Those of you who shot off straight after the UKNOF28 meeting missed a sight. It was a hot air balloon landing on the lawn of the hotel. V graceful. I dashed up to the 10th tee to take the vid so that you could share the experience. Good eh? 🙂
Other posts featuring hot air:
It’s too darn hot – not really
30 degrees and the Eastcoast train aircon is broken!
Chromebooks, backups and crackling open fires
I expect the manager at the DeVere Wokefield Park kicks himself (or herself) every time he walks up the stairs in the Mansion House. This is the first sign you see. Took me a couple of days to notice it. Was there for UKNOF28
It would probably ruin the wallpaper if they tried to move the word Bed a little to the right:)
For reference this is how the signs look elsewhere in the hotel.
Nuff said!
Other curry related posts:
Collaboration using Google Docs to order curry
Rebellious moment in Currys audio dept
Internet connectivity powered by beer and curry
50% off kids at Easter! Sound too good to be true? You can bet your bottom dollar it is.
Take it from me. 50% off might sound like a good deal but get those kids home and the magic will soon wear off. They will want feeding, clothing, educating etc etc etc. That 50% will soon be a drop in the ocean compared with the ongoing maintenance and operational expenses.
Sure there are consolations. Fathers’ Day cards, new pairs of socks at Christmas. Nobody is going to turn those away. But before you buy take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself what you see in front of you. If you want to see your whole head and shoulders then don’t take them up on the 50% offer because pretty soon that mirror will need lowering so that the kids can see themselves in it before heading off to school. Brush their hair, adjust school uniform…
50% off kids at Easter? Buyer beware:)
Related posts:
Easter bunny – one for the ladies
As sure as chocolate eggs is chocolate eggs
I ordered some concrete slabs off the internet. Bought them on eBay actually. 21 off 600 x 600mm for £57. Had I bought them from a shed they would have been something like £120. They are going to form the base for the playhouse that I’m converting into a shed. We are using the patio where the playhouse currently stands as the new basketball court. As it happens the slabs came from under a deck so it would seem that they are eminently suitable for their new purpose.
I collected them from somewhere in Lincoln. Before setting off I looked up the address on Google Maps and even saw the house on Streetview. V useful. When I got there I had to reverse down a very narrow drive and in the end was only able to shift half of them. They are so heavy I didn’t want to risk knackering the Jeep’s suspension. Going to have to go back and get the others another time.
It seems strange in a world where we live a “virtual” life on the internet that there are actually solid items such as these concrete slabs that intrude on our everyday existence. It’s called reality. I looked it up on Wikipedia: “the state of things as they actually exist rather than as they appear or are imagined”.
Concrete slabs apart we shouldn’t forget that reality is generally much better than the virtual world. It’s a perfect spring day out there – get out and enjoy it:)
A few months back my brother-in-law (heretofore referred to as BiLly) treated me to lunch at a new Yannick Alléno resto in Paris called Terroir Parisien, located in the Palais Brongniart near Bourse. There we enjoyed a deeply satisfying meal, sampling from a menu that features stalwart Bistro dishes made new with the help of a pinch of little-here-little-there creative tweaking (i.e., Pot au Feu, Boudin Noir). Having indulged previously, my BiLly suggested — well, insisted — that as a starter I take the Champignons rosés de Chez Spinelli à la Fleur de Sel (a long fancy French way of saying “Crazy-fresh cremini button mushrooms produced by the renowned grower Spinelli, served with flaked sea salt”), and having no reason whatsoever to doubt the temerity of his urging I did just that. Uh..oh yes..YES, a point — no, two points — for BiLly.
Some weeks pass, and on a recent Friday night my BiLly’s wife and mine (sisters) found occasion to put a couples dinner on the calendar (with one of my lovely nieces included). My Missus had not yet experienced Terroir Parisien, so a booking was made and a table soon occupied. Menus passed around, experiences recounted, and soon enough My Missus was ordering…yep, those mushrooms (wanting to explore the menu a step furher I didn’t go again for the dish, somewhat to my regret). Lots of “Mmmmm!” and wide-open-eyed happiness, and then the “We should do this at home.” The 5-ingredient roster was no secret — so-fresh-they-snap-between-your-teeth Cremini mushrooms, flaked sea salt, hazelnut oil, faiselle (cottage cheese, or close enough anyway), ciboulette (chive) — and the presentation was right there before us. So why not?
In this space on 6-April I waxed on (and on) about the Orbec mushrooms we strive to lay hands on at the Lisieux Saturday morning farmer’s market whenever we are passing time at the La Famille Kessel Normandy hovel, and these we knew would do nicely. The salt, the oil, the cheese..check, check, check. And the ciboulette grows wild in the garden.
So here is where my narrative will take on the air of recounted recipe, playing — I can only hope — to my technical writing strengths (save for citing amounts as my experience may not be yours, hungry read, and hinges on how many salivating maws you are looking to sate).
Kory on the clock. Knife in hand. Lunch won’t wait.
