Trying To Be Sensible
Posted: Fri 30 October, 2015 Filed under: Business, Domestic, Driving, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »The last couple of months here have been pretty busy, with very little time spent at home. In fact, I haven’t spent a full weekend at home since the end of August. November and December aren’t currently looking much different on that score.
So, in the name of sanity, I’ve made a couple of other decisions.
I was supposed to be going to a conference next week in Manchester – for something that’s not super-relevant *right now* but will be for some plans/ideas over the next six to twelve months.
However, it would take me away for three days, and to be honest, that doesn’t appeal all that much right now. I’d rather have the chance of some downtime somewhere along the line.
So I’ve sacked it off, cancelled everything around it, and will instead ‘just’ do my normal work instead. Which seems like a good plan.
I’m not good at the whole ‘cancelling stuff’ thing, but I do know it sometimes needs to happen, and this is one of those times.
I think the most telling thing was that having made the decision, my only real reaction has been “good, that makes sense”…
Another London Run
Posted: Mon 19 October, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, London, M1, M25, Parking, Reviews(ish), Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday was yet another day spent in London. Thankfully, it was also a different area (again) which helps to keep things fresh.
This time, it was Hammersmith, primarily to see an American comedian called Gabriel Iglesias at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo with a friend (who was the one who knew of Iglesias first) who was doing a one-off, rare (and sold out) London gig
It’s a long time since I’ve been to the Apollo – December 2008, from the look of it – and Hammersmith has changed a bit since last time. The places I’d used to use for parking had – unsurprisingly – changed, and disappeared, so it was time for a bit of a new explore.
Because it was an evening thing, we aimed to have food before. So mid-afternoon we went into London via a circuitous-ish route that allowed us to avoid the vagaries of the peak-time weekend M25, and simply blat straight into Hammersmith. Into the parking area I’d chosen, and job-done.
Had a decent meal, a couple of drinks, and then to the Apollo for what turned out to be a brilliant show – thoroughly enjoyed. (Although lots of people doing American-ised whoops at lots of things, which isn’t really my thing at all) Paid a small fortune for parking – which is taking the piss, as that parking wasn’t being used for anything else – and a pretty simple escape. Certainly nothing like as bad as getting out of Wembley…
And then a straight motorway blat home, dropping off friends at houses along the way (we’d met another couple of people at the gig) so I got home at about 1am, and didn’t get to sleep ’til gone 2.
It’s fair to say I am not fully awake today…
Picked Up By The Fuzz
Posted: Fri 9 October, 2015 Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Driving, Food, Milton Keynes, People, Weirdness 2 Comments »Last night, while driving home from a meal, I got stopped by the police. The conversation was kind-of entertaining…
“Hello sir. Do you know why we’ve stopped you?”
“Well, it’s half nine on a Thursday and there’s been football and rugby on, so I’m guessing that you think I’ve been drinking, because I’ve taken two roundabouts absolutely correctly, which is something that no other sod in Milton Keynes ever does”
“Yes, sir. You’re driving carefully and trying to not attract attention, so we think you might be over the limit. When did you last have a drink?”
“Ummmmm. June?” (I’ve since realised I had one in September, but hey ho)
“OK, can you blow into this device please”
“Yeah, no worries. I should warn you though, I’ve just eaten a brutally spicy curry, so it might melt the little plastic tube”
I blew an absolute zero – same as I have on the other two occasions I’ve been breathalysed. And the tube didn’t quite melt, but it was close. I’ve also now recommended the curry place to the local police, which has to be a good thing.
However, I can’t deny that it does gall me slightly that I’ve now been pulled over twice in my driving history – and on both times, it’s been for driving properly and to the limits/conditions, rather than anything that’s actually wrong to attract attention.
New(ish) Places – Some More
Posted: Sun 30 August, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Memory, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from last week’s post about rediscovering places that are local (and that I hadn’t realised were local) I did a similar thing this weekend.
Having dropped off the Uborkans back at Stoke Bruerne, I had all day to play with, so mooched over to another blast from the past- Rushden and Higham Ferrers, in Northamptonshire. While I didn’t work there myself, friends did, and I got pretty familiar with the area.
As before, it was odd to be going along routes I remember from bus and taxi rides from Northampton, the way those routes tripped my memory – as did arriving in Rushden, and recalling a bundle of landmarks.
