The Brighton passengers are fatter and slower on their feet 60 years on

I bought, possibly for the first time in my life, some jelly babies the other day.  In fact I bought a bag of liquorice allsorts at the same time....they lasted all of five minutes as I find them irresistible, yet invariably feel quite sick to my boots afterwards.  It is the power of the promotion...buying two bags rewarded me with 5p a litre discount.  I didn't do the maths.  I didn't need to.  If I'd been filling up the Jeep, I'd have been quids in - it takes the entire output of oil from Saudi Arabia between Christmas and Easter everytime I fill up.  But in this case I was filling the motorbike which has a tank smaller than a gnats bladder.  Anyway, I've been enjoying the jelly babies, but I have noticed that they seem to reflect the growing size of the population.  They are fat babies.  In fact they're obese, and the local health authority would no doubt take them away from their parents and having accused them of neglect.

I mentioned in the last post that we'd popped in to see the women's cricket.  England vs Australia.  It was quite surprising how many people were there.  Not full.  But full enough.  And some of the audience was quite passionate.  It would have been nice to have read a match report in the papers the next day.  But no, there was nothing.  Not surprising really, as most newspaper sports editors remain of the 'fat, middle-aged, white, football-loving variety'  It's a shame really, because there's so much sport of one sort or another that it would be good to read about it....and perhaps even go and watch it.

Ready, steady go.  Camergoon is fast catching up the Warmonger Blair in numbers of conflicts he's got us involved in.  I laughed until I fell off my perch this morning when The Times front page headline blasted out that WB now supported intervention in Syria.  Really??? The man who is the most trigger-happy cowboy east of Texas Boy Bush.  If it was down to him, we'd already be across the borders of Persia, keeping those damned rag-heads in their place.  I've plenty of opinions about what's going on in the Middle East and why, but one thing I'm totally clear about is the need for Western powers to keep their noses out.  History, common decency and common sense clearly demonstrate that the more the West interferes militarily, the worse the situation becomes in the long run.

Egypt is a mess, but fortunately the West is so confused as to who is the least worst bad guy, that it is managing not to form any policy whatsoever.  And long may it continue

Once upon I used to do the daily commute from Brighton to London.  Really it was a pretty stupid thing to do.  It was a long, expensive journey, spoilt my social life (last train at 11) and exhausted me.  These days, if I do the trip, it's an enjoyable experience.  Sixty years ago, the BBC filmed the journey from London to Brighton...you may well have seen that film, it's quite famous, quite fun, and very speeded up - if only we could all do the journey in four minutes.  They filmed it again in 1983 and again now.  The article and video have been posted on the BBC News website, and well worth four minutes of your time.  Perhaps you can confirm that my headline, taken from the article is accurate.  Click here

There's (no) such thing as a free lunch

We managed a few days away, which is nice.

On Thursday we headed off to Deal, which is a quite delightful old seaside town on the Kent coast to see some friends, who have recently returned to Blighty having spent so long living and working abroad that they still appreciate just how wonderful England is.  Naturally it was a barbecue.  Naturally, Mr Abroad stood outside under an umbrella cooking whilst we watched him, and the rain, from inside.

After that we headed round the coast to Brighton.  I'd quite forgotten just how far it was and just how up and down it is.  The clue was in the alpine-style switchback bends that kept me concentrating.  We loved the drive...there's so much to see...it's quite lovely...even when passing through Dover and Folkstone.  We loved that every time we crossed the Romney Hythe Dimchurch railway the sat nav gave us a toot too train whistle.  Well I loved it, and the rest of the car despaired.  Truly.  As the miles piled on I promised The Cats Mother that the De La Warr Pavilion was well worth staying awake for.  And indeed it might be.  But it was late.  You come to the back of it first, and that part looks like a council car park.  And here may have been a little strop as no one would get out of the car to have a look at one of Britain's finest pieces of architectural heritage from the front.  The journey continued in silence.

As they say, the best things in life are free.

So we will ignore our trip to the Brighton aquarium with the Muffins and Up, because even with a voucher for 40% discount, it still came to over £100. Actually it was quite good...aquariums can't help but be fascinating.  We also went to The Pavilion.  I've been there a hundred times, The Boy slightly less, The Cat's Mother once - six months ago when it was so cold, we went from one room to the other merely searching out the radiators...anyway The Muffins loved it.  It is truly a splendid place indeed.

