London

So we got out of London just in time, in more ways than one...

We took a sleeper train to London which proved an extremely good way of doing the trip. One arrives refreshed and ready to face the day, while avoiding one night's expensive accommodation in the city. J got a really good deal on it which made it even better.

Saturday was spent at the National Archives before booking in to our hotel way on the other side of town. The Jubilee line and the Docklands Light Rail were closed on the weekend so it felt as if the whole area had been cut off, but a bus got us where we needed to be. The hotel was average but a pretty good deal pricewise. On Sunday we had a look around Canary Wharf which was almost unrecognisable from when I was there 17 years ago. Still a bit sterile in the way of a financial centre, but softening over time. I guess there are a lot of worried people there on work days.

Monday and Tuesday were spent back at the NA, with J providing stirling secretarial services. She was getting through the photocopying faster than I could feed her stuff to copy. She managed the odd search for her family while I caught up though. She was sick on Wednesday while I was at the IWM for a day, but joined me for the next two days.

We caught up with RH and D for dinner in Brick Lane. The Indian meal was really good value, and the area interesting. R & D are counting down the days, having booked to go home in June. Probably good timing with the economy as it is. R's job might be in jeopardy anyway as the company he works for is talking of making 1000 redundant, with temps probably the first to go.

We took Saturday off and had a look around Greenwich. It's a lovely place to be in the summertime. Cutty Sark was under wraps after its disastrous fire, but we went to the observatory and straddled the Greenwich Meridian. I've now been on both 0 and 180 (Fiji) and crossed the equator several times. Just the poles to go...

Getting from our hotel to Victoria took longer than expected so we missed our Stansted shuttle. Fortunately we made the next one with about two minutes to spare. It then took an hour to drive back to a block from our hotel on the way to the airport. We arrived there with only 30 minutes to spare before the flight left and security took forever so we had to run for the plane. Too many 'only justs' for my liking but it all ended happily. On the way from Edinburgh airport I made us take the #35 because it goes past our door. What I didn't realise is that it does so at the wrong end of a loop that takes it to what felt like every bus-stop in town. It'd be OK for town to airport, but not airport to town again.

On the subject of airport security I have to say that Osama and his ilk have caused so much cumulative stress and disruption just by forcing these ridiculous checks on us that they've won that particular battle even if far less obvious that 9/11. Nearly everyone had to remove shoes and belts on this trip through the scanners, and I was nearly held up for my tooth floss/pick. And is there any real increase in security? Only the dumbest of terrorists would be caught by these checks. Anyway...

On Sunday a cold blast from Siberia hit England and today it visited bonny Scotland. We got snow most of the day, but it didn't settle for long in town.

Work has instituted daily targets which is worrying some of my workmates. I did some figures today:
We have 59,000 work-orders to process. Let's round that up for convenience to 60,000. That means if we shave a minute off each work-order's processing time we save 60,000 person-minutes, or 1000 person-hours or L10,000! Put another way, that's L166.67 per person-second. I reckon the team should be given an all-up sum then find our own way to save time in the processing. First thing I'd do is hire an SQL guru...

For even more pics of London follow this link.

Some more pics...

Highlands and Islands

Or could that be Hislands and Ighlands? What a strange language English is.

So, as you'll know from reading J's blog we did a quick trip around the H&I. We had picked a weekend statistically more likely to be fine, and had hoped to see some lovely snowy countryside. We got neither on the whole, curse those statistics.

We didn't start all that well. First stop was Dingwall near Inverness, at a hotel called Tulloch Castle. A lovely place it was too, but they were a bit puzzled by our arrival. It turned out that the lady who booked our hotels had got everything right except the month - we were booked in for February. Fortunately, they weren't busy and, after the duty manager rang around, nor were the other 3 hotels. The room was nice and the public areas were all magnificent. We had dinner in 'town' after driving three times around it looking for anything other than Indian.