First, I washed and trimmed the Orbecs, taking care not only to rid the marvelous mushrooms of any adherring sand but also cutting enough of the stem away to ensure that the only “woody” evoked was in their flavor. Following that, I carefully cut the Orbecs in a vertical slice (think top of button down to end of stem) at 1/8th inch thickness. Next, I arranged the slices on 5 plates (5 people) in a symmetrical spiral — for anyone out there following along, feel free to express your creativity in how you arrange your mushrooms…this ain’t “My way or the highway” territory — and moved on to the faiselle.
Methinks it is within the faiselle that the trick of Champignons rosés de Orbec à la Fleur de Sel lies. Taking a small bowl in one hand and a fork in the other, I mixed flaked sea salt into the faiselle, test-tasting it until…until…well, until I liked the the taste. I set the mixture aside.
Next, I poured the hazelnut oil into a small container into which I could easily dip a teaspoon. Set that aside too.
Cleaned and minced the fresh ciboulette and set that aside.
Now my mise en place was finished and I as ready to construct the dish. In order: (1) Used a fork to artistically flick small dollops of the faiselle onto the mushroomed plates, (2) Used a teaspoon to drizzle hazelnut oil onto the faiselle-laden mushroomed plates, and (3) Used my fingers to rain pinches of the minced ciboulette onto the oil-drizzled and faiselle-laden mushroomed plates.
And that’s that. I yelled “À table!” to assemble our running band of eaters, sliced up a crusty Boule, and braced myself for the “Mmmmm!”
Related posts:
Easy on Sunday morning…
We are back to typical British Bank Holiday weather today. It’s ok. I’ve done (ish) all my outdoor jobs for the moment. The sky has darkened and the wind is getting up.
I will have to do the blokey thing and go out to man the bbq at tea time but the bbq has a lid on it and I will have a beer in hand so all possible weather counter measures will in place. The beer won’t protect me from the rain but ensuring I get just as wet on the inside as on the outside seems to negate the effects.
The house is quiet. Although it serves as a shelter to kids 3 & 4 they are past the age of rushing down excitedly to start shovelling Easter eggs down the hatch. Classic FM is on the wireless. The world is at peace.
The photo shows some condiments procured last week on the Isle of Man. Basil infused olive oil and two vinegars: tomato and blood orange. The latter is particularly fine and doesn’t need to be accompanied by oil. A nice bit of organic bread to soak it up from the plate is just the job.
The rain is now coming down in earnest. It’s very relaxing hearing it on the conservatory roof. There are roses and lillies in the conservatory. The rain doesn’t stop the birds. I can hear them singing away. Probably sat on a branch in a bit of shelter chatting to each other – about the weather. It’s not only us humans who do that sort of thing.
Scattered around me are various musical instruments. The conservatory does get a reasonable amount of use all year round and tomorrow hopefully the rain will have moved on and we can have the doors open to the garden. We have people coming to lunch. Another bbq.
Still the rain comes down. It sends a shiver of relaxation through my spine. I’ll have to get showered and dressed soon. When Mrs Davies comes back from her dose of religion I am on chauffeur duties taking her and her pal to a craft fair in Doddington Hall. Ordinarily Anne would drive but Kid2 has taken her car to Pontefract for a weekend doing whatever they do in that part of the world. Look it up on tripadvisor. It will quite possibly identify the only attraction as Pontefract Racecourse. I haven’t looked myself.
Nothing wrong with the races but they do expect you to go home at some point so Kid2 have had to find other diversions to keep herself busy. Probably involves a pub.
Over the fence in the allotments I can see a Lincolnshire flag looking sorry for itself. I must get our camping flagpole out. Keep thinking of doing it. We have a pirate flag and the national flag of Mexico purchased at the football in Cardiff during the Olympics. You know it makes sense. I can tie them both on. That way I’ll always be able to find out house amongst all the others, assuming I’ve forgotten our address and what the house looks like.
I don’t really do craft fairs meself so I will either sit in the caff watching the world go by or nip somewhere else. It’s an adventure. Big pic below is of the oils and vinegars for sale in industrial quantities at Tynwald Mills in the Isle of Man.
Other oil related posts: BP oilspill area superimposed onto map of UK
Thing is it’s Easter innit. Spring break if you’re from across the pond. And what is traditional on Easter Sunday? We go to church eat chocolate Easter eggs.
This year only kids 2, 3 and 4 are around which will make it a tad cheaper. On the flip side a cheapo egg with chocolate buttons inside doesn’t seem to do the job anymore. The order was for Lindor, Thorntons and “a nice one”.
Waitrose didn’t do Thorntons and whilst I considered chocolate buttons to be within the definition of a nice one I figured it was best to play it safe and buy them all the same one.
Now there are some rules when it comes to Easter eggs the main one being that you have to give your dad a piece. That way it’s possible to indulge without any comments regarding how fattening chocolate eggs are so no you can’t have one. Wouldn’t want a whole one anyway. I’d be constantly brushing my teeth.
The other thing to know about Easter eggs is that every adult member of the extended family has always considered it their duty to buy nephews, nieces and grand children Easter eggs. This results in each kid having a ridiculous surfeit of chocolate all of which is consumed within a one or two day window.
