Self-service

Self-service check-in… Useful and convenient at airports, really not so nice in hotels.

I’m ok with travelling. Despite being away from home there’s usually enough ‘different’ about the whole experience to keep my spirits up. But arriving at an airport hotel in Manchester today, I came across self-service check-in for the first time.

It was a funny start to the stay anyway, as I realised moments after I walked in the door that I’d left my bag (laptop, tickets, passport) in the taxi. Managed to retrieve them before he got out of the car park. Phew. So I made my second entrance into the lobby to find the receptionist skulking away and myself faced with a pair of terminals. Enter your surname. Enter your postcode. Select your extras. Get your key card.

Go up to your room feeling unusually dejected and lonely.

Carry on living in a lovely, warm community in mid-Wales, and be thankful that (a) your usual life is very personable and rewarding and (b) this is just one night at an airport hotel.

Hey, stupid! Give us some fish!

Roode Pelikaan Cup

My favourite cup and saucer, which somehow found their way into my suitcase in Belgium…

Something for the weekend

2 sourdough loaves

I actually quite like getting old, and spending Friday night baking bread and watching Dr Who episodes with the missus.

The nice thing about sourdough baking is that it just takes a few small investments of time over a few days… meaning it’s easy to fit into a busy work and family life.

Yum

My Sourdough, toasted on the Rayburn

My Sourdough, toasted

Here’s my toast. So yummy I appear to have put the image in twice!

Something to prove

My sourdough loaf, proving in a tin

This sourdough was made from an 18-month-old culture I found in the back of the cupboard. It rose beautifully overnight, I’ve now shaped it for proving. Waiting with baited breath (what does that actually mean???)

I gots the sourdough bugs

… if you can class wild yeasts as bugs, I got ‘em. Over there in a bowl, making the dough rise.

Back in Wales after 7 weeks in Oz, attempting to sort everything out and keep things tidy, I came across my old sourdough culture. Suddenly I felt inspired to do something with it, probably 18 months since I last even looked at it. It still looked right and smelled right, and it seems to be rising right. They do say the culture is hard to kill!

This time around I’m applying more patience to the sourdough experience. Most of my loaves last time around were a bit stodgy and probably prematurely baked. I’ve given this sponge 2 days to get going, and have now kneaded it for its first rise. I’m determined to just give it as long as it needs.

And for the record, I’m loosely following Hugh’s recipe.

Greaseproof Victory II

Yes! I remember now why the unfinished post was titled ‘Greaseproof Victory’.

We had a situation arise with a visiting child… my kids have a large TARDIS to play in, hand-built in cardboard craft by their uncle. It’s a truly fabulous thing, very well made, great attention to detail etc, etc. When one of their friends came to visit, they decided to build some kind of Dr Who scene in and around the TARDIS, spending about half an hour preparing and getting very excited… eventually they darkened the room and called the adults up to see.

We made suitably impressed oohs and aahs… until I noticed a hole in one of the TARDIS paper windows… then another… and another… and then I wasn’t benignly amused Dad any more. I was very, very not amused. Not nice when there’s a small child visiting and you get into the sort of mood I got in. Randomly sticking holes in a hand-made, one-off time machine is not something I would tolerate from my children, and I “just knew” it was the visiting child. You don’t want to get as angry towards a visiting child as I was feeling. I think I held it in pretty well, but the kids might think differently.

My son valiantly defended his mate, claiming it was accidental. I wasn’t buying it… I declared the top room out of bounds and somewhat ruined the mood of what should have been a nice, cheerful viewing.

So – after a few minutes fuming and snarling, I thought to check in the kitchen drawer for greaseproof paper. To my relief, there was a lovely new roll just sitting there. All of a sudden my mood lifted, here was a constructive way to undo the whole situation without having to worry about blaming anyone.

All the kids were roped into the job of fixing the TARDIS windows with greaseproof and PVA. It was all fun and happy, and when my son was struggling to get one of the damaged sheets off, and I suggested putting a hole in it, and after a few failed attempts his mate declared “no, you can do it if you push hard – like this!!” (cue one mighty and well practised poke), I wasn’t cross. I just chuckled, content in the warm glow of the Greaseproof Victory (II).

