Chip's Place

4:36:34, and 11,454th out of around 18,000. I couldn't have gone much faster, not this Sunday anyway.

The first 25k was fine - looking at my split times, I was doing pretty much exactly 6 minutes per kilometre, as planned. Things really started to hurt about then, though! Bumped into Paddy at 28, just as I'd started my first little stretch of walking, and then no more English for me for the next 2 hours. I slowed down to about 8 minutes per k over the last 10k - I felt like (although I'm not certain I actually did!) I sped up in the last 3 or 4, so that could have been 9 or more minutes per k for 32-37ish.

I don't know how I did the 32-37k stretch.

The spectators were fantastisch, super, klasse und toll. I was glad I speak enough German to understand most of the signs and the shouts that were going on practically continuously - they all helped. Having your name on the runner number sheet on your chest helped me 3 times, at 33, 35 and 39 - you feel a bit guilty walking in a running race with 10 foreigners heckling you! (Shouted a few things back myself, though!) I was pretty pleased that in total, I did only about a kilometre of walking.

Fragments of memory in no particular order :

- "Show Me The Way To Amarillo," "Mr Vain," Haddaway's "What Is Love?" standard German Euroelectronica and an appalling cover of "Country Road, Take Me Home" at -0.1
- The Mexican wave tunnel at 15
- The bizarre sunbed sculpture house at 10
- The excellent views over the docks between 8 and 12
- The views of the Alsterdorf between 17 and 20
- "Wir haben schoen geduscht" at 36
- "Lauf, Chris, lauf - du bist ein Sieger" at 33 (I needed that one!)
- Staring at the sky as I crossed the 40 mark, and knowing I was on the home stretch
- The biscuit lady at 39
- Andre Hahn the dentist at 31
- All the people having breakfasts, lunch, barbecues, etc. along the wayside
- The dangerous curve at 11
- The rabbits at 12
- Coldplay (Rock & Run) at 35
- Chris and the British flags at 26
- The bottle I picked up for the lady that I couldn't catch up with at 34
- "Hier gibt's das bestes Trinkwasser im ganzen Marathon" - not sure where
- "Grossgeld, Kleingeld, Scheine, Muenzen" - 35 onwards
- The spectators, all the way from 0 to 42.195
- Turning the corner at about 41.9, and seeing the finish line - the crowds, the cheering, tapping hands with the young children, trying to speed up and being surprised to find that I could...

Crossing the finish line was like qualifying all over again.

Other local maxima for the weekend :

- Mit Hoenig
- Zoo Station
- Where's my 4-4-4?
- What time is it in Dublin?
- Paddy getting in and out of bed
- My complete failure to be able to order a bottle of water in an Italian restaurant
- The steak at Block House on Sunday night (and a local minimum when we realised the toilets were down some stairs)!
- Chan-Leung Danny Tan Chan Chan
- Do you mind if I have a shave?
- Hammer Time - don't touch that.
- Drew and I pressing all the call buttons on the lift on Monday morning

As barely even a cherry to sit atop the icing on this cake, Team Marathon won £6.50 at last night's OWS quiz, by a single point. Which fortunately meant Drew and I didn't have to do a Cossack dance-off for a tiebreaker.
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Stir and serve.

Victories. Annual work bowling competition this evening. With my usual team, we've come 5th and 3rd the past 2 years. Arithmetic progressions are nice. I got 157 and 118 (2nd and 4th respectively), a respectable but not spectacular average. Neil managed to win a Crazy Frog toy after about 40 attempts at the grabby machine. Also had three 2-player games on Mario Karts - 3rd and 2nd the first two times. Arithmetic progressions are nice. Won the OWS quiz on Monday despite thinking we'd done appallingly - £5.30 each, between 6, so not a bad haul.

Laptop. Finally arrived last Friday - I'm typing this post on it. 9 weeks late, mind! It's very shiny, and has a lot of bright blue lights on it (including a little glowy-eyed alien on the lid). I haven't been in all that much to play with it, but I've finished setting up the toy OS that came with it and will be spending some of the weekend installing a real OS.

