Heavy Mileage
Posted: Sun 3 April, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Health, London, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »This weekend’s been a busy one, what with one thing and another.
Saturday was supposed to be quiet – because Sunday was already planned with a day-trip to Reading and had other stuff going on – but I wanted to do something. So, being an idiot, I opted for a day-trip to London, primarily to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year photos at the Natural History Museum, which I hadn’t been to in at least twenty years.
The idiot part is primarily that I decided to walk there – from Euston to Natural History Museum. And back. That’s 7km each way, plus whatever else I wanted to do. I just thought “well, I can do 5km easily, so the other 2km will be easy” – forgetting that 2km is another mile-and-a-bit.
Of course, I managed it, and I enjoyed the exhibition – but I’d miscalculated a few other things along the way. I’d not realised that it was in the school holidays, and I didn’t think there’d be so many people and children going to a museum on the first really decent warm/sunny day of the year.
So, having walked there, it was then a case of moving slowly through a 40-minute queue to get in to the place, which did an excellent job of reminding me why I’ve never wanted children. The exhibition itself was good – but by then I didn’t want to spend too much more time in the area, there were just too many people and spawn around.
That decision made – and having acknowledged that I was rather more knackered than I’d expected – I opted for walking back to Euston (see, I said I was an idiot) rather than the extra bit of walking I’d planned, to go back to the South Bank as well. That’ll wait ’til I’m next in London, which is only a couple of weeks away anyway.
Another 7km did pretty much stuff me, though – I can’t deny it.
All told, Saturday involved walking no less than 21km (slightly over 13 miles) – and I knew I was planning to walk a fair bit more on Sunday (of which more in another post) which made it all even sillier.
It was a good day, and I’m glad I did it, but yeah, Saturday night was pretty painful. I just won’t learn…
2016 Q1
Posted: Fri 1 April, 2016 Filed under: 2015/16, Business, Car Repairs, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, London, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel, Weigh Less, Weight Loss, Write More Leave a comment »So here we are, in April already. A quarter of the year gone.
The first three months have been fairly awkward and problematic in some ways, but all told it’s still been a success – although in some ways it’s been a case of looking at grey clouds and finding a silver lining. Work and so on have stayed stable, it’s just other non-work stuff that hasn’t gone as well.
The worst (or at least most frustrating) part has been the car – thankfully that now appears to be sorted, but it’s been an expensive quarter, with repeated re-visits to the garage, along with replacement parts and so on.
I did have plans for writing more and so on, but they haven’t materialised. I’ve done a couple of things and started with some ideas and the like, but the intended plan hasn’t happened. Hopefully the next three months will let me write more, if I’ve got the time and inspiration.
Health-wise, I’ve slacked off a lot on going to the gym and so on. I’ve had a bundle of colds and coughs throughout the last few months, and every time I’ve thought “Ok, that’s finally gone”, I’ve picked up another one. That’s not been fun, but there we go. Admittedly, a lack of gymmage hasn’t resulted in any weight gains – everything has stayed in exactly the same place it was while I was going to the gym regularly. That’s been another thing that’s not helped on the motivational front – if it’s not making any difference one way or t’other, it becomes less important to go.
I do need to get back to it, and doing other stuff as well – because I’m a loon, and have just signed up to the NSPCC’s challenge to walk/run (OK, walk) up the 38 floors of the Gherkin on Sunday 19th June. I must be fucking barmy. This is the kind of thing that happens when Marie Curie aren’t doing their 10km walks. I blame them. 🙂 That’s in ten weeks time, so I need to do some stuff pretty quickly…
Anyway, it’s been an interesting first three months of the year. There’s some interesting challenges coming up – not least that bloody Gherkin challenge – in the next three months, and I just hope it’s a bit more positively motivated than the first three have been.
Time will tell…
Ridiculously Organised
Posted: Fri 19 February, 2016 Filed under: Cinema, Day Trips, Domestic, Films, Geeky, Getting Organised, London, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »So far, this year has been pretty non-stop with travel, visits, concerts and idiot day-trips (mainly to see concerts) and I’ve kept on saying that I must calm things down a bit, build in some time for myself and so on.
And I’m trying to, I really am.
But then cool stuff comes up that I want to go to – which means I now have plans all the way through this year. Not every weekend, or anything similar – but there’s already stuff planned right the way through to December.
