Author Archives: Kym Hamer

Lemmon Drops…

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I have only recently become acquainted with the work of Jack Lemmon. Oh I’d heard about some of his movies like The Odd Couple and Grumpy Old Men but I’d never seen them. (My association with The Odd Couple being the 1970s TV series starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall.)

My first viewing was The Apartment at a gorgeous art deco cinema, The Rex in Berkhamsted. Similar to my beloved local, The Phoenix, the grandeur of the auditorium fitted the same sense of occasion as when movies began by telling you right up front who was in it and what it was called. But I digress.

The Apartment stars Lemmon with youthful Shirley MacLaine. Lemmon is the employee put-upon by the powers that be at work in return for a boost up the corporate ladder. Things get complex when MacLaine becomes an ‘apartment’ girl and falls off the pedestal that Lemmon has adoringly placed her on. It turns out in the end but not before some pretty grim soul-searching.

In mentioning my lack of Lemmon to my movie friend, she immediately loaned me Some Like It Hot, starring Lemmon alongside Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. This is a lighter affair, full of naughtiness and high jinx and Lemmon’s turn as Daphne gets him into all sorts of trouble. It all works out at the end again (as most Marilyn Monroe movies do).

By then I’d found myself completely under Lemmon’s spell. You see I’d become rather partial to that cheeky grin, the twinkling eyes, the earnestness. Although he does look a little too good as a woman for my liking! There’s obviously a few more movies to see and I’m wondering whether Lemmon was always cast as the hapless but endearing charmer. I guess I will have to find out.

Not that I’m complaining.

Lemmon may just have become my new favourite flavour.

And you can never have too much of a good thing.

Holy Homage…

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This is post number two about my recent sojourn to Barcelona with fellow emergency handbag-ger, A. And I made a promise. 

The promise was to inspire you with a post about Antoni Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s premier tourist destination and testament to the vision of one of the city’s greatest sons.

The spires of La Sagrada Familia

But now it seems like a really big promise and it’s ended up presenting something of a dilemma for me. Here’s why.

Before I went, I wasn’t really sure I would like it. The whole thing looked crude and indulgent in most of the pictures I’d seen and having visited a cathedral or several in my time, I doubted that anything could really blow me away on the church front. But like all great tourist attractions, you can’t visit a city without at least paying homage to what it deems to be the absolute best of itself.

After lining up for half an hour on Saturday morning, we finally entered at around 10am. And I was blown away…but largely by what I didn’t expect to see.

So I’m wondering whether my sharing here may actually spoil it for any of you inspired to visit for the first time. But a promise is a promise and in the interests of keeping my word, I will do my best to walk the fine line between providing you with a little inspiration and giving the complete game away. I will leave it for you to decide whether you want to stop here/look away now.

First things first. La Sagrada Familia stands in the heart of Barcelona just a 15 minute stroll away from the bustling shopping district of Passeig de Gracia (and not far from our top tapas tip from last post, Bar Mut). It is still a work in progress, begun by Gaudi in 1883 and designated for completion in 2026, a century after his death. (Anticipating that the project would outlast him, Gaudi spent the last 12 years of his life developing the plans so that work on his vision could continue after his death.)

The main entrance is via the Passion facade, which is on the opposite side of the cathedral from the Metro station and which is considerably less photographed than its famous counterpart, the Nativity facade. Make sure you get the audioguide before you start – I know they can be a bit naff but the extra few euros is really worth spending here. And finally, all of the advice says to get here early to beat the queues – also I expect to avoid standing in the fierce heat. We had a 30 minute wait – be patient, good things are to come, as the saying goes.

The ‘tour’ starts with the Passion facade, which traces the story of Christ’s judgement, crucifixion and resurrection, before inviting you to move under the wide arches of the portico and enter the cool sanctuary of the church itself.

The story of Christ’s crucifixion plays out across the Passion facade.
And this is where I gasped out loud – it literally took my breath away.
Gaudi’s vision – of capturing nature’s surreal beauty and presence – is extraordinarily delicate and bold at the same time. Imagine if you will a forest glade, dappled sunlight dripping through the canopy overhead…

Gaudi’s forest…
…and his trees.
Natural light streaming through the stained glass creates its own pallette.
The ceiling forms an ornate and dreamlike canopy overhead…
…lit only with glorious sunlight.

(Note: I took squillions of photos, trying to capture every moment when I turned and gasped at some new aspect – it’s unbelievably difficult to do it justice.)

There’s a brief opportunity to visit the under-construction Glory facade, which is at the long end of the nave-cross, before moving outside again to see the famous Nativity facade, celebrating the birth of Jesus.

The expressive style of the ‘birth’ facade contrasts with the modern starkness of its opposite number at the entrance.
Here’s where angels herald the miracle…
…of the birth of Jesus.

The audiotour finishes by suggesting a visit to the museum and workshops underneath the church. The workshops are…well, working and aside from the history of La Sagrada Familia, you can see the actual models which are created to explore both the aesthetic and practical components of building each intricate piece of this fantastic sanctuary.


Last glimpse of the towering Nativity facade before entering the museum.

We left after a little over two hours, me with a ‘considerable number’ of photos and a flat camera battery. Both awed by the morning we’d spent.

We had an amazing weekend in Barcelona with great food, brilliant weather and some excellent sightseeing and shopping. There are many other things to do which we didn’t have time for but for me, La Sagrada Familia was the piece d’resistance. The luscious cherry atop our Catalonian sundae.

Hope I’ve managed to whet your appetite.

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Other posts in the Barcelona series:
Brave Beauty


This post is also part of the Post Of The Month Club – August 2012

Brave beauty

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Last weekend, A-used-to-be-down-the-hill and I took a little city break to Barcelona.

There was much tapas and tippling (I can highly recommend Bar Mut for tapas and Bubo for pastries), a bit of slip-slop-slapping (to protect ourselves from that hot Spanish sun), a spot of retail therapy and a whole lot of jaw-dropping ooh-ing and aah-ing at the clash of the bold and the beautiful that is so uniquely Barcelona.

Barcelona is a curious mix of leafy boulevards, intricate alleys and wide modern avenues. Its architecture moves from the classical to the bold, at times visionary while at others bordering on ugly. Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia forms the touristic heart of this city of contradictions – and will feature in a separate post – but is by no means the be all and end all.

So this post is to what your appetite with a little scenic tour of Barcelona’s brave beauty and extraordinary visual diversity…

Apartment building La Pedrera, one of Gaudi’s many architectural wonders scattered throughout the city.
The dis-used bull ring still stands proud whilst undergoing a transformation to host activities of a more modern ilk, shopping!
At Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium, the torch provides a poignant memorial 20 years on…
…and ‘the athlete’ still points the way to the now residential Olympic Village.
Modern shapes silhouette against the blue hot sky…
…right next to more classical, and decoratively painted, architecture.
La Sagrada Familia mixes monochromatic starkness…
…with lush and glorious colour.
(More on this amazing testament to Antoni Gaudi’s vision later.)
The wide and leafy La Rambla forms the backbone of Barcelona, dividing the residential El Raval district from the buzzing Barri Gotic and La Ribera enclaves…
…while numerous small squares and parks provide a shady retreat for the locals from the heat of the day.

Packed your bags yet? If you haven’t, stay tuned for your armchair tour through Barcelona’s visionary heart…coming soon.

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Other posts in the Barcelona series:
Holy Homage

I Come From A Land Down Under…

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With the Olympics going on here in London, I’ve read/seen a lot of stuff about Australia and sporting heroes.

Just last night, in the midst of profile after profile on Team GB (as is the perogative of the Host City), Cathy Freeman featured in a montage about ‘The Face of the Games’ for her star turn (both on and off the track) at the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 and legendary Aussie swimmer Ian Thorpe has been a key part of the commentary team at the Aquatics Centre for the swimming events.

Let’s face it, there’s nothing like a sporting great or two to bring out a bit of proud Aussie patriotism.

Today I was reading a post by Aussie-in-Doha, Kirsty Rice called The Fine Print In Your Passport. Just as the company you work for tells you that you are a representative of that company and are expected to conduct yourself as such, Kirsty reveals that same admonishment exists in the pages of your Australian passport. (For those of you that have one that is – the rest of you should check your own fine print.)

For many years, Australian airline QANTAS has run an overseas television campaign featuring Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home, the unofficial anthem for any self-respecting Aussie expat. The line ‘no matter how far or how wide I roam, I still call Australia home’ has always moved me (and most other Australians I know) and reminds me of the enormous pride I feel in being an Aussie amid the eclectic cultural melting pot of London.

But today Kirsty’s post unearthed a new gem and for me, an absolute pearler that covers the two places I’m lucky enough to call home.

So just you remember, I come from a land down under…

…you’d better run, you’d better take cover.

Your 2012 Five A Day…August

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Well, the 1st August heralds the end of year number 42 for yours truly. No more counting down, no more sleeps to go. It has arrived so first up, it’s a Happy Birthday to me!

There’s much else to celebrate in August. The Olympics have begun in earnest and I’ve been cheering on the green and gold. The Opening Ceremony was quirkily British and aside from that inordinately weird section with all the beds, I loved watching it. And what a tribute to future sporting generations that torch lighting ceremony was – absolutely brilliant. I may have even welled up a little.

Back at Gidday HQ, I’m still quarantined and starting to go a little stir crazy – although at least I’m sleeping through the night now and my appetite has returned a little despite the aches, pains and general unattractiveness of my affliction.

And last but certainly not least, this month’s Violent Veg introduces us to Brian, of the Parsnip variety. After Colin Carrot’s heart-thumping exploits in June and July (you can see the Violent Veg Back Catalogue at the end of this post), Brian reminds us to enjoy some gentler pursuits this Summer…

But quite frankly this is now Day 7 of *tranquility* so even with the promise of a little tackle-nibbling, I think there’ll be no such standing still for me.
Here’s to throwing oneself in the deep end this August.
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Five A Day Back catalogue
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

2 Sleeps To Go…Life’s Spanner

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Today it’s Monday. July 30th. That’s 2 sleeps to go.

2 sleeps before the day of moi on August 1st.

And life, in its own inevitable manner, has thrown a spanner in the works.

You see, I have been quarantined since last Thursday with chickenpox.

I mean really. Chickenpox for goodness sake! Surely that’s for children? That mysterious illness that mothers in my acquaintance are charged with managing in their various little ones.  And then see fit to regale all in proximity about its trials and tribulations thereby forcing me to maintain my sympathetic and concerned face for longer than 5 minutes.

(I would like to point out here that I can do sympathetic and concerned but sustained effort in this area is not my forte. As my friends know, I can be brutal with my ‘suck it up princess’ philosophy of deaing with life’s hard knocks.)

And yet here I am, forced to keep my own company, no-one to soothe my fevered brow while this virulent virus makes its way through the various stages of its frolic around my immune system. Snap!

This was not my plan. I had imagined quite a carefree week to finish my 42nd year on the planet. Filled with laughter, amusing repartee and kindly reminders of sleeps to go and shopping days remaining for you all. 

But the spanner arrived. So I have focused on doing the right things and riding this sucker out in the hopes of being fit for company (read work) again come my big day. I mean I have birthday yummies to share and the alternatives sans company are either gluttony or waste. And while I am of the school of ‘waste not want not’ (or as my mother called it ‘ the starving children in Africa’ who can quite frankly have ALL of my peas and brussel sprouts), a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips is definitely no fairytale.

2 sleeps to go peeps. Time for someone else to have the spanner.

A+ For Creativity…

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In previous posts I have been known to bemoan the less than extraordinary output managed by today’s educational systems. Whether they be the formal or informal, academic or the University of Life, it has seemed that perhaps something has gone awry and that we are not preparing the current – or for that matter future – generations as we should…and I use the term ‘we’ loosely to mean society in general.

As far as I can see, there’s something of a dichotomy going on at the moment.

There’s the over-arching drive to get that all-important (and increasingly expensive) university place, although it doesn’t always seem to be pursued as a heart-felt vocational calling but rather as an experience or a rite of passage before entering the ‘big bad world’.

And then there’s a worship of role models who come sans academia – the self-made men made Lords, the single-minded stars of the sporting arena, and those in the pages of the weeklies who seem to be celebrated for…well…being.

So where does education fit in? How do we line up the roles that society has created with an education system at odds with fulfilling them? And what happens to those that fall somewhere in between talent and narcissism?

Just when you thought that this post was turning into another rant on the state of the world, I want to take a pause to share a demonstration of the very mismatch I speak of.

The following is a selection of exam questions and answers provided by one particular student:

Q In which Battle did Napoleon die?
A His last one

Q What is the main reason for divorce?
A Marriage

Q If you threw a red stone into the Blue Sea, what would it become?
A Simply a wet stone

Q If it took eight men 10 hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men?
A No time at all. The wall was already built.

Q How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A Any way you want because a concrete floor is very hard to crack.

The teacher obviously saw the funny side and noted A+ for creativity…and the student failed the test.

So whether you’ve chuckled at their chutzpah or despaired at their defiance, the question remains: how do we engage this clearly clever mind in contributing something valuable, meaningful, worthwhile to the world at large?

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Now just before you race off to ply sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandkids and/or the neighbours’ offspring with a raft of serious and thought-provoking questions on the matter, in the spirit of true narcissism and self-absorption, I must remind you that there are only 7 sleeps to go until Society’s Celebration of little ol’ moi is upon us. Not many shopping days left peeps…are you ready?

Summery Sundays…

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It’s Sunday.

A lazy, mooch-about with A-used-to-be-down-the-hill Sunday.

And it’s a gloriously sunny Sunday here at Gidday HQ.

Yes, you heard read right.

The sky is brilliantly blue, the sun’s rays fierce in their determination to make up for lost (British Summer) time.

And there have been a couple of squatters on the back patio for the second time in as many weekends.

We even had to put the umbrella up to protect our delicate Australian  hangovers skin!

Don’t look now but it might be summer at last!

Shhhhh….wouldn’t want to scare it away again…

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ps…and there’s only 10 sleeps to go ’til the big day peeps. That’s right – only 10. You can count down using only your fingers now…

Speechless

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In the midst of preparations for last weekend’s Gidday Soiree, I took a break and went to Sadlers Wells to see Matthew Bourne’s Play Without Words. This was both my first Bourne and even more remarkably, given my love of dance, my first visit to Sadlers Wells. And apart from it being another bonza deal unearthed during my daily travels, Sadlers Wells is an easy commute down the Northern Line from Gidday HQ so I suspect that this cultural pocket of London will feature amongst my erstwhile ramblings a little more often.

Anyhow, Play Without Words is set in London in the early Sixties and is based on Robin Maugham‘s novel, The Servant. The action starts as we see leading man, Anthony (all 3 of them) sign the lease on a swanky new pad. He hires manservant Prentice (3 of them), a maid Sheila (only 2 of these), meets up with an old friend and then hosts a party with his glacial financee Glenda (yes, 3 of these too) by his side.

Image sourced from http://www.sadlerswells.com

The trios and duos interweave to show the same character captured in three different moments in time, adding power and depth to the wordless storytelling.  There’s friction and frostiness as the relationship between Anthony and Glenda disintegrates. There’s wit and clever visual repartee as Prentice and Sheila insinuate themselves into the household. And there’s sizzle and sexual tension and lust and betrayal – and I LOVED IT!

But more than anything, it’s Bourne’s visionary eye that makes this a seamless and sensual masterpiece. I was entertained, uplifted, moved and thrilled…and determined I’d be back for more.

So as I left, I picked up the program for the rest of the year and amongst the turned-down page corners, you’ll find the San Francisco Ballet, the Rambert Dance Company, Paco Pena and…yes you guessed it, Matthew Bourne and his world premiere of Sleeping Beauty.

It might be baked beans on toast for a while should I let myself indulge in this passion.

Now where is my debit card?

If you are in London between now and August 5th, make sure you get along and see Play Without Words. I kid you not – it’s absolutely brilliant! And I even got an Editor’s Choice for my review on Weekend Notes.

ps…if you’ve been under a rock ignoring me not reading my posts all the way to the end, Birthday Number 43 is fast approaching. You are down to only 13 shopping days peeps so let’s make that a lucky 13 shall we? Don’t let a little superstition get in the way of celebrating…well…me.

 

Gidday Soiree…A Hat Trick Of Birthdays

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The inaugural Gidday soiree is done. My guests have left replete with good food, an indiscriminate amount of wine and feisty yet flowing conversation.

Le outdoor setting (or patio furniture as my American compatriate at work calls it) did me proud and the skies, while not exactly blue and sunshine-y, kept to themselves with not a drop of rain falling. That’s a minor miracle in itself given the past few weeks.

(Although as I woke this morning after yesterday’s intermittent and torrential rain, I do believe I closed my eyes and whispered ‘oh please just let it be dry!’ Maybe someone was listening.)

It has inspired me to do more of this. I have to say that I rather enjoyed having visitors to fuss over, deliberating over the menu during the week prior to strike the balance of both the ‘right’ quantity and trying out some new things.

(There was a chilli, cheese and corn loaf and some savoury rolls – basically a soft cheese mixture and some other ingredients wrapped in pita bread, chilled overnight and sliced – which were both newcomers to the party.)

It was also an opportunity to use my ‘stuff’. You know the stuff I mean. You have some of this yourself. For me it was my Oma’s crockery, my Mum’s tea set (for the coffee) and, being a cup short, even a lone Royal Doulton cup and saucer for the fifth of our party.

Having the room at the new Gidday HQ for all of this to have been unpacked from the boxes that were their home for 6 and a half years is absolutely brilliant. Now it’s all just an arms reach away on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard.

I’m extremely proud to say that the only thing not Gidday-Made was the chocolate cake, collected from the local Polish store round the corner this morning, to celebrate our three birthdays.

Which brings me neatly to a reminder that there are only 17 sleeps to go until my big day. Celebrations may have started today at Gidday HQ but this doesn’t mean you’re off the hook peeps.

Not by a long shot!