We then rushed off to the cricket ground to see England thrash the Aussies.  You may have read that England just drew with Australia...but that was not in Hove where it was women's cricket.  We turned up late enough in the day to get in for nothing and early enough to see a finely balanced match tumble England's way.  I may not be a cricket fan as such, but this was definitely fun...

But best of all was the #BAbeachside .  On the  seafront, we were lucky enough for us all (or at least those over 1.5 metres to win lunch courtesy of British airways.  This was not just any lunch.  This was lunch 150 foot in the air....the UK's highest pop-up restaurant  Hoisted up by crane, strapped to our seats, this was true dining extraordinaire.  Our trip was sponsored by Lanzarote, so the food was appropriate to that destination...as was the very delicious wine.  It was a terrific experience.  We loved it.

Bird on a wire

Evidently there are too many exclamation marks in use today!  Exclamation mark inflation is not a good thing, but has come about because of the modern habit of texting.  If you receive a text saying "C U @ Starbucks @ 6" and reply "See you there", you come across as a bit begrudging, a bit down.  Your friend might wonder what's wrong.  So you have to reply "See you there!"  You come across as excited and enthused.  Everyone's happy.  And if said friend reports on the the birth of her sister's baby, a simple "It's a boy" doesn't quite do it, whereas "It's a boy!!!!!!!!" does.  Does this matter?  Well, yes and no.  Some well known authors think that there should be no more than 2, perhaps three exclamation marks per 100,000 words.  No, because when you only have a few characters to use, an exclamation mark gets the emotion across.  But the habit has gone beyond mobile devices, so books, magazines, and the wrong sort of newspapers all now use an excess of exclamation marks.  Can you believe it?!  Anyway, it seems to me that the best way to solve the world's economic crisis would be to tax the use of exclamation marks.  Equally, a tax credit could be offered for the use of semi-colons which the younger generation don't even know exist .

I was thinking about writing about this David Miranda affair.  He is after all not the first Brazilian the British Police have screwed over...just that this time it was a little less deadly.  He should count himself lucky.  But really if he was (as appears to be the case) carrying something relating to Edward Snowden he's a bit daft. Unless it was a case of Chris Huhne/Vicky Pryce "You don't mind taking this stuff for me do you?".  Still, I can't help but think that as a PR exercise it will turn out to be yet another disaster for the government. Whatever the true merits, Snowden has generally come out of this quite well....governments spying on their citizens, and the US spying on its allies.  The US government has had to become more open and honest about who it is checking up on, and why...and it will probably find that the NSA will face all sorts of legal cases for breaching the law.  Snowden has gone the way of all whistleblowers.  Of most long-term damage though is that governments are continuing to lose the trust of their citizens.  People like to think of themselves as individuals, protected by the powers that be from the baddies whoever they are....but time after time the government seems to suggest that they think we're all suspicious and they are acting in the best interests of the state apparatus, rather than the people that put them there.  Some public servants go one step beyond, acting as if  everything would be fine if there were no people at all.  When modern media makes chitter chatter ubiquitous and instantaneous it's odd that public opinion matters less and less to the ruling elite. Really quite disheartening.

I remain fascinated with the Middle East.  I saw this morning that the CIA has finally acknowledged its role in the 1953 Iranian coup.  That saw the democratically elected government ejected in favour of the pro-west Shah.  Now, there's an obvious wrong there.  But then the West really only likes democracy when it's the right sort of democracy - witness events in Palestine when the democratically elected Hamas were cold-shouldered.  But rather than dwell on the wrong itself, my mind turns to the issue of 'what if'.  What if the coup had failed; what if the Mossadeq government had been allowed to stand.  Of course, it's a silly thing, but still I can't help myself.  Certainly the USSR would have been more powerful in the Middle East, so there would have been an impact in Europe.  But I wonder if we wouldn't have seen the more fundamentalist Iranian governments we have seen since the fall of the Shah.  If that was the case, we may have seen more stability, and the whole Middle Eastern crisis which rolls on from one decade to the next may just have been solved.  Who knows...I would need to write a book to decide.

