Sunday 11 December 2011

Carrots and washing lines

It's been some time since I posted anything but, as I'm in a bloggy frame of mind right now, I thought I'd stick a few sentences down on life around here at present so...

Back in about March the Daily Mail (sorry about that) provided a free packet of carrot seeds in each paper one Saturday.  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth I decided to plant them somewhere within "the grounds".  Now it has to be said that there aren't too many places to plant anything at our place.  Most of the "gardens" are laid to flags, surrounded by trees,or filled with perennial shrubs.  So it's hard to find anywhere with sufficient space and light to grow veg.  Notwithstanding this I put the seeds down anyway - in the half-shade of our front hedge.  This is nothing like a perfect spot to grow carrots and, I have to say, that I probably didn't help them much by basically giving them very little attention at all.  Anyway, the seeds have been in the ground for about 6 months and some plants have grown so I thought I'd lift a couple to see how they've got on.

We live in a town surrounded by countryside and it's not hard to find carrots growing.  The plants in the fields look bushy and very green above ground and mine, basically, didn't.  But I lifted some anyway and this is what I got.

"Bonsai" carrot action

Now I know many of us still cleave to the spirit of "size doesn't really matter" but in the realm of carrots (oo-er missus) I think we are probably wrong.  AJ was making soup at the time but she refused to sully the pan with my specimens on the basis that they "would be a waste of time".  I couldn't argue.

Now is the time when long-suffering house-holding men like me get sent up into attics to drag down dusty boxes full of trees and decorations, including those infernal lights.  More recently, of course, this so-called festive decoration has included stuff to exhibit outside the house as well as inside and our house is no different to what is increasingly becoming the norm.  Thankfully for our neighbours our outdoor decorations are limited to the back garden (or yard as I call it).  We started with some white(ish) icicle things and last year supplemented these with some blue lights.  Now there was a little issue with the blue lights because AJ thought she'd bought more icicle type things but actually these came as a simple line.  

Today I was fortunately presented with a gap in the current gales and/or torrential rain which offered the perfect opportunity to put the outdoor lights up.  These had already been tested and "fixed".  Fixed in this case means reducing the number of train elements which show no glowing lights at all by testing bulbs and replacing duds with working bulbs from another part of the chain - simply put I minimise the duds sections.  It seemed a relatively simple task this year and has provided us with a 90%+ light-up  rate (for now at least).  I was also asked to take down the washing line as, it being winter, no washing gets hung up.  It was whilst I was taking down the line (a blue plastic one) that I hit on a notion - why not replace the blue washing line with a line of blue lights.  Excellent idea.  This was made to appear like an even better idea when I found that the line of lights is about twice the length of the washing line so they were easy to string up.  Halfway through the exercise AJ came out wondering what the heck I was doing.  She then saw the "artistic merit" of the exercise and is currently humouring me.  I think it looks pretty cool....
Electric washing line

Monday 10 October 2011

Pineapple peeling paradise

For some reason I've been getting busy with the bloggin this week so here we go again...

Pineapples are the flavour of the month at the moment, helped by the fact that Morrisons have them on offer - truly huge pineapples for a little over one British pound.  I must admit that I have a taste for pineapple, as much as I have a taste for anything fruity, but they are a real bind to prepare.  Sorting out the inedible core and then sorting out the peel generally takes a while and ends up with much juice on worksurfaces, hands and other places that you didn't mean to get juicy (clothes, the floor, etc. etc.).  Sometimes you wonder whether it's worth the effort.

With this in mind AJ noticed that Lakeland are advertising a pineapple peeler in their latest catalogue so she decided that she wanted one.  I looked at it and decided instantly that it probably wouldn't work and wasn't worth the few pounds of outlay.  As usual, she completely ignored this and ordered it anyway alongside a bunch of toilet-related stuff...

Last week the bundle of plastic "goodies" arrived and a pineapple was bought to test it out.  Now, despite the fact that AJ bought this device, it turned out that I was the lucky guinea-pig chosen to test it out.  I did so and was surprised at how well it worked.  So much so that I thought I'd phograph the process and blog it the next time.  So, here we go.

First of all, chop off the top of the pineapple and decide which size of cutter to use (there are 3).  Then attach the handle to the top of the cutter and start on the pineapple.


Pineapple & peeler ready to go

Note that the cutter has two sets of "blades".  One is in the middle - it takes out the core as you cut through the fruit.  The second is on the outside edge of what is a slightly corkscrew shaped part of the device.  The turning action gently cuts into the soft fruit on the outside edge whilst at the same time taking the blade further down into the fruit.
Peeler part way in - a bit wonky but getting there...


So, midway through the process you've dug into the pineapple.  Then comes the clever bit on the user's part...  You have to work out roughly when you're near the bottom of the pineapple.  If you don't then you end up going through the bottom of it and juice will flow out of the bottom of the hole - that's what happened to me the first time.  Not a total disaster but it can be messy.
The finished product

Staying above the bottom of the fruit you then simply lift up the whole device.  This should bring out the pat of the fruit that you want to eat.   
Leaving the waste and juice...

