All 7 entries tagged London

Back To London

Has it really been over a month since my last post. Hmm.

This week is going to be a busy week. I’ve got a ticket to a recording of “Two Pints of Laget and a Packet of Crisps” this evening, then tomorrow I’m going to a recording of “Thank God You’re Here”.

Thank God You’re Here is a brand new Paul Merton comedy show! In each episode four celebrities are dressed in an appropriate costume and must walk through a door into a situation which they know nothing about. They are greeted by the show’s ensemble cast and always with the line “Thank God you’re here”. They must then rely on their wits alone to survive the rest of the scene. At the end of each show a winner is announced. It’s the funniest, most original show on TV!

Then on Tuesday a recording of “Miranda Hart’s House Party” for Radio 4.

This British Comedy Award nominee promises an eclectic serving of comedy, song, dance and other guests. She’s had lots of rave reviews which is a very good reason for Radio 4 to record her house party. This lady of laughs has starred in TV’s Not Going Out and Hyperdrive. So laugh yourself warm this winter with Miranda Hart.

Then another recording of “Two Pints …” next Sunday and then “The Late Edition” which is LIVE.

Late night, topical and funny. Newsnight with jokes. And the only totally live comedy on television. Presented each week by Marcus Brigstocke with special guests. LIVE on BBC 4 on 29th November at 10:30 – 11:00

Oh, and speaking of Miranda Hart being in “Not Going Out” that was very funny. It was the christmas episode which was quite fun, and it’s got me in a bit of a christmassy mood now. I’m still agianst shops playing christmas music before December starts but then … what can you do?
The warm-up comedian at Not Going Out was the same one as at the recording of Crawford Park that I went to as my 1st TV recording. This did mean that I already knew half his jokes but nevermind. It was much more funny when Lee Mack did a bit of standup, dressed as a Policeman, during a long costume change, then handed over to Tim Vine, who was dressed as a Gangster, to do a bit more.

All in all I’m really enjoying living this close to London. It means I can get to a recording any evening for only about £5, rather than the £15 from Maidstone or the £30 from Coventry.

: 11 Nov 2007 15:57 |  Tags: BBC London Recordings TV |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Out To Lunch

I’ve recently got back from London where I was at a recording of Out To Lunch for BBC Radio 2. I spend most of the afternoon around London. I went to Clapham for no reason, Picadilly Circus to see the advertising screens ‘cos I don’t remember seeing the in person any time before. I then found out how close together some underground stations are on the surface by walking back from there to Tottenham Court road while just wandering randomly.

Just across the road from the Soho Theatre, where the recording was, I went down a side streat, , and saw this. It’s a nose stuck to a wall at about 2^nd storey level. How odd.

Later, at the recording, I now know where the BBC licence fee goes. It pais for the 2 free drinks for each audience member at this recording. I guess it’s go get us in a mood for laughing at some of the more weird comedy moments.

If you want to listen to the one I was at the recording of it will be broadcase on BBC Radio 2 at 1300 on Saturday 20^th October 2007

: 08 Oct 2007 00:12 |  Tags: London Out To Lunch Radio 2 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

I've got a bit rubbish at this …

.. havn’t I?

The rest of my 1st day in 2 mins was that I went with all the other students working in the web departments. We sat around in the kitchen area of the WSG floor (4th floor) and the heads of departments came and collected the people who were working with them. I was still sat there at lunch so I went with them to the Italian down the street where the company paid for our lunch. That was OK. It turned out when I came back that I was supposed to be on a completely different floor in a different department to all the other students. We eventually found out where I was supposed to be. I was meant to be on floor 14 in CSG. So eventually I got to where I was meant to be just in time to go to a presentation and then go home.

The next 3 weeks was speant doing training in central London. THat was a lot of fun. We didn’t have to be in ‘til 9:30 and we got a morning tea break, lunch and an afternoon tea break. Almost every lunch we went to this great Italian sandwich shop just across the road where they serve the best toasted sandwiches.

