I knew I should have learned how to…

Seen on the way into work this morning. More information here.

(Apologies for the low quality picture.)

It was a fun affair, with copious amounts of sparkly stuff to drink, lots of warm finger nibbles and dips, and as her living room filled up, lots of varied people and conversation. The journey to Island Gardens on the DLR was surprisingly easy, while a lack of engineering works on our line meant that we might not be quite so wary next time.

One of the many highlights of the afternoon was Poppi (above), the 10-month old Jack Russell, who can jump as high as a small child, and whose excitement knew no bounds. Another memorable moment came when the same young Nathan asked Steven if he had a girlfriend (clue: he doesn’t, and isn’t interested in females in the slightest). All in all, a fun way to spend an afternoon.

And quite different to the way we spent the latter half of yesterday. In the morning, we walked around a grassy field and took in the Battlesbridge VW Weekend Show at Battlesbridge Antiques Centre (full report at PoloDriver, picture above), while in the afternoon, we headed down to the shopping centre behemoth that is Lakeside, off the M25 at Thurrock.

The main reason for our impromptu visit was a mooch around IKEA, but on the way, we meandered around Decathlon, What! (exactly what we asked ourselves when we saw some the rubbish it sold) and Best Buy, which has only just opened at the Essex retail park. The US-based retailer isn’t as ground-breaking as you might have been led to believe from all the advertising, and we left the store disappointed. The only downside to both a social and busy weekend.

As cultural juxtapositions go, there can’t be many like this one. At opposite ends of the London cultural spectrum, we watched Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday night, and visited the ABBA World exhibition at Earl’s Court on Saturday morning. Both full of brightly-coloured costumes, stage acts and singing, only one had acrobatics of the high-wire kind. The other boasted voice acrobatics that have become known the world over as the sound of the Swedish supergroup.

If you don’t know the ABBA story, you’re either very young or have had your head buried in the proverbial sand for the best part of the last four decades. There haven’t been many Eurovision winners that have gone on to mega-stardom and have a legacy both as rich and recognisable as Agnetha’s, Bjorn’s Benny’s and Anni-Frid’s. And it’s just as well it’s a legacy worth celebrating, as, unsurprisingly, that’s what ABBA World is all about. Premiering in the UK, the movable exhibition is, just like the band did, going on a global tour and will end up in Sweden as a more permanent reminder of the Swedish super group. But we got it first.

My fear was that it would be a tacky, glittery and money, money, money-making memorabilia fest, taking away the credit that the post-ABBA Gold and Mamma Mia! years have built up. Yes, there is a fair bit of, let’s call it fun, but the one thing the exhibition does do is remind you of how big the four Swedes were. Led down the stairs in what appears to be Earl’s Court’s basement, 25 themed ‘rooms’ let you enjoy the ABBA story, told by new video reminiscences (even by the ever-elusive Agnetha), endless numbers of gold discs and music industry awards, props, puppets and scene set-ups.

Interactive exhibits lets the visitor test their ABBA knowledge (I was quite good on the ‘Fan’ questions but rubbish on the ‘Fanatic’ ones), mix an ABBA track (compared the original, I was 86% correct and quite pleased), appear in an ABBA video and appear with 3D cartoon-like holograms of their idols. Unfortunate and incorrect Swedish to English translations on the exhibit information panels aside, ABBA World is largely well-done and a diverting and interesting three hours. And even I, an ABBA loyalist, learned new things about the other fab four.

Don’t believe all what you see, though; the helicopter in the ‘Arrival’ section (above) isn’t the one that actually appeared in the stunning 1976 Arrival album cover. But, disappointment aside, that didn’t stop me and several others sitting in it…

To Cirque de Soleil (and to Romani language), Varekai means ‘wherever’. To us, it usually means a brightly-coloured night of spectacle and wonder at the Royal Albert Hall. An ‘acrobatic tribute to the nomadic soul’, it was a Friday night out with Emma and Adobe, and Varekai was by far the best Cirque du Soleil show we’ve yet seen. With a plot based around the mythical story of Icarus who melts his wings after flying too close to the sun, it’s almost a literal translation of this circus troupe’s name.

