Month: December 2004

It’s Christmas time pretty baby, and the snow is falling on the ground. Ahh the Elvis Christmas Album. Gotta love it. Beers with old mates .Much food. Some moose socks from the lovely Andy and Jess and Oscar who appear to have memories like elephants, (although I’m guessing Oscar had a minor role in the gift giving, he having a memory like a Golden Retriever which is more based around being surprised and amazed and incredibly pleased that every day the sun comes up, and the people he loves still live in the same house as him and then, wow! They’re taking me for a walk! Is that a ball? Yes it is! You know the only thing that could make this day any better? If they threw it and I could chase it! Arrrgh! He threw it! I’m gonna explode with happiness! I got it! I got it!).

Anyway, Christmas Day all lovely and mellow with great food and good presents.

Then Boxing Day and the really, really bad thing happened. Not going to talk about it on here but if you keep meaning to donate and haven’t got round to it yet, here’s the link.

Hello…

OK I’m sorry. What can I say? Christmas got in the way. I lacked an internet connection. I was lazy. The dog ate it. I left it on the bus. I’ll hand it in tomorrow if that’s OK?

All of those things contributed to a lack of ego fuelled ramblings on here. I caught myself reading my blog earlier and wondering what happened next so being as since no one else is going to write it, I suppose it’s down to me to get on with it. Gawd it’s just work, work, work innit? So, as I always say, where was I?

Right, Bergerac. This is all a little hazy but Bergerac continued to be lovely and a little drink sodden for the next few days. A trip back to the Sherwood pub with Geoff and Michael ended drunkenly again with Geoff and I nattering animatedly to some locals in bizarre French-English. I spoke French, they spoke English, Geoff looked on confused and as though he was about to get one of his heads. Not long after that we went home and watched a bit of an odd French movie which was animated which took the pressure off us to be animated as we weren’t and shortly after that I went to sleep. The next day, we possibly came up with a plan which will mean we never have to do any proper work again. I’m quite sure absolutely nothing can go wrong. We even had a meeting with minutes taken and everything and on paper it all looks good. Nice formatting. Good choice of font. The works. Watch this space. Or even, watch Spaced, which I saw for the first time the other day. You could actually watch a little film I made of it if you really want to kill 30 seconds… Click the pic below for a Spielberg-esque piece of nonsense.

As virile young men, we also had a tense game of domino’s while Michael looked on horrified. I won by a matchstick. We then made the smallest Record Breakers style domino run ever made (Norris McWhirter said) and videoed ourselves knocking it over. All good clean innocent fun in an absolutely-no-responsibility type way. Clickety-Click the pic below for a frankly pointless exercise in futility.

I’m guessing you’ve noticed that there’s more films on here now recorded on my nice little digicam that Fab and Clau bought me a couple of years ago (Thanks lovelies). You don’t have to watch them OK?

Talking of virile young men of Bergerac…

Any road up, a trip in lovely Michael and lovely Andre’s Smart car back to the airport, Geoff and I hungover again but I can’t remember why it was this time. Possibly drink related, then the trip from Stansted to Epsom via tubes and trains with, of course, a delay at Victoria. Ahh it’s good to be back in Berlighty where trains run even more randomly than French ones.

So Alun, there we were you and I, on Christmas Eve, trying to get to a pub on the north side of the river at Westminster Bridge. As we were stuck in traffic crossing said bridge, in a National Express coach all of a sudden for no apparent reason, we looked at the Parliament buildings and saw that some very low, dark, fast moving clouds were obscuring the top of Tower of St Stephens containing Big Ben. As we watched, those clouds slowly pushed the tower from its rightful vertical state, until it toppled flat on to the roof of the House of Commons below. As we continued to watch, the base of the tower overwhelmed the structure of the roof and crashed through on to the MP’s below who were fortunately sitting in high backed wooden chairs so the tower rested on the top of the backs of their seats giving them a lucky escape. Betty Boothroyd in her former, elevated position as Speaker however was not so lucky, and what remained of her was taken away in an ambulance. We, no longer in a coach, continued to watch the spectacle for a bit until I said that we better get a shift on as they were likely to close the bridge soon and we’d be stuck on the wrong side and wouldn’t be able to get to the pub.

That was last night’s entertainment in my head.