Skiing. This one surpassed all the others. Moguls - check. Skaty thing - check. Carving linked turns - check. Val Thorens - nearly check (concern over frostbite turned me back!) World falling over issues - check (three times!) Top, top chalet hosts Rachel and Rowen, and an excellently-located chalet. It was Wednesday before I knew what any of the rest of the town looked like, though! Favourite photo (yes, it's a rainbow!) :



Job upgrade. 2 weeks ago, I tried to find out what had happened to my application. Yesterday afternoon, I finally managed to find someone who could tell me. No interview for me. As, by this time, I was expecting, since the person it had been offered to had already told me he'd been offered it about an hour earlier. So I went to have a chat with the recruiting manager about what had gone wrong. And that's where the anger bit comes in - since he had no available information on how I've done since December 2004 (and I'm aware I've not done too shabbily since then), he'd had to use that, and unsurprisingly, in December 2004 I wouldn't have been a sufficiently good candidate for the job. Am I now? Well, I don't get to find that out, do I? I do, however, get to wonder, if I'd not gone skiing last week, would have been able to change any of this?
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Hopefully tonight's other post should mark, if not the actual conclusion, at least the dying embers of one of the problems that've been plaguing me the last year. So happy (relatively) stuff only for this post.

My first proper post of 2006, and the anniversary of my return from my round-the-world trip last year. So how's 2006 gone so far, 1/7th of the way through as we are?

Tried to buy a laptop the day after the last time I posted - 29/12. Still haven't got it! There's been much comedy with my credit card company (having to ring them 4 times to get them to action the payment I'd asked them to make), and with the laptop company (who, as far as I can work out, cancelled my order on my behalf as they'd taken the rather generous special offer I'd bought the thing under away, and replaced it with a new, much less good offer they thought I might be more interested in). Still, fingers crossed for it this week - it's currently at production stage 9, which as far as I can tell means they've run out of stamps and have gone down to the Post Office to get some more.

Survived (most of) my first year-end with only a few cuts and bruises. It doesn't help that everyone keeps saying "It went so well, it was a really good one." I'm doing my usual of focussing on the negatives. And I've already said I'm not doing that in this post.

Been to the cinema twice in 2 weeks, having not been, I think, for about the previous 6 months. Aeon Flux good, Final Destination 3 bad.

Regained contact with 4 friends I thought I'd lost. Technically, I haven't quite finished off the making contact with 2 of them, but I will send you all e-mails or phone this week before I go on holiday.

Received the second most positive appraisal I've ever had - we'll see how that translates into bonus in the next few weeks, but I'm hoping the laptop will be paid for (which is pretty much what I told the credit card company back in January...)

Got to the 1/3 point in CNPS - that was tonight. 2006 has been pretty poor for CNPS - I've averaged one every 5 days (despite what I told you earlier, Jimbobjo - my math was a bit off!), or around 1/3 of the rate I was getting last year. Current estimate for finishing is somewhere around June 2009.

Tried out my ski boots last week. I'm sure a lot of this is psychological, but they feel at least as good as the ones I had in Cortina (my previous best), if not better. Looking forward to finally going down a mogul field without limiting myself to right turns!

Going skiing on Saturday! 'Nuff said.

Won quite a few quizzes recently. Tonight's at the OWS was at least my third of the year, and a new prize record - £11 each! And we thought we'd come about 4th! Also came joint first at the Swan last week, but due to our usual rubbishness at the tiebreak round, we only won the £25 drinks voucher rather than the 50 quid cash.

Marathon training has gone surprisingly well. I've got 2 months to go on Thursday, and I can comfortably do 10 miles at a 4-hour-for-the-marathon pace - would probably be able to keep that up for several more miles, too. Considering that for my first run of the year, on 08/01, I just managed 5 miles before collapsing in a heap on my bed and I couldn't walk properly for the next 2 days, I'm quite happy with how things are going - just one problem so far, with my knee getting locked about 7 miles along on one run. I will be going for a half-marathon on Thursday evening - I'll let you know my time.

I've applied internally for a new job. I reckon that I'm about a year behind Lint, so getting a promotion is one of my 2006 challenges, where he had it for 2005. Hoping for the interview to be after I get back from skiing - the other 2 people I know who've applied have already got their interview dates though...