It also leaves the core and some juice inside the pineapple.  I poured the juice into a glass and drank it.  Lovely.

An important part of the process is choosing the right blade of 3 in the first place. Too small a blade leaves edible fruit inside the pineapple, too large means you would have to trim the fruit once extracted (kind of defeating the object of the exercise).  So, pick carefully peelers!  

Thursday 6 October 2011

Inspired parking award

We have these awards in work they call "Inspire" awards.  The idea is that someone does some really good stuff and you can nominate them for this award.  It's a good idea in principal and up to a point.  Someone wins an award at each site every month - except that we don't seem to have had a winner since May.  My guess is that the person who organised it at our site maybe left the company?  Who knows. 

Anyway, that's the background.  The key is that the winner of the award gets two prizes.  One is an extra day's holiday, which is fantastic.  The other prize is a prime parking place right outside the door of our main Head Office building.  The space is marked by a "golden cone".  This is a nice idea assuming two things - firstly that you drive to work, secondly that the parking space is convenient for you.  The office I work in is next door to the main office and some people who won the prize didn't actually use the space because it meant they had further to walk in.  Well done to the competition organisers.

None of this is the reason why I posted today however.  The reason I posted is because someone parked in the space today.  I'm guessing that they didn't actually win the award (because nobody seems to have won it for months) and also that they are a girly.  The picture reveals all - this month's inspired parking award (note the cone).

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Lunchtime irony

This is one of the dishes available from our staff "restaurant" today. I couldn't resist snapping it.  I'm not sure whether it contains real vegetarian shepherd or not.  Why they couldn't call it something different I don't know.

They also serve a vegetarian scotch broth sometimes which I think should be renamed "english" broth...

Apologies for the poor picture quality but that's phone cameras for you (well my phone camera).

Thursday 1 September 2011

Jus-rol pizza base and Vuelta on ITV4

I just thought I'd write about these because they have something in common - neither have lived up to expectations so far in similar ways.

I've used Jus-rol stuff before - usually the puff pastry, occasionally the filo and, on one previous occasion the vol-au-vent cases (fancied a blast of 70's past).  Note that I've never used the shortcrust because that's quite easy and quick to make.  Generally this stuff does what it says on the packet and if there have been any usage issues they have been down to my making.  You really do need to keep an eye on puff pastry and I have let it burn in the past...

I had 2 problems with this product - the amount of dough in the packet and it's usability.  The weight on the packet is 600g which, in my mind should be enough dough to make 3 pizzas.  However, some of that weight is a jar of tomato sauce.  The weight of dough, therefore, is probably no more than 300g (I didn't weigh it) which effectively meant  that I had to go straight back out and buy yet more pizza dough if I wanted to make 3 reasonable sized pizzas.

So.  Usability.  One thing I should say about this pizza dough is that I didn't use it as instructed.  The dough is wrapped inside a tin just like a swiss roll so you are supposed to open the tin, unroll the thing and place it on a rectangular baking tray.  That wasn't what I wanted to do.  What I wanted to do was make 3 pizzas and, for me, pizzas are almost invariably round.  So I wanted to reshape the stuff.  Now it may be that there are instructions on the pack telling the baker to under no circumstances try and roll out the dough into a different shape.  But I don't read instructions so... 

I separated the dough into three lots, one lot being a combination of 2 lumps.  Then I tried to make 3 discs of dough using a rolling pin.  This was not a good move.  The dough turned out to be anything but pliable and each disc took a few minutes of rolling and huffing and puffing to achieve a desired size.  The kids are lucky that they didn't end up with drips of sweat on their dough but they certainly got a base combined with mumbled swear words... 

Toppings were applied, the things were cooked and (looking pretty Ok I have to say) served up.  They didn't go down well though.  In fact one, KT's, didn't all go down.  So, on the face of it, that was the first and last time that the Jus-rol dough will be tried in our house.  The only other stimulus to use it again would be if I was similarly time-constrained (busy working mum and all that) and was happy to serve square-shaped pizza.  And another thing - the tomato sauce wasn't that brilliant either but I've got a spare jar of it now that's good until 2013 if anyone wants to put a bid in.

The question you may now be asking after all that blah is how ersatz Italian pizza dough links to a bike race in Spain.  Read patiently and all will be revealed.  ITV4 have been covering the Tour De France for a few years now and they do a pretty good job of it.  They have a travelling studio set up and several people presenting and commenting through the whole series and it's a very good package.  It's no surprise, therefore, that interest is increasing in the race and in cycling in general and the production team (as well as ITV4) can take a lot of credit for this.  They do what they say on the packet as it were.

With all this in mind I was quite interested in watching the Spanish tour, aka Vuelta a Espana.  Unfortunately the coverage of the race has not lived up to the hype in my head.  Firstly, there are no people for ITV out in Spain so everything comes out of a studio.  That, in itself, isn't an issue but the knock on effect is that there's no scope to do "on the plot" extra material that embellishes the programmes, gives more insight into what's going on, and generally brings the tour to life. 

