Gooooood Morninggggg America !!!

I'm trying to get into a sort of routine here regarding exercise. I put on a lot of weight over the summer and it needs to go. If I can't do it here, I never will. The weather and this park makes it easy to do plenty of walking and biking and swimming and generally being outside getting fresh air.

Back in the UK I don't exactly live in a concrete jungle and as I've said in previous posts, I can be in the countryside in a few minutes. But apart from the odd rabbit, I don't see much wildlife. That doesn't mean it's not there. Just means I don't see it.

I was sitting in our lanai room yesterday and glanced out to the tree which is right beside it. This little fella was running up and down the trunk and as I had my camera handy, I took a couple of photos through the window. I have to admit we've not cleaned the windows since we got here a week ago so they're not at their best.........but I just wanted a record of the scene and didn't care that it wasn't perfect.

Sometimes you just gotta make do.

The squirrels that congregate around the Cafe On The Lake all winter are nowhere to be seen right now and we've wondered where they are. I like the idea of them heading off somewhere with little suitcases for pastures new until the snowbirds return to the park and their food supply is restored. But I blame that Disney fella for filling my imagination with such images. He's scarred me for life.

More likely, they've just spread out around the park and are hoping for scraps of food lying around on the properties that are occupied.

They won't find anything on THIS property !!

So back to this exercise business. I'd walked along a nice 30 minute route the last 2 mornings but it was always closer to noon than early morning and I'd return dripping with sweat and having a cold shower didn't help much.

So this morning I got up at 7:15 (a time I never knew existed in the UK), had my 2 cups of coffee and then set out for my walk. I decided to 'design' a better route - one that incorporated both the nature trails that run around the edge of the park. The first one hugs Jackson Creek for about 1 km before spitting you out onto the internal park road system and after a short walk along one of these roads, you come to the other trail which takes you through scenery that better suits the name nature.

But first, before getting to the Jackson Creek trail, I came to the lake and as usual, there were a few wading birds along it's edge dipping their long beaks under the water and pecking out whatever critters they could find.

I know my posts could easy become boring with constant photos of birds, especially the same birds, so I promise to limit future photos to ones where the birds are unusual or they are doing something unusual.

A heron or a stork with a vaudeville cane and straw hat would fit that criteria but don't hold your breath.

Maybe a crane with a cane. Has a ring to it.

I've not had much experience taking photos of birds in flight but one took off, started by my approach (or dazzled by the glare from my still white Brit legs) and I took the photo you see here.

It didn't fly far enough to retract it's landing gear - although even when it does, it's ridiculously thin legs just stick out behind it's body like a couple of twigs it's snagged along the shoreline.

Landing is incredibly graceful as these twigs suddenly shoot forwards to initially help with balance and then with a sort of hover worthy of a Harrier Jet, it gently lands with all the nimbleness of a prima ballerina.

Bloody show off.

While still at the edge of the lake and close to the wooden pier, I spotted a large butterfly darting around as only butterflies can do. Yes I know many winged critters dart around but few have wings the size of butterflies. In relation to their bodies, they are huge and how they can change direction so fast is one of natures mysteries - one that the military of any nation would love to crack as it would make their fighter aircraft invincible.

This butterfly knew nothing about head up displays, power to weight ratios and thrust vectors. It just wanted something to eat from the mud.

On the few occasions when it landed, the background was always a distraction. I tried to coax it onto the rail of the pier but it wasn't in a photogenic mood.

I could've picked it up, stuck a pin though it and nailed it to the pier but that idea had so many downsides that I soon dismissed it. I also wasn't carrying a pin so it was really a non starter.

Oh now don't start on me. I'd never be so cruel. I'd stun it with a blunt object first.

I continued on my new route and soon reached the 2nd nature trail which really takes you close.......to nature. Well nature of a sort. On one side, the lawns of the manufactured houses come right down to the path and on the other, it's like a subtropical jungle and I'd never dare leave the trail and enter it's depths. The flora and fauna is totally alien to me and I should have taken photos - I will next time. I half expected an inquisitive velociraptor head to pop out at me as it was that kind of area. The unsettling bird and insect noises grew louder and I sped up.

Once back out on park roads I let both my pace and my heart rate slow down and took the shortest route back to the house. I was surprised to find I'd only been out 31 minutes and I'll get that time down by not stopping so often to take photos !! I do want to take my camera though in case I come upon a gator or more likely, a snake as we don't get many of those in the north Leeds suburbs. I'd heard there was recently a snake in the main swimming pool and when the temps approach 100F in the shade, I don't blame it. It just needs to slither out when I get there as I hate to go round ANYTHING when I'm doing lengths !

All that exercise has given me an appetite. I think we'll go to a breakfast buffet as I'm sure I've lost way too much weight already today to be healthy !!

Vive La Difference

I guess I'm like a modern day David Frost who was someone from 'my time' who was known for spending so much time flitting between the UK and the US that he talked with a sort of Transatlantic Twang. I don't think I've lost my Ulster accent yet but I do tend to mix my words from both countries and it can confuse my listeners and now, if Jennyta is a good example, my readers. A car boot becomes a car trunk, chips become crisps, butt becomes fanny and so on. Then there are words which are ONLY used on this side of the pond and I usually realise this and add an explanation if I use them.

In my defence, I don't tend to explain them if I've done it before in previous posts and so I'd gently suggest that if you cannot understand a word, do a blog search on my site and I'm sure you'll find it elsewhere. This has the added advantage for me that you'll then read my older posts which I'm told were quite interesting even back then !!

Of course you can always Google the words if you want to pass on the opportunity of knowing me from way back when. In any case I'll help out Jennyta and others by explaining the words she mentioned in her latest comment.

Bocce Ball : a game like bowls where you toss out a small white target ball along a narrow court and then using 4 larger balls, attempt to get as close to it as possible.

5th Wheel : a huge towed trailer which is connected to the bed of a truck (unlike a normal trailer which is attached to a hitch ball on the back of a truck or other towing vehicle). It is easily spotted as the bedroom area towers over the top of the truck bed. This is the advert for ours when we put it up for sale earlier this year.

Shuffleboard : I'll take the easy way out and provide this link. It's not a US only word at all but the game is most often associated with sea cruising and probably wouldn't be played much in Leeds !

RV : almost world known now thanks to tv shows and movies. A Recreational Vehicle could cover the whole gamut from Travel Trailers (the long towable units most like the static caravans we'd have at the seaside in the UK or that you see set up on building sites as temporary offices), 5th Wheels (see above) and Motorhomes (which are the motorised behemoths like an urban bus or coach). I tend to use RV when describing a motorhome, which is wrong but hey, my blog, my rules.

All these RV's are like homes on wheels with everything from showers to toilets, plasma tv's to surround sound speakers set into the ceiling and fully fitted kitchens. In my relatively short time visiting America, I've moved up the line from a popup camper (which I've not even mentioned as an RV as it hardly qualifies - but was fun to travel with for a year or so and it does sleep 3-4 people as long as they REALLY like each other.....a LOT) to a 30ft travel trailer which we took all over the country from coast to coast and finally to the 34ft 5th Wheel in the above advert. Now we have this home in Florida, we don't need the 5th anymore but it didn't sell earlier this year so we've taken it off the market for now.

So there you have it.......todays lesson in how to understand AngloYank. Your homework will be to learn these new words and throw them into conversations whenever you can.

Well I never said learning a new language would be easy !!

Mad Dogs And Ulstermen........................

Hasn't got the same ring to it, has it ??

Anyway, as we spent a lot of yesterday shopping in Sebring, I wanted to get out into the park today. As always I took my camera with me in case I came upon a gator or a Yeti or some other exotic creature. I had no luck with any of those and had to settle for a couple of common (for here) birds.

I've no idea what the temperature was when I gingerly stepped outside and exposed my pale Brit body parts to the Florida sunshine, but it was almost uncomfortably hot and humid. It was also midday and I had to be mad. It also explained why I never saw another soul for most of the hour that I was out under the blazing sun. Every park native was wisely inside sipping ice cold pina coladas and knitting quilts or something. A lot of that goes on here. Idle fingers and so on.