As far as I can make out, Bergerac has no gym. Shame really as that would amuse me in an 80’s British crime drama kind of way. Unless of course Cyrano is French for gym, in which case there’s a film about it. Who nose?

I may have pointed out before that Bergerac is lovely and it continues to be. Been back here for 3 days now and had a marvellously relaxed time courtesy of my host Geoff, his friends Ian and Karen, and the fabulous resident restaurant owners, Michael and Andre. On arrival in this old, old town on Friday night, after a train ride made all the better for not featuring the word “couchette”, I was whisked like an Angel Delight straight to L’Enfance Du Lard for a night of fantastic food, great company and a very funny plaster goose dressed up in 12 different outfits, one for each month of the year. A Turner Prize winning installation if ever I saw one. Much laughter was had as well as much gorgeous red wine and some pretty lively Eau De Vie (A lot like Grappa which I think is Italian for “fire water”) before retiring in a very wobbly state back to Chez Geoff to polish off a couple of restorative lagers (Ian’s somewhat faulty idea of a hangover avoidance trick) and to the delights of watching Geoff and Karen, half miming, half dancing to David Bowie’s early classic, The Chingaling Song. When I say “early classic”, of course I mean “absolute drivel”. It makes The Laughing Gnome sound positively meaningful.

Drunkenly to bed.

Next day, Geoff left heroically early to pick up his very, very heavy Christmas Tree from the local market and drag it back to his place before leaving to have lunch with Michael and Andre, leaving 3 very hungover casualties on the sofa’s, talking gently about how we could string out this life of leisure for as long as possible. A plan is required. Given the state of us, it wasn’t surprising that a plan was not forthcoming, so instead we drank a lot of tea and had a nice time anyway.

That evening, after Karen and Ian had left, Geoff and I ignored doctors advice and headed off for a quick beer before going to find a pizza. We never found the pizza, but we did find the Sherwood Pub which was full to the brim of young funky Bergeracians with more bizarre facial hair than me (and that was just the girls) all grooving to a Kraut Metal soundtrack. We drank really quite a lot of beer and left when the barman Sebastiane made us as it was way past our bedtime. There’s every possibility we will return. You really have to go back to a bar that has a full working bath and shower in the toilets don’t you?

Yesterday, absolutely nothing was done apart from some gentle trimming of a Christmas tree and the making of Blue Peter style tree decorations. I directed, Geoff got out the round ended scissors, glue pot and sticky back plastic.

Jacques Brel. If ever there were a reason to learn French (other than to be able to talk to lovely French people which is good enough reason in itself) then giving yourself the ability to enjoy the songs of Jacques Brel is that reason. He’s not just a bit good, he’s really very good, or was at least prior to his death. I went to Toulon to buy (achète – that’s French for buy) my host a present (un cadeau – see now you know another French word. Easy isn’t it?) of a DVD box set containing about 7 hours of Brel’s TV performances and have spent a couple of very good (très bon – that’s two more) evenings drinking some bottles of red wine (des bouteilles de vin rouge – that’s some very good ones) and watching the genius at work. Britain, or in fact the English language, really doesn’t have anything to compare with the kind of troubadour type songs that he did covering life, death, drinking and love with excellent lyrics and that’s a shame because we’re really missing out on something extraordinary. Don’t just listen to me (moi) listen to some for (pour) yourself.

Now let’s practice what we’ve learnt so far…

Achète moi des très bon bouteilles de vin rouge pour un cadeau.

See how you’ve progressed?

That’s either the biggest fox I ever saw or a weird looking dog. He was very friendly though…

So yeah… errrm… oh yes, didn’t sleep much last night so I got up early and watched the sun come up across the Mediterranean (not a bad thing to do and worth losing sleep for) and am now sitting with the sun streaming in through the window, a smell of burnt toast on the air (oops) with the roar of French Navy jets flying low over the house doing some sort of practicing I guess. Did I mention that there’s a bloody great big naval base that takes up half of the island of St Mandrier? Well there is and a fair few of the people stationed here long term actually have properties in the village. Now when you think of your average British military type, certainly the lower ranked ones, I don’t know about you but I tend to think “Oh dear, here comes a big fight in some poor little home counties town which just happens to have the misfortune to have a base nearby. I’ll be off in the opposite direction if you don’t mind.” On the contrary (or Au Contraire as we all learnt from Blackadder) French Navy blokes tend, in my experience, to be very mellow people, certainly up for a chat and generally with pretty liberal views about the world in general. This still surprises me. How many British Navy people do you know who are paid up members of Greenpeace for instance? I’ve met two French ones which is a little ironic since the French Navy blew up the Greenpeace flagship in New Zealand a few years back.