The other issue is the commentary coverage.  They've clearly bought in a service from another station so we've got an Australian guy telling us what's going on.  To be fair, he seems quite knowledgeable and isn't bad but he doesn't give us the same experience as Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin.  It's great that the race is being covered and it's live every day as well (suggesting that the rights to screen it must have been cheap) so I suppose we should be grateful for that but it's not a quality job and it's a bit of a shame.  The issue I see is that it won't drag enough punters in as an audience and we may never see it back.

To give an idea of how uncompelling the coverage is, CJ isn't even watching the highlights.  He has the option to watch it live in the afternoons (having probably just surfaced by about 2) but he's not doing so.  If ITV4 can't catch him then they're not really trying.  Fair play to Ned and his Gollum-like mate in the studio.  They're doing an OK job but not enough to really bring it up to a compelling show.

Jus-Rol, ITV4, spot the difference.

Monday 22 August 2011

Paintblog or... gloss paint is runny or... get someone in to decorate

Now then, I was trying to work out how many years I’ve been painting and decorating.  My first recollection of a painting job was when my dad asked me to paint the shed.  I was young and stupid enough to think that it sounded like a fun job and don’t recall asking for any dosh – probably about 11 or 12.  Little did I know…  Still, I took the job and (eventually) finished it.

The suggestion from that little tale is that I have been decorating for the best part of 40 years, so there are a number of lessons that I have learned over that period.  Lesson one is that nearly all paint is quite runny – in fact I even manage to get non-drip paint to run from time to time.  Of the runny paints, gloss is generally the runniest so it’s the one we should take most care with isn’t it.  The second lesson is that you should take appropriate precautions whenever a paint job needs doing.

The job yesterday was to gloss up the garage door, it having been undercoated the previous day. The undercoating went without a hitch so there was no reason to suggest that the gloss leg would be any different.  It was a nice sunny morning and, because I know gloss paint is runny, I put a couple of dustsheets down.
Everything started off well.  I got a brush out to do the edges of the door because the roller doesn’t get into the gaps and seams.  

No problems there – I used the step to stand on for the top of the door then went down one side.  I opened the door a bit to bring the bottom of the door up to painting height and worked along the bottom.  Whilst doing the bottom, however, I took a small step to the left, for whatever reason, and just dinked the paint tin.  I didn’t knock it over but this was a full tin of paint so I hit it hard enough to knock about a saucer full onto the dust sheet.  

Expletives were muttered and I got down and scooped as much paint as I could back into the tin with my brush.  I then checked that the paint hadn’t gone through the dustsheet (old duvet covers being used for this particular job) and found that, unfortunately, a little had.  Garage door up, into the utility room and out with a cloth.  I cleaned up and got back on with the job – no worries.
The door edges were finished so now it was time to get the mini roller out.  This, of course, comes with a small tray.  The first job was to pour some paint into the tray – not too much because gloss is runny and we don’t want it dripping all over the place.  So I poured a bit in.  Then, somehow, I managed to over tip my paint tin the other way (towards me) so that a little paint came out of the “wrong” side of the tin.  I was holding the tin at this point so the paint was now also going over my hands as well.  More expletives – paint tin down, back into the utility room.  White spirit and soapy water came out this time and my hands got cleaned.  I also cleaned up the tin and checked the dust sheets yet again.

The bloody (OK, painty) result of the spills 1 & 2
Now.  Because things clearly weren’t going to plan, and because I’ve learned that precautions are generally a good thing where runny pain is concerned, I did 2 things.  The first thing was to turn the dust sheets around.  The paint I was using is a red colour and the garage floor is also a red colour.  The garage floor is also due for repainting.  So I figured that if any of the previously spilt paint did leak through it would do so onto surface that didn’t matter.  I was also conscious of the distinct possibility that I would tread in a patch of spillage and end up walking red paint all over the place.   

By this point in the story you will doubtless be unsurprised to know that I have managed to do the "paint trodden through the house thing" before as well…

That was the first thing.  The second thing was to place another dust sheet under the first two sheets.  The idea here was that there was every chance that I would spill more paint so I thought a dustsheet belt and braces approach would make sense…

OK.  I started painting the top of the door with the roller.  I was stood on the step and holding the paint tray in my left hand.  The thought then occurred to me that holding the paint tray, given what had already transpired, probably wasn’t the best idea – if I didn’t keep it really flat the chances were that further spillage would occur.  The other thing was that I didn’t need to dab the roller in the tray very often so why hold it? 

So, instead, I put it on the floor next to the step and everything went well.  I got near the end of the top bit of the door and thought I’d spotted a patchy bit where I’d already been, so I stepped sideways off the step to deal with it and went straight into the little tray…   

Paint went over the dustsheets, some went on the driveway, and also on my trainers.  Brilliant.  More expletives and a continually rising blood pressure.  

First thing was to take the trainers off.  Then, YET AGAIN, garage doors up, in for a cloth and white spirit.  I folded the dustsheets back and attacked the drive with the white spirit.  That got most of the spillage up out of the drive but then created a pink slick.  So, it’s back into the utlity for a big bucket of soapy water to dilute the slick and then mop it all up.  