I went across the grass on the other side of the road as the relevant homes were still empty, awaiting their snowbird owners to arrive in November when the park will be full to bursting with Northerners and Canadians escaping the first snow flurries of the year.

This bird thingy was on the bank of the canal (Jackson Creek) which runs from the lake (Lake Josephene) and goes past our house...almost. I can see it as I sit here typing this so it runs past the house, ok ?

Is it a heron or a crane or a crow or what ? Somebody let me know as there are lots of them here. I'm sure I asked the same question when I was here before but you know how that goes !

Anyway I could've gone left or right along the cart path that skirts the canal and in the end I decided to go left as I wanted to see the bocce courts. The gravel path is just wide enough for golf cart access and it was strange to see it devoid of all life - well apart from that albatross thing above.

Where it meets the lake, there are some benches and it's a lovely place to sit and watch the wildlife and any boats that are out on the lake. It's also a favoured spot for sunset watchers as it sets over to the right and is pretty spectacular every time.

It's a sort of headland point as the land goes off to the left towards the main park 'play' areas of the bocce and shuffleboard courts and the horseshoe pits.

This photo also shows the wooden pier that goes out into the lake and has a sort of gazebo thing at it's end. I don't know what else to call it and I had the same problem last time too.

It's also is a lovely place to be during sunset but, as I discovered to my cost last year, it's also favoured by mozzies who take every opportunity to feast on fresh blood. They love mine anyway and nip off with a few cc's every time I want to enjoy a sunset. Little bastards...pardon my French.

By now I was sweating like an Estonian shot putter and I needed shade. I found this very unBritish as we usually crave the sun like it is going to implode by late afternoon the following day.

"Hey George, the sun is out and the ITV weather girl says it's to get to 63F"

"Wow, ok I'll phone in sick and you get the kids up and lets get to the beach"

"The beach ? We're 3 hours drive from the beach !!! And you know what the traffic will be like. We'll have to start back as soon as we get there"

"But it's the sun, Mildred, the sun. It could be gone forever by this time tomorrow"

"You're right. let's go but we'll need to stop off at ASDA and stock up on candles !!!"


Before I started on my quest for shade, I did take this photo looking back down Jackson Creek with the view of all the boat docks - as opposed to the boondocks which is another thing altogether.

"As opposed to the boondocks which is another thing", they all chorused to get a cheap laugh.

Once again it was strange to see no activity along the canal. When the park is jumping, as it will be by next month, the proud boat owners can be seen most days polishing their yardarms and hoisting their mainbraces.

Thankfully I've now exhausted all the nautical terminology at my disposal and have probably used what little I had in all the wrong places.

So moving swiftly on, as I now did in real life anyway, I pointed both my body and my camera lens at the view west of the pier.

You can see the benches again and the start of the wooden pier this time.

In the background, over to the right, are the bocce and shuffleboard courts. Hard to imagine I know but we'll get to them next.

You can see why I like to walk along this cart path. You can also see the sky begin to cloud over and I knew rain was in the air.

Before I could leave this part of the park, there were 2 birds that got my attention. The first one was on the ground just out of shot to the left of the benches. It wanted to get to the water of Jackson Creek but it seemed to have forgotten it could simply fly there.

So it 'walked' up and down on the grass as I walked a parallel path on the gravel track. I'd hoped it would come closer when it realised I was no threat but I guess my parallel walking was threat enough.

I stopped and gave it a clear path to the water and I had to laugh when it strolled majestically to the edge of the canal........and promptly took off and flew to the far side.

As Peter Kay would've said "What was THAT all about ?"

Maybe it just enjoyed the inter species dance we'd just shared. Maybe it was a mating thing.
For all I know, I'm now engaged.

I think I'll stay away from the area just in case it comes back and demands a prenuptial.

The other bird was much smaller and thus cuter. It was perched on the wooden pier and had been watching this bizarre courtship ritual going on with a sort of detached interest as it wasn't involved in any way.

But now things had changed and I was approaching it's space.

You can almost tell that it's not happy. It's whole posture suggests one more step from me and it's off.

I stopped and took some photos as one of the most important wildlife photographic tips I was ever given is to take a shot, or shots, as soon as you can - no matter how far away you are.

If the subject runs or flies away, at least you have something to show for your efforts.

This bird had learned from it's time watching me earlier and as I slowly moved along the pier and paused, so did it. It managed to keep us apart by just about the exact same distance and I knew this was as good as it was going to get.

As I walked away, I took this view of the pier in all it's glory.

I next came to the 3 bocce courts and I've mentioned them in several posts from last year as I really like playing bocce.

Our best friends in the park are here already this year and they also like to play bocce. The balls are always laid out for informal contests and although the twice weekly official games won't be starting until November, we will be making good use of the courts before then for some keenly contested international matches.

Official matches are played every Wednesday and Sunday from November as until then, there aren't enough players in the park.

It's a wonderful location for any game as you may be able to see the lake in the background.

I think there are plans to increase the number of courts as although 24 people can be playing at once (4 players on a team, 8 players per court, 3 courts and so 24 players in total), there are often upwards of 50 or 60 people wanting to play.

Just behind where I was standing to take this photo of the bocce courts, are the shuffleboard courts. Beside them are the horseeshoe pits and then the Cafe On The Lake which will be opening soon to dispense freshly bbq'd burgers, hot dogs and other basic goodies for a couple of dollars every weekday at noon. I can't wait.

All around the Cafe are wooden picnic tables set amongst the trees which sweep down to the lake. It's a beautiful setting and certainly helps with the digestive process. You are usually joined by ultra tame and cheeky squirrels that will eat the food out of your hand or even your mouth if you don't get it in fast enough.

I know it looks dark and a bit foreboding in this photo but it really isn't. The trees provide welcome shade and that's what I desperately needed right then.

I've no idea if there is a season for squirrels but there were none to be seen today. I guess with the cafe closed and few people in the park, they've had to find other places to scavenge for food.

They're probably attacking customers outside Burger King and McDonald's as the Cafe On The Lake will have given them a taste for bread buns and burger meat. I mean, who wants nuts ?

Leaving the Cafe behind, I went past the water hole that last year had a gator as an occasional occupant. Once again it must've gone elsewhere as there was no sign of it. I know that some gators were chased off the park roads over the summer and some were removed from the lake itself and taken to a more appropriate place (a Gucci sweatshop somewhere). I'm sure 'water hole gator' will be back and I'll keep you posted.

I walked up to where we had lived last year and it was rather strange to see the empty space where our 5th wheel had been. I believe someone will be moving onto the lot in a few weeks time but for now, it was empty and sad looking. I think the sun was affecting my brain.

Don't even go there.

A sudden downpour freshened the air and I'd managed to stand under the car port of an empty house for the few minutes of torrential rain. Once it had stopped, I decided it was time to get 'home' as I'd been out in the sun long enough.

I took a couple of photos of my place partly because it will soon have a huge RV parked on the lot to it's left. They just haven't arrived yet and that is why I can now see the canal from my chair as I type this post. In a few weeks I will be looking at the side of an RV which is a bit of a shame although it'll be nice to have our neighbours back.

As you can see, the storm shutters are opened up, the living room window a/c unit is in place, the golf cart is fully charged and ready to go and the door and windows leading into the Florida Room or Lanai (Hawaiian word for a porch or balcony but also used here as a sun room built onto any building) are decorated for Halloween.

For UK readers, the white truck at the side of the house is a Chevy Silverado (One Ton Dually) 3500 HD. I say this because you may think the house looks quite small as you'll have the idea that the truck is like the ones we see now and then on our roads.

These photos don't do it justice and I've never seen a truck like it on our UK roads - which is a good thing as it would dwarf everything other than a bus.


It would look down it's exhaust pipe at a pathetic Range Rover and spit on the windshield of a Toyota Landcruiser. It would take up one and a half lanes on the M1 and oncoming traffic would simply be run over in the Lake District.

We got it to tow the 5th wheel and we'd really like to sell it and get a more practical vehicle but until the 5th wheel itself sells, we're stuck with the truck.

So to summarise, the truck is huge and the house is NOT as small as it looks.

