Saturday 14 August 2010

Sunny, with a chance of grins

Stretches arms and yawns leisurely.

Imagine me doing that. The yawning and stretching. But imagine it happening somewhere sunny and hot with the pleasant relaxing sounds of wittle birdies tweeting their happy songs of blissful summer. Got the image? Hold it in your mind's eye for a moment and drink in the fresh air and feel the hot glow of the sun on your face.

Ok. Now forget all that and return to reality. Because even though we're here in the south of France it's cold and windy. WTF I hear you cry! Cos I did! Maybe its just early, but it pretty chilly and the mistral is blowing stuff all around.

I'm sitting here at the table in the garden of the lovely grande maison in Lapalud, near Orange. The sounds of the water lapping in the swimming pool have a calming effect boosted by the whisper of the breeze in the trees.

Amelia and William are up early, it's about 8:05. Cherie is kind of up but doing her best not to be. When I asked her if she'd had a good sleep, she replied, "Still having it."

Music to my ears! Amelia has just asked me if I'd like a coffee. Does the pope shit in the woods? Wait, I think I mixed a metaphor.

I'm just feeling a bit negative. We have a lot to do, little time and its not as sunny as I expected; but it's the first proper day dans la sud de la France and I'm with my kids who I have not seen for weeks.

Lovin it.

Friday 13 August 2010

Arrived 24 hours early

Wow. What a journey. Simples said the ad. The travelling was so quick we cancelled the hotel room in Dijon and sailed on down to William and Amelia's house in Provence.

Terriffic. We arrived at 19:20.

The worst part was trying to cancel the hotel room. The phone would not get through, the mobile website refused to accept the booking and the staff at Accor Hotels were unhelpful.

We ended up having to contact Cherie's sister in Wales and get her to do it over the Internet from her computer. Rubbish!


- Posted from my iPhone

Thursday 12 August 2010

Ferry terminal

Well, we arrived at the ferry terminal for our 9:20 sailing to Calais. Weather has been miserable. Filled the car again ready for France. Put the crappy plastic headlight converters on as per the instructions. They seem to have no effect to me. Still, at least we're legal.

Signing off!


- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Jubilee Way,Dover,United Kingdom


Holiday driving

Norton Canes. M6 toll road. Costa Coffee. Two americanos About time.

I like driving holidays. I really do. It's stressful, but the feeling of freedom is worth it.

We are going to Bugarach in the south of France. The long way via Provence to pick up Amelia and William.

Love it. We set of at one and the ferry is at 9:20 from Dover.

Keep you posted.


- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Cannock,United Kingdom


Friday 6 August 2010

Walkies!

I've just tried a bit of a techno experiment. I took the dog for a walk and tried a bit of mobile blogging. It was fine, but I decided it would be better from an actual computer. I even tried a new iPhone dictation app with moderate success. But, here I am back at home, with a laptop on my, well, lap.

Not really that much to say really except to shout "holiday" overexcitedly. That's right, I'm off on my jolly 'olidays in 6 more getups. Yay!

Tomorrow I've got a couple of holiday related jobs to do with Nat. We're going to clean the car inside and out, put some air in the tyres, check the oil, put lots of fuel in and plan the packing. Nancy and Maya are coming up tomorrow and we'll be picking them up from Preston station.

Also, it's my mum's birthday. Happy birthday to you, ma! We're going to have a bit of a party in the evening.

Gareth is meant to be coming on Sunday. That'll be good; I'venot seen him in ages.

Monday 2 August 2010

Time travel, fire and a broken bicycle.

Yeah. Odd title, isn't it.

But it kind of sums up my day. Well, the salient points anyway. The cream of the tomato soup that was the last 15 hours or so. Except for the bit about time travel. I didn't actually do any time travel today. If I could have done that, then I would have sorted out all the other things that happened today by shifting back a few hours and just trying again. Obviously whilst dodging my prior self to avoid any gnarly paradoxes.

