Movie Premiere - Uxbridge and Beyond

I've hastily thrown together a 3-minute movie of the past 10 days. You'll recognize a lot of the scenes from the blog. I've found that it's fast and convenient to shot most of the time with the Flip video camera, then make screen shots of single video frames to use for photos. That way, I'm actually shooting 30 photos per second and usually can find plenty of useable shots of a scene.

Uxbridge and Beyond: the movie

Foxes on campus

Jonas, our Shoreditch flat neighbor from Taiwan, told us as we were standing around outside during a fire alarm incident, that you'll see foxes on the grounds around the residence halls early in the morning.

We haven't been outside early in the morning, but tonight, around 9:30pm, Robin and I were returning from the nearby convenience store, and a fox was right outside our residence building entrance. He disappeared into the darkness before I could grab my Flip video.

More Bonus Photos

The walk from Brunel campus to downtown Uxbridge takes you through a redidential section of apartments and townhomes. One of the houses has an aviary on the outside wall. We usually stop and say hi. And shoot photos.


We had lunch today at Bar Zest, a small cafe on campus in the Sports Center building. It's quieter here than most places on campus, and the customers seem older. Probably a faculty hangout.


View of the campus from the Bar Zest patio.


While shopping in Uxbridge, we had lunch at Slug and Lettuce. Probably the best place we've eaten so far.


The U3 bus makes a stop right in the middle of the campus, headed to Uxbridge (ten minutes, max). It's always full. If you decide to walk (20 - 30 minutes), there's always a steady stream of students walking both directions. The students heading toward the Brunel campus are always carrying shopping bags of stuff for their rooms. And, of course, there's always a couple of guys carrying several 12-packs of beer back to the dorm. Fosters seems to be the most popular. Probably the cheapest.

Uxbridge discoveries

While Robin was in class, I walked to downtown Uxbridge to get a few items and look around a bit.


St. Margaret's Church.


St. Margaret's Church is right on the town center. Windsor Street, which used to be called Lynch Street ("lynch" means "slope") runs downhill from the church to a small park one block away, Lynch Park. The church is the oldest building in town, with most of its architecture surviving from the 14th and 15th centuries.


This is Lynch Park. Small, pretty, serene. It wasn't so serene back in 1555 when three men were burned at the stake here for their protestant beliefs. The weathered stone monument in the foreground marks the spot, and includes the names of the men.


A stone memorial, placed here in 1933.


The Queen's Head, also on Windsor Street (formerly Lynch Street), dates from 1544, but is thought to be older, was originally known as The Axe. It's a former public house (pub) and coaching inn. It's said to have a tunnel from it to the church.


Another Windsor Steet establishment, The Fig Tree, was constructed in 1871 as a police station. It became a pub in 1988.


Finally, in the Windsor Street category, a local hairdressing shop. I'm not sure what this graphic has to do with hairdressing, or why, for God's sake, the horse looks like it has been run over, but I might have to go ask.

Side Note: I shot the "horsepower" photo above with my iPhone. I obviously must have moved the camera while shooting, and it warped the image instead of blurring it. The iPhone is the only camera I've ever used that distorted an image instead of blurring it. Just in case you thought the building was curvy.

They grow up so fast

I walked Robin to her first class. It was sad watching her enter that big building all by herself - wait, I think I'm confusing today with when my son started the first grade. Today's entrance was all good, and best of all, she loved the three hour class (something about researching, I'll have to get a description from her), and she thought her teacher was fabulous.

Deben's

We were in the Uxbridge Pavillions mall today, shopping for various household items. We couldn't find one item, a down comforter, a duvet some call it. Every store had only synthetic microfiber duvets. Robin sat on a mall bench to snack on an apple we'd just bought. I was standing nearby, snacking on my apple turnover (hey, it's apple!) and noticed Robin was talking to an elderly lady. I figured she was asking the lady where we could find a down comforter (yes, she was) and I couldn't wait to remind her that local Brits never have a clue anytime we ask them where something is. Not even if it's a historic battlefield a few blocks away. Or how about the time it was the historic Inner Temple (where effigies of the Knights Templar are laying on the temple floor) that was half a block away from the men she asked. Admittedly, there's so much ancient history around here, people seem to block it out, like so much noise. For instance, at the Malt Shovel Robin asked a waitress how old the Tudor style building was, and the girl looked at us like the thought had never ever entered her mind. "Oh my, I wouldn't have any idea." She had a "Why would anyone want to know a silly thing like that?" look on her face.

To my astonishment, the elderly lady suggests "Deben's" in the other mall, The Chimes, just a block away. Of course, you have to know that when she says "Deben's," you're actually looking for a store pronounced "Deben's" but whose name is spelled "Debenham's." Brilliantly, we found the store and the down comforter.

Thanks to the elderly lady, from now on I'm going to cut the Brits some slack on the instructions thing.

As we left the store I grabbed this shot of a Debenham's employee in the display window. I consider myself open minded, but come on, get a room.

Monday sunset photo

Monday's sunset from the window of my UK office. Another residence hall - I mean office building - is seen next door. There's usually an airplane in this scene, taking off from Heathrow airport, 15 minutes away.