where art collides

This morning, in the shadow of the Great Orme, the Irish Sea is calm. Waves pound gently but rhythmically on the stone beach. Occasional walkers catch the breeze. Hardy swimmer in blue bobble hat puts on her leggings under blue and white striped towel. Bloke in bright orange swim shorts and black and grey top.

…

I am sat on a comfortable sofa in the lobby of The Imperial Hotel, Llandudno gazing out at the promenade. The view is not as idyllic as it could be as a large Pay and Display sign is the most prominent feature outside the bay window. In the distance, wind turbines whirl. Modern times.

There is a proliferation of palm trees on the prom, a suggestion that Llandudno might be in its own microclimate on the North Wales coast. I imagine they have all self seeded from coconuts washed ashore by the gulf stream 😉

The sea front is getting busier. Guests assemble in warm coats and hats in the hotel lobby. The main topic of discussion is the sourcing of change for the pay and display machines. Charging starts in three minutes at ten o’clock (ante meridian). I have already paid and displayed and moved the car nearer to the hotel. Result! although not as much of a result as had I been able to find space in the hotel car park.

I feel no compulsion to head out and explore the town. Done it before. Quite surprised at how many people are in town. The hotel is full of snooker fans like us. Today is the final. Anne passed Ronnie O’Sullivan on the stairs on her way out. He isn’t in the final. Cue tip problems. She also spotted Sean Murphy in Starbucks. He is in the final. Relaxing before a high pressure afternoon. Llandudno is the place to be to spot snooker players.

Ronnie just walked past me headed for breakfast. Just sayin’ 🙂

It’s quite a luxury having a couple of hours in the hotel all to myself. For some reason it doesn’t feel like a Sunday although I have no idea what any day should feel like really. A white convertible with red soft top drives past the window. Orange life belt on post. Has it ever been used in anger?

Behind me the receptionists babble. They like working here. Imagine spending your whole life working in a hotel reception in Llandudno. Why not? If that’s your thing. Is it really anyone’s thing? Bloke just walked past me in shorts. A month early. I start wearing shorts when the clocks change. This is Llandudno mind you 🙂

…

Interesting to stroll around on your own. Other strollers are a mixed bag of couples, small family groups and other singletons. I get very lonely if i have to spend an extended time on my own.

It is nine thirteen on a Saturday morning, as the crow flies 🙂 The fast has been broken and I am sat without a cup of tea indulging in some relaxation prior to getting ready for the day. This will involve the usual performance of ablutions and getting dressed and then sauntering in the general direction of the shop to purchayse picnic supplies.

For today we set the compass bearing west to Llandudno, the Imperial Hotel and the Wales Open Snooker Championship final. We will see two out of the four semifinalists do battle for the trophy on Sunday.

The semi finalists are Shaun Murphy, Robert Milkins, Pengfei Tian and Junxu Pang. This is mildly disappointing as I’ve only heard of Shaun Murphy. All the other big names have been knocked out wtf! Including Ronnie!!! Presumably we will be watching a new star in the making. I woz there!!!

Gorra go. Ablutions etc…

Nine ante meridian. Doesn’t quite sound the same as 9am. Funny that. I’d like to bet that lots of people don’t even know what am stands for. I had to ask Anne who is a gifted linguist and who of course did know. Obvs all you guys do know, if only because now you’ve just read this (totally random) discourse on the subject.

I was sat here pondering what to write and that just came out. Seems to be a lot easier with a keyboard than with a pen if for no other reason than it is quicker to tap in words on a laptop than to write them on a piece of paper (ie page).

So what, I hear you say. Each to their own innit.

I quite like the pen function on my new phone and have used it to write actual notes. With older phones I’d have to do a voice recording or even a video if I wanted to note something down. Now I just whip out the stylus (or whatever it is called) and scribble away. It is a very smooth writing experience.

It must be said that a cup of tea needs to be finished before the day begins in earnest. This isn’t the most dramatic of opening lines but it is what it is.

We, I’m sure, all have different interpretations of what an earnest day might be. For some it will be hacking away at their corporate coal face. Others will find distraction in a trade or gainful employment in the retail sector.

For me it will involve an initial cleanse (shower) and then a foray into the local market for some milk and freshly baked bread. The staples of life. This isn’t to say I haven’t got a busy day ahead because I do but the timetabled activities do not start until noon.

