Heatwave... really?

from The Guardian 27/6/09: "Hospitals were put on high alert today as the Met Office issued its first ever heatwave warning, designed to signal impending extreme weather events. Temperatures are forecast to reach 33C this week and it is thought that the UK could be placed on the highest level of the government's Heatwave Plan by midweek, a category that denotes a state of "emergency"." You can probably guess what I'm thinking, so I don't think I need to comment : )

coffee, films and stuff

I mentioned nude espresso in my last post - this photo is snapped from their website. Dwayne and I were there on Wednesday morning - me because I had worked some late nights and was enjoying some time in lieu drinking coffee and reading the paper (luxury!); Dwayne because he was interviewing film producers! Yes, he's been helping A4ID get organised to have a short film made and wonderfully some good film producers have come forward offering to make it free. More on that as it gets underway.... BUT back to coffee... when we first arrived in London and Dwayne didn't have a job, he researched and then plotted the pitifully-few good coffee places onto GoogleEarth (with sampling wherever possible of course!). He has passed it on to so many people I think he should start selling it.

The street where we live...

We live in a tiny cobbled one-car-wide dead-end lane, near Brick Lane, London's most famous stretch of Bangladeshi/Indian eateries. We live in the only purely residential block in the street. We are joined by a Primary School, a printing business, a homeless men's residence, a community centre/aged care/residential facility, a pub and a carpark! Our residence is also first stop on the various Jack the Ripper walking tours that run year-round. The fact that our building has 1886 on the top of it and is located in the area where some of the murders apparently took place has something to do with it but I suspect being in a quiet generally car-free is more the reason. We overhear the guides tell their groups how our building was built by a philanthropist for prostitutes to live in and get off the street, or how it was a 'doss house' for the poor who could only afford a few pence for the privilege to hang asleep (?!) over a rope strung from wall to wall to avoid being arrested for vagrancy... Maybe some of it is true. Despite the views of many about living in Tower Hamlets, London's most deprived borough, we love it! We like being close to Liverpool St's transport hub, I can walk to work in 10 minutes; we love walking along Whitechapel Rd on a Saturday and being the only white people in sight, mingling among the saris and hijabs, the live fish and crabs in buckets, the bright and unfamiliar fruit & veg; we like passing the big Mosque on the way to the best 'Asian' food in the UK at Tayyabs or Lahore Kebab House and coming back past 'Baraka' restaurant (really!); we enjoy the Indian sweets in the Brick Lane shops (avoid the restaurants though!) and Bangla City with its 5kg bags of spices, huge tubs of yoghurt, okra, durian and metre-long frozen fish; we are members of the local library (great for travel books of course); our favourite local coffee shops are 'nude espresso' and 'Taylor St Baristas' (run by Aussies and New Zealanders respectively - of course!); and when friends visit from abroad, they always want to see Spitalfields Market and the Columbia Road flower market (pictured) - and we can just pop around the corner to join them. We are very lucky.

Organic Deliveries

When we arrived in London, we were struck by how many Fairtrade options were in the supermarkets and how organic produce was also very common. We had been trying to buy local, seasonal produce but we were finding that nearby markets often didn't sell local fruit and veg. So, this year we have been getting fortnightly deliveries of organic fruit and veg from Abel & Cole, which is usually locally grown. It's certainly more costly but we hope it's helping to improve what we eat. I'd guess we probably also eat more veg than we would otherwise so that's got to be a good thing. It's also introduced to things we'd never heard of before - like black salsify (see photo), purple-sprouting broccoli, new varieties of melon, and various green cabbage and lettuce-like things! Today we got fresh broad beans in their pods. Yum!

Test

Sent from my iPhone

Mudchute Farm

I've loved horse riding since my grandfather took me out mustering sheep and cattle at my aunt & uncle's farm near Goulburn throughout my childhood. There I rode happy and free in the wide open space and dreamed of growing up to be a farmer ('not a farmer's wife!', as I'd say). But whenever I went on horses trained in the English style I lost some confidence from the different use of the reins. Well, living in England seemed to be the perfect excuse to learn to ride with hands held high and without the security of a western saddle. Hyde Park seemed a bit expensive and on the other side of town, so I was pleased to find Mudchute Park & Farm, a little cheaper and closer, surprisingly alongside Canary Wharf's skyscrapers. So, on as many Sunday mornings as we have free and can afford, off I journey to what has become somewhat of a haven for me to join 3-4 others for adult horse riding lessons. I feel like I've been on a holiday as I return, usually pleasantly tired and mulling over where my legs and hands and back should be next time to improve my posture and chances of staying on... and working towards my goal of being able to jump! Once Dwayne comes along with me, I can put up a photo but so far, this is just one from the Mudchute site to give you a feel for the park/city contrast...

A4ID

I thought I could explain who I work for here. Thanks to them we are even in the UK at all since they got me the work permit! (I'm sure they'll never do it again given it took 5 months to process...) I work for a small UK charity called Advocates for International Development. My role is to manage the broker service, which enables organisations pursuing the UN Millennium Development Goals (addressing global poverty in some way - but it includes environmental challenges and the developed world making necessary changes too) to access free legal services through the partnerships we have with law firms, legal academics and barristers. So, these tiny and large organisations contact me, I help them work out what it is they need and how lawyers might be useful (both traditional legal things like helping with employment, contract, tax, property issues, and also broader rights-related research and analysis, like looking at how a UN Convention might be applied in many countries). Then I circulate the requests to A4ID's Legal Partners who can elect to do the work if they have the expertise and capacity needed. I then connect the lawyers to the organisation and away they go (well, I stay in touch in case there's a problem and to see how the work goes). That's one part of the work. Then there's the education programs (or 'programmes' as the English would say) for lawyers on development issues [Dwayne & I did the year-long course which was fantastic] and for development professionals on legal issues. And the awareness-raising through events and smaller group meetings. In July, Archbishop Desmond Tutu is coming to speak for us in St Paul's Cathedral on the Millennium Development Goals to about 2,000 people! We're looking forward to that. Dwayne's been the photographer for most A4ID events this year which he has really enjoyed - the Tutu event will be his biggest job yet! The training programme we went on has been a great way for us to meet people we like and find interesting. Most of our new friends have come through it. The friends that came for dinner last night were from the course.