I'm quite sad about Egypt.  I doubt there's much tourism going on there now (which generates a significant amount of money for local people), so it is the common man in the street that is suffering from the ravages of political instability.  It's quite monstrous really that the US has been unable to commit itself to admitting to there having been a military coup.  There's only one thing worse than socialism and that's Islam seems to be the view...so having the military in charge is no bad thing.  But hundreds, perhaps thousands have been killed, and many more will die before it's all over.  There can't really be a return to democracy if one of the major political movements, and half the population are disenfranchised.

As I pedalled home the other night, I saw perched on a post in the Limehouse marina a big black bird.  It was the shape and stance of a heron, but it was black.  Normally I would photograph such a creature and display it here for your delectation.  But I was in a hurry, I had a long way to go.  Which is a shame.  Now the birdwatchers amongst you will say it was a cormorant.  But I know a cormorant when I see them. Black.  Long snake-like necks.  This one was different.  Hunched shoulders.  No neck.  Looking at the internet I found 'Black Heron'.  I saw there have been some British possible sightings...but some equal cynicism.  Evidently black herons reside in Africa and are most unlikely to visit London Docklands.  I don't see why, it's a lovely spot , plenty of rich pickings to be had.  Anyway, I don't care.  I'm convinced I saw a black heron.  Not a red herring.

Oil be back

Ooops...usually I write my posts in a block, and then schedule them for posting...this means they get written when I have time, and then magically appear at regular intervals.  Last week, I must have been on dope, as they've all pretty much appeared together...oops, even I would find that a bit tedious....

Sometimes I get random Facebook friend requests, and usually I just ignore them, sometimes I'll delve a little further and find they are from the mother/father of one of The Boy's friends and just occasionally they distinctly dodgy.  I had a request a week or so ago, and without thinking...we were in Scotland...I just accepted it.  Shortly afterwards I received a message from the person concerned.  They are the PA to someone who was a fellow graduate trainee at Austin Rover and had been trying to track me down. Ridiculously, it appears to be 30 years since I left the safety of the educational system.  How does that happen?

In case you have forgotten, Austin Rover was the purveyor of the finest in British automotive engineering - the Metro, the Maestro and the Montego.  I had ended up there because having gained a 2.1 in Economic and Political Development since 1800 from the University of Exeter, I had no idea of how I wanted to earn my crust, so went on the Milk Round to find a company that would have me.  I liked cars and in the toss up between  Ford, Vauxhall and Rover, my misplaced loyalties took me to Coventry.

Even with my limited knowledge of the real world, I realised we were back in the dark ages.  In the factory, if you did well, it would take a decade to move up a grade.  A robotised production line for the Metro required two burly blokes to bend the panels over their knees to make them fit.  The badge for the MG Maestro wouldn't fit the space on the rear door, and the then soon-to-be launched Montego had to have the interior redesigned because the ashtray was positioned just by the air vent, ensuring that ash was blown everywhere.

And so on.

Once I was asked by my boss to drive his car to pick up a VIP from the airport. He drove a metallic blue Rover.  I went to the car park, saw another couple of hundred of them so just clicked on the remote control until one flashed at me.  Only after I returned did I discover that I'd taken the wrong one...there were only a few remote lock combinations, which may have been a slight security issue.  My own brand new MG Metro had three changes of engines, and even then couldn't manage the journey from Coventry to Edinburgh without a top up of a few litres of oil.

And so on.

Anyway, the twelve or so sales and marketing graduates are meeting up.  I will be fascinated to see what we have to talk about...hopefully lots.

Result!

I can only remember two mornings that started in slow motion with a phone call at 6.00 a.m.

Yesterday was the better of the two.

It was The Boy calling from Edinburgh where the offspring are still performing in The Actors Nightmare.  It was 'A' level results day for him and The Cat and thousands of other teenagers across the country.

I stopped breathing as he told me the contents of the e-mail from the school.  Three 'A' grades.  Breath, smile, cheer.  Very pleased.  He has his place at Edinburgh University confirmed.

The phone was passed over to The Cat's Mother for the Cat to reveal all.  More breath holding.  A*, A, B. A grade was dropped from her requirement, so began a worrying few hours to discover whether Exeter would still have her.  Advice was given...but without the UCAS official channels open for two hours, it was a matter of nervous thumbs twiddling for her.

Not for us though. We had planned a surprise trip up to Edinburgh for the day to celebrate the results.  This time we would be avoiding the train.  But it did mean that as phone calls were exchanged we had to tell little fibs.  No I couldn't come to the phone...I was in the loo (I was driving to the airport).

Fortunately, by the time we boarded the flight, Exeter had confirmed.  Much relief, much, much joy.

To be honest, I was blubbing like a baby...it's what I do these days when I'm over emotional.  It never used to be like that, I was hard as nails.  But the delight of a successful conclusion to all that hard work, the culmination of all their efforts throughout their school years just got to me.

Our surprise visit was only possible because The Muffins were already in Edinburgh, and had asked the two teens to meet them for lunch...nothing as usual there.

The Boy had arrived at the restaurant before us, so we snuck up behind him.  Nothing but confusion.  Then recognition and a big hug.  Lovely.

The Cat arrived momentarily. Same confusion.  Same hug.  Few tears of joy.

Perfect.

We had a lovely meal with champagne..of course champagne!  And then we went to see their performance again, celebrated with the rest of the cast and crew who had all also achieved their university ambitions before catching the last flight home.

A lovely day we will all remember for ever.

And to cap it all, The Boy was handed a card by an acting agent who rather liked his performance!

Doing nothing

For the first time ever (probably) I checked my Barclaycard statement and couldn't understand it so gave them a call.  By the time we'd run through it (that was about half an hour), there was a discrepancy of £1.23. Their explanation?  'It's for the smooth running of your account'.  Yes, I nearly choked.

 Google has decided that the route I cycle to work is not the right one.  In many ways it is right...not least because on Friday some joker turned left in front of me in Leytonstone and it's as close to death as I've ever been. Even when I hurled four-letter abuse and witnesses remonstrated with him he was adamant he'd done nothing wrong.  The Cat's Mother thinks that one day someone will thump me for getting angry with them...she may be right.  Someone in the office has suggested an anger management course....

Anyway, the Google route (it pops up on my phone whether I ask for it or not) takes me even further along the canals of London and the Home Counties than I normally go.  It's a lot longer, but flatter for most of the way until I come off the canals and then have to climb the North Face of the Eiger. I love cycling along the canals so that's not an issue.  But as I near home, it takes me through the Forest.  Which is fine if you have a mountain bike, or better still a Land Rover, but on my carbon-fibre, Bradley Wiggins style road-bike it's a bit challenging.  It made me think of all those stories about people blindly following sat navs into rivers, off cliffs or down roads so narrow they get stuck.

Although it might not sound like it, we had a remarkably relaxed weekend...it was genuine bliss to have no parental responsibility and no real plans.  We saw the new Alan Partridge film Alpha Papa which only confirmed my view that Steve Coogan does not really have much to offer.  It was mildly amusing, very predictable and not very clever.

We then headed off to a bar that I had spied on my canal-side travels.  The White Building in Hackney Wick.  It was a terrific place...well how could it not be as a bar by the waterside with a view of canal boats gliding past.  The Cat's Mother was concerned that we had doubled the average age of people there...but as I pointed out, they were all beautiful young things and no doubt cutting--edge creative, probably working in digital media...when we left after a couple of drinks, we headed out through the Olympic Park which is gradually taking shape and will be a terrific place when it's finished next year.

Sunday I met up with some friends and fellow OOC performers to look at an exhibition at London Museum of costumes from the event.  London Museum is a really great place to while away several hours as it traces the history of the city from its earliest days to the present day...highly recommended.  But skip the costumes exhibit as it was pretty poor.

The evening was spent curled up on the sofa with The Cat's Mother watching Johnny Depp in The Rum Diaries...that's the film where he met the woman who stole him away from Vanessa Paradise.  I picked the Blu-Ray up cheaply from Play.com, and now I see why.  It is just possible that he has lost the ability to act, and Bruce Robinson can neither write nor direct.  The scenery was glorious, the rest was poor enough that we were tempted to turn it off...which is quite surprising given how much I'd been looking forward to it.

About time we were on the Red carpet

Last week we attended the 'World Premiere' of the new Richard Curtis film 'About Time'.  Not quite as grand as that sounds, we simply bought our tickets to see it in the open air at Somerset House....a truly beautiful setting, although you have to sit on the cobblestones and get a very sore bum for your sins.

We were treated to welcoming thirteen of the cast, and a short speech by the man himself.  Terrific stuff.

Anyway about the film.  Yes, lovely, whimsical tale with not so much humour as his past efforts, but very pleasant.  It's already been slaughtered by the critics of course.  The lead is taken by a ginger Hugh Grant sound alike, and it adopts many of his Curtis' norms...including a transatlantic romance and Bill Nighy.  A fabulous cameo from the sadly departed Richard Griffiths alongside Richard Grant made the older members of the audience think of Withnail and I.  The tone of it made me think of Richard Ayoade's brilliant Submarine.  Anyway a very lovely way to spend an evening...not too taxing on a single brain cell and it has a super soundtrack.

French kissing....

Talking of France and the French, as I was...we were in France a couple of weeks ago, enjoying temperatures of about 38 degrees.  It didn't start well when we went to pick our hire car from Budget/Avis (did you know they were one company now?) at Geneva airport and were told that they'd let our car go because we were late.  The girl on the desk had a victorious smirk on her face...no it wasn't a customer-friendly smile.  This was a car that was booked and paid for, not just reserved, so I went at her like a rottweiler.  The Cat's Mother stood back.  We got a car, and Anglo-French relations have been put back a couple of centuries.

We'd actually arrived in Geneva a couple of days earlier...only just though as Swiss Air tried to bump us off the flight because the temperature meant they couldn't take on enough fuel.  At €250 each, it was a very tempting offer... Driving into Geneva the taxi managed to run into the back of a stationery vehicle.  I was facing backwards whilst The Cat's Mother and her friend were facing forwards.  As no seat belts were being worn, I can tell you that this is the first time for many, many years that two women have thrown themselves at me in an undignified manner.

Coming out of a restaurant in the old town late in the night a young girl of about 7 or 8 came out of the dark scootering towards us crying because she'd lost her mother.  She was desperately upset and in a complete panic.  We took a little while steadying her before beginning to walk her back up the hill the way she came. Suddenly she spied her mother in the distance and was off  without a glance back.  Children.  Mothers.

Down by the river, we sat at a bar whilst the drugs police dispersed the obvious drug-dealing youths with a dog that would strike fear into the Hound of the Baskervilles.  It certainly struck fear into the chihuahua that was sitting close and clearly thought it was going to be turned into a tasty morsel.

At our friends' flat there are rules.  The Swiss like rules.  They have a rule for everything.  I'm not sure why no monkeys are allowed (top right).  No singing in the bath is also to be applauded if you've heard me sing...perhaps you will understand all the rest.

Odd then that they allow the workings of the Lake Geneva paddle steamers to be completely exposed

We drove to Beaune in the Burgundy region for a three day wedding - bride French, husband English.  Beaune is lovely.  The wine is over-priced and not that great...but perhaps The Cat's Mother shouldn't have told the vineyard guide about the pleasures of Chilean wines these days.  She was very French about it.  The wedding was fabulous...in a chateau of course.

What a fabulous wedding indeed

We saw a lot of sun flowers

We saw a lot of chateaux and vineyards

 And wine

 Amazingly this is an early example  of the french national health service...look at the roof!

 And inside....

Fringe benefits

In the same way France is wasted on the French, I would like to suspect that Edinburgh is wasted on our Scottish friends (and enemies), but I doubt that is the case - there is an obsessive pride in wearing tartan and blowing the bagpipes which gives a sense of national identity the English would do well to learn.

Our trip north of the border started with a fairly gruesome journey by (non) Sleeper train courtesy of ScotRail.  It eventually left two hours late, which meant after 2.00 am.  The downside was a very uncomfortable marble floor at Euston, the upside was seeing people return home after a night out on the tiles.  It's amazing how lovely and friendly they were in their inebriated states...probably best were the lesbians who were very excited by our trip, gave us a show and tell of all the things they'd pinched from the bar they'd been at, and were obviously deeply in love/lust with each other as the one explained how the other one kept digging her in the ribs when they were asleep.  We were woken up at 7.30...the time we were due in Edinburgh...by a stewardess who explained that the train had broken down and we would have to change.  then she came back and said we didn't have to change.  Then she came back and said we did have to change.  The Cat's Mother generally retained her sense of humour.

