The House Husband

Having finished reading about the Tube and its wonderful engineering miracles, I have just started reading a biography of the very late Attila the Hun. I was rather dismayed to read today about a process called ‘cranial deformation’, which the Huns, along with other Steppe tribes, practised. It just shows how differently we all view things like personal appearance and the purpose of a head.

The process involved the flattening out of the forehead. To achieve this, the Huns would strap a flat stone to the head of their newborn babies, increasing the size of the stone as the child grew. Apart from flattening out the forehead, this would also make the nose wider at the top and, I assume, spread the eyes out a bit.

Anyway, those that know these sort of things have produced a reconstruction of a female Hun’s head. I pinched their image…

A Hunnish female after cranial deformation

The only useful purpose I can imagine for this would be to look incredibly ugly, thereby scaring the hell out of your adversary. It would certainly look a bit primeval. The Huns didn’t leave a written history and created very little art (apart from a few scattered cave paintings) so it’s very difficult to know why they did this. It’s strangely comforting to realise they’d be quite unable to head butt anyone in close up fighting.

This leads me to wonder what this reduction in cranial volume did to their brains. The forehead has evolved n order to fit in our large brains. Homo erectus didn’t have much of a forehead and, in fact, had a thick cranial ridge which, some posit, was used for head butting – similar to what stags, and other similar animals, do during macho displays of strength. Something the Huns would not have gained.

So, what sort of brain functions did they lose? The frontal lobe is generally responsible for a number of different functions but, one of the main ‘executive functions’ involves the ability to recognise future consequences resulting from current actions. I’m thinking this goes some way to explain why they just roamed the countryside and killed anything and anyone they came in contact with. It may also explain why they were so feared since they wouldn’t have had a lot of empathy (read ‘none’) for their fellow humans.

The Huns were also nomads, riding horses, moving their sheep from winter to summer pastures, constantly on the move. They had no time for agriculture or civilisation. Why would they? They wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the advantages of planning for the future. Rather than settle in one place and grow their own food they would just raid those that did. I think this may also explain why there’s no Huns around any longer.

Although it is very important to stress that the Huns were not the only people to practise cranial deformation and the above theory about brain function is mine and shouldn’t be taken as gospel.

All that apart, I journeyed up to town today to lunch with Mirinda. It was bitterly cold. The temperature was about 0 but with the wind chill added (or subtracted) it was more like -5. And there was quite a bit of wind. As I said…bitterly cold.

While I waited in our usual meeting spot, I was approached by a young lady with a microphone in her pocket. She was from the BBC and wondered if she could record my response to a question about my idea of the most romantic spot in London.

Before proceeding, she firstly made sure that I knew London and spoke English. I think this was because of my Czech hat and the fact that I was taking a photograph of a statue.

I happily agreed to speak for a couple of minutes about my favourite romantic spot in London. I spoke about where we were, Victoria Embankment Gardens, saying it was romantic because I always met my wife there on Wednesday for lunch. (She sighed and smiled at this.) I stressed that it looked very different in the summer and wasn’t usually so grim.

I also mentioned the rather fact that the numerous pigeons appeared to be eating the last remnant of snow. That obviously wasn’t romantic but was something I’d wondered about since discovering the fact when I entered the park today.

She was apparently pleased and wandered off somewhere else to ask another person the same question. I have no idea when or if it will ever be broadcast and will just be one of those entirely random things I do that will impact on complete strangers without my knowledge. I rather like that.

After Mirinda located me not in my usual spot (which had been grabbed by a smelly drunk with a horribly crackly radio) we wandered over to the Tattershall Castle pub, where she regularly goes with Ben.

It’s a pub on a boat and wonderfully free from crowds. The gentle rocking is wonderfully calming and the view is pretty amazing, to say the least!

Our lunchtime view across the Thames

It was also the perfect place for lunch, being nice and warm.

Over lunch, Mirinda told me all sorts of exciting plans at work which, unfortunately, I cannot divulge on here. Take my word for it, they were very exciting.

My stupid cold has gone. After a night of two nightmares, a horrendous thirst and a bit of tossing and turning, I woke up feeling much better. As the day progressed I only improved. Except my voice, which is delightfully husky. Although the foul tasting strawberry Strepsils may have reduced it to its normal tones.

Today was our first lunch date for ages. Mirinda was working from the flat so we went for a wander around Mill Quay, dodging joggers and prams, spotting lots of birds to photograph before realising I had no memory card in my camera. It always takes me ages to realise it too. I hate that. And I took some brilliant photographs.

Anyway, on our walk, Mirinda outlined her super master plan to me which will revolutionise the world of education as we know it. It’s complex and simple at the same time. It is beautiful. The Official Secrets Act forbids my repeating any of it here.

For lunch we went to a Lebanese restaurant we’ve passed many times but never ventured in. it’s opposite the Lotus. It’s called the Byblos Harbour and is fabulous. We had one of the set lunch menus which features lots of different things. My favourite was the Kibbeh (ground lamb and onions filled in a meat and wheat jacket) which was absolutely divine. It’s sort of like a falafel but so much more. Dad would hate it but mum might like one.

After a lovely, long, leisurely lunch, we strolled back to the flat where I left Mirinda to work and wandered down to the ferry stop.

Generally I can’t get a seat outside, due to all the tourists, but today there was no-one there. Which meant I had a lovely trip back up the river and the chance to take some photographs that weren’t taken through glass. I tried for a few seagulls in flight (I blipped the best) and some interesting buildings. I also managed to find a seagull with a double chin.

I'd fly away if I wasn't so heavy

I’ve not noticed this building before, which is surprising given the huge sign on it. It was once a riverside warehouse but was converted into flats in 1970. It’s in Wapping and is grade II listed. You can pick up a nice three bedroom flat there for a mere £2,500,000.

On the Thames, at low tide

It was built in 1870 for George Oliver and was used, mostly, for tea. It was one of the first serious flat conversions along the Thames. I found a website for an American pub in Baltimore that claimed it was used to house pirates and ‘vagabonds’ in ‘Merrie olde England’, which only goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

And here’s the Mayflower, a pub I went to many, many moons ago. I was told it was where the Mayflower set off from. Apparently this is true. The Mayflower was moored nearby and did, in fact, leave from here in 1620. It was called the Shippe back then as it had been when it was built in 1550. It was then rebuilt in the 18th century and called the Spread Eagle and Crown. In the 1960s it was renamed the Mayflower because of the associations with the original ship. Oddly, it’s licensed to sell postage stamps.

A great pub for a beer

Finally, here’s Metropolitan Wharf. It is, like Oliver’s, grade II listed. It was purpose built as four warehouses between 1862 and 1898 and was still used in conjunction with the river up until the 1960s. It was refurbished in 2005 with the idea that it would house business space for ‘start-up’ companies. It also has restaurants, cafes, shops and other general meeting places for the daring young professionals who are busy starting up.

Great location for your first business venture

And that was about it for my day. I won’t bore my reader with the super dull train ride home (nothing happened) or the details of my dinner which wasn’t a patch on Byblos Harbour fare.

Rafi is being taught fencing. Unofficially, but still. He knows how to do the salute at the start and starts off with his left arm in the air. He returns frequently to the salute but the arm is never lifted again. He also cheats by using two hands. He claims vociferously that he doesn’t cheat OR use two hands. He does.

I think this proves my point

We had a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve lunch. We had what we normally have on Christmas Eve which is the roast gammon. The meal turned out perfectly (even though I was forced to use ghee* when I realised there was no lard in the house) apart from the brûlée which wasn’t set properly. As Mirinda said, it tasted perfect but was a bit runny. I blame my wrist because it’s always been perfect before.

After lunch, Mirinda and Susanne went for a walk into Farnham, leaving Rafi and me to watch The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. What a cack! It was hilarious. Quite surreal in parts.

Rafi actually remained quiet so I could hear the dialogue. At one point I paused it to let Day-z go to the loo and Rafi complained! Odd how Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs doesn’t have quite the same effect.

Anyway, I loved the movie. I thought the Hoff bit was superb, the opening sequence with the pirates truly inspired and Scarlett Johansson excellent as Mindy, which is saying something because I’m not a big fan of hers.

We both laughed a lot throughout. Rafi claims he’s only seen it once before.

I had a lovely day (this is the first time Rafi has stayed with me while Susanne went somewhere else with Mirinda) and was royally entertained by Rafi and his two rubber swords.

Mirinda telling Susanne where the house extension will go

Both Susanne and Rafi noticed the new path (with a little prodding) and wholeheartedly approved.

*The Story of the Ghee
Normally I roast potatoes and parsnips in lard, like anyone who was brought up in the same cultural way that I was. For the last few days, I’ve kept forgetting to buy any lard to roast the potatoes and parsnips in for today. Every day I return from Waitrose and whack myself on the forehead and give an agonised D’Oh!

Last night was the last straw. I figured they might have some in the Pantry (the ex-Londis…the shop down the road) so I popped out. They had no lard but they had tins of ghee. For anyone who doesn’t know, ghee is a clarified butter or, basically, butter without the whey. It stores very well outside a fridge, in a can and it smells very buttery.

I ‘ummed’ and ‘ahed’ for a bit and then decided to bite the bullet. I bought the ghee and used it for the potatoes and parsnips. It’s very easy to use (pretty much like lard, really) and makes the kitchen smell of butter. The potatoes were very crunchy and fluffy. Mirinda said they were the best roast potatoes she’s ever tasted. I guess I’ll be sticking to the ghee from now on then.

I was sitting in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, happily reading about the Medici family, waiting for Mirinda, when two guys in flouro tops approached, wielding big blowers. There was a lot of fallen leaves. I say ‘was’ because these guys were really moving them on. At one stage I looked back to where they’d been and wondered what they’d done with them all. Then I saw this and realised they were returning them to the soil.

Blowing leaves around

Once they’d moved passed me, it was rather nice sitting in the gardens. The sun was out and the day was unseasonably warm. This helped the fact that I was feeling a trifle seedy after last night/this morning. Eventually, Mirinda joined me and we went to the cafe in the garden for a lovely lunch and financial discussion.

Before going back to the office, we took our usual stroll. Today it took us the length of the Victoria Embankment Gardens and to a memorial I’d not seen before. It is to commemorate the airmen who served and died in the service of the Fleet Air Arm – naval as opposed to Air Force planes.

The statue sits atop a very tall plinth, inscribed with wars and the names of those who fell in the two world wars. It stands proud with wings outstretched, a cyborg looking creation. It is Daedalus, the legendary Greek craftsman who created a set of wings in order to escape King Minos of Crete.

James Butler's 2000 memorial statue to the Fleet Air Arm

It’s quite striking so I’m amazed I’ve never noticed it before. You can read more about it here.

Sadly, as I journeyed home, the weather grew increasingly worse. About half an hour after getting home – about the time the poodles calmed down – the rain started. When the sun went down, the temperature plummeted as well.

At least it was nice for lunch. This is how it looked earlier:

Embankment on a lovely autumn day

So lovely.

Wednesday. Lunch date with my wife. Time and place, the usual. I waited. And waited. No wife. Tried all manner of communication channels to find her. No luck. An hour late, she turned up, all apologetic. She had been involved in one of her high powered meetings and couldn’t get away. Naturally I forgave her. We went to lunch.

It’s sometimes tough when you’re married to such a high powered wife. There’s all these irritating people who want to make deals with her. They steal my time! Still, this one was very successful and she managed to convince them she was right (she does this SO well).

We had lunch in a little cafe near Embankment then had a lovely stroll up to Holborn (she had another post-lunch meeting which, at it’s end, she still didn’t know what it was about). It was such a lovely day in London – no sign of rioters anywhere. A lovely day for a wander.

Of course, I’d been to the flat beforehand, taking over Mirinda’s stuff she had taken to Oz. (It’s only since reading Baum’s Oz books that I realise how magical Australia can be when the name is shortened.)

I was running late (oh, irony of ironies) so didn’t take the ferry for our lunch date, having to take the DLR then the LOOOOOONG walk underground to Monument. For a change I decided to get off at Temple and see if it is any closer. It isn’t. I’ll not be doing that again.

Still, as WS Gilbert said: “Faint heart never won fair lady!” I trudged along the pavement heading for the usual spot, outside the Savoy and opposite the statue to Sullivan (Gilbert’s chum). The one with the semi-clad lady.

On the way back from lunch, I snapped a few photographs around London. Here’s a few, just to show it isn’t all smashed up.

Corner of The Strand & Aldwych

Actually, this was my blip for today but I thought it worth repeating as it looks so peaceful.