During the last week of training I found a room I liked and in order to secure it I had to pay the deposit on the morning of one of the weekdays. To do that I had to phone up Martin (my brother) and get him to go onto my Online Banking and tranfer the money from my savings into my current account. I then had to go from Pecham Rye (where I was at the time on my way into London Bridge) to Sutton which is 2 slow trains. I eventually get to Sutton then had to find a Natwest becase the cash machine limit is less than the deposit amount. Eventually I paid the deposit, got my key and went to the training, only about 3 hours late.

Since then it’s not been that eventfull. We moved offices from the 14th to the 2nd floor of the office block, so now I walk rather then taking the lift :). I’ve completed about 3 projects now and it’s all going well.

On Sunday afternoon I went and had a free trial day at my local gym. It’s part of a Holiday Inn, but only a tiny part. I was looking for a gym with a pool and was expecting something like at University (I wasn’t a member, just saw it on the open day). I should know that nothing is ever quite as large as at Uni but this only had about 8 machines and a tiny square pool. I was expecting a whole floor of machines and a lenghts pool. The other downside of this one is that it is also open to all the hotel residents so there are probably quite often kids in the pool.
I’m going to see another gym this Wednesday which is a little further away and doesn’t have a pool but sounds a little bigger. I’m going to have to weigh up all the factors to decide which one I want to join. I don’t know whether I want a large or small gym or whether a pool is important or not. I guess it depends how comfortable I am there more than anything else.
I’ll have to see, if this one is’t great there is one other within walking distance in Sutton.

I shall have to start blogging more again, and to steal a signoff from J …

I’m Still Here

: 17 Sep 2007 22:51 |  Tags: Gym House London Rent Sutton Work |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Work etc…

Ok. Long long time and no blog entry, but that’s the way it’s been since the last one.

Exams were horrid, at one point I thought I was going to get forced to withdraw or at least have to retake some but I managed to get an average of 73% which is a 1st again so all’s good.

The week after exams was WSAF (Warwick Student Arts Festival) which was all good fun despite the rain and living a bus journey away. I can’t remember many details at the moment but it was all good.

The week after that I started my placement year job at RBI (Reed Business Information) in Sutton, London (Surrey/Greater London really but London sounds cooler). Being straight after Uni I didn’t have a chance to find accommodation there so I got a 7-day train ticket for ~£70 and commuted down.

I left home at 7am monday morning to get the train(s) to be at Sutton by 9am only to find that reception didn’t have any record of me atall. Great! After some phone calls he verified that I was actually starting work and I got a day entry pass and a voucher for a free cup of tea or coffee (with my name spelt “Payne”). That was fine.

We then went into the AV Theatre (small room) for induction. That all seemed fine until it got to the end and HR came round to get everyones Passports, NI nos and signed forms. What signed forms? When was I told to bring my passport? It appeared that I was supposed to have had a pack with all this info in and my contract, to sign and return, through the post weeks ago. Since I hadn’t received anything I had assumed that it was all sorted on the first day.

As you can see, my first day went really, really well. That’s only half of it. The rest of my 1st day will come tomorrow as I want to go home now.
I’m still at work writing this as I don’t have internet at home at the moment, will do tomorrow though. Woo.

See ya

: 24 Jul 2007 17:28 |  Tags: Commute London Rent Room Sutton Tired Work |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Weekends Away & Graduation Times

A couple of weekends ago I went to visit my friend James in Southampton. It was a good trip down, 2 hours on the train. During the weekend we went shopping, had a BBQ and sat around at home playing a network game of OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe). The journey home was a little more eventful. I got a train from Southampton to Winchester. I then had to get a bus from there to Reading and a train from Reading to Leamington Spa. I was dreading the bus ride, expecting it to be a cramped bus full of people. It was instead quite a nice coach and only about 10 or 11 people so it was quite a pleasent journey.

Also, while I was there we worked out that all of our friendship group graduate from Uni at the same time, despite all our differing situations. The diagram below should explain that nicely.
The reason Matt has 2 1^st years is that he started a course he didn’t like, dropped out, re-took some exams and then started again in the course he originally wanted.