This makes Easter very similar to Christmas which is the other time of year people go to church consume lots of chocolate. They also usually take advantage of the dual public holiday by taking the rest of the week off thus getting 8 days off for “the price of four”. The main difference between Easter and Christmas is that the latter also includes compulsory consumption of vast quantities of alcohol for a month in the run up to the big day. It doesn’t therefore take a month or two for the body to recover from Easter in the way that the aftermath of Christmas is typically characterised.
This Easter the barbecue has been rolled out of its winter quarters and will be exercised today, Easter Sunday and tomorrow, the bank holiday Monday when we have guests coming for an all afternoon session of eating and drinking. At least that is my expectation. Hopefully the guests will think that way too or I’ll have a lot of wine to get through. Suppose I don’t have to open all the bottles!…
So that’s it. enjoy your chocolate eggs, your barbecue or whatever else you do to celebrate the double holiday long weekend Easter spring break. Next week is UKNOF in Reading. Look out for network engineering posts.
Just got a free newspaper and a cup of coffee from Waitrose. I don’t drink coffee but Anne does so I got her a black one to maximise the chance of it staying warm until I got it home. We only live 5 mins away.
I don’t read hard copy newspapers either. I get them all on the internet, at least those without a paywall. Now this did give me a bit of a dilemma. Here I was taking a freebie totally gratuitously knowing that I probably wouldn’t read it. My thinking was that it would come in handy to light the firepit this weekend. Not great from a planet saving perspective.
This marketing tactic of Waitrose has to be working big time. Anne never used to go there but she often does now. One of her friends just pops in for a coffee without even buying anything. The cost of a few coffee beans is nothing compared with the additional revenues from their more expensive quality groceries and they will get their papers at a heavily discounted wholesale rate.
I’ll finish with a little snippet of a conversation held with my wife over sms:
Anne: Fiery red rice for the salad available in Waitrose
Me: Yay – you can rely on Waitrose to get the basics right
:))
Other Waitrose related posts:
Hi Olaf.
I hope you don’t mind the informal start to my letter as, after all, your company’s recent one to me regarding an increase in the price for my package from EE was as equally informal (I’ve popped a copy of it in the gallery below, though I’m sure you already know all about it).
Before I start, I will admit that you have a contractual basis from which to make the change detailed in the letter, and can mount a robust (albeit one open to challenge) argument about regulatory compliance. That isn’t quite the point, though.
First, I’d like to draw your particular attention to the line that says “RPI (Retail Price Index) is a measure of inflation, which directly affects the cost to run our service.”
Interesting. And I’d like to point out a few things to you which would suggest that you are mistaken.
I am sure you can see at this point why I have a problem believing you when you say that RPI (or CPI) has had a direct affect on your entire business; unless in spite of what I have cited above there is a cost that has risen so disproportionately high that it means the average cost increase is the same as the RPI? What could that cost be…perhaps Kevin Bacon’s fees?
It’s been 3 days. I haven’t fallen in love yet. I don’t think it’s going to happen. No, I am not falling in love with this new phone. I thought this would be the one.
A female college roommate once told me, “Men learn to like the women they love, whereas women learn to love the men they like.” The point being that men tend to fall in love first…and fast. They know within moments. I’m a man, so I know this to be true. I will never develop feelings for the technology in my hand.
I am in no danger of turning into the Joaquin Phoenix character in “Her”. I already know that unlike Theodore Twombly I will at no point get sexual gratification from my new device, not even if I suddenly discover a Scarlett Johansson voiceover app.
At noon the text came: “Happy Hour?”
My friend Amanda. She just started a job at a hip little engineering firm in Austin that is doing some kind of data analysis on franchise business data. She held her previous job — the one she took straight out of college — for 16 years prior, and for that she used to take a considerable amount of ribbing.
I decide to drop in at Amanda’s new office, which is in an old house downtown where 60-year-old dilapidated houses rent for $300 per square foot. It’s in a part of hip-Austin that is only slightly indistinguishable from dilapidated Austin.
The first thing I see on walking into the living room (the lobby) is a huge monitor that serves as a metrics dashboard of some sort, displaying scrum and defect statistics. The display changes to show another app, one that offers a graph of beer consumption in the office over the last month, complete with a projection of when the beer will run out. The beer of reference is housed in an antique refrigerator on the other side of the living room…. er, welcome area that has been retro-fitted with a spigot that serves to turn the entire thing into a huge keg. First thought? This is a LOT more comfortable than my “office” in the corporate cube farm.
Amanda appears, and soon we are driving the 12 blocks to Arro, a trendy little French restaurant I’ve wanted to try. We sit at the bar, and I begin the conversation, saying “Thanks, I wanted your advice – actually your reassurance about something.” I then proceed to tell Amanda about my having given notice at work, and how I’m unsure about whether to take a leave of absence or just quit. We also talk about her new job, and how refreshing she is finding it to work with smart people who don’t get hung up on egos, and who just focus on the solution.
