Crossed Lines

Sitting quietly at home the other day my mobile phone rang. It was my ex girlfriend who would instantly lose her ex status if she would only come around to my line of thinking. I'm still crazy about her. She is not English. She speaks very good English albeit with an East European accent and a few grammatical slip-ups now and again. The line was poor - we were speaking mobile to mobile across a distance of about 500 miles. The conversation went roughly as follows...

She: "Hello, it's me. How are you?"
Me: ""Bune, multumesc. Ce faci?" I learnt a little Romanian during my time with her.
She "Haha, you're funny sometimes."
Me: "Awww thanks. Where are you?"
She "I'm in the bath." She's phoned me from the bath before.
Me "Grrr....I wish you hadn't told me that."
She: "Why?"
Me: Because now I will spend the rest of this conversation imagining you in the bath."
She "Why would you do that? You're weird."
Me "No I'm not. You know I'm still crazy about you and now you phone me while you're in the bath and expect me to act normally and not have my imagination run wild."
She "You are definitely weird."
Me "OK, if you say so. What's all that noise in the background?"
She "Oh, it's just some people."
Me "What people? Where?"
She "They're here with me. In the bath."
Me "What? There are people with you in the bath? I can hear children as well."
She "Yes, there are lots of children here."
Me "What? Are the children in the bath with you?"
She "Yes"
Me Whose children?"
She "I don't know. They're just some kids. They're very noisy aren't they. Sorry."
Me "What? You're in the bath with lots of people and also somebody's kids but you don't actually know whose kids?"
She "Yes. Why are you asking me these strange questions?"
Me "They're not strange questions. You're in the bath....with a bunch of complete strangers....and some kids as well."
She "Yes. So?"
Me "What? Eh?"

The conversation continued along this thread for a minute or two more.......remember the line was extremely poor. I finally worked out what was going on.

Try rereading the above conversation substituting "on the bus" whenever she says "in the bath". To her, it is more logical to say "in the bus" rather than "on the bus" and I just misheard this as "in the bath".

Weather

Blogging about the weather is pretty low hanging fruit but sometimes, when your mind is as atrophied as mine you go for the easy stuff and hope it might trigger some more interesting thoughts out.

Anyway, the UK has just emerged from the longest spell of cold weather and snow that most people can probably remember. This is especially the case in the south east of England where on the few occasions snow falls, it usually fades away within 48 hours. This time it stuck around for two or three weeks.

A consequence of the relative rareness of these events is that we don't really have the machinery in place to deal with a prolonged bout of weather like this. When we get a bit of snow, public transport tends to be unavailable for a day or two, but eventually the roads get salted and things get back to normal pretty quickly. There is the usual clamour from people saying we should be able to cope and why don't we have the resources to deal with things like this? Critics generally then suggest that in somewhere like Canada or Switzerland they get nothing but snow for three months a year and their buses don't stop running.

Of course that is exactly the point. If the UK had a climate like Canada or Switzerland, we would invest in snow ploughs and put spiky tyres on our cars for three months of the year but if you only get a bit of snow once a year, maybe not at all, there's no point in investing millions of pounds in lots of expensive machinery. You just take the hit, deal with a day or two of inconvenience and things get back to normal.

So, you would think that when people were caught out in the recent bad weather, the authorities who were unable to clear the roads and asked the hapless general public to be patient, would be sympathetic to those inconvenienced by it. But no. What happened was many people were out on their cars when the bad weather struck, the locals councils were unprepared or under-resourced to deal with the problem and people ended up having to abandon their cars as the roads were too dangerous or they simply could not move. Many roads were inaccessible for days, maybe weeks because the local council would not clear them as they concentrated on clearing more major routes or they were preserving their resources in case the bad weather lasted for even longer than was initially feared.

What then happened was that the same authorities who were contracted to clear the roads - and did not - in a decidedly unsympathetic manner, chose to fine the people whose cars had been abandoned.

Sometimes you just can't fuckin' win can you!

Kitchens

Isn't it nice when a plan finally comes together.

I've always enjoyed cooking but I'm also a touch obsessive-compulsive about my environment and I've always had to make do with less than perfect cooking conditions. Just under two years ago I finally got round to replacing my entire kitchen. This was part of a larger refurbishment of my entire flat which is still ongoing but pretty much complete. The kitchen was always going to be the room I did first. It makes sense because I live in a flat with only one entrance and the kitchen is not accessed via any other room therefore would not be disturbed by any subsequent work. I also did it first because my existing kitchen was the room I disliked the most in my flat - hard to believe if you'd seen my bathroom (which you never will cos that's now also also been replaced). And also because the kitchen is always my favourite room in any dwelling.

I know I'm not going to do this very often so I wasn't going to do it cheaply and regret any decision later. There's nothing worse than tolerating something you don't really like and trying to console yourself that it was cheap but knowing, deep down inside, that if you'd spent a little more money you would have had exactly what you really wanted instead of second best. If you like something you soon forget how much you paid and you'll always get a nice warm feeling every time you use it in the years to come.

I won't go into too many details but some of the decisions I will never regret are -

• solid wood kitchen units with soft-close doors/drawers
• a double recessed sink
• a fancy mixer tap that will never drip (German engineering)
• a double oven (conventional and fan)
• a five burner hob with a huge wok burner in the middle
• lots of very powerful lighting
• 4.5 metres of solid granite worktops (the best bit by far)

Now I could really start cooking. But having done all this and seeking out all those interesting recipes I wanted to prepare, I found I still wasn't quite as ready to rock as I thought. I needed more stuff. I had to build up that background of core ingredients that a good kitchen should always have in stock. Herbs, spices, dried fruits, six different types of flour (plain, self-raising, strong bread, corn, semolina and whole wheat if you're interested), other dried goods (rice, pasta, oats, yeast), assorted condiments, various tinned essentials. Also I'd been making do with a crummy selection of pots and pans which I've steadily been updating as and when a recipe demanded it (French cast iron Le Creuset casseroles are my favourites here). I got a rice cooker, a hand blender, a good lemon/lime zester.

In short, after nearly two years I'm confident of not only being able to try any recipe I like the look of, I'm also now reasonably confident my kitchen is perfectly tooled up to prepare and present it. The only thing I tend to need to buy are the fresh ingredients and to keep that background selection of essential ingredients stocked up.

I've also still managed to hang on to items I've known with all my life. I acquired a few things from my grandparents house so I'm still using the same cutlery I used as a child. A good mixing bowl will never go out of date and I still use the same one I remember my grandmother using to make cakes. I also got their entire twelve piece dinner service plus quite a lot of silverware they received as a wedding presents in 1936 which I admit I don't actually use but I have it in reserve should I ever entertain twelve people.

Sorted.

I know a good cook can make excellent food on a one-burner camping stove in the middle of a field during a torrential rainstorm (probably at night as well) but I'm not that good. I need the reassurance of the environment being just right as well.

Think of a recipe and I'll try and cook it and send you a picture. You won't get to taste cos I'll have already eaten it by then.

The Right Stuff

I'm re-reading an excellent book at the moment called Barrow's Boys I won't go into explaining the name but suffice it to say it's about the efforts of the British to explore the as yet unmapped regions of the globe in the early 19th century. This was mainly focused on North Africa and finding the path and source of the Niger river and also the search for the fabled North-West Passage across the top of Canada in an attempt to find a navigable link between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Various explorers were despatched, and the book is an account of their efforts. Some achieved their goals. Most did not. Quite a few died horribly, mostly through disease. Some went so convinced they knew exactly what they were doing they dismissed previous explorers accounts of their journey and consequently repeated mistakes already made by others and thereby met their doom.

One of my favourites is a chap called Gordon Laing. Arrogant, and quite possibly mad, and if not, then certainly deluded, he set out from Tripoli in order to find the path of the Niger. At one point his party was set upon by Tuareg bandits upon whose lands he had encroached without paying the appropriate protection money. His camel train and entourage were routed and he was left for dead in the desert. He did however manage to pick himself up and continue his journey - strapped to the back of a camel - and describes his injuries thus:

"To begin from the top: I have five sabre cuts on the crown of the head and three on the left temple, all fractures from which much bone has come away; one on my left cheek which fractured the jaw bone and has divided the ear, forming a very unsightly wound; one over the right temple and a dreadful gash on the back of the neck, which slightly grazed the windpipe; a musket ball in the hip, which made its way through my back, slightly grazing the backbone; five sabre cuts on my right arm and hand, three of the fingers broken, the hand cut three-fourths across, and the wrist bones cut through; three cuts on the left arm, the bone of which has been broken but which is again uniting; one slight wound on the right leg and two with one dreadful gash on the left, to say nothing of a cut across the fingers of my left hand, now healed up."