Really enjoying Battlestar Galactica. It's an excellent update of the rather camp 70s/80s series, with much better acting, believable sympathetic characters, good plots and amazing effects. If it manages to keep this up for another few series and hold together a coherent plot over that time, it could rival B5, and I never thought I'd say that about any series.

posted by Chip : 23:36

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My own castle has felt decidedly under siege the last year or so. Someone called me tetchy last week - this is the culmination of just one of the reasons why. Here is an e-mail I received from one of my neighbours on Sunday - the names have been changed to protect ... well, no-one in particular.


"Dear All,

This is just to let you know that I bumped into Chris from number XXX in the car park last evening. I asked him if he was still withholding his service charge payments and, because we had heard nothing from him for some time and he has not replied to any correspondence, whether or not he still considered himself a part of the Residents' Association.

In summary, he is up to date with paying his service charge, thinks the Residents' Association is " a waste of time" and is "not getting us anywhere". He also said he "hasn't got time" to attend any of "these meetings" (I think we've had one in the last 6 or 9 months), and wasn't interested in receiving any further correspondence in connection with the Residents' Association.

He was unaware that has admitted some culpability for the condition of the windows and that the company has also admitted their service has been inadequate - and he didn't know {management company} has offered a contribution to the sinking fund. Presumably this is because he hasn't bothered to read any of the correspondence he's been copied in on.

Of course, any member of the Association is perfectly entitled to do as they please over paying the Service Charge (or not) - but in view of the circumstances ,I do think it might have been courteous for Chris to let us know that he had decided to opt out of the "protest" and was no longer interested in the Residents' Association. Presumably he'll also be happy to "opt out" of his share of any financial settlement agreed with {management company}!!!???

We're all very busy people and none of us are doing this for fun, or the good of our health - this is taking up far too much of my time, but I'm simply not prepared to be ripped off by {management company} any longer. And I think recent developments have shown that our persistence is finally paying dividends, and we must keep up the pressure on {management company} to further increase their contribution to the replacement windows scheme/pay compensation for neglect of our property. Four of the six leaseholders in our block are firmly behind the protest, and there is every intention to enlist the support of the new owner of number XXX once that sale is completed.

Regards"


A few of the points in here are valid, I'll admit - I haven't bothered to read any of the e-mails since the author of the above wrote one to complain to the rest of us about the "undesirable characters" hanging round next door, and that someone should tell the mother of the girl about it - but most of them are open to argument. E.g. the correspondence I've been "copied in on" makes no mention of anything about the windows compensation, I've checked, and I've received no e-mails from them between 28th November and last Friday - and they're keyed to get through the spam filter too, so it's not that.

Since, at this point, I'm clearly off the writer's Christmas card list, I wouldn't normally feel particularly inclined to hold back on a reply, but as I said to the author on Saturday, I have other things that come higher up my priority list than this to worry about - plus, getting no reply from me is probably the most annoying thing for her, she'll be aching for a fight!

posted by Chip : 23:19

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An amalgam of several partial posts that never quite made it to the ready-to-post stage - so here they all are, rolled into one.

Got my ski boots, finally, in all their silver, orange and translucent glory - picture below. I need to try them out soon. Very soon. Iasonas is already wanting to take his back - he's not happy. Funny, that - not like him at all...



We narrowly missed winning the Swan quiz last week. After more than a little help from a very drunk man, we appeared to be joint first on the scoring, and if Tom had bothered to check my answers, or I'd been a little more confident with my answers for the music round, we'd have been in first place. Sadly, though, we still wouldn't have won, as another team had been mismarked by 3 points (!), and they'd have won regardless. Still, we'd have got the 2nd place prize of a £25 drinks voucher.

Thursday was notable for an amusing quote - "You're really evil walking down the street. You should smile more." - and for me not repeating last year's self-immolation event. The Ujala was as good as ever.

