Rabbit Confused with Raisins

I've Moved

2010-12-26T14:36:00.000-08:00

I have taken the plunge, and from now on you can find me at www.rabbitconfusedwithraisins.wordpress.com

I hope tis not too much inconvenience. I dont have too many readers nowadays anyway - so hopefully there will be only a few feeds to be modified.

See you in a bit.

Sam

Lenny the Idiot

2010-12-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

Lenny is a stupid cat. He doesn't realise that cats aren't supposed to lie on their backs.

This is pretty much the way he sleeps most of the time.

Stupid cat.

Tricky those Photocopiers

2010-12-01T00:37:00.000-08:00

We are currently in the process of buying a house. At present my 1.5 hour commute each way is killing me, so we are moving north - back to the land of my childhood, flat-caps, wellies and middle class ladies in SUVs taking their kids to school. That the life for me!

Lucy is still holding out some hope of being in the house before Christmas, possibly because everyone we speak to in the trade tells us that 'it should be around 4-6 weeks to get you in'. We have no chain, they have no chain.

Of course when you ask around, no-one in the history of mankind has ever actually been in their house within 4-6 weeks. I have no idea where than number has been taken from.

For a start you have to deal with inept banks. This time my frustrations are directed at NatWest who are organising the mortgage. Yes NatWest, I am naming and shaming you for all of your wrongdoings, here on the internet for all to see, on this here blog which very few people actually read! Ha!

Its a ridiculously simple thing which has been holding us up. In order to get our mortgage, I, who am not a NatWest customer need to take in my passport to my local branch and get it photocopied and stamped, with the photocopy sent through to the mortgage arm of the branch.

I took an hour off work to take my passport into the nearest branch (of course most branches only open 09.30 to 16.30 which makes this in itself a pretty difficult task). They did the required copying and sent it through to the mortgage bit. We waited...

...nothing happened. After a few days we were frustrated with the lack of news and called the mortgage centre up to find out what the delay was. They informed us that the passport hadn't been stamped properly. They agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority. We were annoyed but went back into our local branch on the Saturday morning to get another copy done. Then another wait...

...nothing happened. We chased the bank again and surprise, surprise they said that the passport hasn't been stamped properly. Again they agreed to make the passport an urgent priority and this time they gave us a list of all of the things that the branch had to do in this complicated photocopying tasks.

I had to make a round trip missing a meeting at work to a branch near Bradford, outside which I had to wait for 30 mins with a huge queue for the bank to open. They all open at different times you see, obviously for lack of demand at 9 in the morning. They dont percieve a queue of 10 people outside of the bank being demand it seems. I stood there and made them do the copies properly with the two different stamps. They sent it through...

... Surprise surprise, nothing happened. We called up and they told us the passport copy was smudged so they couldn't accept it. Lucy screamed at them, so they agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority (again). The guy in the mortgage centre offered to put us through to the branch so we could scream at them instead. Nice of him.

At this stage we had lost around 2 weeks of time and Lucy and I wanted to get this in quick. She had to go home at lunch to pick up my passport whilst we arranged to meet at Huddersfield NatWest - somewhere we should have both been able to make within 40 mins of our workplace - meeting in the middle.

I set off from work at 3.30 (I told your they close at the extremely useful time of 16.30 didn't I?) missing an important meeting and hightailing it to the M62. Just as I passed the last exit on the M606 heading onto M62 westbound, I hit a wall of traffic. The M62 was shut westbound and I couldn't escape. I spent 2 hours in that traffic queue going 1 junction. I have never been so pissed off in my entire life. If there was a camera in that car - it would make some very amusing viewing.

So. I set off to work yesterday to take my passport in before work (another bit of work missed), managed to battle through the snow as far as the inner ring road when - my power steering went in my car. The lord did not want this passport photocopy!

I borrowed Lucy's car and after dropping my car at a garage (£516 the repair is costing me!), we got to the bank and went through the whole rigmarole again. The girl in the branch couldn't really understand why we were so adamant about checking the photocopies - but we made sure she put every stamp on perfectly.

We rang the bank in the late afternoon (it takes 8 hours for the photocopy to get onto the system - didn't I say). It had been rejected again. this time one of the stamps wasn't quite legible. Lucy screamed and screamed. they decided that with the 4 copies of the passport, they would probably be alright actually and actually they would accept it.

Its amazing what a bit of screaming will do.

Tha Winter Light

2010-11-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

Its amazing the rubbish you can find adorning shop windows in some of the tourist towns of this country of ours. Little metal buckets with random words daubed on them, small wooden animals, wreathes shaped like hearts with little red bows.

I know this, for I spent the majority of the weekend chaperoning Lucy through the miriad of chintz shops to be found in the towns of Grasmere and Ambleside in the Lake District. Lucy has been somewhat distracted by home and leisure type magasines of late, for we, finally are about to lay down some roots and enter the housing market. A big step for two people who haven't lived in the same house for more than two years since leaving home.

The only problem is, that with Lucy in charge I think our house may end up looking a little like a cross between a Beatrix Potter scene and an old peoples home. Its all I can do to veto the purchase of porcelain ducks.

In between viewing tiny blue bookshelves which are not big enough nor strong enough to actually hold a book - we once more got a little walking in.

This time we were blessed with not only good weather, but excellent light for photography. I always love getting out in the winter.

Left behind!

Clucky the Chicken

Flat Light

Spooky!

2010-10-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

We may have come face to face with some real ghosts this weekend. Or at least, if ghosts did exist, they would be sure to hangout at the place we stayed last night.

This weekend we went down to Lea Hall, in the heart of glorious Derbyshire. Yes, its a bit far south - but I promise you it looks a lot like the north, so it is probably worth a visit!

Lea Hall was the childhood home of Florence Nightingale and so had some proper history and that. The rooms were fantastic and Lucy got this rather shadowy shot of the bed which I like:

(the toblerone you can see was a present to me, and lasted approximately 2 hours)

The reason for this visit was the 6 year anniversary of us getting together. I didn't reveal to Lucy where we were going until the blooming sat-nav gave the game away when we were about half a mile from the house. I probably made a mistake by hinting that passports may be required for the weekend. This may have potentially led to a problematic heightening of expectations. It was a damn good weekend though!

View Over Valley

2010-10-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

Lucy and I are close to making some big decisions at the moment. With my new job has come a 1 hr 20 minute each way commute and we need to figure out a way to narrow this down. We're pretty close to actually getting off this goddam rental train and actually purchasing a place of our own. Its about time really - but we both still harbour sectret desires to sack everything off and go and live in a tent in some faraway place. Pretty difficult to do with a big fat mortgage in tow.

As we usually do when we have things to discuss, we head for the hills. I took this one in some valley I dont know the name of - while walking near Derwent reservoir. The reds of the moors are fantastic in the Autumn, and I always think you can do much better photography in the winter months than summer if you get a clear day:

Ho Hum.

2010-10-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

I have made the decision that I really need to get back into this blogging malarkey. Its been a hectic 12 months, but hopefully some of that should be dying off and I should have some free evenings again.

That job I wasn't sure I wanted - I took it, and we are even looking at buying a house at the moment (though a major issue is the fact that I am the crappest negotiator ever to grace this earth).

I thought that in order to get hings going again I would have delve into my Flickr account for any photos which I have stashed away and could use. Then I had a minor heart attack when I found out all of my photos were missing! Thank god it was just my account expiring and I can recover them - otherwise I may have cried.

Here's one of the boys standing on the top of a via ferrata route we did in the Dolomites in May. A little too dark to see faces, but still I like it:

Hopefully I will be around a little more from now on!

Some do and Some Dont

2010-10-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

When Lucy and I took my new car out for its first run a couple of weeks ago (new car because I now have a new job and have had to give up the company Prius), I discovered a little difference in our approach to life.

We set off from a straightforward junction to be greeted with the vision of the car in front being ploughed into by a late turning honda civic full of preppy rugby players. The civic must have been accelerating hard as around it span to about face and begin drifting back in to my new prized possession. It was at this point that I realised Lucy and I are not of the same breed.

I, a veteran of several car crashed, had the following chain of reactions:

1. Oh shit if he drifts back into the side of my car and dents it I am going to be mightily pissed off
2. They're probably alright - these things usually look worse than they are
3. What am I going to have for dinner?
4. Lucy wants me to stop, if I do that here I may dent my car or scratch my alloys mounting the curb
5. For some reason the sun-glasses compartment is slightly too small to fit my sunglasses in. Why would they do that?
6. Boy am I glad that I wasn't one car further up or that would have been my car with the bumper hanging off.

Lucy, who has never been in an accident had a slightly different reaction:

1. Screams silently
2. Oh shit that looked bad I hope everyone is ok!
3. We have to stop, Sam stop the car, I dont care about your alloys - just stop the car!
4. Are you guys alright, I will call an ambulance.
5. Whats the number for the ambulance?
6. We need to hang around for 8 million hours (in the cold) to check if they get in the ambulance ok and to make sure that the police get our details for an insurance claim in which the driver of the civic as already admitted fault.

It turned out the passenger was a little bit injured. Only a broken arm or something (my diagnosis from around 3 metres away) - Lucy did the right thing, I am always proud of how she acts in a crisis.

I am more the guy that walks past. In this situation it didn't really matter - but as a rule, being the guy that always walks past is nothing to gloat about.

On Other People

2010-09-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

I probably haven't written anything on this before, but Lucy's sister is married to a pretty talented guy who works on special effects for major blockbusters (he has done kick-ass and The Sourcerers Apprentice). I probably haven't written anything on this because I am mildly jealous.

He video calls with major Hollywood directors once a week, I have weekly conference calls with engineers working in the sewage treatment industry.

He took his fancy pants DSLR camera with HD video function on our recent Lebannon trip. Only the first third or so were the bits I was at, but its a pretty good video (though there are too many shots of him with his top off for my liking). It gives you a feel for the craziness of Lebanese weddings.

Random Review: 6 of The Best...

2010-09-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

... epic adventure books

For the last few months, I have been filling my impressionable mind with thoughts of adventure. I am not a big fan of fiction, I find that although the stories can enthrall me and whisk me away, I can get the same feelings of escapism, along with a large dose of 'that's pretty unbelievable' from true stories. And to satisfy the fact that I rarely get the opportunity to go climbing, I can marry these together in my current favourite type of book - epic adventure biographies from times gone by. Here are my favourites:

The White Spider - Heinrich Harrer (1959)

And why not start with the ultimate in climbing stories. I already reviewed one of my favourite books, the Heinrich Harrer book Seven Years in Tibet. And boy did this guy have some life! Before he was the first westerner allowed into Tibet and permitted audience with the Dalai Llama (after escaping a British PoW camp in India), Heinrich was one of the most celebrated of european climbers after scaling the most difficult and prestigious wall of that time - The North Face of the Eiger.

Heinrich (by his own admission in the pre-face to Seven Years in Tibet), is not the most fluent of writers, nor does he need to be - for this story of an epic journey up an uncharted climb facing down death on a number of occasions tells itself. This book is credited with being the inspiration for a great number of future climbers who have taken up the call of difficult, dangerous ascents. Only when you read this, will you understand why.

4 out of 5 Rabbit Raisins

Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer (1996)

Jon Krakauer is a journalist and expert in story-telling. He is also a fine mountaineer having climbed some difficult big-wall routes and attempted the Eiger North Face - though at the time of this Mount Everest ascent, none of this had been experience at high altitude. As a part of a guided expedition to report on the increasing traffic on Everest's slopes, Jon attempted Everest on a fateful day in 1996 when 8 climbers were killed high on the mountain.

Its not just the way which Jon writes which makes this an amazing book, its also the presence of real-life drama in the writers life. In the book Jon levels some criticisms at the guides responsible for getting their clients to the summit, with reference to their safety practices and their competition with other guided parties. This book led to a great deal of controversy within the high-altitude guiding field.

4 out of 5 Rabbit Raisins

The Climb - Anatolo Boukreev (1996)

Anatoli Boukreev was the most experienced and fit guide on the disasterous Everest expedition of 1996. He summited without supplementary oxygen (an extremely difficult feat) and enacted an extremely brave rescue following the difficult summit day, of a number of clients stranded outside. He was also on the receiving end of some of the blame from Krakauers book on the safety mistakes faced by the expedition. Read in conjunction with Into Thin Air, this book is totally enthralling.

On an Everest expedition, there is supposed to be a turnaround time, at which point if you haven't reached the summit, you have to turn and go back down because the cold weather is coming in, your oxygen is most likely running out, and you have spent too long above 8000m. This turn around time was ignored (it is thought that, because of the large amounts of money clients had paid to do the climb and the intense competition, expedition leaders wanted as many to summit as possible).

Other mistakes made include a lack of supplementary oxygen, and a lack of fitness and experience amongst the clients. Boukreev was specifically targeted for summiting without oxygen (if a client had had problems, oxygen would have enabled Boukreev to provide more support), and for going ahead of the party to get to the tents first.

Perhaps its because Boukreev writes with a small hint of arrogance, or perhaps its because Krakauer is the superior writer - but I found it easier to sympathise with Krakauer's case and cause, but what seems to me as so obvious and simple as a reader, is not so simple to think through at over 8000m above sea level when your brains have gone to mush and your body is slowly eating itself.

3 out of 5 Rabbit Raisins

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer (1996)

This book isn't about climbing, but is by climber! This is a true story from an investigative journalist about Christopher McCandless, a student who abandons his comfortable middle america life - giving away all of his money and possessions including his car, and heading out on the road with a dream of getting to Alaska and to live self sufficiently, at least for a while.

The book is expertly written (I am not so keen on the film version) as for parts of it, you are totally with McCandless, admiring of the actions he has taken, breaking free from the chains of society and just living hand to mouth however he can. It inspires you as the reader to consider your own chains in life an the potential for casting those away and setting off on your own epic journey to take you wherever. You admire his bravery.

On the other hand, there are actions which McCandless takes which are difficult to reconcile and appear selfish and hurtful at face value. The biggest for me, is the fact that he doesn't tell his family, in particular his sister that the is going and that he is safe. In his bid to change his own life, he takes away several years of those around him. The writer almost asks the reader to come up with their own judgement on McCandless actions. I don't think think is brought out in the film.

4.5 out of 5 Rabbit Raisins

Annapurna - Maurice Herzog (1952)

In 1950, 3 years before Hillary and Norgay reached the summit of Everest, Herzog and Lachenal became the first mountaineers to summit a Himalayan peak of over 8,000m. The summit was Annapurna. This account tells of the massive efforts of hundreds of people which went into forming the expedition. From Nepali porters, to sherpas, to liaison officers, climbers a medical officer and photographer, the story is as much of Nepali attitudes to the climb and climb organisation as it is of an epic struggle of a group of experienced French alpine guides.

What fascinated me about this book, is that one of the first things they have to do, is locate the mountain! There is only one map of the area which is hand drawn and inaccurate, and the Nepalis rarely go up o such heights. At one point they head over the wrong pass and end up in Tibet - where the surprised residents werent even aware that Nepal was at the other side of the pass!

The book is extremely well written and keeps you glued to its pages right to the very end when Herzog and Lachenal have to be evacuated from the mountain on stretchers complete with frostbite to hands and feet.

4.5 out of 5 Rabbit Raisins

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson (1988)

This book need no introduction really. A Sheffield local, Joe Simpson ans Simon Yates experienced a terrible tragedy in 1985 on the Suila Grande in Peru. Simpson broke his leg on the decent and was lowered bu Yates rope length by rope length until he was accidentally lowered over a precipice. Yates had no choice but to cut the rope and Simpson fell into a crevasse from which he had to crawl for many miles.

The subsequent film was a success and although it is very mainstream, this is an example of a climber who is also a very good writer. Highly recommended.

4 out of 5 Rabbit Raisins

Went Camping

2010-08-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

Went Camping.

It rained.

A lot...

Actually I have to say I don't really mind camping in the rain much. so long as I have the right gear to stay dry and can retreat to the local pub for a few when it all becomes a bit much. Because we waited out those two days of misery and wet feet. Because we spent those nights awake, with that 'desperate for the toilet' feeling, the one where you are waiting for that one bloody gap in the rain to allow you to get outside and pee against the hubcaps of your car. Because of all that, we were one of a few campers to witness the perfect weather that came in on Monday morning in Langdale.

On the way back home ... for the second time, I got to meet my beautiful baby niece Imogen. In fact I can now post up a photo of both of my nieces together. We Hugheses are multiplying don't you know.

Fair Verona

2010-08-25T01:26:00.000-07:00

During our may trip to Lake Garda in Italy, we made a day getaway to the infamous city of Verona full of visions of glorious balconies. Verona itself is beautiful, full of some fantastic architecture - not to mention the best pizzeria I have ever been to.

The balcony itself was a bit confusing for me. I admit I am not an expert in Shakespearean literature, however I was under the impression that that the play was a fiction, and not in fact, a fact.

Not the way these guys were selling it - the tour guides and the placards were there preaching to the amassed throng of tourists about the various comings and goings of the descendants of the Capulet family over the centuries?! You mean the Capulets - that made up family? I mused.

I was further confused over the logistics of the whole scenario, in that in order to climb into the courtyard, one would have to climb onto the roof of one of the smaller buildings. Not a problem in itself - but on surmounting said roof, surely it would be far more simple to just climb onto the balcony (around 4 ft higher than the roof) rather than down into the courtyard where young Romeo would have to make a 20ft ascent up a sheer wall to Juliets arms. It just didn't make sense to me.

On our trip we visited some stately gardens which we walked through with our friends. Lucy and I took a walk up one of the steep banks at the rear of the garden, and I spotted The Nurse and his girlfriend in such a situation as I thought would make a nice photograph. I probably took 10 photos of this type from various angles. I was quietly smug because I thought I had a good shot.

It was only afterwards, that I realised that I had invaded one of the most private moments a person could have. For this shot was taken at almost the precise moment that the Nurse offered a proposal to his girlfriend - and she had accepted!

So belated congratulations and as my engagement present have this photo of your engagement to keep.

I have also landed myself the duty of joint best man, so stag-do here I come!

Choices

2010-08-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

I had a job interview this week. For a job that 12 months ago, I would have really really wanted Its for a great company and for a great position, with loads of resources and my own team to manage...

...trouble is, if I get offered the job, I don't think I will take it.

Its a funny little choice I find myself with, and one which I think has been experienced by many people around my age. Several of my friends, as they have neared the 30 mark, have undertaken a little self reflection and decided that maybe climbing the greasy pole is not for them.

I have one friend who has a very well paid job in one of the major banks at canary wharf and is applying for charity work at a wage less than half of what she is already earning, I have another friend who quit his IT job after 10 years to set up his own business selling betting tips!

One of my best friends who works in the consultancy sector, providing IT support to financial institutions handed his notice in last week, after 6 years slogging his guts out in a job he hated for a nice fat wage. He is going back to university. His company were so upset that they were talking about legal action as he wanted to leave his job one week before the end of his notice period.

Personally - my work is getting a bit much for me at the moment. I don't seem to see Lucy at all, spending my time traveling up and down the M1, working weekends and being constantly stressed. This has got to change because I am presently a misery to be around. I am not one of those people who can switch off their work life when at home - and I desperately wish I was.

However, the last thing I want to do is jump out of the frying pan, and into the fire. More money, more responsibility, will probably mean more workload and stress in the end.

I find myself secretly hoping that I don't get the new job offer, as if I do I will be faced with one of the largest decisions I have had to make.

Please don't offer me the job!

As per making my current job more bearable. We are working on a plan...

Famous Borders

2010-08-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

In 'the village' we crowded into a sweaty minibus and headed toward the border. We had decided after a little deliberation, that there was no real risk and it should be ok. After a 10 minute journey and one downhill bump start we made it.