All week long the focus for the coming Saturday has been easily described: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”. The film was released in France on 2-April and circumstance and scheduling conspired to keep La Famille Kessel from taking it in over opening weekend, but that would be rectified on Saturday. No doubt, no question, no choice.
Woken this morning by Bella the Cat and the call to breakfast (again, “À Table!”), my first thought that didn’t involve body function was “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”! Hot coffee? Crave it, and not for the caffeine. Orange juice? Cold and sweet and slightly fizzy on my tongue (I mix it 1:1 with Quézac, or whatever other cold sparkling water is lurking in the fridge), every morning I revel in the marvelous contrast it offers to that other beverage. Some edible or another, depending on the day or location or mood or availability borne of desperation. Breakfast, yes, please…but let’s not forget “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, OK?
Just as I was breaking the surface into full consciousness My Missus says to me, “This morning we need to replace the broken lamp, and I want to go to that Indian furniture and accessories shop we walked into last month, to buy a birthday gift for my sister.”
But…yes, OK, but…but…”Captain America: The Winter Soldier”? Mind you, it is not yet 9h30 and we decided days ago that we would go to a late afternoon showing at a nearby cinema, but…but…”Captain America: The Winter Soldier”?
I polished off breakfast, helped my cups and plates and such into the dishwasher (which has needed replacing since Kevin Feige produced his first flick for Marvel Studios — that would be “Iron Man” — in 2008…and perhaps the subject of a future all-too-compelling “Saturday Snapshot” in this space?), splashed water on my face and over the part of my head that once housed my once-signature bushy brown locks, figured out the clothes and shoes thing, and declared myself ready to do what had to be done. Somewhere in Paris there was a cheap halogen lamp just waiting to be brought home, and Indian curios in the 11th Arrondissement to be picked over.
A long time ago I used to cycle everywhere; then I learned how to drive……. then I learned how to drink and how to hail (and afford) a taxi….. then I moved to the countryside with idiot drivers like me that didn’t really look out properly for cyclists….. then I moved to the Surrey / London border and the quack told me to stop abusing my joints.
But now, I have an all clear and the realisation that there is some epic cycling country around here. I write this, for example, after following National Cycle Route 4 pretty much from home to Tower Bridge this morning, through Richmond Park and substantially along the river (including past Craven Cottage, home of the mighty Fulham Football Club). I am now editing it a few days later after a 25 mile blast from home to Richmond Park to say hi to the deer.
Of course, being in telecoms means such a venture cannot be undertaken without some degree of geekist equipment. So, I have my bike, a Specialized Crosstrail. Hybrid, obviously, because (1) I don’t want to be associated with the LycraLouts that ride two abreast on main roads and (2) becasue there’s no way a roadbike can handle tow paths at speed.
There’s the Moon LED lights that charge from a microUSB socket, which is incredibly useful. They have a multitude of settings, which I cannot master despite them having only one button. Oh, and they’re bright, which I suppose is the main thing. There’s also the generic Chinese reverse engineered wireless speedometer, which is essential for knowing just how fast the idiot BMW driver that missed you with a nanometre clearance was going relative to you…. and, more importantly, how far it is to the pub for pie, chips and ale.
Which pretty much just leaves some form of mapping solution. And for that, I have two essential pieces of kit. The first is my iPhone; the second is something to put it in – for which I have this handle handlebar bag. It is importantly water resistent (to be fair it only gets mildly moist even in a monsoon downpoor). It’s large enough to hold a wallet and a battery pack (essential for mobile mapping, for reasons I have previously written about) and has a clear plastic cover on top and a pouch for your iPhone (apparently other devices are allegedly available). There’s also a neat slot for a headphone cable, though I for one would rather hear the idiot in the BMW coming than listen to my playlists.
This week I’ve been on holiday in the Isle of Man and have not shaved with a view to testing whether 4 or 5 blades are best for shaving. In theory I guess the 5 blades should give a better shave but there is also an argument that the fifth bade may be redundant.
The sequence of photos takes you though it. I order of appearance:
1The tools – including the King of Shaves shaving gel. Best in the game in my experience. 2 Close up of the razor heads. 3 Nivea aftershave – don’t normally use the stuff but thought I would for this test. 4 Before the shave. 5 Lathgered up. 6 the 5 blade result. 7 Half way through. 8 The finished job. 9 The 4 blade shave.
The result is buried amongst the photos. Manipulating photos in WordPress isn’t easy and the text is where the text is:)
The result: Mrs Davies Senior thinks the 4 blade was smoothest. The current Mrs Davies preferred the 5 blader.
I think I might marginally prefer the feel of the 5 blader when shaving but tbh there isn’t much in it and if the 5 blades are significantly more expensive than the 4 then it’s a non starter.
Voila…
My friend manages to piss me off and it’s not yet 8:00 in the morning. A thought flashes across my brain, “Maybe he’s not the root cause.”
This morning, the first text I see: Priority 1 emergency ticket.
Damn. I hope the server isn’t down.
As usual, my alarm went off this morning at 6:00. I look at my phone and see a text message that was sent late last night, an automated message from our Linux server passing along a support ticket. A surge of anxiety rushes through me. “Oh no, I forgot to re-enable the submit button in our application!” A suspicion, though I don’t really know yet for certain. I jump out of bed.
