Doobrie's London Daydreams

Hello World!

2010-07-13T07:30:00.002+01:00

Well, after 9 months and 2 weeks of waiting, I finally arrived.

My name is William and for some reason I am always hungry. My first memory was of the voice of my mummy coaxing me to wake up. Apparently I looked blue and was rather floppy so there were a lot of voices talking frantically but my mummy's voice broke through it all and I took my first breath at 23:42 on the 24th July. It was a Thursday so apparently I have far to go.

It was really bright, much brighter than anything that I'd ever seen before but for some reason I couldn't close my eyes. I just wanted to look at everything. I have big blue eyes and light wispy hair (longer than my daddy's, hehe.)

After a while I suddenly got really tired. This seems to happen to me a lot. and I fell asleep between my mummy and daddy on the makeshift hospital ground sheets.

Daddy looked after me for my first night as mummy had to have some surgery (just minor, so nothing to worry about, they told me) and he opened the curtains as the sun came up and said to me "Welcome to your first dawn, my son."

I was happy but a few minutes later I felt strange. There was a space inside me that didn't feel nice. It made me cry. I didn't know it at the time but I was hungry. This happens a lot!

As of today, I am 19 days old. I lost some weight after I was born and took a long time to put it back on. Mummy and daddy were perplexed by this as I was eating all the time. Well, when I wasn't sleeping or pooping or peeing.

I've already travelled a lot. I love my pram. It's comfortable and I feel safe in it. I can watch mummy or daddy as they push me. For some reason I'm fascinated by the colour of the side of the pram's hood. The colour is called khaki and I just love to stare at it when I'm lying down.

I've been on a few buses and underground trains. I found these really loud though. They made me cry! So mummy and daddy bought me a hat to cover my ears. This makes me sleepy.

The weather has been really nice and mummy and daddy have taken me out to a few parks.

When I wake up in my pram, I stare at the sky and the trees. I love the contrast in colours between them. They fascinate me!

At home, I also have a nice play mat with lots of bright colours and black and white loops that spread above me. These are nice to look at too.

Oh, yawn......I feel really tired now...must go......I have far to go, don't you know?

Good Progress

2010-02-12T12:30:00.000Z

What has happened to me in the last 4 months?

Well, the job is going well. Amongst other things, I now manage a team in India, where the amount we pay them is so much less than what we'd pay people in the UK to do the same thing that I wonder why more people don't do the same.

Then I realise that quantity over quality isn't quite what you'd look for in a strong team, and don't get me wrong, they are not a bad team, they just aren't completely good...

My team love their processes and hate deviating from them. Whenever they fall behind in a project, they show an amazing work ethic to work long hours, weekends and holidays to catch up, but don't realise that if they had done things right the first time around, this extra work wouldn't have been necessary.

Plus, don't get me started about national holidays in India. They've had 4 already this year. I'm not sure how they compete against their neighbours like China if they spend so many days a year simply not working!

Anyway, regardless, I've managed to launch an iPhone app for my company which was really exciting along with countless other projects. The role is so varied that the days just fly by. I get a real buzz out of it.

What else, can I say....Hmmmmm...One small piece of news I guess. We're having a baby.......

WE'RE HAVING A BABY

WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!!!

OMG! We're living in a one bedroom flat that I can't sell and we can barely fit our own things in and now we're having a baby....a baby!......A BABY!

*breaths deeply*

Yes, it was planned and yes we are very excited and petrified at the same time. The due date is in early June so we have a bit of time to sort ourselves out. A lot of my stuff will go into storage to make room for the cot etc and I hope that post-birth, we can then find somewhere bigger and affordable to move to.

Hmmm, it's going to be quite a year!

A Brighter Future?

2009-10-31T18:14:00.001Z

Well after eight months of living in an unemployed “wilderness”, I finally got a role that over the past three months I have found to be the most challenging, yet varied and interesting role I’ve had since my very first job out of university.

I’ve passed my probation period, the last two weeks of which I managed without any direct support from my boss as he took the opportunity to take a well deserved break and I’m rather enjoying things so far.

I now work for yet another property company, but this one is international and is growing as the recession recedes and the work is definitely interesting.

Over the last few months I’ve been very much involved in the re-launch of our new websites, learnt about CRM systems, property portals, designed an iPhone Application and now, day-to-day, project manage an offshore development team based in India.

It’s not easy, and the hours are longer than anything I’ve ever done before but the people I work with are a great team and I find the whole thing gives me a real “buzz”, probably something I feel more and appreciate more now that I’ve been in limbo for so long.

I do really hope that it lasts as I can see myself really growing in this role, where unfortunately my last short-lived position really pales in comparison.

But then you live and learn with each set back and now it’s time to get moving again.

I work near Monument, in the City now, and I just love going for walks along the river at lunchtime, when I get a chance that is. The hustle and bustle of the surrounding streets and some rather self-centred people does get annoying but then I’ll walk out after work, in the rain, after the sun has set and the reflections of the city lights onto the roads and buildings is a photographer’s paradise!

Anyway, back to work now (just a little bit on the weekend) and on with a new, brighter future.

(Oh, and I passed my driving test too…)

2009-06-15T11:54:00.006+01:00

Well, I've been a crap blogger of late but then it's because I'm still rather focused on getting a new job.

In fact it has become my almost full time job. Unfortunately I only get paid just over £60 a week to do it which means life continues to stay on hold in some ways (new house etc) but obviously carries on in other good ways (happy marriage etc.)

Extra non-essential outgoings have been seriously curtailed (even Sky Sports is now gone, SHOCK!) but I can't avoid things like utility bills unfortunately so they'll continue to trickle away my savings. But hey, at least I have savings!

So, things are not lost but just waiting to be found...

Down but not out...

2009-03-02T11:05:00.003Z

Wow, it's certainly been the longest since I last wrote an entry in this blog. Unfortunately things are unlikely to change any time soon. Things are on a bit of a downer at the moment.

I'm now going through the longest period of unemployment in my life. I've had no joy with job agencies, sending CVs off to as many places as I can or on some weeks even finding jobs to apply for.

I've even bitten the bullet and signed up for Jobseekers Allowance. It's better than zero income but I have to prove that I am applying for 3 jobs a week which can be hard when some weeks I'm lucky if I can find one appropriate job.

I absolutely love IT and technology, have management experience but evidently never enough for any of the jobs out there. It's as if my career has gone in the wrong direction and seriously needs a reboot.

Giving up programming years ago was a big mistake and whilst I am keeping myself up-to-date with various languages and technologies, it's not worth a lot to me so long as nobody is interested in hiring me and gives me a chance to apply my knowledge.

Head's up, stiff upper-lip and all that but it's still hard to not feel down about the way things in the last 12 months have gone.

A year ago, I had a good well-paid job, was getting married and looking forward to moving to a new house with my future wife.

On the down side:
- I have spent more than 6 months out of the last 12 unemployed and cannot afford to move.
- The longer I'm unemployed, the harder it may well start to get to explain to potential employers what I have been doing with my life.
- My savings are dwindling away. This is money that was for our future and is now being used up by me in the present instead.

On the up side:
- I have a lovely wife who has helped tremendously to keep my spirits up as much as possible. Marrying her was by far the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life.
- I have no mortgage. Thankfully we didn't move last year, otherwise we would have been struggling financially big time to meet payments.
- I've had time to spend some of my money in driving lessons and have now passed my theory test. It's an investment as some jobs benefit from being able to drive from place-to-place.
- I have had time to read up on programming (C# and ASP.NET), project management (PRINCE2) and general management techniques. More so than when I was employed and in the thick of things.

My typical day consists of job hunting in the morning with a break for lunch and a load of reading or programming in the afternoon.

I know I have to be positive but at the moment I just want a salary so that I can un-pause my life and get on with doing things...

Westfield

2008-11-21T19:23:00.005Z

The shopping mall behemoth that is Westfield recently opened down the road from me and the wifey and I were there on the first day (woo hoo.)

Now, I've been there so many times, mainly because it's the only thing open after eight PM anywhere near me, that the initial excitement over having a mammoth shopping centre almost on my doorstep has now long gone.

When I was little I learned to ride a bicycle on a massive hill in the local park by me in Ealing. Years later I returned and was rather dismayed to discover that the mountain on which I had so many fun times was in fact barely even a gentle slope.

Going to Westfield, now feels like that. It's big, granted, but nowhere near as big as it seemed when it had yet to be explored.

It's still darn handy though but why, oh why are there no specialist electronic or photography stores? If you want fashion then Westfield offers a big range (though not a full range - you still need to go to the dept stores on Oxford Street for that) but if you want gadgets, TVs, cameras, a Currys or anything like that, then forget it.

Annoyingly W H Smith, which I love as an avid reader of many magazines, is diametrically opposite to the entrance through which I normally enter the centre. M & S is also a fair way in on the opposite side so it's still more convenient to go to Ealing for that staple of my diet.

Initially a lot of shops were also not open and to be honest quite a few still aren't. In particular, the restaurants outside the centre look woefully shuttered up waiting for their occupants to move in eventually.

On a more positive note, the lack of seats that I, and I know a lot of other people complained about, is less of an issue as stylish bum rests have popped up all over the place now. So my memories of knackered feet on the first few visits and having to sit on the ground should now be banished.

Oh, and wandering around Westfield at an hour before closing time is actually quite a pleasant experience compared to those initial opening days and every weekend when the place absolutely crams out and you can't walk in a straight line for more that 3 meters.

Lightning strikes again

2008-11-20T10:10:00.004Z

Well, it only went and happened again.

Things have been going well at work. Though initially tough, I was actually starting to enjoy my new role. One of my projects made it's first deliverables deadline last Monday and everyone was very happy. I'd done a lot of work to push things through with my team and it had been and excellent job all round by everyone.

My other project was delivering to schedule too. The development team had won a company award for achievement and we all went out for a nice meal to celebrate on Thursday night. It was nice to sit down, relax and socialise with those I'd seen sweating blood and tears to get things done and find out a lot more about the people behind the hard work.

Back in the office, I was just putting the final touches to my future planning when a bombshell struck.

My company was going through its annual appraisals process. I'd only been there coming up to six months but had still been set a number of goals some of which I'd met, some of which were no longer relevant and some of which I had room for improvement on.

I'd put in a few hours writing up notes preparing for the meeting and was rather dismayed to find my manager moving it back a week to the morning of the Thursday that we were all going out and then to the evening of the Thursday that we were all going out and then to the Friday morning after (deadline day for the whole feedback process.)

Perhaps what I'd thought would be a serious evaluation would just be a quick "let's just get this over with" job.

Nevertheless, what happened at 9am on Friday morning still came as a shock.

"I'm afraid it's bad news" my manager told me as soon as we started.

Alarm bells started ringing. Flashbacks to earlier in the year and nine years previous burst into my head.

"We don't think that you're the type of person we were looking for when we employed you here," he carried on, "This explains everything that'll happen now," he said as he handed me a sealed envelope and tried to end the conversation then and there.

"What went wrong?" I asked bemused, stunned and shocked. "My projects are running fine and delivering on time....What has happened to bring this about?"

"I can't go into detail. I just don't think it's working out," is all he would say.

"Can you give me any examples of where you think things haven't gone right? Why have I never received any negative feedback to indicate that this was going to happen. Isn't this the whole point of the appraisal process?" were just a few questions I asked.

He couldn't or wouldn't answer any of them.

I pushed a bit further and he finally said "I can contact you to meet up and give you feedback next week outside of work," and I had to be content with that.

So the HR person came down, I packed up my stuff and walked out. A girl in my team had tears in her eyes when she found out, everyone else thought that I was joking until they saw the serious look on my face.

And that was that. I am unemployed once more.

I walked past the Evening Standard vendor's stand down the road with the previous day's headline still "UNEMPLOYMENT IN LONDON REACHES RECORD HIGHS" and I realised that I was now just another statistic.

When I got home, deflated, I realised that I'd left my suit jacket in the office on the coat rack and a pair of trousers in the local dry cleaners to boot. *sigh*

Livf goes on I guess, and whilst positive things are also happening (happily married, starting to learn to drive), this sure as hell isn't plain sailing for me at the moment.

The Happiest Day Of My Life

2008-09-12T13:50:00.006+01:00

And so the long awaited day finally arrived.

I didn't get a huge amount of sleep the night before but the adrenaline kicked in for the whole day and kept me going. The suits had been delivered to the hotel two days before, we had picked up the cake the day before and taken it to the hotel (and realised that the colours being used for the flower arrangements on the tables were wrong, which were duly changed, no questions asked, which we were very impressed with) and so it was just a case of getting myself to the hotel to get changed and then into the cabs that the hotel had booked to get me to the church on time.

But that almost didn't happen. Someone decided to end it all under a train at Chancery Lane and after sitting on a train outside White City for thirty minutes, I started to get a bit worried. So I wasn't taking any chances when the train pulled into White City and I rushed off the train, up the stairs and out to the local mini cab office before anyone else had the chance to queue up in front of me.

Twenty minutes later I was at the hotel, a bit more flustered than I would have liked and glad that I'd taken some money on my journey. Oh, but not before a minor make sure I didn't bump into the other half incident (she'd just arrived back from getting her hair done moments before I got there) which my best men managed to resolve.

The fun didn't stop there unfortunately. The suit fit well but the trousers were about 4 inches too large around the waist! *sigh* I had to fasten my belt around my waist (with no loops) just to keep my trousers up! It worked amazingly well so long as I walked around carefully.

But then that was the worst of it. The ceremony went perfectly. I and the best men got to the church on time. I greeted friends and family, some of whom I had not seen for a long time and before I knew it I was being told to go to the front as Lorraine had arrived.

I stood nervously and snuck a quick look back. I could only see her silhouette against the brightness of the open church doors, but that silhouette looked stunning. And then the bridal march kicked in and goosebumps duly followed.

When she arrived by my side and her dad passed her hand over to mine, I looked across at her and she just looked so beautiful. Thinking back to that moment I don't think I stopped smiling for the rest of the the day.

She had a stunning dress (which the priest even commented on) with quite a train and so we walked carefully up the steps to the altar for the main service to begin.

And everything went perfectly. Well, okay, I got a bit nervous during the vows and had to repeat slowly after the priest but that didn't matter. It all felt so right and we couldn't stop smiling at each other.

Afterwards we walked down the aisle to the the chimes of Handel and we were now man and wife! We waited at the doors and talked to people as they headed out to the double-decker Routemaster bus we'd ordered to take everyone to the hotel. The happiness in my heart was just unlike anything I'd ever felt before.

We took a Bentley back to the hotel and sat in the gardens awaiting our guests. It was nice to have a few quiet moments together. As it turned out, the bus driver had taken a scenic route back to the hotel, so we were back twenty minutes before our guests arrived.

Champagne and canapes followed along with lots of official photos in the gardens. It was a dodgy day weather forecast-wise but, somehow, we had been very lucky. The sun even peeped out a while for us. Later on when we had gone in for the reception dinner, it absolutely chucked it down outside!

The dinner went well. I could see my best man getting nervous about his speech. He'd told me that it was only three minutes long just a few days before and I'd had to tell him that ideally it should be a little bit longer. Just my list of thank yous would take longer than that.

Anyway, the father of the bride came out with a stormer of a speech. Some good jokes and a finish that would make it a hard act for me to follow. I'd never actually written my speech down and has only worked on it in my head. My speech did work out okay apart from one rather embarrassing hiccup.

I'd thanked the father-of-the-bride, asked us all to remember departed family members, thanked everyone who'd come and even thanked the hotel staff for doing an excellent job.

I then sat down and my best man stood up to deliver his speech. At which point a niggling voice in the back of my head started bothering me...

I'd forgotten to thank my lovely bride! ARGH!

With my best man a few words into his speech I had to stand up, apologise, ask him to sit down and then deliver a heartfelt speech to my lovely bride.

Luckily it worked on so many levels. I spoke from my heart and Lorraine almost started crying with joy along with a number of other guests.

Afterwards, talking to my best man, it turns out that having made him sit down and start to deliver his speech a second time had actually made him a lot less nervous. And he didn't let me down. His speech was excellent and my "accident" gave us all something to laugh about later.

The food was good, the service excellent, we cut the cake which tasted delicious and then had a first dance as a married couple to Andy Williams - "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."

We'd only practised dancing together twice in the week before the wedding as we'd only selected the song two weeks previously and it was a miracle that I didn't step on Lorraine's dress or shoes and that we even managed a few twirls but boy did it feel like a long four minutes with everyone staring at us! And yes, my trousers did stay up!

And then we had a lovely retro disco and everyone seemed to have a great time.

As we sat in our candlelit, rose petal strewn suite afterwards looking through all the cards, we thought about how amazing it was that we all the hassles we'd had with the dress, the flowers, the orders of service (which I ended up getting at half price due to the numbers of reprinting errors) everything had turned into one perfect day.

The happiest day of our lives...

Six days to go

2008-08-10T21:09:00.003+01:00

Not long to go now and all the months of preparation for the single big day seem to have paid off.

Everything has come together nicely. Everything has been booked and confirmed, we've chosen our first dance song (though not really practiced dancing much, so that should be interesting), finalised seating plans for the reception and are now all set for our final rehearsal at the church on Wednesday.

So all-in-all a big success bar one hiccup...

We ordered a custom made topper (bride and groom figures for the cake) a few months ago from a woman on eBay (who had very good reviews) only to be badly let down with a complete non-delivery. She doesn't reply to e-mails or phone calls and both eBay and PayPal have said that it's too long since the order was placed to be covered by any of their protection processes.