The border between Lebanon and Israel was not how I expected it to be. In my mind I saw a desolate strip of wasteland between two huge wire fences. In reality the fence was small and on the other side were the green irrigated fields of Israel and a rather pleasant looking village with sunbaked red roofed houses. A couple of workers were planting next to the fence and though there were a few soldiers and a big white UN tanks, there was nothing that inconspicuous about the scene.

In fact I found it very peaceful. No traffic (its seems to be pretty hard to avoid the traffic in Lebanon, particularly in Beirut), no hustle and bustle - some nice looking villas and a view of a wide valley. Its hard to believe that only a few days before, this very area (a spot no more than a mile or so away) - was the subject of international media coverage, due to this unfortunate incident. The serene fields which filled my view, had actually, in recent years witnessed large tank battles.

The reason for us being at the Lebanese border last week was for the wedding of Lucy's brother to his Lebanese girlfriend in Beirut. Her family invited us out for a day trip to the village where her father was brought up close to the border (you need to show your passport to get into the village). We had an amazing reception from all of her relatives who still lived in the mainly Christian area which was the brunt of a fair bit of military action in the 2006 war. Everywhere new houses were being put up in the place of old, abandoned shells, including a rather majestic looking villa being erected by the bride's father.

The views were fantastic, though I was told that I couldn't go wandering in the hills, as is my want - for there are still a few land mines around.

Beirut - where we are staying, is now a favourite city of mine. Its a city - full of contrasts. It appeared a playground for rich Arabs, but was also full of culture and history. You are never too far away from a soldier on patrol, a wal full of bullet holes, or the burnt out shell of the old Holiday Inn tower block.

Beirut is a real party capital. We spent one night partying till 6am with a 3 litre bottle of vodka to keep the 10 of us going on a rooftop club full of rich socialites. You could only get into the club if you booked a table - and you could only get a table if you spent an obscene amount of money on spirits. We did both.

During our days, we took a trip to see impressive Roman ruins in Baalbek (which put the Hadrians Wall to shame), and went to the craziest (and most expensive) beach I have ever seen (where waiters bring you drinks, and there is no sand!).

Lucy at Baalbek

But the whole point of being there, the culmination of the week - was the wedding. The wedding was something out of this world.

For starters, it was in a 5 star hotel, the likes of which I have never seen before. All gold plating, crystal and glass. The kind of hotel which I wouldn't pay for, even if I was a millionaire (the rooms ran from $400 to $20,000 a night).

There were violinists and fire spitters to start us off, then the bride appeared on a balcony high above the crowd, and the music began. Th bride disappeared as the groom entered complete with 4 professional dancers who glided around him whist fireworks threw sparks over the edges of the stage. All credit to the groom - he took it in his stride with no complaint!

And then there was food and free drink all night...

No stuffiness and formality - jost a lot of good food and rum! It was an excellent all round experience.

The Bride and Groom

Big Red

Snakes and Ladders

2010-08-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

This time we took our friend The City Worker up into the mountains. And instead of climbing rocks we were climbing iron ladders. Great big massive iron ladders, one of which was 50 metres in length.

These are the the kind of ladders which you don't tackle without any equipment for clipping in, for a fall from the ladder itself could be fatal, even not considering the fact that the adder is high up on a rock face.

We began the climb with a steep uphill walk with good views of Lake Garda:

The Nurse and I led the climbs, up ladders with hundreds of rungs which ascended up into the mist, seemingly never ending.

Climb four rungs, clip. Climb four rungs, clip. The guide book said it would take 30 mins to climb one of the ladders alone - and it was right!

The City Worker was the only non climber among us, and he did a pretty good job! He tried to change the subject every time I spoke about how much it would hurt if we fell, and he complained a lot but to be honest he always complains a lot.

Here he is completing the daddy of all the ladders:

And leaning back on my harness I managed to get a little video of him looking up for the first time:

I have the Internet Again!

2010-07-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

Finally, after having moved house around a month ago, and after having confirmed that BT are indeed the most dis-organised organisation on the planet - I have the internet at home!

After clearing out the links to dodgy sites which had accumulated in my comments section, the first thing I did was to upload my photographs for Team Bandicoot on the Hadrians Walk. Rather than bore you with them all, you can go to see them here on my Flickr page.

I thought I ought to post up the picture from the start of the walk (incidentally, only one of our party started in the sea, having been the only one who could be bothered to wade through the mud):

Bowness on Solway

Left to right: The Sergrant Major, The Tank, Me, Lucy, The Nurse, The City Worker, Katie, Will, Mike (who incidentally never looks at the camera), Alex, Mark (Buff creator), and the Artist (in distance).

I think probably my most favourite shot from the walk has to be this one, taken on the way into Houghton North Farm:

Fields of Gold (ish)

And here we are at the end, substantially more sweaty, and with a fair few more blisters:

Wallsend

Left to right: The Artist, The City Worker, Me, Mark, Alex, Will, Lucy, Katie, The Nurse, Mike, the Sergeant Major, the Tank (Front - DNF).

Thanks to everyone who took part, it was a great week and I think we may be able to turn it into a annual event. Particular thanks goes to our mobile Podiatrist who followed us the who breadth of the country - keeping the team going with foam padding, strapping and cans of Carlsberg.

Julia - Our Mobile Podiatrist

On Heros and Twits

2010-06-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

There is a fine line between being a hero and being a twit. A very fine line indeed.

Simple acts of heroism can be converted into twittishness in the highest order within seconds. Not just twittishness though - extremely embarassing twittishness, which is worse.

Take for example the time my friends and I cycled over Holme Moss in celebration of the Sergeant Major's birthday (lord knows why). We must have been around 11 years old and we slogged our way over the top of the sweaty hill to a long gratifying free wheel on the other side. In order to cool ourselves down, we took a dip in a nearby river - parking our bikes up some way down the road and walking the last bit to a suitable pond.

The Sergeant Major's Dad then came wandering along afterwards in order to enact repairs on the Sergeant Major's broken bike. A gentle type, he got on with his work quietly. Until disturbed by some bruiser of a man who was playing at being a hero.

The man mistook the intentions of said Dad for those of stealing bikes from poor 11 year old kids. He decided that the most heroic thing to do, was to punch the poor Dad in the face in order that he would be forever put off from his thieving ways. Unfortunately, the hero spotted his mistake very shortly afterwards and was forced to beat a rapid running retreat when threatened with the police (we thought this event was hilarious at the time, but I am pretty sure that our friend's dad did not).

An embarrassed twit, right?

Last week I went on the annual holiday with my friends in a town called Coimbra in Portugal (and once again I came back sick). On one of the nights we encouraged some unfortunate passing Japanese tourists that it would be a good idea to engage in some drinking games with some hardened British drinkers (I am referring to my friends, not to me!).

The game in question was Fu's phone. Its rules are simple. My friend is called Fu. He has a phone. On that phone is a randon number generator (sometimes known as a stopwatch). He reads numbers out which correspond to numbers pre-allocated to our drinkers. When their number is read out - they have to drink. Simple but effective.

Anyway after playing said game for quite some time with our new friends the highly bemused (and rapidly deteriorating) Japanese tourists we all decided to go to a club.

The clubs in Coimbre, however are a massive pain in the arse.

Basically the way they have it set up is that you get a card on the way in and every time you order a drink, the barman stamps said card and you pay for your drinks on the way out. Saves time right?

Wrong. For all that they do is to ensure that every single person in the club has to queue up to pay at the end of the night and tempers flare as people just want to go home. This plays havoc with my mild self diagnosed claustrophobia. There aren't even fire escapes you can break out of - which is worrying.

So, there we were in the club with some inebriated Japanese friends. They seemed to be having a good time when we were in there. Only when we decided to leave we found that one guy had left (we found him wandering the street near our hostel later that night), one guy was sitting in the street with his face in his hands, and the girl that they were with was unable to leave the club as she had lost her card and had no money to pay the extortionate 50 euro fine (incidentally we decided later that if such clubs existed in the UK, everybody would go in drink as much as they could and then 'lose' their card and pay 50 euros to get out).

But more than that, the manager of said club was being rude to the poor upset girl, demanding that she find the money. She came up to me and told me he was making racist comments to her and that he had made some less than above board suggestions as to how she might pay her way out.

That was enough for me. Hw dare he make such suggestions! I got my nearest friend (the Lawyer) as back up and squared up to the manager, aiming to give him a piece of British what for!

...then I realised who I am and where I was - so I just gave him 50 euros instead.

The only thing is, that when I woke in the morning (read afternoon) with a light feeling in my wallet, I re-assessed some of my key memories. Memories which were substantially impacted upon by Fu's bloody phone.

I had gone to bed thinking I was some kind of knight in shining armour to that poor girl.

I had woken up realising I had just been done over 50 euros.

Of Iron Roads

2010-05-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

As we got higher up the mountain, we nervously ploughed into thigh deep snow, putting into practice some of the winter skills we learnt during our course, but this time without the comfort of having an experienced guide directing our every step. We weren't quite sure what to expect and whether the going would get tougher, the snow drifts deeper and the danger or falling down the mountainside on our left, even greater as we wound our way upwards.

The guide book gave directions based upon landmarks, but we must have gone past several, a signpost here, a memorial plaque there, a fork in the road. They were supposed to be ten minutes apart, but it was hard to know what ten minutes should be, being as our progress was much slowed by the snow. Round the corner to fantastic views down the Lake Garda, the guide book said. We could just see grey sky.

The cloud began to lift as we were closing in on our first bit of Via Ferrata. Descend 200m into a large bowl, but be warned, this may contain some snow early in the season. Some snow! It contained massive bloody sheets of ice! It was only on the good advice of the chap in our local outdoors shop, that we even took ice axes. It would have been very difficult without.

The Nurse followed as I chopped steps down the mountainside to the first wired section.

Via Ferrata routes are essentially long sections of wire attached to steep bits of rock, to which the quick fix climber can attach himself using a specifically designed lanyard. They were initially built in the Italian Dolomites to assist soldiers in the first world war by helping them climb quickly to great height without the use of ropes. This route was considerably newer than this (or at least I hoped so), and I am presuming just set up for sport.

When we got to the bottom of the bowl, we put on our harnesses and lanyards and began our ascent. The first section was a fairly easy chimney, up which the Nurse led the way.

We then hit a massive patch of snow which was concealing all of the cables into which we needed to clip. The next clipping in point was visible about 10 feet away from us - the only problem being the traverse unprotected accross an icy slope with a massive drop on one side. We decided a much better idea was to spend 20 minutes furiously chopping through the snow to get to the submerged cable. Neither of us was prepared to stand on a slide away to nothing, without at least being clipped on somewhere.

The next pitch up a large crack was a little more challenging. It wasn't quite hard enough for me to think I was going to fall off, but still hard enough for me to spend my climbing time thinking about what the concequences would be, if I did fall off.

Place hands, place feet, haul self up, look down, remind self never to look down again ... and repeat. It was a fair distance to the top crawling over the edge and making that final clip with no small sense of relief.

'The final pitch climbs at an easier angle', said the guide book. It didnt seem much easier to me with tired arms. The water cascading down the rock didn't assist slow progress, but did add to the adventure.

Wearily we drew ourselves over and walked the short distance to the top of the 2,200m peak. We opened the metal box which contained a climbers log. The last entry - October 2009, meaning we were the first climbers of the season. Something to be proud of I feel, and perhaps this explains why we were wading through virgin snow the whole way up the mountainside. One thing was for sure, the second group of climbers of the season would have a much easier job digging those blasted cables out.

We thought to rest until thwarted by an act of nature.

We looked each other tentatively up and down. Two lonely souls on the highest peak on the range, caught in a thunderstorm! Luckily we had long metal sticks in our hands to ward off the bad weather.

It was back down for us through hail and snow to sun-burnt girlfriends, cheap red wine and pizza.

We had a number of good little adventures on the trip. But I will save something for future posts!

You Bugger I Voted For You!

2010-05-07T03:17:00.000-07:00

This whole election malarky has turned into a bit of shambles for me. Last night Lucy went to the polling station in Ranmoor 9 (part of Nick Clegg's constituency in Sheffield) at around 9 o' clock. The queues were right down the street. Lucy only managed to get in to vote because she was a 'resident' and in an area afflicted by students, she managed to jump the queue.

She was locked in the polling station at 10pm along with a bunch of other people, whilst the poor sods left outside in the rain caused a bit of a ruckus (and to be honest I am not surprised). The police were involved and Nick himself came down to apologise to the voters.

This video on the BBC website shows the problem, the first people interviewed are at my polling station, just down the road for me.

Nick also sent me a nice flyer a couple of days ago which told me 'Labour cant win here'. My constituency is essentially a Tory or Lib-Dem battleground. I voted Lib-Dem purely in an effort to keep the Tories out. Now I find that Nick is talking Tory alliances!

You bugger I voted for you.

On Doing Shots with Super Mario

2010-05-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

So this is the end result of a weeks worth of toil on my Panthro suit. It involved a lot of parcel tape, selotape, insulation tape, PVA and garden wire. All together I was pretty happy with it!

Liono's efforts were a little less impressive I have to say. Especially given as he is supposed to be the leader of the group (I never could understand why that was).

It was an awesome night!

Apart from getting accosted by a rather camp He-Man for quite some time, I spent a lot of the night talking to various members of the Motley Crue as well as Tom Cruise from Top Gun. The goblin king from Laberynth kept trying to pull my spikes off, but I am pleased to say that they held firm (that'll be the £1 poundland insulation tape then).

However alcohol is not so abundant on the planet Thundera, and after a while - us cats got a little tipsy and tired. In the absence of the Thundertank (I thought it best not to drink and drive), we got a taxi back home to the Thundercats Lair (well, actually it was my mums house -

she had to put blue sheets on the bed so that my face paint didn't stain them).

Tigra, Liono and Panthro - just chillin'

How to Make Your Own Panthro Suit

2010-04-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

When I was a child I was very much obsessed with a children's cartoon series called The Thundercats.

The Thundercats was basically based around a group of cat like humanoids who had been exiled from their home planet Thundara (I believe) and were on a lifelong quest to sell plastic figurines to small kids. Their leader was Liono (who looked a little bit like a lion unsurprisingly), but there was also Cheetarah, Tigra, and by far the coolest Thundercat of them all ... Panthro.

Panthro was the older, cool headed Thundercat who made stuff out of other stuff. He even made the Thundertank (which he drove), which was awesome. It ate rocks for christs sake (though my mate has a plastic one and that definately did not eat rocks)!

Panthro was my favourite by a country mile.

On Saturday we are going to a fancy dress party, my friend's 30th in Huddersfield. The theme is 80's but rather than going in shell suits, we opted to dress up as the Thundercats.

The Nurse will be Tigra, the city worker is going as Liono and I (being in possession of one of his natural traites - no hair) will go as 'Panthro the Deadly'. Incidentally I am not sure where he got that name as, if I recall correctly - no-one ever died in a Thundercats episode.

Panthro the Deadly

My recipe for the perfect Panthero costume is as follows:

1 pair of tight blue leggings;
1 pair of blue speedos;
Blue card;
Red card;
Black card;
Silver card;
Lots and lots of PVA glue;
Part of the box that the TV came in (this is going to make shifting the TV next month when we move house that little bit more difficult);
1 pair blue football socks;
1 tight blue t-shirt;
Lots of blue face paint; and
1 pair of nunchucks (available from any good weapons dealer)

Mix together for one mean looking Panthro!

I havent quite figured out whether this will work yet, but will keep you (the general internet) posted...

Oh, and also whilst researching all of this, I figured out that they are supposed to be releasing new Thundercats movie! Awesome!

Grey Crag

2010-04-11T02:26:00.000-07:00

The Lake District in the UK has the reputation for having by far the worst weather in England. It basically pees it down 24/7. Which is why, when we went climbing yesterday - we were extremely surprised to see that glorious sunshine was forecast all day, and even more surprising was that there was to be not a smidgin of wind either.

We headed up to Grey Crag near Buttermere for some easy multiple-pitch climbing, and a not so easy 1 and a half hour 600m ascent walk to the base of the crag in baking hot sun with all out gear (my legs feel as though they are no longer under my control today).

Weirdly there were no other climbers at all. It not often you get perfect climbing conditions in the lakes (i.e. no wind or rain), but beside a few walkers, we saw not a soul.

I didn't get ay 'killer' shots (i.e. single handedly hanging off a rock by our little fingers 'cliffhanger' style). But here is one that I like (which was actually from when we were nearly back at the car):

Oh - and to the guy who decided to park his £1 ice cream van right next to the car park. Thanks, it was needed.

Its Been a While

2010-04-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

I was just emptying out my camera in preparation for a trip to the lakes tomorrow (a brisk 5am start for me!), and found a couple of shots that I like from when Lucy and I were out walking on Mam Tor in the Peak District a month or so ago.

The snow had built up on the northern side of the hills and the strong sun we had that morning had melted everything on the south - creating this weird stripe down the landscape:

Hopefully I'll have some new photos tomorrow.

Curved Ridge

2010-03-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

Last week there was a sad story in the news about a couple of climbers who were killed on the descent from Curved ridge in the Glen Coe area of Scotland. I have linked to the story here.
The scary thing about that story is that we were on the exact same ridge on day two of our winter mountaineering course!

When we were on our way down our guide warned us that you should never take the route we took when there is an avalanche risk. When we were there, it was mainly ice with little loose snow layers luckily.

We slid down on our backsides (I managed this video of Andy). The guys who died were on the ridge to the right trying to avoid the avalanche zone:

A few days later we were emailing our guide and recieved this message:

A big dump of snow again last week has made everything really dangerous. You just can't get into anything. The zig- zags on Gear Aonach that we did on the last day is about it, unless you want to get killed. An instructor and client were killed in the Coe on the Buchaillie on the way down having completed Curved Ridge. The corrie we slid down was correctly avoided, but even on the ridge on the right as you look up, which is considered a safe descent, avalanched. A friend of mine was guiding his own party just a few paces behind the others when it happened. Fractured right in front of him, Just a small slide 4-5m wide and only 150mm deep but enough to carry them all the way down the mountain. A real shock to the mountaineering/guiding comunity.

It just kind of proved to us that you cant mess around with mountaineering. The danger is very real.

I Think Lucy's Having an Affair

2010-02-27T13:55:00.000-08:00

No, scrub that. I am sure that Lucy is having an affair!

I have been working a lot lately and getting quite stressed out about my job. Spending a lot of time in such splendid cultural metropoli as Reading and Swindon (I have been to pretty much every small town in this country with my work and I think Reading and Swindon between them are joint winners of the 'towns with least character award').

I think this time away has allowed Lucy time to put her adulterous plans into action. Just the other day I came home from a long day on the road and Lucy met me at the door.

'Hi' she said mischievously.

'I have made you something nice for dinner and have tidied the whole house for when you get home'

This has never happened before and I was taken aback. Keen to retain the moral high-ground I made sure that I pointed out that she had forgotten to mop the kitchen floor. I am generous like that, I like to take the time out to help her undertaken her chores properly.

She has made my dinner no less than THREE times this week and has taken me out for a meal and has been nothing but sickeningly nice to me all week. What more evidence does a person need! Now I just need to catch her in the act.

This Friday she sent me an email while I was at work - asking me if I wanted to go climbing and to the gym over the weekend. She said if I wanted I could watch the football with my mates while she did some baking! Watch the football for christs sake! I haven't been allowed to watch football sine about 2003!

I have given everything to her. Supported her when she was short of money. Diligently pointed out where she could make improvements with her housework. Pointed out when she was putting on weight, despite the danger to my personal safety. The list of my sacrifices goes on and on.

And she does this to me. Fobs me off with chocolate and beer while running around behind my back.