On arrival at his destination he caught the plague and spent nine days "so ill with fever that it was presumed, expected and hoped that I would die." As he lay in his deathbed he was also robbed of pretty much everything he owned. Considering the injuries he describes to his hands it was amazing he could actually write but he does manage to add, at the end of the above account "I am nevertheless doing well." and he pressed on to become the first European to reach Timbuctoo.

He stayed in Timbuctoo for just over five weeks and then set off north, possibly heading for Morocco where he again met more Tuareg bandits. This time they succeeded in killing him. He was throttled by two men hauling on either end of a turban that had been wrapped around his neck. They then cut off his head and left him for the vultures. The only survivor of his party was a servant who had feigned death and then made his way back to Timbuctoo to explain what had happened.

Gordon Laing's journey is one of the more gruesome but certainly not the most unusual account described in the book. It's fantastic.

On Blogging

I blog for work, I blog for play; I really don't have anything to say.

Please someone, somewhere, inspire me.

Get On My Horse

There's something very funny about this....

http://www.getonmyhorse.com/

Have We Really Sunk So Low?

Here in the UK we have a TV show called The X Factor - find the link yourself, frankly I can't be arsed to do it even this small favour. I'm sure there are similar variants of the same thing on TV all over the world. It purports to give aspiring young talent a chance to make it in the big time by giving them an audition with influential people in the music industry. In reality, it's just a chance for deluded wannabes to be humiliated on national television. It's only a matter of time before this results in some heartbroken youngster committing suicide over the disappointment and embarrassment of being made to look stupid on national TV. Hilarious eh!

The initial audition requires that the young hopeful sing live in front of the judges, unaccompanied by any musical backing. If anything is going to show up a less than perfect singing voice, it's this. But they keep on coming up, and they keep on getting knocked down. It's voyeuristic, manipulative and degrading.

Last week, one of the judges, Cheryl Cole, actually performed herself on the show. This was a performance of her first solo single. As she was a judge, already a very successful singer in a group, and now in the fortunate position of being able to pass judgement on other aspiring young talent, you'd expect her to make an effort and put on a show., What did she do? She mimed along to a backing track of course. The outcome? You'd have thought she'd have been roundly booed for an act of risible hypocrisy. Anything but. Her fellow judges lauded her performance, her bravery and whatever other egregious waffle they could heap upon her.

Vorsprung Durch Technik

Round about this time of year I get a small frisson of excitement mixed with mild trepidation. My car has its annual test (we call it the MoT which stand for Ministry of Transport).

My car is 13 years old, it's done 230,000 miles (that's 370,000 km). It has a few dents and scrapes but I've had this car from new and I know each and every scratch. I didn't personally inflict all the damage - it's been bumped anonymously in various supermarket car parks over the years, or somebody has kindly just inflicted a scratch on it just for fun but the car still runs and carries its scars with pride.

Last Thursday, it passed the test. I once thought of getting rid of it. 100,000 miles seemed a good point but it burst through the 100K barrier without so much as a squeak.

Let's see how far it'll actually go I thought, fully expecting some major problem to inevitably appear. 150,000 miles ticked over and still it kept running. Maybe I can get 200,000 out of it I thought and kept on going. My next target is 250,000. That'll mean it's gone round the world ten times. Watch this space - 250K will roll over sometime in the Spring of 2011.

All hail Herman, the mighty Audi A4. All this time and I don't actually have a nice photo to show you.

Plumbing

Trying to fix your own plumbing is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard. In the history of dumb ideas, it’s right up there with trying to cut your own hair. The other evening I tried to fix my own plumbing.

It all began when I had friends over on Sunday night. One of them came back from the bathroom and asked me if I realised one of my radiators was leaking. I checked and they were right. A very slow, but nonetheless visible drip.........drip…........drip from the pipe going into the bathroom radiator. Bollocks! I wedged a few sheets of toilet paper underneath it and left it like that. The next morning the toilet paper had absorbed the night's drippage. It was a tiny leak. No real drama.

But things like this torment me. I imagine I can hear it, like a ticking clock in a silent room can seem almost deafening, I was thinking about this drip….....drip….....drip. By the middle of the week I could bear it no more.

That evening, I stopped off at the DIY store and bought a nice big new adjustable spanner as the one I had was just not quite big enough. This is cool because I like buying tools. Rather cleverly, I also bought a roll of PTFE tape which you wind around the threads of a joint and it helps to make a watertight seal. Clever eh! I was pretty sure I would only need a little turn on the nut with my shiny new spanner and I would tighten the joint and fix the leak but I bought the tape as an added precaution.

First I turned off the boiler and turned off the water supply. I then ran all the taps to take any water out of the system. Then, with my sexy new tool I tightened the lower nut connecting the copper pipe to the radiator valve. No longer was there a drip……….drip………drip. Now I had a drip drip drip drip drip drip. Bollocks again.

I would have to undo the joint, put some PTFE tape around the thread and reconnect the pipe and that would fix the leak. I closed off the radiator valve and undid the nut and pushed the pipe down to move it clear. A jet of water came straight out the pipe and went a full half metre into the air…..FFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK. I shoved the spurting pipe back into position. It was not leaking any more. It was now gently pouring out of the loosened joint. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed any receptacle I could find (a few old pans), ran to the cupboard and grabbed some big towels and went back to my slowly filling bathroom to mop us some of the water. By repeatedly lifting the pipe out of position and catching the spurting water in the pan I managed to perform an improvised draining of my heating system. When each pan was full I put my thumb over the pipe to stop the flow. As the edges of the pipe were razor sharp, I managed to cut my thumb quite impressively.

Finally it was empty. I put some tape around the joint, reconnected it and tightened the nut. Drip drip drip drip drip. On closer inspection it now also appeared to be leaking from the joint above the valve. I would have to fix this as well. With my shiny new spanner, I now undid the upper joint as well. As this was above the radiator valve I had earlier shut off, as soon as I undid this new nut all the water in the radiator also came out. More pans. More improvised draining. I put some more tape around this joint and reconnected it. The drip had stopped. No surprise really because there was no longer any bloody water in the system to drip out.

I tuned on the water supply, turned on the boiler and turned on the taps. I still had water. Phew. I then bled the air out of the radiators to check my handiwork. Drip drip drip drip drip. I checked the boiler and now the digital display was flashing to indicate there was no pressure in the system. Oh for God’s sake! I carefully (yeah right) read the boiler manual which may as well have been written in Chinese for all that I understood in it. So, having started with a small manageable leak, I now had a much less manageable leak, a busted boiler and a gashed thumb. It was also 10pm.

I will continue this later……after I've given myself a cool new haircut.

Decimalisation

I think I’ve worked out where the British capacity for mental arithmetic met it’s demise. It wasn't, as you might think, when the pocket calculator came along. Nor was it when they stopped teaching real maths in school because it was too hard. No, the rot set in back in 1971 when we converted our currency to decimal.

Before then we had a wonderful system based on pounds, shillings, pennies and ha'pennies. There were two ha'pennies in a penny. Twelve pennies in a shilling. Twenty shillings in a pound. Or, if you wish, two hundred and forty pennies in a pound. Oh, and you also had a guinea which was twenty one shillings. Expensive items like cars and fridges and fancy clothes were often priced in guineas. Some places still use guineas today but it's somehow lost its romanticism now as it's £1.05. You also had weird coins like the half crown which was two shillings and sixpence and a thrupenny bit which was three pence. I'm too young to remember farthings which were worth a quarter of a penny.

To work in this currency, you had to be able to add up in base 12 and base 20. If you bought two items, one costing seven shillings and sixpence and the other costing four shillings and eightpence it would add up to twelve shillings and two pence (or tuppence). This was expressed in writing as 7/6 + 4/8 = 12/2. Verbally, 7/6 was expressed simply as "seven and six".

