Woohoo!! My question got answered on the FT "Ask the experts" website. Last week, in honour of the 20th anniversary of Big Bang, the deregulation of the financial markets in London which led to its growth in importance as a financial centre, Sir Nicholas Goodison, former chairman of the LSE, wrote an article on "whether London can stay at the top" and answered questions on the FT website. His article was broad but pretty interesting, as was his answer to my question (scroll down near the bottom of the page).

CardiffBristolLondon

Went to Cardiff to give a talk at the Institute of Theoretical, Applied and Computational Mechanics.

It went pretty well I think - i managed to not waffle on for too long and they asked lots of good questions afterwards. Not keen to face the train-mission back to Cambridge that night, I went to Bristol to stay at Tim's and to catch up with Leah and some of her pals. We had a jolly corking time in a number of salubrious establishments.

Then we went to the Lizard Lounge. No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limits. No limits to our collective exuberance at the fantastic music, that's for sure.

Bristol's Catholic Cathedral, down the road from Tim's place, is quite a cool modern building, in a similar style to that of Liverpool.

Went to London on the weekend to catch up on exhibitions. Tam and I did no less than 4 in one day: Cezanne in Britain at the National Gallery (very nice selection if not particularly thematic); David Hockney at National Portrait Gallery (fab - plenty of his famous pieces and some great newer works, cool to see this so soon after visiting the 1853 gallery in Saltaire); V&A (just checked out permanent collection, esp. photography and fashion); Fischli & Weiss at Tate Modern (cool variety of clever, thought-provoking works).

Saw the slides at Tate Modern which are the talk of the town at the mo. See here and here and here. They're quite cool (not ridden on them yet however) and extremely popular though the art-i-ness is somewhat ambiguous- very Tate Modern then. (Get yer hand off it, Matt...)

Venezia

MJ and I set off, after respective demanding weeks, from Stansted to Treviso for a bit of RnR La Serenissima style. Made it in pretty good time, all things considered, to Ponte Santa Lucia and our hostel.

A quick Duo Panini Por Favore, a glass of Valpolicella, and a packet of Italian twisties and

Up bright'n'early, first espressos for the day and onto a vaporetto.

Woohoo! Boats and stuff!

The water levels were definitely higher than when i was last in Venice in 99. Not quite acqua alta but just about.

The Biennale was still on so we headed over to Giardini to check that out.

Italian pavilion:

Had a lookee at the Australian pavilion:

Cool to see a reference to Kellerberrin wheatbelt town near where my grandparents had a farm (and where Dad was born!).

Headed back into the centre of the touristy action:

then to Accademia where we amused ourselves in the queue with some pistachio cake - hey baby, you're the real work of art!

then to the Guggenheim

where peggy was kind enough to say hi to us in the gift shop.

After a bit of regrouping and dinner in Cannaregio, we made our way back towards Dorsoduro to see a Vivaldi concert in an old church:

Very splendid, and sufficiently culturally virtuous that we could justify a few cocktails in San Polo before bedtime.

Next morning we vaporettoed out to the Murano to look at a very large amount of glass, ranging from the supercool to the megatacky.

Back to the main city, I semi-successfully navigated us straight to the Ca Pesaro, which we'd previously spied from the Canal Grande:

Terrestrial aspect is more like this:

Had a very nice lunch: authentic Venetian dish, cuttlefish in squid-ink sauce with white polenta.

Strolled along the main tourist route, across the Rialto towards San Marco.

Realised we'd both left our Biennale tickets in our bags in the lockers at Ferrovia, so we couldn't check out the other half of the show. Substituted this with molto authentico Birra Morreti,

and had a wander around Arsenale then vaporettoed back to the train station.

Whilst having a last glass of vino at a cafe we managed to get involved in a conversation with some fellow Australian travellers. Their story about going on a gondola (pah, how cliched...) was so incredibly boring that MJ and I both fell asleep with our eyes open. When we jolted awake, time had run away from us, and a madcap dash was required to get to Piazzale Roma before our bus left. Made it and sweated profusely all the way to Treviso airport.