To add to it all, I am pretty sure that the people who have moved in next door are KGB.

VIP

2010-02-21T05:37:00.001-08:00

Last night the rock-star took us to see the Noisettes in Sheffield. It was excellent.

They show was pretty damn energetic, with the lead singer bounding around and contorting her body into shapes in which I would have trouble just speaking, let alone singing. This included a death defying number performed leaning precariously over the balcony banisters holding on solely through the power of her dextrous ankles.

The show was doubly good because the Rock Star is a performing arts graduate (although he maintains that he dislikes chattering performing arts students 'darling') and as such one of his ex-course-mates is a backing singer in the band. This meant we got free entry, which is always good!

Added to this, we went backstage and met the band and various groupies before heading off to a side room in some bar that they had booked. I was a little disappointed by the lack of class A drugs and glamour models - but hey, you can't have everything...

Fear

2010-02-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

On the fourth day of the mountaineering course, our guide thought we were doing pretty well (as we all have a bit of experience in rock climbing) and agreed to let us try one of the most famous winter climbing routes on Ben Nevis, called Tower Ridge. Andy, one of the guys on the course with me had been keen to do it right from the start.

We were joined by a second guide on the day, and being as Graham had retired on day two (due to a sprained ankle on the walk-out), we had three of us to two instructors.

We started early and ascended the side of Ben Nevis towards the start of the route where we roped up. I was on the end of a rope of three (our guide, The Nurse and myself) with Andy and the other instructor following behind. We donned crampons, harnesses, helmets, extra layers and armed ourselves with our ice axes. The weather was good and it was 9am, leaving us plenty of time to tackle the route.

The climbing was not too hard, though I wasn't fully used to jamming axes into cracks and putting my full weight on them and there were a couple of hard bits of climbing near the beginning. All in all we made pretty good ground up until about midday or so.

The View from the Bottom of the Second Climbing Pitch

The difficulty then came that we got stuck behind a really slow moving group of four and as there was no option to overtake on the route - we had to queue to climb the different sections behind them. We must have waited nearly two hours to complete a traverse and a climb up to the top of the 'little tower'.

The traverse was scary - I had previously thought that I wasn't at all scared of heights up until that point. But with just a few crampon points separating me from a couple of hundred feet of drop below me - I was more than a little nervous. Here is a photo of the traverse courtesy of a photo stolen from the internet (spot the footprints):

Then it all started to get a little worse. The party in front of us held us up so much that our guides told us that we would have to walk down in the dark ... then they told us we would have to finish the climb in the dark. All in all - we climbed for over 3 hours in the dark!

Just Before We Crossed Tower Gap - The Nurse, and above that - our guide

The hardest point of the tower ridge route comes near the end. Basically you have to cross an extremely narrow, extremely exposed walkway into a hole known as the 'Tower Gap', before climbing out up to the top.

The issue here is that I was roped to the back of a group of three, so I couldn't move forwards until The Nurse in front of me was able to move up enough to pull the rope tight. The Nurse spent a total of 10 minutes navigating the Tower Gap whilst I stood with my feet together and my knees shaking on the narrow walkway ... in the dark. Here is a picture of the walkway in the light that I managed to steal:

Although I was roped in and safe - the fear was pretty much building in me from here. Next I had to climb down into the gap and back out of the other side. It would have been a tricky climb in the summer with a pair of climbing boots and the sun-shining. In the dark - it was much worse. Especially seeing as just as I was climbing into the hole - my head torch broke!

I kept having to take my gloves off (which were essentially ice-balls by this point) to press the button to get the torch to work again and as soon as I put them back on again, the torch would switch off.

I swore ... lots. At one point the head torch went off as I was straddling the gap with one foot either side and one glove half on trying to hook my axe onto a piece of rock quite far above my head. I can honestly say thats the most scared I have ever been. I cacked myself.

I finished the climb short roped to the nurse (about 1m behind him) so that I could make use of his head-torch light) and we walked 2 hours bac down to the car - to get there for about ten o'clock.

It was a brilliant experience though. While I was climbing, all I was thinking was 'mountaineering is crap!', but afterwards - the feeling was pretty great.

A Hughes in Australia

2010-02-12T00:38:00.000-08:00

I am just about to set off up to Scotland for the winter mountaineering course I have been harping on about. I have various kinds of implements for bashing holes in the ground, a zillion different types of 'warm layer' and took a wicked trip to the supermarket in which I tried to buy all of the food that had the highest calorie count per gram I could find!

Anyway the upshot of this is that I wont be blogging for a while until I return (hopefuly with some good photos). So in the meantime I leave you with the third video installment of 'Pillock Conquors the World'. For parts 1 and 2 see here and here.

The Misadventures of Lucky 'Little Bugger' Hughes - The Unfortunate Childhood Dog

2010-02-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

I clearly remember being around 10 years old and sitting in the car as my mum drove me up South Lane.

I asked 'can I have a guinea pig for my birthday?'

She replied 'would you rather have a dog?'.

This memory has obviously stuck with me because it was one of the most exciting surprises of my entire childhood. Offering a small child the option of a dog over a guinea pig is a bit like serving up a lobster dish when a visitor asks for a digestive biscuit to dunk in their tea.

Obviously at the time I didn't realise that this was a con job. My parents were planning on replacing the family dog 'Abby' anyway, regardless of my annual birthday plea. It didn't really matter either way to me.

So, off we went to the dog pound in Huddersfield one weekend around my birthday. I remember this being a little traumatic - looking at all of the dogs lined up in cages looking folorn.

Most distressing of all were the little pieces of paper attached to the cages with the termination dates of the poor creatures.

One dog in particular, was very energetic. We were allowed in to see him and he immediately jumped up at us and ran in circles around my legs. He was a little black mongrel with quite a pretty face, but the most unfortunate body you have ever seen!

His head was about a foot off the ground and connected to these awkward looking bowed front legs. He had a long body and a bug bushy (frantically wagging) tail which arched almost in a full circle so that it rested on his back. They told me he was six months old.

To this day I have no real clue what breeds were in him, but whatever he was - it didn't look natural.

I think this was pretty much the first dog that we saw, and as we were leaving his cage thing, I turned and looked at his little piece of paper. It said he only had until the Monday after the weekend before he was to be terminated.

'I want that one' I exclaimed stubbornly. My mum knew what I was up to.

'Are you sure you really want that one, and are not just saying you do because of what it says on the label?'

'No I definitely want that one' I protested.

And thats the one that we got. Of course, I did choose him because of the imminent date of his 'elimination', but thats all water under the bridge now. I named him 'Lucky' (oh how I rued that name in later years) in light of his lucky escape.

I don't really know whether he was lucky or unfortunate throughout his life, but he certainly was energetic and had some eventful times. Within one week of getting him I contributed to him breaking his hind leg at the tennis club by pulling his lead too hard and sending him into a river where he landed on a rock. I can clearly remember his sad little face now. He licked by hand while my friends ran for help. He was a good friend for a boy to have.

He bore a metal pin in his leg which gave him a limp to the end of his days. Not that it really slowed him down. In fact the limp was probably exacerbated by the number of near misses (and hits!) he took from cars in the street...

....for Lucky was pretty much un-trainable...

...or to be more precise, he was untrained. I was never sure whether it was possible to train him, as to be honest as a 10 year old boy - I couldn't be bothered anyway.

He would escape out of the door (and even out of the cat flap before my dad blocked it up) as soon as there was any hint of it opening. And he would roam the streets of Holmfirth for hours looking for adventure before returning covered in mud or some other foul substance (I remember him falling in a pit full of slurry once).

We would get calls from people we knew around the surrounding areas telling us that they had sighted him, and off my dad would go to pick him up. He used to go to The Artist's house all the time when he found out where he lived.

I am pretty sure that he had a network of friends across the town who he would go and play with (probably within about a 1 mile radius), but who would be just as unsuccessful at catching him as we were.

He was also hated by a fair few people in the area. One time he ran into a garden which happened to be inhabited by one of our classmates and picked up their family rabbit. I am not sure he meant to kill it - rather just play with it.

But kill it he did. And my classmate declared a blood feud on the poor little bugger. But he never caught little Lucky. He was too fast, his little metal enhanced leg going like the clappers as he played the 'keep away from people' game.

Another time he followed my sister onto a bus and she had to pretend that he didn't belong to us to save embarrassment as the driver shooed him off. These events happened regularly. It got pretty bad, and I do remember disowning him in the street myself a few times.

Particularly when asked 'is that your dog? I see it around all the time?' I didn't like walking him on a lead, purely in case he was recognised and some piece of damage could be traced back to me.

I loved that dog though. In his older year he became less excitable and went to live with my dad as I left for university. He would sit on my dad's workshop floor and wouldn't stray more than 20 metres away from his side. He was probably a bit more adorable then, and certainly easier to get along with. I was quite upset when he died 4 or so years ago.

He still did have the odd little adventure in his teen years. Every once in a while he would disappear off for a few hours and my dad would find him at one of his old haunts near our old house (3 miles away)....

Subjects I Dont Usually Talk About

2010-02-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

I got some bad news over the weekend. A girl that used to hang around in our ‘gang’ in college died of bowel cancer last week. I only found out on facebook having lost contact with her pretty much during my university years about 10 years ago. She was only 28 years old.

When I was in college we spend an inordinately large amount of time hanging around in the kind of common room area, where there was a couple of tables pretty much devoted to those students that came from my highschool. We played a lot of cards during free period, breaks and lunchtimes and I dodged my history teacher whose class I had more than likely skived that morning (she was gutted that I still managed a B in History A-level despite my attendance record).

There was a group of guys I hung out with, most of whom I am still best friends with today, other of which I have lost touch with over the years . We affiliated ourselves with a group of girls because of the mutual benefit of appearing less socially awkward by having friends of the opposite sex. One of my friends still goes out with one of those girls 10 years later.

One thing we would do was to meet up in town for our regular jaunts to either Visage or Beyond Beach Babylon or whatever other nightclub happened to be letting in underage drinkers. In those days I used to take £20 out with me and get thoroughly sloshed on Caffreys (it doesn’t taste like proper beer) and Southern Comfort (it doesn’t taste like proper spirits) in the Welly and Flares and still be able to pay for my club entry and a taxi ride home.

This particular girl was one of the group I hung about in. She was one of the (if not THE) friendliest and smiliest people I ever knew. The type that are actually 100% nice. You know them, there aren’t that many around.

She was the kind of person who would be extremely upset if she ever found out that she had offended someone, and would be completely incapable of ever bitching about anyone behind their back (there are very few women who fit in that bracket). She always made me smile whenever I spoke with her.

She was also a little more troubled than your average teenager (not that you would know if when you first met her). She had a form of manic depression which only really seemed to manifest itself in public at times when she had alcohol. Even a bit of alcohol. She would get upset and drunk really quickly. I forget how many times we must have carried her out of places, comforted her, bought her coke and told her it was vodka and coke, defended her from over-aggressive revellers or bouncers.

She wouldn’t remember what had happened the next day and would see alcohol as her only escape (causing her to drink more).

This problem led her on to incidents which I am not going to go into. She ever showed evidence of this to anyone during her everyday life. She was polite, pretty, fun to be around, well loved.

I noticed she had about 280 friends on facebook – I don’t think I know 280 people! It just goes to show the impact she had on the world. I scrolled back through her profile and saw that she was still posting humorous updated about losing her phone in the laundry, even when she was in hospital.

Her premature death shook me a little. Out of the 30 or 40 people I counted as my acquaintances and friends at college, she is the third to have died. One through a car accident and two through cancer. All of them people who I admired in some way. Added to that, my housemate Mark who helped bring Lucy and I together also passed away prematurely.

But I knew this girl a little better than the others and it all seems a little more unfair due to the sadness I know she had during her life.

4 Boasts

2010-01-29T04:01:00.000-08:00

What an absolutely crappy week this has been. I have been sinking beneath an ever growing mountain of work with a constant stream of people hassling me for things I haven't managed to do yet.

On Tuesday morning I came down stairs to find a magpie on my living room. Bloody big thing it was! The cat was chasing it around to no avail (being as it was bigger than the cat). It must have got in through the cat flap. I finally managed to get the thing out of the patio door (but not before it shat down our curtains) after about 10 minutes of struggle - and get myself off to work.

Lucy informed me that it is bad luck to see a lone magpie (something I was not aware of) and this rang true the next day when I crashed my car on a roundabout I have crossed a thousand times (incidentally, for the last 18 months I had been referring to it as 'the roundabout of death'). Then I spent the whole morning trying to figure out (via about 10 phone calls) who the bloody insurers were for my company car (even our finance director didn't know) as it had just changed the previous week.

But hey, I have managed to line up quite a few interesting bits of time off in the next six months. Each and every one of which I am excited about for different reasons.

In February I will be undertaking a 5 day winter mountaineering course. I recently sold my kidney on eBay to pay for boots, crampons and goretex jackets and am very excited about putting them to good use! I got the following email through from the course instructor today:

"Tower Ridge is a route that I would choose for the course but its a long route, so you will need to still be fit enough by day 4-5 of the course in order to go for it. Try to do as much airobic training bettween now and your arrival." I was hoping to get through it on strength of mind alone. I didnt realise I needed fitness!!

I was seconds from posting up a picture of Tower Ridge and then realised that both my mum and Lucy read this blog and after viewing the pictures - If I post them up I may not be allowed to go!

In May I am heading to Lake Garda and the Dolomite in Italy with Lucy, my friend The Nurse and his other half. He is my regular climbing buddy and we are going to tackle some via ferratta routes before retiring to the lake for some relaxation (and maybe a visit or two to Milan / Verona / Venica)

The best way I can describe Via Ferrata is that its like mountaineering or climbing but with fixed wires and ladders. We did some of it in a past visit to the Tatras in 2007.

In July we do the Hadrians Walk in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust. I have been enstrusted with preparations and leadership of Team Bandicoot. We are going to be a small team (I am hoping for between 12 and 15 people), but we should get on great and there is nothing I love more than romping through the countryside in the sunshine. Conversely to the Pennine Way last year - we will also get some good nights sleep in hostels rather than tents which will be welcome for most (though secretly I would rather camp).

In late July / August, Lucy and I will be heading to Lebannon for a week - for a wedding in Beirut! This is somewhere we would probably not have chosen to visit (as there are so many places in the world we want to go), but I am really looking forward to it and it will be really interesting to get an inside view of such a different culture.

Apparently we will be spending some of our time in a small border village where we have to get signed in and out. The hills are supposed to be amazing here too, but the warnings about land-mines have kind of put me off somewhat.

So really I cant complain.

Also I just spent half an hour blogging when I was supposed to be working.

A Hughes in Iran

2010-01-17T12:08:00.001-08:00

Ok, so my blog posts appear to be following a bit of a theme (you can see the last post on the subject here), but I really like this bit of the film, with the red bus traveling across all kinds of dangerous mountain passes. It seems to pretty much capture the spirit of the adventure.

Plus I got 7 comments on the last post, which is pretty spectacular for me, given that I pretty much never post comments on other peoples blogs (though I do read them!). I am one of those annoying people who sneaks silently through blog posts, keeping myself informed, but never giving my hand away (or at least thats how I like to think of myself).

Blogging time is going to be pretty short in the coming weeks, given that I have just worked all weekend and am most likely going to have to do the same next weekend. I have some good stories all banked up in my mind that I want to transfer to paper, but am having trouble finding time and motivation to spit them all out.

Also, when is a guy supposed to climb god dammit!

Anyway, here is the video. I particularly like the bit about leaving the engine of the bus permanently running to stop diesel and oil freezing.

p.s. For information Clive, mentioned in the first sentence is my uncle.

Snow

2010-01-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

This Christmas I got a brand spanking new set of crampons for a mountaineering course I am doing in Scotland in February. Given that we have had an unusually large amount of snow recently, I wanted to go and try them out in the hills and I am glad I did!

The main problem with the idea was actually getting to any kind of hills being as many of the passes in the Peak District are closed at the moment. I managed to make it as far a Ladybower reservoir (with a bit of wheel spinning) and did a few miles over Wym Hill (i jut looked at the map for the most contour lines close together).

It was pretty cold (I think around -3 deg C). But being as I had all my gear together for the course - it was not too bad.

I took a few pictures too (though they did no kind of justice to the actual views):

I particularly like the sheep which had been burying its face in the snow:

A Hughes in Afghanistan

2010-01-03T03:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't had much time for blogging recently as it has been a pretty hectic Christmas travelling all over the place from Solihull to Holmfirth to Leeds to Sheffield back to Holmfirth and to Sheffield again. Coupled with a couple of trips out and some nightmare new year sales visits to the hellish shopping centre just a small trip from the house. If only I were XXL or XS I would save so much money.

All in all its been a good Christmas I have to say. I have had some excellent climbing sessions and got the opportunity to try out my new crampons in the snow on Mam Tor in the Peak District and went walking with friends and an excellent night out in Sheffield for new year. Maybe Christmas isn't so bad.

One of the things I got from my Dad when I went up to see him was a working DVD (I previously had a faulty one) of 'Pillock Conquors the World', the story of how he travelled on a double decker bus from England to Australia with 9 guys who formed the band 'The Philanderers' when he was younger than I am now. You may have heard me mention it previously.

The footage I find most interesting in the film is the bits where they are traveling parts of the world which would be completely un-crossable in todays political climate. Such as eastern Iran, Afghanistan and the infamous Khyber Pass

At present the Khyber Pass is an area of conflict between the Taliban and the Pakistani Government. The Philanderers drove straight through it in a bright red bus!

This little piece of video shows the passage of the group through Kabul. A prize (consisting of respect) to any non-related person who can identify my dad.

A Great Post (not mine)

2009-12-24T00:57:00.000-08:00

Every so often I like to sneak a quick blog post in about what I do for a living. Basically I work as an energy consultant, pretty much with the end users.

Here goes: I help out large industrial and commercial clients with engineering, systems development and change management on all aspects of energy efficiency and renewable energy project implementation. This tends to be in utilities, heavy industry and large scale retail sectors.

I have also been known to undertake climate change related work in policy advice, compliance, purchasing and even 'shudder' carbon offsetting (don't get me started on that).

For some reason, this means that when people ask what I do, I generally have to field large numbers of questions about whether I am a tree hugger and my opinion on two weekly bin collection. From a surprising number of people who I have known for a long time.

People have also been asking my many, many questions on the Copenhagen summit. I have to admit to them that, although I have read many articles on the subject - I am not keen to enter into debate on the subject.

This is not because I don't think its important, I think its very important.

It is partly because I don't feel like many of the people I talk to in my every day life really understand the issues (understanding appears to have been getting fuzzier due to the emergence of more powerful pressure groups in the last year or so distorting the issues), but its mainly because I am really not interested in the politics, bullshit and woolly target setting that is involved - being of the opinion that long term energy security should be reason enough to pursue these policies.

I much prefer to be at the actual implementation end. Making things actually happen rather than talking about it (this is why I left my last job).

However, I did find a very excellent blog on CiF on the Guardian website from one of only 60 individuals who was party to the 'behind closed doors' discussions that went on in Copenhagen. I can't rave about it enough and hope that it gets reproduced in other media across the world.

And hey - this is one article where America comes of pretty well!

Another Year

2009-12-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

In the absence of anything exciting to write about this week - bar the usual misery around another year passing me by and feeling like I all but missed the noughties (surely it was only just 2000?), I thought I would post up some pictures of some walking in the snow that Lucy and I did this weekend.

We've had a fair but of snow in Sheffield, which in normal countries wouldn't really matter and things would go on pretty much as normal. However in the UK we are crap at snow...

