One of Our Ducks is Missing

Its more than one actually. Its lots.

Over the last few years the duck population in London has dropped and ducks have been reported M.I.A.

The 'Bird Recorder' (one of the best job titles I have heard of) for Wandsworth and Tooting Common said natural predators were likely to cause population changes. He said: "They can be taken by pike and large carp, herons or foxes." Ahhh but this is not what the London Wildcare Trust thinks. According to them people have been nicking the ducks and eating them. Ted Burden, head of the trust, said: "People are taking them for their own table, or to sell on. They're not taking them to make pets out of them. They're ending up in the cooking pot."

Well I am pleased that during this recession people aren't dropping their standards. No nicking pints of milk and loaves of bread from outside the corner shop at 5am. No resorting to living off the contents of unlabeled and dented tins from the supermarket. No siree. People are refusing to compromise their lifestyle just because a couple of Yankee Banks fucked up on mortgages.

Its crispy aromatic duck time!
*I wonder how the sales of hoisin sauce are looking*

How I wish this show would be staged again

But unfortunately it has been shelved indefinitely. At least I got to see it a few times:

Shockheaded Peter

This is one of the best stage shows I have ever seen.

Never fails to amuse me

This morning I had the following conversation with my manager, David:

Sock Monkey: What time do you want to do the meeting today? Did you say this afternoon?
David: We're going to do it tomorrow instead with **** (our big boss). At two thirty.
Sock Monkey: That's the time you go to the dentist
David (thinking I had an appointment and we'd have to reschedule): Oh no
Sock Monkey (laughing): No...tooth hurty. That's the time you visit the dentist!
David (head in hands): I've lost the will to live

heh

Did you know 'My dog ain't got no nose.....'

Runaway Elephants

Ha HA! See below etching of said runaway elephants mentioned in my previous post. Photographic(ish) proof!

If you click on the image you will make it big and can then read the captions.

Kentish Town

I have been conducting some of my world famous 'research' . This time it was on Kentish Town because P lives there. Here are 3 things I have discovered about this part of North West London:

1. There is a nudist public bath in Kentish Town. Its called 'Rio's'
2. Kentish Town was the site of the 1st train crash in London on 2 September 1861 - 16 died

And thirdly, my favourite fact:

3. Elephants once ran riot in Kentish Town. They escaped from a circus parade and were later found in the basement of a house in Pemberton Gardens.

How the Hell did they get down the stairs?

Apologies for the break in transmission

Sock Monkey has been a very lazy bugger about writing my reports but I've just been so busy! My diary is ridiculous and I don't have a spare weekend until the middle of August. P says she's going to have to chuck me because I'm wearing her out and all the tickets are costing a fortune. I maintain that I simply can't miss anything.

So here is a bullet point list of what Sock Monkey has been up to thank you:

I went to see the Tiger Lilies. Their last show 'The Seven Deadly Sins' was a bit pants but I was pleased to see that they were performing the songs from Shockheaded Peter. I love Shockheaded Peter and have seen it several times. They sang pretty much all of it, including Flying Robert, Bully Boys, Fidgety Phil and Harriet and the Matches. They also sang stuff I hadn't heard before, most notable was the one about the prostitute. And naturally everyone dies in a horrible fashion at the end of every song. Shockheaded Peter has now been shelved and it isn't staged anymore so this was a treat. V. V. Good. Gold star.

Next was an evening out at Frank Sidebottom's Summertime Special at the Lextington (my new favourite venue). Sam and I found this highly entertaining, "Oh yes we did, we really did. We did actually. " He came skipping on stage singing Mungo Jerry's 'In the Summertime' (but naturally the lyrics had to include references to his Mum). P absolutely hated it and spent most of the evening either outside smoking or inside looking unhappy. I was very pleased when he sang 'The Monopoly Board Song', and of course Little Frank was there too.

Slightly less low brow was 'Time and the Conways' at the National Theatre. It had lukewarm reviews but I liked it so there.

Much more excitingly I also saw Antony and the Johnsons! Hooray! How good was he? Bloody amazing thats how much. He played for about 2 hours, much longer than usual and he chatted to the audience a lot which I have not seen him do before.

P and I splurged out on lunch at Gordon Ramsay's new(ish) restaurant The York and Albany and we can report that the food was very nice. The venue itself is lovely. Used to be an old boozer and they done it up laaavley, very light and airy. Its a hotel upstairs too.