Bit rubbish really. So we've had to order generic toppers (as the top of our cake will look a bit sparse otherwise) and I've managed to find someone who does bald groom toppers so hopefully we'll get them before the end of the week.

But it's not a showstopper (or should that be no shows-topper) and now with things being really hectic at work (I've worked the weekend to fit everything in) this week up until Friday (when I am off) should go pretty quickly.

Hmmm, just remembered, must pack for the honeymoon too.
*sigh* I knew I forgot something!

Late Night Thoughts

2008-07-30T01:00:00.000+01:00

I sit here late at night
wondering

marriage
what will it be like?

will it be all happiness and butterflies
or challenges faced together?

will things change
will we change?

companionship
exclusivity

stronger
two as one...

the end of something
or a new beginning?

Or all of these?

The Dress (part 2)

2008-07-29T22:55:00.001+01:00

I got an e-mail from the other half today.

She'd received a phone call from the dress shop.
The dress has arrived! Hoorah!

Finally! *phew*

She's off to the shop on Saturday to get her first fitting (with just a fortnight to go...)
Fingers crossed all goes well :)

The Dress

2008-07-28T22:16:00.003+01:00

Less than three weeks to go now... The clock is ticking....tick tock, tick tock, TICK TOCK

We've sorted out a lot of things: invited people, wished that we could afford to invite more but we had to draw the line somewhere. We're sorting out the order of service now, meeting up with the priest of the church where we are to be married this week to sort out a rehearsal, cross the t's and dot the i's.

Only a few blips at the moment.

1) We ordered a topper for the cake from someone on E-Bay who isn't replying to any of our e-mails. They appear to have lots of satisfied customers regularly but we're certainly not one of them at the moment.

2) The florist at the church is an elderly lady who has been doing the flowers for the church for thirty years. She's not very flexible especially when we found out that we have to settle with the flowers of the couple who are getting married two hours before us. The other half was not pleased and reverted to true Essex-speak to express her feelings about the issue to me.

3) The dress hasn't arrived yet. So a rather HUGE show stopper really and unsurprisingly the biggest worry so far. We've been told that it's due this Thursday and that the tailor who makes adjustments for the shop is a real wizard with a needle, so everything will be sorted in plenty of time. We went to the shop the other week and heard this huge earthquake of a sound shaking the building.

"What's that?" we asked. "Oh, it's the tailor upstairs with his new sewing machine."
The tremors has already made a crack in the ceiling! I stood there secretly hoping to myself that if it did collapse it, it'd only be after our dress has been dealt with.

But until the other half sees the dress with her own eyes, she has yet to be convinced. I'm trying my best to support her but this will be something that even I won't be able to do anything about if it goes pear-shaped.

In the meantime, when work isn't taking my mind off things (which it does A LOT), we've gone to see Fatboy Slim at Hyde Park (music good but pill popping, coke snorting crowd not-so-good), Neil Diamond at the O2 (great music, vertigo-inducing seat) and I've taken in a bit of culture at the opening of the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum (excellent, especially as we'd been to his Tivoli villa and stayed by the Pantheon when we were in Rome last year, though not anywhere near as busy as the Terracotta warriors exhibition was.)

Happiness Is...The Simple Things In Life

2008-06-26T21:32:00.005+01:00

We like to spend sunny, lazy Sunday afternoons in the park amongst the bluebells, watching the ducks gossip.

Well, we have to make the most of our Sundays since so many of them aren't sunny. Even in Summer.

We sit on the grass or a bench eating our M&S sandwiches, sharing our diet coke and crisps, just happy to be together.

The last time we were there, a photographer came along with a newly wed Asian bride and groom. We watched as he got them to pose by the water and took portraits shots of them.

We thought, that'll be us (in a similar situation) in just a few weeks!

And we were happy....

A Change Is As Good As A Rest

2008-06-16T23:14:00.003+01:00

I've settled in nicely in my new job. Though still early days to know whether the job or company are right for me (an attitude which I'm now adopting after having been made redundant three times) things are going well so far. It's only a small company and obviously has it's quirks but also has more than enough business to keep me busy. Days are racing by at the moment.

As a new challenge, it's a job with more authority and responsibility, something that I have no problems dealing with, and I now realise with hindsight that career progression-wise, things had pretty much plateaued at my last job and were even going downhill in some respects. I wish it had been different as I did very much like it there. I'll certainly miss the people for sure.

I'm guess that I'm glad it happened whilst I'm still young and able to adapt rather than years down the line things might have made it very hard for me to move elsewhere.

And yes, two months is more than enough time between jobs.

Okay, so I think that in all that time that I probably had less than a week of actual relaxation (mainly spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV), the rest spent looking for jobs, sorting out the wedding and then when I did get a job, reading up on it to make sure that I got off to a running start. House hunting had to be put on hold but we hope to get that up-and-running soon again.

So I didn't feel all that rusty when I did start and the main challenge that I'm facing at the moment is learning the business. It's a company that does a lot of work for the education sector and the number of initial and acronymns used for everything is just silly!

Anyhow, as I've said, so far so good...but I'll carry on crossing my fingers for a bit more, just in case.

It had to happen eventually....

2008-05-23T17:35:00.005+01:00

Yes, after almost seven weeks of being a man of leisure, a sense of worth has been restored.

Someone has employed me!

It was very much like buses. I waited ages (an under-statement if there ever was one) in-between interviews and then three positions came up at once. Three different sized companies and three different roles. I basically had my pick.

Two didn't pan out as what I was looking for or progressed too slowly but the third did.

So, starting June 4th and for the foreseeable future I'll be commuting off to the South side of the river to "lovely" Clapham (or Cl'am to the locals.)

Hoo-rah!

It's funny the things you see when having lunch in London

2008-05-21T19:44:00.002+01:00

Fingers Crossed

2008-04-30T18:34:00.003+01:00

As of tomorrow, I'll have been unemployed for one month.

One month and just a single interview in all that time.

It's not quite what I expected. I apply for IT management or team leader jobs all over the place and my CV (which everyone says is excellent) doesn't even get me to the interview stage. It feels as if there are so many people out-qualifying or out-specialising me out there that I can't even get my foot in the proverbial door.

Giving up programming six years ago and hoping that my career would progress in another direction at my last job was the worst career move I've ever made.

It's hard not to feel down but I am keeping myself busy, learning to program all over again (which is more exciting than I thought it'd be) and of course sorting out lots of wedding stuff.

Something now gets booked or arranged for the wedding every few days now.
It's project management at its finest and I'm actually enjoying sorting everything out.

Photographer sorted, DJ sorted, transport sorted.... Oh, just another 50 things left to sort now!

Plus in between all this stuff I'm actually keeping fit by doing regular runs on my old treadmill and as of Monday, using the Wii-Fit to strain all those muscles that I didn't even know that I had through the wonder that is Yoga!

See? Life does go on, though I do hope that my holiday doesn't go on for too much longer.

Fingers crossed...

In Suspended Animation

2008-04-07T15:09:00.004+01:00

Hello peeps,
I've been unemployed for almost a working week now with no luck even getting an interview as yet. I'm wondering if it'll be like the last time when I suddenly got a load of interviews out of the blue in a huge flurry and got offered three jobs on the same day?! I can only hope.

Although the last week has actually gone very fast and I'm not sure at all where it all went?

The wedding countdown still ticks on. The other half is on the verge of getting a wedding dress (4 months before the wedding is actually cutting it very fine apparently) and I'm sorting out the formal wear for myself and the best men along with finding somewhere romantic to honeymoon that isn't in the middle of its monsoon or hurricane season.

Once again, I've been told that someone may be interested in buying my flat but to be honest I'm not so fussed if it falls through as until I get a job I'd be better off staying put. However if an offer is made I'm afraid with the impending predictions of house price falls, I may not be able to refuse.

But then I'll cross that bridge when I need to.

Free?

2008-04-01T23:30:00.003+01:00

So, my last day of current employment was on Monday.

Today was technically my first day of 'freedom.'

I plan on keeping myself busy looking for a new job but today I gave myself the day off. It was the RAF's 90th anniversary today so there was to be a fly past over the Thames that I headed down to see.

It was just the Red Arrows and some Typhoons and it was over in a flash. Impressive but it caught a lot of people (me included) off guard. I was on Westminster bridge in a spot I'd acquired thirty minutes previously. We waited expectantly, looking over the horizon for them to appear but they didn't come along the river as we all expected but cut across the bend and appeared from behind the old city town hall and flew right to left above us.

Luckily my camera was at the ready and I managed 2 shots before they were gone, though both required editing to salvage what were essentially rushed shots.

I rushed off afterwards to meet the other half for lunch but noticed that most of the people on the bridge were staying; expecting more, so I reckon after a while, there were probably a few disappointed people out there. They'll probably have to wait for the 100th anniversary for the full monty.

Lunch was a nice two meal special jobbie at the local Wetherspoons establishment which I then walked off through Mayfair popping into the church in which we plan to get married for a bit of peace and quiet and then onto the cinema for a bit of light entertainment-based escapism in the form of 10,000 BC.

Finally, thanks to a nice bit of retail therapy over the weekend, I'd also acquired an iPod Touch, the Wi-Fi abilities of which I managed to give a good test around London after having signed up to a provider called The Cloud.

Essentially, some places with advertised hotspots didn't work, whilst those in all McDonalds I passed did. I managed to review a proof of our wedding invitations, forward to the other half and approve it with the suppliers alternatively from Westminster Bridge (where a free provider allowed me 5 mins of access if I watched an advert for 30 secs), a park bench in Mayfair (some random connection) and from outside McD's on Shaftesbury Avenue.

It's amazing how Wi-Fi is omni-present though the number of unsecured connections is just silly!

Can I have a napkin please?

2008-03-17T22:12:00.000Z

In shock

2008-03-11T08:05:00.004Z

I got made redundant from my job of eight and a half years yesterday.
To say that it came as a bit of a surprise is an understatement.

I know there's no such thing as a job for life but I was busy in my last job and looking forward to the future.

I'm still in a state of shock today but have started to look to see what the market has to offer comparable to what I currently do. And the answer is not a lot. Not that I have a CV anywhere anyway. That's long gone on some old PC.

Since my financial stability is now up the creek the marriage arrangements, honeymoon and house moving have now been put on hold. Great timing, eh?

If it wasn't for the support that my other half has given me I'd be in such a state right now, though I'm sat here at home alone now, still shaking and so sad.

*sob*

A Date With Destiny

2008-03-05T20:54:00.002Z

Things are slowly ticking ahead with the wedding preparations. We've heard back from the church (pictured) and been given a number of dates in August.

So far, all being well, Saturday 16th looks to be the ONE.

It all becomes a lot more real now that we have a date. It's as if a countdown clock has started and now we have to get everything sorted before it hits zero!

Next steps are to meet up with the priest next week and to start visiting possible venues around the area this weekend that won't break the bank. (Not so easy when the church is in Mayfair!)

We've set ourselves a budget and in a flurry of organisational genius I've come up with a long list of eveything that is likely to cost us something and estimates for how much each is likely to be.

It's not going to be a big wedding, mind, with 50 being the maximum number of people. This could fall further to as low as 35 depending on if people are around in the middle of the holiday season. But then less people equals less cost (we hope!)

I've chosen two best men as I've two best mates and it wouldn't be fair to choose between them. One can sort the speeches etc and the other is a good organiser so I hope that as a team they can get all their bits sorted. Not that I know what their bits to sort out yet as I've yet to look that up!

On the flat selling front, I continue to have viewings and one "very interested" buyer but no offers as yet. Similarly we've yet to find a house we like either so that's a big flat blank.

If nothing else it allows me to concentrate more on the wedding arrangements and there are a lot of those to get through!

163 days to go!

Progress report

2008-02-21T18:03:00.000Z

Yes, it's an exciting random picture of a building!
This one's right by London Bridge.

No progress on the moving front at all, despite the price drop.

I'll have to see if I get any viewings at all on the weekend. As it stands the woman above me has decided to keep her flat at the same price that mine was just lowered from, so I can only see that that will make my flat look more attractive. Until she sees sense and changes her mind, that is!

On the wedding front, we've written off a letter to the church where we'd like to get married. It's in Mayfair (very posh, I know!) but it is a beautiful church with a hugh stained glass window behind the altar. The other half loves stained glass windows! It also excudes a certain spiritual calmness, so I very much like it. I got a call back from them to confirm receipt of our wedding request and apparently someone will be back in contact with me next week.

I am a bit worried that at this rate we'll be married but not living together!

The Long(er) Road To Work

2008-02-20T07:45:00.003Z

As mentioned in a previous post, ever since we've moved offices from Baker Street to Marble Arch, my journey into work has become a lot quicker and a lot more pleasant. I worked out that I now saved myself a working week each year in time that I could spend longer in bed.

This is what my old (45-50 mins) main journey options were in the morning:
Acton Town -> Green Park (Piccadilly Line)
Green Park -> Baker Street (Jubilee Line)
or
Acton Town -> Hammersmith (Piccadilly Line)
Hammersmith -> Baker Street (Hammersmith & City Line)

Of course there were many other routes I could have taken but these would turn out to be the best for consistency and giving me an idea of what time I can leave the house in the morning to get in by a certain time.

Ever since the office move, my new route (35 mins) became a simpler one:
Acton High Street -> Shepherds Bush (Bus 207/607)
Shepherds Bush -> Marble Arch

But, alas, the good times are no more. Ever since Shepherds Bush station was closed with barely 4 weeks notice for the next 8 months, my journey in is more complicated and definitely a lot less comfortable.

My average journey time is now between 45-60 mins! And all because of one station closure! *sigh*

I now get a tiny no 70 bus with an unreliable timetable to East Acton station and then onto Marble Arch from there. However they have just decided to spend the next few months digging up the main road that the bus runs along so, thanks to the traffic, on some days, just the bus route portion of my journey takes almost as long as my entire journey used to be... Argh!

And it is a tiny bus. The few seats are cramped so close together that unless I sit at the back, I'd rather stand to be more comfortable. By the time the bus has gone two stops it's packed full with people standing and all the seats occupied.

The number 70 is supposed to run every 10 mins but that's just wishful thinking. I've a feeling that the rushed closure of Shepherds Bush has meant that they've not even considered the impact on travel links around the area.

On the way home, I now get off at Holland Park and do a very brisk 10 min walk to Shepherds Bush to catch a bus back from there. So far, so good as I've yet to hit a rainy day during that part of the journey home.

There are still other routes that I'm investigating but so far they all come in at around the same journey time.

I am rather annoyed by the way that the station closed. Apparently it's a first for such a busy station to close when escalators are being replaced and it's not even having a lift put in to make it more accessible or having anything to expand its capacity before the White City Shopping centre opens right next door to it! It certainly beggars belief that they may have to do this in a few years time anyway to meet the Mayor's targets for accessibility on public transport.

But I guess money speaks louder than any words of complaint (and with less than 4 weeks notice, how much can someone complain?) and the Australian property developer "Westfield" responsible for the new shopping centre has won the day. I feel sorry for all the small shops around the Green which will now close because of the lack of custom and that's before they get bulldozed away by the impact on their business of a major shopping centre with large corporate stores competing on their doorsteps.

Complications

2008-02-17T22:11:00.004Z

So, the merry-go-round that is the sale of my flat is still going on.

It's been 5 weeks and the viewings have pretty much dried up as the prices in my area have gone down, so it looks as if 10k will have to come off just to see if that improves things.

Granted we're not in such a rush to sell as we've yet to see anything that we fancy but when 2 bedroom flats and larger 1 bedroom flats in the same area come in at the same price as mine, I know I'm in trouble.

Still, every night before I go to bed, I tidy up the flat and every morning before I head off to work I make the bed so that it looks nice and tucked in like something in a nice hotel, just on the off chance that someone will do a viewing that day. It does get you down a bit though.

On a more positive note, we've started to push things forward a bit on the getting hitched front. We're sorting out a church and have found a nice one in Mayfair (not far from work) that we both agree that we really like. The thing is with her family East of London and my friends to the West, we thought it'd be a good compromise. Apparently we now have to write a letter to sort a formal meeting to discuss things further which I'm in the process of doing.

We've both met with my local parish priest, something that needs to be done in the Catholic Church to sort out a formal parish letter of freedom to prove I'm not already married. Solicitors get involved for a small fee too *sigh* And we're even going to attend a marriage course (another Catholic requirement, though one which probably isn't really that bad an idea.)

It all sounds so complicated, doesn't it?
And that's all before we've even got a confirmed venue or date!

The pic is yet another from the "Switched On London" series and is of London Bridge all lit up.

HMS Belfast last night

2008-02-09T22:19:00.000Z

Part of something called "Switched On London". Worth checking out for some good night shots of London Bridge, Tower Bridge and bits 'tween all lit up.

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

2008-02-07T22:02:00.000Z

Happy 4706!

Taken rather hurriedly with my compact camera as the battery was about to die on me...
London's Chinatown tonight. It's the year of the rat which according to the Chinese calendar, I am.

Thankfully it's not as bad as it sounds:
"Ambitious, clever and devoted to their family. Hard-working and imaginative. Not always sure of themselves and do not always plan for the future. Will always stand by their friends."

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

(which literally means, "congratulations, may you be prosperous" so winning the Euromillions rollover this week would be a good start.)

When sometimes, the view out of your window is worth waking up for

2008-02-03T23:15:00.000Z

Please buy me! (One careful owner)

2008-01-31T22:31:00.000Z

So after a ten day flurry of activity things have gone rather quiet on the selling the flat front.