I check the emergency ticket’s timestamp. About 10 hours ago. “Oh please,” I pray-but-do-not-say as I head for my computer, “Please let it be that someone jumped in and handled this last night.”
Last night we performed a software upgrade to the server. The entire team on the phone, dialing in from multiple geographies, talking through headsets and typing commands on the server, a virtual everyone-from-home Mission Control. All talking on the same call, as we’ve done dozens of times before. The launch pad ready, countdown begun, I was walking us through the checklist and then gave the go ahead to deploy. But wait! There’s an error, a build error that is picked up by the programming group doing the deployment. We investigate and discover that the server is offline and end users are waiting. Finally, we call it. Abort.
19.11 GB of 471.48 GB – About 6 hours
Roughly 8 minutes ago I fired up my brand-spanking-new 3.5” hard drive enclosure (complete with newly-installed and formatted 4TB 3.5” hard drive), navigated via Finder to my bursting-at-the-seams 500GB 3.5” hard drive (also happily enclosed, and for over 5 years now), nimbly hit Ctrl+A to highlight everything, and dragged the highlighted contents over to begin the process of copying the data therein to its new home.
31.41 GB of 471.48 GB – About 6 hours
Speaking only for myself (though I suspect my words will ring true for a great many, if not the majority), I am not at all surprised to find the act of upgrading my external storage to be akin to cleaning out a household “junk drawer”. Generally speaking, I know what I have collected on Compote – the original 500GB drive – over the years, and yet many surprises abound.
55.10 GB of 471.48 GB – About 6 hours
Before I go any further, I should come (somewhat) clean by saying that not all of the flotsam-and-whatnot that resides in my digital universe has come into my possession in a pure and unassailable manner. Without admitting anything that could be used against me in a court of law (somewhat mad I am for “Law & Order” in its various flavors, and it is especially good when viewed in pristine .mkv on such-and-such device at my leisure), I will just say that I am, have been, and always will be a music/film/TV junkie and leave it at that.
So I am seeing that all kinds of curious things are moving over to the new neighborhood (Windfall be its name, and in case you aren’t paying close enough attention, yes, I do use a certain fruit as the basis for the network drive naming convention at Chez Kessel). To offer just a hint of flavor, these were the last three items I saw go by:
A part of a television documentary, lossless Stevie Ray Vaughan music files, part 11 of a Galactus-sized collection of Marvel comics in .cbr format…any moment now I expect to see a box of old staples, a airline-issued personal sewing kit, and a too-well-thumbed and dog-eared deck of cards!
125.45 GB of 471.48 GB – About 5 hours
Just to fill in some of the backstory here, Compote is actually only one of three long-maintained “junk drives” whose contents will be making their way over to the oh-so-shiny-and-sparkly Windfall today (and from the looks of it, into tomorrow). Decorum restrains me from naming the other two, but suffice it to say they don’t fall very far from the tree, and each one is chock full of the same kind of gotta-have-it-and-someday-I-will-get-around-to-doing-something-with-it digital entertainment media detritus.
161.02 GB of 471.48 GB – About 4 hours
To be clear, I am not what used to be called a “packrat” or what today is more readily referred to by the darker and far less cute-sounding “hoarder”. No, I actually have real purpose in maintaining the nearly 2 TB of this-that-and-the-other that is currently undergoing consolidation onto the honker of a hard drive that is Windfall! You see, the center of my aforementioned digital universe, AppleKory (feel free to take a short break here to point fingers, cover your mouth, and enjoy a giggle at my expense), is sacrosanct, and new content must be scrubbed and polished before being allowed to cross the barrier into the vast media libraries I am forever building there. Thus the external drives? Holding pens of a spinning platter order.
206.26 GB of 471.48 GB – About 3 hours
Insight and useful lessons are no doubt popping off of these pixels, different depending on the individual reader (none of whom, I hope and pray, has the legal standing needed to commit me for observation or my own safety). I do want to share one last piece of information, though, to anyone out there who is finding inspiration in my personal data migration exercise and is now considering moving down their own amalgamation road: make sure the enclosure you have or will buy is capable of handling the new hard drive. SATA is SATA is SATA, right? Well, no. The SATA enclosures I bought years ago for my soon-to-be-pensioned 500GB drives were only able to handle the new 4TB drive up to a maximum of 1.8TB, a key fact I learned only after the shoes and socks were off, the screwdrivers were pulled out, the hard drive was relieved of its antistatic bag and installed into the enclosure, and the whole schmear was connected up and awaiting formatting.
258.14 GB of 471.48 GB – About 3 hours
<sigh>
Related posts:
After a bit of training, a few blog posts, and a little apprehension, here is my result from yesterday’s Lincoln 10K:
| Pos. | No. | Name | Gun Time | Chip Time | Chip Pos. | Gender | Gender Pos. | Cat. | Cat. Pos. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3200 | 1466 | Paul Tyler | 1:06:52 | 1:02:29 | 3090 | Male | 2211 | M35 | 292 |
The race itself was remarkably pleasurable. As I’d suspected, the start was tricky, as after lots of waiting around the gun finally went off and I got to watch the people who are better runners than me speed off, knowing they’d be taking the places in the pubs for Sunday lunch long before I would.