When you reached twenty shillings (20/-), you got a pound. But that didn't neccesarily mean that you expressed the pound in notation. Some people just kept adding up the shillings so one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence would often be written as 37/6 but could also be £1/17/6.

Added to this, certain denominations had nicknames, so a shilling was usually called a bob. A two shilling coin was called a florin. A sixpence coin was called a tanner. A quid was, and still is, a pound.

I was eight years old when they got rid of this system yet I can remember being able to easily add up sums of money using this system. It came completely naturally to me as it was ingrained in the culture, like language. Lots of people of my generation and of course my parent's generation can do the same but present this system to a teenager today and they're bewildered.

When we converted to a decimal currency, all the old coins were retained and new ones introduced alongside. So an old sixpence was now worth 2.5 new pence. An old shilling was worth 5 new pence. A half crown was worth 12.5 new pence. Working with two sets of coins in my small pockets was easy as well. This was money - it was important you didn't make mistakes so you learnt it fast!

Mental arithmetic was and still is easy. It was at least another five years before even the simplest pocket calculator was available and these were too expensive for most people to afford anyway. I remember the anger expressed by many people who said that introducing a decimal system would be too confusing. It would simply be a way for shopkeepers and the government to put up prices without people noticing.

If you want a numerate society, I suggest reintroducing the above system. A fiendishly complex currency is a great way of learning how to add up quickly in your head.

Happy days.

Hitler and the Bunnies

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8234018.stm

At his living room table, 92-year-old Rochus Misch shows me some of his old photo albums. Private pictures he had taken more than 60 years ago. There are colour images of Mr Misch in an SS uniform at Adolf Hitler's home in the Alps, snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits, and photos of Hitler's mistress and future wife Eva Braun.



"....snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits" ?????

Having read this, I see Hitler is a completely different light.

Wasted Potential

Gordon Brown's talents are wasted. Here we have a man with undoubted potential. A man who has a singular but great skill. A skill and ability that he has so terribly failed to exploit. At a press conference today he exhorted the young people before him to make the most of their lives. And yet Gordon Brown has failed to do that single act for himself.

Somewhere, on an industrial estate, perhaps in a quiet corner of northern England, or maybe even in his own beloved Scotland, there is a goods warehouse, and down at the back of that warehouse is a little office, and in that little office is a small, but functional computer (no internet connection). This computer handles the stock control for the warehouse. It makes sure everything that comes in and goes out of the warehouse is recorded. Right now, this neglected but functionally perfect little machine needs someone to enter important information.

Someone, with the essential backroom skills ideally suited to a mundane job in a micro-society of one. It requires no interpersonal skills, marginal real intelligence but a rudimentary and single-minded application. This person needs little or no understanding of what is going on around him. Someone who, cannot be distracted by, or susceptible to changing events around him. Someone perhaps who is so embedded in his own little world he cannot really understand or analyse anything beyond him and his beloved computer. Somebody who just hunches over that computer for eight hours a day obsessively and diligently recording the comings and goings of this little world. Someone so lacking the tiniest iota of imagination that most of the time he is simply unaware of anyone or anything around him. Gordon Brown is that man.

The fact that he has been cruelly thrust into running one of the major world economies is a terrible waste of his potential. Daily he is required to understand and deal with major events in a fast-moving and politically turbulent world and daily he shows us how ill-equipped he is, on almost every level, to carry out this task. A great and possibly tragic loss to a small warehouse somewhere in the north of England (or possibly Scotland).

Joke of the Week

From the mighty P J O'Rourke, a humourous anecdote about the old USSR....

An old guy's wife tells him to go to the butcher shop and get some meat. He goes to the butcher shop and stands in line for hours.
Finally the butcher says, "We're out of meat."
The old guy blows his top. He yells, "I am a worker! I am a proletarian! I am a veteran of the Great Patriotic War! I have fought for socialism all my life, and now you tell me you're out of meat! What kind of a system is this?! You are fools! You are thieves! . . . "
A big man in a trench coat comes up to the old guy and says, "Comrade, Comrade, not so loud. In the old days you know what they would do if you said such things." The big man in the trench coat makes a pistol motion with his hand.
He says to the old guy, "Calm down and go home." The old guy shrugs and leaves.
He comes back empty-handed, and his wife says, "What's the matter, are they out of meat?"
"Worse than that," says the old guy, "they're out of bullets."

I thank you.

The Emasculation of the British Male

Let's face it. The average British male is fast becoming a pretty poor example of the species.

Two news items today illustrate this. The first is the number of men who choose to stay at home with mum. A remarkable 29% of British men aged between 20 and 34 still live at home. Presumably so they can get their dinner every night and their underwear ironed. BRITISH MEN!!!! These are men (and I use the word with its loosest interpretation) bred from the same stock of fearless nutcases that colonised the world a few centuries back. Members of the same gene pool who stuck it to Hitler for six long years (like my Grandad). Men who thought nothing of jumping on a ship and trying to sail off the edge of the world, and failing that, seeing what they could rob and plunder along the way.

Nobbut a few generations ago, young men were turfed out of the house the day they turned 18 and sent to live in some windswept military barracks in some of the most godforsaken spots of this tiny island we inhabit. The weak stock were ritually humiliated by the military personnel during the day and then buggered senseless by their comrades at night. If that didn't make a man of you then nothing would. It was called National Service. If that particular lifestyle wasn't to your liking and you found yourself the object of affection or disapprobriation of whoever you met, you chose one of the many nights when the weather was truly filthy, went outside, took a walk and died miserably in a ditch from hypothermia. Thus the strong survived and we continued to produce generations of sexually confused but hard-as-nails menfolk.

The other news item is the relentlessly falling intellect of the current crop of male students. Don't be misled by the headline. These numbskulls are only showing an improvement in exams compared to the girls because of the elimination of coursework from their studies. Coursework is of course simply a cipher which actually means "copying it from the internet". In the past they were obviously too thick to carry out even this simple task. This was thus removed from the syllabus in order that they stood a statistically equal chance as the girls of randomly guessing which boxes to tick in what constitutes examinations these days.

I despair.

NB: I did not do National Service and left home shortly after my 17th birthday.

Feral Parents

I've just spent the weekend at my Mum's. An unplanned weekend. She phoned me earlier in the week and I said I'd cancel whatever I had on and be there by Friday. Sounds bad doesn't it? It wasn't - don't worry.

I had to go up there (it's a 500 mile round trip so 8 hours of driving) to help her find a new car. She's 71 and needs a car to get around. A nice little hatchback runabout you might think so she can get down the shops a couple of days a week and go see the granddaughter now and again. No, it's not quite as simple as that.

This is the second time in two years I've had to rush up there at short notice and perform this particular duty. What had actually happened was she had written off ("totalled" to use the American terminology) her current car. She did exactly the same thing last time. So, in the last two years my Mum has demolished two cars in quite spectacular accidents. This is the kind of driving record your average teenager would be proud of. The kind of thing that would drive parents to distraction. Except I now find it happening to me in reverse.

These are no ordinary cars. For the last 30 years she has driven only Saabs. Big, sturdy, high-performance Swedish cars that the advertising campaigns would have us believe are designed by the same people who make a particularly intimidating and supersonic fighter jet for the Swedish Air Force. My mum likes this. She seems to fancy that driving a car modelled on a fighter aircraft lends her a certain quirky kudos amongst her increasingly elderly chums. It makes her feel she's not quite ready for the scrapheap. This is OK by me - keeps her young at heart and all that.

But two write-offs in two years? It's time she calmed it down a bit you would think. I was relieved to find when I got there she had been given a seven year old diesel powered Ford Mondeo. The kind of car it's difficult to tell is moving even when it's going flat out in top gear. This would reign here in I thought. She would be suitably contrite after managing to destroy two substantial Saabs in the last two years. Not a bit of it. She hated it. Despite it's practical attributes, she could not see past the fact it would not do 90mph (approaching 150 kph) down the motorway and blast everything else off the road as she screamed "Eat my dust losers!". She's 71 - did I mention that?

She'd already been perusing the car ads in the papers and was eyeing up locally available Saabs. She'd also been wondering whether a 4x4 would make a change. She lives in the North of England and a 4x4 is handy in the winter sometimes. Various other high performance cars were on her prospective shopping list. Audis, Mercs, Volvos....you get the idea. Of course, her budget wasn't quite up to her desires (isn't that always the case) and I had to point out with her budget, any car she could find on her list at that price would be likely to have had a long and probably interesting history. So it was down to me to find her something that ticked all her boxes on her wish list, but that would allow me to also sleep at night.