I had a few viewings before any of the marketing had gone out but strangely enough since the actual marketing has now popped up in the local paper, agents' windows and on the main internet property sites, it's all gone very quiet.
To be honest I'm not 100% happy with the pictures. They either:
a) Make my flat look somewhat smaller than it actually is.
b) Make my flat look a lot more over-exposed in colour tone than it actually is.
c) Act as a good excuse for some nice local burglers to pop around as they show off the location of my PC, scanner and camera.

In terms of the actual viewings, there were a number of excuses over things they didn't like
a) Didn't like the location: Acton.
- Go figure. Why were they looking in Acton then?
b) Didn't like the Somalian cafe down the road and the locals hanging around outside it.
- I've never even noticed them until that comment was made but they're old geezers hanging out at their usual haunt not street hardened "hoodies!"
c) Didn't like the fact that part of the view out of the window (to the right) was of the local high rise estate. If you're wondering what this looks like, it's the building used as the exterior for "Nelson Mandela House" in the comedy "Only Fools and Horses."
- But look to the left and the view sweeps out as far as the south-side of the Thames. I can see the white roof of Earl's Court exhibition centre to the far left, Crystal Palace's transmission tower to the right of this, Fulham FC's floodlights to the right of this and a lovely vista with no tall buildings for about four or so miles beyond this. At night the lights in buildings in the distance twinkle and create quite a nice city scape view. Plus then the building directly below me is a retirement home, so it's nice and quiet but bloody well located for transport links.

But, in spite of this I did get one positive viewing, a lady who said that the flat ticked all the boxes and now she wanted to check out the value based on the area before getting back to the agency. Given that we've not heard anything since I'm guessing that she was either a phony fibber or else realised that Acton wasn't her "cup of tea" and had looked elsewhere.

*sigh*And so the quest to sell continues...

A rant about estate agents...

2008-01-21T19:02:00.000Z

So after many weeks of sifting through and then throwing out or giving away clutter (approx twenty five large black bags worth plus one 32 inch TV), removing all signs of personalisation/individuality/character from my flat, giving it a nice new paint job and enduring paint fumes for a few days I finally got to the point where it was ready to go onto the market.

*phew!*

So I ended up choosing two local agencies who have to share my spare set of keys between them. "It's okay. We get on well. We've done a lot of business together in the past. There should be no problems sharing the keys", I was told by one of the estate agents.

Two days later I missed out on my first viewing because one of them had forgotten to give the keys back to the other. But then what do you expect? They are in the much maligned estate agency business after all so they have a reputation to uphold...

To be honest, just like in any profession there are the solid grafters and then there are the cocky w**kers. We've come across both. It really is a minefield out there.

It still surprises me how we've come across quite a few agents who aren't willing to show people around on weekday evenings. Along with Saturdays, THIS IS THE ONLY TIME THAT US PEOPLE IN GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT ARE GOING TO BE AROUND TO VIEW FRICKING PROPERTIES!

And yet they still umm and ah and annoyingly sometimes never get back to you.

Then you get the ones who can't be arsed to register you. "Just look on the web. We put our properties on there as soon as we get them." (Yeah, right!)

It really is bloody frustrating. Can we please introduce some standards of conduct here please?!

Anyway, so I'm now having to keep my flat in a state of perpetual perfectness. Which means keeping the place as spotless as possible, making the bed every morning (argh!), making sure the bins are empty, that the cushions on the sofa are nicely arranged(!) and that there are no potentially wiffy things in my bin that might go off during the day!

It also means that for the first time, the spare keys to the flat are with someone I don't really know so I have to do something I've never felt compelled to do since I've lived there: put the chain on the door as soon as I get home. Though to be honest, it's more to avoid someone coming in to do a viewing unannounced when I'm starkers than anything else (half the bathroom is visible from the front door.)

So, to be continued....

Onto the next thing

2008-01-07T20:32:00.000Z

Marmite bottles with big hearts on proclaiming "I Love You!" and even more confectionery featuring hearts than I've ever seen in Selfridges plus hot cross buns and even large chocolate eggs in Woolworths.

I guess Christmas must be over and it's time to start peddling the next commercially lucrative things. *sigh*

As it is I've been quite organised and had sorted something out for Valentine's Day two months ago and I guess that Easter is unseasonally early this year at March 23rd but even so, that's still eleven or so weeks.

As much as I like hot cross buns and Easter eggs, should they really be selling them already in the second week of January!?

2007 - A Mainly Positive Spin

2008-01-03T21:17:00.000Z

January (The last long-haul adventure?)

Went on a trip to Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.
Made it back in one piece.

February (A moving month)

Moved offices down the road from Baker Street to Marble Arch knocking 15 minutes off my average journey time giving me back almost a working week each year in time that I can now spend in bed. Zzzzzzzz.
Took the other half to see Dirty Dancing on Valentine's Day which she liked (a lot) and realised now that I bemusingly didn't blog about this at all.

March (The month I became a debt-free man)

Finally(!) sold my mum's flat and used the money to pay off my mortgage.
Blog re-christened to reflect it's wider-wordly aspirations. Ironically, August excepted, just as I stopped travelling.
April showers arrived early as it rained (a lot.)

April

Made an April Fools' joke about something on my blog. Can't remember what though!
Had a brilliant day out at London Zoo. Would recommend anyone go on an April week day when it's relatively quiet. It's well worth it.
Played Guitar Hero II (a lot.) Sadly had blisters to prove this.

May(-us horribulus)

Caught some kind of flu-ey thing.
Left my keys at work and had to go all the way back in to get them.
Had a hoodie try to set his dog on me.
Moaned (a lot.)

June

Made the (as yet not achieved) joint decision to move in with the other half.
Got to go to see England play at the newly re-opened Wembley Stadium.

July (Music month)

Saw Tori Amos and Suzanne Vega live as well as a rather good (though pointless from a message stand point) Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium.

August (The triple-header holiday!)

Went to Rome and got engaged.
Went to Dubai and bought a ring.
Went to Hungary and saw my late grandmother for the last time.
Oh, and in between these, won a compo to see K T Tunstall live at an intimate gig, which was kinda cool.

September

Had a birthday where I could commiserate the fact that I was now closer to 40 than 30.
Saw the excellent Patrick Stewart staring as Macbeth in the West End.
Got (almost) up-close with Gwen Stefani.
Saw the first set of Christmas decorations go on sale in the shops at the end of this month!

October

Met my favourite author, Neil Gaiman, and got my copy of 'Stardust' signed along with a photo on my camera which I eventually retrieved after having walked out without it.
Bought a scanner and scanned in most of my old photo albums (which took a very long time.)

November

Went to a brilliant firework display in Ealing for Bonfire Night.
Saw (or rather tried to see) a not so brilliant Oxford Street lights switch on.
Saw an atrocious Amy Winehouse 'performance.'

December

Succumbed to peer pressure to join Facebook and met up with some old friends through it.
Attended a most peculiar christening.
Won preview night tickets to "Winter Wonderland" in Hyde Park but it turned out to be a Winter wet land.
Had yet another brilliant Christmas and New Year with the other half and her family.

General

Went to the cinema a paltry 39 times.
Blogged 80 times.

Winter Wetland

2007-12-12T23:08:00.000Z

I entered a competition through the Londonist website to win a pair of tickets to a preview night of the Winter Wonderland event that's going on at Hyde Park Corner at the moment and "shock! horror!", I actually won.

Having completely forgotten that I'd entered the competition, the phone call from a nice sounding lady the day before the preview was to happen was a very pleasant surprise.

My memory being like a sieve nowadays meant that I'd also forgotten to tell the other half that I'd entered and after a bit of gentle persuasion along the lines of "come along tomorrow and watch me fall on my ass as I attempt ice skating for the first time", "it's free" and "it's only ten minutes away from work", we were all set for a nice evening.

Unfortunately the good old British weather wasn't going to let us get away with things that easily. The following day, Friday, felt like one of the wettest days of Winter, so far.

I spent some of my lunch break doing a quick reconnaissance of the area and taking a few shots of an empty park. The weather was cold and cloudy but by late afternoon it had started to take a turn decidedly for the worse.

I periodically looked out at Hyde Park, from my window at work, willing the dark rain clouds to go away and the wind to abate. And truth be told, it did a little bit. Come evening the wind was no longer howling like a wolf and it was no longer raining cats and dogs. Now it was just raining small hamsters and puffing like a bulldog.

Nevertheless, we thought, "it's free" and with our brollies protecting us from the majority of nature's cruel taunts we stepped out across the park and gave it a go.

To be fair, so did a few other people but not many. It was a lot emptier than it would normally be and this was a blessing in disguise.

Unfortunately I didn't get to ice skate for the first time. The rink was covered in an inch of water and only the brave, intrepid souls or the foolish dared to venture out. I was wearing jeans and knew that just a single fall (all but guaranteed for me) would have me soaked through in freezing cold water and turned to an icicle in no time.

We did try out other things though. Out first port of call was the giant wheel, a kind of mini London Eye with pods, that could seat a family, slowly rotating around to give you a good view of the surrounding area.

In our case the view was mostly obstructed by the rain though it was quite atmospheric and we got a pod to ourselves which allowed us to cuddle up as the rain lashed the pod and the wind howled around us. The other half loved it every time that a gust of wind blew the pod from side-to-side whilst I wondered what our chances of survival would be if the pod did actually fall (slim.)

I would however recommend the wheel (dependant on price) if you happen to pass by on a clear day or night.

Next we ventured into one of those capsule rides where a video gets played in front of you and the capsule rocks and rolls around in time with the video. In the case of the Winter Wonderland ride, it was a small excerpt from "The Snowman" accompanied by the requisite "Walking In The Air" song.

And boy was it naff! The rocking and rolling didn't really have much to do with the very grainy old video being played in front of us and the floor of the capsule was like one giant, muddy puddle as people got on and off with their wet shoes whilst nobody cleared up in-between.

Definitely not recommended for anyone, of any age!

Then we tried out the haunted house which as grown-ups you don't really expect to be very good, now do you? After all I remember going in these when I was little and not finding them particularly scary then. Is there such a thing as an actual scary haunted house ride anywhere?

Anyhow, it was more gory than scary though I did get a great laugh out of the bloke with scary mask who jumped out at the other half just after we entered and made her scream her head off. Hehe! In fact that was the highlight of that ride.

We then strolled around watching kids slide down the giant toboggan ride, which did look like good fun but, as with the skating, was off limits for us sensible adults in the still pouring rain.

And finally we checked out the German market which was okay though very touristy and very small compared to others that I've seen or heard about around the country.

So, though slightly dampened by the weather conditions, for free, we'd had an interesting evening out and finished it off with a lovely pie and mash in Selfridges food hall. Yum!

The case of the peculiar christening

2007-12-09T14:04:00.000Z

I went to my first christening the other Sunday.

Other than my own baptism, I'd never been to one of these before. And it was quite a peculiar affair indeed.

First off, it wasn't in a church but in a members-only bar/club in East London. So loads of people drank their way through the while thing.

Secondly, though the other half and I turned up half an hour late, the christening was delayed by...get this...the West Ham vs Tottenham game that was going on that afternoon!

The celebrant had to wait for the match to finish before half the intended crowd turned up!

And when it did finally start, it was a strangely informal affair. The celebrant was an Archbishop of the episcopal church from Kent (nobody seemed to know what this meant so I'm not sure who had arranged for him to officiate.) He dressed up in his full purple robes for the occasion whilst young children of all ages roamed around the hall making as much noise as they wanted whilst the whole thing carried on.

By roamed, I mean that the little 'uns ran and crawled in front, behind and sometimes through the ceremony whilst it was going on with the archbishop (who apparently had five kids himself) carrying on just fine.

It was obvious that neither parents or God-parents of the little boy to be christened has stepped into a church in a long time. They looked on baffled. So, to ease the discomfort of the mainly West Ham partisan crowd, the celebrant got everyone to sing "I'm forever blowing bubbles" as the first hymn! (It's the West Ham theme tune.)

That's how bizarre the whole thing really was!!

Long Time No See

2007-12-04T20:00:00.000Z

Having joined Facebook recently and deciding that only people I really like will get added as friends rather than any Tom, Dick or Harriet, I found myself rather restricted.

Whilst lots of friends-of-friends are on Facebook, my immediate circle of friends only has a small number of people who are IT literate and have heard of Facebook.

So no friends-of-friends-of-friends etc.

But it was a small group. Too small...

I guess that some people feel pressured into oneupmanship. You see all those people with hundreds of "friends" and there's me thinking that I probably don't even know that many people! Besides, Facebook doesn't really work if your group of friends is too large. You just get bombarded. It's almost as if you need an inner and outer circle, something I'm surprised they haven't implemented yet as standard.

Nevertheless, I hunted around a bit more, typing in a few names into the search box to see who else I could find. As luck would have it some of my old school and university friends were on there (though not many, which was surprising) so I sent a few friend requests out and waited...

When I got a few replies, I started the obligatory "Hello. How are you?", "How are things?" going type messages with them and to cut a long story short, I ended up arranging a meet up with four of my old uni mates.

It'd been over ten years since last I'd last seen them. We all used to hang out together durng those formative years and even went on a fly-drive holiday around North-East America after we finished uni, from which I've had some great memories, but distance and laziness did me in.

They all lived in Surrey (we went to Kingston Uni) and I didn't. Without a car, and no direct form of transport, it'd take me almost two hours to do what should be a relatively straight-forward trip down to see them.

And...it just never happened. They kept in touch which each other whilst I grew further and further away.

Anyhow, it was great to see them all and the bizzare thing was that apart from a few more grey hairs or, in some case, slightly less hair, we were all basically the same!

One of my friends had got married (on the day that I went to Nepal so I never made it to the wedding) and had had two kids (one of whom was a junior monster) whilst another is getting married next year. Spookily one of my friends had not changed at all, in so far as I even thought that he was wearing the same clothes (or very close to the same clothes) that he used to wear 10 years ago!

Oh well. We all got on pretty well, though meeting on a Friday in busy, noisy pubs was probably not ideal for catching up type chat and I did have to rush off before everyone else as we'd met in Clapham Junction and their journeys home were more straightforward than mine.

Hopefully the beginning of some better friendships, I hope?

To be continued, I guess...

Dying In Public

2007-11-27T23:49:00.000Z

We went to see the train wreck that is Amy Winehouse last Saturday. Needless to say it was a blooming disaster, or rather, she was a blooming disaster.

Touts outside were selling tickets at over four times face value. Due to other stuff that was going on for us over the course of the day, we didn't turn up at the Hammersmith Apollo until near half nine which is the latest that I have ever turned up for for a gig, though I insisted to the other-half that this would not be too late, since her average from previous gigs was 45-60 mins late, I still worried if tonight would be an exception.

My worries were unfounded. As we waited to get our tickets scanned at the entrance, I could see loads of people at the bar beyond. She wasn't on yet. *phew*

Turns out she was due on at 9pm, so it's just as well for us that she was still locked in her hotel room refusing to leave when we arrived.

The place was rammed solid. We got ourselves some drinks, stood at the back and waited...and waited...and waited some more.

Each time a song from the music they were playing ended, the crowd started booing as a new one started up. I'm not sure what time the support finished but if it were around about half eight, then these people would have to have waited an hour and forty-five minutes for her to come on. No wonder they were booing!

And when she did arrive, we all thought that she might as well have stayed locked in that hotel room.

Taken as performance art, it wasn't too bad. Her impression of a washed up addict was first class.

She jiggled from side-to-side with strands of hair hanging out of her beehive and what looked like a tampon string dangling down the side of her dress. Fag hanging out the side of her mouth, she made noises during the first three songs that were in tune with the band with the occasional word or line thrown in for good measure.

Some people in the crowd booed. Some even cried.

I thought, well this is what we all came to see isn't it? A modern day Jim Morrison letting it all hang out in public. Except that she's only twenty four and hasn't lived at all and here we were watching her die already.

She did get a bit less worse during the middle stint of the gig though. I thought that her ska and calypso songs covers went down well. Some still booed but then that's probably what they were there to do. Perhaps they'd got lost on the way to the last Big Brother eviction night and ended up here instead?

Well, if pantomime is what they wanted, then they'd be happy.

Amy wandered off randomly in between and sometimes during songs leaving her main backing singer to introduce the band and then finally departed mid-way through her last song, "Valerie", leaving the band to finish it, and us to look on bemused, feeling cheated out of a good fifty quid.

The record company of, course, won't refund unless the gig had been cancelled.

Which is what it should have been. Thanks a million!

hi-a-tus

2007-11-24T10:30:00.000Z

hiatus (h-ts)n. pl. hi·a·tus·es or hiatus 1. A gap or interruption in space, time, or continuity; a break.

That's me at the moment...

Nonsense

2007-11-08T12:24:00.000Z

Beleive it or not this blog entry is the same text as taken from the previous entry about the wonderful Christmas lights switch on of Oxford Street but chucked into Babel Fish, translated into Korean and back again into English.

Inspired by an article in "The Register" that made me laugh, it shows that Babel Fish translations should be taken with a pinch of salt.

I ended a day today and i followed and in order the fact that it will convert in color of a flame two place the jade su Ford distance khu li su E su the for thing i decided.

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Switch on or a big switch off?

2007-11-07T22:22:00.000Z

I finished work today and decided to go along to see the Oxford Street Christmas lights switch on.