I went away again this weekend. I went home for my brother’s and nan’s birthday. My brother’s birthday was on the friday when I went home so I didn’t see much of that. My nan’s birthday was on Sunday. We went over to whitstable and had dinner in a nice hotel with the other side of the family. I was expecting the journey to be relatively unevenfull, Maidstone -> Victoria, Victoria -> Euston then Euston -> Coventry, the same as it has been evey other time.
I got to Euston, via Cannon St instead of Victoria, only to find that the train was delayed, along with a load of others. Trains then started being cancelled left, right and centre. Someone had decided to throw themselves off of a bridge at Milton Keynes and had got hit by a train. In my boredom I had some dinner at Burger King and then went back down to the underground station to buy myself a pay-as-you-go Oyster card.

I also spend a little time finding where the external shots for the Channel 4 program Black Books were filmes. I did find it and took a couple of photos, despite the rubbish camera and the rain. Click the photo to see the other 2. I eventually got home at about 2pm, 2 hours later than I was expecting to, and had to go to a lecture at 3.

: 16 May 2007 01:15 |  Tags: Black Books Bus Coach Euston Friends Graduation London Maidstone Milton Keynes Oyster Soton Southampton Train |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Holiday, Placement, Laptop etc

Not much memorable happened during the holidays. I went up to London to see Golden Balls (see prev entry) and ended up missing it. I had gone to grenwich, ‘cos I had 6 zone travelcard, to find the zero meridian line and got on the DLR too late to make it back in time.
Mum, Martin, Bethany and I also went to Chessington World Of Adventures for a day, with some Clubcard vouchers. As we have been going to foreign theme parks on holiday recently it seemed relatively tame but was still quite fun.

Over the holiday I applied for about 6 or 7 work placements for next year and have so far only heard back from 1. I went to an interview for Trainee Web Developer for RBI last week and thought it went really badly. There were some things that I really should have known that I didn’t, but he seemed very impressed with what I told him about the BHF Photo Gallery and Satnet Online . I was supprised 2 days later to be offered the placement, so now I’m looking for a place to live in Sutton (London) for that year. The only down side of this placement is that it starts on Monday July 2^nd, which is the 1st Monday after the end of term.
Just to make this worse, all my exams are in weeks 8-10 of this term, with the last one being on the Saturday of week 10, the same day as the WSAF stage goes up. WSAF then continues thoroughout that week, but in order to get settled in in Sutton before starting work I think I may have to leave part way through that week, which is a shame ‘cos WSAF it a whole lot of fun, especially the last evening. Nevermind, I think a 16k placement has to come 1^st. There’s always another WSAF in my final year.

Finally, I have got myself a new laptop. After ages of only having a laptop without a screen I now have a nice new one with Windows Vista Home Basic. It’s quite cool even though it’s massively graphically bloated. I bought an extra 512Mb of RAM with it as it only came with 512Mb which I knew would be no good atall.
The speech recognition is really quite cool. It works with any program that uses standard windows buttons etc. You just have to read out the text on the button or link and it will click it, and to fill in fields, just say what you want to type. It’s still not flawless, but it is a lot better than IBM Via-Voice from a few years ago.
I may still yet reformat it and install Linux instead. We shall have to wait and see.

For now. Adios

: 22 Apr 2007 22:04 |  Tags: Holiday Laptop London Placement Sutton TV Vista Wsaf |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

SRA Awards

This has come up very quickly. On Thursday afternoon a load of people from RaW will be heading to London for the annual Student Radio Awards. RaW or members thereof have got an impressive 8 nominations in 6 different categories. See here for more details.

It promised to be a good night of drinking & celebrations as well as a chance to catch up with the people who graduated last year and see what they have done. We then leave London at 3am on Friday morning so I doubt that most of Friday will exist. If you are in any of my lectures and don’t see me there can you grab me a copy of any notes please :) Thanks.

: 08 Nov 2006 00:10 |  Tags: Coach London RaW Sra |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem