Category Archives: Blog?

Ski-free

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When it snows, do like the Romans. Sit indoors and drink lots of wine. Alternatively, why not go skiing? I did, and it turns out I suck quite a lot but I have slithered my way down a hill in Halifax (yes, skiing in England) all afternoon and now it hurts a lot. Memorable moments include goinig superman over the front when I hit a snowdrift, smashing through a plank when I hit a sapling, and burying myself, my skis and my dignity in a fir tree near the bottom of the run when I had lost control and decided this was better than crashing into the house at the base of the slope. I did eventually manage to link a few turns together though, so some success in the end 🙂

Maybe I should stick to something else, which I last played on our 486 in about 1997.

Snow!!

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I’m  in Huddersfield visiting Sonya’s parents, and apparently there is now a rule that every time I drive somewhere it has to snow for days. Leaving 4 inches behind in Cambridge we arrived in a relatively snow-free Huddersfield only to get 6 inches this morning, it could be interesting getting out of the street on Tuesday.

On the upside, we did get to go sledging this afternoon which was pretty awesome. Not sure the golf-course owners will be quite so pleased when the snow disappears and they get to see what has happened to their teeing off area – the mound of earth provides the perfect kick-start to a sledging run.

With apologies to Pierre de Fermat

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I have some beautiful photographs of the Eiffel Tower, but the internet here is too slow to share them with you.

Christmas lights here in Paris are somewhat more tasteful than their UK counterparts. Each major road has personalised displays hanging across the road, whilst the pedestrian areas are ablaze with lights strung here and there. The highlight is the Tower though, which is a lighting engineer’s dream. Each strut has been wired individually with at least seven colours, each can be switched on and off independently to create pulsing rainbow effects, with colours running up and down the height of the tower. There are also searchlights on top and spotlights which can be set to flicker and sparkle. Each hour the lights change from a simple white illumination to a full-on spectacular for 10-15 minutes, visible from all over Paris.

I guess the question would be, who has to climb up and down the inside of the struts when they need to replace a bulb?

Rob 2 Merde 1

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Three days down, two days in the lab, and still just the one merde incident. I feel like keeping a track of the number of times I successfully dance across the pavement, avoiding another well-laid trap. However, keeping score like this is fruitless; if I score a point each time I avoid some, I effectively lose a million points each time I fail.

On a lighter note, the food today has been great. For lunch we had the plat-du-jour at a local Spanish restaurant, a fantastic paella stuffed with chicken, prawns and saffron. Back in the lab the lasers are switching between playing ball and playing up, but data is appearing quickly at least and I will have plenty to keep me busy over the winter. This evening I wandered around the Christmas-lit city centre with Lauren (who is being paid to do a masters here!) but unfortunately it was raining and I’d left my camera at the hotel, so pictures will have to wait until another night.

One foot in the merde

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Anyone who has read Stephen Clarke’s “Merde” series will remember the lengthy description of the author’s battle with Parisian canines in the first of the series, A Year In The Merde. No matter how carefully he trod, their nocturnal faecal distribution network would outsmart his shoes. 4 hours in and I have myfirst merde moment, hooray. Turns out that shoes with nobbly grips on the bottom aren’t the easiest to clean 🙁

Vin rouge is nice though…

J’arrive a Paris

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Having been back in the UK for three weeks it’s time to rack up some more expenses. This time I am in Paris visiting Olivier Beyssac, who has a shiny lab here with lots of expensive machinery for me to use. Eurostar was great, the check-in and passport-control system managed to get everyone in the right place at the right time, even though the train was really busy. It made me think of early aviation, where you could walk onto your plane with ease rather than the current system of frisking, security announcements, airports miles outside the city requiring a transfer as expensive as the ticket, water-bottle nazis and several miles hiking to get to your gate.

