A few updates whist I eat breakfast

For those who don't know, pretty much EVERYTHING in England shuts down on Sundays - shops are only allowed to be open for about four hours, leaving you with the choice of, say, the pubs or... the pubs after about 2PM. (Though, to be fair, the Lidl across the street was open for some time after that, as Julia and I went over and bought dinner [and some microwave popcorn and gummi bears for movie nights] ) At 4, however, I wandered over to St Peter's for Evensong - while I was disappointed that their boy's choir wasn't in singing (mmmm... boy choirs), their men's chorus was quite lovely, their choice of hymns quite nice (I actually knew one of them! Woot!), and the two readings (Proverbs and a parable from Luke) were nicely chosen and read by the Vicar. The church itself is absolutely sumptuous, with Victorian gothic-y goodness, stained glass, painted walls, gilt, and all the festoons of glory with nary a video screen to be seen. :) During the final prayer, the Vicar offered a prayer for the Americans, as [we] select our new leader - "a new leader for, well, nearly the whole world". Rather a sobering thought. I'm sorry for my flickr account not working correctly yet - I can't figure out how to specify that the pictures are meant to be public. In the meanwhile, however, the church's website has some great pictures: http://www.stpetersbournemouth.org , then go to "Gallery" - be sure to scroll to the bottom and do the 360 degree view - quite breathtaking for such a randomly placed little church.

We then wandered down to the beach to sit in the sand, people watch, and soak up the last rays of summer - the sand is phenomenally immaculate - a few sticks, some seaweed, some shells, but no miles and miles of beer cans or broken glass (or even, I was quite impressed given the number of smokers around here, cigarette butts). They have bins pretty much all over the lower gardens area, but I'm amazed to see that people actually use them.

Then, over to the movie theatre to see what was playing - it took me rather aback to see that Brideshead Revisited was still playing, and Burn After Reading was still headlining - then into the movie to see trailers rolling for movies that were "already out". Bond doesn't get here until Halloween, for example. (Of course, I make this an example, but don't actually know when it comes out over there...)