It’s a hard life for a dog. It all starts when the sun comes up. “I must inform my master that the sun has come up. Woof woof…”.
Some time later “… woof, woof. Ah good, my master is up to see that the sun has come up, I can now go back to sleep”. Thank you dog!
Continuing with the rude theme, here’s a photo from my not so recent trip to Basel in Switzerland. We may assume it’s the Dutch who have the monopoly on lewd behaviour and the Swiss are more interested in banking, cuckoo clocks and chocolate. But perhaps the racial stereotypes are incorrect, here’s a shop devoted to selling condoms. I’m probably showing off my ignorance, but how can you have a shop that only sells condoms? Are there enough varieties to fill it? I didn’t enter to find out the answer.
Perhaps it’s just my dirty mind, but the snowman that Jo and Lola made the other day ended up looking less like a man and more like, well something else entirely. The huge erection has now melted away…
If you go to Rail Europe and purchase a ticket, chances are you won't actually be sent real tickets. Instead you'll be sent an itinerary with some reference numbers. Then when you get to the station, you go to a machine and pick up the real tickets. So I was trying to get to Basel In Switzerland and chose the train since I had too much baggage to go on the plane and also felt like going on the train was the right thing, environmentally, to do.
So I got to St Pancras and started typing in my reference numbers. My Eurostar tickets popped out but I was unable to get the tickets for the rest of the journey. I thought perhaps this was because I needed to pick them up from the station in Paris so didn't worry too much.
I arrived in Paris, dragged my stuff to Gare d'Est and tried to type in my reference numbers again and got nowhere. The touch screen computer helpfully had an English option with a button so small that it was almost impossible to hit the screen in the correct place to get it working. Nice touch, SNCF. So I started queuing up in the ticket office but time was running out, so I headed for the train. After all, I had an itinerary that included my seat number, so it was obvious that it was my seat. Unfortunately, the ticket inspector didn't see it that way. I didn't have a ticket. Yes, the train was fully booked and nobody was demanding to sit in my seat but I didn't have a ticket. With the man next to me translating, I tried to argue my case, but got nowhere and ended up paying for my ticket again. Ho hum. The ticket inspector did assure me I could get my money back if I went to the ticket office when I got off.
But at least I managed to get to Basel. So the next thing to do was get my ticket refund and get my ticket for the return leg of my journey. Unfortunately the ticket office in Basel informed me I was now in the wrong country to pick up my tickets for the return journey and would have to go to France. Fortunately Basel is only eight minutes from the border so this wasn't too time consuming or expensive. When I got to St Louis, the lady in the ticket office was very nice and her English wasn't too good (although clearly much better than my French) so after getting my return ticket I thought better of trying to explain why she needed to give me some money due to her jobs worth co-worker.
So lesson learned, trains may be more environmentally friendly but train companies don't seem to be in any rush to actually compete with airlines. They cost more, take longer and make life difficult for their customers. To solve one of these problems, here's a suggestion for you, how about sending the tickets along with the itinerary and then I might be tempted to use the train again in Europe?
At least I wasn't to blame for this death unlike our last chinchilla, who I accidentally stood on as he ran down the stairs. A similar fate befell my brother's cat who ended up under the wheels of his car.
I was worried how our daughter would handle his death, but in fact she was very cool about the situation, mostly concerned about when we'd be getting another pet...
I'm not sure at what point I switched from enjoying living in London to wanting to escape as soon as possible. It was probably a slow process but I'm definitely in the latter camp now. Here are a few of the reasons...
Too expensive - For sure you can get paid more if you work in London, but this is completely wiped out by the cost of living here. Ridiculous house prices, expensive travel costs, over-priced pub and restaurant prices all add up to a fortune.
People - I don't have a problem with the people as such, although of course people up North are friendlier, but there are just too many of them. There is nowhere to go to get away from everyone, although deep within the bowels of Wimbledon Common can be pretty quiet on a weekday.
The other problem is that a lot of the people here are only here temporarily, generally to earn a bit of cash before heading off somewhere else. It's hard to have a sense of community when your neighbours are constantly changing.