But then I would say that.

More views of the park will be coming soon but tomorrow I'm off to play bocce ball with a Yeti.

Flying - The Only Way To Travel !!

The taxi driver who took me the airport yesterday (Wednesday) didn't know it, but he was setting the tone for my whole trip to Florida. He was a few minutes late and as I was worried I'd arranged for him to pick me up a bit too close to my flight time anyway, I said to him that 'we' were now running late.

He took this as some sort of personal challenge and as he strapped himself into his 6 point harness and dropped his helmet visor, I realised I may have made a grave mistake. Mombai's answer to Louis Hamilton shot off, leaving a trail of burning rubber outside my house and probably waking every occupant of my street. It was 5am after all. Hopefully they'll have forgotten the incident by next April when I return.

He broke every speed limit he encountered and at one point, close to the airport, he actually tried a suicidal overtaking manoeuvre that had me closing my eyes and shouting "we don't need to get me there THIS fast". We screamed to a halt at the short term car park barrier at 5:15am, closely followed by most of my internal organs at 5:16am. You cannot be dropped at the terminal building anymore thanks to the Glasgow airport incident earlier this year and so once we'd entered the car park, I went off to find a luggage trolley while Mohinder Hamilton got my cases out of the taxi.. Once paid, he again shot off, presumably thinking that my challenge was still in force until he picked up his next passenger.

With my suspect heart still trying to pump more blood around my body than the drugs would allow, I headed for the departure terminal and on to the checkin-in desk. Here my morning got a whole lot worse.

I checked in my two large cases, got my boarding card for the flight to Heathrow and set off with my 2 smaller cases to find the gate and relax for a while. I'm at that stage in my life now where if I cannot easily find where I need to go, I ask someone who looks like they do. I used to just walk all over the place, trying to my destination by a process of pure luck and basically removing all other possibilities by trying them first. I was in no mood to attempt that on this occasion.

I asked a BMI (British Midland International) employee and she looked at my trolley with the 2 small cases on it and said "you can't have two pieces of carry on luggage, you know". My beating heart suddenly went into spasm and it was all I could do to stop myself having a stroke. Instead I gently wept.

Now I regard myself as a seasoned and knowledgeable traveller and I had made a point of researching the latest regulations regarding luggage but my mistake had been to get this information from the airline site. D'oh. The one carry-on case regulation is unique to travel within the UK and so my internal flight to London came under that category. It was too late to get my checked luggage back again and do some speedy rearranging of contents. So I had to try and cram as much as possible from my small camera bag into my slightly larger case which was pretty much full to busting already with my 6 months supply of medication and my laptop and hard drive and MP3 and associated cables.

It's amazing what you can do when you are on a time deadline. I got most things into the larger case by removing the laptop as they said I could carry this on it's own. This left my camera bag which now contained one pair of swimming shorts and 2 pairs of socks. I took this back to the check-in desk to have it processed as checked luggage. Bet it was the lightest case they've ever loaded into the cargo hold of a plane.

With my now grossly overloaded case and laptop in hand, I got through security and boarded the plane. The 65 minute flight to Heathrow was uneventful and we landed a few minutes before the official time of 8am. My next flight was at 9:55am so I had no reason to rush to get to the gate even though I had to take a shuttle to get from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3.

I boarded the Boeing 777 and was pleased to discover I was next to a normal sized young man from Switzerland who was on his way to Guatemala. And I thought I'd a long trip ! He hardly said a word the whole flight even though I tried to initiate a conversation a couple of times. Fair enough.

My seat, 41C, had been chosen by my going to Seat Guru and it was just as they'd said. This row, and those behind it, had seats that were substantially wider than those in rows 40 and beyond as they had 5 seats in the middle as opposed to the 4 we had. Luxury. I settled in and stretched my legs out in a way they couldn't - and smiled the self satisfied smile of someone who had done his homework and got an A+ and a little blue star from Miss.

A few minutes after 10am we pulled back from the departure gate. We slowly taxied along and moved up to No.1 on the queue and finally turned onto 09R, the main Heathrow takeoff runway. The engines came up to full power and we moved off, the force pushing me back into the seat. As we rapidly gathered speed, there was much more vibration than I'm used to and I noticed others were looking around the way people do when wanting to gain reassurance from others. Suddenly the power dropped and so did the vibrations and then the power returned and then dropped. We were halfway down the runway and it was obvious we weren't going to be able to take off.

We turned off onto one of the service jetways and taxied a bit more before the pilot came over the PA and told us they'd had a computer alert but everything was fine now. I begged to differ and said to Mr. Switzerland, "clean up in aisle 41." It lost something in translation.

And so we went round again and had another go. This time when the engines hit full power, the vibrations were much less severe and the world's largest twinjet aircraft finally lifted off the tarmac, helped in no small measure by the collective willpower of about 300 very relieved passengers and some expelled gasses from yours truly.

A few minutes later the turbulence started. I've been very fortunate with all of my previous flights and have only experienced very sight turbulence and even then the pilot had given some warning or at worst, explained it to us as it'd been happening. This is all good for putting worried minds at peace but this pilot didn't tell us a thing. We were shaken violently from side to side but thankfully not up and down. It went on for quite some time and caused another informative comment from myself that aisle 41 needed servicing again. I was shedding bodily contents faster than an anorexic supermodel.

It was only some time after the turbulance had passed that the pilot came on and apologised for it. He said due to us having to go around again in order to take off, we had been slotted high into the takeoff queue at the last minute and as a result had followed a bit too closely behind an Airbus 330 and had been caught up in it's wake. Holy turbulance, Batman. Thinking about it afterwards, knowing what was happening at the time would've made things worse as I've known planes to have crashed when following too close behind another plane and my already heightened fears would've gone up a few notches.

The next 9 hours passed VERY slowly as the movie selection sucked and I had to try and avoid seeing anything from Mr. Switzerland's screen as he broke off from reading his Rough Guide just long enough to watch the latest Harry Potter movie - and as I want to wait and see it on DVD, I didn't want to see any of it there and then.

We touched down in Miami at 2:27pm just a few minutes late. My date with the US immigration dept was upon me and I felt like that guy at the start of Midnight Express when he was trying to get through Turkish customs with several blocks of heroin strapped to his body. My heartbeat was as loud as his and I was sure the agent would notice the sweat pouring from every oriface.
What was going in my favour was the fact that it was 90 degrees in there and everyone was sweating with me.

After answering a few standard questions and having my finger prints taken as usual, Mr Jolly Smiling Immigration Agent (not) stamped my passport and I was in. Wooohooooo. I didn't have to play my trump card by pulling out my 2003 letter from Homeland Security which basically said I was one of the good guys and posed no threat to the US apart from my ability to get to the front of the line at any event with a buffet.

To celebrate my relief I think I accidentally passed wind again but I didn't care. It was my personal WMD but unlike an atomic bomb, posed little or no threat to anyone. Well apart from a kid nearby who stopped dead in his tracks, looked up at me with wide eyes and flared nostrils and said in a loud voice "mommy I smell poop". Kids eh !!!

And so I was officially IN and able to stay for 6 months. My friends were waiting for me and within 10 minutes of clearing both immigration and customs, I had picked up my cases and we were on our way to Sebring. It was HOT and sunny and then it rained and there was a beautiful double rainbow which accompanied us for several miles. The sun returned and was setting as we approached Sebring and I took this photo out the window of the truck.

It seemed an omen of better things to come and after that trip, they had to be better.

Then I thought about it. Ok, I'd been rushed to the airport, inconvenienced with my luggage, endured a decidedly dodgy takoff and shaken, not stirred, by a bit of turbulence.

But so what ? I mean I'd not died in a fiery explosion at 38,000ft or been vapourised by crashing vertically into the ground at Miami airport. Hey, I'd even had a smooth passage through immigration for a change.

And here I am in hot (93F today) and sunny central Florida till the end of March.

Yes it's certainly going to be a case of having to survive a long winter but you'll be proud to know I feel I'm up to the task. It's my British duty.

Houston, The Eagle Has Landed

Arrived safely in Sebring a couple of hours ago but as I've not slept for 43 hours, I'm off to bed.

