I'm sure you've all heard of the heat wave sweeping over the southern cities of Australia these last several weeks, and seen the email forwards of the koala on the right. Cute though these shots are, with temperatures well into the forties these poor little buggers are approaching humans out of desperation rather than better judgement, which is worrying to see because not all humans are so kind. In fact, some humans do this...

Last I heard, some 30,000 hectares have been scorched, close to 200 people perished, 1,800 homes destroyed, one scumbag arrested, and the police are trying to hunt down a few others they believe started or reignited some of these. As of writing, there are about a dozen fires still burning. Britain has just had its worst snow in 20 years; Aussie has just had its worst 'natural' disaster in 20 years.

This is fast becoming a common sight around certain parts of London (and Europe for that matter): counterfeit DVD's being sold on the on the roadside (mostly by Asians). A lot of these movies are still in cinemas, or at least not out on public release yet. Whenever they hear a siren coming up the road they pack their shit away and are outta there in the blink of an eye.

I didn't think to take a before-shot, but take my word for it - I had a lot of hair on my head hehe! Hairdressers are ridiculously expensive here, so I've held off for the last three months in case I wound up back in Edinburgh for any reason because they're pretty cheap up there by comparison. Despite being in London for well over half a year now, I've always managed to get a mop-chop up in Ed since I had to go back up there a lot for work, but not anymore. So I bought my own damn hair clippers for the same price as a single haircut in London - brilliant!

My impression of someone from southeast London. Two knives concealed under the tracksuit jacket, and as much intelligence as a Mars Bar.

The BRIT Awards are the annual pop music awards for British artists. The BRITs take place at Earls Court, and the surrounding roads were a complete mess of cars pointing in all directions, pedestrians jumping over them, and me taking photos. At one intersection a small truck pulled out of a side street across the path of an on-coming scooter (which I was a short distance behind on my bike). Traffic had kindly stopped to let the truck out, but the scooter was overtaking all the traffic and didn't realise until the last minute. The truck saw the scooter coming (I saw the driver look right at the scooter, and at me) but continued to pull out regardless, clipped the back of the scooter fairly hard and sent the driver flying! I spun around and chased the truck back up the road to get his number plate, which was easier said than done because he was motoring away - the prick knew exactly what he'd done! Anyway I caught up enough to get his plate, and returned to find the scooter with a nice fat dent in its side and the driver fairly shaken up. Those scooters do push their luck sometimes - it's the same throughout Europe, but this was just a classic example of the arseholes that are London drivers.

As for the BRITs, this was as close as I could get to the red carpet before being shimmied away by the police. From the stars that most all teenagers idolise...

...to the job that most all London teenagers will end up doing one day - picking up cigarette butts off the footpath.

Any vantage point will do!

The great debate continues - on the side of London's buses hehe. I took the shot on the left a month ago. More information here but in a nutshell the "There's probably no God" slogans recently started appearing on buses throughout London and caused a bit of a stir. Well now the Christian Party has forked out a large sum of politically-donated money to start their own campaign in reply hahaha! "There definitely is a God" they claim, and so the great debate continues.

My second attempt at getting to Kingston today after I gave up two weeks ago when (true to form) the weather packed in on me as I got to this hill and decided bugger it!

However it was a high of around 13 degrees today and the cloud managed to stay away for the entire day! So, up the hill I went, and what was up there? More of the same really, oh and some horses.

A little further down the road and more big hills! Whoever told me London was flat clearly didn't see it by bike!

My GPS detoured me half way up the hill before sending me down this dinky little lane.

Dinky or not, big brother is always watching! (There are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain - one for every 14 people).

An hour and 20kms later I arrived in Kingston (full name Kingston Upon Thames - no points for guessing what river this is). Kingston is 16km southwest of central London, and they have a good little spot right on the Thames. There are a lot of riverside bars and restaurants down there - nice!

I've got no idea what the point of this is - telephone boxes resembling dominoes, right in central Kingston. Whatever the point they've been there since 1988.

Before checking out the town centre I went and checked out suburbia. Same old London crap really.

Granddad here was completely drunk out of his head. He was mumbling some nonsensical gibberish as he swerved all over the road, probably on his way to The Swan. I thought he was looking at me when I shot this, but I was no doubt just a blur hehe.

Ahh not all London crap - a few bankers live here too.

Look at that sun - I wore shorts for the first time since August today!

I eventually made my way back into the town centre.

Granddad (probably another patron of The Swan) was dancing to this music machine...

Big Issue man with his Rottweiler and other large mutt couldn't work out why he hadn't sold a single Big Issue...

Something for the kids...

And something for the religious.

This guy had set up a microphone for the public to have a discussion (argument) about Jesus and pals.

After my weekly dose of religion I left and found a few more dinky lanes and off-road tacks - sweet!

Almost looks like summer (well, apart the lack of leaves on the trees).

Fat? Well you're not alone in Britain!

This time last year Jen and I were in and around New York for a week and a half. Last month, a plane taking off from the same New York airport we arrived at and departed from crashed into the Hudson River west of Manhattan after a bird strike; no fatalities thanks largely to the pilot who performed a 'perfect landing' on water.

During that trip we flew to Buffalo en route to Niagara Falls for a day. Less than two weeks ago, a plane on approach to Buffalo fell near vertically out of the sky and slammed into a house, having apparently stalled due to low airspeed in combination with excessive ice build-up on the tail. 50 people dead.

To get to and from New York we flew via Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. This morning, a plane on approach to Schiphol fell out of the sky and crash-landed in a field, breaking into three parts and killing at least nine people. Now I'm no more superstitious than the next guy, but in the last month three planes have come down in spectacular fashion around airports that I was at this very time last year as part of a single trip. People are starting to ask me what other airports I visited last year hehe.

Tonight Katie, Katie's chum Suzy and myself went to see Avenue Q at the Noel Coward Theatre (where they don't want you sleeping on the steps) in London's West End. Avenue Q is best described as Sesame Street gone bad in the form of a musical. Most of the characters in the show are puppets (operated by actors in plain view), which is set on a rundown street in Brooklyn, New York (which does indeed have an Avenue Q). The show was hyped up to be bloody hilarious, and although it was good (especially the sex scene bottom-right) it really wasn't all it was cracked up to be for mine. I got in trouble again for taking photos of course ;)