Driving - I remember when I was younger I used to enjoy driving but the reason I enjoyed It was because I was able to drive without thinking too much. Driving in London is a different matter. First you have to constantly look out for idiots who are going to pull out in front of you. Then you get harassed by some idiot who is determined to get to wherever they are going in as short a time as possible. Then when you get to where you're going to you have find somewhere to park, generally an almost impossible task.
Dysfunctional weather - I have happy memories as a kid of building igloos, sledging and putting chains on the Land Rover when the snow came down. In London I have memories of having a super quick snowball fight and trying to knock together a snowman before all the snow melted by lunchtime. The ground temperature is so high, snow has no chance of surviving. Other weather works kind of as expected I guess.
Commuting - Fortunately I don't have to suffer the pain of this anymore, boy am I glad about that.
I thought I'd add try putting an image onto my header to see how it looks. It's a picture of Darwen Tower, and the view is quite similar to the one from my bedroom window for the first 17 years of my life, although the tower was much further away from our house. The view from my current abode is much less impressive, unless you're a fan of looking in people's windows across the street.
It would appear I can use this image as long as I credit the original photographer, one Andy Pagett, whoever he may be. You can find the original image on Flickr.
One of the sure signs of getting older is listening to Radio 2, not in some kind of ironic post-modern way but because, of all the options available, it seems like the best one. And if you listen to Radio 2 then it's pretty much required to like Stuart Maconie, since it seems like half their output involves him. Fortunately I fall into that category. The man's funny and it's always good to hear a Northern accent on the radio (even if it has been softened, presumably from too many years living in the South).
So when I saw his book 'Pies and Prejudice - In Search of the North' I was interested. When I read the back cover 'A northerner in exile, stateless and confused' I thought yep that's me and promptly bought it (OK I put it on my Amazon wish list and somebody bought it for me several months later).
And it's a great read. He writes like he talks, so if you like his shows you'll like the book. Any Northerner reading it will no doubt be disappointed by his lack of coverage of <insert name of place that is important to you>. I was surprised by the lack of mention of Lancaster, one of the more attractive towns in Lancashire and the Trough of Bowland, Lancashire's best kept secret. I wasn't so surprised by him avoiding Blackburn and Darwen, which even the most rabid Lancastrian would have to admit are dumps. And even when he does cover areas in some depth, anybody with some inside knowledge will probably think he's missed out some important parts.
But covering every little nook and cranny isn't really the point of the book. Maconie is attempting to redress the balance of the coverage of the North. It's not all terraced houses, grim weather, even grimmer food, unemployment and fighting, which is what you may think based on the typical drama based anywhere in the North. And he succeeds in doing that. Unfortunately he may have succeeded but I suspect the people who should read it, the people with those prejudices about the North, quite likely won't be the people buying it. And perhaps that's no bad thing. Do we really want the North to become yet another weekend escape from London, with property prices driven up by bankers who only ever visit every month? Perhaps it's best for the prejudices to remain intact, the people who matter know it's not true. Lets keep it our little secret.
Spelunking - This word comes from the caving community, the weird guys who like to go down small wet holes at the weekend (fnar, fnar). They may be weird, but their sport is kind of dangerous and possibly exciting. Now the geek community have appropriated the word to describe, er, groping around in new technology or source code. It seems to be a desperate attempt to make IT sound much more interesting than it really is. Look, computing is not cool, get over it.
Grok - What is wrong with 'understand'? It's been in the English language for quite some time and everybody (including normal, non-geek people) knows what it means. Also see above.
Regards - Email and the web have always seemed pretty informal to me. There was a time in about 1990 when I ended emails with some kind of sign off, but now I find my name is plenty to mark the end of a message. So when I see 'regards' (or worse 'kind regards'), I think that the person sending that message has some kind of problem. In fact, I wonder why they are being so formal and wonder if they are implicitly telling me to feck off.