If you’ve never popped your Cirque du Soleil cherry, the first time you see a show performed by the Canadian (and increasingly global) family of acrobats, artists and singers, you’ll be amazed at the costumes and be taken aback by the low and high-level acrobatic stunts. Varekai features quite an assortment; triple trapeze, Georgian dance, aerial straps, juggling and Russian swings were all on the menu tonight (as was the delicious nibbly food that we had in our box).

Breaking from the acts of daring-do, the clowns have nothing to do with the otherworldly and mystical story (few real-life things do, but it’s escapism for a couple of hours) but almost upstage the more dangerous acts. The magician and assistant duo perform hilarious conjuring tricks, while the bumbling assistant with her hooped dress and big knickers drew laughs aplenty when she kept falling and tripping over, thus exposing her big bloomers to everyone in the RAH’s round.

This year we had a room at the plush Royal Garden Hotel, just a stone’s throw away from the RAH, and it made all the difference. There was no last-minute rush for the Tube, and no crowded, smelly train full of drunken late-night revellers to carry us home to Chelmsford. We walked back along Kensington High Street with Tim and Kim (who also had a room), before saying our goodbyes and retiring for the night. All very civilised, nice, and relaxed.

The sleep was relaxed, too, the large, comfortable bed setting us up for an undisturbed night (the glasses of champagne must have helped, too), meaning that we arrived at breakfast refreshed, ready to look out at the uninterrupted view of London from the tenth-floor restaurant’s huge panoramic windows. It really was an almost stereotypical view; nearly all of the recognisable landmarks were present and correct, glinting in the late-morning sunrise behind Kensington Palace and Gardens. We didn’t hang about, though; we had a busy day ahead of us.

It’s grossed $US280m so far, has 87 dates, 24 songs, and 4 ‘acts’. Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet world tour has impressive stats, but none of those are impressive as the show itself, or the person at the centre of it all. She’s been around for 25 years, had multiple reinventions, caused raised eyebrow after raised eyebrow, but on Sunday night she had the audience in The O2 in the palm of her hand.

We were there courtesy of Adobe (thanks Emma and Ali), as the screen projections were made using After Effects, and as a spectacle by the so-called Queen of Pop, it promised much. And boy did it deliver.

A high-tech, high production value, highly polished show included old songs that were thrown in among new ones, but more than that, the way that Madonna threw herself around the stage defied belief. For a 50 year-old woman, she looked at least 15 years younger. The yoga, pilates, and Kabbalah worship clearly pays off.

There was no let up in the pace either. Whether poking fun at her previous incarnations, leaping on a vintage Rolls-Royce, standing on a grand piano, or walking on a travelator, she made it all look so easy. The projections were equally unrelenting, competing for your gaze with their bright colours and shapes.

Downsides? Too much playing of guitars provided a few too many sit-down moments for the audience, and too much crotch grabbing from a woman who is half a century old, and doesn’t need to either cause scandal any more or prove she is sexy.

Overall, it was a truly astounding two hours, with some clever bootleg tinkering of old and new songs, a tasteful Michael Jackson tribute, and truly legendary stagecraft, of which you’ll rarely see elsewhere; it was Madonna after all. Take a bow, your Madgesty…

Transport for London had in their foresight, decided to close the Jubilee Tube Line, on what was probably The O2’s busiest weekend of the year. That meant a taxi ride to the Greenwich Peninsula, and after standing in a 35-minute cab queue at St Pancras, we eventually persuaded a driver to ferry us across the city, even if he was very reluctant to do so.

One of the road tunnels at either Blackwall or Rotherhithe was closed, so traffic had been backing up all day, but by scooting around the southern part of the city and crossing Tower Bridge, we arrived within 30 minutes, much less stressed than we would have done had we have taken a very crowded and many-stops Tube ride.

It still meant that it took us an hour to get from the centre of London to the east, though, when we had sat in five-star, high-speed TGV comfort for only 2.5 hours to get from the southern France Avignon TGV station (above) to Paris, a journey of over 700 miles. The irritable cab queue (due to a lack of a steady flow of carriages), meant that we missed our behind the scenes tour, too. All in all then, very frustrating, but very London.