I was supposed to go to my friend's book launch but it was on the same night as when I meet my personal trainer so instead of drinking free champagne and eating teeny tiny nibbles I was running around Crystal Palace followed by a man on a bicycle. The reason I didn't re-arrange my training evening is because I ran the Race for Life 4 days later. Two of my workmates and I decided that it would be a splendid idea to run 5,000 metres around Crystal Palace Park, along with 2,000 other people in aid of Cancer Research. On a day when it was 26 degrees. We finished in half an hour, raised £1,000 and deserved our drink in the pub afterwards.

P took me to the 125 Party. This was one of her friend's 50th birthday, her friend's husband's 50th birthday and their wedding anniversary all rolled into one. Hence the 125. God it was swanky.

Now then for those of you who don't have the pleasure of living in London you won't know that we have a giant, purple, upside down cow-shaped theatre on the SouthBank this summer. Udderbelly is a great venue. And outside they have astro-turf and a bar/food area. Its really pleasant. And in this green and purple pleasant land I saw Tina C. Yee Har! I love Tina C. Much more than her alter-ego Dame Ida Barr. Her show this year was called 'Complete and Utter Country'. P and Andrew were laughing so loudly the people in the row in front of us were laughing at them. She didn't sing the song "No Man's Dick is as Hard as my Life' but she did invite us all onto the stage to line dance at the end. We also saw Rhona Cameron there. She was rubbish but we all enjoyed the Pimms before, during and after.

I also sat and watched some opera in the park. The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden are showing live operas on outdoor screens throughout the country. So 3 of us from work went trip-trip-trip billygoats gruff, (armed with a big picnic and wine) down the road to from our office to Canada Square to watch La Traviata. It was a lovely sunny evening. Before the live broadcast started we were able to watch Venus Williams demolish her opponent in the Ladies' Singles Semi-Final of Wimbledon. It was very good - much better than the arse the Met in New York made of showing Faust. The Barber of Seville is the next one in a couple of weeks.

Andrew & Jacques had a most civilised dinner party. Actually it was a very, very funny evening with a good mix of guests. Most enjoyable.

Tonight I'm off to the Vortex for some Jazz. P's friend Lianne Carroll is performing. Tomorrow we are being old gits by going to a matinee. We are seeing 'Duet for One'. Then we have tickets for 'Warhorse' (which is apparently quite difficult to get tickets for). Its P's birthday soon so I am taking her out for the day and for a nice lunch. In Paris. We are also going to Dublin for a long weekend and I'm meeting up with some friends in Brighton in a few weeks. I also have an unusual party to go to. My friend's car, Brad (named after Brad in the Rocky Horror Show) is 30 years old and she is having a surprise party for him. So big ol' barbeque at Angela's. Her parties are always a laugh.

P & I are also going to Ben & Jerry's Sundae on the Common at Clapham - this looks good. There will be a helter skelter, coconut shy, loads of ice cream (what with it being Ben & Jerry's) an herd of pantomime cows and live bands. Guess who is playing? Camera Obscura! hahahahahahaha

Tunisia

Sock Monkey and P went to Tunisia and had the most fantastic, relaxing week.


We stayed at the Sinbad Hotel in Hammamet. I have now decided that I need to have a pirate's name in the title of all my hotels from now on. It was beautiful. Possibly the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at. Very swanky de-la posh and just our cup of tea. Or bottle of Tunisian Chardonnay as we quickly became accustomed to every night. The door of our room was opened for us and we were met with this: 

Our Room

Our room looked more like a junior suite with a massive bed covered in flower petals (different arrangement every day), a day bed, bathroom with bath & shower and another separate shower-room and French Windows which led onto our own private terrace. Two minutes after we arrived I answered a knock at the door and found someone standing there with freshly-laundered, fluffy bathrobes for us. Yes, this will do nicely we thought.

It was early evening so after quickly unpacking we made our way to catch our first glimpse of the hotel's private beach (below).

Managing to stop ourselves clapping with joy and then went to the Pool Bar for a celebratory cocktail. The Pool Bar was beautiful. Outside there is an infinity pool gives you the impression that you are swimming into the sea. Inside its painted clean white with white furniture and slightly ultraviolet lights which make it seem even whiter. Its a real chill-out zone. Then we got changed and went for dinner.