We don't use snow tyres (for the 10 days or so per year they would be useful), don't use snow ploughs, we have tiny little narrow roads, we don't stock enough grit (if you believe the papers), its not really that cold (so snow generally becomes slush and ice pretty quickly), and generally people dont really know how to drive in snow.

Its the English way.

We purposefully don't help ourselves in any way what so-ever in order that it increases the chance of us being able to have a good moan when things do go wrong. Oh yes we love to moan.

I was actually quite surprised yesterday when I spotted someone cleaving through the snow in snow tyres. Very un-British. Far too prepared.

In the Hills Above Ladybower Reservoir

Lucy Rests at the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield

A Tree

A Photo I Missed from the Last Set!

Seasons

2009-12-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

A few different people have mentioned to me recently that they love the changing of the seasons, and in fact it is one of the best things about living in England.

I am inclined to agree. Especially after a walk we did today to the top of Kinder Scout in the peak district in the freeing cold. The failing light (failing so much we had to use head torches for the last half hour) was pretty spectacular on the peat bogs and the red heather.

I took loads of photos that I really like that I have uploaded onto Flickr, but I really can't figure out which one is my favourite - so here are a few for you...

Lucy facing the winds on Kinder plateau

Walkers in the distance above Jacobs Ladder

Footpath to Nowhere at the Start of the Pennine Way, Edale

Rock Formations on Kinder Plateau

Treading Where Millions of Photographers Have Trodden Before

2009-11-28T04:07:00.000-08:00

Blogging has been on the back burner recently due to the ridiculous amounts of work I have had to do. For some reason they expect me to go in every week day from 9 till 5! This only leaves weekends, evenings and lunchtime in which to blog. Its ridiculous. I am going to complain.

Lat week I was in Canada yet again. This time I think it will be my last trip for which I am glad. Although it is interesting and always a good opportunity to visit another country with work. It is blooming tiring.

Another trip means another set of photos of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Though this time it was dark, so at least there was some variation:

Its a bit grainy as I don't have any kind of mini transportable tripod (hint for Christmas). But I like the people standing around the Centennial. In fact, they were all snappy happy tourists like me.

I also hit Canada's National War Museum and the National Gallery, both of which were surprisingly empty (considering it was a weekend!), but both excellent if you happen to be passing by Ottawa.

On Hobbys

2009-11-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

WARNING: THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS UNSUBSTANTIATED GENERALISATIONS

I was driving back from a business trip in London a couple of days ago with a work colleague of mine. We are both grumpy Yorkshiremen so we like to have a good moan and a whine when we get together. We usually put the world to rights through a strange process of mutual agreement and re-enforcement of each others views. A communal re-enforcement of views which is experienced by many men when left together with no supervision. Thats pretty much how wars start.

I think in that trip we solved all of the UK's problems relating to energy security, social housing and planning law in the space of only 3 hours which was good work. Next week we plan on tackling world peace and creating a Windows operating system that works.

Our discussions turned as they usually do, to generally complaining about women and specifically that our women folk have the cheek to be different from us and to hold opinions which are not directly in line with our own.

We agreed that generally, the source of all of the issues which our women have (or we generally have) is rooted in their lack of a hobby. You see, men can't really get their head around how many women can get by without having any particular interest in anything.

And more than that, men can't understand how, if women do have a hobby - they often aren't particularly bothered about being any good at it. They just don't care. If men have a hobby, they have to be the best at it, whether that is getting as many blog comments as you possibly can, or having a faster car than all of your mates, or going to the gym more than anyone else you know. We all feel we have to have a niche skill in something. Its in our nature.

By way of example, my colleague is obsessive about music and spends his weekends perusing record shops, attending hi-fi conferences or inspecting the home-made insulation on his specially converted garage sound-room. Whereas I spend my weekends in the gym, climbing or galavanting around hills somewhere (also obsessively).

We thought about this for a while and something struck us. What do our other halves do as soon as they get home from work? What do they spend their weekends looking at and what do their evenings revolve around.

The answer .... crap TV.

Both of our partners are completely obsessed with crap TV. Whether it be crap reality TV, crap talent shows, crap cooking competitions, or Kirsty and Phil helping Gerrard from Staines find the crappy 1 bedroom flat of his dreams - crap TV rules both of our homes. Lucy even likes to watch 'wedding TV' and more surprisingly 'wedding TV asia' which even my colleague thought was weird.

I have to say though, one programme in particular is the bane of my life. It serves absolutely no educational purpose (as some of the above may be argued is some bizarre roundabout way, to do), it is dragged out to lengths I cant even contemplate (one episode spanning an entire week), and I can't even bear to be in the room when it is on. Sound familiar?

Yes its 'Come Dine with Me'.

Basically if you haven't seen it, it involves a group of complete misfits who are never in a million years going to get on together, cooking for each other and generally falling out and providing mild entertainment of the worst variety. Actually that sounds a bit like Big Brother doesn't it?

Its on ALL the time.

However.

I can't criticise 'Come Dine with Me' too much, for one reason. A bunch of friends and me (The Lawyer and The Nurse) have decided, with out girlfriends, to recreate the show in our houses using a video camera and everything.

We were first this week. I have to say it was a little stressful as I am not too keen on people judging my Chicken Udon soup. With actual pieces of paper with scores on and everything.

I am sure I will post the video up when it is all edited together.

5 Years

2009-10-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, it will be five years to the day since I first met Lucy. We celebrated by going away to the Spa town of Buxton for the day and aimlessly wandering around. Lucy then forced me to rediscover my artistic talent by making me do pottery painting. Which to be honest - wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!

On our third anniversary I was somewhere in Indonesia, and took some time out to write the story of how Lucy and I first got together (you can see part 1 and 2 here and here).

This year I thought that I would put pen to paper and describe our first date, lest too many years pass and I forget what happened...

It was 2004 and I was living in a house in Chapel Allerton in Leeds with my friends Stu, Mark and Robb. I had taken a few days off work and Mark and I had spent some time pretending we were students again.

Lucy and I had met a few days before at a tacky night club and I had done the uncool thing ant text her straight away the next day. Despite not following the correct delayed contact procedures, Lucy had agreed to meet up with me in a bar called the Arc close to Headingley.

Initially I was to go to her house and pick her up in a gentlemanly fashion, however her housemates (who at this point thought I was 40 years old - their memories being a little hazy from the club), advised Lucy that I shouldn't come to the house being as I was probably some kind of serial killer and plans were changed.

However, the main reasons I wanted to meet her at her house was that, embarrassingly I wasn't sure if I would be able to spot her straight away in a crowded bar. I changed tactic and decided that the best way around this would be to get there extremely early and stand by the bar, not catching anyones eye and staring straight ahead so that she would have to identify me. I sent her a text stating 'I am upstair at the bar' to put my plan in place.

Lucy apparently read the text whilst standing outside getting moral support from one of her friends from home. She finally plucked up the courage and came inside. I think I gave up my wall staring and turned around and looked just as she was walking up the bar. She looked amazing.

If I remember correctly she was wearing a kind of low cut green top that she had borrowed from one of her housemates, with a suitable short skirt to match. She was full of smiles, life and laughter. I recognised her instantly and my first feeling was pride. I was proud that I had managed to bag such a good looking girl the previous week, despite being barely able to stand up!

We exchanged pleasantries and I bought her a drink. I remember going to sit down in one of the booths near the corner. I think we were both nervous, but nerves affected us in different ways. Lucy tends to talk a lot and I tend to go quiet.

Lucy exploded into a tirade of questions 'sowhereareyoufrom?' 'whatdoyoudoinyoujob?' 'doyouhaveanybrothersandsisters?' 'whatkindofmusicareyouinto?' barely leaving me time to answer each one before moving on to the next.

We had a few drinks and both quickly calmed down and began to enjoy each others company. This is where Lucy spinned the largest lie she has told me during 5 years of our relationship. We were discussing music, and Lucy told me she was into all of these great bands and it turned out I was into the same bands too and we had so much in common!

Later I would discover that actually she likes 'Kelly Clarkson' and 'N-Dubz'.

We drank quickly and decided to move to this fancy new (at the time) basement bar next door called Trio. We began to really enjoy ourselves and I began, even at this early stage to realise I loved Lucy's company. She ordered shots as if to ease the nerves just that little bit more. I forget what they were, they could have been B52s or something similar. Probably cost us about £20 (in those days I didn't have a lot of cash). But I had decided we were going to make this a night to remember as soon as I had realised how much I liked being out with her.

We then decided to go to another of the new bars in Headingley by the name of 'The Box'. Similar in style, this place was generally full of Rugby players (and not proper rugby either) swilling lager and singling songs and I usually avoided it.

It was a couple of hundred yards away and we walked side by side along an empty back road to get there. I remember extremely clearly my heart jumping up into my throat as I decided grab Lucy's hand and hold it as we strolled along. She made no objection and she squeezed my fingers making my heart race again.

I can't remember what we were drinking in the Box, but I think we were in there for a while. She sat on a stool while I stood, listening to her talk. Watching her lips move and watching her smile. All I could think about was that I wanted to kiss those lips, but that I was such a gutless wimp that it was unlikely to happen.

I decided to go to the toilet (I am not even sure if I needed it) to gather my thoughts and pluck up my courage a little. I walked straight back out and straight up to her and reached for her face and kissed her. I was nervous about what her reaction would be, but it was good. In fact it was really good. I still think about it now.

I held her by the hand and exclaimed that we were getting a taxi into town. We went to some more bars, my favourite club in Leeds, 'The Hi Fi' (though we decided it was too loud and left) and a place near the corn Exchange, which I think was called Jakes Bar. I think it was the most fun I have ever had with a person on a night out.

We stayed out until past 3am (something which doesn't happen so often anymore!) and I bundled her into a taxi and said goodbye, having one of those 'singing in the rain' type moments, walking away, practically clicking my heels.

Happy in the moment.

I am not sure I believe in love at first sight, but I definitely knew that day that Lucy and I were a perfect match and would be together for some time. And I knew that I could definitely love her.

Which I do. Very much.

Financial Security at Last!

2009-10-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

This week Lucy got a new job as an Assistant Clinical Child Psychologist or some such thing. This has made me immensely happy, not just because she can now pay her half of the rent, but also because its pay back for a massive amount of hard work.

3 or 4 years ago, she had left university with a fairly average degree. Actually it was a sociology degree ... sociology apparently having something to do with studying the inside of a pub. It probably wouldn't be too much of dis-justice to say that she was a little unfamiliar with hard work.

She was going from temp job to temp job and was devoid of direction, she had ideas of working in jobs in accountancy and HR and was encouraged towards them, but deep down she knew she wasn't suited to them. Like all graduates - at this stage she thought she would just walk straight into an amazing graduate job straight off the back of her 2.1 in sociology. She once said to me, 'I would rather get some graduate training than do a masters degree', I replied 'I did the masters degree to get on the bloody graduate training!'

Then one day she had an epiphany.

All her life she had wanted to be an educational psychologist, but didn't think she was good enough and thought the road would be too long and hard. But then she decided she was going to do it.

She enrolled on a masters course in Educational Psychology in Manchester and had a hard year working while I was out galavanting in Australia. Then she made it her goal to get on the PhD to become a psychologist. She learnt sign language, undertook volunteering, worked in a primary school where she pro-actively trained staff on psychology, set up interventions and obtained funding for one of Sheffields pioneering 'Nurture Groups'.

She had trouble with interviews and failed at the last hurdle on previous on previous job applications and in getting on the PhD course (a lot of psychology jobs an the PhD have up to 200 applicants). But she took on interview training, practised and practised and even did hypnotherapy for interview confidence. And eventually it all paid off! She is not on the PhD yet, but now she has her dream job, there is no hurry.

Everyone around her, friends and teachers in her school are telling her how jealous they are and how they want her job. I dont think they realise how much work it took. My advice to them is that they need to get of their backsides and do something about it like she did if that is what they want to do.

I am very proud.

This Can Only End Badly

2009-10-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

After a really good day at my sisters wedding, about which I will post at some point in the near future - I got up super early to speed on up to the lake district for some climbing.

I appear to have got in with a bad crowd at work, and have been tempted by some of the more hard-core outdoors enthusiasts amongst them to delve further and further into outdoor sports. Over the winter I will be undertaking a 5 day mountaineering course up in Scotland (and may potentially have to pay for the expensive equipment I will need by selling a kidney!), and I am getting more and more into my climbing.

In the lakes we did some multiple pitch climbing. I will attempt to explain what that means (though I am not completely sure myself). One person leads up on the rope, putting in safety gear along the way and being belayed from the bottom. The bottom person then follows being belayed from the top. Both people are now half way up the cliff face and repeat the process until all the way to the top.

We had three people, which made everything a little more complicated and made each climb pretty lengthy. To the point at which we had to abandon out second climb on the third pitch (and abseil down) to avoid having to walk home in the dark.

We all hauled our cameras up with us and tried to angle the lense such that is appeared we were doing much harder climbs than we were. This is my favourite of Graham (though if I had proper photo editing software, I am sure I could make it better):

Top 10 Movie Characters

2009-09-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

Lucy is currently doing her hypnosis CD which is supposed to alter her mind so that she is no longer hungry and stops eating when she is full. If I have calculated this correctly, this should give me just enough time to respond to a meme in which my brother tagged me sometime in July. It was top 10 movie characters of all time (in all honesty, this will probably be the top ten movie characters I can think of right now):

So here goes (in no particular order):

Randle Patrick McMurphy - One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

"They was giving me ten thousand watts a day, you know, and I'm hot to trot! The next woman that takes me on is gonna light up light a pinball machine!"

Possibly a very obvious one, but I have to say one of my favourite hero's of all time, stretching back to when we had to read the book in GCSE English.

Steve Zissou - A Life Aquatic

"Ned, next time you have a brilliant idea, whisper it to me first. Otherwise I look like a sort of day-dream Johnny, you know?"

To be honest this could have been Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers. I absolutely loved Broken Flowers, but appeared to be the only person that did! I can't get enough of the deadpan style.

Marv - Sin City

"Ahh Jerks, they should have shot me in the head. And enough times to make sure too. Its so stupid. Everyone knows what's coming."

Another film in which I love the style for different reasons. And you can't bead Marv, indestructible, stupid but with a heart. I had trouble finding any decent clips though.

'The Bride' - Kill Bill

"Its mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality."

Not much to say about this one. Another character I love for style, Tarantino-esque lines and a bit of ass-kicking

Seth - Superbad

"I'm over here in my unit, isolated and alone, eating my terrible tasting food, and I have to look over at that. That looks like the most fun I've ever seen in my entire life, and it's B.S. - excuse my language. I'm just saying that I wash and dry; I'm like a single mother. Look, we all know home-ec is a joke - no offense - it's just that everyone takes this class to get an A, and it's bullshit - and I'm sorry. I'm not putting down your profession, but it's just the way I feel. I don't want to sit here, all by myself, cooking this shitty food - no offense - and I just think that I don't need to cook tiramisu. Am I going to be a chef? No. There's three weeks left of school, give me a fuckin' break! I'm sorry for cursing."

I have had a few problems with my Ipod, which means that I only have a few films which will copy onto it for my train journeys etc. Superbad is one of them and I have watched it a lot of times! I love Seth, but a Michael Cera character (e.g. in Juno, Arrested Development etc) could have been in there too.

Bigwig - Watership Down

"I can run. And I can fight!"

One from my childhood here. I loved Bigwig, my favourite by far. I always tend to favour the heavyweight second characters in films.

Watership down was genius (although a little heavy for a kids film) And Bigwig was the toughest.

Couldn't find any good clips for this, just some wierf Bigwig tribute video.

Richard Sharpe - Various Sharpe Episodes

Just wanted to add this one in quickly (though it is not technically a film character, it rates right up there for me!

Turns out I didnt have enough time for ten, and having used up all of my free time credits for the week yesterday. Lucy is demanding that I go and watch some crappy TV with her, so I guess I will have to end the post here.

What do you reckon?

Random Review: District 9

2009-09-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

Lacking money or imagination, we went to see District 9 at the cinema last night. I have to say that it was brilliant. I was very surprised, being a Lord of the Rings geek, I had a preconception that Peter Jacksons films were bursting with effects but lacking in story.

The only way I can sum up District 9 is:

The scare factor of 'Alien'

The goriness of 'Starship Troopers'

The humour of 'Serenity'

The style of 'Cloverfield'

The political slant of 'Hotel Rwanda' or an anti apartheid film.

All of which are fantastic movies in their own right. I highly recommend it (even Lucy likes it and she only likes Jennifer Aniston flicks).

Adirondacks

2009-09-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in my previous post, I managed to sneak away for the weekend to Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains following a trip to a factory I am working at, close to Montreal.

The trip basically consisted of me, delayed by an hire car employee who had lost his keys, and by US customs, arriving at the mountains at around midday, and then trying to rush round what was a pretty arduous route as fast as I could in order to make it back before sunset (as I had pretty much no equipment/compass/torch etc).

When I arrived I tackled the Algonquin peak, which at 1,500m above sea level is actually higher than anything we have in the UK (though it didn't feel like it as I think I may have started a little higher than you would do with, say Ben Nevis). Due to the time constraints it was pretty thigh busting on the way up (as I had accidentally chosen the steep side for the ascent), and ankle-breaking on the way down.

After staying in superb(ly cheap) hostel type accommodation in a local lodge with a random party of 50 year old birthday revellers, I managed a quick ascent of mount Jo the next day before a little shopping in Lake Placid and a the long journey back to the UK.

The amazing thing for a European in New York State in the Autumn, is most definitely the colours. Although I was probably two weeks early to get the full brunt of the autumn reds, There were still some amazing opportunities for photography. Though I felt I never managed to nail that killer shot (considering the scenery around me), largely due to the fact that much of the walking was in heavy bush, I was still fairly proud of these ones:

The View from Algonquin Peak

Outside the Lodge at Heart Lake in the Morning

The View from Mount Jo (if someone could have just cut that damn tree down...)

Heart Lake ... Again

A Chipmunk Near Charleston Lake in Ontario

I am not a great lover of photoshopped photos (bar a little colour enhancement), probably due to the fact I don't own a copy or photoshop (or know how to use it). But I did a little tinkering with a couple of photos I wasn't quite happy with in iPhoto:

Depending on the Kindness of Strangers

2009-09-15T09:18:00.001-07:00

I always thought that Yorkshiremen were a fairly kindly breed, pretty generous in terms of acts if not with their money. Definitely more kindly than those sour faced Londoners. However, today I was faced with a level of blind generousity I have never seen before.

This week I am back in Ontario Canada for work, stuck in the same old hotel I have seen many time before. The difference between this trip and previous ones is that this time I am determined to make a little more of this opportunity to travel.

I decided to take the weekend out here to go down to Lake Placid (of oversized alligator fame) and do some hiking in what I have been promised is spectacular autumn scenery.

This is all on the back of recommendations made by the guys I am working with over here. You cant beat a good loca recommendation.

Everywhere I have been in the world - when I have spoken to locals about the places to go, eat, and things to see - the experiences have been ten times better. Which is a bit of a problem for me, as I cant usually be bothered to speak with people.

Except this time, I was offered not only advice on where to go, but the lend of a car and a big stack of camping equipment. The guy who I hardly knew was going to lend me his car to take across a national border! I would lend my best mates my car (I barely let Lucy drive it).

Unfortunately I am British and therefore unable to accept hospitality of this nature and have consented only to allow him to book me some rental camping equipment upon arrival.

All I want is a decent nights sleep!

2009-09-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

Following our little cat related mishap a few months ago, we decided that our current cat (who has always been around other cats) needed a new playmate as to be honest she seemed to spend more time around the neighbours house with their cat than she did at ours.