Consumer - Is that all we are good for? Buying more tat to help fuel the economy? I am not a consumer, I am a person. When I think of consumers, I think of Fight Club - "working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need"
After some fiddling around with Google Maps I've managed to come up with a little map of our journey through France and Spain. It would be way cool if somebody came up with a web app that could be used by normal people to do this kind of thing...
Take as few tents as possible - Campsites in Europe generally charge per person, per vehicle and per tent. Since you can't do much about the first two, the only way to save money is to bring a single tent that's big enough for everybody to fit into. The downside of this is the possibility that your big tent won't fit in the plot, but most sites seem to provide a pretty big space for you.
Take some kind of mattress - I've always slept directly on the ground in the past without problem, but the campsites in Europe can have much harder ground than the sites in blighty, with little or no grass, leading to some not very restful nights.
Spanish people stay up very late and have exceedingly loud TVs - I guess I already knew they stay up late, but hadn't considered the potential problems when staying in a camp site. Most of Spain takes the whole of August off and some of them head off to camp for a month, along with their tellies. They are then involved in an arms war in an attempt to drown out the sound of other campers' TVs, leading to yet more lack of sleep. In the site we were in, we also right next to the train line into Barcelona... Loudest... campsite... ever...
People still camp - I was under the impression that there were only a few foolish people who still bother to use tents when on holiday but we found quite a few camp sites that were full when we arrived.
You can camp for free in France - As well as the standard service stations on major French roads, there are plenty of aires that are just a bit of land with toilet facilities and running water. We didn't use them ourselves and they are probably only for hardcore campers who are happy to do without modern facilities like swimming pools, shops and showers, but it's good to know they are available if necessary.
Driving is more fun than flying - OK, a 3 hour flight may be quicker and cheaper than a 3 day drive but it doesn't give you any kind of idea of how far you travelled or let you visit any intervening places.
GPS would be useful - A bog standard map is fine when travelling on the major roads but when you get into a city things can get a bit tricky. If you've got a detailed map of each city you'll visit you'll probably be OK, otherwise GPS will probably make your life easier. I can't verify this since we didn't go for the GPS option.
The UK should sign up for the Euro - It's surely inevitable so why not go ahead and do it? Life would be so much easier, no more carrying around two currencies, no more trying to work out how much something really costs. So we may lose some sovereignty, so what? Get over it.
Wine in Spain is very cheap - 8 euros for 10 litres...
It all started when my brother read Trek by Paul Stewart. The book describes the story of four people attempting to cross Africa (including the Sahara) in a Morris Minor during the 50s. Unfortunately it all ended in tragedy. Oddly enough, due to this story, we head out on Thursday on a road trip of our own. Not quite as dangerous as crossing the Sahara (although by all accounts, thanks to GPS, even that journey is much less risky than in the past), we're heading off to Spain to see my dad. The original plan was to go in a Rover P4, but the demands of teenagers mean we have to go in an air-conditioned people carrier.
From a personal perspective, I also see this as part of the slow travel movement. I haven't worked out the figures but I'm hoping this will be better for the environment than flying (although staying at home would be even better of course) and will be much more fun than being crammed on an EasyJet plane.
So move along, there won't be anything to see here for a while.
So there was a bit of rain today, almost enough to flood our house but not quite. And our roof leaked. But the shed is intact. Then as quickly as it arrived, it stopped. And a few hours later, all the evidence had gone. Here are some pictures.
Or more specifically any mothers who've stumbled across this site. My other half has set up a website dedicated to providing tips for mothers and parents in general. There are other sites out there providing similar resources (Mumsnet being the obvious example if only due to their legal problems with Gina Ford) but Mums Guide is providing a different angle on things.
She was after a link from the Random Pub Finder (due to it getting many more hits than this site) but I couldn't for the life of me think of any kind of link between pubs and parenting.
You can read every book by Gina Ford you want but from my vast experience (ahem) there are only two things you need to master when bringing up a child.
Bribery and blackmail.
It's that time of the year again when I have to submit my list for the Deadpool game. If you're one of the celebrities on this list, don't panic. I haven't come close to winning in the several years it's been running. I always keep the same list except for any additions, a strategy that has been spectacularly unsuccessful.
