6 October 2011 (Thursday) - Time for a Change?

Today’s news is full of praise for Steve Jobs. One of the leading lights at Apple, he died recently, and all the pundits have been singing his praises. Personally I never met the chap, nor have I really had much to do with Apple’s products, so I can’t honestly say that I am overly affected by the sad news.

However it does strike me as a shame that the media had to wait until his death before saying anything good about him. I can remember news articles over the summer about his health: those articles weren’t especially respectful to the chap.

This morning’s radio news broadcast a part of a speech that Mr Jobs made at Stanford University a while back. What he said struck a chord with me: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.”

It’s no secret that I’m not enamoured with my current job. I spent a bit of time today looking up advice on CV preparation.  I shall dust off my C.V., update it, and see if I can’t find something to do which I might like doing a bit better.

Meanwhile back in reality one of the problems I’ve been having with the diet recently is measuring my weight. Our old bathroom scales aren’t very good. When I stand on them, I can make my weight vary by over a stone depending on how and where I stand on them; the dial is that wobbly.

So, even though I really couldn’t afford it, I bought some digital scales from Asda. Being digital, there is no trying to guess where the dial is. And they are precise: that is, the result they give is very repeatable. However I’m not sure they are accurate – they tell me I am exactly a stone heavier than the old scales said.

I expect MyFitnessPal will go mental when I tell it my new revised weight. So what do I do? Not update my weight on it until I’ve lost a stone? Commence blagging and tell it I’ve lost a pound for every two that come off?

5 October 2011 (Wednesday) - Easy Money

One of the most popular TV shows of our time is the Simpsons. Personally I can’t stand the program; at one time I actually banned it from the house. And it would seem that the program will soon be no more.

This is one news story that I simply cannot understand. The program has been running for twenty three years. It makes money hand over fist, but (according to the interview on the radio this afternoon), the more successful a TV program gets, the more it costs to make more episodes.

And despite the actors who provide the voices for the various characters having offered to take a wage cut of thirty per cent, the makers of the show don’t feel they can afford to continue making it. How on Earth does that work?

Meanwhile other people coin in money hand over fist. Lord Edward Davenport has made a fortune by providing loans to businesses that need cash in a hurry. Or that is he made a fortune offering to provide loans to businesses that needed cash in a hurry, but once he’d had their admin fees off of them, he just laughed all the way to the bank. He’s been rumbled, and he’s gone to prison now (and he isn’t actually a lord either!), but I for one can understand where is coming from. The lure of an easy buck is hard to resist.

Meanwhile, with ‘er indoors ^TM out flogging candles, I spent the evening home alone doing the ironing. Dull, but I can watch the telly whilst I’m doing it. Perhaps I could take in ironing – I wonder if I could get enough to give up doing my day job…

4 October 2011 (Tuesday) - Twenty Five Years

The nice people who were also staying in the B&B had mentioned at brekkie yesterday that they’d been to Cheddar Gorge on Sunday. We got chatting this morning at brekkie: they said they’d been talking about us all day yesterday, and were wondering what we thought of Cheddar Gorge. So we told them what we’d done, and they listened with evident amazement, and perhaps a little jealousy. They asked what the caves were like; they asked what the museum was like. They asked what the climb to the lookout tower was like. They’d seen all of these attractions, but done none of them.

It turned out that we’d been to Cheddar Gorge and “done the tourist thing”, but they’d been to Cheddar Gorge and looked in some of the shops before going back home to the B&B. How can you travel several hundred miles to somewhere like Cheddar Gorge and not do the tourist things?

Mind you, they were a funny pair. We saw them come into the pub last night when we were having dinner, and we saw them leave again, having had two drinks each. Apparently there was nothing on the menu that they liked, so they thought they’d try somewhere else. And not having a clue where else to eat, they got quite lost trying to find somewhere. But then again he smothered his full English breakfast with vinegar (!)

The plan for today had us calling in at some touristy place on the way home, but a combination of the weather being awful, and there being no English Heritage attractions in the Basingstoke area put paid to that little scheme. So we just came home. Once home I caught up with blogs and stuff. The guest house had free wi-fi, but for some reason when I post blogs from my lap-top, the formatting is absolutely awful. So having got cross with the lap-top last night, I did all the internet-catch-up when we got home this afternoon.

I then popped up town to pay some money into the bank. There was probably a tad more in the astro club’s petty cash than was sensible to have as petty cash. The astro club’s account isn’t with my bank, and I went in to that bank, read their posters, and decided to move my accounts to them: they seemed to be offering such a good deal. Then I actually dealt with the awkward old bat on the counter, and I came out having decided to see if we can’t more the astro club account away from them to my bank.