So we went back to the cat rescue place that we had been to previously. After some embarrassing questions about what happened to poor Beau, I asked about whether they had any discount card programme as because we seemed to be visiting so frequently, I thought we should be entitled so some kind of reward card. You know - like get 3 cats for the price of two or something.

Apparently this is not the way it works, and actually you are supposed to keep your cat for 16 years or some such period of time.

I jest of course, but we did feel that we could house another rescue cat and provide some company to Ripley. They had a couple of cute cats, nay kittens there and we fell for a four month old tabby called 'Dude'. 'Dude' had been dumped at the shelter by 'some Chinese guy' possibly (as we later found out when 'Dude' came home) because of 'Dudes' psychopathically violent behavior!

So Dude came home with us and quickly became renamed as 'Lenny', though I was all for 'Hicks' as I thought 'Ripley and Hicks' would have been quite a cool combination.

Unlike when we brought the cats home previously, Lenny was in no way nervous. In fact he settled straight into a routine of systematically attacking any exposed human body part at any given moment, with no regard to etiquette or accepted rules of engagement.

So much so that when Lucy lets the cats into the bedroom at night (aww they get lonely out in the corridor) Lenny will spend the entire night sitting on the pillow, attacking my face and arms, and god forbid, should you stick a foot out from under the covers, it will quickly end up with a cat-shaped attachment!

The only night I have managed to sleep this week was when I went on a business trip to Scotland. The only one who is not too bothered is Ripley, who will deal Lenny a simple head blow should he get too boisterous.

Anyway I am in danger of being one of those annoying people who talks about their cat all the time, so shall end this post.

Lenny launches a surprise attack from the TV cabinet

The devil cat plot its next move...

Insight into the Mind of an Eight Year Old

2009-08-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

When I got hold of those old photo's from my mum, which I scanned into my mac, with which I attempted to embarrass my brother and subsequently managed to lose all of due to a hard drive failure, I also found a few of my old text books.

One of them was from 'Class Four' which I think means I was about 8 years old. I was perusing the pages and found this gem of a short story (potentially eligible for some kind of literary prize) which I thought I should read out:

Sam said "coming for a walk by the river?"

Robert said "yep".

When they go there Robert said "I bet you I can swim across the river".

So he jumped in and went down down down and died.

Funny thing is, I am still friends with Robert (often referred to a 'The Artist' of this story and this story), he still is a competitive git, and I still hold him in just about as much contempt.

(p.s. what I want to know is why te teacher didn't submit me for psychological testing after that one)

Notes from a Small Island

2009-08-16T03:10:00.000-07:00

We got back from our Cyprus adventure last night (or early this morning). I am not a massive fan of Cyprus I have to say.

Due to its colonial past there is a very large British ex-pat population mixed in with the Greek and Turkish residents and large swathes of the coast are covered in concrete apartment blocks, partially completed luxury villas and strips of cheap restaurants and bars.

Though I don't doubt that there are other aspects of Cyprus we were unable to see, those parts which we did manage to get to within a few hours drive which were not covered in concrete monstrosities were also very touristy though with a little more authenticity and intrigue.

All this, however didn't stop us having a great time as we were also bombarded by the exceptional generosity of Lucy's parents who were out there with us, and paid for a pretty huge villa for the week, and we managed to get up into the mountains which was pretty cool.

I struggled a little with photography, partly because the sun was always so high in the sky and set very quickly, meaning that interesting light was hard to come by, and partially because it was so hot that I couldn't be bothered to exert myself for good angles for photos.

However I did manage to take a few nice ones of Lucy during a sunset at the villa:

This one was taken at the 'Tombs of the Kings' in Paphos, which was pretty spectcular:

Other photos should be available on Flickr shortly (when I get around to uploading them).

Hours of Fun

2009-08-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

I am soon to be off the blogging circuit for a week or two as I am heading off on holiday, first to Cyprus and then to Wales for a week of sun followed by a week of rain to cool my sun-burn.

The Hadrians Walk event seems to be in full promotional rage at present, so one of the first things I need to do when I get back, is to whip team Bandicoot into shape. We are at present at around 18 interested parties I think, and I may just stop the recruitment activity at that (in order to preserve my own sanity whilst doing the organising).

So whilst I am away, I will leave you with a great game which was brought to my attention in Riga. It goes as follows:

Loosen your cheeks and shake your head from side to side as quick as you can
Take a photograph of yourself
Hold amusing props such as fists / cricket bats / beer bottles close to your face
Repeat for approximately 5 hours until you get a good photo

Our best result after hours of practice is below:

Losing My Right Arm

2009-08-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

I havent actually lost my right arm. What I have lost however is my Mac hard drive, all of my photos, all of my music, and all of my videos at the end of a pretty unsuccessful fortnight in the household (in which i had my sat-nav nicked, lost out on a job at work as well as the whole cat-thing). It did feel like my right arm.

It is for this reason that there has been no communication from me on the Hadrians Walk, little blogging and very little commenting. Wordpress, blogger and flickr have been blocked at work, and I have been confined to Lucy's virus infected tortoise like PC.

However, I have been to the Genius Bar at the Apple shop which I have to say is fantastic, you can say what you want about Apple trying to take over the world, but they do have a unique approach to customer service. On their recommendation, I have bought a 500 gig (non-apple) internal hard drive.

Screw you failed hard drive - now I have a hard drive five times your size! Ha!

Now I find out how much of my stuff I actually backed up properly.

Meet the Neighbours

2009-07-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but the week before last we attended the Eden Project Big Lunch. Essentially the idea is that on Sunday the 19th of July, as many local communities as possible, would gather together and have a kind of 'getting to know each other' picnic.

I was sceptical at first, telling Lucy that 'I already know loads of people I dont have time to keep in touch with - why do I need to know some more?'. I protested. She made me go.

Actually it was pretty good fun. We live in a new build house in the grounds of an old mansion which has been converted to flats. The mansion appears to come complete with quite a few curtain twitchers, which I was concerned would lecture me about parking my car accross the big 'keep clear - no parking' sign as is my want. Contrary to that, we were informed that anyone can park there and that as the only renters we hadn't found out because our landlord had neglected to tell us.

I ended up meeting the old dean of a major university as well as a high court judge (who informed us that our favourite restaurant is actually a front for a Thai marajuana dealing operation). We made friends with some of the people that live in the terraces next to us. A friendship that we put to good use when they had to store our dead cat in their garage for a day last week.

the main concern really is that we were the youngest people there by a good five years. Ok Lucy was the youngest person there by a good five years (I was borderline fitting in). They all had kids or were pregnant, or had grandkids so far as I can tell!

Anyway. I have discovered that it is good to know your neighbours.

What Made Me Laugh Yesterday

2009-07-25T01:27:00.000-07:00

Lucy and I were making our way to Blockbusters last night, knowing we had a fine to pay and arguing about whose fault it was as we couldn't remember. After deciding on our rentals (which is a lengthy process involving much negotiation), I asked the guy at the counter:

"Do we not have some kind of fine to pay?"

The guy replied "yes, you have £4 outstanding for some crappy chick flick"

"I knew it!!!"

A Cat Called Beau

2009-07-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Every day when Lucy or I come home from work, we come in the door and Beau is there to greet us. She rolls on her back straight away and demands her belly rubbing (she does this a lot). Lucy picks her up and carries her around the house, I tend to swear at her and tell her to get out of my way.

And every morning, I wake up at a bout 4am to Beau purring like a demented tractor, staring into my eyes from about 1 inch away. She follows us around when we get dressed, she keeps me company when I work from home, and she follows us down the drive when we go out. When we eat you have to throw her off the table / sofa at least 10 times per meal. Lucy is totally in love with her, and I have to admit, despite the early mornings and the inability to hit the cat litter tray, I was too. I have known a lot of cats and have never met a cheekier, friendlier bolshier one.

The only one she follows around more than Lucy is our other cat - Ripley. They are quite the gang, roaming the neighbourhood together. Beau cant be more than 5 metres from Ripley. They sleep in the same basket or at the bottom of the bed together.

Except that our neighbour horrifically backed his car over Beau (as unfortunately witnessed by Ripley) this morning and we are totally gutted.

The heartbreaking thing is watching our other cat roam around the house looking in every corner and walking round in circles looking for Beau and miaowing (and they say cats aren't sentimental). Apparently she was doing this outside all day.

Totally gutted.

The Rock Star's Tribute to Michael Jackson (Latvia Style)

2009-07-18T04:09:00.000-07:00

Complete with random drunken girl.

This was actually a brilliant bar we went to on a couple of nights.

On Latvia

2009-07-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have just got back from a 5 day trip to Latvia and am now in recovery mode. At the moment this involves trying to de-tox by drinking water and eating celery, though this is not working so well...

Riga is a brilliant city however - full of contradictions. On the bad side, the influx of stag-do's into the country as assisted by Ryanair's cheap flights (I may prepare an entire blog post about my feelings for Ryanair) has meant that the city is full of sleazy joints where attractive women feign interest in you to trick you into buying £500 bottles of champagne. The hostel I stayed at has a whole list of clubs and bars that 'you cannot go into or you WILL be robbed'.

This has led to a bit of bad blood between the Latvians and the English and we struggled a little bit to get to see the real city. We weren't helped by the fact that there were seven of us, and we were drinking, and we were loud!

I have kind of decided that I will try to veto foreign stag do's arranged by my mates, as I really think it can affect a place.

On the good side we did managed to do some cool things, like get ourselves into a Latvian nightclub on the 6th floor of some old soviet bloc concrete building, we had some great food and managed to get out of the city to some of the beach resorts which were absolutely fantastic. And unlike when we went to Prague 5 or so years ago, we managed to completely avoid the stags (except in the airport), and by Monday the stags had all disappeared. So it can be done!

Riga is beautiful and boasts some of most beautiful people you will ever see anywhere (and I've been on a fair few different continents). Just don't go where the stag do's do.

Goodbye John.

2009-07-07T13:54:00.001-07:00

When I was traveling to Canada a lot for work back in 2006-07, I worked with quite a character called John.

John was an electrician of some 35 years service to a large steel works that I worked on a long term energy reduction project with. He had been there so long that in fact his employee number was '3'.

John spent most of his years as an electrical maintenance supervisor, trouble-shooting problems and responding to breakdowns on the many large motors and electricity supply systems at the site. Towards the end of his career (actually I think it was technically after he retired), John became actively involved in our energy teams, being the implementer for many of the good ideas that were generated. It was a great project and since has become a case study for the work we do over there.

He got so involved that he saw a gap in the market when trying to solve one of the energy efficiency issues on site relating to industrial lighting control - he began building his own automatic control systems that could withstand the incredibly dusty, dirty, tough conditions in a steel melt-shop. He set up his own company delivering these simple robust systems to anyone who would have them.

John and I spend many an hour walking the myriad of switch rooms, investigating pumps and fans and motors and drives across the factory. He would tell me funny stories about how the guy who first build the site, built the huge electric arc furnace on the assumption that he could just plug it into the local grid and faced a 1 year delay in production start up due to having to get a larger supply to the entire township to feed his factory. He would tell me of his ice fishing escapades on the local river, and we would discuss the merits of American trucks and European diesels.

The funniest story I remember, though I cant tell it properly, was about how one of the factory cats (semi feral creatures which are often found in steelworks and fed by the operators - to keep the rats down), got into one of the electrical rooms and electricuted itself across two live circuits and took town the entire factory causing $100,000 of lost production. Feeding cats was banned after that, though I did see a couple of soot covered creatures which I mistook for huge rats myself.

I remember John fondly because he was, despite his age, extremely kind, very courteous, enthusiastic, friendly and warm. And because he had a real belief in what we were doing. A real deep seeded belief that the work we were doing was important - not just for money saving reasons, but for moral reasons too.

I am writing this post because today I found out that John died of cancer a few months ago.

Goodbye John.

I Have Found a New Hero

2009-07-05T11:49:00.001-07:00

I am not the kind of person that usually looks up to anyone. I hate our celebrity culture and if someone asked me who my hero was, I would rally struggle for an answer, possibly citing Tim Flannery of some ageing rock god.

I have found a new hero. He is a little short, overweight, as silly hair and is a complete geek. Not general hero material. But I agree with absolutely everything he says.

David Mitchell is one half of the comedy duo that wrote Peep Show. In my opinion the funniest comedy show EVER written. I am struggling to find a video that I can embed, but I have linked a you-tube clip here.

Recently I have discovered that David Mitchell is extremely funny, but also that he shares almost all of my opinions too. Surprisingly left wing and Tory hating for a Cambridge graduate, he now blogs regularly on 'Comment is Free' on the Guardian / Observer website and his articles are just about the only thing I laugh out loud at in this age of over-stimulation. Witty and clever - the only problem being that some of the commenters cant quite keep up with his point.

Here are some favourites on wheelie bins and Alan Sugar.

What got me laughing today:

"They say a sneeze is like a mini-orgasm. Well, if my cock went off six times in a row every couple of minutes for hours on end I'd cut the blasted thing off"

There' Something Weird About this Recession

2009-07-04T02:37:00.000-07:00

A recession is a time of hard graft, where everybody just gets on with it and tries to get out the other side without losing their job / house / business beer allowance. Its a time when everybody is grim faced and resolute. The sky is grey, its always raining, and old episodes of 'Cheers' are on repeat play on the TV.

Thats how I imagine the early 90's.

But the funny thing about this recession is its not really like that at all.

I work in an office where approximately 70% of the staff are being forced down to a 4 day week (and there have been several redundancies in the last six months). Where we are battered by constant edicts from up above, telling us off for spending too much money on mobile phone calls, informing us of the new biro rationing scheme and battering us about how bad we are performing financially (but at the same time completely missing the point and failing to understand the simple steps which would actually make us more profitable - steps which everyone around me seems to understand).

It seems to have become a little bit of a joke almost. For some its almost at that if-I-dont-laugh-i-will-cry point. I can only laugh at spending days writing a proposal for a client, only to find that that client has gone bust a few days later. Luckily I am still busy at the moment, but others joke about having sat in the office not having done any work for the last three days.

Added to this, the industry I work in has basically seen blanket recruitment freezes. There is usually a relatively high turnover of staff, but as nobody is recruiting - nobody is leaving. In my team of twenty, the personnel has not changed in twelve months. Nobody is getting pay rises, nobody is getting promotion, therefore levels of office politics are low.

This, along with worries about impending doom has actual led, in my opinion to wierdly high levels of humour an camaraderie in a group where nobody usually has any time to talk to one another.

Its very strange.

I Don't Wanna Move! (throws toys out of pram)

2009-06-27T01:17:00.000-07:00

Our landlord called us up this week. To be precise the tight bugger texted Lucy asking her to call him up. He is thinking of moving back to Sheffield and may want his house back. I don't want to move!

This is probably the second longest I have ever stayed in a house (almost one whole year!) and I actually quite like it and want to stay. I now own things like 'furniture' and extras like 'cutlery' and cats which will make the resumption of my nomadic lifestyle a little more difficult. I've been nesting!

I am thinking of invoking squatters rights...

A Discovery on Team Names

2009-06-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

Whilst undertaking the mammoth Three Peaks Challenge yesterday (after which, I am thoroughly exhausted and have contracted sun-burn so ridiculous that when I take my shirt off, it looks like I am wearing a white T-shirt), my newly recruited team-mates and I got to discussing our team names (Bandicoot and Oscelot).

I was previously under the impression that an Oscelot was some kind of deer, probably found in Africa or some such foreign part and that a Bandicoot was something similar to a fox, cunning and sly. After a little argument, neither of us were any the wiser. So I looked it up on t'interweb today.

It turns out an Oscelot is some kind of cool large cat, otherwise known as the 'Painted Leopard' or 'Jaguarette'.

A bandicoot is basically a large hamster. Awe inspiring!

Some Training for Bandicoots

2009-06-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here with a not insignificant headache, trying to keep my eyes open after driving back from the Lake District. Two potential members of Team Bandicoot took Lucy and I scrambling up 'Jacks Rake', a short route very close to a part of the Cumbria Way a few weeks ago.

I have been informed that my compact camera is un-repairable after coming into a fair amount of contact with a rainwater / dissolved boiler sweets concoction. Therefore not wanting to risk my DSLR in the rain, I must resort to stealing images from the internet:

Tomorrow however, I have agreed to go with some other potential members (or at least they will be by the end of the day), to North Yorkshire to complete the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge!

Its a 23 mile circular route over three of the highest peaks in the Yorkshire Dales (Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough) and is supposed to be completed within 12 hours. Wikipedia calls it 'gruelling'. 'Gentle' or 'easy peasy' or 'like a large cuddle from a giant marshmallow' were the descriptive sentences I was hoping to read.

To make things worse (as well as the forecast for drizzle all day) is that one of the guys I am going with is a little bit hardcore and far, far fitter than me, like really fit. Like 'I've done a tour of Afghanistan' fit.

This would be OK in itself ... except that he told me that he wants to complete the circuit as fast as he can.

I should have told him, 'thats fine but when you get to the end can you get a round in?', but I think he expects me to do the same (and I am slightly scared of him).

I have this ominous feeling in my stomach tonight.

I am off to get myself a power curry!

Team Bandicoot Update

2009-06-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

Its kind of a little pointless writing this as the majority of my limited readers (limited in number, not in their reading ability) are also readers of my brother's site over at All That Comes With It so will probably be aware of what I am about to write.

Dan has blown cover and announced that in July of next year we will be taking on a six day hike across the Hadrians Wall in the north of England. The walk, for the Joseph Salmon Trust will commence in Bowness on the West coast and will wind its way along Hadrians Wall taking some quite dramatic scenery and some historical sites along the way.

For the walk we have decided to et up two teams. Mainly because we want to be able to raise as much money as we can for the charity, which means having a large group of participants hassling a lot of non participants. However in terms of group size we are limited by the range of accommodation available along the way. So Dan will go with one group (randomly named Oscelot) from East to West, whilst I try to organise another from West to East to ease the burden on hostels etc. The groups will meet in the middle on the third day for a healthy game of rounders or perhaps a bacon butty or two.

I was actually planning not to tell my group about some of the bunk-houses and inform them that they were going to have to camp, but that has kind of fallen through now, so I am going to have to relent and allow a few walk comforts.

The team name 'Bandicoot' has been inherited for the West to East rabble for reasons unknown to me, though I think I am happy to stick with it as it took us nearly two weeks to come up with a pub quiz name (and the Nurse ended up getting that from the internet) so having a name ready decided will relive a little stress.

So, what now. Oh - we need some walkers! Dan (envying my initial recruitment joy) has already made moves to try to push for 'Oscelot' membership via his extensive readership, and by the looks of his recent comment list is doing pretty ok with it too!

I do have one trump card however. I work in an an environmental consultancy full to the brim with twenty somethings who thought it would be a good idea to do an environmental science degree thinking that this would lead to lots of exciting work outdoors. Then they joined a consultancy and had their hopes buried at their desk in a large pile of Environmental Permit Supporting Documentation and Environmental Management System Procedural Guidance. Hence, frustrated walking / climbing types are in abundance!

I plan that to be my recruiting ground.

For any who haven't seen it, the walk website has been set up by Dan here, and here is a parting picture of Hadrians Wall (as stolen from the internet):

Ottawa

2009-06-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

I am back home finally now, and I am working hard to keep my eyes open as I work up the energy to go to our regular Sunday nigh pub quiz. I thought I would take this half hour of opportunity to post up the last of my photos from the trip - Parliament Hill in Ottawa which I visited on the way to the airport - and another Charleston Lake photo, which I have my eye on for an extended canvas.

Pleasantly Surprising

2009-06-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

Just finishing up work for the week, sitting in my hotel room contemplating what to do tonight.