I made it towards the main stage at around about a quarter to six. The switch on was set for 18:17 (something to do with news coverage) but already I couldn't even vaguely get close to where the action was. The crowd was so densely packed, I didn't stand a chance.

Neither did the hundreds or thousands more who arrived after me.

Such a big crowd and the stage from where the performers and light switch on was happening was recessed between two departments stores so that only people directly in front of it had any chance of seeing what was going on. Wise move(!)

And guess what, no big screens to convey any of it to the crowd at all. Way to go with mis-organisation!!

It was a complete bollocks job, quite frankly. Lots of people must have walked away, very disappointed.

Ear ear!

2007-10-27T23:50:00.000+01:00

This picture was in my mum's photo album. I have no idea who they are other than a scribbled note on the back that says it's for a "Mrs Townsend." and that my mum was their nanny for some time after she arrived in England.

But I do like the picture. It has a certain charm.

I just find this picture so funny...

2007-10-22T12:45:00.000+01:00

On so many different levels but particularly every time that I look at the woman on the right.

It was actually taken as part of a series from a Hungarian online newspaper about a march that was going on in Budapest over the weekend. Not quite sure how this one made the cut though.

Perhaps someone on the paper has a sense of humour?

Another Trip to Wembley

2007-10-13T22:11:00.000+01:00

An easy game for England.

It had been a mad dash to get to the section in the stadium where we were sitting.

In the old days, the walk up Wembley Way (now renamed Olympic Way for the sake of a two week event in 2012) and into the stadium was straight. Now, you get to the stadium only to find that you then have to walk halfway around it to even get to the turnstiles.

Something to do with crowd control. Bah!

So unfortunately we arrived a few minutes into the game, just in time to see the big screen replay of England's first goal.

We got seats that were closer to the pitch than any of my previous visits, so this made up for it somewhat, though the crowd in my section (bar two mouthy chaps behind us) was quite quiet.

A solid performance from the team but the England that the fans wanted to see forgot to turn up for the second half having already got three goals up by this point and fans streamed out in their hundreds when the game still had 15 minutes to go.

Frank Lampard got booed, though not by me, even though I do think he doesn't fit into the England side, Gareth Barry got Man of the Match, though I'm not entirely sure why. Gerrard was everywhere on the pitch, taking his leadership duties seriously.

We left after the final whistle and had fun joining the now always present post-match 30 minute queue back to Wembley Park Station, dodging police horse poo as we went!

One of these days I may try the bus route home...

Today I met Neil Gaiman...

2007-10-02T20:31:00.000+01:00

My favourite author.

He was being interviewed by the literary editor of the Guardian at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly, an event that went on for a fascinating, delightful and never boring hour followed by a rush down to Waterstones for the book signing.

Fortunately, being a local (of sorts) I knew that walking down Jermyn Street rather than along Piccadilly would get me to Waterstones faster.

And boy did it pay off. I was third in the queue. Result!

Neil signed my first print copy of 'Stardust', drew a shooting star under my name, shook my hand and I even got the pictorial evidence to prove it.

Feeling a bit chuffed as I walked past the queue of hundreds of people outside the shop, snaking around the road, I embarrassingly suddenly realised that I'd walked out without my camera.

Duh!

The guy working for the publishers (Headline) has taken the photo but I'd forgotten to pick up my camera from him as I walked past! Silly me. It did mean that I got to walk straight back in and see Neil again though. Ha!

Today, I met Gwen

2007-09-28T23:50:00.000+01:00

Happy Birthday To Me

2007-09-25T19:49:00.000+01:00

It was my birthday on Monday, so as a present from the other half we went down to the West End and The Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue to see a modern re-telling of that Scottish play of Shakespeare's with Patrick Stewart in the lead as Macbeth himself.

For some reason on other, I'd realised that I've never seen one of Shakespeare's plays performed live, and well, it's always interesting to try something at least once, I told the other half when it was obviously not her cup of tea.

As it was, we both really enjoyed it. For something that ran for about three hours (including the interval) there really only was one act when things slowed down and I got a bit bored. The other half, in fact, actually nodded off but then she managed the same feat in the middle of a loud song and dance routine at a musical we saw in New York, so I wasn't too surprised.

So asides from that one dip, the rest of the play was suitably intense. The setting was in more modern times in a somewhat Stalinesque Russia which suited the treachery and greed for power that unfolds within the story perfectly.

Newsreel shots of parading soldiers played across the walls and an atmospherically smokily back-lit clanking lift centre-stage brought characters in and out of the story with some style.

The three witches in particular, re-imagined here as field hospital nurses or serving girls flitting around in the background until the lighting dims, heart monitor traces illuminate the walls and they take centre stage with their echoing words foretelling the future are just wonderfully evil.

So a pretty original (for me) and excellent time was had on my birthday.

Memories of Grandma

2007-09-23T23:49:00.000+01:00

I got a not entirely unexpected phone call over the weekend from my aunt in Hungary.
My grandma, Rebeka, passed away last Wednesday, peacefully in her sleep. She was aged 93.

The funeral is tomorrow, so unfortunately, there was no way that I'd be able to make it, but I spent some time over the weekend recollecting my happy memories of her. I was also thankful that my fiancée and I had at least been able to see her last month before she left us and had effectively received her blessing.

Though not my grandmother by blood, because she couldn't have any children, she adopted my mum and two others when she was young (I'm not sure of the exact age) and raised them like her own.

I'd been lucky to probably have spent the most time talking with my grandma since my mother's death in 2002.

I visited for a week in 2003 and stayed with her for most of that and then again in 2005 by which time she was in a care home. During that time, my Hungarian improved (it always starts of rather rusty due to no practice in the UK) and she'd sit down and tell me about my mum.

She told me how in 1956 when the Russian tanks poured back into Budapest and quashed the revolution, my mum met with her two best friends Julianna and Veronika and talked about leaving the country. My mum was 20 then and my grandma told me how she was a bit of a tomboy.

Well, the three of them headed off but when they got to the border with Austria and saw the guards patrolling with their guns and barbed wire my mum's two friends relented and came back.

My grandmother explained how my mum had then swum across a river at night to avoid the guards and had left the country. They didn't hear from her after this so assumed that she was dead.

Then a year later, a letter arrived telling them that she was alive and well in England working as an au pair having stayed in Austria and then France along the way!

She told me how pleased they'd all been to hear that my mum was alright and how happy they were when, a few years later, she was allowed to come back and visit and then even later got married and then when I was just a wee baby came back to show me off too.

I always remember my grandma smothering me with kisses. Way too many kisses in fact but that just showed how loving she was. She visited us in London twice, the first time with my grandfather. I remember her telling him off one day for telling daft stories and everyone just laughing their heads off at their silly argument, her face initially cross and then breaking down into laughter with us.

A friend of my mum, whom I still see, recalls during my grandma's second visit, how they ended up sitting in the garden together one day and even though my grandma spoke to her in Hungarian and my mum's friend back in English, they seemed to yap on for ages and got on like a house on fire.

Apparently the baffled look on my mum's face when she came out and saw the pair of them getting on so well despite the language barrier was a sight to see.

Rest in peace gran. You'll be missed but never forgotten.

Shuttlecock Sport

2007-09-13T21:51:00.000+01:00

We completed our visit to my mum's home town by checking out Zoli, my 16 year old nephew's new sport, something called Shuttlecock (or labtol in Hungarian which translates literally to foot-feather.)

I'd never heard of it before and wasn't surprised to find out that, internationally, England are crap at it, though probably because nobody plays it over here. Hungary and Germany are the best teams in Europe, with Hungary apparently better at the moment, whilst Vietnam and China lead the rest of the world with the former being world champions (I think?

It's played across a net, much like badminton or volleyball, but the shuttlecock actually has feathers and the rubberised end is made up of a number of discs and a rubber dome. You can only hit the ball with you feet and parts of your body but not the hands.

Well, we had no idea what we were going to see when my nephew said, let's go down to the local school gym to watch a practice session. They obviously take it very seriously in Ujszasz and there were about twenty kids split across five areas of the gym, three of which were set up with a net supporting teams of three, two and single pairings taking on each other whilst the other two areas were for pairs practicing passing and shooting the shuttlecock at each other.

When someone was tired in one of the games, they'd drop out and enter the practice area whilst someone who'd been practicing would enter the game.

It was fascinating to watch their dedication. My cousin told me how he was looking forward to travelling to Germany and France to compete on an international level. I was mightily impressed.

After this we went back to my Uncle's house and had a lovely cold dinner. Lunch tends to be the main meal in Hungary and generally, Hungarian families will only eat something cold in the evening. In this case it was bread with slices of salami and peppers. Delicious in its own simply way really.

After this we bid our farewells at the train station and got on a more traditional, non compartmentalised and unfortunately slow train for the journey back into Budapest.

Though obviously still tempered by my gran's illness, I was nevertheless happy that we'd manage to achieve so much today and that everyone had managed to meet my fiancee.

The next day was our last and was in reality only a half day, so we packed, slept in and then went out for an early lunch finishing off with some fine Hungarian cakes from the lavish Cafe Gerbeaud.

A fitting end to yet another fine holiday.

Visiting the old neighbours - Pigs, pigeons and Spider

2007-09-12T23:11:00.000+01:00

We then walked across the road to see if Veronika, one of my mum's best friends, was home. It was an unannounced visit and I pushed their doorbell not knowing if anyone would answer. A black Hungarian Puli dog ran up to the gate and stood his ground on the other side of the gate and with an impressively constant rhythmic and very loud "bark bark!"

Just as I was starting to think that perhaps they weren't in, I heard a familiar voice calling out from the back telling "Bogar" the dog ("Spider", in English) to shush.

It was Veronka, one of my mum's best friends from school days, and despite us having turned up unannounced, she opened her arms and kissed us both, radiated nothing but warmth towards us.

Once Spider had realised that we were no longer a threat, he quietened down and disappeared to the back of the garden whilst we were ushered in to the house where it soon became obvious from the fact that Pista, Veronka's husband was lying down on top of the sofa in just a pair of shorts, that they had both been taking an afternoon nap!

I apologised for disturbing them, but they would have none of it. We were shown into the front room and sat down on a pair of comfy chairs whilst Hungarian Palinka (Peach Schnaps) was poured out for both of us.

It was really potent stuff and in the heat we had to decline a second helping lest we pass out!

We sat and talked for a while, Veronka also getting us some nice cakes to eat, and me doing my best to translate to the other half so that she wouldn't feel out-of-sorts. The translation process was easier said than done, though, as Veronka and Pista moved from one topic to the next without pause, obviously trying to cram the last two years happenings and then some into our brief visit.

Afterwards, the other half told me that even though she didn't understand a word, she had managed to follow lots by observing how Veronka and Pista had been speaking, laughing and gesticulating throughout the conversation. They are a close couple, having been married for fifty odd years and it really shows in how comfortable they are with each other.

Before we left, they gave us a guided tour of their small menagerie of animals in the back. We saw their well fed, free range chickens running around in a large area in the back, then their house pigeons, and a sweet baby pigeon, something I'd never seen before. These pigeons were nothing like the scrawny, dirty things I've always seen in cities but well fed birds with clean and tidy feathers with a nice colour and sheen to them.

Finally we saw their huge black Hungarian Mangalica pig that they were fattening up. It was feeling particularly hot this afternoon, so it waddled out into the corner of its pigsty, relieved itself over the floor then proceeded to roll around in it's own pee. Lovely!

As a more hygienic alternative to this, Pista sprayed water over it and we watched as it lay on it's side and squirmed and squealed in obvious delight, something that made us all laugh.

It was after this that I looked at my watch and realised that we'd been away from my uncle's place for over two hours, so we bid our farewells and made our way back but now with a grin on both our faces at the memory of that happy pig...

Lunch with the family and happy reminiscences

2007-09-08T19:59:00.000+01:00

We drove back to my uncle's house and ate a lovely Hungarian meal that my aunt had prepared for us. Before this my uncle had popped out and picked up my God-son, Gabriel, and his younger sister, Andi, from nursery and they joined us for the meal.

Andi, at two and a half, a year younger than Gabriel, seemed a bit more capable at the lunch table. She broke off bits of bread from a large slice and used it to mop up the juice from her dinner plate when she'd finished whilst Gabriel was a bit lazier and played around more. He was also much shyer than Andi who warmed to us instantly. I remember that it had taken three days before Gabriel had come out of his shell during my previous, longer visit but here was Andi, this time, with no such similar reservations. The other half played peek-a-boo with her and she loved it!

Over dinner it became obvious that my aunt and uncle had misunderstood me on the phone, when I had rung to say that I was coming to visit, as they had got a room and a bed ready for us to stay the night.

"No, it's alright, we're only here to visit for the day. We need to be back in Budapest tonight so that we can pack and get ready to fly off tomorrow afternoon," I had to explain to them.

It was still scorching in the house and I suggested to the other half that we go for a little stroll around town to walk off the food and so that I could show her my grandma's old house and perhaps visit one of the neighbours.

We ambled along the narrow pavement past gardens each with guard dogs too hot to bark at us until we arrived by my grandma's house, a place thick with memories for me. I remember arriving here by car, straight from the airport, years back when both my mum and dad were still alive, a dust cloud following us along the then rocky road and my grandparents running out to greet us. My shyness caused in part by my poor Hungarian language skills always made me feel awkward when we arrived but they'd all kiss me on both cheeks, my grandma many times over, and make me feel at home and loved. We'd only visit Hungary every other year, since that was all we could afford, and I'd always be taller each time they saw me, something I recall that they ALWAYS commented on!

I remember the smells and sounds of the house, now locked up and slowly falling apart and I couldn't help but feel sad, wishing that time would stand still, in just this one place, so that I could relive those happy Summers over and over...

The Hospital Visit

2007-09-07T19:29:00.000+01:00

My grandma lay in bed, looking deflated, literally, from the jolly old lady that I remembered from my childhood. The doctors' didn't know what was wrong other than that there was something up with her stomach. I stood by one side of the bed and tentatively said hello. She looked confused but her deep blue eyes were still sharp and I thought that they looked beautiful.

She didn't know who I was though. At first she thought that I was her brother but then when we repeatedly said my childhood nickname (which embarrassingly translates into English as little white goose - apparently how I looked when I was born) I could finally see recognition cross her face.

She looked so fragile and seemed to fade in and out a bit but she still told me to visit more often. I introduced her to the other half and I realised that she'd understood what I'd said as she started to tell us to be good to each other and to never hurt each other, as her and her husband never had. It was sweet but also very sad. The other half cried a bit. Hospitals never bring back good memories.

I brushed a hand through my grandma's fine silver hair and told her that it still looked beautiful. She asked "Is it?" with almost a smile on her face but was now also starting to look more tired so we took this as cue to allow her to rest and said our goodbyes.

I felt bad for having to lie that I would come back to see her soon knowing that she probably wouldn't remember my promise though I think that it was worth it as it made her happy to hear me say it now.

We walked quietly back outside. I wondered if it would be the last time that I would see her. I remember her telling me, a few years previously, that she had never been ill until she hit 90.

But the sturdy old woman that she once was was now long gone. I didn't really know what else to do. It'd be all up to her now as to whether or not she'd want to go on. But then having outlived her husband and adopted daughter (my mum) and now lying helpless in a hospital bed, what would you choose?

Later on that day I gave my aunt some money to help with funeral costs, should the worst happen. I hoped it wouldn't but then having seen my grandma as she was now, a pale shadow of her former self, perhaps it would be for the best now?

A journey across the Great Hungarian Plain

2007-09-06T19:56:00.000+01:00

In the four and a half days that we'd spent there so far, we were having a great time in Budapest.

As mentioned in a previous post, I'd failed to get hold of my uncle to let him know that I was coming to the country with a possible visit out to him, his family and my grandmother in the offing.

However, on our very first day in Budapest, right after we'd walked into our hotel room and were unpacking, my mobile rang.

It was my aunt! I couldn't believe it. Had she somehow found out that we were coming? No, it turned out that she was ringing for an altogether different reason. My grandma was ill and in hospital and things didn't look good. But then when you are 93, I guess illnesses become more of a pray and hope type thing.

She was so surprised when I told her that I was in the country. We arranged to come down on the Friday to visit everyone and go and see my grandma in hospital too. It was lucky that she had called as originally we were planning to go down on the Thursday, unannounced and, as it was, it turned out that nobody would have been home!

So we were very fortunate, however unfortunate the circumstances of her call, that we had managed to get in touch.

I'd printed out train schedules before leaving the UK off the excellent Elvira Hungarian railways site and we went along on the Thursday to buy tickets for a 9:45 train leaving the following day. It turned out to be extremely easy and the cost of tickets was just plain silly. Just over four pounds for each of us.

The next day, though, we overslept slightly, so it was a bit of a mad dash to the station. Things wouldn't have been so bad but for the fact that when we arrived, there were two trains leaving at 9:45, both going to the same destination and both on platforms that were on opposite ends of the station! I frantically looked through my printed out schedule and saw something written on the paper for our train that matched one of the trains listed on the departure boards.

We had to jog down to catch it and I spotted someone in a Hungarian railways uniform lounging by the train of whom I asked, in Hungarian, if this was the train for Ujszsaz. "Not for Ujszasz", she corrected me, "But, yes, going through Ujszasz."

That was good enough for me, though afterwards, once we had settled into a carriage and caught our collective breaths, it did suddenly occur to me that she might have meant that it was going through Ujszasz without stopping on the way to its destination. I prayed not!