I ended up walking round Rushden, as well as up to Higham Ferrers (roughly 3km each way) to revisit places I used to frequent. It was odd to see the changes, as well as the bits that haven’t changed – particularly the hotel that my friends worked in, which is now a set of apartments, with a new connected building, and a new supermarket over the road. It’s bloody weird, seeing old memories overlaid with new changes.
Once I was done, I drove home via a very perverse and winding route – I kind-of knew where I was, and where I was heading, but definitely took some of the odder routes and diversions, basically just learning sections of the local geography (and linking together bits I already knew, but hadn’t figured the road connections) and enjoyed doing so.
All told, a pretty decent way to spend a day.
New(ish) Places
Posted: Sun 23 August, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Milton Keynes, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »As has been noted many many times here, I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to travel, and think nothing of doing a two-hour-each-way drive for a day trip. Somewhere in my head, I don’t really think “locally” for exploring and finding new places. As a result, I’m sometimes surprised by locations when I’m doing other stuff.
This weekend I was helping the Uborkans with a bit of taxi-work to make their lives easier. That involved nipping up to Stoke Bruerne to collect them, and dropping them off in Linslade – a dead easy journey, and not at all far for me.
I’d been to Stoke Bruerne a few times as a kid – school trips and the like – to the canal museum and so on, and I’d never realised how close it actually is to my current location. We’re talking less than half an hour’s drive – it’s really close. Because it was a nice day, I got there early, and had a wander along a decent-sized length of the canal too, for fun – definitely somewhere I’ll return to.
Once I’d dropped them off at destination, I also finally discovered a pub I remembered from years ago, when I worked and lived in the area. So I’ll have to give that a go at some point – we never visited it the first time round, I just remember going past it on a regular basis, but didn’t remember the roads properly for how to get to it – I’d actually decided it was a different pub that I have tried and not been impressed by, which is in a similar location. So yeah, that’s on the list.
And finally, in the evening the Uborkans had come back up to the edges of Milton Keynes, so we arranged to meet at a pub. It was in Simpson, an area I’ve been past on the main roads several times, but not actually been into at all – and it’s really nice, to the degree that you wouldn’t believe you were in Milton Keynes at all. Indeed, it’s nice enough that it’s been added to the “yeah, I could live there” list, for if/when I decide to leave the current location.
It’s just interesting, how you (OK, how I) can still find new places in an area you’ve lived in for a number of years. I regularly bugger off far and wide, but I haven’t really explored a lot of the local area. Maybe that needs to change a bit…
Ten
Posted: Tue 11 August, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, People, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Ten years ago today, I finally passed my driving test. How time flies when you’re blatting round the country, and all that.
Prior to passing, driving had never really bothered me – I’d usually lived in places with decent public transport links, and when I hadn’t there’d always been friends, or lifts. It also helped to own very little for a lot of that time – there were a few occasions where I moved by train, and could still do it in one journey, albeit with three or four bags.
However, now I wouldn’t be without my driving licence (and car, naturally – or at worst the ability to rent one whenever needed) and would hate to lose it. If something were to happen that made me lose my licence, I’d have to change everything – house, job, life in general. It would emphatically not be fun.
It still surprises me, though, how much I’ve changed in that ten years, and how much my attitude to driving has changed too.
Because I was such a late adopter of it – pretty close to mid-thirties – I thought I’d stay with using public transport, and that I wouldn’t drive much. Oh, how wrong I was.
In that ten years, I’ve covered *at least* 180,000 miles. That’s just a calculation based on the two cars I’ve owned, and doesn’t include hire cars, Herself’s car when we were together, or any other journeys. With all that included, it’s probably damn close to 200,000 miles in ten years. Considering I’ve had some years (like this one) where I’ve been working far closer to home than others, that’s still quite an average to have been covering.
As I’ve said before, I really don’t think anything of a day trip involving two hours driving each way – one of those can add 4 to 500 miles to my total on its own.
Oddly, the general attitude to driving and miles seems to be a family trait – my brother covers even more miles than I do, Dad always used to cover a fair amount too, and none of us think anything of doing journeys that most people class as “too far”. Or maybe it’s just being daft that’s a family trait…