The respected UK printing trade and graphic arts industry title earned a good reputation for itself throughout its century plus 30 years, and reported on the great, good, and not so good from the world of the presses. It was largely owned by one company, CMP Information through its incarnations, and started life when the owning firm was known as Benn’s, becoming Miller Freeman, ending up as the CMP of today.

Printing World continually moved with the times, too, its editors steering a course through calm and sometimes stormy waters. It went through a redesign while I was there – and at least two subsequently – ending up belligerently incorporated into its arch-rival, Print Week. Owned by publishing giant Haymarket, it was the West London publishing house that played the role of the wicked stepmother and eventually killed the title off earlier this year.

But we didn’t dwell on that. We remembered the good times, the bad times, what a happy place it was to work it was, and how that we’d all left better people, with new-found skills. We lamented on the friendships we’d made, and with around 70 people attending, there was much talk, laughter, and reminiscing. There were familiar and not so familiar faces, familiar and not so familiar stories, but overall, a celebration of the publication that had brought us all together.

Yes, there were notable people absent (from my short stay at the title anyway), but that didn’t harm my enjoyment of the evening. We’ve all moved on to bigger and better and not so bigger and not so better things, but the long lunches, late press days and industry stories unite us all. So, as we did last Thursday, grab your rose-tinted specs and raise a glass to Printing World, the greatest graphic arts title the UK has seen, and one of the best publications on which to work. I’m pleased to have played a small part in its story.

Campaigners have vowed that “we’re going to reclaim the City, thrusting into the very belly of the beast: the Bank of England”. On 1 April a coalition of radical and green groups will gather at four major London stations – Moorgate, Liverpool Street, London Bridge and Cannon Street – potentially obstructing thousands of travellers, before marching behind “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” in themed processions to a mass rally outside the bank.

Source: The Guardian

We heard the sirens blare, we saw the helicopters circle, and there were fewer people on the streets (although a greater number casually-dressed), but from the comfort of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields office, we could only surmise as to what was happening in the G20 protests across the city at the Bank of England. I thought there was a slim chance that I’d be caught up in some travel delays or station closure today, as one of the protest marches was leaving from Liverpool Street.

But, thankfully, it was quiet both this morning and afternoon. It was disconcerting knowing that just over the other side of the station heading east there were still thousands of protesters behind police cordons. It turns out that the protests were nasty towards the end – and questions are being asked about the police’s role in turning them violent – but I got home having experienced no disruption. I hope it’s the same tomorrow, as the Stock Exchange is being targeted early in the day, before I’m due to walk past.

It was the fact that it was advertising different flavours of Polos which caught my attention initially, but on closer inspection, there was something very familiar about one of the pictures. The images had all been shot for VW, but distinctly weren’t press images, so they had clearly been taken for advertising purposes, on what looked like London streets.

Familiar? The Polo on the right wears the New Street Scirocco reg no

And there it was. The Scirocco had been wearing number plates with the mark RV58 UWY, exactly the same as one of the Polos in the Inchcape copy. Mystery solved. It turns out that it was most probably an advertising shoot after all. Moving around from car to car, this would certainly explain the blue-tinted film on the Scirocco’s centrally-owned number plates. They were clearly brand new, and the film had yet to be removed for road use.

This silver example of VW’s scorching new Golf-based coupé was being unloaded at New Street Square, where it was promptly coned off, and left for a few minutes. Burly minders asked for no photos to be taken, further adding to the air of mystery surrounding the sleek car’s arrival. A 2.0-litre TDI might be new for the UK, but as a model, the Scirocco has been well-known and well-received in the UK for a handful of months now, so just what was RV58 UWY doing on the corner of New Street?

A photo shoot seems the obvious answer, although for a magazine or press stills, we’re not sure. The car wasn’t registered with Volkswagen UK’s usual press office registration mark, which would suggest the magazine route, with one of the major monthlies or weeklies taking images to accompany a road test or initial drive. Another option, could, of course, have been filming for a television motoring magazine.

If you were in the area of New Street Square, London, this lunchtime and saw the Scirocco, let us know what you think it was parked there for, or if you are one of the burly minders or even the car’s low-loader driver, drop us a comment below, and help us solve the mystery.