Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

Like Sam, Andy and I have been to Wales. Shockingly (and in part
inspired by Sam's report), we didn't visit Bangor, opting to remain on
Anglesey for the entire week, which was probably a good idea thinking
back on the bittersweet feelings I had after driving through at
Christmas.

We had an active week where we did just about every watersport we
could think of. We spent a sunny day being towed behind the speedboat
on various devices, which left me with very sore arms and shoulders.
Then we had 3 very windy days with no watersports (although some hardy
folk windsurfed), so we cycled two days in a row (the Nico cycle route
first, then a trip to Church Bay) then went for a walk from Cemaes
Bay. The walk would have been beautiful but it was extremely windy
with driving rain so we were mostly concentrating on not falling off
the cliffs. On Wednesday it was calm again so I tried wakeboarding.
It's not as easy as waterskiing: I did get to an upright position but
fell over almost straight away each time. Then Thursday was a
beautiful and windy day so we started with windsurfing; I was very
pleased as I made lots of progress so need to find another opportunity
to practise.

Then on Thursday afternoon I thought I'd finally get to sail my
Europe, so spent about 90mins scrubbing and rigging it, then attached
it to the back of the tractor and headed to the beach. But a bad thing
happened. Although we safely negotiated the wires by Andy's house, we
both forgot and didn't notice the (lower) wires right down at the
beach. And we rammed them with the mast. And snapped the mast.

I was mostly upset about the danger of electric shock initially,
especially as the wire snagged a cleat at the top of the mast so the
mast, precariously attached to the boat, stayed attached to the wire.
After some careful thought about the conductive properties of various
materials, we decided that fibreglass did not conduct electricity, so
we lifted the boat, the wire was freed and the mast slowly toppled
into the hedge. So we didn't sail, but Andy did let me zoom the
tractor up and down the beach to cheer me up.

On Friday it rained and rained, so we spent most of the day cleaning
the house & moving everything to the campsite. Then on Saturday we
went sea kayaking from Cemlyn Bay to Cemaes (past Wylfa, where the
water was warm and probably radioactive) but when we tried to get back
again the wind rose and I wasn't strong enough to paddle against it,
so Andy, Ben and I were shipwrecked (well, voluntarily) on a beach
while Chris and Matt paddled back and brought the car round to where
we were.

So there. I'm bored of typing on my little phone now but will put up
some photos soon.

I'm on my way back to the Department after a meeting, but am
completely stranded about 150m from the building in one of the biggest
storms I've ever seen. Louder even than the one a few weeks ago that
woke me up at 6am. Rain is BUCKETING down, there's lots of lightning,
there's hail, there's sirens and there's extremely loud thunder.
Thankfully I got stranded in a covered area outside a Leonidas cafe so
I'm merrily drinking my cappuccino out in the open hour but with a
roof over my head. Glad I didn't cycle in today.

11:30 and we've found a nice spot on Henman Hill. Quite a steep hill
though - it's a constant battle with gravity. Highlight so far was
stumbling upon Roger Federer practising on one of the open access
courts. We have also acquired a pack of playing cards so have been
playing rummy to pass time until 1pm. 5.5 hours' wait down, 1.5 to go.
We definitely could have turned up at 10am.

9am: estimated still 5000 of the 6000 tickets available. The queuing
is such fun though, I've read quite a lot of my book and, well, that's
it really. But we're queuing for the turnstile now, we're nearly in!

I thought I couldn't live in SW19 and not go to Wimbledon, so here I
am, standing in a queue, and we're still 5 hours from kick-off or
whatever the tennis equivalent is called.

There are a lot of myths flying around about the length of the
Wimbledon queue and how long you need to spend in it. People queued
for two days for quarter final tickets. People turned up at 6am to a
two-mile queue. So we got here just before 6am, worrying that we
wouldn't get in at all on our long walk from Wimbledon station (where
there was a taped off crime scene, by the way). But when we got here,
turned out there was no need for panic: I'm number 265 inthe queue and
there are 6000 available. Feel a bit silly really.

The No 11 bus is very smelly. I'm making the return leg of my journey
and on both occasions the (different) buses have smelled so bad I have
had to cover my nose. Is it the people on the bus? The cleanliness of
the bus? Or is it just that I inhaled clean sea air at the weekend and
have lost my immunity to London smells as a result?

I'm wallowing in the pleasant after-glow of a very good book. It's a bit like waking up from a lovely dream and wanting to hang on to it just a little longer. The book had a rather violent end but it all worked out perfectly in the epilogue, and I feel smugly satisfied that I anticipated a number of the plot twists before they became too obvious. There's a real nack to pulling that off in detective stories: you don't want to give too much away too soon, but allowing me to figure things out just slightly before you spell it out for me makes me very happy.

I think that's why I don't like Agatha Christie very much: she introduces too many wild cards so you just can't figure it out for yourself. There you are suspecting the parson when she tells you that the butler's alibi was entirely fictitious and he was famed for his skill at archery in his youth. It's just plain annoying -- there's no scope for stretching my intellect, unless I try to guess who the culprit is based on who it's most unlikely to be.

This was the first book I've read that was set in the Second World War without being too grim about it. It wasn't as though everything was rosy; in fact, several people were killed because of the dangers of the blackout, nobody could travel anywhere because of petrol shortages, several people's houses were destroyed by bombs and nobody had anything nice to eat (except Aunt Maud). But I felt I understood it a lot more as a result, I feel much closer to understanding what living with rations actually meant when you were trying to cook a meal. I'm not a big war-head (quelle surprise!) but I did find myself interested in the war for the first time in this book.

Just one criticism: dear old Rennie needs to move away from ending all his books in isolated country houses (with such-and-such baking bread and such-and-such-other off milking the cows) with the killer breaking in and John Madden fighting them off bare-handed. It made for a good read but it did seem a little familiar, and when you've only written three JM books that's a bad thing. But he's one of my favourite authors anyway, and the great thing is that unlike many of my other favourite detective story authors, he's actually alive so there's a good chance he might write more books for me.

I bought five other books last week in a little literary spree (how could I not? I visited John Sandoe and there's a new book stall in the market that sells very good second hand books for £2) so I'll report on those once I've read them all.

Today I did another exciting thing: I visited John Sandoe Books in my
lunch break. It was just like I imagined it would be: layers and
layers and layers of books and the people had read them all.

I went there to get the new Rennie Airth book. I felt I should buy it
from them rather than Amazon as I think it was them who recommended
Rennie Airth to me (via Dad) in the first place. It was a fun trip.

This morning two exciting things happened, one good, one bad. The first was that I saw a rat on my way to work. Andy wasn't there to mind me so I had to run away. Inconsiderately, he was on the tube so I had to leave him a hysterical voicemail (I don't hold with counting h's as vowels) instead of speaking to him hysterically. I googled fear of rats: turns out musophobia (as it is less commonly know) is one of the most common specific phobias, and is often a combination of the "reasonable concern about rats and mice contaminating food supplies, which has been universal to all times, places, and cultures where stored grain attracts rodents, which then consume or contaminate the human food supply" and the startle response. Sounds sensible.

So that was an unpleasant start to the day, but it was tempered by a lovely email from my boss when I got to work thanking me for all my work since Anfal left and praising me for not letting anything major slip despite doing two people's work. So she and my boss-boss have agreed to nominate me for a £150 instant reward, which is very nice indeed. Instant rewards are a nice thing the Department does as a way to recognise good work on a particular thing, like a sort of short-term bonus. So I feel pleased.

The rest of the day was quite dull in comparison.

I've just been to a headteachers meeting in a consortium I have links
with. It was a bit frustrating because very early in the meeting I was
asked a confrontational question about a potential policy change
should the government change which naturally I couldn't answer, but it
left everyone in the room a bit annoyed with me for not being frank.

Thing is, even if I wasn't bound by the civil service code, I don't
have a crystal ball. I don't know what the outcome of the next
election will be as opinion polls, like mortgage repayments, can go up
as well as down, and even if I did know for certain that the
government was going to change, I don't know what that would mean for
this particular policy. But to all intents and purposes my answer
looked like another civil servant dodge and did nothing to make the
people in the room feel happy I was there. So it wasn't quite as good
a meeting as I hoped it would be.

Andy's abandoning me on Thursday to head to Scotland for his annual
kayaking trip. I don't know what I'm going to do while he's away but
when he was in Sheffield I ended up over-filling my time so I didn't
have any time to myself at all. I'll try not to do that this time.

One thing I'd like to do is book a piano lesson with our new local
music school, Cherry Pie Music (they have a website, google them).
They're opening a branch in Abbey Mills which is super-convenient, and
they say they do all styles of music which is ideal. My idea of what I
want is one 'classical' piece on the go at all times, which would be a
demanding one that I'd be concentrating on perfecting and really
working on technique, a jazz tune I'd be playing from chord charts,
and a rock/pop piece I'd be reading from music but augmenting with
twiddly bits by ear. And it sounds like they'd do that. They open on
Saturday so I think I'll give it a try.

A big shout out to Dad for discovering my latest allergy: I really do not think I would have discovered that it was my tomato plant that was making my hands flare up on my own. But it is.

We returned to our flat to find disaster had struck: our Aerogarden had run out of water. So Andy and I had to do a lot of remedial work to prune dead leaves, prop up the stem and rewater. And then my hand flared up. But now I've taken an antihistamine and it has done much better than all the moisturiser I have been applying since my hand went crazy. What a weird allergy.

I'm on the train to Woking and it's very early. I'm off to visit my
Twin (I'm twinned with a consortium delivering Diplomas) and I'm
heading there extra early so I can sit in on their weekly planning
meeting to see what it's all about. It can be quite a disadvantage
never having taught so this kind of thing is a way to keep my ear to
the ground, finger on the pulse etc.

It's only the start of today's adventures though as I'll be heading
into work after this, then going out for a nice meal before getting
the train to Gatwick and flying home. Did you know the Gatwick Express
(£15) is only 6 minutes faster than a normal train to Gatwick (£6 if
you buy an advance ticket)?

My tube journeys have become much more exciting lately since I
downloaded the Classics application to my iPhone. I started by reading
Alice in Wonderland and have now moved on to Robinson Crusoe. I'm
really enjoying RC, I love how surprised he is that a savage can be
kind and how much he despises the Conquistadores. I'm slowly getting
through it in my 50 minutes on the tube each day but I can't bring
myself to read on my iPhone when I'm actually at home. I've also been
cycling more in the past few weeks. It's becoming noticeably easier
and faster which is nice.

Just a short walk from our flat and it felt like we were in the middle of the countryside. How refreshing to have trees and water and green space in the middle of London.


Although there was still an industrial estate to our right. This bakery smelled delicious, though, and had wind turbines generating some power.


You can't really see it properly but through these trees is our lovely City Farm which grows vegetables, has lots of farmyard animals and gives riding lessons.


This is Morden Hall Park. I expected it to be immaculately preened, but actually most of it is wetlands which was lovely.


In the wetlands the river splits into several different streams, this being the main one.


More wetlands.


You can just about see Morden Hall itself through the trees.


Does anyone know what these arches might be for? They're very pretty but I can't really see what their purpose might be as the stone is far too thin to be a bridge.


Once you pass Morden Hall the park does become much more managed, but it's still very pretty , with lots of white bridges as you can see in the background.


Out of Morden Hall Park and into the next park which might possibly be called Ravenscroft Park, I can't quite remember. It was full of mill streams ...


... and mill stones.


There were little people feeding ducks and swans and geese.



This lovely white wooden house had water on several sides. I'd like to live there.


Further along, the opposite side of the river became increasingly industrial and less beautiful.


But even when we'd left teh river, we could still see trees and fields and grass and other un-London-y things. We'll gradually complete the whole thing, watch this space.

On my way home now, another bus, another slow crawl through London. I
really liked Lindsey's friends, one of whom works for my department
but is on secondment to BERR. When she comes back I think we'll be
lunch buddies.

We had a good couple of hours eating and drinking chez Lindsey. Then
we went to Infernos which was less fun. The girls went straight to the
dancefloor but Andy, being the only boy, was less keen to dance. So I
stuck with him but it meant that we sat there for an hour and a half
on our ownio before deciding it wasn't really worth sitting there just
for moral support.

We didn't see anyone vomiting which was a disappointment, but whilst I
waited for Andy to collect our coats who should appear but Cousin Ed
with Zoe and Isobel who were in his year in Newtown! So that was a bit
of a coincidence. They too were leaving in horror.

So now I'm up to 7 people I have bumped into unexpectedly in London:
Matt and Andy, ex-presidents of Bangor SU (I met them separately),
Gary from my class in Bangor, Jim from NUS at an education lecture and
now Ed, Zoe and Isobel. And I also strongly suspect I have passed
Kevin-who-is-friends-with-Jimi-and-whom-I-went-to-primary-school-with
several times in Colliers Wood but I thought it was too unlikely it
was actually him to say hello. Turns out he has moved to London so it
might be him after all.

Ah, Infernos may have let me down but the night bus hasn't: the guy
opposite just vomited on the seat and the floor. Yum yum.

I'm on a Rail Replacement Bus Service crawling through Tooting on my
way to Lindsey's birthday party in Clapham. Normally I'd be delighted
to do anything in Clapham as it's only 15 minutes away by tube but the
Northern Line isn't running between Stockwell and Morden this weekend
so chaos reigns.

It's been beautifully warm and sunny today so Andy and I tackled part
of the Wandle Trail. It's really rather lovely as most of it is
through parks. We discovered a city farm really close to our house and
also visited Morden Hall for the first time. I think we'll take Ian
and Kristin there next weekend as there's a National Trust cafe - they
tend to be very good. I do have photos but I'm blogging from my phone
so will have to upload them tomorrow.

We went to a fancy bar by the Thames yesterday after work for one of
Andy's colleagues' leaving do. It was very nice with some delicious
cocktails but our wallets are considerably lighter today. They were
all really friendly though, which was nice. Shame they all live quite
far away so aren't very easy to socialise with.

Tonight is an 80s party so I'm pretending to be Debbie Harry with
frizzy hair, pink leggings and a Blondie top. I know, I know, it's
unlikely Debbie would wear a top with a picture of herself on it, but
I worried nobody would guess who I was without it. Andy's dressed as
Magnum PI and has a chest wig and stick-on moustache. We look great.
We're off to an infamous nightclub called Infernos which my boss and
other ex-Fast Streamers were exchanging tales
of exciting/awful nights out at when we went out for curry on Tuesday.
I felt so left out at the time but after tonight I too will have tales
of people vomiting on the dancefloor to regale dinner parties with.

Back to staring out the window. I hate this bus.

Did I ever tell you that The Bill is filmed around here? There's a weird fake police station and fake hospital on a business park we walk through on the way to the tram, and sometimes they film outside our apartment. A couple of months ago they were filming the red-brick flats (they covered over the 'Vista House' sign) and today they've closed the KFC to film in and around there [cue lots of distraught fatties who had driven here especially for their nightly fix].

It was exciting walking past there this morning. There was a big white double-decker bus in the car park for some reason, and a van with a man cooking breakfast with loads of different types of cereal and bread and jam on a table in front. We should have gone there for breakfast instead of eating at home.

A brief midweek bulletin outlining our key achievements thus far and
upcoming milestones in the next period:

• Andy had his John Lewis assessment centre today. We expect to be
able to release results either this week or in March.

• It is cold and my fingers are going to drop off any minute. As Sam
points out, it turns out streets were gritted on Sunday, the snow was
just too heavy, which is fair enough. Business people are such grumpy-
pants: blah blah economic damage blah blah poor planning blah blah.
Snow is FUN and we should all be allowed to have an unscheduled,
exciting day off on a dismal winter Monday, especially when it only
happens on this scale once every 18 years. I don't know about you but
I'd rather my council tax was spent on something a little more useful
than snowploughs. I'm going to miss the snow when it finally leaves.

Not that I had a day off, I should point out. The Northern and
Victoria lines, blast them, were the only two running properly so I
had no excuse.

• I have managed to wangle a reason to go to Leeds on March 12th
which means I can justify working from the Sheffield office on March
13th which is good cos Andy has to be in Sheffield too.

• Someone has set up a stupid facebook group slagging the SU for not
representing their views but so far they don't have any views. I wish
people understood how hard it is to collect the views of 10000
students when they don't notice elections happening etc. I'm glad I've
left student politics.

• The Lib Dems are making a 'significant announcement' on 14-19
education policy this week according to an email from the Open
University lecture series I was going to go to (postponed due to
aforementioned significant announcement). What a funny way for that to
be leaked to the Department; they could have just blamed it on the
weather.

Next period:

• I'm supposed to be going to Yorkshire this weekend but that trip
depends on how heavily it snows tomorrow.

Hats off to Merton council who have actually gritted their roads.
Making much better and safer progress now, nearly home, now we just
have to locate some food as we've only had a sandwich since 8am.

Still trucking through south London. Four scary moments so far even
with chains on: three times when the back wheels skidded sideways
across the road (all been okay so far ...) and just now going up a
steep humpbacked bridge which had an oil tanker stuck halfway up. The
car in front decided to overtake and slipped back towards us, then
pulled out into the opposing traffic and turned right across it,
another car tried to pull in at us from the left and slowly but surely
the oil tanker inched its way up the hill. The driver deserves a
medal, he did a wonderful job in rather difficult circumstances. We've
just skidded a fourth time. Why is nobody gritting the roads? Snow has
been forecast since at least Friday. That's just bloody dangerous.

Snow chains are now on and I have now been in the car for nearly 12
hours. Can you tell I'm getting fidgety?

This isn't even comparatively heavy snow anymore, this is just
downright heavy. I never thought I'd see a layer of snow several
centimetres deep right across the M25. We may be stopping to put snow
chains on again soon. We're trying to get up a slip road off the M25
right now - we've passed a car attempting to reverse back down,
presumably unable to get up the slope, a motorcyclist who looks like
they've given up and a small car whose wheels are spinning in vain.
Unfortunately stopping on a very icy slope is not a great idea so we
haven't stopped to help anyone. I'm glad we're in a Saab estate well
stocked up with snow gear rather than the Mini. I'm pretty confident
we'll get home safely but I'm worried about all the other people on
the road who set off totally unprepared. We've already passed a van
sitting sideways across the M25 - there wasn't any visible damage and
the driver looked fine fortunately but a bad sign of things to come.

... that 2000m up the Alps it was 3 degrees with a blazing hot sun (I
have rather rosy cheeks) so we took off our snow chains before
descending the mountain but back in England we're driving through
(comparatively) heavy snow causing all sorts of traffic problems? I'm
now regretting not getting around to asking the estate agents to turn
our heating on before we got back.

I'm on my way back from a week skiing in the Alps and I'd just like to
say that once you leave the Alps France is very dull to drive through.
Mile after hundreds of miles of flat, flat fields with the occasional
wind turbine and service station punctuating the flat, boring, flat
landscape.

The Alps, though, are a different story. I love them. I think that
once I've made my contribution to working life, I'm going to have to
retire there. I'm going to live in a wooden house with a balcony and a
tree swing and a high-speed Internet connection (there's no sense in
cutting oneself off completely). And I'm going to be hale and hearty
with all that delicious clean fresh air and sunshine and yomping, and
because my lifestyle will be so healthy I'll also be able to eat
mountains of cheese and pate and bread without any qualms. And I'll
probably have a vineyard but I won't make wine, I'll just eat the
grapes - wine-making seems like a lot of effort when you can buy good
wine cheaply from people who like doing it. But maybe I'll find I like
it. I may even get a goat so I can drink goats milk and eat goats
cheese. And also because it would make me feel a bit like Heidi. And
I'll have long lunches and speak French but I'm going to retain my
Irish friendliness instead of being surly and unhelpful (although
that's a terrible stereotype).

So skiing itself was quite good but very exhausting, and also quite
emotionally draining. It was difficult and scary hurtling down
mountains, and I found mustering the courage to do that day after day
quite a strain (though it's also very exhilarating). Although I did
feel better when my hilariously uncommunicative ski instructor
revealed on the final day that I had been moved up from the beginners
class into class one after a couple of days, which might explain why
it was difficult ... Anyway, I did manage to keep up, although my
stance is wrong and my skis were too short so my legs hurt an awful
lot. But again my instructor only decided to tell me my stance was
wrong at the top of my first red piste when frankly I had other things
on my mind, and he told me my skis were too short after I come down my
last piste on my last day. I liked him, but that's just bloody
unhelpful. And goodness me ski boots are uncomfortable. Surely for
such a posh-persons sport someone must think it worth inventing a
comfortable pair of ski boots?

Thankfully we're only 20 miles from Calais now, although I've still
got the ferry to contend with. Embarrassingly, I threw up on the way
over right after eating a very fancy meal. In hindsight, foie gras and
steak wasn't the best meal to choose on a rocky crossing. In Calais
Andy's family are going to stock up on wine and I'm going to buy some
of my favorite wine, Pouilly Fumée. It's still not cheap here but far
cheaper than in England. I think I've earned it for being so brave
this week. In fact, when I get back to my flat I think I'll pop the
bottle in the freezer to chill and run a bath. The unpacking will just
have to wait.

Photos [and maybe even videos] will follow soon.

The day started with snow.



I took some pictures on different settings, but I think I like the 'auto' results best.



Then we went to Trafalgar Square because I thought the fountains might be frozen. And they were.



There was even a warning sign. The pigeons looked cold.



Then we found a giant snowman on Carnaby Street.



And that was some of my day. I also went to a party, met Maeve, went to the National Gallery, bought presents and ate in the Cafe in the Crypt. But I didn't take pictures of those parts.

Christmas is a funny time. I had such a good time at home and am
feeling lovely and rested, but now I'm really not looking forward to
returning to normal life. Holidays are sometimes quite unhelpful.

But I'm trying to make January seem more appealing by filling it with
fun things. Next weekend, for example, we're meeting Sam and Melanie,
Maeve's coming to stay and I have a dinner party to attend in a
gentlemen's club to which I must wear a cocktail dress. The weekend
after Tom's coming to visit which will probably involve a visit to the
Science Museum. And if Andy's back holds up, we're going skiing the
weekend after for a week, which takes us to the end of January.

February is only a little month, and I find time passes quickly if you
think about your birthday all the way through. And the days keep
getting longer and warmer so I'll cycle more and more. And then it's
March, which has many birthdays, and which marks the start of the race
towards summer. Also, Legoland reopens in March so I may go there for
a birthday outing.

But in the meantime we've got a long drive back to London on Sunday,
then we're back to alarm clocks waking you up when it's still dark and
you're still tired, and the long and 6% more expensive commute to
work. When I grow up I want to work from home.