Greaseproof Victory

(Or, that’s right, I have a blog!)

To start with, I have no idea why this post is titled ‘Greaseproof Victory’. I logged in to the blog to pass some quiet time (very rare commodity of late) in the airport lounge. I found this unfinished, curiously-titled draft. It was so unfinished that all it was was title. This gives me the mental challenge of recalling what on earth I was on about, back on the 16th of October.

I think it might have had something to do with my birthday cake, a few days old by that date, which was in fact a large Epoisses cheese with candles stuck in the top. It took at least a week to consume, and might have involved some greaseproof paper in the attempt to stop it escaping, but the accompanying witty anecdote escapes me with the passing of the weeks.

Anyway, here would be a good point to go through the highlights of the last few months. First thing is, I’m in Australia with my family! (Although, without them for the next 2 weeks). I often marvel at the fact that I get to do an interesting job with UK-wide responsibility from a lovely, peaceful town nestled in the hills of mid-Wales. Now it’s gone one step further and taken me to Melbourne. Unbelievable!! So, one month’s (fairly intensive) work, followed by a couple of weeks’ holiday up in Queensland, visiting the folks with my family (if that distinction makes sense).

This weekend we came up to Brisbane, I took my boy to the Ashes at the Gabba today!! Bit of a dull day’s play, which he felt (one wicket fell all day – while I was in the toilet!) but a great experience nonetheless, catching up with old mates and soaking up the atmosphere. Should be some action (and hopefully a result) tomorrow – which I will follow with half an ear from my desk.

In the hectic week preceding our departure to Aus, I managed to collide with a passing car. Whilst driving my boss’ Prius. Nothing bad happened physically to anybody; the other car ended up well embedded in the hedge. It was pretty dramatic. There was no proper reason for me to have the boss’ car; I’d used it to get to a meeting in Reading the week before, and he just didn’t need it back straight away so I hung on to it and drove into work for a few days instead of cycling in the chilly, rainy weather. Probably a mistake.

Now I’m soaking up the long, sunny days, and trying not to think about the shock that awaits me in Wales in early January. I hear they had 3 inches of snow yesterday. (Interesting passing typo there, for a moment they had apparently had 3 inches of snot. Eew!)

There’s a bunch of blokes at the next table in this airport bar going on about their cars. Oh, how they love their big engines here. The new Holden Commodore has as big an engine as ever – the ‘Efficiency and Power’ range starts with a 3-litre V6 and goes up to a 6-litre V8! Bear in mind this is seen here as your standard family car. It’s mental. But I must admit I find the design of this new car very sexy, it just appeals to me, mostly because it does away with the blandness of most modern cars, it just looks chunky and solid with nicely protruding wheel arches and these really tough-looking air vents on the wing… no idea if they do anything but I reckon they look great!

Time for another overpriced beer and a bite before boarding. 2 weeks work in Melbourne, 2 weeks away from my 3 favourite people in the world; this is the longest we’ve ever been apart and I miss them like crazy already.

What’s worse than a conference call at 11pm on a Sunday night?

… discovering you’d miscalculated the time zone difference between Wales and Melbourne, and your conference call is actually at midnight!

On the plus side, I have an extra hour to polish up the demo system.

On the minus side, I was ready for sleep three hours ago. Time for another coffee I think…

From despair to joy in 36 spokes

So I decided to try and correct my back wheel, which went quite badly out of true on its maiden voyage.

What was I thinking?

After about 2 minutes of strategic loosening and tightening it was clear this wheel wasn’t getting straighter. Another couple of minutes and it was looking decidedly warped. 2 minutes more and I was shaking my head in wonder, muttering things like ‘irredeemable’ and ‘seriously mangled’. J’s comment was ‘I didn’t know it was even possible to warp a wheel that much…’

4 hours and 3 whole attempts later, it’s running true. What worked in the end was loosening all the spokes to the same point, ie where I could see the thread begin, and tightening ‘opposite’ groups of 4 in small increments. There were still plenty of warpy moments but eventually the light broke through and it spun all the way round with a jaunty clicking that cheered my heart.

Lovely stuff… until next time I go for a ride and it gets all warped again.