Saw an amazing sunbow in Harrogate on Friday. It was a clear blue sky with a strong but low sun - full arch of a "rainbow" but without any rain. I've seen a few small arcs of ones before, but this was something else again. Fortunately, for once, I was sat in traffic jam, so I had plenty of comfortable spectating!

I've just watched the new Doctor in his first episode, and I was quite impressed. I did enjoy his "Who am I?" speech in particular. There were a few annoying bits - over-use of Welsh people (never a good thing), the continual aim of Russell T Davies to get the phrase "Doctor who?" into his scripts, and the veiled references/adverts for Torchwood. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing more of Mr Tennant, and Sarah Jane appears to be reappearing in a future episode, so that'll be good. Having it be a little less politically-motivated during the next series, and feeling less like a constant jabbing at Tony Blair (e.g. "launched within 45 seconds" last year, "don't you think (s)he looks tired?" tonight), would be a good thing - it's not meant to be a satire.

I managed to work Goldbach's Conjecture into a joke about peas. I was quite pleased with that one.

Went round York today in the snow, taking a few pictures. Here are my favourites :





And lastly but not leastly, apologies to Tom for marring his unbirthday dinner somewhat. At least you had 5 other friends there to give you cards.
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I've lived in York now for a little over 3 years, and one of the things I've perennially thought I probably ought to do at some point is to go on a ghost walk. However, while it's a popular pastime for foreigners (in which group I'm including anyone who doesn't live in York), it's always felt faintly demeaning to go and do something that's there primarily to keep the toruists happy and out of our way.

However, tonight, because I'd had a very early tea (mmmm, rare venison steak), I had a choice between going to watch other people eat at a restaurant, or go on a ghost walk. Hobson's choice. In the end, it was quite good fun. The guy was very funny, so I let him off for throwing water at me, and he took us to some less well-trodden parts of York - the big house behind the Minster and next to St William's College looks amazing with its Christmas lights on at the moment.

Sadly (for him), one of the foreign foreigners who was picked on by the guy appeared to be called Urine.

I also finally managed to partake of the new opening hours this evening - we didn't buy any drinks after 11, despite the barman's rather plaintive attempt to tempt us into going and buying something at the bar, but we were sat chatting in the pub till 12, about topics including funeral attire, dehydrating genes, TV theme tunes (including the A-Team, Quantum Leap and Indiana Jones) and which famous people shared our birthdays (mine include Alexander the Great, Andre Agassi and Michelle Pfeiffer).
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Had rather an event-packed weekend. Nothing particularly exciting, just full.

Meal at the Olive Tree, which included discussions on practical and theoretical actuaries, whether I would prefer to receive a pay rise or the firstborn son of my boss (and if the latter, whether he'd taste of garlic, apricots or something else entirely), and how to maximise your bonus cashback when paying with American Express, prior to discovering that the "American Express - Open" sign in the window meant exactly what it said and nothing more, and that true to form, American Express was not accepted there.

Not quite understanding the new licensing laws yet - we went into the Terrier at 10.55, just for the novelty value, and it had stopped serving already!

Wandering round the St Nicholas fair in town, partaking of a venison burger and some roast chestnuts for lunch.

Offending a lady stood outside Borders' front door when I cracked up laughing to her face at my first sight of her. To be fair to me, she was handing out leaflets advertising Waterstones at the time.

Spending 2 hours trying to fix my dad's PC. I've not given up just yet, but I must be out of practice fixing broken things from using Linux too long and having it all "just work" - I'm still no nearer to knowing exactly what's wrong.

Puressence at Fibbers - not a lot needs saying, except they were as good as ever, with quite a lot of new(ish) material - there was also a rather novel re-working of one of their classics, a no-vocals version of India, after Jimmy's mike broke. Also a bonkers woman, who danced at me, then when I didn't go completely mad and dance back at her, walked on to dance at someone else - might have done so if I hadn't had a thick woolly coat on, given it was Sharpen Up The Knives, the 'Essence equivalent of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for a mosh-friendly tune.

Suddenly reacquiring the use of my second bedroom, as we took all the cardboard boxes that've been piling up in there over the last 3 months to the tip.

