries and scored more points overall in the three games, and would certainly have won the second test had Schalk Burger been sent off rather than yellow-carded for eye gouging. Thankfully the captain, an Irishman, replied that honours boards don’t record moral victories, and that losses are losses no matter how you dress them up.
On the subject of honours boards, not all of Kaelene’s family origins are of the Irish sheep-stealing kind. There are those from the South of England, wholesome people with a proud tradition of rescuing people from the sea and building lighthouses, and that is how we found ourselves at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution Museum on the stony beach at Eastbourne. From even earlier than 1900 a number of the Boniface family were involved with the coastguard and the museum has a fine collection of memorabilia, photos and newspaper clippings, and details of boats rescued and lives saved off what must be a wild coast at times.
As well as rescuing people, the family had a pub, the Alexandra Arms, and we went there expecting lunch but settled for a beer for the passenger and soft drink for the driver. Then on to St Mary’s the Virgin Church, the family’s parish which dates back to the twelfth century, and then the Ocklynge cemetery where some are buried.
Eastbourne is a classic English seaside town, but clearly a favourite of the older set, with motorized wheelchairs and scooters the transportation of choice. On the promenade are a number of grand, pristine, white hotels and guest houses and a pier which juts out into the sea, at its end a gift shop and tearooms. By contrast, the pier at Brighton has amusement arcades and sideshow rides and along its beach, bars and cafes instead of a rotunda for the local brass band’s regular concerts.
On a day that reached 28 degrees and with the top down in the Merc, SatNave Ken could have had his revenge for our repeatedly ignoring his directional instructions by taking us over the edge at Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in the UK at over 500 feet, and apparently the most popular suicide spot in the country. There is little there by way of barriers to prevent jumpers, aside from a cruising chaplaincy service and a sign that says it’s not too late to phone a counselor, both of which seems to have worked because the number of suicides has decreased from around 20 per year to only seven in 2006. In May this year a young couple whose son had died of meningitis jumped carrying the body of the boy and a bag of his toys. Crosses along the cliff top present a haunting image.
From there to Brighton is a short distance, past a sign warning motorists to watch out for badgers and along another pebble beach where stalls sell cockles and mussels, jellied eel, mackerel pate, and crab sandwiches. And fresh fruit, locally caught!
A sign on the Brighton Pier cautions against feeding birds, warning that they become aggressive in search of food. And so they do, a woman ahead of us had her food snatched from her hand by a seagull swooping from behind. Not only was she startled, but she was left with a bleeding hand such was the ferocity of the grab. As for us, we left and returned to London for a grandstand seat in the Moodie’s living room with strawberries and cream for the Wimbledon final. Thankfully the interviewer didn’t ask the losing Andy Roddick whether he scored a moral victory on the basis that he broke Roger Federer’s serve two games to one.

Music and lyrics
There is something weird which distinguishes opera from other performance arts and that is the contradiction between the brilliance of the music, singing and stagecraft, and the banality of the lyrics. It is hard to take it seriously when baritones and sopranos belt out lengthy and expressive singing conversations when many of the actual words are about mundane or even dopey matters such as watching out for dog-fouling on the footpath when going up to the shops to buy the Sunday papers. It is disjointed and maybe that sounds alright when it is sung in Italian because so few of us can understand that language that we can then justify the silliness of the lyrics as simply poor translation.
For those unfamiliar with opera, the modern practice is to have a monitor above or to the side of the stage providing sub-titles in order that the audience can get an idea of the action. But what is even weirder is, as was the case in Puccini's Madam Butterfly, when the opera is sung in English accompanied by an English translation on the monitor presumably for those who cannot understand the sung words. And what is even weirder still is when there is a person to the side of the stage doing the sign language version. This may seem insensitive but two different translations of the same English words seems excessive (we presume deaf can read) and if you need both, why go to the opera at all given that it is a medium of sound?
We almost became two of those people we have complained about vociferously; those who arrrive late or get up and wander around and eat during a stage performance. It was a close call but it wasn't our fault. Allowing almost an hour and a half to get from home in Ealing to The Coliseum Theatre near Covent Garden, we opted to drive rather than take the tube and the inevitable happened, we became stuck in traffic. Forty minutes to get down Piccadilly but we found a park in one of Anousheh's secret locations (she has the London Knowledge) with just four minutes to spare. A sprint, or as fast a walk as dignity allowed, and we made it in just as the doors were closing.
As for the performance, as would be expected from the English National Opera it was spectacular, the sets, production and singing outstanding. Madam Butterfly is the story of a fifteen year old Japanese geisha's marriage to an American naval officer who abandons her soon after the wedding but not before he impregnates her (showing that nothing changes). She waits in vain for him to return, he eventually does but with his new American wife to forceably adopt the by-then three-year-old offspring. With child gone, the butterfly dramatically stabs herself to death, leaving us to ponder why such a tragic story so beautifully sung can be told with such silly words. Clearly Puccini needed a good lyricist.
The venue, the Coliseum Theatre in St Martin's Lane is a grade II listed heritage building and is magnificent, its designer, one Frank Matchum, wanted to build the "largest and finest peoples' palace of entertainment for its age". And it would be hard to dispute that he succeeded, it is a classic theatre of Italian Renaissance style with boxes for the toffs, stalls for the aspiring toffs, and circles, a grand tier, and then a balcony for those of us in the cheaper seats. The ceilings and walls are adorned with ornate plasterwork, as is the outside with columns and carved figurines.
On another note entirely, we can report that Marty's computer has been restored to full working order under guarantee, but in a manner which illustrates the very best and very worst of English service. To activate the repair, the company's mend-it team required scanned copies of our arrival and intended departure documentation, somehow to prove that we are actually in the UK (as if we would try and get it fixed in the UK if we were not actually here). Although difficult to do with e-tickets, no scanner and a broken computer, added to by the fact that we don't yet have any permanent departure arrangements, we cut and pasted our arrival tickets, return tickets for an intended side trip to Hungary, and offered to forward them the original e-tickets. Not good enough apparently and there followed a lengthy debate, them firmly insisting on the actual scanned tickets saying they needed to print them off for their records, and advising the original e-tickets or cut and pasted copies were not satisfactory. Quite why was impossible to fathom but stalemate it was.
Slightly frustrated, Marty phoned the company, spoke to a very sensible chap and was told to ignore the email traffic, comforted by an analysis from this person that the one (actually two) we had been dealing with was just being "anal". As a result the computer was picked up from home next morning, Tuesday, and and couriered to Plymouth for repair and returned first thing Friday in full working order. Brilliant. It is as well the last man told us to ignore any further email traffic as, even after the courier had picked the computer up, we received further email advice that, unless scanned copies of our actual tickets arrived, repairs would not be undertaken.