Next day I buried myself in the Fort George archives of the Cameron Highlanders and Seaforth Highlanders. There wasn't actually a lot there but at least I know. J spent the time being blown around the Fort. Apparently it's quite impressive, but I'll never know. Of course, by the time I came out the sun had gone down, it being just after lunchtime. (Well 4:30 actually.) We raced past Culloden and drove through the dark to Skye. Lovely scenery.

We stayed at Skeabost Lodge most of the way up Skye. It was another large manor type building, with billiard room, etc, and a golf course somewhere outside. In the morning it was raining and windy, but we drove around the north of the island anyway. The only word we could think of was 'bleak' and we were sorely in need of a thesaurus in pretty short time. A little less weather [yes, I know it's grammatically inaccurate] and it would have been quite spectacular I think, but we couldn't really see much of it from the car. J developed a photographic technique that I shall call 'drive-by shooting' which involved pulling over at any place with a view and taking the shot through the window. (With her new camera I should mention.) There's not much scope for framing a view from the passenger seat of an Astra. On the other hand, when I opened the car door it got caught by the wind and was nearly wrenched off its hinges, so perhaps her idea wasn't so bad... Funnily enough we didn't see any bonny boats speeding like birds on the wing, as even the birds were taking shelter. Still, I'm glad we made the effort.

We drove through to Loch Ness where we failed to see much of anything through the rain, let alone any monsters. We had a look at Urquhart Castle - closed for the winter - then drove down the lochs, past the Commando memorial at Fort William and on and on through the dark and rain to Kintyre. We were staying at Stonefield Castle, about halfway down Kintyre, but they also seemed unprepared for us. We were given the room keys but when we got in it was obvious the room hadn't been cleaned up at all: bed unmade, rubbish in bin, towels on floor, etc. We called the duty manager and she was up like a shot. Very apologetic and took us to another room - a suite, complete with four-poster, bath and view of Loch Fyne (as we discovered in the morning). This was double bonus as we were there two nights. Not only that, but we got drinks and desserts free at dinner time. Lovely. (Next time we plan to run up to the room and mess it up then complain.)

We spent the next day driving around Kyntyre, but try as we might, we didn't see a mull anywhere, though we did see the mist rolling in from the sea. I don't really know what Paul was on about. We visited a couple of sights - some bleak caravan parks on windswept beaches; a gun battery with no views, and a fortified medieval farmstead just big enough to swing a cat in. (Sorry Tiddles.) All in the wind and rain of course. There was some lovely scenery here too, including some magnificent rhododendrons. OK, so they'd be magnificent in bloom, not so much so in mid-winter. Still, I'm glad we made the effort.

By this time there were distinctly worrying noises coming from the right front wheel area which with my extensive mechanical knowledge I immediately recognised as a splongled wodget, which would no doubt cost three times the value of the car to fix. However, it was still running, at least in straight lines, so we carried on. We did better than a car we passed in a ditch. The lights had been left on so I thought it might have been recent so checked it out. No-one was in it, but oddly there was a pair of gloves neatly placed on the passenger seat. I picture it as the shocked response of someone who had just done a 180 before sliding sideways off the road into the ditch - righto then, I'll just take my gloves off and put them here, nice and straight, just like that, there we go now. AAAAAAAAHHHHH! Strangely, there was no ice on the road, nor any sign of other skid marks, so my best guess is a deer got in their way. No sign of the deer, so it must have got out of their way as well. Haha - revenge!

This day I buried myself in the Stirling Castle archives of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. There was a reasonable amount there and at least I know. J spent the time being blown around the Castle. Apparently it's quite impressive, but I'll never know. (Actually I might this time because it's only a day trip from Edinburgh.) We raced by Stirling Bridge, the sight of Mel Gibson's famous victory over the English and headed for home. We think we did around 1000 miles in this short trip, at least 200 of it in daylight. Still, I'm glad we made the effort.