MJ pulled off a brilliant queue-jumping blag at the airport "Oh, i've been in an accident recently and my leg's quite injured, and he's my carer, so can we come on with the people with babies?"
2001 is pretty recent. And I'm a good carer.

Scotland and the North

Mum had been on a highland tour; i went up and met her in Edinburgh, ready for a road trip and champing at the bit for haggis, long-haired cows, tweed, black-pudding, whippets and big, baked yorkies.

Went for a couple of runs round the city, both that evening and the following morning, which was a cool way to get a feel for the different areas.

Solid art morning: National Gallery of Scotland - highlights: Titian's "Diana and Callisto" and "Diana and Actaeon", Poussin's Seven Sacraments and

the flagship painting (voted 7th most popular painting in Britain last year) Sir Henry Raeburn's Reverend Walker Skating.

Quick visit to the adjoining Royal Scottish Academy - they were kind of between exhibitions so a bit thin on the ground - then off to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery - highlights at latter being Eduard Paolozzi sculptures and paintings and cool Miro and Ernst pieces,

and the sculpture garden outside:

Hit the road and made tracks for Glasgow, arriving in time to visit the recently-refurbished Kelvingrove museum. Built for the International Exposition in 1882, when Glasgow asserted itself as the second city of the British Empire, it exudes a nouveau riche Victorian grandeur eclipsing anything that the much older Edinburgh has to offer:

Went for a walk around the Kelvingrove River and the University of Glasgow,

then up the hill in Kelvingrove Park - yep good idea Mum.

Can't say if the view was worth it because my eyes were watering so heavily from the exertion of hauling my monstrous bulk all the way up.

Had some haggis for dinner, which was (slightly disappointingly) tasty and edible - but a good way to maintain, if not supplement, my aforementioned monstrous bulk.

Next morning, swung by the Glasgow School of Art designed by the city's favourite son, Charles Rennie Mackintosh:

then off to Glasgow Cathedral

and the St Mungo Museum of Religious Art. Saw, amongst other things, some Burne-Jones-designed and William Morris-produced stainglass windows:

Went into town and had a cup of tea at the famous Willow Tea Rooms (whose insides were designed by Mackintosh in what became known as the Glasgow style, a variant on Jugendstil/Art Nouveau).

Check out the chairs!

Visited the Lighthouse centre - kind of a design/architecture museum with a cool tower with excellent views over the city


Nipped into the Gallery of Modern Art - Art Galleries of the World was spot on the money with this one: visit for the building not the contents.

Went out to the Burrell Collection; significant parallels with the Getty: big collection of art, antiquities and artifacts endowed by a rich industrialist (Sir William Burrell) and housed in an iconic modern building (designed by Gasson, Meunier and Anderson of the School of Architecture at Cambridge, and named as Scotland's second greatest post-war building in a poll of architects by Prospect magazine in 2005 - thanks wikipedia).

Had some haggis for lunch!!

The building design and the way the collection is set out is fantastic

Hit the road south, crossed the border into Cumbria and roughly followed Hadrian's wall east. Had a look at a section of the Wall before light faded (it was almost 3pm after all)

The sheep grazed utterly oblivious of the historical import of the northside fence of their field.

Made it along to Durham after nightfall and grabbed some dinner, including a trendy fusiony black pudding entree and a knock-off priced Pinot Noir (oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet.). You just can't go past all that at only £7 a bottle.

Went to Matins at the Cathedral - one of the more spectacular in England.

and had a jolly fine stroll along the river and through the town.

Next stop, the, one might say, more quintessentially northern (more so than Durham which is full of them thar bluddy soothen stoodent taaps), town of Barnard Castle for a hearty Sunday roast with almost-authentic (technically we were still in Co Durham not the Shire of York yet) Yorkshire pudding, then to the Bowes Museum

Here I'm transported back through the centuries with the simple application of a ruff.