The Thames from Waterloo Bridge

Underpass at the IMAX, Waterloo

I always find this intriguing. It’s the massive IMAX cinema on the roundabout near Waterloo and is all modern and high tech. Then, all around it are these vines seemingly growing from a jungle somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I do find it oddly imaginative.

Back at home, a sad and sorry sight was waiting in the garden. The gladdies had become saddies as their faces were facing the ground, their stalk bent over. Now, it would be very easy to blame the poodles, a squirrel or a cat but I actually think it was the wind. It was very blowy today and the stalk is quite high. Needless to say, it has been staked. The stalk, not the wind.

Gladiolus - day ten

I can’t believe I’ve been posting pictures of the gladiolus for ten straight days! Extraordinary. I’ll have to stop soon.

Oh and, to be honest, I really blame the cat.

If you’re ever in a position of choice between taking the tube from Embankment or walking across Waterloo Bridge, I’d always choose the latter. At least that’s what I thought before today. Sadly, this is no longer true. My newest aphorism is “if in doubt, catch the Tube”.

I’d seen the weather report so cannot plead ignorance. Even sitting in the restaurant where Mirinda and I had Italian for lunch, the rain was heavy enough for me to see it without my glasses. Did I heed the warning of Apollo or hear the glee of Thor? Not a bit!

We had a lovely lunch in a new place (for us). The thing about the location of Mirinda’s office is that there are enough restaurants within a lunchtime radius that we will probably never run out of a new one every Wednesday. We wander, Mirinda spots somewhere, we eat. Brilliant strategy.

I would normally have a Fiorentina pizza in an Italian place but the special salmon in a lime, coriander and butter sauce was too good to pass up. Apart from the calorific content (about the weight of an adult yak) it was perfect. I guess that really means it tasted great but was very, very bad. Too bad, I say! In all senses.

Earlier in the day (before I left home) I realised that someone had stolen my umbrella. Given that the last time I saw it was hanging from a hook by the front door, it could only be one of three and I’m pretty sure the poodles would have difficulty working the opening mechanism.

As I looked out from the restaurant window, smiling at the poor tourists running from shelter to shelter and the lunchtime workers battling against the wind with their oversized golf umbrellas, I remembered I didn’t have mine anymore.

Normally I’m rather reticent when it comes to umbrellas. I think they are dangerous and pretty useless when there’s even a puff of wind. However, it’s always nice to know there’s one in my bag if I’m ever caught up in a drench emergency. Like today.

After lunch, the rain having eased off to the faintest of faint drips, I walked Mirinda back to her office and then set off back to Waterloo. I stood at a metaphoric crossroads in Embankment Park. Left to Waterloo Bridge or right to Embankment Tube. Stupidly, I turned left.

15 minutes later I was standing in front of the platform indicators in Waterloo concourse, soaking wet with no-one to blame but myself. Never mind, I thought glumly, the train will be announced shortly and I can strip off my wet outer garments and be relatively comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can be on a South West Trains 450 carriage.

The announcements at Waterloo station are terrible. It’s not a language or accent thing because generally the announcer has clear diction and an easy to understand accent. The problem with the public address system at Waterloo Station is one of pitch. A voice needs to be of a certain tone otherwise any long information will become indecipherable.

For instance, today the train was delayed for some reason – it said so on the indicator board – and some bright spark figured it would be a good idea to let us know why. The message sounded a little something like this:

For those passengers waiting for the 13:23 train to Alton this train gmbld nmukl grmmb drddldrd grmp dmp dmp [this actually went on for ages but you get the idea] very shortly.

I’d like someone to tell me why that was necessary. It wasn’t just me, there were plenty of other passengers looking completely mystified, some asking other people what had been said and getting only shrugs in reply.

Anyway, eventually the indicator changed and I boarded the train on platform 11 (where a train had been sitting all the time I’d been waiting) and, apart from leaving a few minutes late, had an uneventful trip home.

Here’s one of the only decent photos I took today. It features Embankment Pier where Mirinda catches her ferry (one very similar to the one in the shot) and, if you look carefully, you can see her building.

Embankment Pier

As I walked across Hungerford Bridge, I was greeted by the unusual sight of a row of beach huts extending alongside the Thames on South Bank. It all looked very summery with miles of bunting and hordes of people taking advantage of the weather. As I returned via Waterloo Bridge, I noticed an improvised beach continuing on from where the beach huts ended.

Beach huts outside the Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London

I’m sure there’ll be people who say this is just copying the French with their beachifying the sides of Seine but I don’t care. I think it looks fabulous and I’m certain the people enjoying it would agree.

Of course, being a normal Wednesday, I was in London to have lunch with Mirinda. I had left home at 9 (an hour early) so that I could logon in Starbucks seeing as our Broadband connection hadn’t miraculously returned while I slept. Anyone who read the previous entry would realise that I had been assured BT would ring before 9. Naturally this didn’t happen and I left.

I was standing in the queue at Starbucks, waiting to be served when my phone rang, making everyone turn around, wondering why the theme tune for Curb Your Enthusiasm was blaring out of my bag.

I quickly unzipped the front compartment and extracted the phone, answering it within three rings.

“Hello?” I asked, knowing from the display that it was BT.

Nothing was the stern reply. They’d already gone. After three rings. What an amazing effort for a valued customer.

As I put my phone away I noticed it was exactly 9:20. It occurred to me that this could indicate two things. Either BT had fixed the problem and was letting me know or BT had forgotten to call me and was anxious to let me know they hadn’t fixed it. Call me cynical but I favoured the latter.

I think what annoyed me most (after all I’m getting used to the inept service) was the fact that they only held on for three rings. Do they think everyone holds their phone, just in case some service company might ring? Or that everyone has those stupid Borg devices welded to their head?

I’m beginning to wonder why we pay them so much money every month. OK, generally everything is fine but whenever I’ve had a problem, it’s been a bigger problem getting it sorted. It’s not like they have a monopoly. There are other companies we could use. Given the tough competition, should I assume that they’re all as bad? I mean there was the Optus Incident in Australia in December to bear in mind.

So I went to lunch with Mirinda, having no idea what sort of response I had coming from BT. I figured that I’d just have to spend another couple of hours on the phone when I returned home.

We met at Embankment Gardens as usual (although my cloak of invisibility was working very well and she didn’t see me for a while…well until I started jumping up and down and waving my hat at her) and wandered down to a lovely sandwich place near Heaven (where I was thrown out of – that just never gets dull) run by a rather jolly chap who seems to like everyone to indulge in a bit of butter. He tried valiantly to convince Mirinda that her toasted sandwich would be much better infused with it but to no avail.

With or without butter, the sandwiches were lovely and cost about a third as much as they would have in Venice. In the heart of London. I’m glad we don’t lunch in Venice every Wednesday.

After lunch we continued wandering around, enjoying the sights in tourist filled Convent Garden, before dropping Mirinda back to work. Given the fact that I’m probably going spend an extended amount of time on the phone, I decided to go straight home rather than finding a museum to visit.

The beach on South Bank

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I realise I haven’t reported on the most recent Nicktor Night. I shall, of course, rectify that immediately. However, there is a proviso; an injunction, if you will. Certain parts of the evening have been ‘zoned’. This means, in essence, that I am not allowed to discuss them. This has nothing to do with secret men’s business or private jokes or footballers having affairs with reality show contestants. Sadly it’s more to do with Nicktor’s choices in alternate viewing. But more (or not) about that later.

We have taken a bit of a fancy for revenge movies lately. To be fair, I LOVE revenge movies (it’s so Jacobean) but I think I’ve convinced Nicktor they’re jolly good fun. So our first film was Hard Candy.

An amazing film. It was filmed in the producer’s house and, basically, has a cast of two. It was filmed for under a million dollars. There’s no real action – it’s not an exciting movie – as it’s character and dialogue driven. There is no gore or ‘bloody violence’ as DVD sleeves love to say. But it is frightening and thrilling.

What excited me most about the movie were the performances of the two leads. Truly superb. If the Oscars were really about great acting then the 14 year old girl playing Hayley (Ellen Page) would have one. An extraordinary performance which I would liken to a young Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. She could be an amazing talent if she continues to grow as a performer although her skills now are already equal to much older actresses who have fallen into the habit of playing one dimensional characterisations of themselves.

The guy, Jeff (Patrick Wilson) was also excellent. You were never quite sure whether he was a bad guy or a good guy. There were times you believed him and times you didn’t. Nearly all the time you knew you shouldn’t like him at all but he was a sympathetic character in a lot of ways. A wonderfully crafted and nuanced performance.