Anyway, we eventually arrived in Alba at about 10.30, dumped our bags and headed up Scott's Monument.  Gorgeous view...but for someone who suffers from vertigo these days, being crowded into a space about the size of a bath tub with twenty other people a couple of hundred foot above the ground was a challenge for me.  The Cat's Mother generally lost her sense of humour as we first fought our way up the 278 steps and then fought our way down again.

Edinburgh is just a fabulous city...it has a solid beauty which must be matched by few others anywhere in the world.  It's fantastically laid out, and really I could wander around for days enjoying the magnificent architecture.

We were there to see The Cat and The Boy perform in 'The Actors Nightmare'.  They can't possibly realise how lucky they are to be a part of The Fringe...it's something that I hope they will both look back on with much affection and pride in the future.

Other highlights were La Clique...a fabulous cabaret show that we've seen before, but that didn't make this any less memorable....particularly the forty-five year old man dressed in a sparkling blue lycra bunny outfit, and Piff the magic dragon who did terrible things to his chihuahua (RSPCA - not really).



(from an earlier tour)

Best of all for me by a mile was 'WotNoFish'...a heart rending tale of the narrator's great aunt and uncle, Ab and Celie Solomon.  The Great Uncle had drawn a cartoon on his wage packet every week and given it to Celie his wife, and together the wage packets told the tale of their life together.  Beautifully told by David Braverman, who manages to subtly draw you in from the beginning, and make you laugh and cry as their story unfolds.  Truly inspiring.



Other than that we saw some hit and miss comedy, and a show that sums up all that's great and bad about British society: 'Shitfaced Shakespeare'...as you might expect it's a performance of Much Ado, with one of the actors completely and utterly legless.  You couldn't help but laugh, but really it's a complete train crash.

Anyway, I took some pictures

The journey home was a little easier

Normal? Service? will be resumed as soon as possible

In the meantime, I read that some 300 people have complained to the advertising watchdogs, the ASA, about the new Marmite advert.  Evidently it demeans the work of animal rescue charities.  If ever we needed proof that people need to get a life (or just a sense of humour)...

Romance...

I had this lovely romantic idea of travelling to Edinburgh overnight on the sleeper train. Unfortunately ScotRail has other ideas as we both sit on the concourse of Euston station past midnight. From the announcements it seems they have lost the carriages. This may not have been one of my better ideas...

Run Fat Boy Run

They say that as you get older, time goes more quickly.  There's even some scientific reasoning to it.  When you're two, one year is fifty per cent of your life, when you're fifty it's two per cent.  So I must be ancient beyond belief as I hadn't noticed how quickly the last week rolled round.

The Boy did return in one piece.  I'm told that if we wait six months we will hear all the horror stories one by one.  So far he has mentioned "there is only one night I don't remember'.  Contrary to our text conversations during the week, I now discover they were essentially leaving their apartment at midnight to go and enjoy themselves...and there was I thinking they were all safely tucked up in bed by then.  According to him 'Geordies are a different breed'.  He means it in a negative way.  I agree with him, but mean it in a positive way!

The Cat's Mother and I went to see Goldfrapp on Saturday evening at Somerset House.  It's a beautiful location, and no band ever sounds bad there.  The Boy's first concert was at Somerset House...we saw Turin Brakes there, and the group remains one of our favourites.  As for Goldfrapp though, oh dear.  She has a beautiful, intoxicating voice and there was no doubting the performance (I think she just about made 50 minutes) sounded glorious.  But the set started off with some slow numbers that nobody knew, and you could see the thumbs twiddling...it wasn't until the last twenty minutes that that the favourites were played. Good for her for not pandering to our lowest common denominator, but really we're a shallow lot and needed her to kick the gig off with something more lively.  She did suffer from a touch of the Kings of Leon too...long breaks between songs when they seemed to be deciding what they were going to play next...so even when the songs were lively, there was no real momentum.  Anyway, a bit of a disappointment...but that won't stop me from buying the new album in September.