Spill 3 result (to the edge and beyond)

Eventually, I finally cleared all of that up and carried on, except now I had watch my step around the patches of spillage that were left on the dust sheets.  The rest of the job went without a hitch but what was a 30 minute job probably ended up taking about an hour.  It also took a while for the blood pressure to recede.  Some people think painting is a relaxing job (including me – sometimes).   And there’s still at least one more coat of gloss to go!!!

A trainer on the way to the tip

So, folks, don’t ever underestimate the runniness of paint and remember, if you can afford it, that there are plenty of decorators looking for simple jobs like this to pick up from divvs like us.

Still...  It could have been worse





Until the next time

Friday 19 August 2011

Rant of the week - Morrisons latest version of the self-service till

I'm a regular shopper in Morrisons, primarily because they're the biggest supermarket near home and they are good value without being rubbish.  I'm also a regular user of their self-service tills.  Generally I've had little problem with them and fly through without too many hassles but they've changed the software on them now...


I think every time I've used them on the last half dozen occasions I've had to call for help.  The reason for this seems to be mainly because the scales think something hasn't been put into the bag or is the wrong weight.  The poor assistant has to just reset stuff so it all seems like a waste of time.  I've also found out that you don't now put newspapers into the bag because it confuses the till (sounds like I could get away with a free paper there... people are bound to catch on to that).  Similarly, if you put a bag onto the scale at the start of proceedings and there's already shopping in it the till also gets upset.   More help required.   It didn't use to be this bad...


We were away last week and visited a Tesco and used their self-serve tills.  Absolutely no worries.


Last time I used one at my local branch the whole thing just froze.  The assistants hadn't got a clue and hit random buttons until the till woke up again and carried on.


So... Morrisons... Get your act together with the self-serve scene and sort out that dodgy software.  I can see that you are trying to make sure that shoppers don't rip you off but we shouldn't have to nab assistants every time we do our shopping.  If you don't sort it out you'll just put people off using the infernal devices...


I think I've done well not to swear on this one.  Think I'll probably do a weekly rant which I'll try to make more amusing than  this one

Thursday 21 July 2011

The way we were, or, IT (and office life) in the 20th Century – Part 1 - kit

It’s nearly 30 years since I starting working in IT – a scary thought.  What’s even scarier is that I could face almost another 20 years working life before I get to retire.  Note that I didn’t suggest I would still be working in IT…  These days I sit under the shadow / glare of a 6ft interactive whiteboard which is basically one of the biggest TV’s I’ve ever seen (and the pride of our team). 
Our interactive "whiteboard" - glowing with pride
I get zillions of emails every day, most of which go straight through to my junk mail folder, and I can communicate via video links with people all over the globe at the click of a mouse button.  Generally, “all over the globe” most commonly means Normoss, a suburb of the Greater Blackpool metropolitan area, but it could be India, Australia or the US… Anywhere.  Back in the early 80’s all of this stuff was the work of science fiction and Q from James Bond…
The fact is that our working lives have changed immeasurably compared to the days back in the early 80’s – some, but not all, for the better.  So I thought it would be entertaining to ramble on a bit and mull over the differences between our present 3D reality and the days when phones hadn’t yet become mobile, TV screens larger than 26” were considered infeasibly large, and we’d only just got a 4th Channel on the tele.  Sky was the cloudy bit above the land and the sea (occasionally blue in the UK) and if Rupert Murdoch was hacking a phone it would presumably be with a knife or an axe…  This blog may not be that interesting for the vast majority of my readership (all 3 of them) but it will entertain me (sad or what?).
There are a lot of places to start this off so I thought I’d kick off with kit – or the lack of it back then.  These days almost every office employee is equipped with a desktop at least.  Some will have a laptop and, as if that weren’t enough, smart-phones and tablet pc’s.  Most of this is essential to our working lives and, for some, ALL of it is.  And that’s fair enough because they make us more productive so we get things done much more quickly.  Actually, I don't even go on holiday without a notebook these days.   But it wasn’t always like this…
First of all though, I just want to make it clear that I don’t go that far back into computing history as far as my working life goes.  So I don’t remember computers like this…
Manchester Uni (Alma Mater) Mark 1 computer

Nor did I ever have to work this this stuff, although we did play with it a bit in my 1st year of Uni (as a bit of a history lesson)…
Paper tape (as seen on old films)

As a student I did have some short dealings with the following cards but only for a couple of weeks programming Fortran.. (Ithink Fortran 66...)
Good old holorith cards - a staple of the (now) 60+ techy

So, none of that old nonsense.  Back in 1982, and for some time after that, "the desktop" meant the top of one’s desk and nothing more.  For a mere mortal this was generally a veneer of some cheap indeterminate wood, probably chipped and almost certainly stained by spilt, coffee, tea or ink.  More senior people would have their desk topped with a large sheet of glass – not entirely sure why that was seen as a better thing to do but that was the way it worked.  On top of the desk would be various pieces of stationery – paper, pens, pencils, etc.  The ubiquitous desk diary would be lying around somewhere, possibly a photo of the wife and kids (I had neither at the time), and for some people there would be an essential of working life - the ashtray.  Some “busy” people would probably have mounds and mounds of paper on their desks – quite often computer listings.  The one thing that you wouldn’t see on the desk was what we now call a desktop because, although they had been invented, they were very expensive and our applications weren’t designed to make use of them at the time.   
"Kit" generally only lived in “special” rooms.  They were the data centres and, sensibly we were kept away from them.  Our access to the vast computing power was via terminals and these were all housed in the terminal room. 
A typical terminal room, although they were usually smokier than this