The other stars of the movie are the script (Brian Nelson) and the direction (David Slade). They are both sharp and minimalist, giving the audience just enough while not descending into unnecessary repetition, violence or shock graphics. It should be noted that I liked this movie very much.

The second film we watched was the first major film by the Cohen brothers, Blood Simple. Half an hour into the film, Mirinda rang so we paused it while I chatted for a bit. Up to this point, the film had been slow and measured, creating the perfect platform for what comes in the last hour. Not that Nicktor is ever likely to know this. When I hung up the phone he wanted to stop watching it, claiming it was slow and dull (or similar). I watched the rest the next day over lunch.

In fact, upon my ejecting the disk he was up on his feet and racing upstairs to what he terms ‘his room’ saying he had just the thing to watch. It is at this point that I have to tread very, very carefully in order not to breach the aforementioned injunction.

He returned with the first season of a sitcom which, to put it bluntly, hasn’t been seen on television for quite a few years (decades). We enjoyed it thoroughly going so far as to watch two entire episodes before calling it a night and retiring happy.

One other thing I should mention about the Nicktor Night is the fact that we didn’t drink any whisky. Not a drop. Amazing as this seems, it is entirely true. We did, however, drink half a bottle of 50% proof schnapps that he’d very thoughtfully brought back from Germany.
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BT Update

As soon as I arrived home, I took the pesky poodles for a much needed run up the park, for which they were suitably grateful, if somewhat over exuberant and then I picked up the phone to call my arch nemesis.

Meanwhile in India some guy whose name I couldn’t hope to repeat informed me that he knew of my problem (which stunned me into silence) and that he had to run a few more tests and would ring me back. This he did 20 minutes later. He then informed me that in order for my problem to be ‘escalated to the next level’ he had to run one final test. Clearly I failed this final test because I was immediately escalated. Actually, thinking about it, maybe I passed.

One might think that being ‘escalated to the next level’ means some sort of urgent appeal to a higher power which would then swoop down and fix whatever the problem was (which would beg the question “why not go to this higher power in the first place then?”). One would, however, be completely wrong. Being ‘escalated to the next level’ means I will get a phone call tomorrow between 9 and 11. I don’t know what about because I couldn’t understand the guy on the phone.

A very interesting fact has just occurred to me. BT is a communications company. The acronym itself stands for British Telecommunications. The clue is in the name, after all. So why is it that when I talk to someone at their so called Help Desk, I can’t understand half of what they’re saying? If you ask me, their communications are failing them.

And another thing, while I’m at it. When you call them you have a few options to go through. I’m not moaning about that, it tends to make things easier if you can filter your calls to the right area so I’m in favour of it. However, one of the options is to select whether the problem is connected to your broadband, phone or Vision TV. Each time I’ve selected broadband and the very next thing they suggest is going onto their website and downloading their self help software.

Call me simple but I can’t think of a problem you’d be ringing them about that would allow you to access the Internet, let alone their website. It’s a bit weird. If I could go on to their website, I’d have a broadband connection and, therefore, not need to ring them. Even if you’re calling because your connection is slow, the last thing you’re going to do is try and download a piece of software because it would take forever. Though, by my reckoning, it sort of takes forever anyway.

Or so Mirinda said. She had a couple of meetings miles apart and barely time to register my presence. But before that…

She has decided to take her netbook away with us rather than the portable DVD player. This way she can load films/TV programmes onto the netbook and watch them through iTunes. All well and good and a lot less to carry when you consider the player AND the DVDs AND the fact that she’d probably bring the netbook anyway.

Trouble is, when we loaded something onto the netbook it didn’t render very well. It was all jerky and impossible to watch more than two seconds of content. It looked like it was going to be the extra suitcase full of technology unless I could do something miraculous.

So, stepping into a handy telephone booth I quickly changed into my secret disguise as Mr Fixitup and hightailed it up to Canary Wharf to secretly fix the netbook. Actually it wasn’t so quick. I spent a few hours last night working out what the problem was with the help of a few forums and techies that know stuff that I can only imagine. To be fair, I can’t even imagine most of it.

Arriving at the flat I immediately set to work (with the IPL cricket on in the background). It was a long, drawn out process (quite the opposite to the cricket) but I managed to fix it. And I take it back. As much as I hate all things Apple, it wasn’t their fault. It was the high spec of the netbook which needed taking down a peg or two in order to play the antique Apple generated files.