I then went to my bank, and bearing in mind how surly and uncommunicative was the old misery-guts behind that counter, I resolved to give up with banks entirely, and to keep all the cash in a biscuit tin under my bed.

So I came home and phoned English Heritage to have a whinge. After all, they’d locked us into Old Wardour Castle on Saturday afternoon. I didn’t really mind, it was quite funny really.

But I’m (still) able to clamber over walls. Your average castle visitor probably isn’t as sprightly as me, and whilst I don’t really want to stir trouble, someone somewhere (at Old Wardour Castle) needs to check that all the punters are out at closing time. They said they’d look into it and get back to me.

And then we watched last Saturday’s “Doctor Who”… Bearing in mind it was going to be a “River Song” episode I was expecting the worst: she’s not my favourite character in the show. But I was pleasantly surprised at the episode. Not bad at all.

The evening was spent in committee making plans for Saturday evening. The moon doesn’t observe itself, you know….

And in closing I’m sure that today’s date rings a bell for some reason…..

3 October 2011 (Monday) - Cheddar Gorge

Another 8am brekkie. This one was somewhat marred by having to make polite conversation with the normal people who were also staying in the B&B. But with brekkie scofffed we soon set off.

We gave ‘er indoors ^TM sat-nav one last chance, and it’s fair to say the device exceeded the misgivings of even it’s staunchest critics. It waited until we came to the second roundabout of the journey, directed us back to the first roundabout, and then tried to get us to drive to and fro between the roundabouts.

I'd had enough, and I got my sat-nav out. That gave us some no-nonsense directions, and soon we were in Cheddar. We parked up, and managing to shake off the old biddy who wouldn't shut up about the courtesy bus tour, we paid up and were soon in the first cave. Apparently opened up in the early 1900s by some bloke called Gough, the cave had a really good audio tour, and had loads of bats flitting about. Despite the ill-behaved schoolbrats swarming, we were in this cave for over an hour.

We then went over to the Museum of Dull Drivel. Some sad act was loitering outside, dressed up as a caveman, and I explained to him about the flint tools he was brandishing. We then went into the Museum of Dull Drivel. I suppose it wasn't that bad, but compared to Gough's cave it was dull.

Cox's cave was next, and with no audio guide, that too was dull, The cave led into the Crystal Grotto: a cave with a few scary statues strategically placed here and there. This was quite entertaining.

From here we thought we'd scale the steps to the lookout tower. Several hundred steps took us to the lowest part of the hills overlooking the gorge, and having had a quick look from the lookout tower, we walked, scrambled and climbed up even further along the Cheddar Gorge Walk.

The views from the top of the hills were wonderful, but we were somewhat dismayed by one small fact. The walk was billed as a circular walk. Up one side of the gorge, along, down to the road, back up the other side, and back to the village.

There was an endless stream of people walking back from the direction in which we were heading; all complaining that they weren’t going to do more hills. From where we were, we could see across the gorge to the footpath on the other side. Not many brave souls had got that far. But we weren’t going to back out. So having climbed up several miles to the top, we then went down to the road, and then went up an equal number of miles on the other side. And came down again. But it was worth going back up again: if only to see the goats.

The walk was billed as lasting for two hours: we took two and a half. It was a good walk – but in retrospect the good weather helped a lot. I could imagine that the weather could make it a very miserable walk indeed.

Once back down we popped into a nearby café (selling “Styles” ice cream!), and we realised we’d then done all of the attractions. The courtesy bus tour wasn’t running today, and to be honest I couldn’t see exactly what good the bus tour would have been – you could walk the length of the touristy bit in just five minutes.

So we perused the gift shop, and set off back to the B&B. We’d originally planned to visit Wookey Hole today as well, but we didn’t have time to do it all.

The journey back took twice as long as we were expecting: we got caught in traffic in Bath. But once back, we set off to the Crown, for another very good meal. And some zider. After all, you can’t go to Zumerzet and not drink zider…

2 October 2011 (Sunday) - Bath

We'd asked for an 8am breakfast. There are those who might think that was a tad early, but holiday is too good to waste slobbing about. All thoughts of diet went straight out of the window when "Mine Host" mentioned the possibility of a full English breakfast. That went down very nicely. As we chatted with the landlord, we found that in years gone by he had once acted as the relief manager of the Honest Miller - a favourite pub of hours which is somewhere we've cycled to in the past.

Once brekkied, we were anxious to make the most of the day, and so we paid our bill, and were on the road before 9.30am. And having forgiven the sat-nav for yesterday's fiasco, we gave the thing a second chance. I wish we hadn't. It got us as far as Bath, and then started shouting random directions. I was all for throwing the thing out of the window, and I gave up and parked up in the first car park I could find. I must admit that I thought paying over seven pounds for a day's parking was a tad excessive, but I wasn't prepared to drive any further. Not with the sat-nav in the mood it was in.

Fortunately we were only ten minutes walk from the Roman baths, and that was our main port of call for the day. We stumped up our cash, picked up the audio guides, and set off inside. If any of my loyal readers are ever in Bath, I can certainly recommend the Roman Baths as a place to visit. There was loads to see, the audio guide was really good, the staff were helpful, and it kept us out of mischief for over two hours.

Having paid to see the Roman Baths, we were also entitled to free admission to the Bath Museum of Fashion. So, working on the principle that something for nothing is always good, we went to have a look-see.

Oh dear!

It's probably fair to say that in my time I have endured more tedious ordeals than the Bath Museum of Fashion. But those ordeals have been very few, and far between. The museum started off with a display of a couple of dozen wedding dresses, and progressively got worse. There were five rather dire dresses from God knows when, some manikins dressed up as fugitives from the 1960s, and a Petula Clark album cover nailed to a wall. At one point I felt rather nervous - with all the showroom dummies I was having Doctor Who flashbacks. But if the manikins had turned out to be Autons, quite frankly the excitement would have come as a blessed relief. It was with a sense of joy that I found the exit to this dreadful museum.

In retrospect it only took twenty minutes to go round the Bath Museum of Fashion, but there's no denying it was twenty minutes which were totally wasted.

We then browsed around some of the shops; killing time until 2pm. We'd found that at 2pm there were guided tours of Bath, and we made our way to the assembly point. As did a dozen or so others. We found our guide, and spent a very pleasant couple of hours walking round Bath. The guide pointed out all sorts of little snippets of history that otherwise would have passed me by. We found all sorts of oddities in the back streets:  the houses of the artist Gainsborough, and of the first Prime Minister Pitt the Younger. We saw where the posh would have lived in days gone by: we saw where a direct descendant of the Duke of Wellington had won a battle with the highest court in the land over the colour of her front door. We saw where Jane Austen's heroes had walked. We saw all sorts of basements and crypts under the roads that we would so loved to have explored. And as we walked between the places where we stopped, I chatted with the guide. He was a really friendly, knowledgeable chap with a genuine love of his city, and of showing tourists round.

It was a really good tour. And a good day. But all too soon it had ended, and conscious that our car parking ticket was about to run out, we made our way back to the car.

And so on to our B&B (which would be home for the next two nights). The sat-nav did it's best, and despite a couple of false starts and a couple of signal failures we eventually found our way to Bathford and Garston Cottage.

It would have been nice to have stayed in another pub, but Garston Cottage seemed to fit the bill. A little old lady showed us to our room, and after a couple of minutes settling in, we set off for a bit of exploring round the local area. We mooched around the footpaths for half an hour (and found a river)  before making our way to the nearby pub for some tea.

The Crown was the only pub within walking distance. But we'd been told that the food was good. Apparently it had won an award for serving the best roast dinners in the Bath area. A well deserved award. Roast lamb went down very nicely, as did a bowl of Eskimo Mess. For those who've never sampled the delight, Eskimo Mess is just like Eton Mess, but with ice cream. The whole lot was washed down with a couple of pints of Gem Ale from the Bath brewery.

In fact the only fault I could find with the Crown was that it was at the bottom of the hill: going back to the B&B was a bit of a slog!

1 October 2011 (Saturday) - Wiltshire

A reasonably prompt start on our long weekend. Once I'd got some petrol in the car, we set off. The M20 and M26 were as well as could be expected, but there was a dodgy five minutes on the M25: some twonk was weaving in and out of the lanes of traffic at very high speed. It was clearly only going to be a matter of time until he wrapped himself around a lamp post.

The M3 was a different matter though. Traffic was stopping and starting seemingly at random. From going at a steady 70mph we were down to going at barely walking pace. And then suddenly the traffic started moving again. And then it all slowed again. Four times we went from national speed limit to standstill and back. Leaving the motorway for the A303 came as a blessed relief.

We stopped at the first services we could find, and had a diet sandwich, diet shandy and snack a jacks (oh yes!), and then hit the road again. and then just as we came over the brow of the hill....

Have you ever driven westwards along the A303? That road was designed by a half-wit. Just as you come over the brow of a hill, you get a glorious view of Stonehenge. And the view is so breathtaking that you can't think of anything but that view. And then suddenly you realise that you are travelling at high speed toward a queue of stationary traffic, and find yourself doing an emergency stop, whilst very conscious that the person behind you is still enthralled with the view in front, and is approaching the back of your car at warp factor nine.