Note the apt black and white shot although these places also existed in colour.  Because there were only so many terminals and there were plenty of us coding types, it was necessary to have a terminal booking system.  No surprises to find out that this was a sheet of marked out paper… You could only book 30-60 minutes at a time to give everyone a chance to use the things.  So you got maybe 3 goes on one in an average day.  This was probably just as well because the atmosphere in them wasn't that healthy.  They were generally quite smoky and stuffy but there was an advantage that they were a good place to hide from the boss...
So how , I hear you ask, did we find time to type in all that code?  Well the answer was that we didn’t…  We wrote out our code on 80 character wide sheets of pre-printed stationery.  Those sheets then got taken (I think the typists took them) to the Redifon team (I think Redifon was the agency we used for "data collection" which means people typing stuff in for us) who typed the coding sheets in.  We had special notation to differentiate 1 and I, O and 0 - in fact you still see some old coders put a slash through a 0 in case anyone gets confused.  So, in the course of developing a program, the first you saw of it on a computer system was the version typed in by the Redifon dept.  This was generally not exactly what you had written so job number one was to correct the errors before anything compiled.  And so it went on.  I do wonder now how we ever got things done but, thinking about it, we probably didn’t get THAT much done.  Happy but somewhat unproductive times…
Typical Honeywell terminal which we usede for many happy (?) years

In the mid 80’s we started to get more terminals which were split out by teams – so each team had a couple of terminals.  Just like the one above one… This gave us more terminal time so the coding sheets started to get dropped as we keyed stuff in for ourselves - the beginning of the end for the typists...  We also had basic word processing capabilities on new machines called “PCs”.  A few of these started to appear and some of us got to use them but mainly they replaced the typewriters that the typists used.  So, younger analysts (I was soon to become one) keyed in their design documents and specs on the PCs whilst the older ones continued to hand write them and feed them to typists…  Great fun.

The next leap towards the future was the introduction of the portable computer.  This wasn’t a laptop, yet, as you can see.  These were produced by Compaq and available to buy from about 1983,  I suspect we started buying them 2 or 3 years after that.  Portable was just about plausible.  They weighed in at just under 30 pounds (about 13kg kiddies) so they were as portable as a sack of spuds – the  screens were pretty pathetic as well.  Why they didnt put wheels on them I don't know.  You could book them out to work at home (at evenings and weekends – nobody “worked from home” in those days) but you could really only get them off site if you had a car parked nearby.  No way would they have seen atrain journey home.  Still, they got used and some (very senior) people had them in favour of desktops… 

The dawn of the personal computer as an everyday working tool (as above) was only round the corner and soon things like this appeared on more and more desks – the “workstation” was born and we have never looked back…  Well, maybe occasionally…

Saturday 16 July 2011

Unikids / Vive la difference

Having kids is a good idea and I would recommend it to anyone who can afford them - because, make no mistake, they can be VERY expensive - especially if you are weak of spine.  Sometimes though...

So here's the deal - I have two kids who are both at Uni at the moment.  The financial burden could only be increased, in fact, if they both happened to be at private School together, or required finance for concurrent crack habits, so I'm thankful for small mercies.  At least they’re not eating me out of house and home for most of the year or leaving clothes, plates and other assorted junk around the place or bringing manky members of the opposite sex home to eat, drink, sleep whatever, or, or, or…I could easily go on.  Instead they are working hard at their studies (so I’m told) and, if they are misbehaving, they are doing it hundreds of miles away where I am unlikely to find out about it.  I'm also thankful that they are not burdened with the impending 9k a year fee hike which is frankly a joke and just proves that The Government has no grasp on real life whatsoever...  “Oh, loads and loads of Uni’s, both respected and of somewhat dubious reputations, have jumped onto the 9k bandwagon – we didn’t expect that!!!).  Naïve or what?  Welcome to the 51st State…

Anyway, the blog isn't about that (honest), it's about the fact that I had to move one out of flats, etc. on a Friday and the other one on the Saturday.  That was a 200 mile trip one day followed by a 400 mile trip the next (and I ain’t no long distance driver…).  Thank heavens for the Mighty Mondeo and for cruise control...  All of that was fine and, to be fair, what I'm signed up to do as a parent but the Saturday in particular was a nice day, and I've loads of outside decorating to do, and there are only so many decent days in the British Summer as we all know, so another little opportunity drifts past.

The interesting thing though is how different the job is from one day to the next in terms of the cargo stowed into the motor.