One of the features of the Bowes Museum is the Silver Swan, a clockwork swan that, when wound, plays misic and moves its head around, snaking about then bobbing forward to nip a fish from the water. The whole performance occurs once every three weeks except in Lent, and lasts for about 21.6 seconds, so we were most fortunate to witness it.

Southward ho, to Ripon Cathedral, one of the oldest in England - the first church to St Wilfrid was built there in 607,

then on to Leeds. Our hotel was right in the centre of town and i have to admit the traffic system had us slightly foxed, but we made it there ok and headed in for dinner, which we enjoyed at a very authentic West Yorkshire style establishment, called Wagamama.

Strolled about the next morning,

then headed along to the Leeds City Art Gallery and the Henry Moore Institute

To be quite frank, my expectations were not exceeded by any means, due mainly to misalignment between the offerings and my tastes. The Victorian-era collection on display there is dwarfed by collections in Manchester and Liverpool, though there is more modern stuff, particularly sculpture.

Heading westward out of town, we stopped off at Kirkstall Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery dating back to the mid 12th century. While the ruins are pretty spectacular, the abbey must have been mindboggling when extant.

Wester still is the town of Saltaire, an industrial village on the outskirts of Bradford built by Sir Titus Salt back in the good old days of dark satanic mills when England actually produced and exported real stuff not just financial and management consultancy services.

It is designated as a UNESCO world heritage site due to its significance as the first purpose-built industrial town, and one of the main mills has been turned into The 1853 Gallery, featuring the works of Bradford-born David Hockney.

Further south of Leeds, we partook of the final activity of our Grand Northern Road Trip, a visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

A highlight is the selection of Henry Moore pieces set against a backdrop of the misty Dales.

Back on the M1 and zoomzoom back to Cam, thankfully avoiding sustaining any speeding tickets.
Jolly fine trip. Once again, Mum, I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for being the most obnoxious passenger-seat driver ever to grace the A650-M62 interchange.

NorfolkSuffolk

Mum came to visit and, having done all the Cambridge things last year, needed to be entertained further afield. So we hired a car, an upgrade from the hire place to a Peugot 307s convertible - niiiiice, and set out into the hinterland. Friday, we went to Duxford Imperial War Museum where we checked out heaps of cool planes, including a Blackbird, a B52 and the first Concorde ever made, which one can walk inside.


Definitely gives the National Air & Space Museum in Washington a run for its money.

The next day we set forth for Norfolk. First stop, Eric St John-Foti's Collectors World. "Possibly Norfolk's greatest eccentric and prolific collector, the original Mr 'Norfolk Punch' himself, Eric St John-Foti has displayed his extraordinary lifetime collections..."

Extra-ordinary, indeed. Some of it is set out thematically, eg. the Christmas rooms, highly redolent of the first scene of City of Lost Children:

Other sections are more random, but mindboggling nonetheless:

One of the newspaper articles likened E SJ-F to Norfolk's JP Getty, i think WR Hearst would be a more appropriate comparison. Definitely worth a visit though next time you're in the SW Norfolk area.

On to Castle Rising, the one time home of Queen Isabella, widow of Edward II and mother of Edward III.

This is the slot through which boiling oil would be poured on prospective invaders:

Further north to Sandringham. Our royalist tendencies were insufficient to provoke a full tour of the house but the gardens were very nice.

Next stop: Wells-next-the-sea, a charming fishing village next to the estuarine inlets that make up most of the coastline of north Norfolk.

Then on to Great Yarmouth where we stayed that night. I think I preferred the ambience of Wells-next-the-Sea with only the creak of swaying boats and the occasional gull's cry over the peacefulness of the estuary (as opposed to drunken stags nights shouting and staggering out of mini-casinos and amusement arcades blaring happy-hardcore and poker-machine sounds).