I won’t go through the whole race here as that would be about as interesting as listening to a work colleague describe a dream. I will simply say that it took me a good long time to sort my pace out, then there was a bit of a lull in the middle, and I enjoyed a better-than-expected second half.
Though it may be something of a cliché to gush on about the support you receive en route, it truly does make the race not only achievable but worthwhile. I’ve been a spectator at many races and I know that for most of the participants it requires a lot more effort than simply walking to the edge of your driveway with a cup of tea to see what all the noise is about. The effort from the supporters is worth every stride taken, and it provides quite an ego boost as well!
I want to offer a huge thanks, too, for all the support I’ve received from trefor.net and from those on social media. You all helped to push me over the line, and I am happy to share the feelings I have of pride and accomplishment with you.
So for the time being, quite simply, thus ends the subject of the Lincoln 10K. THANK YOU.
Paul Tyler presents Lincoln A to Z on Siren FM, and the audio he recorded at the Lincoln 10K will be broadcast soon.
@lincolnatoz
Related posts:
Yanked to the surface of consciousness on this Normandy morning by the potent combination of bright sky warmth-providing orb, insistent cat, breakfast aromas (coffee, toasting raisin bread), My Missus yelling “À table!”, and the promise of the Saturday farmer’s market in Lisieux (gotta get there before those Orbec mushrooms are gone!).
April in Paris? Schmapril in Schmaris!
** I do plan to return to the whole “April in Paris” in a positive, musical sense in these pages quite soon, but let’s stay on point, shall we? **
Basket in hand, car keys in other hand, shoes on feet…OK, I’ve got the appendages covered (rest of the body too, as the last thing this American wants to do is throw a fright into scads and scads of provincial Frenchies). A few coins in my pocket, and a rough-but-working-itself-out lunch scheme forming.
Our late arrival at the market had My Missus and I worried we would go Orbec-less this weekend, but I am happy to report (and indicate via photograph) that this was not the case.
800 grams of the finest and freshest Normandy-grown Cremini mushrooms secured, our market wander could take on a more relaxed pace and did, leading us to various vegetables and to our lunch plate protein of choice, which today we had decided would be a few nice sole. With no less than five fish mongers hawking their wares at the Lisieux farmer’s market, the selection and pricing is usually in line with expectation and today was no exception (though our score – five good-sized sole for just 10€ — certainly could be described as ‘exceptional’).
Just had Waitrose on the dog and bone saying the kecks are ready. They didn’t actually use those words. I translated for you. The woman on the other end of the phone actually said “Mr Davies it’s Waitrose dry cleaners here. Your trousers are ready to collect.”
I’ve started to use a lot more natural language on this blog. Eased into it. I don’t think you could be reading through back issues of posts and say to yourselves “hey he’s started to change his style”. There wasn’t one of those transformational moments.
Makes you think about the use of language though. In one sense it surely doesn’t matter what words are used. As long as people understand what you are trying to say. Wft, fyi, btw, atb, brb, lol,swalk. Most people will know what I’m on about there. At least most people whose native tongue is English. Oh and below a certain age, except for the last acronym in which case it may well only be people above a certain age that get it.
The extent to which the language used almost depends on how far you can push it before people begin to not understand what you are trying to say. knowworramean? Grammatical conventions should also evolve. why does it matter that we have to use upper case for the first letter after a full stop (that’s a period for those over the pond – I realise that I overstepped the limits if comprehension there for some). the full stop informs that the end of the sentence has been reach thus allowing the reader to draw mental breath.
I may still chose to start someone’s name with upper case but it isn’t absolutely necessary. tref or Tref. You still understand what I’m trying to say.
In the interest of research I herewith request that you leave a comment with an alternative word for trousers. One go per comment. There are two prizes on offer. A pint of beer goes to the person with the most variants and another pint goes to whoever leaves the last comment with a word for trousers. All entries must be in English and in the event of a dispute you must be able to somehow prove common usage of your word. If beer is not your thing I’ll stretch to a small sherry. Prizes must collected in person.
More good reeds:
rong spelins
All you tech heads out there think your stuff is cool don’t you? Your tablet computers, new phones, operating systems and other stuff my grandmother would not have heard of. No new product introduction can compare with what you see in this picture.
It’s new life coming into the apple tree we planted in our back garden a couple of years ago. It will grow and produce apples. More apples than the two we got last year. They were two good ones. Two of the best.
The only good Apple is one that grew on a tree. Read into that what you like:) It’s the weekend and what does the weekend mean? Jobs list. Jobs that don’t get done during the week. Things like clean out the car1 because we are off on holiday. Mow the lawn for the first time this year. Take Kid4 to a badminton tournament.
When all that is done I should be able to relax a little. Maybe stroll into the Bailgate. Bump in to a few people I know and talk about nothing. Look in a shop window.