Back to the fair, where I purchased some venison steak, and some chilli jam to tide me over till I receive the jar I'm owed for fixing Tom's wireless network (at least this one won't have been half-eaten by Helen before I get it).

Back home, to discover a very strong smell of gas. One of my neighbours (not, as you're probably aware, my favourite people as it is) had left the gas cooker on unlit (the man from British Gas thought it must have been on all day to build up so much gas), and was somewhat dismissive of me and one of my other neighbours thinking this was a bad idea - "You need to open up your windows" "But they're all locked for the winter" and "You could have caused an explosion" "Then I'd have been blown up, wouldn't I?" This is the second time in a month it's happened, and my ever-socially-minded neighbours are now openly discussing ringing his daughter with a view to getting him put in a home - I expect having their flats blown up might adversely affect the value of their properties.

Evening meal at 4, High Petergate, which was superb - definitely no let-down after wanting to go and eat there for best part of a year. Partridge and mango roll for starters, juniper-marinated venison with red cabbage and parsnips for main, and a mango cheesecake for dessert. One of the 3 best meals I've had in York (FWIW, the other two would be at Cafe Concerto and the Tasting Rooms), and the ambience is amazing too.

And finally back home once more, to spend half an hour fixing my printer that's been offline for a month (turned out just to be out of black ink!), so I can now decorate the flat with some of the much-better-than-mine photos I've seen of the Guy Fawkes Minster.

I definitely need to start my marathon training soon - I've eaten far too much this weekend!

posted by Chip : 23:26

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Pub Treasure Hunt XI took place this evening (although I'm not wholly certain about the numbering any more - I'm reasonably certain we're up to 12 or 13 by now).

It's been my second-favourite of all of them - the best being (oddly!) the one we were organising. Nothing to do with the pubs, the questions, or anything other than the company - it's just been a very very fun evening. A change is sometimes a whole lot better than a rest.

Beth with her ice hockey shoulder pads

Mick and his flashing groin

Jenny and Jen drawing eyes from all quarters

Cat taking 10 minutes out from talking to count Underground stations

Tom asking why we weren't colouring in any of the sudoku puzzle brown

Dean's arms being only as hairy as mine

Gareth. Just Gareth

Gavin, having initially intellectual discussions about the invention of zero, Roman numerals on watches and Mel Gibson's nationality, swiftly followed by him apologising for the disastrous failure of a project that's been running for 2 years despite his involvement having only begun in October, finishing it all off with an entirely warranted vitriolic attack on one of our colleagues

Martin taking a photo of "Christina Aguileira" and "Dot Cotton" "snogging"

Last night we went to the Swan for "Last Last Orders." As a non-drinker, I guess this whole change has really passed me by - it seems to be a big deal for most people, but I suspect the main impact it'll have on me is that there'll be a less clear-cut time for me to leave the pub and go home, I'll have to judge it based on how drunk everyone else is and how bored I am of them.

Afterwards I dropped in at Tom & Helen's place to fix their wireless network. I'd earlier in the evening (somewhat arrogantly) suggested that I could talk Tom through the changes over the phone and it'd take half an hour, or I could come round and do it myself in about 30 seconds. Turns out I'd overestimated by about 28 seconds! Plug in one wire, click the mouse ... done. He and Trevor B will now be competing for who can provide the most free internet access to his street, at least until he can sort the encryption out.

posted by Chip : 23:20

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All right, I shall...

The indescribably wonderful Kid Carpet was in town again this evening, and (given the quiz turned out to be off anyway, and the team ended up playing Countdown instead) I was extremely glad I decided to go and see if it was possible to cross the same river twice.

It was!

Highlights included "Hot Corners," where the Kid actually played Simon (the children's "follow the lights" game) on stage, the sun and rain song which included bonus weather symbols, "Green and Pleasant Land"'s cow sound, the two girls in front of us finding his performance (if possible) even funnier than Helen did, and of course his cover of Van Halen's Jump.