No there was no time travel. But there was a film about time travel. It had been on TV over the weekend and I recorded it. It had that guy of off the IT Crowd. It was quite a good film. It was kind of like an old fashioned British farce but based around the problems caused by temporal paradoxes.

Anyway, I'll skim through the earlier parts of today. Got up. Ate stuff. Cycled to work (quite surprisingly sunny today). Worked on a modem dialling program so that it can call using multiple modems at the same time with each portion hosted in its own AppDomain using Windows telephony API at the application scope to give resource sharing. Debugged (failed to finish). Came home. Ate more stuff (really tasty stuff, thanks Cherie).

Glad that's out of my system. Now, onto the good stuff (*rubs hands together excitedly*).

Where to start? The broken bicycle. Yes, that's a good place to begin. I think you'll like this.

You know when you had that problem with that thing you bought? You know, that thing? You had to take it back. After you complained, it took them ages to sort it and then it was still wrong? You know the one. It always seems to happen to you, doesn't it?

Well, it doesn't just happen to you.

Oh no.

It happens to everyone. It's ubiquitous. The whole world seems to be populated with a subculture of a certain type of person who like to go to work to mess things up and make life harder for the rest of us. I could rant about my recent experience with BT. I won't. I'll save that particular shining jewel in the crown of British idiocy for another blog post. That shit pile deserves an epic. In fact, I think that one needs to be a video on YouTube. Only that way will you get the full effect of the rage in my head gradually building and turning my face redder until it looked like my brain might spontaneously erupt like Mount St. Helens.

Calm down, Ash. Breath deeply. Calm, calm. Think happy thoughts. Breath sloooowly. 1, 2, 3, 4; feeling calmer. Happy thoughts. Better.

Right, Halfords you b*stards. You're getting the brain drained all over you. Yep, and its all sloppy. Like brain custard. Yeah. See how you like it.

At the end of June, I bought Cherie a new bike so she could cycle to work. I already had a bike from Halfords, and its been great. It was a little pricey mind. Everyone said, "don't go to Halfords", and "Halfords bikes are crap. Get a proper one". But I didn't listen.

We saw an offer at Halfords on a ladies bike. It was only in stock at Preston. I booked it, turned up and ch-ching, it was mine. Well, Cherie's. This is Wednesday.

Cherie used it on Thursday and the left pedal and crank fell off. Ok, no problem. These things happen. We took it back. The guy had a bit of a giggle. Oh the pedal fell off! While she was riding it! I bet she looked a bit silly riding with one pedal. Ha ha ha. He he he.

Shut up and fix the bike. He did.

The bike was not used until the following week when, guess what, the pedal came off again. The bike went back. This time, they took it more seriously. It would be a while, they said, whilst they sent away for some new parts. We'd have to leave it with them.

We heard nothing for two weeks. Finally, they phoned us on Saturday. Yay! Bike is fixed! Happy days!

Monday. Pedal fell off. Again. Bike taken to shop. We wrapped it around the smug guy's head. Sorry, no we didn't. That must have been a dream.

You see, he said to us. "Blimey, this crank has had a lot of wear". We replied, "That's a new part you've just supposedly fitted". He said, "I've never heard of thread lock not working". We replied, "It's your lucky day then, you've seen it now". He said, "Don't worry, I know what the problem is. I can fix it". We replied, "You've had it for two weeks, why didn't you know how to fix it then?". Not happy.

Money back. Bish bosh. Off to a proper shop.

What? The fire? Oh yes, there was a fire. Thanks for reminding me.

I took the dog out for a walk and ended up in the middle of a scene from London's Burning. A brisk walk down to Foxhill Bank and, hang on, what's all this smoke. Yep, some kids (I reckon) had set fire to a fence or something. I stood and watched for a while with the locals who were standing at their front doors and pointing. The blues and twos showed up. It was pretty cool.

On the way back I bumped into my next door neighbour. Hi Pete! Turns out, he'd seen the smoke and had come for a nosey. We get talking. He says to me, "Still doing your blog, I love things like that". OMG, he reads my brain drain. He's probably reading this right now!

Brilliant! My blog's an iPhenom!