I'll skip over the two days spent rehearsing and performing in The Olympic Park for the 'GoLocal' event.  It was quite fun to be up on the same stage that Bruce Springsteen had strutted his stuff to earlier this year, but I was there for the last time doing the choreography as a 'Working Man' from the Olympic Opening Ceremony' with the pandemonium Drummers...what I came to realise is that these things have a finite life...and that time has come and gone.  I loved it at the time, I've enjoyed reprising my stuff, but time to move on...so goodbye to the 35,000 people that were watching us this time.

The absolute highlight of the last week was my run.  The National Lottery Run was 5 miles, around the Olympic Park finishing in the stadium itself.  I really don't enjoy running at all, so have found it a challenge to get 'race fit', but as I suspected lining up with 14,999 of my closest friends was a truly amazing experience. At the front were the celebs...Mel C, Victoria Pendleton, Paula Radcliffe and we were started by Chris Hoy.  Round the park we went until we entered the stadium to the waiting audience (we had all been given two tickets for spectators) to enormous roars and cheers.  Amazingly I was able to spot The Cat's Mother and The Boy and waved happily back as they cheered and whooped.  I loved it.  I may even do some more running...not too much as it will shake my body to bits, but just enough to keep me in shape.

Red hot

When I drove back from Brighton the other evening, I was overtaken by this

It is indeed a stretch-limousine Ferrari.  I can only hope that it is the result of two written off Ferraris being rebuilt as one, rather than someone taking a fabulous sports car and ruining it.  My one other thought though is that from my (limited) Ferrari experience, it'll be so noisy and low inside that nobody will be able to either converse or enjoy themselves.

With just four days to go, I have discovered that I will be competing with Paula Radcliffe at the Anniversary run.  Now we all know lovely Paula, so I have decided that at all costs I must start the race ahead of her and keep ahead, in case she has one of her 'incidents'.  Mind you. I have less of an issue chasing after Victoria Pendleton.

The Boy let me know that tonight he is going here.



Oh dear, oh dear.  What happened to my baby boy?

Now or never

I drove down to Brighton by myself on Saturday.  As the sun was shining, I was able to take the top off the car...no this isn't like a fancy BMW or Mercedes where you push a button and it magically disappears in a few seconds, this is a Jeep, so you twist the latches, unscrew the bolts and lift the roof panels off.  With  a bit of patience you can fit them in the back of the car.  With the poor summers over the last couple of years, you won't be surprised to know that this hasn't happened for a while...if there's a sudden downpour, you just get soaked whilst you struggle to put it all back together.

Anyway, it was a lovely drive, and when the traffic ground to a halt, it was quite fun to be able to stand on the seat and have a look around, just like Rommel in North Africa.  Even better was the return journey home.  There is something truly special driving in the dark with the sky above you and the wind rushing through (what's left of) your hair.  I've even done it when it's been snowing, although many would class that as foolishness.

Whilst the temperature hit 30 degrees as I passed Gatwick, by the time I'd gone through the South Downs, we were at a rather more pleasant 20 degrees.  The sky was still blue, and there was not a spare inch to be found on the beach.  Brighton at it's best.  In the early evening I continued my preparations for next Sunday's run, managing a very creditable 5.8km in 38 minutes.  I will have one more run on Wednesday, when I aim to do the full 8 km, then I'll be set for the Olympic Stadium and ever lasting glory (cough).

I had travelled to the south coast because The Boy and his Sister have a whole pile of stuff in storage there.  In the aftermath of their mother's death, much was put into storage rather than put them through the trauma of having to shift through her belongings and through away stuff that would they would have been emotionally attached to.  However, more than a decade has now passed, the storage costs are phenomenal at £100/month, so the time has come to sort it out.  But we've not visited the facility for ten years so I had to act as the advanced party...firstly finding the place again, then making sure the code for the entrance was still working before opening the combination lock.  I fell at the last hurdle when I realised that the padlock didn't contain two of the digits that I 'knew' the code would consist of.  I had to ask the man to cut it.  Fortunately just as he was about to, he realised that I wasn't pushing 'the button'...so I did, thought of a number, doubled it, added 45, divided by three and then took away the number I'd first thought of and it sprung open.  A quick check shows that most of it is just going to be junked.  I shan't be there as The Cat's Mother and I will be away, so it will be The Boy, his Sister, their Uncle and Grandma in Wales who will be looking through everything.  It will be a very emotional moment I don't doubt, but better now than ten years ago and better now than never.