The latest one, last night, was finding out that the Royal Albert Hall is doing a showing of Aliens – with the soundtrack performed by a full orchestra, as a celebration of the 30th anniversary of its release. Even more fortuitously, it’s on the weekend of my birthday. Oh, I am so there.
And so yes, tickets are booked for it. I’d already got stuff booked in for December as well, so as it turns out, November was the only month this year without something already booked in.
Now my main challenge will be to not book up the rest of the year, and suddenly realise I’ve had ridiculously few ‘downtime’ weekends. Again.
Final High-Mileage Weekend
Posted: Sun 24 January, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Gigs, London, M1, Travel Leave a comment »As per previous posts, January has been a busy month, with a fair amount of travelling every weekend. That’s not a complaint – hell, I kind of planned it that way (well, events combined to make it all into busy weekends, but I allowed it to happen, so yeah, that qualifies as planned) but it’s definitely been busy.
This weekend was the last weekend of high mileage for a couple of weeks. (The week itself is another matter, but we’ll gloss over that for now)
Yesterday, I took my dad in to London to see Billy Connolly at the Hammersmith Apollo – and it was a really good day. We got in to Hammersmith really easily (despite a large number of tosspot drivers etc.) and parked, had food, and enjoyed the show. (I’ll write more about the show itself later in the week) Once that was done, got dad back home, and drove home myself. As usual, getting back around 2am. (I don’t know how that’s been so consistent over the month, but it really has)
Today was a far dafter plan, involving a blast up to the outskirts of Manchester and back. Basically, I’m up there on Thursday for a concert that I’m going to with two friends, and it’s been spiking my brain that the tickets are with me, and I don’t want them to miss out on the concert if there’s problems on the M1 for me on Thursday.
So I took the opportunity today to blast up there, drop their tickets off, and come back. It means that whatever happens, everyone’s happy – I’ve got my ticket, they’ve got theirs, and we don’t have to go through hordes of organisational stuff for meeting up, getting everything sorted, and that if anyone’s transport screws up, it doesn’t fuck things up for everyone.
All told, it’s been the best part of 600 miles this weekend.
I must be a complete barmpot…
Barbican, Rollins and Mileage
Posted: Sun 17 January, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Food, Getting Organised, Gigs, London, M1, M25, Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday was another Rollins gig, this time at the Barbican in London.
It was a bit more complicated than last week’s gig in Bristol, as it involved collecting another friend of mine from over by Oxford, then getting a train to London, across to Barbican, getting food, going to the gig, and then a similar journey for the return.
All told though, it went really smoothly. I’d booked pretty much everything in advance, including the train tickets and reserving a table at the restaurant of choice, so it was as organised as humanly possible.
The restaurant in particular was a real success – the Jugged Hare, just round the corner from the Barbican itself. I’d seen it before, but never eaten there, so went for it when the chance came up, and booked for their pre-theatre menu. I am truly glad I did. They specialise in game of all sorts – it’s definitely not a great place for vegetarians! – but there’s enough variety in the menu, if game isn’t your thing.
To be fair, there is a vegetarian option on the menu – well, it says “Vegetarian – £14”, so it could be a fillet of vegetarian, for all I know.
The three-course meal was great – particularly the venison haunch, and their sticky toffee pudding was amazing. (as was the accompanying mince-pie ice cream, which has to be tasted to be believed) Knowing how easy it is for me to drive to Barbican in general, I will be returning. Several times.
The gig itself was great – Rollins spoke for three full hours, with no breaks. The show was about 50% the same as the one I saw last week in Bath, but I can live with that – it’s better than being entirely the same!
The journey home was OK – getting the trains back went smoothly, and then a drive through snow to drop off friend, and then another hour and a bit on motorways in heavy snow (though thankfully not settling) to get home, which happened just after 2am.
So a long day, but an entirely worthwhile one…
Premier League
Posted: Tue 15 December, 2015 Filed under: London, Sport, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »As regular readers know, I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff about football in general. It’s not something I follow, or am really interested in at all, and I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than go to a game.
However, I still listen to the news etc., and I have to ask – what the hell is going on with the Premier League this year?
At the time of writing, Leicester are top of the Premier League, Bournemouth beat Manchester United over the weekend, and Chelsea are hanging just above relegation. What the fuck?
I know it’s only a game, and thus hostage to the vagaries of luck and chance, but that’s still a pretty radical year, all things considered.