Anyway I digress. The combination of no sleep and military jets flying about noisily took me back to my never-to-be-repeated couchette experience a few days back and the fact that one of the people who shared my taste of Hell turned out to be a naval submariner (The toughest of the tough. Calm yourselves ladies.) . He couldn’t sleep either, so, at about 4 am we both gave up on the couchette and went and had a natter and a fag in the trains corridor, nice fella, offered me a lift to St Mandrier too which beat the hell out of the idea of hefting my rucksack (for now I am a proper traveller type) through Toulon to get the early boat over to the island (It would have been a very nice thing to do without the luggage.) The point being, I’m pretty sure that submarines are not well known for their comfortable living conditions, in fact the word “basic” springs to mind, closely flowed by the words “cramped” and, after a few minutes of cold sweats, the words “get”, “me”, “out”, “of” and “here.”, so if a submariner can’t sleep on a couchette, that kind of gives you an idea of how bleedin’ uncomfortable they are and why I’ll never use one again. That was my point but I got a bit lost on the way.

Talking of lost on the way, I’ve noticed my posts are getting a little longer and more rambling. Is that a good thing or do you prefer short, snappy and just bare info? This is all for you, you know… Vote, why don’cha? (Oh yeah, and the beard is coming along nicely…)

How civilised is France? Very bloody civilised, that’s how civilised. At least in the South, everything revolves around friends and family and eating and drinking. Work happens but it’s kept in its proper place and proportion, and should a friend call round to say hello, which happens a lot, then work is told kindly but firmly to go away until later. In St Mandrier it seems that pretty much everyone knows everyone else so that leaves a lot of scope for interruption and a lot of time to drink pastis and wine (not in the same glass obviously, that’d be stupid.) So what have I done? Well I’ve drunk a lot of pastis and wine and the night before last I fell back in to the late night whisky trap with the usual results. Yesterday ended up being a stay-in-bed-for-12-hours kind of day, followed by a trip on the oh so civilised boat bus across the bay to Toulon to attempt a bit of Christmas shopping. Unfortunately my head wasn’t quite up to it and was not aided by walking around a shopping centre where they were playing the Smurfs Christmas album featuring their version of Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody (is that what it’s called? Well you know the one I mean, “are you hanging up your stocking on the wall” etc.) Hungover head with Smurfs singing in it is not a good place to be. Added to this was the fact that I’d managed in my dazed state in the morning to put my new contact lenses in the wrong way round (having managed to throw my old ones away last night somehow) leading to much seeing confusion which of course I blamed on my hangover only realising later, when it came time to take them out, why the world had become a very blurry place… Still not getting any cleverer…

Woman on boat thinks “what a lovely colour for a ferry”…

On the good side, my French has got to the point where changing my ticket to Bergerac for one that doesn’t involve a couchette was not a problem and even included getting a 15 Euro rebate and my new train arriving in Bergerac in time for Dinner on Friday as planned. Hallelujah! What can possibly go wrong? Well pretty much everything given SNCF’s fairly random train running ways but in theory I’m sorted and shouldn’t have to lose another nights sleep while in France.

It rained here this morning. Most disappointing as it doesn’t generally do much of that around these parts, at least in my experience, although he locals insist it rains a lot. I’m guessing that if they were to have to sit in an office in London watching 9 months of consistent drizzle out of the window they may shut the f—k up about the amount of rain they get, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Ok, maybe on my WORST enemy but not on my second worst. Doesn’t “worst” sound very German when it goes around your head a few times? In fact I wouldn’t wish it on my würst anemone. Jah das ist gut.

What happened to all the pictures? Well I can’t figure out how to post them from the internet café in St Mandrier so tough. There’ll be a bumper crop of lovely pictures when I get to lovely Bergerac and get on the lovely internet connection at lovely Geoff’s lovely old house. Enough with the “lovely” yet?

St Mandrier is lovely too…

Today it’s back to Toulon to try Christmas shopping again… I hate Christmas shopping.