Friday was KJ day.  We went up to the flat in halls and worked out what could be safely deposited at the new house.  The new house was organised a few weeks, maybe a couple of months ago so has simply been waiting to be vacated by the previous student tenants.  Being taken between properties were numerous items of study material – books, papers, other stationery items – plus various items of kitchenware and other assorted items of small and not very valuable hardware.  So that amounted to most of a boot load that needed to be ferried just around the corner. 

After that, we went back to the old flat and started a pincer movement on it – there was the loading of the car plus the forensic cleaning of the flat -  in the hope, not a vain one I trust, that the deposit could be reclaimed from Uni – we shall see.  What soon became apparent was that the large wheeled holdall and mammoth wheeled case would be far from adequate as containers for all of the clothes that required transport.  How this has come to pass is something of a mystery, although I doubt it would require the talents of a Marple or Colombo to solve. 

Clearly we took clothes out with us the previous September and there has been opportunity to take further quantities of clothing out during the subsequent ferrying back and forth at the start of terms but I strongly suspect that there is another reason.  My suspicion is that KJ has been living off bread and jam/marmite (hopefully not both at once) for most of each term and she has ploughed all surplus funds into New Look, Primark and their counterparts.  They have also been the recipients of the funds endowed by grandparents and other assorted members of the family at Christmas, birthday and start of term events. 

I think, as part of this apparel collection, there were enough coats/jackets to wear a different one on each day of the week.  I also think there was a different pair of shoes for each day of the month - -and not all of them particularly savoury…

This clearly put something of a strain on the motor and it is just as well that the kitchen contained a world class collection of supermarket carrier bags to put all of the stuff in.  The boot was full, the parcel shelf crammed and the back seat loaded up with a mass of cotton, polyester, viscose, leather, etc.  There was, however a glimmer of hope for the following year.  KJ has quite a large room in her new house but not that much storage space so it may force her hand to cut down the quantity of clothing.  That does fall over, though, when you consider that she won’t need storage space for shoes as the floor looks quite capacious.  We’ll see.  There was, of course her “kit” as well but this was limited to a keyboard and stand, PC, printer, clock radio and docking station.  KJ prefers to walk rather than cycle – if there was a bike it would have had to stay at the flat…  It’s as well she’s not a fat lass either because there wasn’t too much space left on that back seat.  It all got brought home safely in the end but there may be a lesson learned there for Uni Year 2..

As for “The Boy”, well it’s just a complete opposite really.  First of all there was no house to move stuff into.  This was because the house had only been signed up to on the very last day of term.  The reason for this, apparently, is because houses come up late in this particular town so there’s no point in trying to get one early beacause there aren’t any.  I suspect that is for the most part true, but there is also another suspicion, given that it took 2 weeks to find and sign for this veritable mansion, that getting up late in the day isn’t conducive to speedy resolution…  Much easier to stay in bed and pick up the crumbs left by those prepared to put the effort in (probably mostly organised females).  Various other excuses were also put forward and are the subject of a CJ blog but I take most of them with a pinch of salt.

So, EVERYTHING that had been accumulated by “The Boy” during the year needed to be fitted into the Mondeo because there was nothing else to do with it.  It was just as well that AJ (CJ’s mum) stayed at home for this one (we had planned for that in fact).  We also knew that CJ was buying himself a “decent” bike so, on a previous visit, the “indecent” bike came home in advance.  What we didn’t need too much room for in the car was clothing.  Just as well.

Being a young chap there was only a mostly full wheeled holdall and a half full suitcase to contend with.  In fact I was surprised to see CJ with a new pair of trainers – clearly an old pair had disintegrated at some point during the final term.  What you begin to realise with a chap like CJ is that the only clothing gets bought as a result of being a pre-requisite for a course (like a lab coat), having been to a gig (i.e. the odd t-shirt), having been seen on t’internet and deemed “cool” (i.e. more t-shirts) or because it is college rowing related (t-shirts, rugby shirts, actual rowing gear, and the customary blazer).  That all sounds like a lot but, in volume terms, amounts to little.

"Customary rowing blazer"

Plenty of room in the car then you might think.  Not exactly, no.  Alongside his sister there are a variety of books, papers and assorted stationery.  There are also a variety of kitchen items.  But then, to replace this apparently chronic “lack” of clothing there is a surfeit of kit.  This takes the form of the new bike (which was dismantled and place around most of the back of the car) guitar, amp, PC, netbook, 2 external drives, Joystick (not a little one, this is like part of an arcade machine…), framed picture (our fault, a present) and 24in flat screen monitor (another present).  Nearly all of this stuff is a bit delicate so it’s all boxed and therefore takes up even more room.  All of this means that the return journey is also with a car boot crammed with stuff and a back seat and parcel shelf also full.  No room, in fact, for any third body on the back seat.  The time may well come when I return with all this gear alone as there will be no space for “The Boy” himself.
The journey up and down the country to pick CJ up was started at around 7am on Saturday.  This is primarily because this Saturday heralded the start of Le Tour – easily the biggest bike race in the world and, probably, the most entertaining sporting event of the summer.  Well, there’s no World Cup or Euro Championships to “entertain” us is there?.  Sorry girls but the Women’s World Cup really doesn’t cut it… You can’t get excited by a sport that ends in a final between US and Japan, sorry.  Anyway, a 7am start allowed us to catch the best part of the first stage of Le Tour so it was well worth while.  Special commendation must also be given to CJ for assisting in this by rising at the “unfeasibly early” time of about 9am.  To be fair to “The Boy”, all of his gear was ready to shift and he also had the presence of mind to go to a Uni where women come and clean up after you every week so nothing had to be done – excellent value dude.

Thursday 14 July 2011

Days 13-15 - The end of the tour - winding down

Our apartment complex (well some of it) - Fuentes de Nerja

The next few days involved mainly more slobbing and also the discovery of another restaurant just up the street from us (the street being the Calle de Malaga) – Rosi’s Bar.  At first I thought this was maybe an English place, which is why we visited it late, but it turns out it’s run by a couple of local lads (Rosi is their mum).  Nice food and a relaxed place to eat (the watch/sunglasses sales guys and buskers don’t seem to bother with it).  So there’s another recommendation.  During the last couple of days we took another morning out to Velez Malaga – interesting enough but not a place we’d bother with again.

One silver lining of the bust aircon cloud was that I found out from our “concierge” that there was no need to vacate the apartment early on Saturday because she wasn’t cleaning it until Sunday, ready for new tenants on Monday.  This was a major bonus because our flight home wasn’t until nearly midnight.  That meant we didn’t have to find something to do for the whole day or go home in a somewhat unkempt state.  An extra day’s worth of slob – perfect.  The only notable incident that day involved our resident tramp. 

This guy spent the night on a bench in the little square in front of our balcony.  That wasn’t an issue for us because he was some distance away and you couldn’t smell him from our place…  The thing was that he left all of his gear on the bench during the day.  Understandably, nobody touched this stuff all week – until Saturday…  On Saturday they were having a mini fiesta in the square and a market accompanied it.  So, the guys stuff got moved (not far away but off the bench).  Our guess is that he came back and threw a bit of a wobbler that somehow involved him falling over and gashing his arm.  We came back from our habitual walk and found the paramedics dealing with him.  Interestingly enough, we only saw paramedics on the street twice during our hols and both time it was to sort out tramps.  What a satisfying job that must be – rather them than me.
The return to the airport was, thankfully uneventful as was the flight back home.  I think we were the last flight into Liverpool because our bags came out very quickly (so everyone could get home?).  We were back home within an hour of hitting the runway and our lovely little holiday had come to an end.  Back to “real” life…

Day 12 - Granada

We decided to have a day out in Granada.  The last time we went we visited the Alhambra but not the city itself so we went to have a look.  I decided to set Jeeves for the Cathedral in the city centre knowing that we probably wouldn’t get right to it but hoping to get somewhere nearby.  We got within about 1km of the place and decided to find a parking spec.  As look would have it we found one almost straight away – a pretty unusual occurrence given our experiences to date.  We had a coffee then a wander. 
Granada's an interesting place and we didn't even do the main sights.  We ambled around the old quarters - there are several of them (?).  Included in the “tour” was a visit to the Mirador de San Nicolas.  From here you get a really good view of most of the city, the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada above the town – it’s very scenic and I’m not sure my photo does it justice... 
View from the Mirador de San Nicolas
We eventually made it back to the car, via lunch and more coffee, and Jeeves guided us back home… When we got back to the apartment late in the afternoon we noticed that workmen had been in and fixed the aircon again – for the last time (hurray).

Monday 11 July 2011

Day 11 - still slobbing with a morning in Torrox

Day 11 took us out of town for our morning amble - Torrox Costa.  This is quite a nice, although relatively standard resort - pretty uninviting name though. The fun bit was that they clearly have some excessive long shore drift here and are struggling to retain the beach.  I don't think they have groynes in Spain.
Torrox beach - bulldozer in distance

Bulldozing the beach (doesn't look much like sand either...)

So, we had the interesting perspective of people sunbathing on the sand with diggers, big trucks and earthmovers around and about them. 
Bathing beauty with beach deconstruction in background

Not exactly a relaxing scene but it made out walk more interesting.  After Torrox, lunch and pool ensued and yet another restaurant in the evening - probably Meson Jose Y Victoria which is a very well priced local.  In between we had fun with the aircon again – it was OK for 30 mins but then started leaking once more.  I put another call in to the resourceful Pat and she said what she could do(whilst also apologising profusely).  The (maybe rather boring) plan that evening was to retire to the apartment and catch the opening episode of Luther on TV as the sunbathing was wearing us out.  However, on the amble back we were spotted by previously mentioned woolies and we joined them at a bar for more drinks and chats.  By the time we were done we were straight to bed (knackered).

Days 8-10 Nerjan slob action part 1

Day 7 was the last sightseeing day and on day 8 we were off to Nerja for a week of (almost) total rest.  The thing with slobbing out is that there's not much write about but thast'd probably not a bad thing...  Anyway, time to leave Seville behind.  AJ had had enough of O'Reilly sending us the wrong way so, for a short time, we tried Bruce (Oz accent) and then, having got fed up with him after 5 minutes, settled on Jeeves.  Jeeves took us effortlessly to Nerja, partly helped by the fact that when we actually got to town I kind of (kind of) knew where we were going.  The fun with Nerja then, at this time of the year, is parking the car. 
I think we did 3 laps of our part of town before deciding to go into a dead end bit (albeit a BIG dead end bit) where we did find a space.  Journey's end (well, for a week).  And on the 8th day shalt we rest?  Well, yes, but not until some shopping has been done and then washing put in the machine (I think 3 loads that day).  A couple of late afternoon hours by the pool and we were set up for the evening.
The evening was quite entertaining because the last time we were in Nerja it was November.  Wandering around the restaurant area on a Saturday night in November invloves deciding which half-empty place to go and visit.  In June it involves about 10 times as many people and AJ did not appreciate the hustle and bustle   (they like to call it atmosphere I think).  We went to an Italian that we knew and had an OK meal.  It was really busy but the service was OK (I think we just beat the rush...).  We kind of decided then that we'd be eating in the quieter parts of town after that...

Sunset from the balcony
Day 9 involved a refresher course in the town's geography - particularly as our Saturday shopping trip ended up with us coming the long way round from the Supermarket.  So we had a wander up and down the beachfront and around the middle of town.  Lunchtime followed that, then slobbing around the pool, drinks, dinner, etc.  You'll see a pattern here (and far less words).  Actually the evening surrounding dinner was quite interesting.  We watched the Canadian F1 GP where it rain terribly (or really well dependent on how you look at it) until the race got red flagged (i.e. stopped).  At this point we went out to dinner.  We returned 2 hours later, got some drinks, sat out on the balcony and then I remembered to check out the F1 result.  I turned on the TV and the race was still on - in fact it had only just restarted...  Jenson Button won.  Brilliant.  All rise for the National Anthem...
Day 10 was a virtual re-run of day 9 with us walking to Burriana beach this time (where we had previously stayed) and (obviously) a different restaurant.  Day 10 also introduced two couples from Leigh and (ex) Bolton thus extending the conversation circle from 2 to 6.   Oh yes, one other thing that made Day 10 different - a drip.
No, not me, the drip was from our bedroom aircon unit.  I came out of the shower to find it dripping good style.  We switched it off, stuck a pan under the drip and rang the "concierge" Pat.  She was very good.  She got onto someone to fix it who sent someone out - they said 45 minutes and they took 90 but at least they came.  There was a blockage of sorts in the condensed water outlet.  He tried to clear it then told me in Spanish that the system probably wasn't set up right.  Anyway, it all went back on and worked for the rest of the night.

Day 7 – Sevilla and the last sightseeing day (well the last consecutive one)


Day 7 started a little late. The Hotel offered a reasonable breakfast which we could take in our little patio or on the roof-top terrace. It was a lovely day so we took it on the terrace and enjoyed the roof-top views, the sunshine and the bread, pastries, etc. I have to say that cake for breakfast seems a very civilised thing to do (bacon is still a preference though).
Having had our fill we set off for the Cathedral & Giralda - Giralda is the name for the big bell tower that stands next to the churchy bit. AJ said that, after the spiral staircase incident in Segovia, she wasn't going up any towers.
As it happened she didn't have to - the tower was closed for repairs that week. Here's where see a theme repeating. Basically, Segovia Cathedral is very much like the previously visited places only even bigger. It also has even more gold and intricate carving so must have been even scarier and awe-inspiring to the C14th peasants. For us, though, it was more of the same and we would probably have been better off finding something else to do.

Yet more cathedral carving


They did have rooms full of "treasure" though, so even more gold. They can afford to given the amount they charged us to get in...

After that I knew we would have a more interesting time - we went to see the Alcazar which is an old Moorish castle turned Royal Palace. The Alhambra at Granada is unparalleled but this place sits credibly alongside it. The ornamentation and scale isn't the same but neither was it crammed full of tourists so you actually got time to roam around at your will rather than feeling herded. We enjoyed it very much and would recommend it as the best place to visit in town. You could pay extra to visit some upstairs apartments in the place which we didn't do but neither did we feel we'd missed anything...


Sevilla Alcazar (apologies for the leaningness – I have subsidence)

Some more ambling about the old town continued, interspersed with drinks stops and another church. Then it was back to the hotel for a rest. Then, about 4'ish peckishness set in (we'd had nothing since the late breakfast) so we moseyed out for some tapas. Very nice. The evening meal was at another tapas bar, this time for more substantial raciones. The waiter was very good. Whilst we'd ordered individual meals he served the plates up individually so we effectively had big tapas action. At the end of the meal we found out that the guy was from Chile and was, of course, a Liverpool supporter (isn't everyone?). He did a couple of quick lines of YNWA and explained that he'd learned most of his early English from Beatles numbers. He was dead busy which was a shame because we couldn't really chat but I can definitely recommend La Mesquita for good tapas and service.
Then to bed to polish off more sherry and get some kip in prior to the big slob that the next week had in store (well hopefully)