Right then, time to try some french cuisine wine 🙂

Train Madness

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AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is how we spent yesterday evening, attempting the 1.5 hour journey from Bristol to Oxford:

  • 21.30, Bristol, 60 miles from Oxford.
    Arrive at Temple Meads station after a really nice dinner with Sonya’s family for Asher’s 21st birthday
  • 21.35, Bristol, 60 miles from Oxford.
    Realise that the train to London (first leg of the journey) has been cancelled. Frantically call Sonya’s parents and Fiona, hoping to get an alternative route. Discover that we have to wait for the 22.33 instead, and should change at Didcot. Turns out the 20.15 was cancelled too, so there are lots of people kicking around at the station.
  • 22.33, Bristol, 60 miles from Oxford. rain arrives, world and his wife get on but we get seats at least
  • 23.00, Chippenham, 41 miles from Oxford.
    Train running a few minutes late, waits a long time at the station, no reason given.
  • 23.30, Swindon, 25 miles from Oxford.
    “We apologise for the delay, there has been a fight on the train and we need to wait for the police to arrive, they have been called”. We didn’t see any of the fight, but security did turf someone off the train for not having a ticket. There was a long wait until we got going again.
  • 23.55, Didcot, 11 miles from Oxford.
    “We apologise for the delays, passengers for Oxford should remain on the train until Reading where there will be a connection to Oxford”
  • 00.25, Reading, 24 miles from Oxford(!).
    “Passengers for Oxford, please disembark here”. Off we get, and walk to platform 4 as directed. Whereupon we look at the board and see that the train coming in to platform 4 is going to … Bristol via Didcot. Great. We make our presence known to the station manager, and explain that we just came from Didcot, were sent on to Reading, and don’t particularly want to go back again. He promises a taxi ride instead and disappears into his office. We wait on the platform.
  • 00.39, Reading, 24 miles from Oxford.
    The last train to Bristol leaves the station, we wait on the platform with four Oxford-bound compatriots, a large bunch heading to Gatwick and twenty-or-so hoping to get to a variety of nearby stations. Our conversations are accompanied by the announcement “Would the gentleman urinating on platform 9 please leave the station immediately”.
  • 01.00, Reading, 24 miles from Oxford.
    “All passengers for Oxford!” We walk outside, only to find ourselves at the back of a large queue waiting for the station-ordered minicabs. Pretty much everyone else gets a cab before us.
  • 01.20, Reading, 24 miles from Oxford.
    The station staff are having problems getting enough taxis, but have good news for us, they have persuaded a passing bus driver to extend his route for us. We can get a lift as far as Oxford, as long as we go via the original destination, Didcot.
  • 02.00, Didcot, 11 miles from Oxford.
    Pulling into a deserted, dark, soaking wet, freezing cold station, the driver delivers his original load of passengers, then goes outside for an extended fag break. To rub things in he leaves the door open.
  • 02.25, Oxford!!
    Finally we’ve made it, only 3 hours after our original scheduled arrival!

After all that, we waited in the cold and the rain for another 20 minutes until a mincab arrived and took us to Fiona’s house, collapsing through the door at 3.00. We are eternally grateful to her for staying up for us, supplying a bed, sleeping bag, tea, bacon sandwiches and sympathy.

Home safely

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You can all breathe a sigh of relief / disappointment, I’ve completed my 24 hour return trip and am back safely, sans food poisoning, swine flu, broken limbs or cholera.

Leaving Kaohsiung at 8.30pm and flying through the night, I arrived into Heathrow at 6.20am after ~21 hours of darkness. Thinking this wouldn’t be the prettiest of flights, my camera was packed at the bottom of my hand-luggage; unfortunately I was wrong. Over China there was a thin veil of low cloud, just enough to blur things out but not enough to stop the light seeping through – giving the appearance of 10-mile-wide embers shimmering away. A short nap, some very dark Central Asia and several terrible films later we were drifting over London, the roads picked out in orange whilst the train tracks were shown up by slivers of light shuttling back and forth. It was immensely pretty, but you’ll have to take my word for it.