Twickenham and Spooks

Sitting in a biergarten in the sunshine with bikes on one side of us and German being spoken on the other three and water sparkling in the distance, it was almost like we were at Seehaus in Munich. We weren't though; we were in Richmond where we started a great walk through said town and the slightly more interestingly named town of Twickenham across the river. (The biergarten is called Stein's, apparently possessive, and they have Obatzda.)

Even absent the beer, I would have loved this walk with its bridges, benches, horses, picnic-goers, flowers, trails, kissing gates, and a ferry across the river.

I think it was the warmest day since I lived here, helping make this my favorite London strolling spot to date.
Also this week, I was the Aide to the Home Secretary on the BBC show Spooks which I immediately wanted to be on because of the cool name. It's the British word for spies, and the show is about the British Security Service. not ghosts.

I thought this would be a lot like my other jobs where I happily chatted with other fun extras all day between takes. But not so much. I discovered on my first day that I was the only extra. Everyone else on set had a real job to do all day. I loved the parts where I was "working" but the parts between where I'd normally be chatting were pretty lonesome. On the first day, I read an entire 300 page book Under the Wire, an awesome account of the American pilot William Ash who was the inspiration for Steve McQueen's character in The Great Escape. The next day, they thankfully had another really nice extra, a pretend deliveryman who saved me from being lonesome but contributed to my being told off for talking too much during filming. It was like Melanie and lift class all over again.