The train was quite old, and it was one of those with a corridor running along the left side and compartments with doors along the right. We walked along the train until we found a compartment that wasn't full of people and settled ourselves into the comfortable seats.

I said "Jo napot" (good day) to the one other occupant, a woman tucked into a seat by the window facing the direction of the train reading her book, as I remember during one of my Hungarian language classes, years ago, that it was deemed polite to do this whenever you walked into shops and/or train carriages. I knew that that was time well spent after all!

The train left right on time and it wasn't long before we had trundled away from the city and its suburbs and were crossing the flat Great Hungarian Plain. Fields of corn, sunflowers and the occasional vineyard broken up by small towns with stations made up of a single sign and sometimes a platform whizzed by. We only stopped once before I recognised the surroundings and station that marked Ujszasz, our destination, and we quickly disembarked (not helped by a really non-yielding door) to find my uncle waiting for us on the platform.

It was nice to see him again. He explained that we would drive back to the house and then straight off to the main town where my grandma was in hospital. As we drove back to his place he gave us a brief scenic tour of Ujszasz taking in the new school buildings in the town and the new nursery that my God son now attends.

It all looked much as I remembered it from my previous visits, though each time I go there always appears to be at least one more tarmac road than there was before. It was sizzlingly hot too, something that further evoked childhood memories of hot Summer holidays spent here.

My uncle's house was also much as I had remembered it from two years previous bar the fact that the room that I had slept in then was now back to being a storage room. It was even hotter inside and there were lots of flies buzzing around, something that a town with so many farms and livestock can't avoid.

Within a few minutes we were off again to Szolnok to see my grandma...

Budapest

2007-09-03T22:21:00.000+01:00

We woke up the next morning to find rather depressing looking grey clouds blotting out the sun. I sighed to myself and had visions of us wandering around Budapest huddled under my umbrella. But lo and behold, by the time we'd got ourselves sorted and ready to go, it started to show signs of brightening up.

Our first order of business was to find something to eat for breakfast. I rarely do hotel breakfasts as they force you to get up far too early when you're on holiday (a big no no in my book) and can charge you far more than you would pay for the same breakfast in a cafe next door. This was the case in New York last year and we never had a problem finding somewhere suitable to eat in Rome where otherwise our hotel would have charged us 7 euros for a single cup of juice and 8 euros for a small bowl of cereal! Ironically in Dubai, breakfast was included in the price but, like muppets, we completely forgot as we'd got so used to the routine of going out for breakfast in Rome it hadn't occurred to us that we could get it for free there!

Anyway, after a nice meal (in a cafe by the Basilica), and a scan through the two guide books that I'd bought (yes, I couldn't decide on which I'd preferred and they did complement each other quite well with one giving a good overview of walking routes and such like and the other giving you more detail on the background of places where you were going and handy tips that generally I wouldn't have known otherwise) we started our journey of exploration around Budapest.

Since we were by the Basilica, this was our first port of call. Last time I was here, my nephew and I climbed the 360 odd steps to get to the top of the dome only to discover that we could have taken a lift! This time I didn't make the same mistake twice and we were whisked up relatively quickly and with a lot less sweat than my last journey to the top with the added bonus of the fact that the clouds had now dissipated and the sun had come out.

It was turning out to be a lovely day for sightseeing!

Over the course of the next few days the weather got progressively better, the early cloud becoming wispier and wispier and breaking down much quicker until the Friday when we awoke to clear blue skies and temperatures touching the high 30s out in the countryside!

We walked most everywhere, and took the metro (Europe's oldest: circa 1896) from time-to-time to get from one side of the city to the other in double quick time. Budapest's metro is actually very good and trains never seemed as crowded as anything I've experienced in London. Perhaps this is because ticket prices for your typical local visitor from the Hungarian countryside are seen as too high and the numerous buses and trams make for a cheaper (though slower, in rush-hour) alternative.

As it was, a single fare was less than a pound and we once opted for a day travel card (the machines for which could be switched to English) when we knew we would be going backwards and forwards around the city a bit. Last time I bought a BudapestCard, a vehicle aimed squarely at tourists but which I now know from experience is a waste of money unless you are too lazy to buy a travelcard each day or do intend to traverse the city multiple times every day from a location in the suburbs. Also, the location of our hotel, right on the Danube between the two major bridges and within five minutes walk of the main pedestrianised shopping areas, somewhat negated the need for this as we could walk most places you'd want to.

So, over the next few days we took in all the sights including the other two other excellent scenic vantage points of Gellert Hill and the Fisherman's Bastion (where I'd highly recommend a walk behind the main well-trodden tourist road too for a peaceful tree-lined stroll back to the main square) and chilled out on the Thursday afternoon at the Széchenyi thermal baths, something that, surprisingly, I've never done in all my visits to the city before.

It was a sunny day with blue skies when we visited the baths in the City Park and such an interesting experience to boot. Though prices were all written out in English too, it was still all a bit confused but not quite knowing what to do was all part of the experience.

For instance the attendant who was letting people into the changing rooms was a bit "simple". His main job, in so far as we could tell, was to take your entry card and put it through a turnstile to gain you entry and exit. He told me in Hungarian that the rooms were full and that we'd have to wait which I translated to a number of non-Hungarian speakers behind us in the queue. After five minutes, with quite a queue building up, a local walked straight passed us and through the turnstile asking us why we were all waiting!

When I asked the attendant if we could go in too he acted as if he hadn't even noticed that there was a queue and let us through as if nothing untoward had happened. Very strange?!

The baths were lovely. You basically moved from pool to pool (both inside and out) trying out the different temperatures. Each had a sign telling you how long it was recommended you stay in (the hotter ones, no more than 10 mins.) and you basically just chilled out. There were lots of families, old men playing chess by the poolside and a number of bars and cafes strung around the outside pools outside of which you could sit and relax. We wished we gone there earlier on in the week as we probably would have gone back a few times at the end of each day.

Later on that evening, sitting outside in a restaurant on one of the main squares not too far from our hotel, we got yet another taste of freaky weather as a warm and pleasant evening suddenly turned nasty with, initially, gale force winds blowing everything in the square all over the place. The bonus was that the waiters showed us into a room around the side of the restaurant that was obviously used for private functions. It turned out to be quite a romantic evening with piped music, plush surroundings and a huge storm outside. Luckily the storm had abated, or at least the rainy part of it had by the time we left, so once again, another memorable evening was had by us both.

By Friday, we managed to take in all the sights bar the parliament tour, the tickets for which were sold out for the Thursday that we decided to go.

Our last full day, Friday, was to be spent visiting my family in the countryside, a nice contrast from the city.

To be continued...

A Stormy Start

2007-08-30T23:10:00.000+01:00

So we sorted ourselves out, unpacked and settled into our room for the five nights that we would be there. After the Red Bull Air Race was done and dusted, and the crowds were starting to disperse, we were ready to head out to check out the surrounding area.

That was until the sun and blue skies were blotted out by a huge dark cloud that appeared suddenly out of nowhere. Just as suddenly, almost as we were about to walk out the door, a huge wind blew up and it started to absolutely lash down with rain.
On the same day last year, just after 9pm, a huge storm had blown in and a number of people had been killed by flying debris so we retreated to the safety of our room and looked out on the riverside at people running for cover. It was now a full blown storm with thunder and lightning.

I wondered how such a freak storm could occur twice in two years on the exact same date and worried that the evening's festivities would be ruined. I watched the news on Hungarian TV and tried hard to decipher what they were saying in rapido Hungarian.

About an hour later the storm passed and just as it was starting to get dark, the skies cleared and unbelievably it dried out and the evening carried on as if nothing had happened. Large crowds started to gather just before 9pm and we headed down to a decent vantage point, almost in front of our hotel.

The firework display was beautiful and lasted just over 20 minutes. Some were launched from the bridge in front of us, the rest from bridges North and South respectively of where we stood.

By the time it was finished, we were a bit peckish but struggled to find somewhere to eat as most decent looking places seemed to be shut. This was the disadvantage of not having had a chance to get our bearings earlier. In the end we managed to get a table in the hotel restaurant, which turned out to be a good idea as the goulash soup that we ordered turned out to be just what we needed!

Nagyon Finom! (Very Tasty!)

Off to the country of the Magyars

2007-08-29T23:23:00.000+01:00

So after the chilled week in Rome and the mad, impulsive spontaneity that was our dash to Dubai for a ring, we were now set for the second of the (as originally planned) week long holidays in Europe.

Budapest, in Hungary, the country of my parents, was the destination and to be frank, I was a bit nervous as to how my Hungarian would hold up and if we would be able to meet up with any of my family out there.

What with all the rushing around from holiday to holiday, I didn't get a chance to ring my relatives in Hungary up until the week before we were due to go.

Essentially there are two groups of people that I generally visit whenever I've gone in the past (the last time having been two years ago now:

Those in Ujszasz
I go to this small town, 84km South East of Budapest, where my mum grew up, to visit my uncle, Gabi (short for Gabor) and his family (including my God-son Gabriel), my grandma and our old neighbours, Pista (Steve) and Veronka (Veronica) who used to be one of my mum's best friends in school.

Those in Ozd
I go to this town in the hills near the border with Slovakia and close to a beautiful national park, to visit my Godmother (also one of my mum's best friends) and her husband (both now in their 70s) . It's much more peaceful up in the hills but alas there are a lot less things to do too.

So I ring my uncle's number and I get a message (strangely in English) telling me that that is no longer a recognised number. I'm bemused...I try his mobile number. That also fails. "What?!"

So, brilliant. I'm coming to Hungary and I now have no way of sorting out a meeting with them!

I look up the train details on how to get to the town. It's only a 75 minute journey, so decide that regardless of whether or not I can get hold of them, we'll go along and see if they're in. If not, it'd be a nice trip to the countryside anyway...

Next I ring my Godmother. It connects. Hoorah! I talk to her and it turns out they will be home if I get a chance to come. The problem is that afterwards, I look up how I can get there and it turns out that it's a four hour journey by train, followed by a one hour car/bus journey. I seriously start to doubt that we'll get a chance to meet up with them as it would use up two days of our five day trip with one day already set aside for the much easier to get to Ujszasz.

I groan inwardly as I know my Godmother won't be very happy that I didn't come to see her. I've yet to call her up to apologise as I fear that I lack the language skills to explain myself fully.

Anyway, the journey to Budapest from Gatwick goes smoothly enough. It's early in the morning and we get a mini-cab to Victoria and then get the Gatwick Express out to the airport.

Confusion sets in for a while as "Malev", the Hungarian airline, isn't on the board listing which zone to go to for checking in. We have to go further into the airport to find a set of screens listing individual flights and check in zones. Quirkily, the zones go something like A-F and then skip to Z, which is the one that I need for my flight.

The plane was comfortable, (more so than 'Emirates' which I am starting to think is rather over-rated) the journey less than two hours and incredibly, for the first time in a month, our luggage comes out quickly.

I have to rely on my Hungarian language skills a lot sooner than I thought I would as it turns out that the driver of the cab I've arranged to take us to our hotel, the Sofitel, doesn't really speak English.

The other half looks on impressed as I gab on in Hungarian and sort out our return journey too and I feel relieved that I've managed to deal with the situation without too much hassle.

It's hot, 30+, and sunny outside and there's not a lot of traffic, August 20th being a national holiday in Hungary for St Stephen's Day, and we only really slow down a bit as we approach the hotel overlooking the Danube when there are some crowds for the Red Bull Air Race that is taking place a bit later.

Unfortunately we then had to wait an hour for our room to be made ready but are given complimentary drinks vouchers. The hotel's atrium looks very impressive and we marvel at the model of an old plane suspended from the ceiling.

Eventually, post-drinks we make it to our room and it's very good too. We look out the large windows and see a beautiful view of the Danube and the chain bridge across it.

An hour later and the Red Bull planes start to whizz by, We watch from our window whilst we relax after the journey. They'll also be a big fireworks display at 9pm tonight.

It's a great start to the holiday and I can't believe how well things have worked out for us over the past weeks...

In between...

2007-08-28T20:49:00.000+01:00

In between Dubai and Budapest, I won a pair of tickets to see KT Tunstall live in a small, intimate gig in Covent Garden after which I discovered a very good (and apparently the oldest in London) chippie across the road.

The quest for The Ring

2007-08-27T15:55:00.000+01:00

We had an excellent week in Rome and the plan was that a fortnight later we would be off to Budapest for yet another week so that I could introduce the other half to the country of my parents.

But, as things are wont to do, plans changed a few days after we had got back. As I mentioned before, I hadn't bought a proper engagement ring as not even the other half had any idea of what type of ring she'd like (when I'd surreptitiously raised the point in the past) so we'd thought that the weekend before we headed back off on holiday we'd go down do Hatton Garden ("the centre of London’s jewellery trade since way back in the mists of medieval time" according to their website) and see if we could find a ring there.

But then someone at work mentioned that buying a ring in Dubai, even with the cost of flying out and staying there would still work out saving us a lot more over Hatton Garden's prices. I did a bit of research on the interwub and sure enough a lot of others seemed to be saying the same thing.

So on the Thursday, we did a crazy thing, booked a flight and hotel out there and come Friday night we were flying out on a madcap scheme to get a ring without having the foggiest about the place that we were going to! In fact it was only thanks to a last minute purchase of a Lonely Planet city guide to Dubai at the airport that we even managed to find our way around at all!

Unfortunately the flight out was delayed by an hour thanks to a passenger who'd checked their luggage in but hadn't turned up for the flight (thanks a lot!) and then our luggage took a long time to arrive at the other end too. So rather than turning up at 3 in the morning, we didn't make it to the hotel until almost 5am.

We then got checked into a room only for me to walk in and find someone sound asleep in the bed, snoring away! I switched off the lights and walked out. In so far as I knew, they hadn't woken up. The receptionist apologised profusely and upgraded us to a larger room on the executive floor (which meant that we had to swipe a card through a reader on the lift to get it to stop there, which was pretty cool.)

Dubai was nice too. Very westernised but bloody hot! It averaged over 40 degrees every day and was 45 on our last day there (Monday.) At night it hovered around about 35 degrees.

So, with the help of our trusty guide book, we worked our way around the shopping malls (including one with a 450m ski slope inside) and gold and diamond centres in our hunt for a ring. To cut a long story, slightly shorter, we found one, or rather, got one custom built, on our second day out there.

Due to the fact that we were flying off the next day, the jewellery store manager drove us off to their workshop, ironically right next door to the gold and diamond centre that we had visited the night before, where we sat down in a nice air conditioned room with six Indians who each specialised in a part of the manufacture of our ring. One made the ring itself, another shaped and sized it, another fixed the mounting and measured for the size of the diamonds, another fitted the diamonds and a final one polished the ring. (The sixth guy didn't seem to get involved with our ring.) At each stage we were shown the progress of the ring and looked on approvingly.

The final product was then given to us to take outside and look at in natural sunlight. It sparkled so brightly that I have to admit, it took my breath away. It was beautiful, it was perfect and came in well under the budget that I'd set myself!

I got the certificates of authentication for each of the diamonds (the ring has three, one central and two smaller on the sides) and we left to enjoy the rest of our quick trip in the knowledge that the mission was well and truly accomplished.

To cap off the success story, I got the ring independently valued, just before we went to Budapest and it was valued at easily more than the value that we paid for it plus the price of the trip and boarding.

Cor Blimey!

Roman Holiday

2007-08-18T17:09:00.000+01:00

Well, carrying on with the busy, busy, busy theme, Rome was so cool. We spent the first few days strolling around the main sites. The ancient Pantheon (lit only from a large hole in the centre of its dome) was a stones throw away from our hotel (in fact we could see it out of our window) and starting from there we worked our way around all the points of the compass.

Each night we would eat in a different restaurant (we only had two duff/tourist/rip-off meals) and paused from Italian food on Wednesday when we went to the Hard Rock Cafe where, even though we had to wait over two hours for a table, we actually had a good time and a nice tasty burger each too, and a long stroll back to our hotel afterwards to walk it all off. This is when we discovered that Rome in Summer at half-one in the morning is still a buzzing, vibrant city.

Of all the sights to be seen, Saint Peter's was my favourite. It literally takes your breath away. The sheer scale of it has to be seen to be believed. We visited early one evening and there was no queue whatsoever. In fact most everywhere we went in Rome had nothing bad queue-wise.

Florence, on the other hand, was queue central! We queued for an hour to go up to the top of the dome in it's Basilica and though the three-hundred plus steps were a bit knackering for some, the view was certainly worth it. The other half also enjoyed window shopping down some of Florence's swankier haute couture streets. It amazes me how she knows so much about fashion labels that most people have never heard of.

We finished our visit to Florence off with a visit to the Galleria dell'Accademia to see Michelangelo's "David" which was absolutely awesome (though no photos were allowed) and for which there were no queues at almost six in the evening as most tourist groups had headed off by then before we caught our train back to Rome.

We spent Friday afternoon in Pincio Park, overlooking Rome, having fun riding around in a two person pedalo (which is when I discovered that the other half is an awful backseat driver) and then did an afternoon trip on the Saturday out to Tivoli to see Hadrian's Villa, which wasn't really all that impressive, though being out in the open on a day when the sun was scorching didn't help, and the Villa d'Este which has impressive gardens with beautiful cool fountains and waterfalls a-plenty.

By the end of the trip neither of us wanted to leave but we finished off having a nice meal on the same table where I had proposed. A perfect end to a perfect holiday.

Little did we know at the time that just a week later, we would both be in Dubai!