I still can't think of words to describe him, or his music. It's a shame that so few people (perhaps 40) came to see the show. It was quite clear that several of these had seen him before - we were all pissing ourselves laughing by about the fourth note he played - and there was a clear dividing line between us and the Carpet virgins who were still staring in abject disbelief by the end of the first song. He'd won them over by the third or so, though, and got everyone joining in providing cold wind sounds for "It's a Bit Windy, Love." How can anyone not love an artist whose songs include lyrics like "I got your love down the front of my shirt, I got your love - and there's a stain on your skirt," "White socks and 'taches make me slightly suspicious," and not forgetting the title of this very post?!

Little can (or should) be said about his support act, Napoleon III, except that he was rubbish, and really ought to have been called Rory McGrath II instead.
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Friday night was fun. It was Nick's birthday on Thursday, so we went out for a meal at Wetherspoons, who do a surprisingly good steak (rare in several senses), and then on for a brief pub crawl, comprising 5 different pubs, and a man who drinks faster than D-Something.

On to Saturday. After a less-than-enjoyable few hours in work wrestling with reassurance, I met up with Nick and Tara again near the Minster in time for the fireworks display to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up the government. The Minster always looks good, but the past week it has been spectacular. It's been illuminated as part of the celebrations, and someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to match the lighting to the stonework. Sadly ,y photos are a little blurry, as I didn't have a tripod (and Nick's head is attached, ultimately, to only 2 legs), and 2-second exposures never work well otherwise!




One thing not quite so spectacular was the firework display itself. The council have been building it up for several weeks - it was to be at a secret location, but one where everyone within the city centre could see it. So, entirely expectedly, several thousand people descended on the Minster, it being one of the larger open spaces within the walls. Realising that it blocked out half of the sky, we decided to make our way down to the river as the fireworks were about to start. However, there were so many people there that we couldn't actually move.

As the fireworks started, everyone began to move down towards the Museum Gardens. It was pretty obvious the display was somewhere out to the west of the city, and that's the obvious place to go. The council, however, had other ideas. They appeared to have held them somewhere out by St Peter's School, which makes sense as Guy Fawkes attended it. It makes less sense as a place to let fireworks off if you want anyone in the city centre to see them though! While we did get to see some of the display, it wasn't easy, we missed about the first half of it and had to fight our way through crowds of people to get anywhere with a line of sight on it.
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Brian Cant was born in 1933, and will be 72 in December.

Rebecca de Mornay jumped off a cliff in the film The Three Musketeers. She did not write the novel Rebecca, and nor did Emily Dickinson.

Tesco's Value mangoes are indistinguishable from non-Value ones.

If you're cooking a curry on the stove, don't go and have a nap just after leaving it to simmer without also setting the timer to remind you it's still cooking.

The Three-Legged Mare's conservatory roof leaks - typically on my head.

It's also wise not to sit at the table in front of the disabled toilet, as you're likely to get flung violently across the table whenever anyone drunk and/or forgetful comes out of there - fortunately, this is a lesson I learnt by watching it happen to someone else.

"Testiculos habet, et bene pendentes" is not a common-or-garden response to "Hello" but it can be elicited as one from time to time.

Random Recipe Week is now almost over, and has been declared a success, although not an unmitigated one. The feta tabouleh was probably the best one, and took about 5 minutes to make, so was doubly good in that respect. Tuna and basil salad also pretty tasty. The scallop ceviche wasn't quite so successful - next time, must remember to buy salmon fillet, not salmon steak. Just a Thai yellow curry left to round things off this evening, assuming it's not too overcooked...

posted by Chip : 16:55

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1. I was stopped yesterday by a taxi driver, who proceeded to ask me for directions to a street in north York. (1a - I knew where the street was!)

2. The Christmas decorations are currently being put up in York. It is 9 weeks till Christmas.

3. It is possible to buy Tesco's Value mangoes. I've bought 2, but I haven't eaten any yet. I will update the Internet on how they taste at a later date.

Other less funny things - I finally finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It seems quite amazing to me that a book in which nothing at all happens for 750 pages can be nominated for one of sci-fi's highest honours. I don't expect I'll be reading Ms Page's next book, unless there's a guarantee of a minimum of one actual event per chapter.

Won the quiz last night, by some margin. Some of the answers I really shouldn't have known - why do I know (and why does Jimbobjo not?!) who married Mel B and fathered her child? I was a little scared that I got the right answer from "First it was BM" before Ian had gone on to the rest of the question. I seem to remember doing that before with a similar question.

The removal of the beard is starting to annoy me now. It's mainly having to shave at all (and get up early enough to do it), and secondarily having to shave at least every other day for work purposes. I can't see it lasting much past Christmas.

Finally, it's Random Recipe week this week, where I download a random selection of recipes from the Net, edit out any garlic from them and cook them. Last night was Japanese rice noodles with teriyaki sauce. Tonight was spicy lentil and turkey tortillas (mmmm, extra Tabasco). I'll see what I can be bothered to make tomorrow - likely to be one of feta tabouleh or scallop ceviche.
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Not sure how long I'll stick with this again, but I expect I'll be posting a little more frequently than once every 9.5 weeks. Since I don't particularly want to remember most of August or September, I'll jump straight in with what's been going on since last Saturday.

Yesterday I returned from a week's stay in Cornwall. And a very good week it was too, despite the intermittent rubbish weather. I've done about 25 miles of walking, spread over 4 days (and managed to avoid the rain every time!), and I also went to the Eden Project, which was opened after the last time I went to Cornwall - well worth a visit, but pick a nice sunny day (which, by a stroke of luck, I managed to do!) Plenty of photos now loaded up on Flickr, for anyone who cares - my favourite one follows this paragraph. I was a little disappointed that the Commando Death Bicycle ride was closed for the autumn.



It was good to visit some of the places where I spent my childhood summers. The little bookshop in Padstow (no weblink unfortunately) is still going strong - imagine a room about 20ft square stacked from floor to ceiling with books, some on shelves, some not, with barely enough space to squeeze sideways between the stacks. I used to save up my pocket money and not buy any books before going away in the summer just so I'd have an excuse to go and buy some there.

Petrol prices - grrr! I've kind of lost track of what petrol costs, as I've used my car very little this year - I'd only filled up 7 times since December before last week, and 4 of those were on my 2 trips to Scotland. Doing just over 1200 miles this week has now increased that to 11. One petrol station I saw in a rather remote part of Cornwall was £1.06 per litre! I managed to find a station near where I was staying charging "only" 90p per litre.

The walk I did on the Roseland, round St Anthony's Head, was one of the best walks I've done in England. I managed to have a beach totally to myself, where I had lunch in blazing sunshine - that set the tone for the rest of the walk! I also saw plenty of wild (some red!) squirrels, a little field mouse and a number of lizards. Artificial sights of interest included a lighthouse, gun batteries, Pendennis Castle at Falmouth and Goonhilly in the distance. Another photo ensues...



I only had 2 pasties the whole time I was there!
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I think tonight is the worst we've ever done in an OWS quiz - 6 million and 11. However, while we came (I think) 7th out of 10, we were only bad by comparison with our previous performances, and not with everyone else there this evening. Third place score was 9 million and 15, and the winners got 15 million and something. We were a somewhat reduced team, comprising just 3 members, and for a while in the first round, we did think we might only be able to answer the questions with numerical answers. Tennis knowledge to the rescue - it often amuses me that some people find the question "When did Boris Becker first win Wimbledon?" (Answer : 1985) hard...

The quiz also included such delightful questions as :

Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, used to live on the same street in Yorkshire as which other sci-fi actor? Answer : Patrick Stewart

How many cups of iced tea are drunk each year in America - 106, 116, 126 or 136 million? Answer : 136 million

What's the most popular colour of toothbrush in the UK? Answer : Blue

What word beginning with M became very popular following the release of the Phantom Menace? Answer : Mindful

Which band is named after Lucas Radebe's (apologies for spelling, I don't do football) old football team? Answer : Kaiser Chiefs

What colour is Bugs Bunny's voice? Answer : White (Mel Blanc)

Which Elvis song title, translated into Latin, is "Aut nunc aut numquam est"? Answer : It's Now Or Never

(I got the last two, so I was pleased!)

posted by Chip : 23:50

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Just too bizarre for words. Goes a bit downhill after about post 30, but that's from an initial stratospheric height!
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