Still, we went for a very nice, more peaceful stroll along the beachfront the following morning:

There's a big windfarm project, Scroby Sands, 3 km off the coast - very interesting - the windmill towers are 60m high and the blades are 40m long - this is the future of renewable energy. If we're going to stop burning coal and oil, there'll need to be quite a few more of these set-ups around the country, and indeed around every country that gets a bit of breeze from time to time.

Eco-techno-philosophising aside, Great Yarmouth also afforded me the opportunity to purchase some Rock which has been a dream of mine ever since I moved to England.

Eating it has been a dream of mine too. Mmmm, touristy AND sugary.

Headed out to the Norfolk Broads.

Checked out the Broads Museum;

looked at some yachts;

and did a bit of sailing of my own.

Learnt that the Broads were in fact partially manmade, resulting from water filling up holes left after peat had been dug out during the middle ages.

Next stop, after a hearty pub lunch Sunday roast, was Somerleyton House, a Victorian stately home built on the site of an early Jacobean mansion. Not quite as historical as, say, Audley End (scroll down) or Castle Rising, but the transition of the Victorian industrialists (like Sir Morton Peto, founder of Somerleyton house, and Sir Francis Crossley, who bought it from him) from entrepreneurial bourgeousie to semi-aristocratic landed gentry is an important aspect of English history. And the gardens are very nice.

I'd been harbouring aspirations of making it as far as Stratford St Mary's, the heart of Constable Country in South Suffolk, but it wasn't looking very promising. Consolation prize was Southwold Pier; nice coastline but bloody cold wind.

Keen to cram one more experience into the day, we stopped off at Framlingham Castle which is another mighty bit o' history in the middle of Suffolk.

No Constable, unfortunately, but a prolific tour nonetheless; fab to get out an about in the countryside and see a bit more of this sceptr'd isle.

Sydney

It was a little bit touch-and-go for a few moments as to whether I'd make my flight after 28 hours of continual carousing, but my fears

were unfounded and it was no time before I was buckled up next to a nice gentleman from Marseilles who insisted (not much provocation required) i have some cognacs with him. My grand plans of reading and working for the entire flight were canned in favour of flicking through the inflightmag and passing out. Stopped off in Bangkok oblivious to the coup d'etat that was going on at the time, then bunkered down for final leg to syd.

Arrived to glorious weather and went straight to Coogee Beach for b/fast and beachside ramble:

Walked into town that afternoon to MCA,

then caught up with Grant who hasn't lost any of his unique ability to summon amazing facial expressions.

HIghlights of subsequent week:

Morning runs round Balmain and across the harbour bridge, round botanical gardens (i made the mistake of sprinting off from Maarinke on the way over the bridge - she offered to do the whole circuit again - i was in no state to call her bluff, which was probably obvious from my purple face)

Placebo concert at Hordern

Giacometti exhibition at AGNSW

I discovered after all these years that the iconic statue outside AGNSW was in fact by Brett Whiteley, whose studio in Surry Hills we finally got round to visiting.

Some fab dinners at The Wharf, Oscillate Wildly.

Brekky with Hoffmans at Dee Why - i can't believe it was still only early spring and such amazing weather.

Went to the Structural Integrity and Fracture Conference and gave not one but two talks, that looked a little something like this: The conference dinner was on my birthday so I celebrated by drinking not one but two bottles of wine.


If you thought i looked kinda funny in the photos when I was talking, check out this corker of my PhD supervisor, Mark, the (now past-) president of the Australian Fracture Group during his after-dinner speech. What a bewdy!

Had a more laidback bday dinner the following night in Balmain. Saw out my final weekend with a BBQ, strolls round Balmain and brekky at Balmoral Bathers Pavilion. $93 for breakfast for two helped me prepare for my return to English prices. Fab trip, very busy, great to see everyone! Might be while before i'm back so good to packed as much in as i did.

