My 4Gb precious

There are two things that I really dislike about public transport: these are the transport, which is generally hopeless, and the public, who are annoying at the best of times and unbearable at the worst. My dislike of both was considerably amplified yesterday because I made the catastrophic mistake of leaving home without my iPod. I made a mistake because I had to be in London early for a couple of meetings before heading over to Heathrow to fly out for a client. The early start meant that I was still medically asleep when I left the house and therefore fail to pick up my precious as I walked out the door.

Despite arriving at the train station before half past seven, I found myself jammed into a South West Trains hommage to the Tokyo subway and had to stand all the way to Waterloo. This meant I couldn't get any work done. Now only did I have to stand, I couldn't even enjoy the book I was reading in lieu of doing any work ("The Vikings" by Magnus Magnusson) because the two guys next to me were wittering on about planning permission for some office they are building. It's very rare you get to overhear an interesting conversation which is why my precious is so important, and was choc-a-bloc with goodies that I'd been looking forward to: the new Led Zep "Mothership - Very Best Of (2CD/DVD)" album, the official Manchester City podcast and last week's In Our Time for a start. But instead I fumed all the way into Central London and learn nothing and was not entertained.

The airport was equally disastrous. I had some really bad luck. The British Airways plane that I was on developed some kind of fault before takeoff and so we had to sit on the plane for a couple hours while a replacement plane was flown in from somewhere or other. Then we had to wait to while they transferred the luggage and the catering and everything else to the new plane, and then finally we had to be bussed back across the airport to get onto the new plane. I did manage to get some work done but my laptop battery gave up after a couple of hours and are no power sockets in Club Europe, so I read for a while, and fumed some more that my precious was so far away. When I eventually arrived at my destination hotel several hours late, all I wanted to do was put my feet up and listen to some music for a while. Once again, thwarted.

At least I did hear something interesting on the bus between planes though. I was standing next to a couple of guys who worked for some kind of media organisation (I couldn't be sure if it was some kind of magazine publisher or something) and they obviously had a large well-known international organisation providing management consultancy to them. One guy was asking the other guy what he thought about the consultants that he had working for him. The other guy said the consultant in charge was "a talentless thief" and that his team were "pointless muppets".

Anyway, back to my precious. So when I go to conferences and people say, as they often do, that people often leave home without their wallet but they never leave home without their mobile phone because it's more important, I always think that is not true anymore. If I forget my mobile phone it is certainly annopying and inconvenient, but it would never leave me fuming for hours on end as I was when I couldn't feel the comforting presence of my precious in my shirt pocket.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Evening in Madrid

Our for a pleasant evening stroll around Madrid, we came upon the Playa del Mayor, which looked very nice indeed in the lights. As you probably know, people go out to eat much later here than they do in Woking, so at ten at night, it was only just warming up.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. As we came out of the tapas bar, a guy came past on a Segway!

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Now this is a traveller

I went to the launch of the book "A Brief History of Disability" by Bryan Breed. It's been published, posthumously, by John Coleman of New European Publications. I've known John for many years, so kindly invited me along. The launch was at a travel show, and John brought along his 1925 Austin -- he drove it up to London, it's still running -- that features in the book "Coleman's Drive". He drove it from Buenos Aires to New York -- solo up mountains, through jungles, across rivers -- in 1962. And there's me complaining because they didn't have my first choice left for dinner on my last flight back to London. Here's John with the car...



Anyway, it was a pleasure to be at the launch. Baron Morris of Manchester (better known as Alf Morris) gave a talk on the introduction of the 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act that was behind. He then went on, 1974, to become Britain's first Minister for the Disabled.



It's a privilege to spend a little time with men like these.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

August journey

I'm a pretty good traveller, I think, and I don't get wound up. But yesterday was just one of those days. My flight was delayed three-and-a-half hours because of fog, so I was sitting in the British Airway lounge at Heathrow for nearly five hours all told, all the time cursing myself for not bringing my splending new USB 3G modem dongle thingy with me. I absolutely refuse to pay to use the wireless network: it should be free to BA silver and gold card holders and why they can't just send you a password to log in to the wireless network in any lounge I don't know. Anyway, I got to Munich and took the train to Augsburg. The train was eight minutes late, which I expected to make the front page this morning but it didn't: things must be getting worse here all the time. When I arrived at my hotel, they had sold my room, because it was only guaranteed until 9pm, which I didn't know. They had a ring round some other hotels and found me a place at Hotel Augusta, which had no internet access and the movie/sport channels didn't work either. And my room was noisy. And then when I got up I got confused about the tram lines and almost froze to death waiting for a non-existent tram. Oh well. Seems like a nice place though. I met up with a friend and we went to the traditional "Irish" pub for some Belgian beer and Mexican food.