More to follow.........when I come out of my coma.

The Day Has Arrived.

As it's gone midnight here in darkest Blightly, I can truthfully say I'm about to leave for my winter home today. I fly out in just over 6 hours and after a short stopover in Heathrow to change from the British Midland Sopwith Camel to a proper adult plane, I should be in Miami at 2:20pm local time (that's 7:20pm UK time).

I'm still not in holiday mood as for one thing, it's hard to get too excited when the holiday in question lasts 6 months. It'll also be my 47th flight across 'the pond' so I now just see it as something to endure to get to where I want to get to. The leg from London to Miami takes nearly nine and a half hours and that's a long time to be squished between 2 total strangers who could be taking liberties that I'd have a problem accepting from a life long friend.

For that reason, I've picked my seat with a lot of consideration. My plane will be an American Airlines Boeing 777 and so I logged onto the wonderful Seat Guru to pick my seat. I've done this over several years and their seat info is very accurate and helpful. This time I was tempted to get a seat in the front of the plane but the one next to the pilot was taken. Rats.

No the front few rows have power points and I was tempted to get one so that I could use this power hungry laptop as it only runs for about 90 mins now on battery power. I have downloaded about 70 movies from "Transformers" to "Die Hard 4" and the time would pass a lot faster if I could watch one or two of them. Yes I know I'll have a choice of several movies and tv shows via the personal inflight entertainment system but those screens are about 8" square and the sound is awful. Why not make use of this laptop's 17" monster screen with superior sound system.

But in the end I opted for comfort and picked seat 41C. From previous experience this row suits me as it's the row when the normal 5 middle seats goes down to 4 as the rear of the plane narrows. This means there is a lot more room on one side as the aisle is wider. I may still have 'obese annoying man' to my right, but at least I can lean to the left and enjoy the space. Being close to the back of the plane, I can easily get up to have a pee, stretch my legs or do my exercises to avoid DVT. Failing this I can always have a word with the rear gunner to pass the time.

Once I've landed at Miami, my stress levels will go up another notch as I have to face the dreaded immigration officers who, since 9/11, come under the wide spread umbrella that is Homeland Security. I never used to have a problem with them until 2003 when my mother died and I had to fly home from America to attend her funeral and, as executor of her will, sort out her estate. It took 2 weeks to find jobs for the servants and sell off the plantations and when I returned to America to continue my holiday, the nice officers at Cleveland airport gave me a hard time for almost 3 hours and.....well, I've posted about it before so won't go into it all again.

So I now stand in line and ease my way slowly to the immigration booths with some trepidation. I'll only relax and start to enjoy everything when I see the officer reach for his stamp and bring it down with a flourish onto my passport with a date that allows me to stay till the end of March.

A stamp of approval in effect !

Of course I'll want to slap on the Factor 75 and change into my shorts and flip flops right there and then. My pounding heart will relax and let the drugs do their work (legal drugs of course) and I can start to think of all the things I'll do in the next 6 months in (mostly) sunny Florida.

Fear not, dear readers, if I do anything or go anywhere remotely interesting, I'll share it with you on here. Don't expect any stunning scenery though, as Florida is the flattest state in the union and a speed bump gathers crowds of camera heaving tourists. But I still love it. I get unquestioned senior discounts wherever I go from movie theatres to restaurants. I don't need to worry about falling ill as every second building is a hospital. I can have a bbq on the beach on Christmas Day. If I feel like regressing to my childhood, Disney, Universal and Sea World are all within an hours drive. There are 3 planned shuttle launches from the nearby Kennedy Space Centre while I'm there and the stunning white beaches of the gulf coast are 2 hrs drive to the West. The Everglades and even Key West are both day trips and the art deco area of South Miami Beach is always worth a visit.

Of course there are downsides. The hurricane season still has a month to run and I could end up semi buried in a cotton field in Mississippi given the right, or wrong, conditions. The fact that 85% of the drivers in Florida are over 75 makes any trip by car challenging to say the least. Walking isn't that much better. The critter approaching you on the path may well have a large set of teeth and a hide straight out of a Gucci catalogue. Then there are the mozzies, noseeums, love bugs and other flying nasties which can make being outside pure misery. Everyone knows about mosquitoes but the others may be new to UK readers.

No-see-ums are aptly named because they are so small that......well basically you can't see them ! You know they are about when you've been bitten....and bitten.....and bitten. Even a standard net or window shutter won't stop them as they pass though them so you have to close the windows and doors and turn up the air conditioning.

Love bugs aren't so bad, don't bite and are seasonal. Sadly their second season is right now (Sept/Oct). The problem with them is that there are zillions of them and apart from making out a lot, they love the lights and exhaust fumes from cars and haven't the sense to know that bug versus car is always going to be a one sided contest. (no Herbie jokes PLEASE). Cars get plastered with them and they are buggers (sorry) to remove. The temptation is to put on your wipers and that makes things a lot worse. You practically need a flamethrower or industrial solvent to remove their earthly remains from your vehicle.

So you see, don't go thinking I'll be having a wonderful time this winter. It'll be hell I tell ya. However in the true Attenborough spirit, I'll do my best, and uphold the standards set by numerous generations of brave and intrepid British explorers. I may even go to a WalMart.

But I'll tell you this. Having a bbq on a beach is no way to spend Christmas Day.

Disclaimer Day

I've never written a disclaimer post before - mostly as I've never felt the need to before.

A few hours ago, someone visited my blog site by entering "Arbuthnot Day" into a Google search. Back in February I had created a post and in the process, had wanted to use a ridiculously unlikely fictional name to flower the story up a bit. I picked Arbuthnot Day.

Having gone to the Google site to see what came up, I noticed that there were two reasons why that name would be put into a search engine. First if you wanted to get info about someone actually called Arbuthnot Day and second, if someone called Arbuthnot had a 'Day' named after him. I now realise both of these exist !!

For a select band of bike riders, the 17th of September 2006 was "Arbuthnot Day" and as the web site states, it............

...........is a day when we ride in memory of Sir RK Arbuthnot. He was the only serving Royal Navy Admiral to ride in the Isle of Man TT races in 1908. He rode a Triumph solo motorcycle in that pioneering event.

Well who'd have thunk it ???? And why just 2006 ? Isn't he remembered on other years ?
He really should have his Day every year as I'll get most hits that way !!

When we move on to people who were actually CALLED Arbuthnot Day, we again find the name comes up mostly in relation to military men. Maybe with a name like that, you had to know how to fight ! One such individual was Stewart Arbuthnot Day who probably spent a lot of his time telling people he was simply signing his initials and not giving a MySpace-like indication of his mood at the time.

I'm sure Melville Arbuthnot Day had a similar problem, but I'd better not let this idea go too far.

So I'm back to my disclaimer and I'm just getting it in now before any nasty legal email or comment comes my way. All names used in my posts (apart from those of friends and relatives who really shouldn't sue me) are fictitious - yes even that of Sammy Murphy in the previous post. In doing so, I do not ever mean to offend anyone living or dead or in any state in between.
Any named Manchester United fan falls outside of the scope of this disclaimer. They are fair game in my book.

There, I think that covers everyone. Feel free to read on....................

Grabbing Your Nuts

No I'm not highlighting some dubious video title - although, of course, I have no knowledge what titles are on the market these days. Or any days. Oh heavens no. Never never, not even once.
Phew. Close call there.

The nuts in question are those to be found all over the place at this time of year and they got me thinking as I walked to my doctor's a few days ago. I'd put an audio book on my MP3 player for the first time (Peter Kay - The Sound Of Laughter) and it wasn't working for me. It wasn't funny at all and I had quickly lost interest and the voice in my ears (not Peter's by the way and I so wish it had been) had become a sort of soft background drone.

Then I came upon a load of fallen chestnuts on the pavement and at the side of the road and I drifted off to a land before time, when kids still played outside and when being sent to your room meant you sat on the bed till the time was up.

Back then, in Sepia World, we kids loved playing with our....well, with.......ah .......ok I can see where this is headed. Lets try it another way. Kids enjoyed conkers. There. That's got be safe enough.

