Happy Christmas

It's Christmas, and I hope wherever you are, you're having a good time. Yesterday on the day itself there were eight of us around a big table at Roxana's just after one o'clock, starting a lazy six-hour lunch, prepared, expertly cooked and beautifuly served by Steve.

Ian, who's been down a few days already; Roxana herself, just back from two shifts at work (Midnight Mass then the Christmas morning service); Mum and Dad, picked up by me as the time to the first course ticked away; Duncan, picked up by me with time really running out; Geoff, too excited to resist already opening half his presents; Steve, territorial in the kitchen; and me, table-assembler-and-decorator-in-chief.

Lunch was interrupted by the Queen, then later by present opening. If you are reading this then my new very slim very sexy mobile phone is doing its job of allowing me to update my blog remotely.

I also got some books and other lovely things, and Steve is delighted with his new leather jacket.

The day passed in a fuggy haze of good food, good wine and good conversation, just the way Christmas Day ought to.

Johnny J-Cloth unmasked

It's been a long time, my little internet stalkers!

Tonight I'm in Solihull - and it isn't a State Secret this time! No, it's a Christmas party, and perhaps the drink has loosened the tongues. Picture the scene, if you will: I'm sitting on a table at the side of the room, swinging my legs to the beat of Erasure - earlier on it was a meeting room, but now it's the Christmas Party - and with the disco lights making psychedelic patterns on the floor, clashing wonderfully with the costumes (some of which really are in the spirit of the 1970s theme) two figures approach me. They will, for the purposes of this blog, remain nameless, so let's call them AF and BB. I've been watching AF and BB for some time, in a kind of alcoholic huddle on the far side of the room, beyond the parquet dance floor where the Flintstones, an (18?)70s cricket-white-clad weirdo, some super-heroes, and assorted time-travel rejects, have been strutting their stuff. They (that is to say the aforementioned AF and BB) head towards me in a slightly alarmingly direct way, and introduce themselves: "Hello," says AF, proffering his hand, "I'm Johnny." "And," says BB, giggling, "I'm J-Cloth." I take his hand, slightly unsure for a moment, and then the penny drops. These two (I never imagined 'he' was two people) are Johnny J-Cloth. So a mystery is solved. And as I stand outside in the freezing cold "'aving as fag" a little later, I slowly and painfully come to realise that I am probably the only one in the team not to have known this little secret. By the way, none of the people featured in the pictures are necessarily related to any part of the text above.

If you are unsure, as you may very well be, who Johnny J-Cloth is (as indeed I was myself until very recently), please search back through my blog. It all started on 6th November 2005, but then an entry on 28th November 2006, and a guestbook entry on 20th March 2006, and some e-mails to me directly, set up the - shall we say slightly bizarre? - character of JJC. But now I know!

And I realise now you have all missed my blog, so here it is back again.

There has been a whole cornucopia of reasons why it has been silent. It's about my mood, generally, stuff which has been going on elsewhere, and the fact that my Mum has been quite unwell recently, and this has been a huge source of worry to me. I will explain a little more about that later, but for now let me just say that she is OK, and I'm so, so grateful to my wonderful partner Steve and my two sisters who are totally on the case as far as making sure she is ok.

Anyway, what's been happening since the last update? Well, loads as it happens, some of which are listed below, and in absolutely no order of importance:

• the new series of QI started (the one we saw the last one being recorded) - yay!;
• we bought a gigantic new TV (Samsung 46 inch LCD) and have added Sky HD and a Sony PS3;
• we sold the old 'portable' (Sony 36 inch CRT) on E-bay, nearly breaking our backs delivering it to the buyer in Basingstoke;
• Steve hasn't been well, but you can read all about that on his blog;
• my new car arrived, and after exactly one week and 967 miles the clutch burned out at the entrance to the Dartford Tunnel toll booths, while I was on my way oop north, and there is a very long story about hire cars, roof bars and the AA, but I won't bore you now - suffice to say I had a crap hire car for two weeks, bu**ered my back, and I now don't trust the lovely Focus;
• there's another long story about exactly how much I hate my new car, but you, my lovely readers, will have to wait for the gory details of that too;
• Steve and I flew to Edinburgh to watch Michael and Christophe get married;
• I failed to secure tickets to an intimate Will Young gig in London - bother;
• we went to watch The History Boys (Alan Bennett's revived touring National Theatre production) in Cambridge;
• I put up curtain rails and moved kitchen units at Roxana's, helping her to make the next moves in de-Alanning her home;
• I went to the Varsity match at Twickenham with Ian, Chris and assorted others - huge fun, we (Cambridge) won 22-16, we lost one of our party on the bus later, and Ian, Steve and I had a great meal in London;
• Something Nasty happened last weekend while I was on my way to pick [someone nameless] up from Gatwick Airport - details to follow;
• [someone nameless] stayed with us over the weekend, and we took him down to the south coast on Monday - it was so great to catch up again after such a long time;
• my Mum has been into hospital twice, and whilst OK now, there's a lot of stuff which needs to be done involving my parents, and it's taking a large amount of my concentration at the moment, and a fair amount of my time;
• my nephew's wife has just produced a second baby, 9lb 5oz Luke, my fourth great-nibling.

More soon, and check this entry again for picture updates.

Let battle commence!

So the Tories have picked Boris, and Labour have Ken. This is going to be fun! I'm far more interested in watching this than any possible general election.

Back again

Having been away for nearly a week in Naples, Sorrento and Matera, I find myself straight back to work and away again, staying in lonely hotels. Want to be at home! Oh, and I've got a cold.

"Ill-ventilated"??

"'Naples is an ill-built, ill-paved, ill-lighted, ill-drained, ill-watched, ill-governed and ill-ventilated city', whinged Cook's Tourist's Handbook in 1884." So quotes Lonely Planet.

Still, I don't care: the temperature is set to be 27 degrees every day for the next five days!

TTFN.

Ferry, cross the...

...well, Thames actually, sorry.

Just thought I'd share a picture I took from the Woolwich Ferry the other evening. Canary Wharf in the background, Thames Barrier in between. And the specks in the sky aren't bits of dust on your screen: they're birds, honest!

Let the train take the strain?

Next month we're off to our first gay wedding (as guests, stupid...!), in Edinburgh. I thought it might be a good idea to go by train. So I went to trainline.com, and got thoroughly confused between the trains in the timetable against completely different trains listed when actually about to buy the tickets.

And then I discovered that the cheapest return is £201.00 (although it did helpfully add that "two singles could be cheaper").

I checked GNER's website, which says this:
"There is engineering work taking place between Newcastle and Edinburgh. We will be providing a regular train service between Kings Cross and Newcastle/Leeds. Beyond Newcastle, we will be running an hourly train service to/from Edinburgh (via Carlisle). Replacement coach services will serve stations between Newcastle and Edinburgh on the East Coast Main Line. We will not be running train services to/from Glasgow or Motherwell; passengers are advised to use Virgin/First Scotrail services to/from Glasgow. We will be providing a coach service between Edinburgh and Motherwell and will continue to operate trains between Edinburgh and Aberdeen/Inverness."

Does that make any sense? Any idea how it would apply to us?