Should I go to the cinema alone? Should I go to a bar ... on my own? Or should I just give in and buy a massive pile of junk food on expenses and eat myself stupid in the hotel room? On my own.

This is my fifth work trip to Canada (I think), mainly Ontario, but I have been to New Brunswick once. It is the only trip I have taken outside of the winter... and I have to say it is an altogether different experience!

One can do things such as 'going outside' or 'walking somewhere' both things I enjoy doing very much which were previously not possible. I have also located the nearby gym and made friends with a guy from my client's site who invited me around for dinner. All very pleasant.

In the spirit of trying to make a little more of my business trips these days, I went out to a local hiking spot the other evening to practice some photography and am planning a little jaunt into Ottawa tomorrow.

I liked the reflection off the water on this one:

Charlston Lake, Ontario, Canada

Just Bumbling Around

2009-05-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have arrived in Ontario a day before I have to start work and I have been determined to make something more out of my foreign work trips than I usually do. So I hopped in to my ridiculously small hire car, made even more amusing by the fact that everyone else is driving trucks, and drove down to the nearest place mentioned for walking in my Canada Lonely Planet.

The lucky location was "Land 'O' Lakes" (whoever named that place was obviously from Yorkshire). I went armed with my DSLR camera, but quickly found out that for some reason it had rejected my memory card so I could only store around 15 pictures on the internal drive.

Also my work laptop doesnt have any facility to edit photos (well actually thats a lie, I just couldnt be bothered to figure out how), and those swines in IT have blocked Flickr access recently (though for some reason have missed Blogger). Oh the trauma of communication!

After acquiring a map from the provincial park centre (which looked a little like Huddersfield public toilets) I spent the first part of the 12km walk wandering around thinking that the scenery could just be straight out of a Yorkshire woodland. Apart from the effing massive dragonflies that seemed to be everywhere of course.

Just when I was tutting to myself, thinking that this Canada place was nothing special. In fact it was a little like the wood at the back of the house I grew up in. I was startled by a startled deer (startledness all around)!

This is normal fayre in the woodlands of England of course, in fact, due to my chronic unattentiveness, usually I dont spot the deer and somebody has to point it out to me ... then they have to spend several minutes explaining where the damn thing is in reference to that there Sycamore tree in the distance ... then they have to describe what a Sycamore tree looks like ... then maybe I will see it.

But, there was no missing this bugger. Oh no. Thats because it was the size of the 310 double decker bus to Homfirth. Ah so thats the difference between England and Canada. Size.

I couldnt catch the damn thing with my camera, despite the fact it was in my hand at the time (the camera not the deer). But it was around this bit somewhere:

I spent the rest of the walk looking out for bears and suchlike, and panicing about various strange insects landing on me, in much the same way as I used to do with the spiders and cockroaches in Australia.

Its funny how different English speaking nations live in such different environments and find them normal. Aussies couldnt fathom my obsession with kangaroos and kookaburra's, yet some get excited by badgers and foxes.

I had one Italian friend who was obsessed with taking photos of sheep (I am sure they must have sheep in Italy?).

Out of the Frying Pan, into the Damp

2009-05-29T01:29:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I got back from my walk along the Cumbria Way with my Brother Dan, Craig (who I will from henceforth refer to as "The Walking Binliner", as he wanted a special name) and several other of their friends. I was going to post something up here about the delights of trekking through the Lake District, but I think Dan pretty much has it covered. Besides which - since my accident with my camera a few weeks ago, I am unable to easily take photographs and have no visual record of the event.

Tomorrow I am travelling once again to Canada for work. Its funny the jealousy I get in the office. I think they believe that its all 5 star hotels, limos, glorious sunshine and frolicking around when working abroad. When really it is losing two weekends to travel and working extra long hours for no extra pay or time off.

Lucy even said to me 'at least you will get a tan!'. I have tried to explain that when I am not wokring in a factory, I am sitting bored in my hotel room watching Simpsons and Family Guy repeats. She still doesnt seem to understand.

Not that I begrudge it - I am getting vast amounts of experience on the job, working in different environments, so I will always volunteer. But it is still work!

On the subject of travel, I have recently set some clevel little widgets up on iGoogle, which allow me to see weather in different parts of the world. I couldn't help but notice this:

Where I live:

Where I am travelling to:

Bugger.

A brief pause...

2009-05-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

It been a little while since I posted on the blog. I put this down to the fact that I just bought the classic collection of Sharpe on sale from HMV, 16 or so of which they are. Each 2 hours long.

I have become somewhat addicted to Sharpe. Spending my every spare moment trying to squeeze in half an hour or so. For that I apologise.

On Saturday I am off on the Cumbria Way and the weather looks pretty nice. This is a little annoying since I invested a significant amount of money in waterproofs after my last adventure. Oh well if there is one thing you can be sure of in England, its rain.

Other interesting news has come to light just tonight. My good friend the Rockstar and his band, have landed a gig in July supporting Echobelly (think back to the 90's, cheesy indie rock - thats the one)!

I used to have a serious crush on the lead singer in my youth.

So I leave you with 'Great Things':

No. 4: The Pennine Way Part I

2009-05-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Recipe for Sticky Soggy Camera:

Take 1 trouser pocket
Add 2 packets of boiled sweets of your choice
Add 10 gallons of rainwater
Walk around a lot

Luckily I managed to dry the thing out a bit, and although still a little sticky, I recovered my photos from the Pennine Way:

Day 1 - Edale to Crowden (16 miles) taking in Kinder Scout and Bleaklow

Four of us were supposed to set out on the first day, however this was quickly reduced to two when The Nurse and his brother Mark missed their train from Sheffield (apparently unaware that platform 2 and platform 2c are actually different locations). Due to the inadequacy of public transport, this put the boys 2 hours behind me and The Tank.

The Bottom of Jacobs Ladder

With no mobile reception, we set off slowly and thought it would be extremely entertaining to leave messages in the dirt for the chasing team which for some reason reminded me of the 90s show 'Challenge Anneka'

Graffitiing Kinder Scout Summit

What was even more amusing was the fact that the trailing team absolutely bust a gut to catch us up and we decided we should change our times to make it look like we were getting faster and faster. Apparently this destroyed their morale.

Day 2 - Crowden to some pub somewhere (11.5 miles) taking in Black Hill

After a nice campsite in Crowden we took a fairly easy route (via Black Hill and a timely bacon sandwich delivery form The Nurse's mum) to a pub near Marsden where the landlord let us stay out back for free. Unfortunately at this point we lost a good man. The Tank was retired by his Pediatrist girlfriend for officially having 'Foot Mank'. An impressive case of 'Foot Mank' to say the least.

Mark Surveys the Damage on Black Hill

Day 3 - Some Pub to Some Farm (17 miles)

We were joined by the City Worker and the Sergeant Major by day 3. The weather held out pretty good up to around lunchtime when we got a bit of a drenching. Though we managed a pub lunch so not all was lost. And a pub dinner which was a bonus as I was getting a little tired of supernoodles by this point.

Day 4 - Hebden Bridge to Cowling (14 miles)

The sun held out for us on this day and we had figured out a way to block out The City Worker's constant moans and protestations to get ourselves to a campsite which had actual working showers and everything!

A Building on a Hill

Day 5 Hebden Bridge to Malham (17 miles)

The team expanded on this day with the addition of Lucy and a few of her friends. It was a long old flatish slog through some really nice lowland (we were bored of moors by this point) up to Malham.

The Wilson Brothers Prove that Fluorescent is Back in Fashion

Day 6 - Malham to Horton in Ribblesdale (via Pen-y-ghent)

Day 6 took in some wonderful views from Pen-y-ghent (one of the highest hills in the Yorkshire Dales). Only thing is, we didn't see any of the views. In fact we couldn't even see Pen-y-ghent, despite the fact that we were standing on it! It absolutely peed it down to the point where we were walking with our eyes almost shut because of the pain of the horizontal rain hitting us in the faces. I spend pretty much the whole day walking with a couple of millimeters of water in my boots which was fun!

No pictures on this day!

Posing for the Cameral on Day 5

A Letter to 16 Year Old Sam

2009-05-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

I got back from my 6 day Pennine Way trip on Monday. I plan to write a long illustrated blog post all about it, however due to an extreme downpour on Pen-y-ghent (note: that linked picture is the first I have seen of Pen-y-ghent as I couldn't even see it when I was on it!) my camera got soaked and I am still a little afraid of turning it on in case it hasn't dried properly.

So I have chosen another subject - whilst perusing the guardian online, I came accross this article. A letter written by Stephen Fry to his 16 year old self, in response to one that he wrote 35 years ago addressed to his future self.

Whilst Fry has focussed his letter on understanding teenage emotion and past and present attitutes to gay rights. I began to think to myself - at the age of 28 (which I turn next week) what kind of practical offerings of advice would I give to my 16 year old self. I can think of quite a few:

Over the next 10 years or so, you will slowly come to realise that you hate night-clubs. You hate the music, the sweaty people, the freezing queues, the groping and the sticky floors. This will take you a very long time (and a lot of night club entry fees) to find out. Save yourself the hassle (and money) and dont bother going.
In around June 1999, when The City Worker tells you not to dive into the pool with the big sign saying 'no diving' because it is dangerous. Take his advice (as much as you dont want to) as this will save you years of dental hassle.
Your hair looks stupid and greasy. Shave it off! Unfortunatey you will go bald eventually as you had suspected, but shaving it now will mean that less people notice. However, do not bother shaving your face as the last 11 years have taught me that it will only grow back again.
Bet on Greece to win Euro 2004. You will get extremely good odds!
Study something at school / college / university that will actually lead to a job. Yes this means that you will have to get off your arse and go to the school careers centre (which, incidentally - you will not do for the next 10 years) and do a bit of research. But it is onyl half an hour!
On a fateful day in 2002 the Nurse will dare you to down an unknown drinks cocktail in the Courthouse. Do not, I repeat do not drink it. Bad things will happen!
It turns out that playing with metal figurines will not make you popular with the ladies as you had previously thought. I suggest you either abandon your geeky habits or at least keep them to yourself when in open conversation for the near future.
It also turns out that in order to be popular with the ladies, you have to talk to them. I realise that this currently goes against everything you have ever stood for. However I can truly recommend it.

I think that whole 'no regrets' thing is a pile of tosh!

Anyone else want to take up their own list?

Its Competition Time!

2009-04-25T12:37:00.001-07:00

Its competition time here at RCWR!

Unfortunately there is nothing to actually win. Except of course my respect - and let me tell you, that i worth more than 'real' money!

Upon perusing some of these old photographs I have been going on about, I began to realise that much of the time, I couldn't actually tell who the photographs were of (except when the names were written on the back). This may, of course be because my Mum appears to have thrown a few ringers into the box. Photos of people who are not actually of my family, nor have I ever met - just there to confuse me.

So I thought I would pass the challenge out to my readers to have a go and see if they can do any better than me.

I have provided below, three relatively recent photos of my inferior siblings and myself:

The challenge is simple. See how many of these good looking mugs you can match up the relevant childhood photos as shown here.

Happy hunting...

Kinder Scout

2009-04-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

Just a few more days to go until we do the 6 day section of the Pennine Way on Wednesday.

The weather is beautiful at the moment which is annoying me for two main reasons:

I have generally been at work
If it is sunny this week when I am at work, the 28th law of sod dictates that it will pee it down next week when I am hiking across hills and camping.

Last weekend we did a bit of a two dayer (3 of the crew that will be starting the walk) carrying tents and camping overnight by way of preparation. The first day was around 13 miles and relatively good going. The second day was 10 miles over Kinder Scout which pretty much wrecked us (as we were force marching to get to our pickup point by 1pm).

The wort thing was that I stupidly didn't wear proper hiking socks and my feet are a bit of a mess of blisters. I also didn't wear any sun-cream which turned out to be a bit of mistake.

Here are some photos (I love the Peak District when the mist ascends in the morning):

Tackling the 'Old Pennine Way' ascent of Kinder Scout

Near Kinder Scout Summit

Lost Amongst the Rocks

Photo of Dan with His Top Off

2009-04-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

I think I mentioned this somewhere on a previous post, but one of my Mum's friends has given me a nice little scanner that was no longer of use to her. I begun scanning in some of my old pre-digital photographs (which only stretch back to Sam aged 18) with the thought that these may provide some amusing blog material in the future.

I quickly realised that my hundreds of photos of me and my friends pissed up in 'some pub or another' would not be of great interest to my readers...

Then I had the thought that I may be able to do my siblings (and family) a favour by scanninng in some of the even older photos that my Mum has stashed in the attic. It would be pretty cool to have these in electronic format and to be able to share them around and back them up properly.

Upon receiving said photography from my mum, I rapidly began to understand the potential power held within those thick tomes of faded paper. Why it would be so easy just to grab a couple of those less than flattering photos of my siblings and publish them all over the internet...

To this concept my Mum issued me a grave warning:

"You know you will never win. If you do this to him, Dan will just keep escalating the insult on and on until you loose eventually. Think carefully before you put those pictures up"

I know I will lose the battle. But at the end of the day its about the fun had trying.

Here is my brother Dan circa 1976. Captions welcome...

Some Nice Time Off

2009-04-17T02:12:00.000-07:00

When I was over in Australia, I clearly remember having a conversation with one of my Aussie friends in which I relayed to her that one of the things I missed about back home was the british countryside.

She appeared as confused as most Australians do when you say that to them as most of them don't even realise we have trees in the UK. Only the timely input of one of my other friends persuaded her that we had things like grass and hills. It is a very rare thing to find an Aussie who has managed to find their way outside of London.

I have mentioned this before, but I am really beginning to love the proximity of the peak district to my house. The weeks Easter holiday that I am on (purely because I have to use all of my holiday entitlement up) has really allowed me to go to ome places that I haven't been before - cycling and hiking.

Stanedge (The local climbing spot) as modeled by The Nurse

Big Announcement: New Addition to the Atkin-Hughes Household!

2009-04-05T10:28:00.001-07:00

This weekend Lucy had some very big news. Something she has been waiting for for quite some time, something that she has really wanted. She has been waiting with baited breath for these results for ages. Kept awake with anticipation ....

...unfortunately the news was bad so we went out and got some cats to cheer ourselves up:

Cat 1:

Cat 2:

We picked them up from a cat rescue place today. They both came from a household with around 15 cats whose owner apparently 'cannot cope' - unsurprisingly!

Lucy fell in love with Cat 1 who was pretty adventurous and bolshy when we were at the centre. I liked cat 2 which I think may develop into a bit of a lap-cat.

Cat 1 is around 6 months old and Cat 2 four years. We originally wanted a single kitten, but I feel a little better that we have rescued some cats that might have otherwise had no-where to go.

We may need to work on the cat names a little. Once thing is for sure - we are not sticking with their original names ("Missy" and "Babes").

So, if you are reading this, feel free to post some suggestion names for some female cats. I am all for calling one "John" as I think it would be quite funny, however I appear to have been vetoed on that one.

A Lesson in Keeping Your Passport Up to Date

2009-04-03T02:36:00.001-07:00

I am working in Canada at the moment, up at some ungodly hour in the morning. I almost didn't get here!

There was lots of swearing when I packed my passport last Friday night (ready for my plane on Saturday morning). I noticed that I only actually had about a week until my passport expiry date! After lots of stomping around I eventually calmed down and figured out this it actually expired the day ofter my return flight (the day of landing).

In the morning I called the British passport office and they told me "No way. you are not going to be able to travel today. They wont let you on the plane and wont let you into Canada." The official line is that you need at least six months on your passport to get into the country. I looked on-line and read loads of advice from people suggesting that going would be a bad idea. I swore lots more and resolved myself to not being able to go.

It would be pretty embarrassing and I am sure I would be talk of my work colleagues for a short while.

Then something snapped and I decided what the hell! Being deported from Canada would give me something to write about on the blog. And work would probably pay for the return ticket I would need anyway.

Then (after a 1.5 hour train journey) I got to the airport terminal really early and went to my airline ticket desk. "No, you wont be able to fly" said the nice lady.

"Can you just double check for me?" I asked.

Phone calls ensued ...

"... yes you should be ok!"

I sweated for much of the flight, worrying about being rejected and having to fly eight hours back in the opposite direction. Usually I get held up in Canadian immigration for quite some time asking me about work permits and what I am doing in the country - so I walked through the airport anticipating a very lengthy stay in immigration, maybe an unsuccessful one.

The guy checked my return flight and let me straight through without blinking. Sometimes I think it depends on what mood they are in.

And hey, it turns out that Ontario is quite nice when it is not -25 degrees!

Red Dwarf is Back!

2009-03-27T01:23:00.001-07:00

A few years of heavy cocaine abuse, rejected sexual assault charges, and poor sit-coms later and Red Dwarf is back!!

One of my favourite shows from my teens.

Only problem is they have 'returned to earth' (i.e. are short of budget) and are allegedly going to be using Coronation Street sets.

Also they are a bit old (old people calling each other 'smegheads' is just not as funny)

Also it is probably going to be a bit crap.

Also its on a channel that I don't receive.

But apart from that ... yay!

Anyway - the only clip I could find of the new Red Dwarf is here and I cant embed.

but here is a classic:

Becoming a White Van Man

2009-03-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

My list of 40 things to do before I am 40 is increasing at a very slow rate (standing at a weedy 16 at the moment) not because I can't think of things I would like to do, but more because I don't like to over commit.

I am making a little progress on #4 as discussed here and I have grand plans in the next couple of weeks to get my first one ticked off - #5 going to an NHL game. This may seem like a bit of a lame thing to put on the list to colonials. But seeing an NHL game when you live in Europe is quite a challenge!

I have always had a bit of an affection for Ice Hockey, stemming from my roller-hockey playing youth. But watching my local team (a good as the Sheffield Steelers are) is a little like watching an NHL game slowed down to 2/3rds speed. Not quite the same.

In a week I am flying out to Ontario for work and will try to sneak in a sly visit to the Ottawa Senators if I can. Unfortunately this will be by myself as my work colleague appears more interested in meeting up with the local Morris dancing troupe.

But the one I really want to tackle this year is #6 - converting a mini-bus into a campervan. I have been wanting to do this ever since hearing stories from my friends in Sydney who spent the best part of two years living in a bus in New Zealand.

While not wanting to do anything that extreme, I would love to have a bus for the weekend. To just drive to where I want and grab a quick kip in the back.

Plus I need a new project!

You may have read about the recent troubles of British van maker LDV. I am hoping I may be able to pick an old one of those up pretty cheap. I've got my eye on a nice LDV convoy 400 for around £1200, but my finances wont stretch quite that far yet.

The Call Girl and the House of Ivy

2009-03-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

I knew the title would get your attention!

A couple of years ago when I lived in Ivy house in Burley - just before Lucy moved in, my housemate, a civil engineer and myself had to find a replacement for another guy who had moved out to live with his girlfriend.

We went through the painful process of advertising on easyroommate.com in order to find a suitable replacement. We got a large number of responses, largely due to how good the house looked (once we tidied it up and took photos) and how ridiculously cheap the rent was (the landlord not having upped the rent in the previous seven years).

A few people looked around. Some we didn't like the look of (such as the guy who came round in the "I hate girls" t-shirt), and some didn't like the look of us. One of the primary considerations for selecting a new housemate had to be that said person was agreeable to our respective partners and their respective jealousies (one being worse than the other!).

This is why when we had a subdued, kind of geeky looking teacher come and look round, slightly ill as she was just recovering from tonsilitis at the time - we thought ... perfect, there is no way there can be any jealousies about this one!

So she moved into our spare room. And this is where things began to get a little strange.

Our new housemate seemed pretty chatty and nice at first, though our girlfriends developed a dislike to her instantly as she almost refused to talk to other females.

It was in the summer holidays at the time and our new housemate wasn't going to work. She seemed to go out quite a bit partying at the time and she would leave the house (with some anonymous bloke picking her up in an old bashed up red saloon) at around 11pm running out the door with nobody seeing her - not to return until around 5 in the morning. When we asked if whe had a good night and where she went, she would reply 'oh I just went for a few drinks in the Marriot' or 'I went to meet a friend at the Jury's Inn'.

This struck us as a little strange as in Leeds it is not common to go for a night out in a hotel bar, particularly the Jurys Inn which is a fair walk out of the city centre . What struck us as a little more strange was that when we finally spotted her leaving the house we noticed that our normally short haired housemate would go out wearing the longest hair extensions you have ever seen. These things were literally about a metre long! And fishnet stockings.

Ok, so she had a dubious dress sense, but we were fairly open minded people.

Then there were the photos. At first they were just enlarged glamour shots that she had decided to put up all around her bedroom. Glamour shots of herself in her underwear or some such atire.

Ok, so she like to look at photos of herself. We could live with it. Ok, so she also had post-it notes printed up with photos of herself in varoius states of undress in her handbag for handing out ... she wants to be a model - no problem with that.

My civil engineer housemate did, however feel a little uncomfortable when she asked his opinion on topless photos of herself and which ones should go into her portfolio. Not because he was embarassed, but more because his girlfriend would have ripped his head off if she had found out.

When the penny finally dropped was after a month or so, when our new housemate began to use the civil engineers computer to go on the internet. Ever a resourceful guy, the engineer would look at his history and find out where she had been. Aside from a few websites I would rather not mention, she had been looking in the main at one of her own design.

It was a profile page - it wasn't her name on the profile, but we clearly recognised one of the photos, with a blurred out face from those which adorned her bedroom wall. the page was filled with satisfied comments from previous 'customers'.

The most surprising thing was the cost. £850 per night!

She wasnt even very attractive (I wouldn't have paid more than a couple of quid - but I am a Yorkshireman).

Anyway I think the civil engineer's girlfriend eventually drove her out with a campaign of hostility. She only lasted a couple of months in the house and then made some excuse about going to London to join the civil service.

Overpriced Cinema

2009-03-08T01:05:00.000-08:00

Every time I go to the Cinema at the moment it seems that there is somebody at the screening hell bent on trying to ruin my enjoyment.

I went to the Hyde Park picture-house some time ago and remember a girl in the row in front putting her wooly hat over a particularly annoying lamp (which are located down the side of the cinema walls. Without the girl noticing, the hat proceeded to catch fire (being as lamps have a tendancy to get hot and that) and send a significant amount of smoke into the cinema. It actually went very on fire and was just a bit of rag really by the time I told her and she took it off.

While that was just funny, the last two times we went to the cinema in Meadowhall we have had a gang of lads smoking and running around in the row in front of us and an overzealous group of girls sitting next to us laughing ridiculously loudly all the way through the showing which managed to annoy everyone in the entire screen. And its not as if the cinema is a cheap night out anymore with tickets costing 6.50 (and then there's the extortionate drinks and food).

Which is why when we got to our 6.50 seats at a late showing of Slumdog Millionaire last night we were doubly dismayed to find first that the only seats left were the ones at the front (you know - the ones that give you neck-ache and a headache) and then that we had been seated next to a young couple - with a 3 or 4 month old baby! That bad enough on a plane, but who brings a baby into a movie about violence and life in the slums of India at 10 o'clock at night??

Luckily it appeared that one the movie got going the shear volume of the cinema speakers managed to drown gurglings and protestations of the young child. I was surprised (according to Lucy) the girl in the seat next to me managed to breast feed the baby without me even noticing (not that that should be a problem).

#4 - Pennine Way Update

2009-03-05T05:21:00.000-08:00

We did our first training walk for the Pennine Way a week or so ago. Me and The Nurse, I had a 5 or 6 kilo pack, he had a 10 kilo one. We did about 16 miles and after the walk my legs seized up pretty hard. I was fine by the next day, but apparently The Nurse was walking a little like John Wayne.

The training walk has learned us a few lessons on the art of walking:

Undertake training walks in order to avoid being crippled by the second day
Wear the same t-shirt and underwear the whole time to avoid carrying too much weight
Dont walk at the ridiculous pace the Nurse tried to set off at
Dont go to the pub until the end of the walk
Try not to walk up hills (this may prove a little difficult)

Being sticklers for punishment, I think we may set out on another one on Saturday.

On Being 18

2009-02-20T06:08:00.000-08:00

The worst thing about being 18 is not that you're spotty and you sweat a lot and you constantly worry about what other people thing of you and whether you are cool. Its not that you are purely a product of your hormones and you can swing from dark moods to glorious happiness to anger in the space of minutes.

For me the worst thing about being 18 is not that you are naive and inexperienced in the ways of the world - and lets face it, a little stupid. the worst thing about being 18 is that you don't realise that you are naive, stupid and inexperienced.

In fact you think you are rather clever and that all of the lessons of thousands of years of civilisation don't apply to you. You have better, more clever ways of doing things that all of your predecessors.

I was reminded of this when I was 18 and I went on my first lads holiday with much the same group that I will be going on holiday with this year (incidentally 10 years later) - The Artist, The Nurse, The City Worker and the newly named Tank (who I am pleased to hear will shortly be moving back up north).

We went to Tenerife. To Playa de las Americas. To a place where I would never choose willingly to go again. It was a mess of horrible concrete hotels and cramped clubs with 2-4-1 deals on pints of vodka-redbull hawked outside. We had a good time.

I in particular had a good time until day two, when I was so perfectly reminded of how stupid I was in such an extreme way.

When we were messing around in the pool toward the end of the day (completely sober I might add) - the City Worker cleverly informed us to watch out when diving into the pool, as once his sister had dived into a pool of similar depth (also surrounded by no diving signs as ours was), and had knocked some of her teeth out. Yeah whatever.

That very same day, we were playing an interesting game which involved slam dunking some kind of inflatable ball into some kind of inflatable ring. The kind of game that will keep up you interest for only a short while. I decided to create an additional element to the game and try to actually dive through the hoop whilst holding the ball.

As any sensible soul will tell you - the first thing that happens when you dive into water holding a ball is that your hands will shoot up with said ball into the air. This happened to me.

What happened during this act was that after passing through the hoop I got a little too close to the bottom of the (1.5m) pool. At speed. So close in fact that I had to stop my descent through the use of the only appendage available to me (my arms being in the air and all). That appendage happened to be my face, or more precisely, my front teeth. I rose to the surface and swore loudly when running my tongue over my teeth and realising that the front ones had broken in half.

No pain. No blood. Just a good clean break. Needless to say I wasn't much of a hit with the ladies for the rest of the holiday.

I was also in quite a bit of pain as I was walking through the street a day or two later when some Spanish kid ran up to me, slapped me round the face and then ran off. A little unusual, but not normally a problem but for the fact that my lips caught on my jagged teeth and caused them to cut open. Coupled with recycled Tenerife water those cuts caused me the biggest, most painful set of mouth ulcers I have ever had.

Also I wasn't best pleased with the "I told you so!" from the City Worker.

Today I have been playing around with a scanner that somebody gave to me some time ago and have finally made it work, so over the next two weeks I hope to bring you some gems from the past.

Starting with this picture of some chavs in Tenerife in 1999 (dont worry, the dust is on my scanner, not your screen):

Left to right: The City Worker, The Tank, The Nurse, The Artist

Re-discovering Letter Writing

2009-02-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

Even with the wide variety of means of communication open to us; email, text message, twitter. Even with facebook pokes and Blackberries, blog comments, instant messenger and simple straightforward phone calls - there is still something satisfying about writing a good old fashioned letter.

Recently, the evil discretions of a faceless and nameless international corporation have allowed me to re-discover my letter writing glee. After idiotically telling me my mobile phone contract was canceled in August, my nameless foe proceeded to charge me four more months phone charges and then get shirty and send in the debt collection companies when I refused to pay.

I responded with a barrage of written responses. Carefully emboldening my angry words and vengeful threats to report the company to the complaints commission. I systematically worked through their letter responses, picking apart their arguments and formulating intelligent points of note. I am taking joy in fighting my personal battle against the man, a game of cat and mouse - my personal war!

They respond with letters that say simply 'Thats nice. But you still have to pay us', and today sent me an additional bill to add to my collection.

I'll probably end up paying them in the end. Sighs

For those who are bored and have 10 minutes to spare

2009-01-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

A video I made of our Australia and New Zealand trip while waiting for Lucy to recover from a hangover. For some reason its very bad quality when uploaded.

On Sleepwalking

2009-01-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

You may have read such tales about young Sam as 'In Which I Make my Mum Proud!' or 'Being Felt up by an Indonesian Transsexual' or my favorites stories of my Peter Pan-esque friend The Artist to be found in my archives such as 'Under the Bridge' and 'The Artist and the Moped' (The Artist always was much better at making a fool of himself than me). Well I think I will add this one to that drunken teenager collection:

Throughout my childhood years and well into my university years, maybe up until the age of around 22, I was plagued by bouts of sleepwalking. I know what you are thinking - but I have to tell you that the sleepwalking was not always alcohol induced. Ok, it was alcohol induced most of the time, but not all of the time.

When I was very young, maybe 7 or 8 years old I suffered one of the first sleepwalking incidents that I remember. My parents were out and we had some poorly paid babysitter at the house looking after us. Imagine her fear as she saw me walking down the stairs into the living room, I don't respond to anything she says and then proceed to plonk myself down on the sofa and go to sleep.

There were very few incidents following that (or at least I didn't remember and nobody else was around to remember them) until I was well into my late teens. This somehow happened to co-incide with the period in my life when I first met my friends Caffrey and Carling.

Once in my second University year when I lived on Belle Vue Road (incidentally the view was rubbish) in Little Woodhouse in Leeds I had a pretty bad experience. It was the middle of winter (January or February I think), and it was freezing. I had gone to sleep, not under the influence, wearing pair of tracksuit trousers and nothing else. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the middle of the street (woken by the biting cold), frozen to the core with absolutely no clue where I was!

It probably took me a couple of minute at least to orientate myself and work out that I was only one street or so away from my house. I was still in a daze when walking back, and I don't really remember it. All I remember is being in the front garden of the house, thanking the lord that at least I had some form of clothing on, only to be confronted by our locked front door (it had shut locked behind me).

With no doorbell to the relatively large house, and me occupying the ground floor bedroom (it was one of those awful student house where they convert the living room so that they gain get one extra bedroom and one extra student's rent), I had to spend the next five minutes throwing an old mouldy tennis ball I found at my housemates window, who incidentally was apparently entertaining a young lady that night and wasn't best pleased by being disturbed.

Over the next few years (particularly in my third year and masters year) there were a few incidents of me walking into my house-mate's bedrooms. Generally, it seemed I would just hover in the doorway and switch the light on, then they would tell me in no uncertain terms to bugger off, and off I would tottle. There was also a bad incident (I have no memory of) when I was around 22 and after a night of heavy drinking I woke and mistook my mums bedroom for my own in my mums house and tried to get into the wrong bed, I was once again ushered on my merry way.

But we have to rewind a few years to hear the two worst sleepwalking incidents of my life, to when young Sam was but a mere 1st year university student and '£1 a drink' at the Dry Dock caused him some heavy nights:

In my first year I stayed in Lyddon Hall at Leeds University. Lyddon was a horrible old hall of residence which was full of misfits and weirdos who apparently couldn't get into any of the proper halls. It prided itself on being the oldest hall in the University, which meant it was falling apart and smelt of sewage. The most unfortunate thing about Lyddon was that it was all male (oh how I wish I had read the application form properly!) and I was in one of the cheaper shared rooms where I lived with an Irish guy (actually he was from Nottingham but claimed to be Irish) called Collins.

Collins and I got on pretty well apart from on one fateful night in May 1999. We used to go down to this horrible club in the Merrion Centre called Ritzy. Thankfully Ritzy is closed down now as it was biggest crap hole I had ever known in Leeds. Anyway in Ritzy on a Tuesday night was an event called 'CocSoc', that is 'The Cocktail Society' (Universities being the place of clubs and societies and all). At 'CocSoc' one could get 'cocktails' for some ridiculous amount like 3 for £1. That is, the kind of cocktails which are served with a ladle out of a bucket.

On this particular evening it was my birthday and a bunch of guys from my halls decided to treat me to the Dentist Chair Treatment. The dentist chair treatment, much to my surprise consisted of me sitting down and leaning my head back (in a pretty much similar style to a dentists chair surprisingly) while all of my friends poured their cheaply obtained 'cocktails' straight down my throat.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I arrived about 8pm, left at around 10pm because I was too drunk and Collins was tasked with escorting me home. Apparently I sang 'I'm Irish, I'm Irish, I'm an Irish Faggot' at the top of my voice to the tune of the Irish national anthem all the way up Woodhouse Lane. I, of course have no memory of this.

That night Collins awoke in the early hours of the morning to a vision. Next to his bed was a sink which we both shared, and hovering over the sink, was a still sleeping and standing me - poised and ready to relieve myself into it.

Not wanting to wash himself in a soiled basin he grabbed me and directed me toward the door out of the room where the toilets were. Apparently I spent a number of minutes grasping for the door handle but actually grabbing the hinge side of the door and wondering why it wouldn't open until Collins finally opened it for me and ushered me out.

Collins then realised this to be a mistake almost straight away. For the room that we were in was on the 1st floor and I had gone out into the stairwell and decided it might be a good idea to do my business through the banisters directly onto the floor below. Apparently there were still people up and about down there, but that's just here say and rumour. Collins spent the next few minutes trying to wash evidence of my discretion with cups of water. A thankless task as I remembered nothing the next day!

Another night in the same year I had another sleepwalking event. I knew absolutely nothing about the it until the next day when being served my awful weekend breakfast (at the weekend you got some additional rubbery eggs and soggy bacon on top of usual rations at Lyddon Hall). Everyone was looking at me a bit wierdly in the queue for the food. Particularly a Mexican guy who's name I forget and a friend of mine from Liverpool.

I didn't know why. As far as I knew I had gone out for a perfectly normal night out in the Observatory (another hole) by the train station in Leeds centre and then had gone to bed. A far as I was concerned it was a better night than most as I had actually made it to the dining room for breakfast in the morning, something that I rarely did at the weekend.

My little Liverpudlian friend delighted in telling me the tale of the young meek Mexican guy who had being playing pool in the common room all evening. He had retired to his room (which stupidly he had left unlocked) at around 1am. Much to his surprise he had switched the light on in the tiny cell-like room, tried to get into bed and been confronted by some slumbering drunk, oblivious to the world.

Scared he had gone back down to the common room and got my bolshy Liverpudlian friend who had accompanied him back upstairs and helped drag me back to my room. Apparently I was completely incoherent and couldn't even utter an understandable word during the march back.

The daft thing it that, not only was my room in a completely different building around 500 metres away, but the Mexican guys room was at the very end of the corridor on the 3rd floor of the main building. I obviously slept walked all the way down the road, into the main building and up three flights of stairs. Obviously at that point I must have got tired and looked for the nearest unlocked room in which to rest my weary head. I would have had to use my swipe-card twice to gain access, so I must have had a little sense with me!

No. 4: Two Ways

2009-01-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

No. 4 on my 40 thing to do before I am 40 is to walk the Pennine Way, a 268 mile walk from the South Yorkshire Peak District National Park, through the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National park - ending across the Scottish border. This spring we are planning on doing the first 5 or 6 days of the trail, which should leave us about third of the way up.

I have had this in my mind for a while. One of the main draws being that the start of the Way is in Edale - not far from my house. I seem to have roped in The Tank and The Nurse as traveling buddies and a number of other people who want to do one or two days. The idea is to carry all of our equipment and camp along the way. It will be pretty challenging, but then thats what we are after.

What has complicated matters however, is that I have been invited along with my brother to a similar 4 day jaunt across the Cumbria Way in late May. I am pretty sure I will do both (Dan - take this as a yes) bar injury. It was suggested by Arjan that I add this to my 40 things to do before I am 40, in order that I can tick something off the list - but I think that is a little against the spirit of the thing.

Photo of Black Hill on the Pennine Way: Stolen from the Internet

Coupled with the annual walking trip I will be taking with Lucy's family - this will be a summer of long walks!

Its Cold in Canada

2009-01-16T17:35:00.001-08:00

This afternoon I got off work a little early. The client I was working with persuaded me it would be a good idea to drive north to Ottawa to go and see Parliament Hill being as it is the main (winter) attraction around. I am in a very tourism oriented little town on the edge of lake Ontario so there are a few things to do around here. Unfortunately the fact that it is below -20 outside puts a bit of a spanner in the works when considering taking a little boat out onto the lake.

So I thought it would be a good idea to go and take a few photographs. I was hoping to get there by sunset so that I could get some good light. It was a beautiful day today.

So tonight I drove the hour and a half or so north and pitched straight into Friday night rush hour. Coupled with the fact that I left my map at home and I drive (even more) like a granny when forced onto the wrong side of the road – the one and a half hours took more like 2 and a half hours.

Parliament Hill is actually quite spectacular in the snow and with the setting sun behind it. Illuminated by the red sunset and by artificial lights it would of cut a fine picture … only my camera didn’t work as I forgot to charge the batteries. The image, however is burned in my mind you’ll be glad to know.

I basically had to run around parliament hill, as with the wind chill I was absolutely frozen to my core. I have made four trips for work so far. They have been in February twice, in January and in December. I have never really seen Canada above 0 degrees!

But, I am told that the weather is especially cold here at the moment, even by Canadian standards. Yesterday evening, the temperature hit -30, without wind-chill! The funny thing is that the cold is all that people talk about. They say things like ‘Wow its really cold outside, hey?’. I feel like replying ‘You live in Canada!’.

It’s a little like when I get into work in Leeds and people say to me; ‘I can’t believe how much it’s been raining recently!’. I wonder if nomads on the Sahara desert say ‘Boy its dry out there today isn’t it? I am working up quite a thirst!’ to one another while tucking into their camel steaks.

On Weddings (not mine!)

2009-01-12T14:40:00.001-08:00

For those who don't know me personally, I have a girlfriend who is completely obsessed with weddings. If you had ever met her, you would know. You would know within about 30 seconds of starting a conversation with her.

She is more than obsessed, she is borderline psychopathic about weddings.

She has planned out every last minute element of her own wedding (to which I hope I am not invited) down to the colours, the dress, all that other crap that goes along with it etc. etc.

She has been to wedding shows for no other reason that she wanted to have a look, and I have lost count of the number of times I have walked into the living room and caught her watching wedding TV. She ashamedly tries to flick the channel over - but I know! Wedding TV for gods sake! What on earth can they play on wedding TV that stretches our for 24 whole hours 365 days of the year? I can't watch it long enough to find out (it burns my eyes).

Over the Christmas just gone, we came home from Morocco to the news that both her sister and brother have officially announced their engagement (not to each other I hasten to add - that would be wrong). This sent Lucy into kind of a spiralling wedding frenzy.

The day after boxing day I ended up trawling around wedding venues in the midlands. Country house, hotel, conference centre, country house etc etc. After about 72 straight hours of Lucy saying: 'I want our wedding to be like this', 'I would have these colours at my wedding', 'I would like flowers of this type when we get married', I started to go out of my mind and actually start thinking that we were getting married. Like we were engaged and I was having small heart attacks about hearing the kinds of costs involved.

In fact. Thinking about it, she speaks like we are engaged all of the time now!

My friends in Australia used to laugh their asses off when Lucy would describe how our wedding would be - despite the fact that we are not engaged - despite the fact I want a wedding about as much as I want a poke in the eye with a rusty pair of garden shears - despite the fact that every time she talks about it or stops at a jewellers or looks in a wedding dress shop window, I just walk off.

