Week 6: Karaoke Queens

Next Saturday night in London, we shall be joining our fellow London ladies for a night of karaoke in deepest Islington.

This week's challenge, therefore, is to prepare a song for said evening, written by someone from your city (or somehow connected to your city). This will be slightly restricted by the fact that it must be a song that is pretty much guaranteed to be available to us in the karaoke selection. The extra sweetener to this challenge is that you must alter the words of the song in whatever way you choose, to make its message extra special and fitting to the enormity of this occasion. And then, of course, you must perform it live for your enthusiastic audience.

Get practising...

Ali x

Week 5 with Lou

With thanks to my beautiful interviewee for her wise words, here she is...



Stand by for the next challenge...this one's going to be a belter.

Ali x

Week Five: Home

This week's challenge is to encompass the wonderful people that we have known and loved for a long time. Those friends that have coloured our life and made it into that amazing technicoloured dream coat and matching boob tube that we crave when we are apart. Therefore the challenge for this week is to get one of said friends on camera waxing lyrical about your fair city, with or without you, in any setting you see fit.

Ferry fun here we come.

A failure?

Posting on a Monday may mean I have failed this week's challenge. I would like to plead the extenuating circumstances of intercontinental travel, and sisterly weddings, yet still I do feel the shame of this belated entry, especially coming after Gem's sterling effort at the classic tube map.

I have returned to a favourite medium, the haiku. The fact that it is short - three lines, 5 syllables, followed by 7, then another 5 - is of course a complete coincidence.

For Britain’s outlaws
Her bright harbour, a prison,
To us, adventure.

Right now, in Scotland's wet and wild winter, I feel very very far away from Sydney's sunny shores.

Ali x

I HEART LONDON

Yes this is true, I do indeed love this fair city that I have come to call home.

Seeing as my nickname is 'Underground Ernie' I felt it apt that I take the iconic tube map as inspiration for this weeks challenge. Please marvel at my painting skills below. I had to dig these watercolours out from a dusty box under my bed and then spent half the day musing about future murals that I would undertake for charity, with the obligatory progression to public art to fund my hedonistic lifestyle.

Alas the exercise ended, as one would expect, with me abandoning my paints for the alluring lights of the TV, such pretty colours.

You may need to click on the image to see all the exquisite details, I made it so you could utilise the full power of your glasses, kindness knows no bounds.

Gem x

When two become one: challenge week 4

Over the coming weeks, we'll be stretching the concept of the blog close to breaking point, as we'll actually be together in the same city for a significant proportion of the next 3 weeks.

That will entail my spending three of the next seven days in transit as I edge back towards the northern hemisphere, and therefore this week's challenge is somewhat sedentary. We must write a story, song, poem, limerick, or some other such literary piece, describing what we love about our fair cities.

Never fear, those readers who preferred our more adrenaline-fuelled challenges (picnic, anyone?); we will be putting our heads together to come up with an amazing special edition blog representing our time together back in one city, the one that brought us together and at times nurtured us, at times tortured us - London.

Ali x

Somewhere over the rainbow...

...lived a girl called Gemma who loved to dress up even when there wasn't a challenge bestowed at her feet.

As you so rightly pointed out, this was tricky, but actually it worked to my advantage. Each morning there was no moral dilemma, no agonising decision about what to wear, it allowed me to filter and distill thus making my first job of the day a no-brainer, pow!

Apart from that it did serve to fan my ego as I pranced around in front of Will each morning waiting for the 'perfect shot'. Poor Will, I think he started to enjoy himself by the end of it, 'yeah, work it, uh-huh, right there, you look great, give it to me'. Anyhoo, skipping to the end, it was a bleedin' marvelous experience and it made me think of you every day, what you would be wearing and what new tricks you might have up your sleeve. I totally loved the vid by the way, you certainly stepped up to the play, my god women, did you buy some software for that little piece of art? Suffice to say it was awesome, I was looking forward to it all week.

Can't wait to see you on Wednesday.

Love Gem, just call me the pot of gold, Parkinson

xxx

P.S. What is the challenge for this week bucko?

The end of the rainbow

I have to applaud you for this challenge, Gem. I was initially wary, due to my inherent lack of any talent at dressing myself in a co-ordinated fashion, but actually found that the challenge became interwoven with my week's activities in a pleasingly synchronised way...



Ali x

Week Three: Rainbow

This is a tricky one my love but where there is a will there is a way. Week three's challenge is to wear an item of clothing each day of the week that corresponds to the rainbow. Please refer to the link for reference but for a quick win here it is plain and simple:

Monday: Red

Tuesday: Yellow

Wednesday: Pink

Thursday: Green

Friday: Purple

Saturday: Orange

Sunday: Blue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aouC56MPOE

I know you will get this when you're at work so an item adorned on Monday night will suffice - look at me the fascist challenge enforcer, rraaargh!

Week Two: Picnic

God it's cold in London in November. As you can imagine I was trying to work out a way to stay warm yet fulfill the challenge objectives by being beside the water. Ideas were banded around such as a picnic beside the bath, sink, glass of water in my living room but no, I was not going to be defeated and out I went. I am so glad I did as it was a sharp, crisp, yet bright day in London: the perfect November afternoon. The sun peppered the orange leaves and with a backdrop like the Houses of Parliament how could I go wrong. Here is what happened.

Ali & gang in Rushcutters Bay Park

I'll let my shaky-camera documentary work do all the talking...



I had a lovely walking route from home to the park, through the pretty terraced backstreets of Darlinghurst, and past the Sydney Jewish Museum, which I should not have been surprised to find closed on the sabbath. Still, something to discover another day; this one has been quite delightful enough!

Oh, and here's the map to help prove this video was indeed shot on location in a real place, and not in an impressively whizz-bang CGI studio in my living room:


View Larger Map

Ali x

Liberty loses her head part 2 and 3

I thought you might want to monitor her progress...

The sad path that liberty often takes

Look here, it is the sad decay of our most precious right. How apt that it has ended this way, Liberty imploding on itself after such effort and patience to build it.

Challenge: week two

Well, I think it's clear that we both hit it right out of the ball park with our efforts this week, good work in both hemispheres!

This week's challenge is to visit a waterside spot you've never been to before, and have a picnic there. London and Sydney are both water-oriented cities so this should be a walk in the park. Canals, oceans, rivers, puddles, it all counts. Now, I appreciate it's not necessarily peak picnic season over there, but just get your longjohns on and be encouraged by the fact that you won't have to fight the hordes for the prettiest spots....