Meanwhile, Mirinda was starting a meeting which consisted of a ridiculous amount of individual five minute presentations with nary a breath for pausing. It was late starting and, eventually, late in ending. We had already planned an elaborate meeting which took ages to work out. The change in time merely meant I had longer to watch the cricket…I mean, fix the netbook. Which I did and then wandered across to South Quays station, where I hopped the DLR to meet her near the young ballerina sitting on her chair.

The view of the DLR tracks from South Quays station

This is the view from where I sat in the sun, reading and waiting.

A row of red telephone boxes

It was very pleasant, particularly as I was sitting beneath a rather scrawny but effective for all that, tree.

Eventually Mirinda met me with the rather irritated remark that our lunchtime would now consist of walking to her next meeting which was to be held in Portcullis House which is opposite the Houses of Parliament. She was meeting a man from the government to discuss something important (again, I am sworn to secrecy and all I can say is that it wasn’t David Cameron she was meeting).

The area around the Houses of Parliament is renowned for two main things: Firstly the crowds are always horrendous made worse by the ever present roadworks and, secondly, there’s very few places to eat. For starters, the Nero’s is so small it can only fit one bar stool in it and a barista. I guess they (the politicians) don’t want to encourage people to eat too much. What with the obesity levels the way they are.

For whatever reason, we ended up buying sandwiches from a girl in Boots who didn’t understand Mirinda when she asked if the building we were in was Portcullis House (it wasn’t). After Mirinda had left, the girl asked me what she’d said. After I repeated it, she was still no clearer.

We found Portcullis House and ate our sandwiches beneath one of it’s arches before I left Mirinda to enter the heavy security through which she had to pass to reach her top secret meeting. She tells me that during the meeting a loud horn went off and all the ministers jumped up and ran out, yelling over their shoulders that they had to get to the House and vote. Given the crowds out on the street, I can only assume they have a secret passage.

And then I went home (after picking up a certain fridge magnet that a certain person asked me pick up). And that was it. Mirinda has since apologised for being irritated. I told her she was a lot better than she was in her last job. It think that made her feel a whole lot better. And, by the way, she thought the person she met with wasn’t up to much.

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And just a glimpse of what Nicktor’s week in Germany was like. He tells me he drank the beer first.

I haven’t seen Stevie since November 3 last year. I know the date exactly because it was the Wednesday before I went to the opera when we unexpectedly bumped into Tom which was the Thursday before my birthday on the Saturday. So we had a lot of catching up to do.

As usual we chatted about everything under the sun after I brought him up to date with the medical situations in Oz. Nicktor has suddenly decided he wants to walk Hadrian’s Wall and I was amazed when telling Stevie that he’d never heard of it. The wall, not Nicktor’s new mania. So, of course, we then had a long chat about the Romans in Britain and the extraordinary wall.

Normally we start drinking in Sovereigns but we’re always chased out by the noise of quiz night (or “…eggheads at Sovs” as Stevie calls it) so this time we decided to go to the Wheatsheaf which is a nicer pub anyway because it serves 6X. Imagine my horror when I was standing at the bar ready to order drinks and noticed a sign which stated that quiz night was Wednesday at 8pm!

When I told Stevie about it he was shocked and horrified that the two best pubs in Woking were unusable on a Wednesday night. We sat, sullenly staring at our beer. This morose mood didn’t last long and we were soon chatting away again.

At about 9:30 I suddenly said “I guess the quiz night is cancelled tonight.” This was very pleasing. We sat and drank and chatted until the bell went and they kicked us out.

I staggered home and was greeted by two insane poodles at about 12:30. Bed was very, very welcome.

I woke up feeling decidedly seedy, dragging myself out of bed at 8am. But drag I had to as I had a lunch date with Dawn today. My second Cansfield this week.

After a lazy couple of hours I managed to stand up under the shower long enough to get clean and set off for Haslemere.

My first stop was the music shop to replace Mirinda’s missing capos for her guitar. Chamberlains is a wonderful music shop with lots of mysterious instruments that always look compelling. They have lots of pianos scattered throughout the first floor and today a tuner was sitting at one constantly hitting a single key, giving very fine adjustments to it before moving on to the next one. It was extraordinarily annoying. I mentioned it to the shop assistant who shrugged and said you didn’t hear it after a while. Fortunately I was only in there for five minutes and left hurriedly, capos firmly held in my hand.