I have grown used to a leisurely start to the day. It is some considerable time since I responded favourably to requests for early meetings, ie before nine in the morning, and some hard thinking has to be put in before arranging trips to London that involve the seven thirty am direct train from Lincoln Central. 

That is a handy train as it gets you in before nine thirty and provides a good head start for the business day. However I generally prefer to make life easier by staying the night before and having a relaxed start.

An earnest day might be spent pruning fruit trees. Yesterday afternoon I took time out of my busy shed ule to prune the grape vine.The vine in its early years living in our back garden proved to be some disappointment but last year for the first time it bore fruit. Moreover on a trip to Bakewell Anne and I had lunch in a cafe courtyard that boasted a wonderful specimen heavy with fruit.

This was inspiring. Our vine is set in a sun trap behind the barbeque and we have now had posts put in so that we can train it around the patio at a height of seven or eight feet. The pruning involved removing branches headed in the wrong direction and helping the right ones up the posts and along the wire.

Results won’t be instantaneous but I am optimistic. We aren’t sure whether the grapes are eaters or drinkers. All in good time.

The scourge of covid has been beaten. Vanquished. Removed from my corpuscles and consigned to history. This episode, at least, is over.

This morning I tested negative. 

I can now no longer justify languishing on the sofa binge watching boxed sets of interesting history programmes that eventually had me falling asleep because one history programme tends to blur into another and another, and another.

My brain has been restored to a state of full alert. Sharp. Incisive. Full of interesting things to think and say 🙂 

There is no reason, other than natural idleness and disinterest, why things should not be getting done.

…

Just been downtown to visit the EE shop as I couldn’t make sense of their online offering. They are trying to get me to “upgrade” 

This involves swapping my £20 a month 5G 160GB/month with roaming and no max speed limitation (I tried 5G for the first time when I was downtown and got 260Mbps down) for £18 (online only – £23 instore) 125GB/month with 100Mbps limitation and no roaming. Roaming is another tenner.

Phuh. I’ll stick with my current plan for the foreseeable future. Data costs only come down not up.

Shostakovich Symphony No5 in D minor is playing in the shed. Tis a relaxing way to start another day. I could say ‘start another week’ but that would be at odds with my philosophy of every day being a start to another week. Or the end of one, or the middle. Anything really.

I wrote that yesterday. Now consigned to a set of electrons parked in my cerebral cortex. Presumably. I dunno.

This morning I woke up the the realisation that I’d entered the wrong delivery address for my new phone, arriving before 10.30am. Doh. It was two doors down. Just before nine I nipped around to alert the neighbour, who I’d never met and who was on a conference call in a tracksuit. Might have been his pyjamas.

All is well. The phone is now in my possession and updating as I write. 163 apps installing. Installed. 

Seems I hadn’t backed up whatsapp messages. Thought I had. Sokay doing it again. The phone is telling me it’s just uploading 8.6GB of whatsapp messages and media. Blimmin ‘eck. Hadn’t realised it was that large or I hadn’t set up a backup. Could have sworn I had. Getting sorted anyway.

I went for a TeraByte of storage on the new phone. Was maybe £135 more than the 512GB version when discounts were taken into consideration and with 200 Megapixel images and 8k vid I figured it would use more storage than my old S10+. Although I mostly store in the cloud anyway. Who knows when next I will be filming movies somewhere with no connectivity.

Interestingly I wrote about 8K video as a thing of the future during the London 2012 Olympics and now here it is, on my phone!

I’ve moved the old phone into the kitchen where there is a newer, faster Unifi access point with noticeable improvement to backup performance. Sprobably already uploaded by now.

181,084 whatsapp messages restored to new phone! Ridiculous.

Day three of feeling positive. Well testing positive anyway. Ah well. Symptoms are on the wane. Actually slept quite well, ably assisted by listening to an Infinite Monkey Cage podcast. Twice. Two different editions at different times of the night.

I like the Infinite Monkey Cage. The only problem now is that there are two podcasts that I not only didn’t hear the end of but have no idea how far into the programme I got. Ya gotta laugh.

I will defo be better for next weekend and the snooker. We shall see. 

The spare room is quite cosy. We actually have four spare rooms. One of them is now devoted to sewing and another is the overflow sewing room. So really only spare when the house begins to fill up as it is wont  to do from time to time.

We like it when the house fills up even though it means a disruption to our otherwise idyllic pre-kid/post-kid existence. At least we have enough space not to be on top of each other even with a full house.

