Seeking History - The Secret History of Our Streets: Caledonian Road

BBC iPlayer - The Secret History of Our Streets: Caledonian Road:

If you haven't started watching this series, please do start. I was ridiculously excited to see the history of the street that I use to commute into London every.single.day. and never realised that so much has happened on this road over the years.

Some of my favourite bits were learning about the market behind Cally station, discovering Thornhill Square and understanding just how big of an impact the rail station had to this area.

What are your thoughts on Caledonian Road - is it a 'rough' neighbourhood or just rough around the edges?

'via Blog this'

Jubilee Extravaganza Day 2 - BOATS!!

After Day 1 of Jubilee weekend, I'm surprised I even woke up on Sunday.

Watching Telly - Did you know that primetime television is on Saturday and Sunday evenings here? I don't get it, in a country that boozes so much you would think everyone would be down the pub, but this is a serious thing! As I had completely destroyed myself the day before, staying in and watching the flotilla river pageant jubilee thingy indoors was a brilliant idea. 

Yes we had freshly delivered pizza for breakfast, no we didn't change out of our PJs all day, yes many cups of tea were consumed whilst it rained all over the fools that stood outside to get a short glimpse of what we saw on BBC for 5 hours - but this level of lounging seems to be the standard for when big events are happening on your doorstep.

Without further ado, here's the best recap of that day

Oh my days, I've just linked to something from Perez...

The better part of this bit is afterwards when John Oliver flails excitedly talking about the boats and gets rained on/beans'd on/toast'd on.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Queen Who Stares at Boats - Royal Jubilee
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On a side note, the BBC wasn't much better than CNN as far as coverage.  My favourite bit of flotilla commentary: 'Well, what some people don't realise is that driving a boat isn't like driving a car.'  

FFS.

West London - Wood Lane - BBC Television Centre

This weekend my friend invited me to the BBC Television Centre to watch a live taping of So You Think You Can Dance.  As a dancer, I was pretty excited to see this taping, but soon realised the dancing wasn't anything to be excited about.  Let's put it this way, if the UK dancers were auditioning for the US version, they wouldn't make it past the bloopers stage.

Anyhow, that's not the main focus of this post. I'm not much of a reality TV watcher, but seeing a 'live' taping of a reality show made me realise just how not 'real' it is.  I'm not even sure if the tears I saw from the loser were real. It was definitely 'recorded' in front of a live studio audience.

To start, they taped the group dance that comes on before the results show before the show even started. Did a few of Cat's lines then as well. Then we waited for ages and the actual show started. They did all of that and opened the phone lines for voting. We waited for about 30 mins (and I missed Doctor Who while we were there waiting!!) before they played the pre-recorded bits. The 'live' band was actually filmed the day before and then the people were voted off. But to be honest, she didn't really seem that sad in real life, the family didn't look that bothered. Did they know she was going to be voted off ages before it was announced? Was she just a really good actress? Oh well, the highlight was that John Barrowman was judging!!! 

I love you sir!

Here are the few photos that I was able to take, since they took our phones and cameras away from us before we even made it into the studio.

All ended well with a beautiful sunset at Willesden Junction

West London - zOMG DOCTOR WHO!!

It's too bad there really wasn't an apocalypse yesterday, because I would've died completely happy.

EXTERMINATE! - A Dalek

I, unlike The Doctor, pulled to open the TARDIS