I used to love finding a large slightly split shell (I don't know what the name is for the whole thing, prickly shell and all) and get all excited by the potential within. Remember these were the days of wired remote controls and when Minnie Caldwell was regarded as a sex kitten. Shivvvvver. I think my memories may just be playing tricks on me but, if so, I can blame my low HDL.

Anyway, a split chestnut shell,with the possibility of a champion nut inside, was a real high point in the week. I'd gently prise it open and hope that a HUGE gleaming chestnut would appear and I could finally try and defeat the conker of Sammy Murphy who had held the record for 2 years with his suspiciously named 'Metal Mickey' monster, which was a fifteensie.

For those of a younger disposition, the idea was to carefully drill through the chestnut, thread a piece of string through the resulting hole and tie and knot it to stop the chestnut falling off. With your chestnut now ready for action, you'd challenge another owner and take turns to try and smash the other nut to pieces or even have it come off the string. If you were both first timers, the winner could call his conker a 'onesie' and if you defeated someone else, it became a twosie' and so on. I think if you beat someone with a conker that was, say, a 'twosie', then you gained his number as well and so you REALLY wanted to meet a champion and defeat him and so gain a bucket load of numbers with one victory.

Who needed an X-Box ??

Of course a whole subculture of "nut preparation" existed and many were the tales of how champion conkers came to be. All sorts of wonderful methods were discussed in the school yards, from gently cooking the nuts to dipping them in homemade concoctions - recipes that went to the grave with their inventors. Cheating during the contests was almost obligatory and modern day Health & Safety inspectors would have stepped in and declared all bets off after the first swing.

But we were tough and fearless kids in those days and fended off chestnut splinters with battle hardened faces. Many kids wore eyepatches as a result of past contests and several went on to play small roles in cheap British pirate movies as they had their own prop and only had to say 'yarrrrr' every so often. In fact Sammy Murphy himself was signed up for a few such epics and made his name in the notorious "Blackbeard And The Treasure Of Bognor Regis" before sex, drugs and a conker splinter which moved down to his heart brought an end to his life in 1978 and thus adversely affected his movie career. Rent it on Betamax now.

Sadly I never DID find my own champion conker but it never stopped me looking. Back to the present and I saw that most of the chestnuts on the ground were still in their shells and I realised that we now have a generation of kids who either don't know about them or don't care about them. This was doubly upsetting as the tree was right outside a school and if ever there should have been a match made in heaven, this was it. Sadly not though. Now if something isn't plugged into the mains or takes enough batteries to power the Mars Lander, then it isn't worth bothering about.

"A nut on a string ? You must be joking, mister".

"No, it's fun; you try and smash your friends nut and that MUST be cool" ?

"Eh ? Get real. You could lose an eye that way"

"Yes but still, a whole new career could open up for you".

"Yarrrrrrrr"

(What A) Carry On Nurse

Continuing with the medical theme of the last couple of posts, I need to vent about my trip to the doc's this morning. If I don't, my BP will rise and we can't have that. Well I can't anyway.

Today I had my annual appointment at the Chronic Illness Clinic (or something like that) which is my surgery's attempt to be proactive about patient care. Now I know I shouldn't belittle any proactive measures, as heaven knows, our ailing NHS service cannot afford to do much in the way of stopping illness and has it's hands full treating it once it has struck us down.

But for high risk people like me, they run this Clinic and I've never been much of a fan. I applaud the idea but in practice it usually involves taking my BP, weight and height and then having a short chat about my blood test results, my exercise and dietry issues and a review of my medication. That's it.

I take my own BP at home, I weigh myself every Monday morning and unless the problems of global warming and worrying if Hailey will leave Roy have caused my shoulders to sag alarmingly, I'm still the 5' 8" I was last year. I got my blood results 2 days ago, I know all about exercise and the best diet for my condition so what do I actually get from going to this Clinic ?

Nothing much. Today I went as I'd nothing better to do and I did have a couple of questions to ask. My appointment was at 11am and I was out before 11:15am. I did learn something new though. That the nurse had as much knowledge about cholesterol as my doctor had 15 years ago when my reading of 9.6 (371 for US readers) didn't cause him any concern at all. His lack of concern and advice was followed 6 months later by my having my first heart attack, followed closely by an emergency quintuple bypass. Even then, my doctor had diagnosed my heart problems as 'muscle strains' until I insisted on 'going private' and seeing a specialist. Since then I've changed doctors and taken it upon myself to look after my own health and not be fobbed off by any doctor or nurse.

So imagine my surprise when the nurse today told me my HDL reading was 0.9 and said that was very good. "No it's not" I said "it should be over 1.2 and the higher the better"

Nurse : "No the HDL needs to be low and as yours is under 5, that's good."

Me : "NO, the HDL relates to the amount of cholesterol that returns to your liver and so needs to be high. It's the HDL that is the 'good cholesterol' and can be raised by exercise. That's how I remember it......H for Needing To Be High and L (in LDL) for Needing To Be Low."

I won't go on but lets say I was getting nowhere with this nurse and I found myself beginning to doubt my facts and I even said "ok you're the expert" while keeping my fingers tightly crossed.

I came straight home and checked the information pack I'd been given from the hospital from the British Heart Foundation and of course I'd been right.

Now maybe nursey had been having a bad morning and was somehow living in a backwards world but this hasn't stopped me getting steamed up. She also advised me to switch from using olive oil to rapeseed oil which was bizarre at best.

So all in all I think I'll pass on this Clinic in future and when they ask me why, I'll tell them. Maybe I need to ring them now in case that nurse isn't a nurse at all - you hear stories about people with medical aspirations, but no training whatsoever, just walking into jobs and practically performing surgery when the cleaner would know more than they do.

It's all a worry, I tells ya. I feel my BP rising and I'm sure I'm heading towards 5' 7" now. Everything seems so much bigger around me and the remote is getting heavy.

I think I'll have a drink of rapeseed oil and go for a lie down.

No Tooth Fairy Needed - This Time

It was ironic that my previous post was called "I Never Floss" as that came back to haunt me this morning when I went to the dentist.

As I may have mentioned elsewhere, the dentist I had for about 20 years decided to go semi retired a couple of years ago and only kept on his older patients - those who were over 55 I think he said. In any case I wasn't one of them and so I got the 'new girl' complete with her modern ways and methods.

On every visit, she seems hell bent on passing me on to the hygienist as fast as possible and this too has taken me some time to get my teeth into.......sorry.........as my old dentist did the hygienist's job too. And very gentle he was with me too !!

So today when I went for my 6 month checkup, I was greeted by a beaming (teeth perfect) receptionist who informed me the hygienist would just be a couple of minutes.

"Hang on" I said, "Surely, I'm supposed to be seeing the dentist ?".

"How did you know I was called Shirley ?", she said.

"It's on your name badge" I said, and thus a good joke was spoiled forever.

Anyway I went into Meldrew Mode and eventually saw the dentist first - as it should be. I mean what would a slip of a hygienist know about cavities and other potential nightmares ? She, the dentist, set a new record for her and I was out of her office or surgery or whatever it's called, in about 5 minutes with no new holes found anywhere. And so to the hygienist who remembered me from previous visits and wasn't about to suggest mouthwashing, flossing or worse, ask me how I'd got on with those nasty pink or red handled things they want you to shove between your teeth to force out plaque, food bits and anything else that has decided to take up residence there.

I'm too long in the tooth (sorry again) for that new fangled malarky. A good old toothbrush was good enough for the Victorians and so is good enough for me. I've had the same one for 9 years and might splash out on a new one next year as I think I'm just scraping my teeth with bare plastic now as the bristles wore down to the head in 1998.

Only joking. I went electric in 2002 and fit new brush heads regularly. When I remember.

So in total silence, apart from the odd "arrrggggg" and "oh what the bloody hell are you doing in there woman ?" from me, Miss Giggleswick Dental Hygienist Of The Year (3rd runner up) hacked the tartar off my teeth and then actually gave me a full floss service. Bless. All was forgiven and I left with a movie style twinkle in the corner of my mouth and her best wishes for my forthcoming trip to America ringing in my ears.

