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Seems strange that the Tour De France should come to England. I guess we’re neighbours, at least.

The picture below is from the Prologue stage around Central London.

As luck would have it …

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I took advantage of this bank holiday weekend’s miserable weather to do something indoors. I went to see Antony Gormley’s Blind Light exhibition at The Hayward Gallery.

If you’ve been out in central London recently you may have noticed a few of these fellows standing on roof tops along the banks of the Thames. What are they doing there?

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Recently, in passing, a friend of mine mentioned that he’d taken a date to Amora - The Academy of Sex and Relationships. I hadn’t heard of this before (turns out it only opened last month) but it sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give it a look.

(Apologies - I couldn’t really think of a decent picture to include. As in, not indecent!)

Amora (no, not Amoura, like you might expect) is located in The Trocadero, near Piccadilly Circus. Not the most promising start - The Troc is a weird shopping mall/amusement arcade, often populated by scruffy young children. I’m pretty sure the Amora site is the one that used to be occupied by Alien War.

The aliens are now gone. Read on to find out what’s there instead.

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April’s been a busy month - I’m back chained to a desk full time in The City, which although it hasn’t stopped me going out, it certainly hasn’t helped. Still, my loss is the world of finance’s gain, I guess. And some rich person is now just a little bit richer thanks to my efforts. I can’t begin to describe how happy (or otherwise) that makes me feel.

Anyway, work’s not what life’s about. Not for me, at least. So, what else have I been up to?

The picture shows the Art! part of the title. Or at least a part of the art. It is the Tate Modern, taken (unbelievably, looking at the pic) on a bright and sunny day. I visited the Tate Modern twice in April, once with a group from friend Clare’s Meet at Last website for their Sunday Serendipity outing, and once a week later on a date.

Any more art?

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I’ve been up to all sorts lately, hence the rather long gap since my last blog entry. Just too busy to write it all up - gigs, exhibitions, parties, talks … and, rather embarassingly, a minor foray into playing computer games.

Eve Online is a pretty spectacular game, though. I was introduced to the game by a work colleage, who pitched it as being “an up to date version of Elite”. That was all I needed to know.
Here’s a link, in case you had better things to do twenty years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(computer_game)

The handsome bloke above is Jack Hamm, my alter ego in the game.

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Yesterday I went to the Science Museum to see the Pixar exhibition. Pixar are the company responsible for the animated films, Toy Story, Finding Nemo and (my favourite) The Incredibles, amongst others. The exhibition includes materials used in the production of Pixar films, including story boards, pastel colour scheme tests, resin character models and lots of drawings and sketches.

In keeping with the animation theme, the picture above is a self-assembly animated toy that I bought from the inevitable post-exhibition gift shop. I came across these on the internet a while ago and didn’t buy one at the time as it didn’t seem worth the hassle of postage and all that for such a silly toy. This, of course, didn’t apply when the product was in my hand and available to me, so finally I bought one. There’s a whole range of them here, along with an interesting set of pages illustrating mechnical devices here.

There were plenty of other fascinating things to see at the Science Museum …

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I am an occasional rollercoaster fan, so I was delighted to hear that Thorpe Park had recently opened a new ride called Stealth. And not just any old ride but a super hi-tech 200 foot tall monster ride.

So, was Stealth any good?

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I saw my Rolfing practitioner, Alan, a couple of days ago and it occurred to me that I haven’t written anything here about Rolfing yet.

Your first obvious question has a detailed answer right here on Alan’s website.

So, what have my experiences with Rolfing been like?

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Manged to get out for an unexpected session of roller blading, today. I tend to think of every sunny weekend as being likely to be the last one for the year, so I like to make the most of the good weather.

As ever, I like to include a picture in my blog. And, once again, since my digital camera isn’t working too well at the moment, I didn’t have it with me to capture some action shots.

In true Blue Peter tradition, here’s one I prepared earlier …

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This package arrived at my house the other day:

If you are not that familiar with South Park then you may not remember the “Weight Gain 3000″ episode where Cartman puts on weight after binge-ing on body-builder weight gain supplement.

Well, I’ve decided that that is going to be me - can you guess what is in the enormous containers in the cardboard box?

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