A Busy Week in London

On Thursday evening I returned from a two-day visit to London, but I haven't been able to report on it until now since my internet connection has been down, due to a fault at Virgin Media.

On the Wednesday afternoon I had booked a visit to the Cocoon at the Natural History Museum, and in the evening went to the 'Evict the Bishops' debate at the Houses of Parliament. These were both something of a disappointment. I've submitted an article to HumanistLife relating to the first topic, and have reported on the second on the Hastings Humanists blog. The cheap hotel room I stayed in overnight was also not to be recommended.

On Thursday afternoon however I had the much more pleasant experience of going to the Albert Hall to see the Cirque du Soleil production called "Varekai". Their show is a sort of mixture of circus, theatre and ballet. To appreciate it best I think you need to book a seat facing the stage and probably on the flat, though these seats are the more expensive for that reason. I was in a box high up on one side. From there you can see all the workings of the stage. They make extensive use of trap doors through which characters regularly appear and disappear. There are all the usual circus attractions, but no animals of course, though many of their costumes resemble strange creatures.

On Friday evening at the chess club I was inveigled into an all-play-all rapid chess tournament, and despite being allowed a handicap of 15 minutes against 5 minutes playing time against strong opponents managed to lose all my eight games, though they all went close to the wire.

So it was a busy week. More on it later perhaps.