But then, that's another story...

The Proposal

2007-08-16T22:23:00.000+01:00

Well, boy has it been a packed few weeks for me!

Rome was brilliant. I'd even go so far as to say it was the best holiday that I've ever had.
Okay, so perhaps that view is tinted by the fact that I got engaged on the first night that I was out there but even without that, Rome is such a beautiful and interesting city to explore.

It's the first time that I've actually managed to work myself through a guidebook so thoroughly too. In the space of the eight days that we were there, we managed to cover every part of Rome, in some way or another, and also even managed to hop on a train up to Florence for the day.

The first night, of course was special. I splashed out on a nice meal for the two of us on the rooftop terrace of our hotel. It was slightly pre-tourist season (which kicked off in earnest in August) so the restaurant was not that full and we had turned up past the time that most would have had their dinner.

It was a warm night with a full moon and we were sat at a table overlooking the terrace and a splendid view of Rome was to be had with various church domes and statues lit up on the horizon.

I felt relaxed. I still wasn't sure if tonight was the night that I was going to "go for it" but I had a ring in my pocket, just-in-case! A pianist played in the background and the meal was exquisite. We laughed at the fact that the menu that I had been given had prices on whilst the other half's didn't.

They gave us some complementary sparkling white wine to start off with and then small spoons of pre-course munchies to clear our palettes between courses. We ordered a lovely bottle of rose wine which perfectly complimented our food and then as the meal proceeded and we talked about the future and how happy we were the sound of "Fly me to the moon" wafted across to us.

#Fill my life with song
And let me sing forevermore
You are all I hope for
All I worship and adore
In other words please be true
In other words I love you#

The moment was so perfect, that I couldn't have scripted it better myself.

I held her hand and said, "How would you like to make it a more permanent thing? I love you...Will you marry me?"

I remember her looking momentarily stunned. Her eyes grew as wide as saucers and her jaw dropped but after a few seconds it suddenly dawned on her what was happening and what I had asked and the word that I had been waiting for expectantly passed from her lips in a whisper "Yes."

We hugged and kissed and suddenly the world was a better place to be in.

I hadn't actually bought her a ring (since at that moment in time, even she didn't know what type of ring she would like) so instead I gave her my mum's engagement ring as a kind of place-holder. Whilst it was probably slightly large, she loved it and for one night only it fit her finger well. Her ring finger got thinner a day later and she couldn't wear it for fear of it slipping off but for that one night, it was perfect!

After the meal, we walked out of the hotel and strolled around the nearby streets, which bustle with people all night through, but now as an engaged couple who were happy and so in love...

(ps: Pictures are now up on doobrie.co.uk) More words to come...

Impulse

2007-08-09T21:57:00.000+01:00

Not having even got around to properly blogging about Rome as yet, including the proposal and acceptance of marriage on the first night on a rooftop terrace overlooking the city with a full moon and a pianist singing Sinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon" in the background, I now find myself doing what is quite possibly the maddest, most impulsive thing in my life.

Today, the fiancee and I booked a flight for tomorrow to Dubai for a long weekend so that we can get her a good deal on a ring! How wacky is that?!

We had planned a quiet weekend going to Hatton Garden to find a nice ring but then we heard how you could get things so much cheaper in Dubai, even taking the flight and hotel costs into account, that we just went a bit crazy and booked a last minute deal for a VERY good price.

We are flying with Emirates and staying in a five star hotel for three nights and a friend of mine's sister works at Heathrow so has put us on the list for the executive lounge to boot!

My head has yet to stop spinning!!!!!

Ciao Roma!

2007-07-28T00:00:00.000+01:00

On the morning of our departure to Rome we got up horribly early at 04:45.

Why, you may ask, at such an unearthly time when our flight was at 09:35 and Heathrow is a mere 30 minutes away by car?

Well, I'd been reliably informed by Paul, a friend of mine who works at Heathrow, that the queues were manic and that we'd be better off getting there three hours before the flight rather than the recommended two and the other half needed time to wash her hair! *grin*

Thankfully the mini-cab driver that I'd booked a few days earlier turned up though was less than impressed when we made him wait fifteen minutes and scowled silently at us through the entire journey. We were in good spirits though, made it to the airport quickly and then found a mammoth queue of one person in front of us at the check-in! Thanks Paul!

Then we got a shock when the other half put her bag on to be weighed and it was 31 kilos, a whole 11 kilos overweight! But the check-in attendant seemed to be in a good mood, probably because she hadn't had to start dealing with harassed, late running, long queuing passengers so far that morning and she let it go by even pointing to the +1 and saying, with a grin on her face in a nice Italian accent, "I bet that that is your bag?", "You realise that you will not be able to buy anything out there as they will make you pay much on the way back?"

Being so early also meant that we got through passport control quickly and managed to have a nice breakfast before the crowds arrived.

The journey after this also went smoothly with only the inconvenience of having to wait almost an hour and a half for our luggage at the other end, almost as long as our flight had been!

I'd arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport as that had been a surprisingly cheap thing to do and we were thankful for the air conditioned car that drove us off into the city as the temperature in Rome was roastingly hot.

The driver had a friendly nature but didn't speak a word of English. Just before we headed off he fumbled in his glove compartment, got out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote three numbers onto it in a triangular formation: 5, 8 and 7 and then started speaking to us in Italian, obviously trying to explain something.

We looked on bemused and I wondered if this was some weird type of maths geometry puzzle or Da Vinci code that we had to solve before we could leave.

Then he started making circular motions and "brum brum" noises and mimed a steering wheel at us when the penny finally dropped and we realised that he was confirming our return time as 7am on the 5th of the 8th!

"Si, si", I replied to confirm that we had understood and with a wide grin and a relieved look on his face we started out.

The hotel was lovely and I almost jumped with joy when I saw our room. Last year's long weekend Christmas shopping trip to New York that had cost me an arm and a leg had ended up with us having a rather underwhelmingly small room. But here in Rome we had a beautifully large, air conditioned room at the end of a corridor with huge windows from which we could see the Pantheon, a lovely rustic red beamed ceiling and a huge queen-sized bed.

It was heaven!

The long and short of it

2007-07-22T22:40:00.000+01:00

Both from Inner Mongolia, Bao Xishun (7'9"ish) meets He Pingping (2'4")

If I was a rich man....

2007-07-19T07:06:00.000+01:00

I'd buy this... *

On further consideration, I'd probably not. I'd have to be sooooo rich that money didn't matter to even consider it. But then if I were that rich I would probably build my own life size fully working Transformer instead...or alleviate world poverty. We can but dream, eh?

* (Oops, the E-bay auction for a full set of Transformers for a cool $1,000,000 has transformed into a cancelled auction. Q'uel surprise!)

(PS: Ouch, some of my blogged pics have disappeared. Will try to sort it out .)

Peace And Quiet

2007-07-15T23:22:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, being a rare nice day during our not-so-nice so-called Summer, I took the opportunity to go to the cemetery to visit my parents' graves.

This entails a quick trip on the Silverlink out of Acton Central for a massive one stop journey to Willesden Junction and then a similarly huge one stop journey on the Bakerloo Line/Silverlink to Kensal Green. I know that two stops doesn't sound like much of a distance but it would take an hour to walk otherwise and it was a rather humid day, so I didn't really fancy turning up all sweaty and knackered.

As it was, I missed the first Silverlink train as it had left a minute before it was supposed to and the one I eventually caught, fifteen minutes later, actually left two minutes before its scheduled time. Aparrently, I was told by a passer-by, this is quite common on this branch.

I've not yet had a gravestone put on my mum's grave as I'm a bit concerned by the subsidence of all the other new grave stones in the area where she is buried. Instead I've fenced off the area around the grave and put silk flowers down to colour it up a bit.

However I discovered that the downside to the little white wire fence I had put around was that whilst it looks nice and tidies up the grave no end, it perhaps isn't as robust as I had first thought.

I turned up on Saturday morning to find the left side of the fence, broken having been pulled completely pulled inwards and warped. It didn't look like some kind of deliberate act. I'm guessing that it was more than likely to have been a wild animal in the cemetery trying to run through the fence, getting snagged and pulling it along to get free. It wasn't too bad. It would appear that someone had picked up the fence pieces and left them in a nice pile on top of the grave, so all I had to do was twist them back into place for them to be usable once more.

Also, to top it all off, since my last visit at the tail-end of April, the weeds had been busy multiplying. *sigh* It took me over an hour of work to clean up the grave by which time the sun had come out and I was thoroughly hot and aching all over. But it was worth it. Check out the before and after pictures and you should be able to see a nice contrast.

Unlike my last visit, it was really peaceful in this part of the cemetery and during the few breaks that I took, to let my back and legs to recover, my only company was a lone crow cawing and a squirrel scampering about across a fence by me and up and down a tree a few feet away.

"Hmmm", I wondered if it was the wire fence wrecker?

Music Is My Life

2007-07-12T12:09:00.000+01:00

It's been a very musical week for me.

I love going to gigs. You can't beat going to see someone whose music you like, seeing them perform live in front of you and depending on the type of music, perhaps even in an intimate setting.

Well, I had one of those weeks when a few artists popped up in a big one week clump and if I wanted to see them at all, it'd had to be this week or nothing.

The first gig of the week was a tad unexpected, in that I only bought the ticket on the day. Tori Amos was playing at Hammersmith and despite being on her mailing list (yes, I do sign up for these things as sometimes you get more than just junk mail out of them) back when her tickets went on sale ages ago, I got no prior warning. Boo! Crap mailing list!

So I accidentally found out a few days after her tickets went on sale, logged on and tried to get something decent and I guess that I wasn't too surprised to discover only standing room in the back was available. So I passed.
I then forgot all about her gigs until I got an e-mail on Tuesday from a ticket seller's mailing list telling me what was coming up at the Hammersmith Apollo. (I also have the Shepherd's Bush Empire on a similar mailing as both venues are so easy for me to get to.)

I didn't really think too much of it but clicked on Tori Amos just out of curiosity to see if it had now sold out and lo and behold, a single seat only a dozen rows from the front came up! I snapped it up still annoyed at the extra service charge type costs that they add onto the ticket price despite the fact that I would be picking it up from the box office and went along to see a mighty fine concert.

Then the very next day it was off to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank to see Suzanne Vega live. I'm also on her mailing list, but this one is decent in that she offered pre-sale tickets which I snapped up quickly and ended up with rather excellent front row seats!

I took the +1 along to this concert (having lent her Suzanne Vega's latest CD) and she was a bit worried that at the end of a long working day, the soft, melodic tones of SV's music might send her to sleep, front row or not. Luckily that wasn't the case and she really enjoyed it. SV engages the audience really well and gave us some nice patter in between songs, even almost accidentally leading into the wrong song at one point, only to be corrected by her cheeky bass player. The only minor hassle we had was finding somewhere to eat beforehand that wasn't packed. In the end we had to settle for the South Bank's cafe and some rather pricey sandwiches.

Then to wrap up the musical week, it was yet another artist's mailing list to the rescue. Live Earth sounded like quite a good gig at the time that it was being promoted but has since been a bit of a TV viewing figures failure. We entered the SMS text ballot to get tickets but both failed to be selected which was a bit depressing when you have your heart set on something and it doesn't pan out. (Though I'm still holding out to win big on the lottery one of these days!)

As it was, early in the morning, just after I had got into work, I logged into one of my webmail accounts to find that an e-mail had literally just that minute arrived. It was from the Corinne Bailey-Rae mailing list and since she was performing at Live Earth, 10 pairs of seating and standing tickets were up for grabs on a first-come-first-served basis! Needless to say I jumped at the chance, quickly logged in and got us a pair of seated tickets straight away. Result!

Despite the poor reception around the world and the controversy over the legitimacy of getting rock stars to be role models for an environmentally friendly way of living, the concert was brilliant. Our seats were bloody good too, just to the right of the stage. I felt sorry for all those who were standing in the blazing sunshine for 10 hours. Our seats were comfy and we had a great time. We even spotted a Bill Gates-look-a-like on the tube on the way to the concert; or perhaps it was the man himself? Who knows?

And all-in-all a great week of music.

Because, nuns can have fun too :)

2007-07-11T07:05:00.000+01:00

Holidays, holiday, holidays

2007-07-02T12:35:00.000+01:00

I'm starting to suffer foreign country withdrawal symptoms. It's been a whole six months since I've left the country and as much as I love London and its relative safety(!), it's nonetheless nice to get out and see other parts of the world too to expand horizons, gain new perspectives and whatnot.

So, first I'm off to Rome with the girlfriend on her birthday at the end of this month for a week. We've booked a lovely hotel and I've sorted out a car to pick us up at the airport (it didn't cost that much extra) and drop us back on our return. We'll spend a few days exploring the city and then head up to Florence for a day too.

Then, since that's only for a week, we're both off to Budapest on the 20th of August for another week, so that I can show her where my ancestors came from and stun her with my crappy Hungarian.

I've booked a hotel with great reviews and with a guaranteed view across the Danube (which I know from experience will be beautiful.)

The 20th also happens to be St Stephens Day, a national holiday in Hungary as he's the national saint, so there will be a 25 mins firework display in the evening over the Danube and the Red Bull Air Race will also be in town. We should get a brillant view of all this from our hotel balcony.

Then I'll go off to see my family on one of the days too.

How's that for organisation? Now I can't wait to head off. Just 26 days to go...

Welcome To Springfield

2007-06-30T23:14:00.001+01:00

Went to see Shrek 3 today. I actually quite enjoyed it. It was a decent way to chill out for 90 mins this afternoon out of the annoyingly almost constant rain and the reality of all the failed bombing attacks going on at the moment.

Granted, staying at home is probably a better bet than going to a place of public gathering but then I'm not really the stay at home type.

Also saw the cool "The Simpsons Movie" advert. Very funny!

Anyway, the point of this blog entry is, try out this cool feature on the Simpsons Movie website. Create your own Simpsons avatar. Go on, it'll waste a few minutes...

This is my one. Scary, eh?

iPhone

2007-06-29T07:05:00.000+01:00

Yes it's finally out (in the US anyway.)

Here's a pretty good video review (for so long as it stays up) courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. The iPhone looks pretty cool though I don't think that it supports very good internet browsing speeds at the moment which is a big shame.

I'm not one for going with the crowd on things like this. The only reason that I never got an iPod is because everyone else had one. So I got a nice Creative Zen instead. It may be twice the size and weight but it does what I want and it's not an iPod.

I get annoyed by all those people who use their iPods on buses and trains with the prepackaged crappy earphones that leak sound so badly that you're guaranteed a tinny rendition of whatever the person sitting anywhere near you is listening to. It's like the late 80's/early nineties all over again when crappy sound leaking earphones were the norm. Then decent ones started to come out at mass-market affordable prices and now with the iPod, we're back to square one.

Anyway, I'll wait and see on the iPhone. I hope that through competition it'll encourage a bit more innovation with what's a bit of a boring mobile phone market at the moment.

Apologies for the "Sponsor's Message" before it. Very annoying for something that can be freely linked to and isn't hosted directly by WSJ by it's only 14 secs long and the rest makes up for it.

A different point of view

2007-06-26T12:07:00.000+01:00

Very Cool

2007-06-17T10:50:00.000+01:00

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

The Highs and Lows of London Town

2007-06-15T21:00:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday was a nice day and the other half was off doing her own thing, so I went into London to see 'Ocean's Thirteen' (which I and the audience all actually enjoyed) and then walked across the river (though not literally, I did use Charing Cross Bridge) to The South Bank Centre, camera in hand, to partake of the weekend of 'musical delights' celebrating the reopening of the Centre and the refurb. of The Royal Festival Hall.

And, I've not seen so many middle class white people in one place at the same time since the Queen's jubilee celebration a few years ago.

Nevertheless, the sun was shining and the atmosphere was jovial. I strolled around at leisure dipping in and out of various 'live events' of which, to be frank, there simply weren't enough off. There was a lot of waiting around for something to happen in a lot of places, though since most people weren't really going anywhere, I guess that this was fine for most.

I got to see some strange dancing acrobats, a collection of sheds as an art exhibit, a wonderful old routemaster bus, a very cool 'walk in' fountain, various (unfortunately) forgettable music acts and Billy Bragg leading a lot of guitarists in a mass play-a-long type thing, which in his own words sounded like a load of "angry buzzing bees."

I only hung around for a few hours in the late afternoon, early evening and headed back to the 'safe' side of the river to buy a copy of Forza Motorsport 2' to keep me occupied for the rest of the evening.

Yesterday, I left work a bit earlier than usual to get my hair cut back in the old barber's in Northfields that I've been going to since I was small. Trying to figure out the fastest way to get to Northfields wasn't easy and in the end I opted to walk down to Paddington and get a train through to West Ealing from where I could walk (or if lucky catch a bus) down to the barbers.

Someone at work had told me that it was only a fifteen minute walk to Paddington, so I was quite surprised when, even at my brisk walk, it took me over 20 minutes walking diagonally from Marble Arch to Praed Street.

I love walking down new roads linking up unknown bits of London in my brain that I'd never been down before. Unfortunately the roads in this area curved and befuddled my brain. I knew that I needed to go North West but ended up a fit further East than I should have and ended up missing the train that I wanted to take.

However on the way I had an interesting encounter with a woman.