I do need want to buy a Leatherman. I had two but they both got nicked. With a leather man if you have a bit of string that needs cutting there is no problem. Need to tighten a screw? Hey that’s easy. Simply chose the correct screwdriver bit and you’re away. Stone in your horse’s hoof. The Leatherman will have something for it. Chop down that enormous tree that gradually grew in the middle of your back garden and before you realised was taller than the house…
My memory was jogged re my Leatherman shortage when strolling round the new GO Outdoors shop that’s opened just down the road from us. Doing a bit of bag procurement I was. There is a half decent range of Leathermans Leathermen on display. I noted the top of the range model had £30 knocked off if I had a discount card, which I do. However a quick search noted that I could get it with a further £30 knocked off from Amazon. I didn’t make that impulse buy.
This week I revisited the Amazon store with a view to making a one click purchase. I didn’t make that purchase because I found out that the model I had my eye on wasn’t the top of the range after all. There was a titanium version. Gordon Bennet! That made sense to me. However the titanium version was about £130.
So this was my dilemma. Feed the kids/buy them shoes/go on a family holiday/pay off the mortgage/fund a cure for stupidity or buy the Leatherman. Well I am going to buy the Leatherman but I will wait until I have a piece of string that needs cutting. Then I’ll feel I bought it because I needed it and it won’t have been such an extravagance.
Anyway gotta go. I have to prepare to take a kid somewhere and then build up the mental strength to clean the car…
1Whether it needs it or not – actually even I think it needs doing!
Wilkinson Sword Hydro – the ultimate razor?
In the run up to Christmas Kid4 scours the online free give away offers for presents for the family. Very resourceful.
One of these offers has just come through: a Wilkinson Sword Hydro 5 blade razor job. It looks very good quality albeit over 3 months late. I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth especially if it is going to give me a shave or two but you do have to wonder about the marketing of this offer.
Either it proved to be more popular than their wildest dreams and they ran out of stock very quickly or their planning was v poor and the execution terrible. If the first was the case it’s interesting to note that their manufacturing lead times would appear to be around 3 months. Seems a lot for a bit of plastic even if it did come personalised.
Whichever is the case I am going to end up using it because I have it, it has 5 blades and it was free. I will of course report back so that you, the unshaven masses, can benefit from the experience. It will be quite annoying if I end up thinking it is good becasuse I will have to go out and buy more blades and you can bet your bottom peseta that they are even more expensive than my usual quad blades.
Maybe I’ll let Anne decide which is best for smooth cheeks. I was going to finish this post with the sign off “something for the weekend?” but I don’t bother shaving at the weekend. A hangover from my old rugby playing days when I needed to look as rugged as possible on a Saturday afternoon.
So on Monday morning you shall know. If I remember.
Ciao bebe (strokes his non existent beard and rides off into the sunset)…
Other posts mentioning the word shave:
UC for small business (boring considering this is the weekend:)
In my house I’m known as Last Minute Paulie, as ‘Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?’ is a motto one could easily associate with me. Rather than get the lawn mower out this week, for instance, I’ve been happily watching the grass grow, employing the ready excuse of it being too damp while bestowing the virtues of a natural meadow look to the chap a couple of doors down who obviously doesn’t approve.
In spite of my proclivity to procrastinate, though, to ensure a good race day experience I am planning to be prepared way in advance. By that I mean sitting on my backside, browsing running websites for tips and not acting on them. As you would expect, of course, the advice to be had is entirely practical. Pace yourself…eat the right amounts of the right foods…make sure to use the facilities before the gun goes off…etcetera and so forth. I know, though, from my limited racing experience that these mostly-helpful websites will fail to mention the following:
Enjoy running on the road. In the first road race I ever took part in I was almost overwhelmed at the realization that the road was closed especially for me and my fellow racers, and with every race since I have enjoyed the same feeling. In fact, this is almost worth the entry fee alone, especially as the local residents have no doubt been moaning about it on social media for a few weeks prior.
Picture of a rib joint of beef before it went into the oven. Today we are having the works: beef (medium to rare), roast spuds and parsnips, carrots & swede, cheesy leaks and I might pop out to get some French beans cos kid4 likes them. I also have some nice beef stock for gravy and a new jar of Dijon mustard. No horseradish sauce – I don’t do it. As a starter we are having smoked salmon then a lemon torte for pud though we might have that after the cheese as I’ve bought a nice cabernet sauvignon and I like to finish the bottle with some cheese, a la mode Francais.
I have of course rung my own mam for a chat. We had our Mother’s Day conversation last weekend. I sent her a card a week early – got the weekend wrong. It was ok. She also got the weekend wrong and had just opened the card before I called her. Now you know where I get it from:)
Nom nom…
I’m not a lawyer. This is something of which I am proud. Nor am I a chartered accountant, this is something of which I am equally proud.