Anyway, here's what Augsburg looked like in the morning, while I was waiting for a tram at the wrong tram stop...



Just to round things off, when I got back to the UK, I picked up my car from Pink Elephant around 11pm and (exhausted) set off home. But the M25 had three of the four lanes coned off from Heathrow round past the M3, so I sat in a huge jam. It's a glamorous life.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Rats!

I'm Singapore and have been downtown to join in the Year of the Rat festivities.

What a splendid day out. Everything works, everything is clean and efficient, the weather is pleasant, everyone is friendly, good food, a couple of beers, everyone is out in the street, the market stalls are fun. I hope it's a good one for all of you Rats out there.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Celebrity guff reaches new heights

OK, so I'm clearly not the only one who wonders why it is that -- insofar as they are not speaking in a professional capacity, be it as an actor about the theatre, a pop singer about recording studios, or a wannabe cockney cook about jellied eels -- celebrities are afforded media coverage and perhaps even reverence when they pontificate from the same perspective as an average member of the public (ie, cluelessly) giving their views on certain matters with which they may or may not be familiar. As Spiked say, they’re entitled to spout nonsense views on a subject as much as the next person, just as we’re entitled to question, ridicule or ignore them. But why have the public utterances of people like Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna or Jamie Oliver acquired such significance? Why do we think that because someone is, say, a pop star that their opinions on anything are worth listening to? You don't have to go the absurd extremes of Irish tax-avoider Bono or capitalist entrepreneur St. Bob lecturing us on poverty to find examples that ought to engender a double take.

This absurd trend in modern life reached a new low a couple of weeks ago, when I heard an actor who plays a teacher in a movie being asked (by the BBC, no less) about education policy. I don't know what the show was, but I think it was on Radio 5. I flipped on to it in the car and at first I assume it was an interview with some sort of education expert, but after a few minutes realised that that it was an actor. The actor turned out to be former rent boy Rupert Everett, who is in the movie St. Trinians, which looks absolutely ghastly in every respect. Fortunately, the reviews are so bad that it won't be in your cinema for long, if it hasn't already gone to DVD. Only another person removed from reality (ie, a BBC employee) could imagine that we would be interested in Rupert's declaiming about schools, education and the learning process. Personally, I don't care what Rupert Everett thinks about anything at all (least of all matters of public policy), but who am I against the crowd. Still, I nearly choked on my Yorkshire Gold when I heard him talking about everyone packing children off away to school at the age of seven. No, that's not everyone Rupert, it's nobs like you. Most of us rather like our children, so still have them at home.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Birmingham or Paris?

I took the train from Guildford to Birmingham. It was comfortable, I have to say. There were power sockets for the laptops, a table to work on and a buffet station serving only a few feet away. But it took 2 hours 45 minutes, which is longer than Waterloo to Paris. I took the train to York. On the way there were no power sockets in cattle class, and I had to stand up all the way back. I took the kids and some of their friends into Woking town centre and to be green, I went on the bus. It cost more than fifteen quid. Last night I saw -- I don't know what the programme was, I was just flicking over -- a sanctimonious green type (who looked and sounded one of those metropolitan millionaires who are always going on about other people having to cut down on air travel) was going on about getting people out of their cars and into public transport. He meant, I'm sure, getting other people out of their cars. Communist. I want to be green, I really do, but the only way to get me to use public transport more is to make it better. Ah, but how? Since I live under the yoke of South West Trains who can arbitrarily raise fares as much as they like whenever they like, it doesn't seem like much of a system. Perhaps if we were to concrete over the railway line into Waterloo, then coach operators could compete to provide a green (they could run on soya or something) service into the heart of London.

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

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