I was free for another 6 months. I went to the nearest sweetie shop and bought a Mars Bar to celebrate. As that may upset my dentist and my hygienist, I'm thinking of going for the hat trick and upsetting my cardiologist by having it deep fried.

Hey, with these teeth, I can now bite through anything.

I'll Never Floss

I handed in my prescription this morning as I need to get a 6 month supply of my pills for my upcoming trip to America. I took the opportunity to ask for the results of my cholesterol blood test from last Thursday and so the receptionist looked it up.

"Everything was ok" she said "nothing to worry about at all".

I've come to expect this response over the years so didn't bat an eyelid. For many people, that might be enough but I take great interest in every detail of my 'condition' and so I asked if I could have the cholesterol results. After a long search through my file, she finally asked me something but it was mostly drowned out by the piped music, the sound from the tv and the collective noises from the other patients around me in the waiting area.

Is it me getting older or have waiting room levels of noise become worse recently ? The moans and groans, coughs and hacks are all part of the general hubbub that we expect in a doctor's waiting room - but now we have music from huge wall mounted speakers attached to a £5 radio somewhere under the desk next to the receptionist's handbag. The radio is usually tuned slightly off the station so you get more hiss than music and Terry Wogan's dulcet tones sound like he's permanently attached to a helium canister.

My surgery now has a small flat screen tv up on the wall and although the volume is usually muted so we can enjoy the ramblings and general blarney of Terry 'Soprano' Wogan on the radio, someone had decided this morning that they needed to hear Phillip Schofield as well as see him and so the two were competing for our aural attention.

I was so glad that I was just passing through, so to speak, and was not ill in any way. All that noise could well have pushed me over the edge. As it was, I didn't hear all of what the receptionist was saying to me so I've no idea if she was giving me my overall cholesterol figure or the ratio figure - which are very different. Hopefully it wasn't how many years they'd given me to live !!

In any case I did hear her say 3.8 (146 in US cholesterol terminology) and I was happy enough to take that and run. I'll ask for more details when I see the nurse on Thursday but considering I put on a few pounds over the summer and not done as much walking as last year, I'll take 3.8 and say thank you very much.

I then headed off for my first visit with fellow blogger, Daphne, who lives nearby and what a lovely lady she is. I met her daughter, Emily and as a bonus, their cute cat - who took an instant liking to me and only bit me once - a friendly nip just to let me know who was boss. I had tea and jaffa cakes and we spent a delightful 90 minutes chatting and getting to know each other. That's Daphne and not the cat I mean.

I hope to be invited again.

I came home as it was time to chat online with Debby as she and Dennis, my US friends, set off yesterday for the drive from their home in Michigan down to our shared winter 'home' in Sebring, Florida. They had driven 342 of the 1,398 miles and were staying overnight near the town of Piqua, OH. The idea is to enjoy the trip as there is no rush to get to Florida. They plan to get there by Thursday evening, leaving almost a week to get the place ship shape by the time I arrive on 3rd October. I can't wait.

Sadly before that, I have my checkup with the dentist tomorrow. I never used to dread such visits as my dentist was a saint in a white coat with the gentle touch of a butterfly. HE would clean my teeth and I never felt a thing. Last year he retired and the new dentist has passed such mundane cleaning tasks to the 'hygienist from hell' who got her training at the Josef Mengele Clinic in Bolivia. At least she apologises beforehand for the pain she is about to inflict on me, but I have to say it's scant consolation. She does her best to open up the gaps between my teeth and I spend the following 6 months filling the gaps in again. It's what David Attenborough would call a symbiotic relationship but somehow I think I'm getting the worst of the deal. I seem to be the remora to her shark.

I may need several jaffa cakes to get over it. Are you listening, Daphne ??

No Worries, Be Happy

A couple of days ago I rang my doc's surgery to make an appointment for a blood test. Having had 2 heart attacks already, I take these tests seriously and have them every 6 months.

I'd left it a bit late this time as I leave for America in 2 weeks and so the receptionist had to struggle to get me a date for the test and also for the follow up at the 'heart clinic' where my results would be given and my medication discussed.

But she was extremely helpful and although she kept saying she'd get the sack for doing it, she got me dates for both visits within the week. Yet again I put down the phone thinking how lucky I was to be registered at such a well run and friendly surgery.

Today I went for my blood test and when I presented myself at the receptionist's window, I noted that the lady was on happy pills and it was Ian this and Ian that and I felt like I was talking with my best friend in the world........ever !!! While I was deciding what had been added to her morning coffee (and if it was on the NHS ?), I was given an NHS questionaire about all aspects of the surgery and asked to fill it in - and was urged to give an 'excellent' mark when answering the questions relating to the receptionists !

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh so it WASN'T down to the coffee after all. Now I knew why she had a smile like a US pageant contestant !

The irony was that she didn't need to be like this today as I was quite happy to tick the excellent box anyway. I've been to a few other surgeries over the years with friends and relatives and those visits have made me really appreciate mine. I get in when I want and I see the doctor I want. I rarely have to wait more than 5 minutes to see the doctor and often go in as soon as I arrive. If I ring in the morning and it's not about an issue requiring an actual visit, I can have the doctor ring me at home which saves us both time and effort. The surgery itself is bright, clean and friendly and today I noticed there was a flat screen tv up in a corner to keep us entertained on those rare occasions when we do have to wait a bit longer.

So I ticked the 'very good' or 'excellent' boxes for most of my answers and I got a few general points off my chest at the end when they foolishly gave me the space to add what I wanted. I wrote nothing about my surgery but plenty about the NHS in general.

Doctor's receptionists have a bad press and I'm sure some deserve it. Any job where you deal face to face with the general public can't be easy although you'd think receptionists have it fairly stress free as they just make appointments and do a bit of paperwork. In this day and age it baffles me why medical details are STILL on cards and bits of paper but at least that's changing.
When most things are computerised, their jobs should be easier and they can put more effort into their people skills.

I also think we see them as barriers between ourselves and the doctors but like traffic wardens, they have to be there or chaos would reign. In the short time I was there this morning, it was like rush hour at a train station. Patients coming and going, others moving about filling in their questionaires, doctors flitting from their rooms to the reception area and back and trying not to be spotted by anyone hoping to 'just have a quick word'. It was crazy. Yet during all this, the receptionists were staffing the window area giving out welcome smiles and raised 'can I help you' eyebrows to all who approached them.

It goes a long way....questionaire or not.

Sport Glorious Sport

Hi, I'm Ian and I'm A Couch Potato.

There, I've gone all AA because these days being a CP isn't PC.....if you follow me.

I mean I may not be quite up there with Jim Royal but I think I run him a close second.

(Had to have a break there as I used the word 'run' and came over a little faint.)

I try to get my fill of fresh air and exercise during the week as weekends are just cram packed with so much live televised sport that Jim's infamous expletive comes to mind when I finally power things off each night. Or the early hours of the morning.

I remember a very early episode of The Simpsons where Homer had just got hooked up to free cable and the family were sitting watching anything on any channel just cause it was there. One by one the family members got bored and drifted away from the living room - except for Homer who sat, zombie like, for 24 hrs + sinking deeper and deeper into the couch. When he did eventually get up, he had to peel himself of the chair and in doing so, left behind a 'shroud of Turin' like image of himself.

I know the feeling.

Many years ago when I first got cable, I remember seeing that I had a couple of dedicated sports channels and I thought......how are they going to fill them ? Surely there isn't enough sport going on in the world to have 2.....yes 2 full time tv channels ? Ahhhhh such naivity.

I now have a choice of at least 12 channels dedicated to bringing top notch sport to me in my electric powered leather armchair and that doesn't include others that I never watch - like horse racing ones.

Well I say top notch sport with fingers tightly crossed and tongue firmly cheeked because some....ok a lot.... of the sport rarely reaches the heady heights that would qualify it as top notch, or even low notch.

A spot of channel surfing yesterday brought up such dubious sports as Pro Arm Wrestling and Pro Bull Riding. Can't see those becoming Olympic events any time soon but then you never know. I mean we do have Synchronised Swimming and Rhythmic Gymnastics after all.

