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.