People that are in Regulatory Affairs (telecoms or otherwise) often individually present a real Heinz 57 of backgrounds, abilities and skills. As far as I am aware, no-one leaves school thinking “I want to be in Regulation!”. You sort of fall into it, from a carrier in the faculties of law, economics, accounting or the commercial arena – and have to be able to hold your own, at a high level, in all of them. In all cases, you need a desire and drive to get under the skin of the regulator and former incumbents alike; those that know me know I revel in this sort of protagonism.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I have an academic background in Finance and Management and a professional background in commercial affairs and compliance, hence my ultimate arrival in Regulatory Affairs. 18 year old Pete Farmer would’ve laughed if anyone suggested this is where I would end up.
So, this isn’t legal advice. It isn’t to be relied upon. It’s to be taken on an “as-is” basis as a way of stimulating debate and discussion around a subject of which I am as passionate about as annoying the Office of Communications; food.
Believe it or not, in my spare time I run a foodie
Yes folks it’s here. Le weekend. Don’t ask me why it is in French. I’m not aware of any particular French theme to this weekend. Not the 14th of July or anything like that and I don’t think this is one of the weekends the baggage handlers go on strike.
Nevertheless, French it is. Not the whole post. Some of you would have to refer to Google Translate to understand it (si ce n’est pas vous ignorez cette dernière phrase). Also my French is frozen in time in 1978 with a B at O’Level so I doubt I’d do the subject of le weekend any justice were it written in that language. Think of the problems Google Translate would have understanding it.
In fact the whole opening section of this post is misleading. Yes the post has been written
As I’ve written previously, I only ended up entering the Lincoln 10K as the route goes through one of the grids from The Lincoln A to Z map, which is due to the overly convoluted radio program I present. Each episode is constructed from what we find in a randomly selected grid square. The route of the Lincoln 10K goes through this grid three times, so I’ll be running through the grid describing the scenes and my feelings and Jonny, the programs producer, has elected that he will describe events from the spectators point of view.
So far we have completed 30 of the 52 grids, which the esteemed Trefor Davies also contributes his glorious verbal dexterity to. The program has given me a different way of viewing the city. As I ride on the cycle path, past the ‘only just out of town’ retail park, I remember the miserable, drizzly morning we spent trying not to moan too much about our consumer driven concrete surroundings.
Lincoln being the place I have spent most of my life has personal memories scattered all over its landscape. One grid stands out though, the grid where, with my family, we watched the Olympic flame being passed from one of the torch bearers to another. I’ll never forget the look on that mans face as he received the flame, its was a ‘lottery win plus your team beating your nearest rivals 5 – 0 multiplied by the birth of your children’ kind of look, one that illustrated joy, excitement and emotion. I’m please I wasn’t one of the many experiencing this moment by looking through a smartphone, its burnt onto my memory banks and from that moment on, the Olympics transformed from being the usual British pavement looking attitude to seeing just how high we could soar.
When we revisited that grid for the program, Jonny and I asked the question “Has the legacy of that incredible few weeks lived on?”
If the Olympics was like a euphoric time when you and your friends went on a bender and beat the night, the word ‘legacy’ had just about sounded out of the closing ceremony when the inevitable hangover over of the sports funding cuts hit. The highfalutin sports – sailing and equestrian faded back out of the grasps of the underclass and you could almost hear the water being drained out of swimming pools when British swimmers didn’t reap success at the following world championships. Just lately, The Royal Mail had a PR disaster when they didn’t reward our successful Winter Olympians and Paralympians with a gold post box. The legacy it seems isn’t worth the price of a pot of gold paint.
The good news is that 2 days before the Lincoln 10K we get to see the inspirational Winter Paralympic athlete Jade Etherington take part in an open top bus parade. The tour will also take in schools the day before the pupils take part in road races too. Huge congratulations to Jade and lets hope we can relive a little of that magic time and inspire the Lincoln 10k runners.
Paul Tyler presents Lincoln A to Z on Siren FM
@lincolnatoz
Le wood store est fini, as they say in Cannes. It’s the sort of thing they drop into dinner table conversation at A List get-togethers on the Riviera. It’s a while since I’ve been. What with not owning a villa in the South of France and all.
In Cannes they would be talking about the fact that Jean Claude1 has finished the job. He is a treasure. You didn’t think they did it themselves do you? Plays havoc with your hands. Anyway it’s about having the time to do it, and the inclination.
Here in Lincoln it’s a different game. We build wood stores ourselves in Lincoln. It’s a matter of pride. Mind you no point in rushing it. It’s a job that has been needing doing for years. These things need careful consideration. Planning is all important. My mate Terry has been doing his bathroom for the last 25 years. Rush a job and do it twice, as the old saying goes.
The wood store is now finished, though the wood has not all been moved into the protection of its confines. That could be
Spotted these speakers in Currys audio department yesterday. They had “do not count” written on a label on top of each one. I therefore counted them. Don’t think anyone spotted me. The moment was captured on video and is now on YouTube for all to see. I’m a rebel, me.
Other weekend reads:
Latest photo in the series #plaques passed on the way to work. This one is to be found at the bottom of Steep Hill in Lincoln.
Photographed in train loo between Manchester Piccadilly and Sheffield en route home from 4G panel at Convergence Summit North. Not in perfect focus as train wouldn’t stop shaking:)
More bog tales: