Category: Witterings

Witterings are, well they’re witterings really. They’re not uncategorised posts but don’t really fit into anything else

On the Road to Nowhere………………

So much for the plans for Easter.

We knew that the weather forecast wasn’t good for the weekend but we thought we’d give it a go. I picked Kathy up from work at 4pm and then after spending nearly twenty minutes at Sainsbury’s putting 60 litres of petrol in the car (thanks in part to a complete moron who decided to pull in front on me when I was paying my bill and blocking me in), we headed off for the boat.

Our plan was to use the motorway as far as possible. So we actually made it upto to Worcester North before bailing out and heading cross country. The going was good until we hit Kidderminster (Ah such a surprise to be stuck in Kiddoi!) where we spent 20 minutes sitting a queue where we did about 200 yards upto the ringroad round about.

After that it was pretty plain sailing and we actually arrived in Market Drayton at about 6:30. After unloading into the boat we headed off to The Talbot – a mere 2 hours and 40 minutes after we’d left Cheltenham. Its been a long time since Kathy and I visited to the Talbot – in fact the last time we were there was on our honeymoon back in 2002 when we both got rather merry and nearly fell in the canal on the way back to the boat (The next day has to go down in the History of Mintball as one of the shortest days cruising – I think it was about 1000 yards!)

The weather was pretty crap by the time we left the pub but the clockwork torch Nick bought worked very well so at least we weren’t staggering along the towpath in total darkness.

So we got back to the boat and went to bed.

Then the weather turned really rather unpleasant and the boat was rolling from side to side in the wind and kept slamming against the jetty and backwards into the concrete banking …. we’ve actually carved a very nice chunk out of the bank side so I guess we need to get some extra fendering down there. Neither of us got much sleep and morning arrived rather too soon. I decided to be lazy and stay in bed for a bit – partially supported by Kathy telling me that it was not only blowing a gale but it was also actually snowing, and certainly was not the sort of day that you actually wanted to be boating.. OK if you were out on holiday and you had to get somewhere you’d be boating but if you’re out for a few “fun” days then you’d do what we decided to do and NOT move.

So we had a very relaxing day doing absolutely sod all, which is probably what we both needed. We connected the laptop to the stereo and watched a couple of movies – which works remarkably well considering that its not something the we ever really thought of when we put things together a couple of years ago.

Its that time of year again..

… when the roads are gridlocked, the pubs and restaurants are full to over flowing and you can’t actually enjoy living in town.

Yes that’s right – its The Cheltenham Festival. When the world and his dog descends on the town, drinks too much Guinness and then throws up or pisses in the street.

So just what is the impact of the festival on town? Well it took 90m minutes for me to do a round trip to Gloucester today (about 30 minutes longer than normal) and the roads are a complete mess. Its not worth going out for a drink because everywhere is full of drunks from the racecourse. And of course THEY are more important than the locals because they are so pissed and flash with the cash that they don’t notice if they are over charged, and don’t even think about trying to go and eat somewhere.

I don’t want to even think about the carbon foot print of the festival. 4 days, approx 60,000 people per day. Thats a lot of cars/buses/coaches. Then there’s the shipping (and storage and preparation) of all the beer and food they consume over the four days and nights at the racecourse and down in town, and the placing of over 3 miles of “no parking” cones because these people will park ANYWHERE – they don’t give a toss about anyone else, and the shipping in of all the horses, the jockeys and the racing teams.

Then what about the litter, the mess that the council have to clear up (and I wonder who picks up the bill for that), and the policing? Tons of drunk drivers around and tons of people drunk and disorderly but no-one seems to get stopped/charged/fined.

But its “good for the town” apparently… not sure how

Off work

Last week I basically hit rock bottom. On Tuesday (one week ago today) I had major problems and was pretty much non-functional and I somehow managed to get through the day without considering anything too drastic.

I’m not going to say anything about the text messages I got.. “Can you just phone us, we need to know something…”. Ill means Ill – not “I just can’t be arsed coming into the office”

I went into work on Wednesday – primarily because I wanted to talk to the HR director about the process for me going off sick.

My Boss works from the US and when he came on line at about 2pm he asked me if I was feeling any better. I said that no I wasn’t. He then said the most amazing thing:

“If you are sick you don’t need to come into work”

Wow – that’s pretty fucking decent of him isn’t it.

“If you are sick you can work from home”

Err WHAT? What the Fuck? If I’m ill I can work from home… well that’s so mighty damned generous of him isn’t it.

By about 3pm I was a wreck and knew I had to take the rest of the week off. Well that went down like a lead balloon I can tell you.

I saw the doc on Thursday (having moved my appointment back by a week) and he signed me off work for 2 weeks and told me to keep my mobile phone turned off . I logged onto my works email account to set and out of office reply and there were quite a few emails demanding that I let them know things.

I ignored them because I knew if I replied to any of them that they’d just snow me under.

So here I am – and I’m feeling a lot better surprisingly It didn’t help that we got a phone call early on Thursday morning letting us know that Kathy’s dad had died on Wednesday night. So Kathy spent most of Thursday getting a flight back to Maine sorted out and I took her down on Saturday morning.

So I’ve been out for too much beer and Vietnamese food on Saturday (Simon’s birthday) and then I fixed Simon’s Internet Connection for him on Sunday and then had a couple of beers as we listened to Señor Coconut and his Orchestra’s take on some Kraftwerk Classics – and until you’ve heard “Showroom Dummies” played in the Latin style you really have no idea what you are missing.

Talking to Simon and Richard and my brother Nick it’s good to know that people out there understand what its like and are all rooting for me to get better soon.

When Food Labelling goes mad..

I went to the supermarket today to pick up a few things.

Thought I’d have some mackerel as I like a good bit of fish.

So I’m standing at the checkout and I wonder how Sainsbury’s recommend I cook said Mackerel fillets.

I turn the pack over:

No cooking guidelines but two very, very important things that I’m sure will shock and astound you all :

Ingredients: Fish

Allergy Advice: Contains Fish.

Really? I would never have guessed!

Facing up to Depression

For the past few months I’ve been suffering mood swings and often they kick in without notice or warning. I’ve also got disrupted sleep patterns and find my self getting annoyed very easily – both with myself and with others.

I booked an appointment at the doctors and went in and I didn’t say the D word once but described all my symptoms and filled in some paperwork.

Diagnosis is that I’m suffering from moderate depression… I’ve got another appointment in a couple of weeks when I’ll be re-assessed and he’ll then look at prescribing medication or other possible treatments.

So there hasn’t been much work done on the Canalblogs code – so sorry about that.

I’ve been building up a new server and Ubuntu is totally different from Suse so its complete learning curve for me (apache is totally different).

We’re also thinking of moving house – getting sick and fed up of how the neighbourhood is going. I’m married to a US citizen so going and living in the US is always a possibility but Maine really doesn’t have much call for Oracle DBAs….

Kerboom???

There are some very interesting markings on the road outside our house.

Two nice long skid marks which start in the middle of the road, drift slowly over to one side and end at the back end of another vehicle which is a bit mashed.

Now our road is quite narrow, its wide enough for one vehicle to get down the middle with a car parked on both sides. The road goes nowhere and is posted at 30mph.

The skid marks are, at a quick visual estimate (based on the length of our canal boat), about 70 feet long. How fast does a car have to be going to leave 70 foot long skid marks on a road?

No doubt it was some piece of chavvy scum from Whaddon in a stolen car… it won’t be the first time that some moron has crashed on our road (someone clipped 3 cars once and then flipped the vehicle they were in).

I really do despair about Cheltenham sometimes…

Christmas

Well we are well on the way to planning Christmas. The Booze has been ordered (which is one of the most important things) and we’ve done a lot of the shopping.

Should be picking up a tree sometime this week – there is a shop close to us which delivers them, which saves you having to mess the car up shoving a tree in and out of it

Happy Holidays

If there is one depressing thing about Thanksgiving it is what comes afterwards – yes that’s right: Christmas, or as they say in America “Holidays”.

Now I know the UK is far from perfect but we don’t leap into the “Happy Holiday Spirit” the way our American cousins do. Right after Thanksgiving the “Holiday” adverts begin. Holiday specials on jewellery, on power tools, on cars – yes they have Holiday Specials on the latest Ford Trucks. Its Madness.

But the madness really shows through when it comes to the Radio. Take 94.9 WHOM (Portland, Maine’s “America’s Superstation”) for example. It normally plays music that is OK to listen to… but not now, oh no, its now broadcasting “100% Christmas Music”. Yes you read that correctly – 100% Christmas music.. from now until Boxing Day… and its not even sodding December yet.

To the Coast


It was a wonderful sunny day and we had things to do. Kathy wanted to see the coast and I needed to get my shoes replaced and we needed to do some Christmas shopping.

So lets combine them all into one trip.

We headed off early in the morning down the interstate towards Portland. Our first port of call was LL Bean who are a huge supplier out outdoor clothing, hunting equipment etc. They never close and none of the shop doors have locks on them! Part of their guarantee is that if something goes wrong within the life of a product they will replace it. Well the middle of the sole on the right foot of the boots I bought from them las year had separated, the rest of the boot and the left boot were fine. So we took them back.. they told me to get a new pair. So I did and they were cheaper so they gave us a gift card for the difference – which we then spent on other things we needed in the store.

After that we headed to Portland and Tony’s Donuts which does a wide range of freshly cooked donuts. So after a breakfast of donuts and coffee we headed off to Kittery and The Stonewall Kitchen where we picked up Christmas Gifts for people.

We then headed back up Route 1 to Ogunquit and Perkin’s Cove


where we went for a walk along the Marginal Way which is a coastal path than runs just above the rocky shorefront. I’ll be adding some photos to Flickr soon.

Having had a good dose of ocean views, smells and sounds we continued heading north on Route 1 and stopped for lunch at Maniax Restaurant before continuing up Route 1 through Kennebunk to Portland where we got back on the Interstate and headed back to Sue and Jeff’s.

In the evening we went to Maria Libra’s Italian Restaurant which is just down the road in Hallowell. Extremely good food in a friendly environment – but if you want the Lasagna it’s advisable to book your portion in advance as everything is made fresh on the day and quantities of some dishes are limited.