There was a glimmer of hope booking through GNER's own website, but after several pages of options selected, and the obligatory confirming of tedious and unreadable Ts & Cs, I was presented with the information that the journey up to Edinburgh would take nine hours (via Carlisle), leaving at half past five in the morning and getting us there just over an hour later than the start of the wedding; and the return journey next day a staggering thirteen hours (including the delightful prospect of a four-and-a-half hour wait at Crewe in the middle of the night):

Station	Arr	Dep	Travel by	Service Provider
EDINBURGH WAVERLEY		18:52	Train	VIRGIN TRAINS
WIGAN NORTH WESTERN	21:39	21:50	Bus	VIRGIN TRAINS
CREWE	23:20	04:02	Train	VIRGIN TRAINS
BIRMINGHAM NEW STREET	05:12	05:30	Train	VIRGIN TRAINS
LONDON EUSTON	07:08	07:08	Tube*
LONDON VICTORIA	07:47	07:47	Train	SOUTHERN
EAST CROYDON	08:03

Well in the end, of course, I decided to bugger the cost to the planet and I've booked flights with BA. Twenty minutes by train to Gatwick, hour-and-a-half flight, another twenty minutes into Edinburgh. Door to door within three-and-a-half hours.

Integrated transport system? Don't make me laugh.

MySpace

Over the weekend I have spent two hours (I'm not exaggerating: it was one hundred and twenty minutes, at least) trying to figure out how to post a profile picture on my MySpace page.

Eventually I decided to create an album and upload a picture to that and see if somewhere I could move it to be the profile pic. Then I get, "Based on your current settings some users might not be able to see ANY of your photos."

And then, on finding myself back at the sort of 'view the profile' stage rather than 'edit the profile', I discover the picture of my ugly mug which I uploaded is in fact by some devious and unannounced default, my profile pic. So now I don't dare upload any more photos to the album in case that screws it up.

I just don't understand MySpace, and the Help is woeful.

Actually I was reading on my nephew's page what I thought were some - admittedly rather short - blog entries, but I've since discovered that actually they are 'bulletins', not blogs. What?!?

I'm so glad I'm using Blogger for my... erm... blog, because it does exactly what it says it's going to... and with no flashing ads.

Mind you, MySpace is interesting to search through, and I have discovered 159 alumni of my old school, and actually started to chat to one of them, which is quite interesting. He also lives in London, and is a video editor.

Popular

Ooh. Ailsun, from Ohio, wants to be my MySpace friend. But on closer examination, Ailsun appears to be little more than an unfeasibly large pair of breasts under a pouting gaze.

Boy has she got me wrong. Request denied.

Always last

Jeremy Clarkson once asked, plaintively, how apparently no-one, and certainly not he, ever caught a plane from Gate 1. I agree with him, although I catch fewer planes than he does. But I do stay in a lot of hotels, and the same thing applies. Today I am in the second-to-furthest room down a long corridor; and because I am also on the eighth floor, while I can see my car very clearly in the car park, I have visions of just watching helplessly as someone vandalises it or drives it away.

Berlin

The journal from our trip to Berlin at the beginning of the year is finally online! (Click the haymee.com link at the top of this page and then go to travel | past.

Mum update

Mum is back at home from hospital, and all seems to be fine.

Mum

Mum's in hospital. More news as soon as I have any.

Steve Fossett

If you want to help find Steve Fossett, the adventurer who went missing last Monday while flying himself over a Nevada desert, you can do your bit here.

Stone the crows

Sorry it's been such a long time since the last post. One of the main reasons for switching to blogger.com was so that I could update more often.

Main news is that Roxana, Geoff, Steve and I went to Paris for a few days a week ago. It was totally fab, and you can read all about it here.

Then, not long after we'd got back, Roxana and her friend, the wonderful Florence, came and stayed with us two nights while they were attending the Guild of Vergers 75th anniversary celebrations in London.

Learned today that the crow is not a bird, but the family name for birds including four you can still legally kill in England (the rook, the jackdaw, the jay and the magpie), plus two you cannot (the raven and the chough). I always wondered why no-one could tell me the difference between a rook and crow.

Today (by which I mean yesterday - Saturday) I managed to go all DIY, and fitted a new thingy in the bathroom to hold the shower head. It had been sort of held up by luck, and with recent visitors who, quite understandably, wanted to move or angle the shower differently, it had basically given up and pointed itself resolutely towards the wall. Well, now, we have a shiny new pole and attachment, and it seems to be much better. First time I've been brave enough to drill ceramic tiles as well, although what I was worried about I don't know. I usually find that after trying something new.

Shorn

First off, congrats to Geoff who learned on Thursday that he's passed eight GCSEs, with pretty good grades.

On a wonderfully warm summer day today (the last?) we walked into town where I got my hair cut, and after buying a few necessities and the makings of a summer dinner, we stopped off for a panino and a cappuccino at one of Allders' concessions, called 'Munch'. I left the counter with the the sandwiches and coffees in take-away containers after an argument over the non-provision of plates, their stated reason being that, at 5.20, they were closed for eating-in because the business shut at 6. I hardly need add that we won't be re-visiting 'Munch'.

Arrived home grumpy after that, but the evening was cheered by watching the slightly odd film 'A Cock and Bull Story', starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing two characters called Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, who are trying to make a film of the 'unfilmable' eighteenth century novel 'The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'.

We seek him here, we seek him there...

We got home a little while ago from a very pleasant short stay with Kevin and Stephen, in Haslemere. We went there for dinner last night, and very splendid and relaxed it was too, with Stephen's sister Denise, and her husband Peter, there too. Kevin and Stephen cooked some chicken wings for a kind of early finger-lickin' starter, then a wonderfully tender beef stew, with crunchy french beans and minted potatoes, followed by treacle tart. There was a plentiful supply of red wine, too.

Peter's drama group are off to the Minack Theatre in Cornwall soon to reprise their recent production of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Although Denise and Peter had to go home last night, we stayed over and enjoyed a very welcome cooked breakfast this morning. And we've set a date to have all four of them over for dinner in a few weeks' time.

Unsung heroes

Travelling up the M5 yesterday evening I noticed, as I sometimes do, work taking place on electrical pylons. Looks very complex and very dangerous - wires hanging down apparently haphazzardly, huge contraptions, cradles, pulleys and other bits of equipment hanging from the pylons. It looks like a complete mess but I'm sure it's all a highly organised project. What are these people called? Is it linesmen? One wonders what they do and how they do it.

Listening to xfm.nl. Every time they speak, though, it does sound phlegm-ish.

President Putin has man-breasts, or moobs as I prefer to call them.

Today on wikipedia I have been mostly reading about Champagne (and sabrage*), and bidets.

*Look it up, you lazy so-and-so!

Dirty protest

The untidy protesters in Parliament Square have been evicted, apparently because they are a public health hazard. Yes, they are an eysore. But if you're going to protest against the state, against the government, against a parliament that gives the government its legitimacy, where better to protest? Perhaps, they might say, when Parliament cleans up its act, they will clean up theirs?

Just a scratch

I see NASA, in an official communiqué, are describing the damage to the underside of the space shuttle Endeavour as "a small ding", as if it had had a minor accident backing into the garage.

Endeavour is currently docked to the International Space Station, and some six US and one Canadian astronauts, along with the ISS's two Russian and one American crew, are enlarging the station, and replacing some broken bits. They're performing quite a large number of space walks, apparently, and may have to try to repair the underside of the shuttle.

Perhaps they've got some Isopon P38 on board? That should do it.

Post haste

Our strange, butch, postwoman, or postal delivery officer (or is it post operative - ha! no, that might be presumptive) has just arrived outside, as always in what I assume to be her own car, a large and rather butch Fiat hatchback.

Is she so lazy that she can't walk her round? Is she given special dispensation - not to mention insurance - by Royal Mail to use her own car, rather than a Post Office vehicle?

It's very odd. She parks in a space here, opens the boot, rummages through sacks of mail, and pulls out the post for the block here. Sometimes she leaves the car and wanders out, presumably to deliver to other local addresses.

Then she comes back, inexpertly extracts her car from the car park, with lots of kerb-bumping, and off she goes.