Tubes suck. There’s no argument to be had, they just suck. Honestly, best thing for them is to make sure everyone’s out of them one night and just fill in the tunnels with quite a lot of wet concrete. Imagine if it happened, the bitter-sweet morning that would greet Londoners. The temptation to be grumpy because they were going to have to find a different way to get to work that day, battling against the slowly dawning knowledge that never again would they have to be stuck in a tunnel with the bile-yellow emergency lighting flickering, their heart beating faster as the engine makes that sounds-like-something’s-about-to-overload-or-the-train’s-going-to-move noise for the 8th time while they get intimately acquainted with someone’s one-man crusade against the evils of deodorant and general hygiene. I think sweet would outweigh the bitter and it wouldn’t be long before people could be seen sitting outside riverside pubs drinking cool lager’n’limes on sunny days with full bicycle racks everywhere, glowing with health (the people not the bicycle racks stooopid) and reminiscing about how they used to put up with underground trains.

Talking of pubs, I was on a tube on my way to one, covered in rucksacks, laptop bags and my trusty manbag to say a brief hello to some very nice people on my 4 day whistle-stop tour of Southeast England before staying with a very nice friend and getting off to Stansted airport. You could say that I was between countries. In fact I quite like that as a way to describe how those four days felt. Not that it wasn’t great to see everybody of course. It was. Ah I’ll shut up before my mouth gets me into trouble again.

Where catching a plane before would be a trauma, now, it’s as forgettable as taking a bus. Well the actual bit where I go through airports is. I love flying. I’ve probably said that before but I’m really pleased I do, so bear with me. (Run away! It’s a bear!) It used to be really scary for me back in old anxiety days but there was always the bit in the middle that I loved. It starts not long after you take off and it’s best on cloudy days. It’s the bit when you rise above the clouds for the first time and see the miles and miles of unblemished blue sky above a ground made of pure white cotton wool and flour and you can look at the sun glinting off the marshmallow-mountains in the distance. I think the moment that happens, I become 4 years old again and it’s all magic everywhere. Goosebumps every time. Click on the pic below and there’s a little video from out of my window. err well do it when I can figure out how to get the pics up here from a French internet cafe…

So a smiley face with rosy cheeks (two, one each side of his face, for ‘tis trés cold at Bergerac airport) greets me and off we go in a borrowed Smart Car. Always quite liked them, and am well up with the concept of smaller cars being good in cities and small towns (Think that’s something that shows that there are almost certainly 2 species of humanity living uncomfortably side by side on this planet. Some people think that saying they need a big car, (well lets call it what it is shall we? a monster-truck), because they have a child and a dog, or even just a dog, and not a big one at that, is in some way acceptable and doesn’t make them a shit-head destroying the planet for their own penis substituting pleasure. It does. So, yay for Smart Cars. If men have big cars as some kind of genitalia display replacement, what are the women who drive SUV’s replacing? And, more importantly, what bodily part am I replacing by writing all this crap? Online diary as brain substitute?). Anyway, we chug along (not chingaling) with Geoff being most hungover, the poor fella, and take it out on the rest of the drivers of Bergerac by turning the lights on full beam in their face. This is where blogs collide rather than drivers so we go back safely, in to lovely, very old Bergerac and up the stairs in to Geoff’s lovely 16th century rented abode. Drop off stuff, and head for lovely Michael and lovely Andre’s lovely restaurant. Everything’s lovely in Bergerac even the lovely drug addicts. It’s the lovely law. A couple of lovely liveners in the lovely restaurant and then back to the lovely old house for some lovely pasta and lovely wine, a lovely chat, and then some lovely and well needed sleep before a lovely day of lovely pottering about in lovely Bergerac and then off to the lovely station to get the lovely train to Bordeaux…