It's the Pro bit that gets me. These 'athletes' actually make a living out of this. Obviously I just HAD to have a look and for a few minutes, I sat open mouthed as in the arm wrestling sport, huge muscled men held hands and got their faces so close to each other that I thought I'd somehow tuned into a webcam at The Birdcage.

Although today is a Sunday, take it as a typical example of weekend live televised sport and in this 24 hr period we have the established sports of golf, cycling, cricket, 'normal' footy from England, Spain, France and Germany, Aussie footy, American footy, Irish (Gaelic) footy, rugby league, rugby union, motor racing (all sorts), athletics and baseball. Then we have the next tier of sports like road racing, 3 day eventing, powerboating and mountain biking. After that we hit the twilight zone of sporting events such as wakeboarding, skateboarding, and something to do with power kites. What ??

The most dubious sport on the tv schedules today is on a show called Cage Rage. This appears to be where small nappy wearing thugs of Asian descent get into a caged ring and basically use any form of martial arts to try and put their opponents into a coma. Maybe it'll catch on if women take up this jolly game and they swap the ring for a mud pit. Sorry.....bit sexist there.

As winter approaches we get a whole plethera of sports played on the snow and ice. These are dominated by the Nordic countries and it seems that if you strap anything to your feet and try to go fast, it's a sport. Well the days are long up there and I believe their tv sucks.

Just to add some excitement to these events, they throw in tasks during an otherwise boring ski race which involves taking the rifle that they've carried around on their backs for 20kms and trying to shoot at small distant targets. If it snowed a lot in South East LA, I'd have to think the natives would be naturals at this. If they ever adapt it and swap skis for cars, America will be World Champs. Drive-by Nordic Shooting. The team event would be a hoot.

Yesterday we had the UK leg of something called Turbo Tennis with players like Tim, Greg, Andy and Goran (??) playing each other - almost normal tennis rules but with 30 minute matches and whoever was leading when the time was up, won. Somehow I think it was their answer to 20/20 cricket as it seems everyone wants fast paced sport these days. If it lasts more than an hour or so, we hit the remote. I see the end for traditional test cricket, as a game that lasts for 5 days will only be supported by oldies who can sit in a chair and doze for most of the time.

Hang on, that sounds like me !

Time To Say Goodbye

The death of Luciano Pavarotti last Thursday came as a shock to me as I heard about it when I was driving down to Nottingham. It was only the previous day that I'd also heard on the car radio that he was 'quite ill' and so to hear about his death so soon after that previous report made it much more sudden to me than it actually was.

I'm no great opera lover and would probably never go to see one - but I do like the occasion song. Pavarotti's rendition of Nessun Dorma still moves me so much and I know that song and his performance of it for the 1990 World Cup opened up Opera for millions of people.

Pavarotti was almost a larger than life character who seemed so genuinely happy to be performing with a wide variety of well known singers from U2's Bono to The Spice Girls, from Celine Dion to James Brown. He lived life to the full with the classic list of wine, women and song being his mantra.

He'll be missed, of course, but thankfully we have a treasure trove of his wonderful performances on cd and dvd to be enjoyed by everyone for decades to come.

And memories are what it's all about. Many a movie has ended with the phrase "he'll never really be gone as long as there are those of us who never forget him".

A tad sentimental and Hollywood maybe......but true all the same.

On the subject of Opera and memories, I do have an experience to share. Although I said that I'm not really into Opera as such, I have most of the albums of Andrea Bocelli as I find listening to his voice an almost religious experience and often it transports me to a better place.

No not like Virgin Rail. More like The Orient Express.

Anyway back to the memory.

I've been to Las Vegas about 4 times now and of course it was the first visit that holds most memories for me as it's quite a place after all. But it was an experience during my second visit that left me with a memory so vivid that it gives me goosebumps to this day. When I was first there, there was a casino called The Dunes just up The Strip from where I was staying, at The Sands. Between 1993 and 1994, the loss making Dunes was demolished and a stunning new resort casino rose in it's place. The Italian styled Bellagio opened in 1998 and as well as being a magnificent hotel, it is almost as famous for the fountain which stretches across an 8 acre lake between the building and The Strip.

To call it a fountain is like saying The Grand Canyon is a crack in the earth. It just doesn't do it justice. It has 1,200 nozzles which makes it possible to put on a display which is timed to music.
The jets can push the water up to a staggering height of 25o feet and when these displays are set to just the right music, it makes for an experience that lives long in the memory.

I was visiting the city for that second time soon after The Bellagio was built and I was in the company of someone special to me. We got to our hotel late in the evening and once we'd checked in and partially unpacked, I was eager to get out and see the sights. It was a typically hot and humid night in Vegas and after a while, we'd strolled along The Strip to the edge of The Bellagio and noticed the crowds gathering all around the lake. We joined them and waited.

On the hour, many of the 4,500 underwater fountain lights came on and the tension and excitement rose around the lake. The only light came from the hotel windows and from The Paris casino across the road. Suddenly the first notes of "Con te partirò" (Time To Say Goodbye) came from dozens of speakers set up around the viewing area and then the fountain display started. As the music and voice of Sarah Brightman swelled, so did the water display with the jets sweeping across the lake and back again and shooting up into the night sky to reflect the pitch and volume of the song. A couple of minutes in and the voice of Andrea Bocelli took over and my goosebumps had goosebumps.

The fountain display on it's own was stunning. The music on it's own was beautiful. The two combined - priceless.

There are several home movies of this on YouTube and I've looked at most of them to try and find the best for this blog. I've taken my own video on a couple of occasions and know how hard it is to capture the event without picking up the voices of those standing nearby and the traffic noises from The Strip. Some posters have just added the audio track afterwards which gives great quality but loses the vital sounds of the fountain.....the swoooooooosh as the jets of water sway from side to side, the rapid, almost machine gun like sounds they make when the jets streak across the lake and finally the explosive sound when they blast the water to it's full 250ft height at the climax of the music.

There is also the problem faced by the cameramen as they try and pan back and forth to track the action and the best videos are those which simply use a wide angle and stick with it. If you've never seen the fountain before, please do not follow this link first, but there is a video taken from above which shows the design of the fountain very well but loses out on 2 points. First there is no atmosphere as I said before and also it was taken during the day. The experience is so much better at night.

So this is for you, Luciano, and it's fitting that it should be sung partly by your good friend Andrea Bocelli. Most other tribute posts will include you singing Nessun Dorma but I just wanted to merge my memory with yours.

It's the best I can do.

Bringing Home The Bacon

As I mentioned in my previous post, I took the chance to get out and about a bit more in the past 10 days while lappy was in Nottingham being repaired.

This coincided with lovely warm sunny weather (for the most part) which has been conspicuously absent for most of the summer. Now that I think about it, we had glorious warm weather back in March/April when we went for weeks without a sniff of rain and then we got a summer where we got a full double nostril full of the stuff (following on from the sniff analogy !!) to give us the wettest summer on record (that's a 78 and not a cd). Now we're having more of the dry, warm and sunny variety and so I think the time has come to drop the idea of seasons altogether.

A bit revolutionary I grant you but I'm that way out these days.

I'm a sort of Victor Meldrew with a tattoo. Rock on.

Anyway a few days ago I went on a little trip to the nearby town of Bingley which seems to be famous for 2 man made constructions - the HQ of the Bradford & Bingley Building Society and the Five Rise Locks.

The former is impressively ugly and the later is simply impressive.

The B&B HQ was obviously transported from Normandy where it began life as part of the German defences against a potential Allied invasion. All that's missing are a few cannon barrels poking out from the windows and that would complete the image.

It's a worthy Carbuncle Award nominee for sure.

Thankfully I was able to drive past it with barely a glance as I was heading upwards to go to the Five Rise Locks - just about a mile away from this monstrosity.

Now I'd been to the locks about 6 years ago and I remembered that the locals seem to want to keep them a secret as there is one small signpost that takes you off the main road and after that, you're pretty much left to your own devices. I knew I was going in the right general direction - upwards - as after a few minutes, it became hard to breathe and my nose started bleeding. While cursing my cheapness for not getting the Renault Clio with drop down oxygen masks, I came to a familiar roundabout and knew I was close. I crossed over and drove on.....and on......and found myself out in the countryside and it all came back to me. I'd done the same thing 6 years ago as well !