Having successfully avoided writing off my car (it has to be said more through luck than judgement), we parked up in the car park. I must admit that i was surprised at how many people had gone to Stonehenge. I was expecting a few people; maybe a dozen at most. There were hundreds of people, if not thousands. I suppose Stonehenge isn't your average English Heritage attraction.

Being English Heritage members, we got for free. Which was for the best. In all honesty I would have resented paying £7.50 to have got into the place.

The stones were a lot smaller than I was expecting. There was no visitor centre showing exhibits and displays. In retrospect, Stonehenge was something of a disappointment: we'd seen the lot in twenty minutes. If any of my loyal readers are thinking of going to Stonehenge, don't pay to go in. You can see every bit as much from the roadside.

Having planned to spend the entire afternoon at Stonehenge and finding we were all done before 2pm, we were at something of a loose end. A quick browse through the English Heritage manual showed us that old Wardour Castle was not far away. So we activated 'er indoors' sat-nav to find the place.

It has to be said that the sat nav did not live up to expectations.  It had us make a bee-line for the narrowest country lane it could find and, having got us several miles into the back of beyond it then announced it had lost it's GPS signal, and then it gave up the ghost. From there on in we were left to our own devices. After I'd got rather cross with the entire concept of satellite aided navigation and we'd rebooted it several times, we found a sign to the castle. The fact that the sign was pointing back the way we'd come just boiled my piss even more.

So, having found the castle (with no thanks to sat-nav technology), we popped into the gift shop to get a crafty Solero. And then we started mooching round the place. The audio guides brought it to life. There was loads to see, the castle, for all that it was in ruins, had four floors that we could explore, a lake, a separate banqueting house, and even a grotto.

It was perhaps somewhat ironic that at one point I found myself idly speculating on the practicalities of how the custodians closed the place up at the evening, because when we decided to pack up and go home we not only found the kiosk was shut up, but that the main gate was locked, and we were locked in. Fortunately being naturally lithe and agile (!) I was able to climb the walls and jump gracefully to freedom. er indoors made a bit of a debbie climbing the wall, but soon we were free, and cursing the jobsworth who'd left us stranded.

By now it was getting on for 5pm, and so we thought we'd best make our way to our B&B. We set off in what was possibly the right direction, ignoring the sat-nav which was making various unhelpful contradictory comments as we went along. We eventually found the village of Fovant, and the Pembroke Arms. And found the Pembroke Arms was locked. Having been locked into the castle, we were now locked out of our digs.

A quick phone call got the landlord to the door, and soon we were ensconced.

Chatting with the landlord we found that the pub didn't actually open for another hour, so we went for a little stroll. Firstly to see the Fovant Badges; military badges carved into the chalk hills. And then we walked into the nearby village and watched the trout swimming in the river. Another hour's exercise before dinner was a good plan.

Exercise built up our appetites: when we got back to the Pembroke Arms, we had dinner. A double rack of ribs, chips, pavlova, and a few pints of local beer.

And then suddenly I realised I was exhausted..... Back to our room where we watched "Bedazzled" and "Pinky and the Brain" (Freeview is a wonderful thing) before having an early night.

30 September 2011 (Friday) - 1900 - Not Out !!

Did you know that this is my nine hundredth blog entry here on Blogspot? And before I started blogging here I did (exactly) one thousand blog entries over on Yahoo 360 (until they shut down). So I’ve been blogging daily for 1900 days. Which is every day since 10 September 2006. That’s just over five years ago. I had no idea when I started that I would become such an avid diarist.

If anyone is that bored, you can read the history of the last five years (as I saw it) over here.

To work. I quite like the journey, even if the sun is in my eyes all the way there and all the way back home again. I think that I must have decided (albeit subconsciously) that the "short cut" actually is shorter than "the way", as my on-board auto-pilot seems to make me want to take the short cut every day. Even if the road is a tad narrow in parts.

There was a dodgy five minutes this morning when, just as I was navigating a particularly narrow stretch of lane, I met a dustbin lorry coming the other way. It wouldn't actually have been a problem *if* the dustmen hadn't filled the only passing place with wheelie-bins.

Oh, how I laughed!

This evening was astro club. We had a great turnout – over eighty people, and a lot of new members joined. After a brief AGM in which the committee was elected unanimously the evening’s speaker talked for over an hour on the moon. Informative, informal, a really good talk.

It’s rather a sobering thought that the next person to walk on the moon with probably be Chinese, and that the first person to walk on Mars is probably currently about ten years old.

And after a particularly spectacular raffle, we had a really good evening with the telescopes. Including “Dobbie” – the club’s new Dobsonian scope.

I really need to get my telescope out again…