A Lovely Dog

The first thing that went wrong was there wasn’t a train to Bordeaux. Lucky I asked really since the woman behind the counter had just, in a very friendly manner, converted my internet-given booking number into a nice set of posh looking SNCF tickets. (SNCF tickets if you’ve never experienced them are more like plane tickets than the mundane and frankly mediocre British equivalent. The French like a bit of a sense of occasion and they’re no different when it comes to train tickets. (Worryingly, now as a thirty five year old I have to think hard about which version of “Their/ There/ They’re” I am about to use. That’ll be some important brain cells dead then.)(I bet you’ve missed my incontinence when it comes to brackets, yeah? Consider it a mental work out and I don’t even charge… everyone likes something for nothing right? That’s the McDonalds way)) (check if you like, all the brackets are closed). What she had neglected to say was that despite providing me with a ticket that said “Train parti Bergerac à 18:59 pour Bordeaux”, it wasn’t ever going to, the main reason being that it had been cancelled, and if I had not said, “So I get the train from here at just before 7 right?” only in better French than that, I would still be sitting in Bergerac, possibly in an uncomfortable silence. Instead I sat on a bus to Libourne in an uncomfortable silence and then waited for a train to Bordeaux from there on an uncomfortable sub zero platform, thinking “at least when I get to Bordeaux I can get on a train with my couchette reserved and sleep all the way to Toulon.

So what’s a couchette then? A couchette is every type of hell known to man put into a train. Invented by Dante in the 17th century but left out of his Inferno because he felt they were a bit strong and got a little queasy every time he thought of them, they were first used by the Spanish for dragging confessions of sorcerous behaviour out of mad old women who lived alone with cats (now known as actresses). They went out of fashion after a Ye Olde Amnestye International campaign swayed Spanish public opinion against the practice. Immediately snapped up by the SNCF (Société Nationale de Carriage de Foreigners), they have been used ever since for carting cheap non-nationals across France once, and once only. The number of couchettes in service is kept in a delicate balance by the number of first time couchette users willing to travel at any one time and once everyone has had a go they will be discontinued. I for one, am going to Toulon today to change my ticket back to a normal train and frankly I don’t care how much extra it costs. With regard to my night on a couchette I’ll just say I got no sleep and leave it at that… There may be children watching and it’s not 9 o’clock yet.

Ahhhh, If there were one place I’d like to be after a night of hell, it’s the Presqu’Isle de St Mandrier and fortunately that’s exactly where I got to. I feel much better now after a few pastis, some top food, and plenty of red wine that doesn’t make your head hurt. St Mandrier is lovely in a different, more earthy way to Bergerac, featuring gorgeous azure Mediterranean vistas and big, cream coloured, rugged mountains covered in sweet smelling pine forests. Last night in a jet black, diamond studded sky, I saw 2 shooting stars, one of which was so low that you could see flame and sparks trailing behind it as it streaked across the heavens.

“Temps pour le petit déjeuner.” said Zebedee (who was French).

Yuka been down for a couple of days as if anyone would notice and there’s a little fly crawling across my screen. Oh the corruption of everything!

Since I’m obviously no good at this I have handed the writing over to a guest writer (stealing Geoff’s idea of a few weeks ago. What? You mean you haven’t been reading his lovely erudite site? Shame on you! It’s far better written than this. See the link over on the left for details.)

Guest writer Sylvie says “Woof!”

So cetaceans. Better check the spelling on that one as I don’t often have reason to type it. “What’s that you say Flipper? We’re talking dolphins here?” Well there you have it right from the blue-grey fellas mouth. Went out on a (medium) speed boat on the Intercoastal Waterway on Saturday and verily, an hour or so into the trip (gently pottering up the river slowing down every now and then so as not to maim the Manatee’s, “oooh me Manatees are giving me gip”) out of the water a hundred feet or so behind the good ship Speedy, jumped a dolphin shaped object in that particular, “I’m really having a lot of fun” way that they seem to have. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I vaguely remember that their closest land relative is the cow. Something about their shared land ancestor deciding to return to the sea. Or did I dream that?

Anyway, check out the little video thingy here of me swearing and being impressed in a very embarrassing way when Flipper decided to suddenly turn up next to the boat five minutes later… Warning: Contains grownup language and hippy-like exclamations.

Then Monday back to Ann Arbor via a far less bumpy plane ride than the one to Florida and a couple of nice days chilling out after all this hard work then Wednesday, horror of horrors, the return journey begins. How the hell did 3 months go by so bleedin’ quick?

