"England, my England"

A few photos explaining why no posts since early last week:

Tuesday evening - about to chase the setting sun west from Schiphol to Brum.

Wednesday - "England, my England"
(and a prize of hearty cyber-slap on the back with no monetary alternative for the first commenter to name the lump of rock that my rucsac is sunning itself upon)

Wednesday - it's not so grim 'oop North

Friday - homeward bound in Holland again.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) my phone battery ran out whilst I was in London so I can't inflict pictures of the changing guard at Buckingham Palace that I happened to walk past whilst on my way from Victoria up to Green Park (Mornington Crescent!*). It's rather grand spectacle even for the jaded, and judging from the crowds standing watching - almost all foreign tourists - it probably pays for itself as a tourist attraction, but I did notice a couple of odd things. Firstly the two squaddies marching at the back of the platoon(?) of the changing guards weren't carrying SA80s with bayonets fixed like the rest of their comrades, but rather were carrying field radios, rather smartly covered in red serge to match the rest of their uniforms, and carrying the phone style handsets in their hands. Odd - were they likely to need to call in air support whilst marching the 200 mtrs round the Queen Victoria Memorial? And secondly, when I first got there the band of - I think - the Cold Stream Guards was playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". Isn't that, well, a bit camp particularly for chaps already wearing bearskins?

And talking of camp: it's Eurovision week in Helsinki and I've been invited to dinner with Terry Wogan later this week when he is town for a few days as part of the BBC team. How cool is that?

*If this isn't funny to you at all, I'm afraid it will take far too long to explain why it should be.