Infinity Pool

Next day we took a walk into Hammamet to get some money. We had a brief look in the Medina then made our way home for an exhausting afternoon of lounging around on the beach. We had decided that we wanted to take a trip into the Sahara Desert and the next trip was leaving the following morning. We booked it and had an early-ish night as we had to leave at 6am.

Because we were leaving early our breakfast was brought to our room which we ate on our terrace. Then we grabbed our overnight bags and left. Its about 200 miles from Hammamet to Douze. Douze is called 'The Gateway to the Sahara' because many people who travel from Northern Tunisia to the Sahara stay in Douze the night before.

On the way to Douze we visited the 2nd largest amphitheatre in the world. It certainly was huge. You could go into where they kept all the lions-and-tigers-and bears (oh dear). And I learned something very interesting. You could see little patches of marble on the walls of the arena. This wasn't for decoration. Oh no. This was to prevent the sabre-toothed beasts climbing up and over the walls and probably eating people.

After lunch we visited the troglodyte village of Matama. Star Wars was filmed in this area and it does look like another planet. From here it was another couple of hours to the hotel we were spending that night at and our first footsteps into the Sahara.

Before checking into the hotel we took an hour tip into the desert. Some people decided to ride camels but I have been on a camel twice before and deemed it unnecessary to do it again. Particularly as this trip was an hour. P would have had the screaming abdabs if she had had to ride one of them. In fact she didn't even like to get all that close to them. Nasty, ill-tempered, hissy, spitty, things. So we went by horse instead. In fact quite a few people ended up going by horse after attempting to ride the camels and quickly deciding that this was a bad idea. Actually one woman we got friendly said the minute she got on the thing she started to cry and had to be helped down.

Next morning we got up at 4am. Yes FOUR o'clock in the morning. This wasn't, however, the crack of dawn because dawn hadn't cracked yet. We were dragged out of bed so we could see her cracking all over the Sahara. You'll have to take my word for it that this picture is of the sun rising over the Sahara. Anyway, we then went on to visit some Salt Lakes. I found these fascinating. They looked like something you'd find on the moon (except there isn't any water there, only bugs) and the piles of salt were rock solid. Then we had our proper big trip into the desert *claps hands*. I had come prepared and was wearing my 'My Little Desert Explorer Outfit'. P bought a Lawrence of Arabia-type headdress. These outfits were necessary. 

                                                           It was about 42 degrees and sodding hot. We were right on the border of Algeria and could just see it in the distance.

It was a big ol' journey back to Hammamet. On the way we saw people flogging petrol by the side of the road. Not from petrol stations but from plastic containers which they had filled up cheaply in Libya and brought over to Tunisia to sell more expensively. And we saw camel heads hanging outside butcher's shops. We were sitting beside a group of Croatian people on the bus, one of whom was very funny. He didn't like the distances in Tunisia and really wanted a holiday in London (I suspect to visit all the gay nightclubs) so he was having a great time. When the guide said it would be another 'one hour and forty minutes' to the next stop he cried out in theatrical dismay, 'What? That's appalling!' We burst out laughing. Then, eventually, we saw our gorgeous hotel, disengorged ourselves from the bus and went to see what floral decoration was in our room. Barney the Bear had stowed away in my hand luggage and had come to Tunisia with us. Despite not having a passport. He didn't come to the Sahara with us as it would have been too hot for him (what with his fur) and he wouldn't have liked the camels or the sand. So he stayed in the room until we returned. He enjoyed being made every day. The guy who did the room incorporated Barney into all of his floral designs. You can just spot him sitting on the left hand pillow in this picture.

We decided to book ourselves into the spa for some pampering. On the first day we had a massage under jets of warm water and an aloe vera wrap. The next day was the hammam, scrub and hot stone therapy. My skin felt as soft as a 4 year olds and it was the best 100 quid I'd spent in ages.

There was some more lounging on the beach involved, a little bit of snorkeling, a bloody jellyfish stung me, and another visit to the Medina where some henna'ing took place. I have been to Medina's before but I have never, ever been with someone who bargains so well that the shopkeeper eventually accepts their price, almost chucks the stuff at them and has a face like a smacked arse. Well done P! She drives a hard bargain.

I can confirm that Tunisian Chardonnay is very, very nice. Every evening we would relax at the Pool Bar with a cold bottle and watch the sun set. After dinner we would then head over to the other pub and play backgammon.

Here we are in the Pool Bar on our last night. After a having wonderful time in Tunisia.