Filling in the blanks

Everything seems to converging to fill up all those free moments right now. I think I put 20 hours at work over the weekend, which is good news for the Mark Laichena spring travel budget, but has left me a little frayed around the edges… add to that finally getting my schedule for Army training [...]

“Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home”

Apologies for the obscurity title – I had Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier in mind, ironically, since I’m thinking about those tiny bits of “forever [America]” here in the UK. The poem’s certainly necessary reading if it’s new to you, though whether you praise Brooke’s patriotic zeal or pity his naivety is your choice.
England has a fair [...]

In the thick of it…

So there’s nothing like a British policeman to take the fun out of a good protest. The building opposite us at work is occupied by BAE Systems (military hardware supplies to Her Majesty the Queen, or rather her armed forces, they could boast), as we found out this afternoon when a couple of kids in [...]

Photos

I’ve finally got around to uploading and sorting more of my photos online:
http://picasaweb.google.com/laichena

I bumped into a few kids at the top of my road when I was coming back from work yesterday. I say bumped into – one of them recognised me from a few nights previously: she’d made some inaudible remark to me as I’d passed, a little later into the night. I was a little [...]

Okay, so it’s going to be more work to keep this going that I thought… still, it’ll help me make a better use of my time here.

Notting Hill Carnival was interesting, as much due to the hordes of police, all shapes and sizes, as the costumes. The weather was typical-ish London: not too cold, not [...]