Last weekend we hired a car and drove down to the seaside. My sister inlaw, Tania, hadn’t seen Stonehenge so we went via Salisbury. The traffic was absolutely crawling along the road to those ancient monoliths. I noticed on the map that if we skirted around the back roads we could not only avoid all the traffic, but we could also visit ‘WOODHENGE’! Oh boy! Two henges for the price of one.

You can read about woodhenge here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/434821.stm

The first thing you notice about woodhenge is that it isn’t wood. It’s a bunch of concrete blocks that some genious has placed where the ancient oak beams used to be. Why it never occured to them to use new oak stumps is totally beyond me. A field of concrete stumps? Hmm maybe we should have just sat in the traffic…Anyway we went around the back way to Stonehenge which is totally awesome.

We then drove down to Portsmouth via the New Forrest. The New Forrest has some pretty woodsy bits dotted amongst lots of barren scrubby bits. But one thing’s for sure; it is possitively packed with ponys. They even wander through the streets in the village of Brockenhurst. So if you are kinky for ponys (like Tania) then this is the place for you.

As for Portsmouth? Well I wouldn’t rate it, but then we were only there for one night (thankfully). If you do go there avoid Gunwharf Quays unless you are yearning to walk along a sterile strip of chain stores. There is a ‘fun’ pier at the other end of the town, but it wasn’t open on Saturday night in the middle of summer. I suspect it hasn’t been open since GAP, Polo Ralph Lauren and Tiger Tiger moved into the Quays.

We got back to Heathrow from New York on thursday only to find all flights had been cancelled due to the terror alert. We were lucky, we were one of the last planes to be allowed to land and we were only delayed an hour or so. Which is preferable to being blown to bits mid air.

I gotta say I was half expecting something to happen what with the gross injustice happening in the middle east.

Can I just point out that it’s not necessary to take sides in a war? I reckon Hezbollah are as bad as Israel. They both have no respect for human rights or UN resolutions. They are both violent terrorist bastards that place nationalism and ideology above human life. They can all kiss my ever growing rubber band ball of peace.

So I don’t suport Hezbollah, OK? But I did enjoy watching this YouTube clip of George Galloway lay down some home truths on Sky when asked to justify HIS suport of Hezbollah. Go George!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbmgkCiwTKo

New York really is the greatest city in the world. I’d forgotten how many huge buildings there are. Big and beautiful. And the New Yorkers are just so loud and larger than life. I totally love ‘em. The energy just rises up from the ground here.

We went down to ground zero. It’s a massive crater. I was glad to see some anti war sentiment looming over the big hole that was once the World Trade Center.

Visited MoMA (museum of modern art) and saw some far out and funky stuff. When this guy in the loud shirt stood between me and the Pollock I just had to snap one off. A picture that is…

I especially liked the work of Swoon that they had there -She’s a woodcut, paper street artist. She puts her stuff up on walls and it just decays. I just realised that yesterday I took a picture of one of her decaying works in the street down in Tribecca. So I looked her up and here’s a link to an interview with her. She sounds cool. http://gammablog.com/gammablablog/featured/swoon.shtml

This IS New York. Arrived here on Friday to attend the wedding of Ben and Kate. Brett left his bag in the cab from the airport. Gone are our passports, Brett’s laptop, Ipod and PSP. Yup. Big bummer.

But we had a lovely time at the wedding! Here’s Ben and Kate getting bounced on chairs to the tune of Hava Nagila. And I couldn’t resist getting a shot of the DJ’s. They even had matching shoes, bless ‘em. ‘Twas a fantastic night!

Today has been spent arranging temp passports so we can get back to the UK on Wednesday. Brett is at the Cop Shop now filing a report. Then we can relax and party with Steve and Heather.

I saw this grand old dame walking down the street. Just cos you’re eighty (or more) doesn’t mean you can’t wear a purple mini skirt in New York.