J, who is currently between jobs, took the car in to unsplongle the wodgets. L110 later we had a new CV joint or, as they say over here, resume joint. We figure that by the time we go to sell the car we'll have replaced almost everything. The buyer will will certainly get a good deal on oil - we're constantly replacing that. Still, I'm glad we made the effort.

There have been one or two tense moments during our many miles of driving in Italy and the UK, so we decided to buy a Sat-nav. We got quite a good deal on a Garmin Nuvi 255W and tests so far have been positive. Actually we got a 250W first up but it was a shop model and when we came to update its maps we found it had been running since June last year and was no longer eligible for new maps. J used it to navigate back to the shop for a replacement that was eligible. It's pretty cool and should take one source of stress out of our trips. If it can get us out of Frosinone it is worth every penny!

We have (oh, all right, J has) spent the last few days organising a trip to London. What an horrifically expensive business that is. We figured that with J not working we will only be losing my wages, not both. It'll be the last hit in the archives before Italy, and this trip to Italy has to be the last before the book is published. When we live closer to London it will all be so much easier of course...

So that's 2009 so far...

Happy New Year

Blimey, over a month since my last blog. It's a good thing that J keeps hers relatively up to date. Two major calendar days have passed without comment and a few others too so I'd better say something...

I hope you all had good Christmas/New Year breaks. J was at home for Christmas and appreciated catching up with her loved ones. It meant a quiet Christmas for me - dinner of leftover lasagna and chocolates in front of the computer. Still, as an atheist and away from family it really was just another day.

New Year's Eve was much anticipated. J came home on the Monday and it was great to have her home. In a reverse of the relativistic effects of travelling, time seemed to pass slowly for me here while much happened for her while away. I surprised her at the airport by actually being there, but even that was a close run thing as she was 25 minutes early. She spent the rest of the day sleeping off the jetlag, then the next day getting sick. Either food-poisoning (but we had the same things to eat) or norovirus (but I didn't catch it) but her back to bed, so come New Year's Eve she was too crook to go out. Damn. Never mind, we popped out just long enough for the count-down and to see, from a distance, the fireworks off Edinburgh Castle and Calton Hill. the good news is she is now over whatever it was.

Since I had 4 consecutive days off from the pipework we popped out to see a couple more castles. Linlithgow was quite graceful and liked to be called a palace rather than a castle, while Blackness was a solid fortress, built to withstand Cromwell's artillery and later used to store the Scottish army's ammunition. Of course we finished exploring in pitch blackness (boom boom) as the sun disappeared at 4:00 pm. Two other days were partly filled by being dragged around shopping centres.

What else? I had a night out with some of the work crew playing Laser Quest. I was crap - cannon fodder - but still had fun. Oh, and there was a work dinner and a badminton dinner. The restaurant where we had the latter was burnt down a week later, which is a shame as it was a good restaurant but also a heritage building. But aren't they all here?

We've started making our plans for the year to come, with the overall assumption that J will get work again soon enough. The very weak pound (97 Euro cents, so way down from 1.40 last year) means we have that much less spending power, but what the heck...

We have decided on Leeds/York for our next place of residence. Leeds is the 5th largest city in the UK apparently and has plenty of history while York, though smaller, has even more. Each is an easy commute to the other so it doesn't matter which we find work in. Leeds is on the motorway and main rail route too, and they're not so far from here to move all our stuff.

This month we will try for a week in the Scottish Highlands; in February (or earlier if J has no work) a week in the archives in London; in March a short trip to Paris for J's birthday; in April catch up with G&RH; in May attend the 65th in Cassino, finish gathering those photos; following on from this, in June get matches for my own next article on a battle at Termoli, and spend time on a Greek/Croatian/Albanian/Montenegran (tba) beach for a couple of weeks. Then back to the grind for the rest of the recession-struck year.