I was a bit early for lunch so I wandered up to the Shottermill ponds to look for something to blip. The geese (there are many of them around the ponds that regularly attack dogs and small children) were all asleep or lying down gazing placidly at the seagulls. This lot were ignoring the traffic.

Not bovvered

The sky was nearly all blue today and the pond looked quite picturesque. An excellent blip, I thought, and took this.

Shottermill upper pond

I then wandered down to the Mill where Dawn was actually waiting for me. This has never happened before. Not that I can remember anyway. We went in and ordered lunch and beer.

We spent a lovely hour chatting about her PHD, Nicktor’s new walking mania, Blip, going on a dig this year and many other things. For lunch we decided on the Mill pie with vegetables. It was lovely but massive. The veg was very welcome as I’ve not eaten that well this week.

After lunch we drove up to Linchmere to look at the glass door in the lovely little church of St Peter. It’s amazing. It gives a wonderful view of the graveyard and across the valley. It brings the outside world into the church in a wonderful way. And then we spotted my blip for today.

On one of the walls there is a carving. It depicts the seven deadly sins with a row of little marble heads, each representing a sin. It was carved in France during the 14th century. The little heads are marble and the stone they sit in has been carved to look like monkish cowls around them. I blipped ‘envy’ because his face was pretty grotesque. You can see him here.

7 Deadly Sins

After taking a few hundred photos, Dawn drove me back to the bus stop at Shottermill and, after a wait of five minutes, I made my way back to Farnham in an empty bus. Well, apart from the driver and me. I felt a bit self concious as I’m reading My Family and Other Animals which makes me chuckle on almost every page. The driver did look at me rather oddly when I left the bus.

It was an odd game of football last night. There were long periods where Aldershot completely dominated the game with good crisp passing and a goal. Lincoln City were left looking stunned as we went to a 2-0 lead. But then we went to sleep in the second half and started the stupid big kicks up field which never work. They quickly scored twice, catching our defence out both times and making us look like waxwork dummies.

The final ten minutes were all spent desperately keeping them from scoring a third. Fortunately we did and the game ended in a draw. The highlights of the game (apart from our goals) were the Lincoln City goal keeper who never stopped shouting but could never be understood and the player who came on late in the second half called Moustafa Carry-on. I’m sure it’s not spelled that way but it definitely sounded like it. It brought general mirth and merriment to an otherwise sullen Slab.

Back at home, we watched a brilliant British film called This is England. While the subject matter sounds rather dark and unpleasant (England in the 80s with skinheads and racism rife) the film is not. While there is a lot of implied violence and one of the characters is not in the least pleasant, it is a wonderful coming of age story of a young lad growing up without a father, looking for a substitute and needing to belong.

There was not a weak performance in the entire film and we both enjoyed it thoroughly. If you can get passed the swearing (which, to be fair, is of the time), this is a wonderful film. I saw the writer/director, Shane Meadows, interviewed on Breakfast when it was released and he went to great pains to say how autobiographical it was. It shows. His deft hand gives us a glimpse of an unpleasant world while making us care about the main characters.

At the end of the film I wanted more; I wanted to know what else happened to the main character to shape such a wonderful film maker. Thomas Turgoose, as the 12 year old Shaun, is superb.

Of course, we also drank too much whisky and went to bed far too late but it was worth it. Normally we see pretty crappy films so this was an unexpected gem. And then I was up at 7 to wake Mirinda for work.

Fast forward to lunchtime and we had Italian today, again at Covent Garden, this time in Ponti’s. During our stroll around the small lanes we came across this rather interesting pub sign – sadly the pub was boarded up.

Pub sign, London

We also spotted a rather lovely building in Leicester Square. It looked rather odd, being so ornate but the colour scheme was lovely and these heads nicely incongruous.

Forget the deer, let's put human heads on the wall

As usual, we spent a lovely lunch hour (and a half) and, after we parted I high tailed it back down to Waterloo. I was going to visit Dr Johnson’s house afterwards but I’m going for a drink with Stevie tonight and needed to get home to feed the poodles. I figured Dr J could wait.