To cut a long story short, I had to show her the kind of car she wanted, for the money she had, to finally make here realise she couldn't afford one with anything appproaching decent provenance. I then had to find her something she would consider an acceptable compromise. Her specification was roughly as follows:-

• acceleration of a scalded cat
• build characteristics of a chieftan tank
• fuel economy of a Vespa scooter
• carrying capacity of an Antonov cargo plane
• reliability but simplicity of an AK47
• cheap
• cool

A pretty unachievable wish list. We went round the local dealers. She sat in various cars, test drove a few of them. All failed to reach her demanding specification. They were all either too small, too large, too slow, too expensive, the wrong colour, too noisy, too quiet, too old, too boring, You name it - they failed the test.

I finally found her a car. It doesn't fit her spec. but it's close. It's quick, roomy, reliable, and almost within budget. It probably won't impress her friends and it won't be much good in the snow but despite her mumblings about a 4x4, she's never actually had one so I knew that wasn't her top priority. Two litre engine, six speed gearbox (she refuses to drive automatics), lots of gadgets (it's the top spec. in the 2.0) should do 90mph with ease. One of these - hope she likes it. Bloody parents.

Pig Flu - The Truth

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8163930.stm

100,000 people my arse!

30,000 will be the usual rampant hypochondriacs who latch on to every passing ailment and decide they've got it.

30,000 are people who fancy a few days off work so have called in sick cos they "....feel a bit under the weather and, best be safe, what with all this swine flu going around eh."

30,000 want the drugs, so have found out the symptoms and called in to pretend they've got it so they can get the drugs before anyone else.

10,000 might actually have something wrong with them.

Of course, the government is delighted to have a crisis on their hands that is not actually of their own making so will be desperate to make things look as dreadful as possible so they can be seen to be trying to do something about it. The problem with this exponential rate of apparent cases is, with the government in full-on exaggeration mode the whole population of the country could be dead in a couple of weeks and then what will they do?

As usual, The Daily Mash absolutely nails it.

Come to think of it, I don't feel too good myself.....what's that hotline number?

Five Minutes Thirty Four Seconds

I've got 5,953 songs occupying 31.72GB of disk space in my iTunes player. If I was so inclined, it would take me 16 days, 7 hours and 12 minutes to listen to them all.....but I would probably die of sleep deprivation before I finished. As a sort of random exercise, here are all the songs that are exactly five minutes and thirty four seconds in duration:

Aztec Camera - Stray
Lisa Knapp - Blacksmith
Black Grape - Little Bob
Terri Naomi - Flesh for Bones
Aretha Franklin - Bridge Over Troubled Water
King Creosote - My Favourite Girl
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Give My Compliments to the Chef
Hootie and the Blowfish - When I'm Lonely
Myrrhman - Talk Talk

Go on, if you're out there, give me a duration and I'll give you another list. Or send me yours.

Dumped

Dumped.

Football and God

It may be apocryphal but David Beckham, legendary English footballer and all round nice guy was once credited with making the following statement about his son Brooklyn "I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don't know into what religion yet."

Cue jokes about footballers not being terribly bright etc. but frankly I don't particularly care if they're smart or not. We don't expect our academics to be good footballers so why should we expect our footballers to be intellectuals? "Jeez, that Stephen Fry's a clever bugger but have you ever seen him take a penalty?" My point exactly. So, on the whole, I think we should leave our footballers to concentrate on putting the ball in the onion bag and we should leave the reciprocation of pi and the quantum physics to the people who are so inclined to such matters. We, the punters, are only really interested in the end result - plenty of goals and the answer to the meaning of life - and we don't much care how our footballers and boffins get there, simply that they do.

But I think Mr. Beckham raises an interesting point. People are not born religious. Religion is a man-made concept. It is now, in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Beckham, apparently simply something of a lifestyle choice. A person may live in a society that is pre-disposed to affiliate itself with one particular religion and it may be somewhat inevitable that in the absence of any other belief system, that is the religion a person gets drawn into, but if that same person, before gaining an understanding of their local predominant religion is taken elsewhere, they may adopt an entirely different set of beliefs from a different society. We're not born and naturally inclined to adopt a particular religion, any more than we are born intuitively French and with an appreciation of good coffee just because we were born in France.

Religion was initially a means of getting a naïve population into believing that, for example, if nobody could reasonably explain where the sun and the stars came from, then the only logical explanation was that someone must have put them there and they had better be careful not to upset that person. Diss the big man up there and he'll be looking for vengeance. This suited religious leaders who could claim they had a hotline to the Gods and could ease your passage through life if you showed them enough respect. A cosy existence if you could get enough people to buy into it.

Nowadays we can pretty much explain why the sun comes over the hill every day and that leaves religion in a tight spot. Every day it seems, one of their core values is explained away by the scientists as simply an inevitability of the passage of time and a lot of atoms pinging around in interesting but pretty random ways. It also means that some of the more new-age, out-there religions have to come up with new ideas to draw in the customers. Cue the Scientologists and Kabbalah crowd, eager to fill the vacuum created by an increasingly cynical congregation. Better still if you can get a few celebrities on board because celebrities are now the new icons. If you can get a few of them to buy into your ideas then, with luck, they'll bring their fanbase with them. The whole Hare Krishna movement was famously given a huge kickstart in the sixties through the patronage of The Beatles.

Where am I going with this piece? I don't really know. You may have gathered that I'm not a religious person but I'm vexed by the idea that,although I know we're not born and naturally inclined to a particular religion, we may be somehow genetically wired to want something like religion in our lives. Not because the alternative of nothing is unbearable but, hopefully perhaps, because we like abstract ideas. Let's face it, we're all a little bit superstitious about something, even if we declare absolute atheism.

Faith is, by definition, belief in something for which you have no proof. I'm happy to say I'm not interested in any of it and don't have that genetic wiring (if it in fact exists) but I'm frankly amazed by the number of people that are.

Gravy Suckers

As our government steadily but inevitably implodes upon itself the whole scandal about MP's expenses prompts a few questions.

The thing that has irked the population more than anything I suspect is that not a single MP has managed to come up with a decent defence of their expense claims. There have been two common defences. The first is to claim it was a simple oversight or accounting error. This would be plausible in a few cases but when this lack of attention to detail is exhibited by just about every MP, you start to think this is simply a collective excuse that they're all trotting out. If we were to believe they all made the same simple accounting errors then this displays a collective incompetence on a grand scale that simply illustrates they're incapable of the most simple of tasks and don't deserve to be employed in any position of authority.

The second defence/excuse is to say that it was "within the rules." This is patently untrue because the rules states that expenses should be incurred as part of being an MP. Having your garden landscaped which has been a frequent expense claim is not an occupational expense of being an MP however lax you make the rules.

The other excuse is to claim they're terribly overworked and equally terribly underpaid as they only take a annual salary of about £64,000. Based on average salaries, this places them in the top 9% of earners in the UK. This argument simply doesn't stand up to even the simplest of analysis. If I were an MP and felt as woefully underpaid, overworked and unappreciated as this lot do then I'd probably give it up and go and find another job where my brilliance was appreciated but this lot, despite claiming that they lead such a financially perilous existence seem strangely determined to hang on to their jobs. The reality is a great many of them could not hope to draw a wage like this (plus expenses) in the private sector as most of them have precious little experience of working in the real world.

None of them have been prepared to admit that being an MP is a pretty cushy existence. You get to run a small business with a turnover of around £250,000 per year that is pretty much immune from the scrutiny of the taxman. You can employ members of your own family in nominal jobs. You have various ways of collecting large sums of money from the public purse without having to provide any proof of actually how that money is spent. There is an extremely generous pension scheme that is unheard of in the private sector and if you do lose your job (effectively sacked because your electorate don't think you're up to it) there is a generous redundancy package.

MPs also like to proselytise about how much work they do and how essential their duties are. The reality is that over the last month, while Parliament has been mired in this scandal, precious little real work has been done. Most MPs are avoiding their constituents and the media like the plague for fear of being asked awkward questions. Party leaders have spent all their time defending the actions of their MPs or in the case of Gordon Brown, feigning interest in the health of reality show contestants in a desperate attempt to appear in touch with the public.

It's been a gravy train for too long and MPs have the gravy boat wedged firmly in their mouths and they'll keep sucking it for as long as they can get away with it.

Travels

So far this year I have been to Romania three times. I have been to Luxembourg twice (including excursions to Germany and Belgium). Next weekend I'm going to Paris and I will be back in Luxembourg again before the end of the month.

Isn't it nice to have someone in your life. Killer on the cash flow situation though.

This is Bran in Romania.










































And this is me looking quite relaxed in a photo for the first time in years.















And this is Luxembourg city.....yes, the middle of the city does look like this.

Insensitivity

There's something uniquely insensitive about a government that decides to deliberately fly a very large passenger jet at low level around the New York skyline for half an hour.

It becomes increasingly hard to understand the individual who came up with this idea thought it would also be a good idea to have the jet tailed by a fighter plane.

Let's add stupidity to insensitivity by mentioning that they failed to tell anyone (not even the Mayor of New York) that they planned to do this.

I've yet to decide if Barack Obama will be the saviour of the western world, but if he has people beneath him who come up with ideas like this then that's going to make his job a helluva lot more difficult.

Apparently they thought it would be a nice idea to get pictures of Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty.

Putting on a Show

Here in London we have the G20 Summit going on. Whilst the mob in the street bays for the blood of bankers and politicians, inside the champagne is quaffed and behind closed doors, the dirty deals are done. Queenie has been wheeled out to gladhand the politicians and Prince Phillip will be kept at arm's length so he doesn't commit any of his usual gaffes. Gordon will trot out a selection of hoary old speeches, riddled with meaningless cliches carefully designed to express nothing and hopefully give the impression he likes everyone. Not true of course; Gordon hates everyone because they fail to recognise his genius, but that's another story.

London is determined to put on a show. We like to think we can do this sort of thing. But amidst the royalty and the pageantry there's one thing that is particularly in evidence as I watch the news tonight - the ultimate expression of extravagance and opulence. You see it everywhere, it will be at every reception, every meeting and at every photo-op and the people who organise these sort of things would consider themselves lesser mortals, perhaps even failures, if it were not included, for it is height of decadence. No top-dollar event is complete without it yet I've always thought it faintly risible.

Yes, it the The Red Carpet. If you really want to impress someone and show them how much effort you've gone to, nothing works better than carpeting a bit of the street. This lets people know you have serious cash to flash. TV reporters will always point it out when they report on these occasions. "The red carpet has been rolled out...." they mutter ominously in order to signify the great import of the event being played out. An appropriately dressed maid will be seen earlier in the day diligently vacuuming aforementioned length of cheap nylon carpet that has been laid carefully to lead from the doorway to the kerb. Forget about the millions you've wasted on fancy venues, menus, flunkies and all the other paraphernalia. What's really important is that visiting nobs will be able to step from their car and not sully their footwear by inadvertently having to, God forbid, tread on an uncovered piece of street.

Putting on this event will have cost millions but people will consider it incomplete without a $50 swatch of cheap red rug in the street.

Flowers

It's nice to visit a country where flowers are loved and enjoyed. India is one such country. Flowers are everywhere. Even in the poorest marketplace in the poorest part of town, someone will be selling flowers, garlands, or something to tie in your hair. Romania is another such society. Having been there during Valentine's weekend I saw lots of women of all ages carrying flowers. How nice that this isn't just a young lover's thing. I was in Romania again last weekend. This time it was the tail end of celebrating Mărţişor - on the first of March women (usually young and single women I believe) receive a small gift of a jewel or a flower tied to a red and white string. Also that week was March 8th - International Women's Day - again more flowers are given. So that's three out of four weekends where women will receive some sort of floral based gift. Nice!

But here's the unusual thing. Women in Romania carry their flowers upside-down, that is, with the heads of the flowers facing down, and I mean right down, by their sides, arms straight down so the heads of the flowers are often barely above ground level. If you haven't seen this before, your initial thought is that perhaps the woman is somewhat nonplussed by the floral gift she has received and is therefore just looking for a convenient bin in which to chuck the bouquet. I asked about this and was told that it's actually considered a better way to carry flowers. Carrying them pointing upwards would run the risk of damaging the flowers, the heads may break off, or they could be crushed in a crowd. Held straight down, the flowers run the least risk of being damaged. On consideration, this seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation but it is still somewhat disconcerting (to a Western European like me) to see flowers being carried in what seems a rather contemptuous way.

Custard Probes

It's always interesting to go abroad for a short break and detach yourself from your home country because you tend to miss out on the minutiae of events. On your return you usually find relatively little has happened in your absence but there's always something that catches your eye on returning and this particular weekend was no exception.

I've been back to Romania for another fantastic weekend. No chance to log on to the internet and check the BBC website. No email and no home news. I'm not a news fiend but I do try and keep up with current events and like to know what's gong on, if only at a mostly superficial level.

Here in the UK we have a politician called Peter Mandelson with, one suspects, a mildly colourful lifestyle. Sacked/resigned from a senior position in government on at least two occasions for extremely dubious financial dealings, he was shipped off to Europe where most of our least successful politicians are sent, to see out their days in disgraceful luxury but away from the glare of public opprobrium at their mendacity. Mandelson actually came back and was again given another senior job in government - one suspect this was only to placate some disillusioned faction of Gordon Brown's party (there are quite a few of these I imagine so he has to make a lot of peace offerings to keep his party on a barely even keel and maintain the semblance of organised government). Mandelson was almost immediately undone and up to his usual tricks again by being caught accepting the hospitality of a Russian billionaire on his yacht in the Mediterranean. He survived this particular spat but has continued to rarely be out of the news for some reason or another.

This time, as I stepped off the plane at Heathrow I saw a TV screen with such an eye-catching headline I could barely imagine what he'd been up to this time....Mandelson Custard Probe Develops....it was quite an anticlimax when I finally read the actual story.

Why I Love Romania

I've just spent an extremely enjoyable weekend in the city of Brasov in Romania. There are many things I could discuss about the weeked but I'll just talk about one at the moment. It's not something that's particularly Brasovian, simply a feature of Romania that I've come to notice in my many visits to the country.

Romania can get cold in the winter. Very cold. This seems to have had an effect on retailing in the country. Shopkeepers don't want a stready stream of punters opening and closing their door, coming in to the shop, and perusing goods they may well decide not to purchase and thereby letting valuable heat escape from the premises. The solution? You run a kiosk instead.

As far as I can tell, about half of what you buy in Romania is from kiosks. Confectionery, soft drinks, coffees, tobacco, bread, bus tickets, admission tickets are all sold from kiosks. The idea is that you, the "shopkeeper", sit inside a nice warm box with a glass/perspex front. Your customers are stuck outside coping with whatever weather is being launched at you that day by the Romanian climate.You, the shopkeeper, array all the goods you wish to sell inside your box against the glass/perspex front so that shoppers can see what you wish to sell. The only opening in the kiosk is an implausibly small hole about one metre from the ground.



To purchase from a kiosk you find what you need in the window. As an average sized human being, you are then required to bend over double and attempt to make eye contact with the individual secreted in the gloomy interior of the kiosk. In winter of course, it is usually bitterly cold your nose is perhaps running, and you are not usually well-disposed to contorting yourself like this just to buy a cup of coffee to stave off the chill in your bones. If you can see a person in there, and you very often cannot, you just optimistically speak through the hole and ask for what you need. It is obtained by the troglodyte within, money is exchanged and the goods are passed through the hole. The hole is generally sized to match the goods being sold at the particular kiosk so, if the kiosk sells only bus tickets or admission tickets to a venue, the hole is likely to be only big enough to accommodate the passing through of tickets and the money required to purchase said tickets. The hole will never be any bigger than is absolutely necessary. It often feels more like you're indulging in some sort of weird street-based Catholic confessional than actually conducting a transaction to buy goods as you often cannot see the person you're dealing with and they rarely speak, usually only to tell you that they're unable to give you any change even though you have proffered a note of reasonably small denomination.

Of course this also limits the range of goods the "shopkeeper" can sell you as they can only retail good that will fit through a very small hole. It's a system that most native Romanians appear to accept as normal, yet is somewhat unusual to the vistor.

I hope the people at http://shopsproject.blogspot.com/2008/11/kiosks.html don't mind that I've borrowed a few of their jpgs by way of illustration.

Socks

There are few things in life more agreeable than putting on a new pair of socks.

My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

One of my browser home pages at the moment is the WikiTravel Romanian Phrasebook. I'm trying to expand the smattering of Romanian I can currently speak. Why, you might ask is someone like me trying to learn Romanian, or perhaps you've already guessed. Yes, a woman is involved; but that's actually not the point of the post.

I'm always surprised by the selection of phrases they consider worthy of translating in phrasebooks and therefore, by extension, what they assume it is likely you will ask in some parts of the world. There are no real surprises in the Romanian guide, the usual stalwarts such as...

Does the room come with bedsheets?
Exista in camere aşternuturi?

I haven't done anything wrong.
N-am facut nimic rău

When tired of trying to get my Western European tongue around Romanian pronounciation I sometimes mooch off to another WikiTravel page and reassure myself I do have an aptitude for languages by looking at a language I do know a little of. Today I went to the French phrasebook. Pretty high up on the list of phrases deemed useful on a trip to France is the valuable....

Do you think I'm a whore?
Vous me prenez pour une prostituée?

The other page I always enjoy is the Omniglot page which has kindly translated the phrase "My hovercraft is full of eels" into all the languages you might possibly hope for. So, here with go with

Romanian
Vehicolul meu pe pernă de aer e plin cu ţipari

French
Mon aéroglisseur est plein d'anguilles

...and especially for my favourite regular reader Saby, Malaysian
Hoverkraf saya penuh dengan belut

Jesus' Blood....

Take four minutes out of your life and tell me what you think of this. It's a recording of a homeless man improvising a simple hymn with the addition of Tom Waits towards the end.

I'm not religious, if anything I'm actively irreligious but I'm pretty sure it would be a less powerful piece if it didn't have a religious angle.

Lost Opportunities

I've always carried a torch for The Beatles even though a few of my friends are horrified by this. Their usual reasoning for why they don't like The Beatles however is usually because of the poor quality of their work after they split up. This, I always say, is a little unfair but, if you were to judge The Beatles back catalogue by the quality of what they have done as solo artists then I'd have to say my friends are right. The Beatles, as individuals, have not served themselves well by continuing to perform. They really should have split up and shut up and their reputations would have remained secure.

Inexplicably, Paul McCartney continues to be revered as a god; every utterance he makes or note he performs is analysed for its genius but has consistently found to be sadly lacking in any substance at all. Let's face it, he hasn't really made a decent record since about 1970. So, with the possible exception of George Harrison and his album All Things Must Pass it's hard to find anything of merit. John Lennon went down the peace and politics route and made some inexcusable rubbish. Ringo? When John Lennon was asked by a reporter if he thought that Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world, he replied: 'He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles' . Within the band, that was usually agreed to be McCartney.

But, in their solo work there is still one track I can go back to. Unfortunately, I don't even like the whole track. And the bit I really like about this track is bizarrely faded out, just as it sounds like it's setting off to be something remarkably good - another parlous lack of judgement on the part of Paul. So here it is - Take It Away by Paul McCartney and Wings. Drag yourself through the nonsensical lyrics of the first three minutes and twenty seconds and then just enjoy the wonderful voices harmonising in the background, be lifted as the stunning horn section kicks in....and then curse violently as the damn thing is faded out just as it seems to be getting started.

Would You Like Anything Else Sir?

Because of a recent burst of business travel I thought I'd sign up for a few hotel and airline reward programs. I've always been too lazy to do this in the past but this time I thought "Why not?"

I've just received my introductory pack from Hilton Hotels and I know they like to pander to one's every whim but I never expected this to be available when I pick up the phone in my room and dial zero.

OK, I guess this is what they mean.

Another Reason to Love India

I've said it before (obviously not here, or I would be repeating myself), and I'll say it again, one of the best reasons for coming to India is frankly, just to stare longingly at the women. They are, without question, the best looking in the the world, and that is by a considerable distance.

You think all the best looking women are saved for the movies? Nooooo sirreee, there's an Olympic standard, Bollywood honey on every street corner, in every shop, riding side-saddle on the back of a motorbike, or at every other desk in the office - they are everywhere. They're even on construction sites! Not only are they beautiful, (it's those deep dark eyes and that long black hair that does it for me) but they are engaging, smart and utterly charming.

And there's something about the way they move. I don't know if they're taught by their mothers to walk in a certain way, or whether wearing a sari requires them to walk in a certain way, but they just seem to have an innate grace and poise and a deeply sexy way of just walking across a room.

OK, I'm off for a cold shower - this is all a bit much for me.

Why I Love India

By all reasoning I should hate India. It's noisy, chaotic, overwhelming, sometimes rather smelly, and at other times delightfully fragant, mildly distressing in parts, and mostly beyond any sort of rational analysis. It's all the things I seek to keep out of my life when I'm in the UK. But I can stand and watch Indians going about their life and never fail to be gripped by the drama that appears to be constantly unfolding before me of which I can make almost no sense at all.

I cannot work out when people stop working. Business and chaos appear to continue operating side-by-side for all hours of the day and night. Time is an abstract concept. Nothing appears easy if you ask for it, but somehow it always gets done. All tasks when initially broached are met with bewilderment and requires much discussion with a variety of passers-by until a level of understanding is reached at which point the job in hand is dealt with exactly as you might expect it - it just seems to be a requirement that everybody has a lengthy discussion about it first.

I know Hyderabad is not exactly a tourist hotspot and so I tend to stick out among the crowd. I tend to attract attention simply by being a European - this is Schrodinger's Cat incarnate isn't it? - the concept that you cannot observe an event simply because by your own presence you are actually influencing that event.

I'm going to elaborate on this further when I am at more awake and a little less time-confused. But I still love it.

Coincidences

So, I guess this is pretty small beer in the bizarre world of coincidences that we inhabit but here goes.

I and a colleague have been staying in a hotel in Hyderabad for the last week. This weekend is our first free time so we booked ourselves on the budget city tour - a nine hour day on a perfectly serviceable but quaintly battered bus, trundling around the sights of Hyderabad. Our fellow passengers were almost all Indians, apart from a couple of other European looking characters and inevitably we got to chatting after a while.

It turns out, one of our fellow European types was actually called Roxana, an Argentinian, currently working in Chile, but over in India for a few weeks working with some colleagues. Who do you work for we asked? Her employers, were, she said, Company B. Now coincidentally, Company B were the subject of a hostile takeover by my employers, Company A some time ago. I mentioned that I worked for Company A, as despite the hostility of the takeover, I've never encountered any real resentment between employees of the erstwhile, separate companies.

Roxana mentioned she'd spent the week working in Hitec City which is the new area of Hyderabad that has sprung up in recent years to service the IT requirements of large organisations such as Company A and Company B. It transpired that we had also been working in the same floor of the same building for the whole of last week. It also transpired that she knew the only three people I know in the Chile office. I only know them because I met them last month when I was in the US and they were attending the training course that I and my aforementioned colleague were running in Florida and Colorado.

So there you go - that's my little coincidence of the day.

And another thing, she's staying in a hotel only 100m from the one we're staying in.....but ours is much nicer.

I'm Off (again)

OK, I'm off to Hyderabad for two weeks, staying in what looks like a thoroughly swanky hotel.

Do you think they'll give me an upgrade because it's my birthday? I'm feeling a bit hard done by - as I'm travelling against the clock, so to speak, I will lose five and a half hours of the day meaning my birthday will only be eighteen and a half hours long. Is there somewhere you can apply to have these lost hours reimbursed if they happen on significant dates?

Arsebooks

Patient: Doctor doctor, I've got a book stuck up my arse.
Doctor: Hardback?
Patient: Yes.
Doctor: Well, just wait six months and it'll come out as a paperback.

I thank you.

Tea

Picture the scene; you're sitting at work, it's early evening, the rain is lashing down outside, the wind whistling past, but you're warm, you've just got to finish reading this report and then you're off home for the evening. The ceiling strip lights have been been turned down low but you have your desk lamp on so you create one of those warm glowing pools of light, a small homely oasis amongst the ranks of darkened cubicles around you. Only a few more pages to go - it's not a bad office, all things considered.

You reach to your side, without looking up from the report, to pick up that refreshing mug of tea you made earlier; lifting it to your lips, you draw a healthy draught into your mouth. You recoil in shock, and spit the tea instantly straight back into the mug and do that thing that dogs do when they've got something nasty in their mouth, shaking your head from side to side, your tongue pushed out and spitting simultaneously. Yes, you've guessed it - the tea was COLD. There are few tastes more shocking or repellent to the British palate than cold tea. You wouldn't so much as bat an eyelid if the vicar, or perhaps your maiden aunt, reacted in exactly the same way if they accidentally ingested this wretched abomination of a fluid. It's just what we, the British, do, when presented with this particular flavour.

So, I was intrigued to find during my trip to the US last month that the drink of choice in US business circles, when alcohol is not really an option, is iced tea. This is often brought to the restaurant table in giant pitchers, served in pint glasses and enticingly infused with slices of lemon and sprigs of mint. In the first week I eschewed the iced tea, and instead would ask for mineral water, not really being a soda / pop drinker. Mineral or bottled water however, is often not supplied in American restaurants, they don't seem to get much call for it. After a week of asking for water and often then having to explain exactly what I wanted and then invariably having to settle for American tap water - which is like drinking swimming pool dregs - I decided to try the iced tea.

I'm sure I've had iced tea the past, and although I didn't have any particular memories of it, I didn't remember it as being especially unpleasant. Not like root beer for example. I was happy to give it another go. It would probably be pretty tasteless, just a hint of tea, a light citrus / minty top note flavour, chilled and refreshing. My glass was expertly poured from the pitcher by the waitress, the ice cubes and amber fluid glopping and plocking into the glass with a pleasing sound. It looked pretty good on the table before me. I lifted it to my lips, and, it being a hot Florida day and we'd just walked across the car park, I took a big gulp into my mouth. The shock hit me instantly, I had just taken into my mouth about a quarter of a pint of the fluid no native-born Englishman can abide - it tasted exactly like COLD TEA. Not just weak cold tea though. This was proper, full-on, strong, well stewed cold tea. It was a bitter, unsubtle, spine-shudderingly, tongue-curlingly nasty taste. The option to spit it out, which I so nearly did, would I fear, have been inexcusable in my immediate company. I forced myself to swallow it, without breathing through my nose which fortunately dulls the tastebuds but it was still hard to swallow. I quickly placed the glass down in front of me.

After the initial shock had subsided, I looked around at my fellow diners who were happily necking this hideous infusion with apparent glee. The taste was slow to disappear. It lingered unpleasantly on the palate and the back of the throat; in fact, it acted in exactly the same way as you would expect if you had just drunk a mouthful of cold tea. Some things, I will never understand. I asked the waitress for a nice glass of iced swimming pool dregs instead - to take the taste away.

Hocus Pocus

OK, so if you think today's music isn't 'out there' enough you're probably right. You need to go back thirty five years and check this out. Be patient - it takes off at about one minute in. This might be part of an ongoing series reminding people that the 1970s really had something to offer. You wouldn't get your boy bands trying anything like this today. They wouldn't even get close. I love it.

Musical Meme

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't anything useful to say so it's time for one of those stupid memes to pad out the flat spots in your blog. I got this one here.

Answer each question using the song titles of ONE band or singer. I choose the mighty Tom Waits.

1. Are you male or female? Gin Soaked Boy

2. Describe yourself. Just Another Sucker on the Vine

3. What do people feel when they’re around you? Tango Till They're Sore

4. How would you describe your previous relationship? Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

5. Describe your current relationship. Step Right Up

6. Where would you want to be now? Johnsburg, Illinois

7. How do you feel about love? Clap Hands

8. What’s your life like? Anywhere I Lay My Head

9. What would you ask for if you had only one wish? The One That Got Away

10. Say something wise. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)

Passports

My passport arrived on Friday. Impressive.

Bish Bash Bosh.....Job Done

I need a new passport. There's been much in the press in recent years regarding turmoil and delays at the passport office. I wasn't expecting an easy ride. Three weeks ago I had my business trip to India confirmed in seven week's time. I would also need a business visa but this would not be issued on a passport with less than six months to run - as was my case. However, in a week I was off to the US for two weeks for which I would need my current passport and on my return that would leave me only four weeks to get a new passport and a business visa as well. Optimistically, these would each take a minimum of two weeks each and could not be worked on concurrently.

It was with some trepidation I logged on to the Passport Office website to establish how to get through the system quickly. The normal method, by post, looked decidedly risky. Apply, and I might get my new passport in about two weeks but the website was keen to point out I shouldn't make any travel plans based on that estimate. The next option was to apply in person at The Passport Office and I should see my new passport in about a week. This looked reasonable.

Historically, a trip to the passport office to fast-track an application meant turning up as early as possible in the morning and waiting all day to be seen. The website said I must 'phone to make an appointment which I might get in a week's time. I 'phoned and talked to a nice chap who rather startled me by offering me an appointment at 7:45 the following morning. Even that was too soon for me, I didn't even have my new photos done. I settled on 11:45 instead and legged it to the Post Office to get an application form. The local photo developing shop did me some decent passport photos straight away (no smiling or showing of teeth permitted) for £5.99 and I took the application form home to peruse the requirements.

The form was a doddle. Name, address, date of birth, barely anything else was needed. As I was applying in person, I didn't even need to find somebody important to sign the back of the photos to say the gloomy, non-smiling baldy in the picture really was me. I also needed to take two other forms of ID with an address on and my current passport.

I arrived at The Passport Office this morning at 11:25, early, as advised, to get through security. A jolly man at the x-ray machine was cracking jokes but despatching people briskly through the process at an un-airport-like rate of knots. I went to the second floor with my numbered ticket. "Oh shit" I thought, this isn't an appointment, it's just a numbered ticket system meaning I'll be there for hours. I got to the second floor and the numbers board suggested I had about fifty people ahead of me in the queue. I congratulated myself on having brought a book to read while I was waiting. Five minutes later the board jumped forty numbers in one go and suddenly I was third in the queue. A few moments later and my number was called and I was off to my designated counter.

The application form had warned me I was to expect a thirty minute interview in which I would be asked testing and difficult questions to prove my identity, provenance and integrity. Identity theft is a big talking point at the moment however I was intrigued and rather looking forward to some testing good cop / bad cop interview process during which I would be grilled under a spotlight and found wanting when I could not name my third cousin's pet rabbit or something.

A spectacularly bored looking lady sat ominously behind the counter. She briefly lifted her eyes to greet me.
"Hi!" I said enthusiastically - having been in the US for the last two weeks I'd got into the habit of being nice to strangers which is not really in the British nature. Bad move I thought, false jollity with government officials is usually treated with the greatest of suspicion. I handed over the application form, passport and photos. I expected her to fix me with a steely glaze and then to get out her jeweller's eyepiece to study my documents closely for the slightest anomaly which would allow my application to be rejected. Still not a single word - except for my embarrassing and rather over-effusive "Hi!" - had been exchanged. I placed my additional forms of ID on the counter half-expecting these to be rejected as unsuitable for no good reason other than the historical determination of government departments to find fault in such things. I think she may have briefly acknowledged their existence but certainly didn't pull them over to her side of the counter to check them. Still not a word. She filled in a couple of forms, stuck on a barcode, put it all in an envelope and mumbled something to me.
"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that" I said.
"Your passport will be with you within a week" she repeated, still staring downwards at her desk.
"Take this form to the cashier" she added, handing over a slip of paper with a sum of money written on it.

I went to the deserted cashier's desk queue, paid up with my debit card and headed for the exit. I was in and out of the place in less than fifteen minutes and blinking like a startled mole in the pre-noonday sunshine. I still can't quite believe it. I'll let you know when my new passport arrives.

And Repeat.....

Well, a missed connection in Atlanta resulting in a six hour delay gave me a departure from London Gatwick but a return to London Heathrow. A defective plane, a staff shortage at immigration, a suicide on the Heathrow Express and a stabbing in Finsbury Park further thwarted my journey home. The result was a 22 hour trip to get from towering but cloudy Colorado Springs to lo-altitude but sunny N6. An unwise attempt at a siesta when I finally got through my front door has left me dazed and confused.