Birthday wishes

Three birthdays in quick succession - PP, RMc and SW. Happy birthday each of you. My own passed quietly with a nice gift from J and a parcel from home. The winter hat, gloves, and scarf are just what I need, and no, I haven't opened the parcels in Christmas wrapping yet. This weekend it was clear and sunny but below zero for most of the time. I've been wearing my long-johns to work and really needed them.

It was the same last weekend when we went out to Haddington see a colleague of J's. Fine day, but freeze the balls off a brass monkey. The ye olde village was nice for a brisk walk after a cuppa, and then we did a drive out Hailes castle. We chased a deer along the road but it got away, so no venison for dinner. The poor thing was in a very narrow lane so there was no escape to either side and it had to run in front of us for a while before it found a way out. There wasn't much left of Hailes, so we continued on to another pile of rocks called Tantallon. This was very impressive, built on a headland with cliffs on three sides. It was unusually high so I was a little unsettled on the windy battlements. What was left was very impressive, so the original must have been quite something. It was brought down by Cromwell's men after a heavy bombardment, and the owner, Douglas, didn't quite appreciate the redecoration, so moved elsewhere.

Monday was the last night of badminton, although I have the dinner in two weeks. It has been fun, so we've signed up again. I played a few singles games and they get you moving a little more than the doubles. I managed to avoid either smacking myself in the face or hitting J with the shuttlecock, so that's got to be a good thing.

On Wednesday we popped into town to see them turn the lights on. J had a prescription to pick up so we dropped that in and walked out to find we'd missed the moment. Never mind - as N at work says we can just keep our eyes closed then quickly open them and pretend. There were all sorts of stalls, mainly from Germany for some reason (perhaps they do Christmas better over there?), and fair-ground rides including a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round. The lights were OK I guess, but you wouldn't pay money to see them. We went to Wannaburger afterwards which I can't recommend: partly cold and completely overpriced burgers, although the thickshake was nice.

News from JP is that AtB would like to have our manuscript by June-July which puts the pressure on me to get the outstanding photographs done. Italy here we come. I've sent out the first feelers for my next article, but it depends on the National Army Museum allowing me copies of photos to match. I bought a volume of the British official history of the Italian Campaign on Saturday, so there is a start.

The biggest news (so saved for last) is that my wife is leaving me. She flies off on Wednesday for NZ and won't be back again....

...for 4 weeks will be rather weird for both of us. She'll come back to find the kitchen full of dishes and ready-meal wrappers, the floors covered in clothes, and me with a 4 week beard. She'll be fairly busy catching up with people, while I slave away on more bloody pipes. I'll miss her.

The Accidental Blogger

How slack am I? A couple of weeks since the last blog I think.

Well, nothing's new at work for either of us. J is counting down the working days 'til she heads home, while my job stretches on to the horizon like a desert...

Two interesting election results, though I far prefer the US one. Both have been handed a hospital pass with the onset of recession if not worse, but Obama gives the impression of a breath of fresh air, while Key seems stale or even malodorous. We'll see how they both turn out.

We had a few car problems that have now been resolved. First our tax disk (rego) expired and a comedy of errors ensued. We hadn't changed our address from Bristol so that complicated things, then we didn't have proof the car was insured. We finally got it all together but not until after the expiry date. Then J was informed that the rear lights weren't working, so she had to get that sorted. Three blown bulbs and the fact we occasionally have to bang the dashboard to get the dials to work make us think that there's something else going on. It's time for a checkover I think.

On a related topic, we got our refund cheque for our parking ticket. Yay.

Last weekend we caught up with some Kiwis up from London for the test match. R is the son of a hockey teammate and a colleague from school, and his girlfriend was an ex-student from my computing class. It might have been a bit wierd for her, but they were good company. We enjoyed the match although I thought the Scots deserved more reward for their efforts. It was strange to hear so many Kiwi voices and to see so much black and white. Sorry the pics are blurry - it's my Parkinson's I think.

I am now a published author, my first solo article being published in AtB, Number 142 (available only in specialist bookstores generally). I'm quite excited but now have to push on and do more.