London Weekender

A grand expedition (i.e. i didn't just go by myself) set out from Cambridge to London one Friday afternoon at the start of autumn. After a few pubs in the City including the famous Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, went on to the Globe to see Titus Andronicus, "certainly Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy". Fantastic performance - definitely glad we stood in the yard, rather than shelling out for seats in the stands - being right in the action was tremendous (except for the girl who fainted and had to be carried out by paramedics - apparently she found the whole "Enter Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished" thing a bit overwhelming).

Post-show drink at The Founders Arms

This Borat High-five thing has to stop. Perhaps after the movie (Nov 2 release date - put it in your diaries!).

Went Broadway Markets with MJ:

& bought an awesome custard slice:

Off to Tate Modern to meet up with the lads. They Kandinskyed, I permanent collectioned - first proper lookee-see since the june rehang.

Thames Festival was in full swing outside so we grabbed lunch there,

had another Thames-side beer

and headed to Temple to check out the Templar church there.

Reconvened with supplementary troops in Clapham for dinner and general hilarity.

Round midnight it was then decided, after a brief adjournment at the Goat, to go on to Shoreditch.

The remaining activities for the evening can be summarised pictorially:

Sunday was spent preparing myself for my flight to oz.

This involved hiking across half of London in order to have a quick bev in Kentish Town then hiking back to the east end then to Heathrow. I've had better flights.

Leicester and Nottingham

Some of my micromechanics chums were in Nottingham for a Continuum Mechanics workshop so I decided to join them, not so much for continuum mechanics, but more for a horizon-expanding excursion to the midlands.

Got the train (actually replacement bus unfortunately - don't get me started...) to Leicester, home of Adrian Mole.

Went to the New Walk gallery,

where I saw, amongst other things (contemporary Chinese installations and paintings, German expressionism, LS Lowry paintings...), a giant prehistoric dog

Managed to escape unharmed and strolled about Leicester for a bit, enjoying the parks and sunshine,

checked out the cathedral,

Look how close together the gravestones are. Short people?

Crossed the Trent.

Moseyed round the castle gardens, site of much historic activity, including

Made it to Nottingham and headed out for a few.




Went for a stroll about the Uni of Nottingham campus.

Headed into town to pay respects to Robin Hood:

Visited Castle Museum:

where I saw Sir Bloom-a-lot

Had a pint at the Oldest Inn in England:

Checked out the bomb shelters in the cliff below the castle. The city is on limestone which is easy to tunnel into, so lots of the buildings have cellars burrowed into the bedrock.

Wandered round the more modern Jubilee campus of the uni:

then went into town to try to find a dining establishment that isn't part of a chain. Was successful in locating the single such establishment (in the entirety of the UK) and can heartily recommend Punchinello - it's near Wagamama and Pizza Express and Cafe Rouge.

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Breakfast of champions: 1 doubleshot cappucino, 1 doubleshot latte, 1 egg-bacon-n-black-pudding-baguette. Heartstoppingly delicious!

Regentrified waterfront area on the Trent:

Bussed out to Newstead Abbey, ancestral home of the Byrons.

This was Lord Byron's bedroom as he kept it.

Here's his study

This is me re-creating some of Lord Byron's famed deviant crossdressing moments (clear evidence for why they shouldn't let children play in the historical-costume activity-room unsupervised):

Cloisters
Being Robin-Hoody in the gardens:


The gardens are beautifully laid-out

Headed back into town and visited Wollaton Hall, which was unfortunately being refurbished. This is the only aspect not dominated by scaffolding.

The parkland surrounding the home are expansive and delightful.

After such a culturally-productive day, it was a shame Iggy had to spoil it by enticing me to debauchery. The events following their workshop dinner do not bear recounting...

Another breakfast of champions, enticing cocktail of black pudding, caffeine and corporate finance, and off i went back to cambridge.