I'm nothing if not consistent.

I did a u-turn and when I returned to the roundabout, I remembered I needed to take the 2nd on the right and within a few seconds, I was parking up about 50 feet from the top lock. It's easy to see why the location at the top is kept a secret as you basically park on an estate street and dozens of summer tourists invading the area would serious piss off the locals. Much better to let people park at the bottom, walk along the canal and get to the locks that way.

This is the view that greets you and very pleasant it is too.

On the right is a lovely cafe serving the usual hot and cold meals with tea, coffee and soft drinks.
I went in to check the menu and decided I fancied a sausage and bacon sandwich - but I wanted it later on after working up an appetite by walking down to the bottom of the locks, along the canal and back up again.

The photo was taken from the middle of a low bridge over the canal and you can just about see how 18th century canal boats would make their way to and from Liverpool, 111 miles to the West. The problem then was that the canal from Leeds, 16 miles to the East, was 59ft lower down and it's kind of difficult to get boats up and down a waterfall !

I mean canal ponies can only pull a boat so far.

Here are a few of the modern narrow boats that use the canal these days. Some are rented by tourists but many are owner occupied and become year round residences - residences that you can take along the UK's many hundreds of miles of beautiful canals until you find somewhere you want to 'park up' for the night, or week or longer.

Sounds wonderful but I'm sure it has it's drawbacks. I've been on such a boat but only for a week. Yes it's a peaceful and relaxing way to see this country from an unusual viewpoint but opening and closing all those locks can be exhausting.

Many of the boats had wind devices for generating electricity and some even had satellite dishes - just because you're on a canal shouldn't mean you have to miss Lost or Heroes or Emmerdale. Perish the thought.

This is a photo of one such dish with the cafe in the background.

When moored for several days or longer, the owners would make their boats more 'homely' by adding plants and flowers along the roof.

Anyway back to the problem of joining the Leeds canal to the Liverpool canal when there is a 59ft height difference.

The answer was to lift/drop the boats using a staircase of 5 connected locks which in the space of 320 feet, raises/lowers the water level 59ft 2ins. It is therefore the steepest set of locks in the UK and justifies a full time lock-keeper to help out those too inexperienced or too unfit to work the locks themselves. Barry, the 'locky' has been doing the job for over 20 years and was awarded an MBE in 2006 for 'services to Inland Waterways in the North'.


This is the view from the top lock looking down and you may have to click on it to see how each pair of lock gates has a small white 'bridge' between it and the next pair of gates.

These 'bridges' are just wide enough for you to get both feet on them side by side but they create a great vantage point for photography.

Each of the huge wooden gates are 7ft wide to make up a 14ft lock which, handily, is also the width of the canal.

The 5 lock staircase was opened on March 21st 1774 and such was the excitement generated, that 30,000 people turned up to watch.

I bet that seriously pissed off the locals - nothing worse than not being able to park your horse and carriage outside your own house ! That's probably when traffic wardens were thought up.

The local paper ran with the story........................

"From Bingley to about 3 miles downwards the noblest works of the kind are exhibited viz: A five fold, a three fold and a single lock, making together a fall of 120 feet. This joyful and much wished for event was welcomed with the ringing of Bingley bells, a band of music, the firing of guns by the neighbouring Militia, the shouts of spectators, and all the marks of satisfaction that so important an acquisition merits".

The article refers to the fact that there is another staircase of 3 locks just a short distance away and then one more single lock to complete the total drop of 120 feet.

This view from the bottom makes it easier to see the scope and impressive drop of the staircase and I waited for someone to walk down the path that runs alongside the locks to give some scale.

It really is a marvel of engineering and the only disappointment for me was that no canal boat needed to be raised or lowered while I was there.

Although the stroll down to the bottom had been easy ( as I stopped at each lock to take more photos ), I knew the climb back up again was going to be much harder - so I recharged my batteries by spending a while enjoying the scenery.

As well as the canal path, the locks, the water and the trees, there was wildlife in abundance.

Having asked for permission to do so, I took this photo of a dad out enjoying the area with his young son. They were feeding the wildlife which wasn't that wild and would come to the bread if it wasn't coming fast enough to them.

The sun burst through a cloud just as I was framing the photo and shone brightly on the locks in the background.

It was a true Kodak moment - or in my case a Canon moment.

This was the view looking the other way and the path ran all the way to..........well I've no idea really as I've never explored any further. Maybe some day I'll go back and walk the walk.

By now it was time to eat and so I climbed back up to the top and went to the cafe for my sandwich.

Isn't it funny how one looks forward to a food item SO much that nothing else will do ? I had been thinking of that sausage and bacon sannie for some time and as I stood in line, I even counted out the exact money, as men tend to do !

Finally it was my turn but even before my lips had formed the words 'and bacon', the girl broke my heart by informing me that they weren't serving hot food anymore !!!

It was 3:30pm for goodness sake. Did she mean it was the time of day or the fact that it was September or what ? Maybe they only cooked hot meals in even years. Whatever.

I glanced at the menu again but no cold offering took my fancy. I wanted sausage and bacon, dammit. I'd earned it. I'd walked and climbed and worked up an appetite. I deserved some fat and cholesterol to replace what I'd lost. I could feel my ribs start to poke through my skin.

I left the cafe in a deep depression but as soon as I walked the few paces to the locks and studied the view back down to the canal below and the countryside beyond, my mood lifted. I sat on a bench for a while and enjoyed the tranquility and then took my rumbling stomach back to the car and drove home.

As I passed the Normandy stronghold - sorry the B&B HQ - I gave it a cheery wave. It was still hideously ugly of course but my mind was brim full of the wonderful images I'd stored up over the previous few hours and I was feeling charitable.

Less than an hour later I was tucking into a home made sausage and bacon sannie as MY cafe has no time restrictions.

Never come between a man and his desired food item.

Glad To Be Back

I scooted down to Nottingham yesterday to pick up lappy after getting the call that it was ready. Actually the call wasn't a good one as when they'd replaced a part to fix a colour problem, it went from being a temporary problem to a permanent problem and I was told it now needed a new motherboard.........that'll be £390 please.

Ah..........no thanks.

So I went to get it and discovered they don't know much about laptop TLC as I worked my magic and voila.........I managed to get the problem to become temporary again and I can live with it now.

The overheating issue has been fixed so until the motherboard finally dies, I'm good to go.

Ok so after 10 days without t'internet (I don't count visits to the library and using a friend's Mac as being on t'internet) I was getting pretty desperate. They should have patches for people like me. Yes I've no idea what they'd put in them - it's only an idea at this stage but I feel it has potential.

I did get a lot more fresh air while being 'out of the loop' as daytime TV pretty much sucks and staring at the empty laptop tray on top of the coffee table was making me even more miserable.

Untelevised sporting events finished and I'd no idea who had won.

TV shows passed me by as my online guide was 200 miles away and without it's timely alerts, I missed House last Wednesday. I was despondent.

Videos were uploaded to YouTube and I knew nothing about them.

eBay deals were being done without my pathetic bids going in.

Worst of all, this blog was growing cobwebs and losing readers faster than a Richard & Judy recommended novel.

I tried to use boring Teletext but to get that I had to access the terrestrial stations via the roof aerial and the quality was awful and so the text would break up and be unreadable. I tried the interactive features of Virgin Media Television but that took so long to load the pages that I may as well have used Pony Express or read tea leaves.

No, if these 10 days proved anything to me, it was that I am now totally dependant on t'internet.

The results of the Outer Mongolian Goat Herding Championships ? Internet.

Did Rita say YES to Norris in the episode I missed as I was watching the US Open Tennis and lost track of time ? Internet.

The pain in my head.........hangover or brain tumor ? Internet.

Had my portfolio gone down the drain after yet another stock market crash ? Internet.

Who WAS that masked man ? Internet.

But those dark days of ignorance are over now and a new glorious age of enlightenment is upon me.

I intend to embrace it. Sod patches. I've got the real thing again !!