Wimbledon - Ladies' Final Day

From Wimbledon 2008

Wimbledon Tickets on Ticket Master must have been a reasonably well kept secret - at least until Gentleman's Final Day! My refreshing of the page at 8:30 when the tickets where supposed to be put on sale turned out not to be needed - there where still tickets on sale the next morning - hours before the scheduled start time... by the time I got home on Saturday night after a great day of tennis, all the tickets for what turned out to be a momentous, if rain interrupted, men's final, had gone in less than 90 minutes.

The day started with a quick journey from central London to Wimbledon - when public transport works it really works. Then entry with my self printed ticket, that some might have paid a fortune for on eBay, with my passport to prove it was me that put my name to the ticket, was simplicity itself. Within an hour of leaving home I was watching an invitation doubles match on No 2 court with Liz Smylie and Nathalie Tauziat against Sabine Appelmans and Hana Mandlikova.

Then to centre court for the main show. Three finals on Centre Court - the Williams sisters on to start, then probably closest match of the day - the Gentlemen's doubles and closing out day the Williams sister again - this time on the same side of the net against Lisa Raymond and Samantha Stosur. Centre Court is a great venue - 15,000 seats and everyone with an uninterpreted view of the court.

So I'll be ready on Ticket Master for next year, and maybe I'll take a laptop with me if I'm lucky enough to get tickets to the final Saturday, so I stand a chance of getting tickets for Sunday.

Bon Jovi - The Lost Highway Leads to London Tour

Last time I saw Bon Jovi they closed the old Wembley - they where literally tearing the place down as we left. That was a glorious afternoon/evening of music and atmosphere - shame the old Wembley was showing its age! Eight years later, on a pleasant Friday evening another chance to live while I'm alive, I'll sleep when I'm dead. The only shame was that Bon Jovi didn't appear to have bothered with a sound engineer who was worthy of the title! The Police has managed a great sound 10 months earlier - even if only when the stadium was full - Bon Jovi was just loud - with no clarity. But you don't go to a stadium event for the audio quality of the music - I've got a stereo and MP3 player for that. The atmosphere was great - with all the classics and Twickenham is a great venue - modern facilities, clean and plenty of them. Queuing for food, drink and other facilities was a quick process - and being a rugby stadium the food was one step above the norm. Another sign of the times was eight years ago my rather basic, by current standard, digital camera was considered so "professional" that I had to hand it in. I did get some of the last pictures of the stadium, as every one was leaving. This time despite a condition on the ticket that stated no cameras would be allowed - even phones with flashes to use with their in built cameras where on the band list - there we small cameras everywhere and at least one SLR with a long lens! Now all I need to do is learn how to get the best out of my new compact camera - the 10x zoom was great - but I've learnt that the high ISO to cope with the lack of light does lead to very noisy pictures - and I've got to find out how to switch the flash off!

New Perspective

With the help of a new lens I'm getting a new perspective on London! There is certainly an art to using a lens as extreme as a 360x180 degree fisheye! But even my first attempt produced some interesting images of London around my flat on a mid-summer eve. The most successful was pointing the camera to the sky amongst a grove of trees in front of Tate modern.

From Fish Eye

It also proved interesting to include reflections, it was amazing how close you had to get to a building to make it fill the frame. And then being up a very tall ladder would have assisted getting the image I was really trying for - getting the dome of St Paul's into a close up shot just wasn't going to happen from ground level! Using the lens amongst the sky scrappers of Hong Kong is going to be interesting... Now the hunt for software to manipulate the images beings - and I think I'm going to have lots of image to experiment with HDR - having every thing in view in one 180 degree by 360 degree arc can make getting all the details at a single exposure setting impossible!

Far East Holiday Autumn 2008

Unlike last year, when I waited until the last minute - OK three weeks before - to book the hotel in the vain hope that there would be a "special" that would get me a great room (and view) at a discount rate, then ended up having less choice and paying exactly the same as if I'd booked at the same time as I booked the flights 9 months before, I've now completed booking hotels for my trip to Hong Kong and the F1 GP in Singapore... Lets see if I luck out again and get a nice upgrade to a suite - as long as the view of Hong Kong harbour is as good as the reviews and pictures I don't really mind.... The hotel in Singapore on the other hand was one of the first things booked - immediately after the tickets to the Grand Prix - the "special rate" for that weekend is enough to make you think twice, luckily for the rest of the week in Singapore rates return to very reasonable levels for a 4 star hotel in a popular Far East destination. Now to start booking the day trips - already got tickets for the Singapore Flyer - the London Eye, but bigger and better. So the count down begins.... 112 days until a late night departure from Terminal 5 - lets hope they've sorted out the baggage handling by then....

Summer Eights - a trip down memory lane

It really doesn't seam like 16 years since I had the greatest, and possibly only sporting achievement of my life - Blades in Summer Eights - and on top of that we got the scalps of four II eights as Univ III. Looking back I was lucky to be at Univ during a golden period of rowing for the College - looking at the bumps charts, there have only been a few other crews to get Blades since.

So 16 years on I decided to spend a Friday out of London - it was a very pleasant break from the office and the built up nature of the city. Even if initially the weather was more suitable for the ducks! Not as much precipitation as during the London marathon ... and the sun did show up late in the afternoon.

From Summer Eights...

From Summer Eights...

From Summer Eights...