I now have four weeks to trim down my physique after fifteen arduous days of American cuisine, get a new passport, obtain a business visa and repeat the whole exercise but this time in Hyderabad, India. Nice biryanis I'm told.

Colorado Springs - Day 2 - Part 2

There are several ways to get to the top of Pike's Peak. There's the 13 mile hike along Barr's Trail which would be fun but I didn't bring the right kit to go hiking and I foolishly decided to break in a new pair of shoes while here (see earlier post) and they have ripped my heels to shreds (woe is me etc.) You can drive up there which is OK I guess but somehow misses the point as it will be an interesting drive but you won't really be able to appreciate the scenery getting there, or you can let the train take the strain. We decided to take the train.

The Pike's Peak Cog Railway, since it goes straight up the side of a mountain, is obviously not your normal railway. It's a little two carriage, diesel powered train that locks into a third cogged rail and simply drags itself up the mountain. The station is located in the small town of Manitou Springs, a few miles from Colorado Springs. On they way up you get a live running commentary from a local guide pointing out the physical and natural changes as you ascend from 6,500 ft. to over 14,000 ft.

The mountain is simply beautiful. My lame prose won't do it justice but the ascent from warm sunny blue skies in Manitou Springs through lush forest, boulder strewn canyons, scree slopes, up past the tree line and out into the barren, snow-capped cold mountain summit air was stunning. With autumn just arriving the trees were turning a million shades of green and brown. A light breeze wafted through the trees and leaves fluttered down in the sunlight. The excellent commentary pointed out natural formations, the different types of flora and fauna along the way along with a history of the railway and its developments and various attempts to colonise the mountain.

At the top is the inevitable gift shop and restaurant which I'm sure takes advantage of the light headed oxygen starved ground dwellers but the prices were reasonable and merchandise not tacky. The view of almost 200 miles across into neighbouring states (Kansas we were told) was huge in every sense of the word. A three hour round trip with 45 minutes at the summit will be the best $30 you ever spend.

In the afternoon went to The Garden of the Gods. A local park just outside Manitou Springs. The word 'park' doesn't really do it justice; it's more like a geology reserve. Outstanding sandstone outcrops, boulders and formations. It sort of reminded me of Monument Valley on a small scale, the kind of scenery thay used as a backdrop for 50's Westerns. Worth a visit - and free to boot!

Colorado Springs - Day 2

7.30am and I've just been outside for five minutes. The air is cool, crisp and clear. The mountain backdrop to Colorado Springs is arrayed before me like an Ansel Adams photograph. The landscape here is much more natural. There's almost an alpine feel to the architecture - houses are built on the contours of the land, as opposed to being on land that has been bulldozed and manicured. This place gets a lot of snow in the winter and the houses have a chalet style to them I had not expected

The hotel in Orlando was businesslike and functional and had everything you need. The hotel in Colorado Springs is a much more laid back affair. It seems to be staffed by teenagers in jeans and t-shirts who seem to have just wandered in to do a bit of work. They still supply everything you need but in a much more relaxed atmosphere.....and they have marmalade. Bliss.

Off to Pike's Peak.

Colorado

Phase two of my fortnight in the US and I find myself in Colorado Springs. Arrived early afternoon, it's now late evening. First impressions are it's much more my kind of place. After the slick commercialism of Orlando, Colorado Springs is a much more relaxed place. People you meet are still charming, polite and helpful but in a much more laid back manner. The smiles are more genuine, the people more normal, the weather more European.

Flew from Atlanta across a cloudless sky, a clear view from 35,000 feet down to an endless patchwork of fields. My colleague managed this snap from the plane which will give you an idea but doesn't give justice to the size or relentless continuity of the agriculture. I vaguely recall us doing a term in secondary school geography that discussed the midwest and the breadbasket of America and here it was writ large.

Scored an upgrade on my hire car and am happily driving round in a chunky 4x4 Ford Escape. The lady on the GPS system is keeping me on the right side of the road.

Colorado Springs is a manageable city. Tiny compared to the endless sprawl of Orlando and set against the stunning backdrop of the Rocky Mountain which tower over the city I think I'll enjoy my week here.

Tomorrow we ascend Pike's Peak and visit The Garden of the Gods. I thought the Americans only had one God but apparently more are acceptable here.

I'm retiring now as I'm so veh veh tired. I have to find three Chileans in the morning.

The Fruitcake in 510

Men just can't help acting on impulse...or so says the old TV commercial. As I was packing for the US on Friday evening, I impulsively grabbed a bottle of sun cream and threw it in my bag. I might need that I thought, even though I'm working and am only likely to see the sun between walking from the taxi to the office and vice versa but when in The Sunshine State one must always be prepared.

I arrived late on Saturday evening, unpacked my luggage and found the aforementioned bottle of sun cream had ruptured and disgorged its comments over most of my underwear (socks and undies), a brand new sweater (very lightweight and specially purchased in the unlikely evening of a less than balmy evening) and my lovely old (non digital) Nikon SLR camera.

Much cussing ensued as I picked through the creamy mess of my carefully packed baggage. I knew immediately I could not just put the soiled garments in a laundry bag and leave them to be collected by the hotel staff. Some poor unfortunate soul toiling in the bowels of the hotel would receive the bag, plunge their hand in to remove the garments and be greeted with a gooey mess. I suspect hotel cleaning staff are hardened individuals and have seen pretty much everything but I still didn't want them to extrapolate wildly and draw some bizarre but wholly wrong conclusions over the contents of my laundry.

First I tried to wipe off the excess cream with a few tissues I had also packed. Useless. I then resorted to large amounts of toilet paper which cleared up most of the excess but in the end I was simply left with a large amount of toilet paper covered with a slimy creamy substance and still had a lot of gooey clothing. Much toilet flushing ensued to dispose of the toilet paper as I couldn't really just leave this sort of suspicious looking material in the bin.

I still didn't feel able to stuff the clothes into a laundry bag as it was still pretty messy. I then tried washing off the remaining excess sun cream under the shower. A hopeless failure. As the sun cream was waterproof and I had no detergent, this now meant that not only was my clothing still slimy but it was now also soaking wet.

I wrung out the items as best I could, draped them over a few hangers on the shower rail in the bathroom and then tried to dry them off with the hair dryer. The hair dryer was bolted to the wall and didn't really reach as far as the shower so I had to hold up each item by hand and try to dry them one by one. I gave up after a while.

OK, the maid would be here the next morning. What would she make of the new hotel guest who had only arrived the night before and now had a large amount of wet clothing hanging in the bathroom with suspicious white slimy patches all over it? I might as well just kill myself now in embarrasment. The suicide would hopefully generate more column inches in the press than idle speculation about the state of the suicidee's clothing I thought to myself. I went to bed and had a sleepless night - quite impressive considering it was now 5am in my own personal body clock.

The Florida morning arrived, dazzlingly bright and I still had a bathroom full of ugly wet clothes. I went to breakfast and related the whole sorry tale to my colleague who chuckled politely at my dilemma. This was worse than the time I left bloodstains all over the hotel bedsheets in Romania (ask me about that sometime), he was kind enough to remind me.

After breakfast I returned to my room, still unable to decide how I would disguise my predicament and get my clothing into a fit state to hand over to the hotel to be washed. I turned the corner just in time to see the maid exiting my room and about to close the door behind her. She looked up to see me approaching. Our eyes met. At this point, fear and embarrassment almost overcame me and I considered launching myself over the parapet and plunging five floors down into the hotel atrium. I just about managed to resist the temptation and kept walking. She smiled sweetly at me, but we both knew, behind the smile she was mentally assessing just exactly what kind of a weirdo I was. But she was a real pro. She held the smile, paused and kept the door open for me. I went in. No words were exchanged. The door closed beind me.

She had taken all the clammy clothes down and rehung them much more tidily and in such as way as they would not drip onto the towel I had left on the floor to catch the excess drippage. She had perfectly remade the bed that the previous night I had tossed and turned in so restlessly. The rest of the room had also been tidied immaculately. Hotel staff really have seen everything and I suspect it takes a lot more than my little disaster to shock them. I would barely merit a mention to colleagues during her coffee break other than for her to advise them that there's a potential fruitcake in 510.

I'm Off

OK, I'm off to the US for two weeks on business. Don't all rush in and comment at once. Yeah...as if.