I was beginning to get to the point where I was thinking that I should probably have an affair or something so that she would change her ideas and consider me as 'not quite marriage material'. Yes. that would be nice. That would be peaceful.

Anyway, it turns out that Lucys sister is planning a wedding very similar to the one that she has always wanted. This has resulted in a complete change of attitude for Lucy to something like:

'I am not that bothered if I get married anymore'.

Result.

40 40s

2009-01-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

I set up this blog as a means of tracking my move abroad last year. I took the plunge and emmigrated to Sydney well over a year ago now.

Then I emmigrated back again.

Beyond the Australia thing, I started a trend of writing about drunken exploits of my younger years, partly because I think they are funny, and partly because I don't want to forget them.

I tried to become a clever, fancy interneteer by converting my blogger blog to a Wordpress blog, I even enlisted my brother who has considerably more experience than me with Wordpress to help with the transfer. He will, incidentally not get paid for his efforts. I couldn't really be bothered to learn how to work Wordpress.

Following my return in September, the posts have kind of dried up, due to the amount of travelling I have been doing for my job and due to the lack of subjects more interesting than 'what I did at work today' posts.

So, I had been feeling that on this, the 202nd post, the blog had kind of lost its purpose. It was no longer functioning as I had at first intended it to (for example, not once in all this time do I remember posting anything about rabbits, or for that matter raisins).

However this week I have found my salvation! I got talking to one of my clients while over here in Canadia who said to me she may buy a bottle of Don Perignon (apologies for misspelling) at some point in January. I looked at here puzzled, for what reason?

Apparently it is on her 40 things to do before she is 40 list that she had written up with a group of her friends on some drunken night.

40 things to do before you are 40! What a brilliant, if completely cliched and unoriginal idea! Why didn't I steal that from somebody! Surely mine would be the only blog in the entire of the interweb that would contain such a fantastical concept.

Its a new year now. 2009 apparently. And technically I have only spent 2 days at home since the inception of the year, so tehnically I haven't had much time to think about a direction for the year. What a perfect time to think about such a list and create a new direction for the blog!

Why waste my time in trying to correct my character faults with new years resolutions that I won't keep, when I can simply arrange a list of single one-off events which will temporarily enrich my life for shortlived moments!

So I have begun a list on the right hand side of this blog. If I could figure out how to use Wordpress, I would set up a different page - but I really can't be arsed with all that.

How I Spent my New Year

2009-01-07T17:01:00.001-08:00

11.56pm:

The Artist "I know, lets get shots in for everyone ready for New Year!"
Me: "Yeah great idea"
We go to the bar.

11:57pm

Me: "Can I have...how many of us are there? ... er six shots of sambuca"
The Artist: "No ... er... seven"
Me: "seven shots of sambuca please!"
The City Worker: "I don't like Sambuca"
Me: "OK. six shots of Sambuca and one shot of Tequila please." turns to friends "I hope you all have some money because I am not paying for all of this".
The Artist scrabbles around in his pockets.
The Artist: "I think I can pay for about three of them?"

11:58pm

Me (snatching up The Artist's money): "Can I pay by Card? Have I got time?"
...
Hands over card.
...
Waits.

11.59pm

Barmaid hands over chip and pin machine.
...
Me: "Oh you seem to have put the wrong amount in here. It says £1.40"
Barmaid takes back chip and pin machine.
...
Waits.

12.00am

Barmaid hands over card terminal.
...
I enter my pin. I hand back the terminal.

12.01am

I collect my drinks.
I return to my friends.

Oh. Its too late.

"Shots anyone?"

Flashbacks

2009-01-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post something up about it being 2009 - a whole brand new year. But I am a little too late on that one.

I have a bit of a hectic post new year time of it, flying out to New Brunswick in Canada on the 2nd for work for the next few weeks.

My enjoyment of travelling for work seems to have diminished for the time being.

This may be because I have taken an absolutely ludicrous number of flights in the last twelve months, and have begun to develop an ingrained hatred of airports. This hatred added to an existing hatred of North American airports that I had before. For some reason being a forgeign passport holder in North American airports means you are subject to a 'guilty until proven innocent' type approach by the (somtimes pretty rude) customs personnel on a power trip. In the UK the staff dont really care about their jobs so much (most of them are temps) which makes getting through a much easier process.

My enjoyment may have decreased because I am working on my own this time, and have nobody to talk to for most of the day (particularly since it is the weekend and I havent started the project yet). I dont mind going to restaurants on my own, but for some reason this time I can't really be bothered.

It may also have decreased because I have stayed in a ludicrous amount of hotels in the past 12 months. I am not a big fan of hotels. I am particularly not a big fan of housekeeping. Surely the aim of a hotel is to make you feel as at home as possible? Well at home I use the same towel for a week, leave it wet on the floor and change my sheets about once a month - so stop bloody waking me up at 08.30 in the morning to clean my room!

No. I jest. The real reason I am not enjoying my trip this time is because going away without Lucy and spending large amounts of time on my own reminds me of my big trip away last year. It reminds me of how hard I found it being apart from her - and in truth it makes me feel a little guilty that she is forced to rattle around our house in Sheffield on her own where she doesn't have very many friends.

Morocco

2008-12-30T06:18:00.001-08:00

Its been a while since I have posted up here. Christmas has been and gone, family arguments have emerged and then faded away again. I am a little more tubby and a little more grumpy than I was before. But all in all, fun was had.

Last week I was in Morocco where we stayed i

n an amazing Riad just outside of the Marrakech city walls. Marrakech is essentially one massive maze of small streets and souks (covered marketplaces) which flog a mixture of tourist tat, Moroccan crafts and items for the locals. More often that not when you buy anything from these places you get massively ripped off, but after a while (and much shopping) you begin to understand the value of things and learn to offer a quarter (or less) of what they are demanding.

The formula seemed to work well for us. Lucy proved herself to be an excellent bargainer (I am particularly poor, being too polite for my own good).

I thought I should post up a few of the better photographs from the trip. Morocco is a photographers dream, vivid colours and unusual people are everywhere. You can spot snake charmers, storytellers and street apothecaries in the main squares at dusk, and during the day the sunlight breaks through the rough souk roofing an casts all sorts of interesting shadows.

Only one thing prevents the photography - it is nearly impossible to take photographs of people because they will either a) become offende

d, or b) demand some money. therefore the majority of my photos are of places, animals or of people I have bought something from.

The Berber village we stayed at, in the High Atlas mountains for one night whilst doing a bit of walking:

The football pitch below is approximately 2300m above sea level. The local kids hike up

the mountain to the only bit of stone free, flat land available. I just wonder what happens when they lose the ball down the hill.

A couple of mules that we saw on a tannery trip in Marrakech. I guarantee to you that the one on the floor is alive as it lifted up its head about five seconds after I took the photo. I was unsure of its health though as I was for a number of other animals we saw around the city:

A very colourful orange cart:

The main square in Marrakech at dusk. Street performers and street food everywhere:

One of the more interesting souk shop-fronts in Marrakech. I spent about half an hour standing outside it as my mother bartered hard for an amber necklace across the road:

If you are interested, want to see the photos without the sides chopped off, or are a stalker the rest of the photos are on my Flickr page linked on the right. If you have any advice on how to display photos without the sides chopped off. Please let me know at the usual address.

Renault Clio 1.2 v Toyota Prius T4

2008-12-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

I got delivery of my new company car this week - hurrah! Strange considering those who ordered Fords in my company wont have theirs for another three months and there isn't even a Prius manufacturer in the country.

So this week I swapped this:

Renault Clio 1.2 (2008) hire car with about 4000 miles on the clock.

For this:

Toyota Prius T4 (2008) with about 150 miles on the clock.

I settled straight into trying to prove to myself that the Prius was the right choice for me. Over the last 6 weeks or so of driving the Clio supermini, I kept a careful check on the miles per gallon I was managing to get over my normal driving route (mainly heavy motorway traffic on my commutes to Leeds and country driving on my commutes to Manchester). With the supermini 1.2 I was able to get on average 39.7mpg over the full 6 weeks. There were a few drives on which I managed to get it up as high as 43mpg with some concerted effort.

So in my first week of driving the Prius I have tried to use my normal driving style (albeit a little like a grandad as Lucy would tell you). Just to get a fairly like for like comparison (although the Prius is obviously much more spacious and heavier). So far I have managed an acceptable 52.9mpg.

In future weeks I plan to increase the grandaddedness of my driving style to see if I can't get that up a little. I will probably be going to Rattling the Kettle for a few tips on how to go about it (this may have to wait until late January due to the impending Morocco trip and some business in Canada).

Based upon my cig packet calculations the Prius would save me £460 of fuel per year (plus the additional tax benefits it holds). I think I should be able to get that figure up a little.

On Being a Scrooge

2008-12-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

I have noticed a significant change in my other half over the last couple of weeks. She is noticeably more 'cheery' and 'enthusiastic' at the moment. Not that she wasn't 'cheery' and 'enthusiastic' before, just that it seems to be more obvious.

I have found that more and more I am having listen to her 'enthusiastic' conversations she has at me, and they are getting longer and longer.

And the whistling is kicking back in (I thought I was rid of that).

Its not that I don't want to listen to her yarns. Its just that whenever she has an extended conversation at me, my mind fills with the last good tune I heard on the radio and I feel the need to whistle it out loud.

Over the top of her talking.

This evening it was 'This is a Low' by Blur (who incidentally are re-forming and touring in the summer) which got me into trouble.

Other strange things have been happening too...

....Lucy has been going on mysterious late night shopping trips and coming back laden with cheap tat

... the house is becoming decidedly more sparkly an Lucy appears to have acquired a bazillion small pieces of gold foil from her Nan which have taken pride of place trodden into the hallway carpet - twinkling in the moonlight when I go for my midnight toilet trip

... and most bizarrely my bank balance seems to be ridiculously low for this time of the month.

Whats that?

Oh ... its nearly Christmas!!! Well that explains it (particularly the bank balance thing).

I generally have a bit of a love / hate relationship with this Christmas thing.

Whilst I don't mind the festivities of Christmas day - I can only take it in small proportions, and the stress of prolonged Christmas tends to put me a little on edge. Though Christmas Eve can be fun.

This generally evokes the response of "Dont be such a scrooge!" from a number of corners (mainly Lucy) followed by extended efforts to get me in the Christmas spirit by telling me how great it is and making me feel inadequate for not being a Christmas lover. Those Christmas promoters just love to try to turn a scrooge.

This Christmas, however will be fairly different to other Christmases. This Christmas my Mum has taken the step to attempt to avoid Christmas altogether. This Christmas we are going to a Arab country - where there will be NO Christmas!

On the 19th of December Lucy, myself, my little mentioned big sister, her boyfriend and my mum will be traveling to Morocco where we will spend time in Marrakesh (hopefully with a little spell in the High Atlas Mountains).

(High Atlas mountains - not my photo!)

However due to this, the Lucy clan have opted to postpone Christmas to Boxing day - so I will be doing it all anyway. Plan foiled.

How to Bypass NHS Waiting Lists

2008-11-20T03:38:00.000-08:00

Last night I was down at the Foundry climbing wall with The Nurse. We've just started doing a bit of lead climbing being beginners and were attempting to tackle some of the overhangs.

For me, lead climbing is a bit more exciting down at the wall that you traditional top roping. Basically rather than being suspended all of the way up, you clip in as you go. The excitement comes with the fact that is you fall off - you fall down the distance to your last clip in point, and then that same distance again below the clip. And then you fall a little bit more if the guy who is belaying you is not really paying attention and has left a little bit too much slack in the rope.

The slight apprehension about what will happen when you eventually fall and smack into the wall makes you fear just that little bit more. And the fear makes you grip a little bit harder. It all adds to the rush!

At one particularly memorable point in the night I was belaying for The Nurse who was attempting a relatively easy climb, but on a relatively difficult overhang. He had already made significant progress and had fallen a couple of times. I was trying to maintain attention, but have to admit, was getting bored with slow progress and was probably diverting a little too much attention to climbers on the other walls.

The Nurse was about half way up the wall when he managed to get both his feet onto a rather large oval shaped hold. At this point he decided to make a relatively straightforward move and reach up for the next one. He extended his foot to get a little more height ... when ... POP! Not usually a good sign. The Nurse fell off and I lowered him down.

He seemed to be in a fair bit of pain. To be honest, the Nurse has a little bit of a history of injury. I used to play roller-hockey with him a number of years ago and he got injured so many times that he ended up acquiring a (very un PC, I am ashamed to say) nickname of 'Cripple' by which he was known in my mobile phone for many years. Most of the time he was just being a big wus in my experience. But something made me believe that it wasn't so this time.

It could have been something to do with the fact that he nearly puked in the middle of the climbing hall, or the masses of sweat, or the rather horrible swollen blue colour his left ankle had gone - but I sensed something might really be wrong.

So we went to the local minor injuries unit at A&E and something quite remarkable happened. We walked up to the desk and the receptionist took a few details. Name, age, etc. What surprised me was that when she got to 'occupation' - 'Staff Nurse', the ballgame changed.

Anyone familiar with NHS A&E department, will probably be familiar with that little board you often get. The one which shows waiting time. This usually flashes by at around 1.5 hours, sometimes 3 on a Saturday night. If you have a minor injury, you may be lucky to get to the front of the queue at all! OK, so its maybe not that bad, but I was certainly expecting a long night.

But apparently if you are a staff nurse, it seems you can completely bypass the queue, nevermind the heart attacks of the broken necks, get seen to immediately - and whats more bypass the x-ray queue as well and be back out of the hospital within about 35 minutes!

Bonus was that we managed to get out just before the kick off to the England - Germany game, and get a few beers (which the Nurse was adamant, increased the effect of his pain killers).

Only downside is that now I dont have anyone to climb with.

(oh -yeah and The Nurse has to have an operation which I guess is a downside too).

A New Prius

2008-11-16T01:22:00.000-08:00

Though this really has not been the top of my mind this week, mainly due to the fact that my office has just laid off 15% of its workforce - I have just put an order in for a new company car - a Toyota Prius T4.

It was basically down to a battle between the Prius and the Mondeo Diesel Titanium, and a Ford Focus. The Prius had a number of things working against it for me:

Its a fairly old car - having been released back in 2003. The Toyota dealer I spoke to made me aware of the new Prius coming out in 2009 which will achieve way more MPG. The Prius essentially also looks a bit dated; and
I love diesels (due to their power, torque, drivability and fuel consumption relative to petrols (excluding the Prius obviously)), and like manuals;

But essentially I did the sensible thing and opted for the Prius based upon:

The taxation rates being extremely low;
The relative cost of diesel and petrol at the moment will save me a shed tonne of money;
I spend most of my driving time stuck in heavy traffic - so performance is not that important to me;
It makes some kind of statement (whether it is the one I want or not);
It has cool gadgets on the dashboard;
My friends won't take the p*s out of me;
And to be honest - I really should figure out how these things work!

So it looks like I will be receiving delivery in around 10 weeks or so. I shall spend my time wisely perusing Rattling the Kettle's "Maximising Gas Mileage in a Toyota Prius". Although I shall probably be putting petrol in mine.

Cutting up the Dancefloor

2008-11-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

I finally have hold of my package which I sent to myself from Australia. This means that I have the lead from my camera (which I stupidly posted) which allows me to download my photos (and videos) to my laptop. So I have spent the afternoon sorting them all out.

This afternoon I re-discovered this gem from our September trip to Brighton. The Sergeant Major cutting up the dancefloor:

Nothing else could have cheered me up more from thoughts of what is to come on Monday (and a pesky bout of Man-flu. I particularly like the bit where he realises he is being filmed and suddenly switches to "cool" mode.

p.s. apologies for the sideway video. I haven't quite worked out how to get it right way up!

An Edgy Weekend

2008-11-07T08:47:00.001-08:00

For those who don't know. I work in industrial / commercial energy efficiency and carbon management. Workloads are ever increasing (as are energy prices). Not to sound bigheaded - I am fairly in demand as are many of my colleagues. Therefore I have never felt any real fear about an economic downturn.

However.

I do have an understanding that when the proverbial hits the fan in the economy - it is those in non-essential services who will feel it first. City centre workers in offices doing marketing, selling luxury goods, providing advice and consultancy much the same as mine.

Also.

The majority of my co-workers (my department excluded) operate in the property market. Either directly or indirectly. You may have heard - the property market aint so boyant at the moment. This has made me fear for my company's ability to be profitable (I am loyal to my company). This has made me fear for my colleagues (and friends) wellbeing who have a much lighter order book than ours.

I am told there will be an announcement in the office next week.

I will spend the weekend sweating.

Slightly Left of the Centre

2008-11-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

I was about to launch into a long monologue about how I have just noticed that all of the large English speaking nations now have "centre-left" (term used loosely) parties in power. For example:

In the US the Democrats are soon to be in power with Barrack Obama
In Australia Kevin Rudds Labour Party ousted the Liberals (who in Australia are right-wing) in late 2007
In the UK we have been under Labour rule for some years (couldn't be bothered to work out how many). Argue as you may about how log this will last.
In South Africa Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe is Centre Left not that I understand how South African parliament works
In New Zealand Helen Clark of the Labour party is Prime Minister. Though by all accounts this may not las long either.

Then I realised that I had forgotten about Canada. To be fair I had always thought that Canada had a centre-left government, but Wikipedia told me that apparently some guy called Stephen Harper is in charge over there and he some kind of conservative.

I had also forgotten about Ireland (Eire) that has I believe a kind of centre-right coalition alliance which is too complicated for me to comprehend. Then again my old American flatmate didn't even realise that Ireland was a separate country to the UK (and his girlfriend was "Irish" - or at least, she drank Guinness)

Myself - I will always be a little left wing. It come from growing up in a household with a teacher for a Dad, a social worker for a mum, a nurse for a brother and an NHS worker for a sister. Being a bit of an environmentalist myself, I have always leaned towards the policies of the Left wing parties.

It doesn't really seem to matter in the UK that a large proportion of the population have recently become a little disillusioned with our supposed centre-left government. You can bet that the vast majority of Brits were rooting for Obama (not that it matters).

I think British people are scared of Republicans. To me they are kind of like Etonians with guns.

10 Things I Love About Sheffield

2008-11-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I had my first big pang of regret - I regretted leaving Sydney for the first time.

I was driving home. The rain was horizontal (they have rain in Sydney but it tends to obey the laws of gravity over there). My car windows were in that kind of permanent partially misted up state that you get (it doesn't matter how high you set your blowers). I thought to myself, the trip home from work in Oz would have been a pleasant bike ride in the sunshine. It hurt.

But on the whole I have really been enjoying being back. And really enjoying Sheffield (more than I imagined I would). 10 things I like about Sheffield?

There are 5 separate indoor climbing places within 10 mins of my house (in Sydney there was one within half an hour). Sheffield is pretty much the UK centre of climbing;
I can get on my bike and be out in the Peak District national park within 10 minutes (boy did I miss this countryside);
I can go out for a run and be in the Peaks in 15 minutes;
I can get in my car and be in the Peaks in 2 minutes;
Did I mention I like the peaks?
I have managed to find a few cool hangouts with live Jazz etc;
I can afford to rent a 3 story townhouse set back in a wooded area for less than a 3rd floor flat would be in Sydney;
I am learning to lead climb;
I am loving the local curry house;
There are many excellent country pubs in easy striking distance (something I didn't think I got in Leeds).

On the bad side:

The 3 hour round trip to work;
After living abroad I have come to realise that english food (which I always defended) is pretty crap.

Thats 10 against 2 I think which makes this an OK move I suppose.