Photo: Gloucester Cathedral, Gloucester. A visit with Frank Pohlmann to discuss our work in progress proposal. A-ha! We meet in person at last!
I popped up to Gloucester for supper on Friday evening. The afternoon was really great from a weather perspective and I enjoyed seeing some of the countryside en route. Unfortunately, the trains screwed me over yet again (so I’m now totally committed to getting a car – sorry, if “long distance” rail travel in this country were practical, then yes, but I’m fed up with it by now) by making me miss the connection in Swindon (at least I got to see a bit of the shopping area while I waited). Since my friend doesn’t have a mobile that I know a number for (if he has one), I asked Swindon to have a call put out at Gloucester at 17:30. Not a difficult question – it’s not my fault that the trains were delayed. The pleasant woman in the ticket office (who agreed that it wasn’t practical to travel by train if you want to be on time) tried to get through to Gloucester. Eventually I was told the call was put out, but when I arrived, I discovered that Gloucester doesn’t have the ability to make manual announcements any longer (it’s all wonderfully automated now – how does that help when the system fscks up?). They made the call by shouting along the platforms as soon as they got the call (before the 17:30 time I should have arrived, so pointlessly before my friend would have been there) but at least they tried.
Photo: My sister rolls down a bank. I tried it too, but felt dizzy enough after one go that I didn’t feel like going again (having just eaten lunch).
I went up to Birmingham with my family for a lunchtime picnic in the aboritum near to where my sister and Joe’s new house is. We took with us some light provisions and enjoyed a very civilised lunch on the green, separated with a little walk to and from the cars. We then tried to do the “ASDA (Walmart) Living” thing, but the carpark was full, so we went straight to Ikea. This was my first visit to an actual Ikea store (having managed to avoid it up until this point) and I obviously enjoyed it. How can you not enjoy the Ikea nesting instinct and the temptation to buy wonderful amounts of stuff you don’t really need, all at reasonable prices? Seriously, I thought it was ok, but had to fight off the temptation to buy some more coffee mugs that just happened to look pretty cool. After some tea back at the house (and a check for nearby caches – there’s one 200m away from the house for my next visit), we headed back home. I gave up on going to Manchester and/or Scunthorpe since I couldn’t be bothered with the trains being screwed.
I just saw The Terminal. Quite aside from the laughable Hollywoodisation and trivialisation of real world problems, this is a reasonable movie. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough faith to believe that events wouldn’t transpire in exactly the fashion decribed by the screenplay – I don’t have that much faith in the TSA/Home Security. Of course, the UK is just as bad, we’re apparently holding a Canadian citizen without bail for playing paintball (just when was that on the national news headlines here?). Great. And I have to defend my anti-ID card/government intrusion tendencies to friends and family? Can’t anyone else see how the world around us is going to the government megalomaniacs? Interestingly, they don’t. Most people in this country (and elsewhere) are probably quite happy to read trashy newspapers (if they do in fact ever read) and believe governments of the world are doing a good job. If they need to hold a few thousand people on trumped up terror charges, then ok, it’s in the interest of the “war on terror” the Bush administration invented to keep itself in a job and in office. Anyway, I finally got around to joining the Lib Dems – the pragmatist’s choice of liberal thinking political party for UKians.
Jon.