Julie's Boggle

When Tom first went to New York, back in January last year, Spamalot was just preparing to start out on Broadway.

And Tom was gutted to find out that it wouldn’t start until after he left for home.

On a subsequent visit to New York when I joined him, we tried to see it and found a queue outside the theatre that went to the end of the block and round the corner! (So we saw Fiddler on the Roof instead, and that was excellent.)

So when at last we heard that Spamalot was coming to London (back in February) we felt we had to get ourselves some tickets. And a couple of weeks back, after 8 months of waiting, we finally got to see it…

The first amusement on the night, was the souveneir stall (“Ye Olde Rippey-Offey Shoppe”) outside. They had a grand collection of show-paraphenalia including several different comedy shirts (“I’m not dead yet”), tins of spam, and killer-rabbit slippers.

There had been much hype about Tim Curry playing King Arthur (from the original Broadway version) so it was great that he’d transferred to London for the start of the show’s run, even if the cast had lost David Hyde-Pierce.

The play itself was pretty much everything I expected. The story lacked some of the cohesion that the movie had, but there were plenty of laugh-out-load moments. (The bulk of these were lifted directly from the movie.)

Though there were one or two numbers which clearly fitted a lot better in a Broadway version of the play than in London, it was nevertheless great to see some of the Python gems acted out live. And the scenery and acting were first-rate. Overall, a good evening’s entertainment.

So It’s going on a week since I came back from Bangalore and I’m sure everyone is panting for news vis-a-vis what it was like . If I’m not too lazy, I’ll post something over the weekend, but here’s something to be going on with… the driving.

You may recall Julie’s comment on her cabby’s driving in Frankfurt that, “figuring he must have some skill to still be walking and talking in his fifties, I tried to reassure myself that he probably wouldn’t kill us off on the way to the airport.”

Can’t say the same for my taxi driver last Thursday morning — he can’t have been more than 23. He did teach me an interesting lesson though: that driving recklessly is not all that bad when you consider that recklessness is deliberate and somewhat controlled.

Thursday’s driver was more hapless than reckless — totally out of control of his vehicle. Twice he nearly collided with another vehicle (one stationary) and once he did collide quite hard with the kerb. It didn’t help that he appeared not to actually know his way around Bangalore — instead he kept asking directions of other drivers and passers by. Although I put a stop to that because by then I knew the way and was able to guide him myself!

In fairness, I must say that traffic in India was strangely cathartic after driving in the UK, where the laws are enforced with a machine-like tenacity and no humanity at all. Oh, and to be in a place where everyone knows just how big that space needs to be for them to squeeze through it — bliss!

After long, long months of drawing out the project I started on back in January 2005, the start of the global roll-out suddenly came upon us in a rush.

And because the London office is in the middle of a big office move, we’d decided to start with the German offices… and also persuaded the project manager that a couple of us should go along to ease in the transition.

So Sunday evening found us on Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, a short 1.5 hour trip (+ the usual airport hoo-ha), and then a taxi ride to the hotel booked for us in the city.

The rooms were very chic. Spacious bed and a great shower. Not much more you could ask for in a hotel room.

We managed to leave our street map behind when we left the next morning. Fortunately, we knew the street name we were after, and that the office building was red with a very distinctive “Japanese-lantern” type roof…

After a good morning getting to know the small team that manages IT for the 300 or so German users, we had lunch at an Austrian restaurant nearby. Pumpkin soup, followed by interesting spinach dumplings on tomato ragut, topped with super-strong grated cheese.

Back to work, and an afternoon that didn’t come close to working off the lunch, then it was time to head out for dinner.

Our international IT trainer was the brilliant ideas man for our choice of evening meals. He recommended an Aussie bar-restaurant — wow, Aussie restaurants in Frankfurt?! — where we arrived just in time for happy hour.

I had an emu salad, but also partook of a large platter that others were sharing which came with emu, crocodile (!) and kangaroo. The crocodile meat was quite pale, curious texture, not unlike chicken in taste. The kangaroo was good, slightly stringy, with a strong flavour of game; and the emu could have passed for a regular steak, slightly on the well-done side of medium.

(Interesting note from the menu: emu has zero cholesterol.)

After eyeing the dessert menu, we elected to head off instead to the “best ice-cream shop in Frankfurt”. Directions and ice creams courtesy of our trainer.

I have to give a very definite thumbs-up to this little shop. Run by a friendly Italian woman, they have dozens of flavours and the ice cream meets all the necessary requisites for true greatness in terms of creaminess, texture and flavour. Drool!

(Unfortunately they close up shop for winter — seems daft but apparently the locals don’t really go for ice cream in winter — so definitely no holidays here for me and Tom before next Spring!)

Tuesday in the office was hectic. I like to think that we really did prove our usefulness that morning even if it stressed us out.

I say morning, because lunch (taken at a real German cafe nearby) seemed to have barely passed before we needed to head off to the airport for our 17h00 flight…!

The taxi-driver they got us appeared to have specialised in maniac driving; but figuring he must have some skill to still be walking and talking in his fifties, I tried to reassure myself that he probably wouldn’t kill us off on the way to the airport.

The airport was massive, complicated, intrusive (we each scored two complete friskings) and expensive (€3.50 for a bottle of water in the duty-free section) so we just walked through to the boarding gates area and whiled away the time with chatting and reading.

All in all – a good trip! And I’m glad that I don’t get sent abroad often enough that all this would stop being fun.

Where did it all start… ?

Well back in South Africa – July 2001 – we packed up our entire flat to go into storage while we were away “temporarily” in the UK.

From there, for a fairly economical £40 a month, Elliott (as in “The Amazing”) looked after our goods very well all the way to July 2006 when we decided enough was enough.

So when we headed back to SA in July, all our stuff was delivered to the verandah of long-sufferering parents. Where we charged through it (in a week), packing up the bits we wanted and doing whatever was needed to get rid of the surplus…

Elliott’s ‘amazing’ incompetence lost them the contract for taking it all over to the UK for us, and we turned to Pickfords instead. And waved it all goodbye on 19 July as it left on its uninsured journey to London.

£420 and 15 weeks later, and we had it all back… (Well all the stuff we wanted anyway. )

Only problem now is that the kitchen plans aren’t going to happen until January. So we’re going to be living with these (and they aren’t even half as neatly packed anymore!) until we get our new storage space!