'Hello' she said in posh voice as I turned a corner onto a busy road. Still trying to find my bearings I was a bit caught out by someone actually randomly talking to me in London, which is sadly a rare thing in general nowadays, so "Hello" was all my brain, as I rushed past her, could muster in reply. She didn't say anything else and I suddenly realised that she was in fact propositioning me. It dawned on me as my bearings returned that here I was walking along the infamous Sussex Gardens part of Paddington where 'working girls' doth reside! She was quite pretty in a clean, posh voiced, mixed race, tidy bleached dread-locked hair type way and I'm sure that business goes well with her.

Then on the way back from the barbers, barnet chopped by a maniacal barber who pummeled my head such that I felt like I'd been in a fight with a heavyweight boxer, stuck in traffic on a bus going nowhere, I hop off only to find myself approaching a bunch of armed police standing around chatting outside Acton Town station. Whatever next?!

Fortunately the rest of the walk home was completely uneventful. *Phew!*

Tonight, despite the bad reviews, I'm off to see 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' for a bit of escapism and tomorrow I'm off to Asda to buy a small TV for an elderly (81 years old, I think) friend of mine whose old 14 inch TV has given up the ghost. I'm hoping that, box and all, I'll be able to carry the TV back to her place in Westbourne Park without doing my back in too much!

Then perhaps, weather allowing, at some point over the coming days, I'll try out this.

What a great, well written true-life story

2007-06-15T12:28:00.000+01:00

"How victim snared ID thief - She chased down woman who had given her 6 months of hell"

Made for a great lunchtime read.

Who?

2007-06-11T12:29:00.000+01:00

If only real life subway travel was as wacky as this!

2007-06-06T12:08:00.000+01:00

New Olympic Logo is bloody awful!

2007-06-05T12:04:00.000+01:00

Please, please, please petition against it! It may not do any good but it may make you feel better.

The petition has now closed with this note explaining why:

"Thanks to everyone who signed the petition.

Almost 50,000 signatures speaks volumes.I have decided to close the petition as it becomes clear that the logo is here to stay - there is little point in damaging the reputation of our Olympic Games, that was never the intention. The protest has been effectively made.If anybody else wants to take up the gauntlet, of course, that is their right....creating an account on gopetition is very easy. "

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/12539.html

The New Wembley

2007-06-04T18:30:00.000+01:00

The notes of #We're on our way to Wembley!# bobbled around in my head on Friday afternoon as I left work early to head home, grab a bite to eat and then head off to the newly rebuilt stadium.

Despite living in West London, and for many years only being one bus ride away from Wembley, I'd only been to football games at the stadium two or three times in the past, back in the days when it was easy to get hold of tickets to football games most anywhere. Since the days of mass sponsorship of the Premiership, football leagues and internationals, matches are definitely not so accessible any more.I had to buy an annual membership to the England Fans Club to get this ticket.

I can remember buying tickets on the day going to my first ever match at Loftus Road to see a goal-less draw between QPR and Liverpool. Nonetheless, I was excited by the chance to see all those players I had only ever seen on TV before.

I was no less excited as I sat on the train approaching Wembley and got a nice glimpse of the arch over the stadium glinting in the sunlight. Okay, since they've erected it, I've seen the arch loads of times. I got a great close-up on New Year's Eve at the Arena next door but this was something different. Now I was GOING to Wembley.

As much as I'd have preferred that they kept the twin towers this still felt special. I was excited!

The train journey had taken me a bit longer than expected, despite no delays or anything else of note so I was at Wembley Park station with about 40 mins. to spare before kick off.

But the crowds! There were thousands of people, heads bobbing up-and-down in front of me walking down Wembley Way (apparently now called Olympic Way but will always be Wembley Way to me.)

I walked off briskly, bought two programmes for a fiver each from the one vendor
that, for some reason, nobody was going near (everyone, like sheep, went for the first guy) and made good progress until I got to the ramp leading up to the stadium proper. Here, things went at a much slower pace. I made it to my entry gate only to see a sign saying that people in my block should use a gate further along. I wondered why but that was soon to become much clearer!

With just twenty or so minutes to go now until kick off, most of the people were now in their seats so by the time I made it through the narrow turnstile and the area behind the stands that encircled the stadium was relatively empty.

This area reminded me of Earl's Court. All concrete and functionality but no character. Concession stands as far as the eye could see selling the same drinks and food. But it was certainly spacious and that was nice. And I don't think that I've ever seen so many toilets in one place in all my life. (In fact I haven't as no single building in the world has as many.) There were male and female toilets every couple of metres!

I bought myself a small coke (£2.20) and headed for my seat. I knew that I was in the lower tier, behind the goal, but what I hadn't realised was:

(a) My seat was right at the top of the tier with a concrete wall behind and an overhand from the next tier above me!

(b) I couldn't see the arch from where I was sat which scuppered my changes of getting some nice pictures of the landmark.

(c) The Brazilian supporters section was located just to my right about three metres away with no segregation. This was why I had to enter by another gate.

Although it felt a bit weird, as it turned out having just a wall behind you meant that you could stand as much as you wanted without getting in any one's way, so that wasn't too bad. The only problem was that the marshals kept on insisting that everyone in the back row sit down for health and safety reasons. It was a losing argument for them though as all we had to do was point at the Brazilian supporters, most of whom were standing, singing and dancing their way through the match and say "We'll sit down after they do" to shut them up.

The leg room and width of the seats was also really good, the best of any football stadium that I've ever been to, though width wasn't such an issue as it eventually became apparent that the seat beside me was vacant along with the seat in front.

The Brazilians were a noisy bunch, bongo drumming throughout most of the match but that just added to the atmosphere and made it more of an experience for those of us who were close to them. This friendly atmosphere didn't decrease their competitiveness at all though. Some
of them snarled at us and some England fans snarled back. When we were 1-0 up they did quieten down a bit for a while but came back with a vengeance at the end when they got their last gasp equaliser.

England supporters are a funny bunch too. Some of them were a bit wasted and could have done with a bit of calming down. There was a boy who looked all of ten or eleven years old a few rows in front of me with a mouth that should be washed out with soap and water. Despite being a friendly, I felt some sections of the English crowd were a bit too angry for my liking. I can see why we get such a bad reputation. There's a thin line between passion and hostility which a few of them crossed from time-to-time.

It was an enjoyable game though and I savoured the experience despite the result. I walked out seconds after the equaliser but it still took me 25 minutes to get onto a train as the crowds were enormous and due to congestion at the station the crowd was held back for about 10 minutes.

Roll on the next game against Israel on 8th September. Hmmm, I hope that the security is tight for that one!

Keeping it short...Literally

2007-06-04T12:50:00.000+01:00

Being really (REALLY) bored the other night, I imported all my blog entries into MS-Word to get a word and character count.

So far, approximately, to date, I've written 73,193 words in 316,214 characters. Which worryingly gives me an average word length of only just over four letters...

Now where's that Thesaurus? I need to start using much more preponderant words!

(By the way, this post comes in at an average of just under five letters per. word, so not much of an improvement there then!)

One Step At A Time

2007-06-01T12:30:00.000+01:00

So the girlfriend and I have been going out for a while now and we were told by one of our friends that it's obvious that we're still in our "honeymoon period."

But travelling from one side of London to the other is definitely a hassle, and since we can't claw back that time lost, the best thing that we can do is to look into ways to improve this aspect of our lives.

Okay, so it's not as if we live in different parts of the country or even in different countries like some people in relationships do, but nevertheless, it can still take up to 2 hours to get door-to-door and that is a chore. (And it also rhymes.)

Originally the other half thought about buying a place of her own a bit closer to me but, to be frank, I was lucky that I managed to get a place here seven and a half years ago. Right now there's no way that she can afford to buy a place anywhere near me.

On the other hand, if we combined incomes we could, but despite the intense feeling we have for each other there's still that little voice in our heads saying "Come on! You've only been going out for ten months. That's a BIG step!"

And that little voice is right. We both know that it is.

So, we've decided to take the slightly smaller, more manageable step of renting a place together for a year or so and if after that period we are still on speaking terms and haven't killed each other, taking the bigger step of buying a place together.

Furniture and appliance-wise I can shift my stuff into the rented flat (saving money) and then rent out my flat.When we are ready to buy a place together, I can sell the old flat, sell off my company shares and we can combine incomes to get a deposit and mortgage on what will hopefully be a larger, nicer place.

Hmmmm, now if only we could agree on where to rent something. But, one step at a time...

Shake!

2007-05-30T09:10:00.000+01:00

I didn't have the best of journeys home yesterday. For some reason the bus that I take at Shepherd's Bush didn't turn up for half an hour and some people had already been waiting for 25 minutes before me.

So you can imagine the free-for-all scrum that ensued when the bus did arrive. It made me realise that perhaps a rich man could easily get through the eye of an needle so long as there was a bus that they've been waiting almost an hour for on the other side!

Once on, my twenty minute journey was akin to being squashed into a sardine can with the added bonus of there being a singing drunk, a praying Muslim and two crying babies in close proximity.

Incredibly people were still polite as they disembarked, actually saying "Excuse me" rather than barging their way through as happens sometimes on the Tube. It's probably because we realised that we were all in the same boat, having waited so long, and that agro wasn't really needed when all you wanted to do was get out to the relative fresh air of the streets.

It's amazing that each year my travelcard costs more and more but the service I get from Transport For London gets more overcrowded and less pleasant. Lots of people on the bus were obviously not too bothered by this as I could clearly see and hear that they hadn't touched the Oyster Card reader to pay for their journey. Bus drivers are unperturbed by this as they also don't want the agro that asking people to pay or get off would entail.

Basically, the bendy bus that I take to and from work is a free service for a large majority of the travellers on it. It was raining yesterday, so the bus made a convenient one or two stop shuttle service for a lot of people. In particular, I noticed that although we waiting absolutely ages for the bus, the number of people getting off within the first three stops was incredible.

I breathed a big sigh of relief as I got off the bus but the fun didn't just stop there for me either. There was a huge crowd at the bus stop blocking the pavement as I got off and straight into that crowd came a bloke on his bike, riding the pavement like he owned it and pushing people out of the way.

I reached out and put my arm out to stop him running me over and the next thing I know he's pointing at my leg to a pit bull behind him in the crowd, and shouting "shake!"

The momentum of the guy on the bike had carried him past me and I was still in a crowd so the dog didn't know whose leg to lock onto and "shake" so I briskly walked off and crossed the road away from him without looking back and until I was well clear.

Am now starting to realise that perhaps I need to move to a nicer area.

*sigh* If only I could afford it!

Bad Omens

2007-05-29T12:32:00.000+01:00

Last Wednesday

Bit of a late write up but better late than never...

As a big Liverpool FC supporter I was really looking forward to last Wednesday. Liverpool were in the final of the Champions League, the second time that they'd been there in three years. I sometimes found it hard to concentrate that day at work as I was actually feeling really excited/apprehensive about the match ahead.

I sorted out a good venue to watch the game by reading up on the LFC official web site forums to see where fellow London fans were going.

The previous two years (for the FA Cup and European finals) we'd all found ourselves in the basement of a bar just around the corner from Barbican tube station.

Two years ago it was called The Extra Time Bar, then last year Masque(?!) and this year it was (according to someone who'd checked out venues) shut altogether. Of course, we should have realised that a bar that changed names so dramatically was struggling to keep afloat but the atmosphere there for the last two years had been the closet to being at the match without actually being at the match.

Two years ago when we were 3-0 down at half time and I was so despondent that I was about to walk out and go home, everyone in the bar started singing "You'll Never Walk Alone." I joined in, never left and the rest is, of course, history.

Liverpool incredibly fought back with 3 goals in 6 minutes and went on to win the game on penalties. I left the bar that night drenched in all the booze that had been thrown around as we all celebrated each goal and each penalty and the eventual victory and it had been bloody amazing!

Then Liverpool did the same a year later in the FA Cup. We never gave up hope, even when all looked lost and once again I stumbled out (though into bright sunshine this time), a happy drunk, my voice hoarse from all the singing.

This time around an alternative venue was required and that turned out to be "The Walkabout" in Temple. It had a capacity for hundreds more than the Extra Time/Masque bar ever had, so the prospects for getting in were good and the other half (wearing an LFC polo shirt of mine, a few sizes too big for her) was coming along too having heard my stories of how great the atmosphere was over the last two years.

We headed off after work and got there quickly and this is where the bad omens started to kick in...

There was a queue...

But not just an ordinary queue...It was a very, very, very, VERY long queue. I walked to the front and, counting in rough blocks, estimated that there were 200 people queuing to get into the place.

I spoke to the bouncer at the front. He was dressed in a dark suit and had shades and a clip-on earpiece. This wasn't a good sign. Here in broad daylight were 200 people trying to get into a pub to see a football game, not a nightclub. Perhaps he didn't have anything else to wear. Who knows?

Anyhow, he told me "It's one in, one out."

I peered around him (which wasn't easy) and could see that the place was already heaving inside. *sigh*

It was pointless queuing. Why were all these people there when it was obvious that perhaps only a handful at the front might even make it in? At the back of the queue, you had no chance.

Plan B - But, with almost two hours to go until kick off, we still had time to find an alternative venue. We looked around Covent Garden. Surely, we'd be able to find something? But everywhere that we went was either packed around a large TV screen already, or had a
screen smaller than my one at home (and I refused to watch it like this as that'd be pointless) or not so full but plain unpleasant.

Plan C - "Look, let's head back to my place and watch it in the bar downstairs." It'd be easy to get home afterwards and you never know, despite being an Aussie bar in an Aussie area of London, perhaps the atmosphere might be okay for a footie match?

So off we went, on the tube back to my place.

Plan D - As we got nearer we decided that since we hadn't eaten (and were starving) we'd pop into McDonalds (not my usual choice but we needed something fast), grab a few things, scrap the pub, eat them back at my place and then head down to the pub for the second half.

Standing in line, waiting to be served, I suddenly realised something "unfortunate."

Having left my rucksack behind, so that I was unburdened during the game, it suddenly occurred to me that my house keys were in the front pocket...back in the office. Arrgrghhhh!

So here I was, just yards from my home, with no way of getting in.

The stupid thing is that, this wasn't the first time I'd done this but the fourth! "Once bitten, twice shy," obviously didn't count where my brain was concerned!

And when (dear reader) do you ask was the last time that I had left my keys back in the office? Why, all of two years ago after the last Champions League final!

I just never learn!

Plan E - With just 20 minutes left until kickoff we sat down in McD's and wolfed our food down. It was actually quite tasty though obviously, being fatty fast food, not very good for us. Then off to the pub where we watched the game, where Liverpool lost but not in a bad way and then back to London, to the office to get my keys and back home in the early hours of the morning.

As we travelled to and from London, I thought long and hard about whether I'd broken any mirrors recently, but no; it was just one of those nights.

Hopefully next time I'll remember!

*sigh*

Turn It Off, Keep It Down

2007-05-22T12:30:00.000+01:00

Thanks in a large part to those who've campaigned for action, it's good to hear that TFL are going to display this on London buses.

I'm not sure if the people who do like to listen to their tinny tunes out loud, as I experienced not that long ago, will give a XXXX but it's a start, and all good things must start somewhere.

Time to stand up and start the backlash against the noise polluting, selfish wa****s!

Zoo Two

2007-05-20T01:38:00.000+01:00

Have belatedly stuck some more pictures from my visit to London Zoo last month here.

One of these days, I need to sort out a flickr or such like account!

PS: Just realised that this is also my two hundredth post!

100 minutes

2007-05-18T12:30:00.000+01:00

The alarm goes off at 07:30.

Unlike yesterday (when I was still deeply sleeping at this point), I actually hear it straight away and get up.

Aim to leave the house by 08:30 but fail and get out 3 minutes late. (Every minute counts as usually I manage to just miss a bus.)

Wait impatiently for the traffic lights (that always take ages) to change allowing me to cross the road to the side that the bus stop is on.

I cross over (eventually), look back, spot the bus approaching and jog the hundred or so yards I need to to make sure that I catch the bus without breaking too much of a sweat.

It's a long bendy bus. Mayor Ken wants to change it into a tram 2.5 times longer. Everyone who lives near these narrow streets knows that it's not practical but what does he care?

Sit on the back seat by the engine, my rucksack on top of the engine casing.

Read a book that I just bought 'Nova Swing' by M. John Harrison. Usually I read the Economist (I like to keep up with international news on some of the places I've travelled to) but I finished this week's copy a day early.

The journey is quicker than it's been all of this week. The traffic is less, for some reason.

I get off the bus and walk toward the station.

Pop into the corner shop by the station and buy a drink for lunchtime. Today it's a nice "low fat" choc milk drink.

Walking out of the shop I can hear someone whistling whilst they walk.

I stride into the station, overtaking people who haven't woken up yet and are still walking around in a zombie-like slumber. Or perhaps they are zombies? From "The Zombies Of Shepherds Bush" a little known B Movie by a relatively unknown director from yesteryear.

I jig down the escalator. I can still hear whistling. I look around. The culprit is a man with headphones on walking down behind me.

Down the platform to get away from him. He walks past me further down the platform, still whistling. Thankfully the sound of his annoying tune is drowned out as he walks further along and is replaced by the gush of wind coming down the tunnel from White City announcing that the train is about to enter the station.

I work out roughly where I know the door will be when the train stops but somebody else has already done the same and beaten me to it. So I wait patiently beside them.

The doors open and I get on.

There're two spare seats but the occupants on either side of each are rather "large" and I decide to lean against the end partition instead and carry on reading. It's early days with the book as I only started reading it last night but it's going well so far.

No problems with the train. I have plenty of breathing room for a change. Nobody pushing themselves against me or knocking into me with their rucksack/handbag/luggage.