Flight from Detroit to Newark and then a taxi to a most depressing motel room near the airport featuring a pizza and a bit of TV before setting my alarm clock for 4:30 am ready to catch BA flight 106 (errr scary sounding one…) to London Heathrow. Excellently, although I was in economy, the flight was far less than full and so I had the dream ticket of a row of 3 seats to myself all the way home. Stretch out and relax in front of The Office Christmas special from last year (yup, cried like a big girl at the end, innit sweet?) and then watched a DVD of David Bowie’s last tour (pre heart op) on me laptop. I love my laptop like Father Jack loves his brick. Top live show anyway just as I remembered from Wembley.

At Heathrow I wished my phone still worked as I waited to get picked up by my lovely sister who had just moved into her first house that she owns. In my tired confusion I managed to tell her the wrong terminal number to pick me up from. STILL not getting any cleverer.

Friday was a day of tiredness jetlag style with added grumpiness for no apparent reason. Did manage to get the new Douglas Coupland book though and it’s signed which is kinda groovy. Did I mention that I love Douglas Coupland?

Saturday was a day of catching up with friends in a proper English style pub, followed by a short stint at a party and then back to a mates for a bit for a natter before falling like a dolphin from a particularly large leap into me big comfy bed and giving it ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz’s.

And now your up to date cos it’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting in me mum’s front room listening to an old Flesh 4 Lulu album and drinking a cup of tea.

So where next? France, that’s where. Off there for 2 weeks on Wednesday to catch up with my favourite person that I’ve ever spent a month in Manhattan with and then down to Toulon to say “‘ello” to some old friends and to see whether I can speak French still.

Berlimey it’s odd to be back in Eng-ger-land.

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Thais drop origami ‘peace bombs’

Good afternoon, it’s Monday (Well it isn’t necessarily Monday while you read this or indeed a good afternoon, but it was when I wrote it, OK?) and I’m on Delta Flight 276 out of Sarasota going to Atlanta for an hour long lay over. I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned this before but when ever I find out a flight number I’m going to be on, I try it out in sentences to see how comfortable it would sound to hear a news anchor type person saying it; so for instance I will try out, “The doomed Delta flight 276 out of Sarasota…”, “The ill-fated Delta flight 276 took off from Sarasota”, and various others to set my mind at rest that I have at least a slim chance of getting to my destination without the words “Plummet”,”Cornfield”,”Fireball”,”Tragedy” or “The Brave Pilots Wrestled With The Controls Of The Stricken Aircraft Narrowly Missing A Local School” becoming involved in a news type way. Now the last flight I was on was Delta flight 1120 out of Atlanta. That sounds eminently safe as it doesn’t fit into either of my test sentences comfortably, I mean it just doesn’t roll off the tongue right? On the other hand “Delta flight 276” is a bit more of a worry and to top it all we’ve got a nun on board. I’ve seen the movies OK? And every single one of them features one of these Brides of Chucky. If she pulls out a guitar, I’m getting off. Did I also fail to mention we haven’t taken off yet?

Let’s go back to Florida, not literally, as I’m back to Ann Arbor today, but let’s go there in our minds shall we? I’ll lead, you follow and for gawds sake, try to keep your feet off mine? This suede is a bugger to clean. Florida has great roadside billboard adverts which kind of give you a clue about many of the people who live there. There’s ads for hip replacements, dentures, arthritis treatments, mole removal, and of course funeral parlours. A significant segment of the population here is O-L-D as Daphne and Celeste might say, and they probably never ever needed an alibi because they are all pretty much retired accountants. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve known some really nice accountants in the past, Dave, Trevor, Rhodri, Kevin, and other’s, all of’em diamond geezers to a man in a sorting-your-money-out type of way and in a social let’s-get-drunk-and-have-a-laugh way. But a state populated largely by geriatric accountants seems to me in some way to be lacking a little variety. I’m sure even the elderly accountants would probably agree with me on this one. They’d probably like to have a conversation on the golf course or over a bowl of the local chowder with someone who did something different to what they did. You know, just to get the brain cells kicking along a bit? Maybe I’m wrong.

Also as I go through a day I often just note down a couple of words if I think of, or experience something, that I think would be good to put in this big page of rubbish. The next note in my little black book (Moleskine) seems to say “Gay Locals”… I have no idea. Instead, I’ll commend the last Divine Comedy album to you. It really is very very good.

More flying to do now… Back probably when I get back to Britainland with more pictures and working technology…

Beers Tuesday next? Red Lion about 6? Oh yes…

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