I watch as people get on and off and my stop gets closer.

We arrive. I get out and head straight up the "emergency exit only" stairs to the escalator and out to fresh air. It smells good. Okay, not that good but better than underground air.

A nice breeze cools me off as I stroll around the corner to work.

I arrive at 09:10 and start counting down the time until the end of the day and the start of the weekend ahead...

Feeling a bit down

2007-05-02T12:35:00.000+01:00

The last fortnight or so has felt a bit weird in my head, mostly because I've got some virus or other that started out as a flu-ey/cold type thing that had me taking three days off work last week but has since lingered and continues to linger as a kind of congestion in my head.

My nose is blocked up for random parts of the day. I feel really hot in my head and randomly feel truly knackered but particularly at the end of the day.

It's a horrible feeling and I'd like it to go away now please.

I went for a nice walk in the park after work on Monday with the other half and felt truly dodgy afterwards. My eyelids started fluttering at one point, which apparently can mean that I was about to faint, but after a little rest I felt well enough to go out shopping. It's bloody annoying though as I hate feeling ill.

I'm avoiding going to the doctor too as all he ever does is give me antibiotics, which I'm trying not to get into an annual dependency cycle with.

So I'm trying to slug it out with whatever it is. Sometimes I feel that I'm getting better but at other times I'm back to feeling truly crap. I'll give it a few more days though before I resort to visiting my friendly neighbourhood antibiotic-dishing-out GP.

Last Saturday was the fifth anniversary of my mum's death, so I went along to the cemetery to clean up the grave, visit my dad's grave (located in another, older part of the place) and pay my respects. Not feeling brilliant, I took my time and it was a nice day to do so.

My mum's grave is located under a tree and right next to the Grand Union canal. So the sun shone, birds twittered and canal boats chugged past from time-to-time. It was a lovely, peaceful day.

And then "they" turned up.

I could hear the sound of drum-and-bass in the distance, getting closer.My mum's grave is on a newer elevated section of the cemetery where you have to take a few steps up to get onto the higher level of the newer plots. A car pulled up by the steps about 10 metres away from where I was. I ignored it initially but the sound of two "hoodies" coming out rapping along to their music was a distraction.

"Each to their own", I thought but kept an eye on them nonetheless.

Kensal Green isn't the nicest of area at the best of times and I was the only person in this section of the cemetery, so I was naturally wary. They sauntered around a bit by one of the graves at the end of the section and then sat on a fence and started drinking what looked like Corona or Sol and smoking something that was definitely not tobacco. *sigh*

I carried on working on my mum's grave pulling out the grass that had grown with a vengeance around the edges in the last three weeks, but the tranquility of the surroundings was somewhat spoiled. I wanted to ask them to turn the music down but definitely didn't feel safe enough to do that aimed with just my gardening fork!

They eventually left after about half an hour but I just thought of all the people there seem to be nowadays that don't give too figs about anyone other than themselves.

I told a guy off on the tube the other day for throwing away the bag that he had just eaten his pasty in onto the floor of the tube right in front of me.

"Why did you do that?" I asked him.
"I'll pick it up when I get off", he replied.
"I bet that you don't", I countered and I know that I was right.

Then there I was sat on the bus on the way home when two guys decided that now would be a good time to listen to all the "tinny" tunes on their mobile.

"It's a free country", was their argument.

"Not if you impose yourselves on others", I tried to argue back but they weren't interested.

DOES ANYBODY CARE ANYMORE?

Something that I didn't see at the zoo

2007-04-30T08:35:00.000+01:00

A Trip To The Zoo

2007-04-28T10:44:00.000+01:00

Me and the girlfriend both had the day off on Friday, so seeing as the weather was nice, and even though I'm still recovering from a stupid virus, both decided that a leisurely trip to the London Zoo would be in order.

Neither of us had been there since we were wee nippers, so we decided to make like tourists and met up in Baker Street, bought sandwiches, sat in Regents Park watching the ducks waddle by and then, with our bellies full, waddled off ourselves to the zoo to walk it all off.

I'd done a quick search on the internet beforehand to check out prices (adults 14.50 or 16.00 with a donation to their Gorilla Action programme) and had even managed to find a 2 for 1 offer so long as you had a valid train ticket. Result! I bought a travelcard and we saved a tenner on entry.

As a backup, I had known that the ZSL website advertises that if you buy your ticket on the internet, you can save 10% and go in a fast track queue.

As I said, both of us hadn't been there for over 20 years, possible even 25. The last time that I went to London zoo, I remember crossing the road with my mum and seeing Mike Reid in the car that had stopped to let us by. I paused in the road and tried to explain to my mum who he was. "The man from 'Runaround', mum." He laughed jovially at me and my mum dragged me away and off to the main attraction of the day, the zoo.

We had deliberately planned to go when we knew that there were no school holidays, and definitely not on a weekend and boy did that pay off, big time!

No queues whatsoever and a very quiet zoo overall. The fast track queue was redundant. Definitely no having to fight our way through school kids or anything like that. It was really pleasant for us to be able to stroll hand in hand (yes, we still do that) around the zoo, taking our time and enjoying everything.

A strange youthful excitement filled us as we walked around. We were so happy together and both felt younger too, like we had when we were last here.

It made sense to follow a green route painted around the zoo which is suggested as the best way of seeing the whole zoo. So we worked our way around and saw giraffes, zebras, flying birds of every colour and sound, penguins, butterflies (landing on us as we walk through through their are), anteaters, snakes, fish, iguanas, camels (well out of spitting distance! ), bugs of every sort, cute blind vole type things (the name of which I can't remember but they shovel sand backwards down see-through pipes all day long, hippos, monkeys galore, tigers, lions and last but most certainly not least, the three lovely gorillas in the new "Gorilla Kingdom." That you get to stand less than a foot away from, should they decide to come up to you (and they did.)

It was brilliant!

We left just as the zoo was closing and heading up Primrose Hill to chill out for a bit, as the other half had never been up there, and I didn't think that we were knackered enough!

We ended the day making up for all the lost calories by stuffing our faces in TGI Fridays in Piccadilly.

I was feeling rather hot by now as my virus temperature thing had returned but had had a really good day regardless. Beats sitting in the office any day!

Half Dead on the London Underground

2007-04-26T18:32:00.000+01:00

Have just started reading this.

Synopsis:
"London. Now. Terrorism is rife, but after today, your life may never be the same again. A ballerina, Romany, gets on a train in the London Underground, and a strange gas attack turns her into a half-dead vampire."

"During the containment and cleanup of this attack, she's captured by a government agency formed to battle the vampire threat, PASA (the Bureau of ParaHuman and Supernatural Affairs). Romany's a remarkable subject, and after some training she is paired with her handler, Ian, also one of a very few survivors of a vampire attack. Ian turns her into a force to be reckoned with...The cogs of an evil machine are turning within the winding streets of London; disaster looms on the horizon; they can strike anywhere at any time. What are PASA willing to do to stop them?"

Sounds stupid but looks really cool.

Postscript: As it turns out the writing in this graphic novel was a bit rubbish. Probably won't bother with the next one in the series.

Yummy Yummy Yummy

2007-04-18T12:10:00.000+01:00

This song has been stuck in my head for the last day.
It's playing over some advert on TV at the moment but it's also such a happy song that I can't shake it off!

Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I got love in my tummy
And I feel like a-lovin you
Love, you're such a sweet thing
Good enough to eat thing
And it's just a-what I'm gonna do

Ooh love to hold ya
Ooh love to kiss ya
Ooh love I love it so

Ooh love you're sweeter
Sweeter than sugar
Ooh love
I wont let you go

Busy doing nothing

2007-04-17T12:15:00.000+01:00

Hmmmm, I'm struggling to find time to sit down and blog and sometimes it's not because my time is full up with lots of other interesting things but rather because my time is filled up with nothing.

Or rather a desire to be doing absolutely nothing.

I have a huge list in my head of all the things I should be doing, from stuff to do around the flat (and de-cluttering it is a bit one) right through to job, relationship and other future ponderings.

But it's a long list, that can seem overwhelming and so my brain kind of rejects those things and just says, "Switch off for a bit. You can always deal with those things later."

Eventually, of course, some things need to be dealt with sooner rather than later and so I'll get off me ass and do something.

Mostly, though, at the moment I don't.

Well, I do do some things, but they are mostly of the watch TV, chill out, play Guitar Hero II on my XBox360 variety, and they don't count.

"It's just a phase," I tell myself.

I hope that that's true.

Journey by a London Bus (1950)

2007-04-12T19:54:00.000+01:00

In a perfect world that is!
(Spot the non-politically correct reference in this film!)

[Film unfortunately removed as it no longer works.]

Mind Boggling!

2007-04-03T23:06:00.000+01:00

Tickling The Taco

2007-04-03T12:37:00.000+01:00

Probably not an entirely "acurate" portrayal of what went on but gave me a good laugh at lunch time today.

A Michigan University frat house will throw out two couches tainted by a mystery masturbating female intruder who used the furniture for an extended public self-pleasuring session, The Michigan Daily reports.

The woman in question simply walked into Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house "without permission" last Thursday, "entered the house's living room, took off her clothes and started masturbating", according to shaken frat president Dan Nye.

Shocked frat members "asked the woman to leave the house, but she refused and continued masturbating for about half an hour". When pressed as to whether she felt ok, the beaver-petting stranger "casually replied that she was fine" and even made a quick call on her mobile phone while tickling the taco.

Frat members eventually called police, who arrived just after the bushwhacking stranger had made good her escape "wearing only a thigh-length black coat". The subsequent police report said the woman had told witneses she was called Melissa and was a student at Eastern Michigan University. She "appeared to be under the influence of drugs", the report notes.

Nye concluded: "Obviously, she was very disturbed. It was not how a normal person would respond to people."

No one is quite sure just how "Melissa" got into Pi Kappa Alpha's premises, but Nye rather brilliantly said "she could have entered through the front door, which was left propped open while it was being repaired".

Sourced from The Register, the original report is here.

MoanMoanMoan

2007-04-03T12:30:00.000+01:00

We're still settling into the new building. From where I sit, by our company's "break out" area I am in the enviable position(!) of being able to hear what people are (mainly) moaning about.

So here for your reading pleasure are the (not very exciting) things that people moan and groan about for my listening pleasure every morning around the coffee machine.

Coffee
- It's not hot enough.
- It's too hot!
- It doesn't look the right colour.
- The machine isn't working, is it?
- It says that it needs cleaning.
- Where's that foreign guy who cleans it?
- Look, we've run out of milk again.
- Where's the milk?
- How does the machine work? I need training!

General Kitchen
- Why do they put all the glasses so high up?
- I can't reach them! I have to use the stepladder!
- Why is the kitchen arranged so badly?
- I have to go from one side to the other like a yo yo to get everything that I need.
- Where are the glasses/cups/plates?
- Why aren't there labels on the cupboards to help us find these things?
(I concur, some people are soooo noisy bashing cupboards around in their search.)
- The dishwasher is full, what do I do now? Shall I just leave my cup/plate/dish here?
- The kitchen is so dirty. Can't people clean up after themselves?

Air Con
- It's so hot, isn't it?
- It's bloody cold. I've not felt well since we've moved into this building.
- They said that they'd put the temperature up/down for us but a day later it just went back to the same temp that it was before.

Time for a change

2007-04-01T09:29:00.000+01:00

Ah, today was April Fools day. 'Nuff said...

When a fast journey home isn't always a good thing

2007-03-30T09:01:00.000+01:00

To eat more healthily and save myself money in the long run I now find that enjoy making my own sandwiches at home and taking them into work as a packed lunch.

To save myself time I like to do this in the evening ready for the next day.

Yesterday night, I found that I had run out of bread. I'd forgotten to buy any on the way home.

This was because the journey home had been so smooth and quick that I hadn't had any of that "thinking time" when I stand there for ages waiting for a bus or train to give me the chance to remember that I had to buy bread.

As a result, my morning routine was also disrupted.

Usually, I grab the sandwiches that I'd made the day before out of the fridge and stick them in my rucksack along with some fruit to nibble on through the day this also nudges me to routinely pick out a work shirt for the day. (I travel in dressed casually and get changed when I make it in.)

But guess what?!

Because I didn't have any sandwiches to pack away, I didn't pack a work shirt. *sigh*
Bizarrely I did pack some apples though. Who knows what my brain on automatic was thinking this morning?!

So here I am sat, wearing my work shoes and trousers (which I leave in the office) but with a t-shirt and sweatshirt on. *sigh*

And all because my journey home only took a smooth 30 minutes last night...*bugger!*

Coffee Pots and Bus Bullies

2007-03-28T12:30:00.000+01:00

Things have been ticking along nicely of late. I continue to settle into my new office. My desk is nice if a little(!) hot when the sun goes by and super heats the windows by my side. And by windows I mean walls as the walls are glass. It's a lovely toasty 27 degrees and we're not even in Summer yet.

The powers that be have even put a spanking new coffee machine in the break out area near where I sit. It's less of a fire hazard than the last one from which the smell of burning coffee would waft when someone left the pot on with nothing in it. I'm not sure where the nearest fire extinguisher is at the moment, so secretly breathed a sigh of relief when they replaced old sparky.

Unfortunately the new machine's plumbing has a bit more to be desired as it's not connected up to the main water supply and relies on a bucket of water placed underneath the work surface to operate. And I have seen what that bucket looks like at the end of a day and its not pleasant!

Also, when the milk runs low in the machine it heats up to around about fourteen degrees, so probably goes off quite quickly!

The good thing about all this is....I don't drink coffee. *phew*

Lately it's all lemon and ginger tea in the morning and peppermint tea during the day for me at the moment. I know it all sounds a bit poncey but avoiding tea and coffee's caffeine highs and inevitable lows makes me feel less tired through the day, though it could all just be psychological.

My journey in though isn't as quick as it has been over the past two weeks. The express bus that I used to take doesn't seem to turn up on time anymore and I have to rely on squeezing myself sardine-like into one of the slower buses that stop what feels like every few yards.

And today the bus had tickets inspectors on. A particularly large, Canadian sounding woman got on the bus and proceeded to fine an old Somalian woman for taking the bus 15 minutes before her pass was valid. So in front of everyone else, she got her name, address and then starting asking her for twenty pounds. The poor woman had to get someone else to translate too.

The ironic thing is that I get on that bus so many times and see people not paying only for there never to be inspectors. This time this old woman was the only person they found without a valid ticket. *sigh*

Oh well, I know that she was in the wrong and I guess she won't do it again but it definitely wasn't right to pick on her in the way that she did. I really wanted to say something but was squashed in place on the other end of the bus. Nobody else did a thing.

Changed by deed poll

2007-03-19T07:46:00.000Z

Today, I decided to change the name of the blog.

As much as I live in and love London, my daydreams are no longer restricted to just it's sphere of influence; so time for a change...

Settled In

2007-03-12T22:15:00.000Z

So I (and my colleagues) bid our final farewells to Baker Street, uprooted and have finally officially moved to our new office in Marble Arch.

After spending a few days there last week mainly shivering away as they left the air-con on full blast to "clear the system," it was an interesting contrast to be sat there today with my South facing window absolutely roasting away! It's dehydration city, baby!

Our blinds just don't do a good job of keeping the sun out and it's not even Summer yet! *sigh*
I may have to buy a desk fan...

Also, the powers that be have decided that in order to encourage recycling we'll have no personal bins in the new office. Just a few recycle and general refuse points dotted around the building. Which means that if I blow my nose and want to throw away the tissue, I can either leave in on my desk, the floor or get up and walk off to the local refuse point and throw it away there. Good for exercise, bad for work efficiency! As luck would have it I'm only a few metres from said refuse points but some people will have a much longer walk to throw their waste away.

Hmmm, I wonder how long that'll last?

Other than those minor niggles, I have settled in very nicely and even have a slither of a view of Hyde Park (as seen above) from where I sit, though the buildings blocking the view aren't actually works of art.

The main bonus point for me at the moment is the fact that my journey averages about 30 minutes coming in and about 35 mins going home, so not bad really!

Work In Progress

2007-03-06T23:59:00.000Z

So, it was first day at the new office today and a new journey into work. Okay, well strictly, I can still take the old journey from Acton Town, get off earlier at Hyde Park Corner and walk across Hyde Park to the office.

I'd tried that yesterday on the way home to figure out how long it'd take to walk from the office to the station (15 mins) and to see what other options I'd have.

Today, I decided instead to take a bus to Shepherds Bush (approx 20 mins) and then catch the Central Line to Marble Arch (10 mins,) which would have been okay but for the fact that the main road was closed off by the police and my bus got diverted up to the A40 and then back down to Shepherds Bush the long way! *sigh*

So in fact it took me 40 minutes instead of 20 and I only just made it into work on time.

But the fun didn't stop there. Our office is still mainly a building site. We're only there in a "testing the IT systems" capacity and the rest of the staff move in next Monday. The bits where we're located have been cleaned up but the rest of it is still exposed wires hanging from the ceiling, covered walls and lifts (as in the picture) and various bits of debris.

Oh and the temperature in the office started off at 18 degrees and fell to 15 degrees by the time I had left after 5pm. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

So there I was in my fleece, jacket and woolly hat for the whole day, trying to work.

I have no idea why but I seemed to be more affected by the cold than anyone else. In fact I was still shivering when I got home. Hopefully I won't come down with a cold over the next few days.

Strangely Mesmerising

2007-03-06T21:26:00.000Z

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