This morning I got up and made the tea which you should take as a sign of progress.

…

Am now enjoying a quiet house. Sunday morning. The wireless set has been switched off. I’m sure it is not good for it to be on all the time. All I can hear is the ticking of the clock. Tick, tock, tick, tock. You know how it goes. Someday the clock will stop ticking… 

Whether this comes after a tick or a tock we will never know for certain. This is partly because the chances of anyone being in the room and listening when it ticks or tocks it’s last are pretty slim and partly because I’m not sure which is the tick and which is the tock. 

The other point worth mentioning is that if there are more than one of you in the room you can’t really hear the clock. And finally I’m not really sure why we have the clock anyway. It has a very small face and I can’t even see it from where I am sat. 

Enough of this horological distraction. Time to move on.

The unadulterated binge watching of history documentaries on BBC iPlayer has been made possible by Covid-19.

I last binged watched the four first series’ of Bangers and Cash but have not watched it since. That is the danger of binge watching anything. A History Of Britain by Simon Shama is not in this category as series 3 ends with relatively recent history and both Si and I will be long dead before anyone looks back in the same way at present day occurrences.

The great thing is being able to sit in front of the telly during the day without thinking I was skiving. I can’t imagine that any daytime TV is worth watching but iPlayer is different. I will also have the use of the shed this afternoon when its current occupant disappears off to the gig he has organised at The Drill.

…

Settled in front of the TV for a day of covid survival. I have a lemsip and a laptop to keep me company and a gig symmetrical line to communicate with the outside world 🙂 The whole world is there to keep me company.

I uploaded a short video of a cup of tea earlier. Ordinarily I might look a couple of times in google photos before it had uploaded. With my fttp connection it was already there by the time I opened the laptop. Internet access as it should be.

Seven Years in Tibet (John Williams) playing in the shed. Tres relaxant or words to that effect. You definitely get the Asian undertones.

Wouldn’t want to go to Tibet for seven years mind you. I’d have to get someone in to keep the grass down. Or turn it into a wilderness garden which I guess would be doable and the cheaper option. 

It isn’t going to work. I’ve only just got back from a trip for goodness sake.

A gorgeous frosty morning out there with clear skies. I would appear to be over the jet lag and the stomach upset I had yesterday has gone. I heavily suspect the overcooked bangers and mash at the Wig and Mitre consumed at the scouts annual leaders’ night out on Friday. The sausages were tough suggesting they had been cooking for a long time and potentially even reheated which might account for the lurgy.

Today will see a flurry of packing in readiness for my next bout of jet lag. You will no doubt hear more of this. The use of the word flurry is somewhat inaccurate as I like to take my time over packing for long trips. On this occasion I am leaving at 7am on Tuesday so a relaxed approach to filling the suitcase is in prospect. 

A two week trip merits taking a suitcase. For last week’s jaunt to Florida I only had carry-on luggage which facilitated a quick getaway from the airport on arrival. For the return leg I opted to check in one of the bags which proved costly in time at the other end. No matter.

The house is noisy this morning. Sounds of an electric toothbrush mingle with BBC Radio 4 upstairs and contrast with the Hovis advert on Classic FM. The music isn’t called ‘the Hovis advert’ but I don’t know the actual name of the tune and can’t be bothered to find out either by googling or getting up off my arse to look at the radio display.

The day has offered a relaxed start. There are locally sourced breakfast ingredients in the refrigerator and food preparation will commence in due course. 

All arrangements are in place for the next trip. I just need to sort ground transportation from Cancun airport to Playa Del Carmen but there is no urgency and it may just be a matter of grabbing a cab. This will be the last international journey for a while, the next one being a weekend visit to Llandudno for the final of the Welsh Open Snooker Championships. Cool or what? 🙂

…

There are a few jobs, apart from packing, that are required (by command from a higher authority) to be done. We have two overflow bins for recycling that need their contents moving to the brown recycling bins for onward dispersal. I also need to go to the tip (municipal recycling centre) with a load of plastic stuff that has been hanging around the front for some time. Should also drop the drain rods back at Simon’s. So you see it isn’t all about glamorous international travel.

Reality is I am trying to cut down on travel although I know it doesn’t look like that 🙂 My, admittedly part time, work gets me around on occasion and we still have some planned big trips, not the least of which is 5 weeks in France for the Rugby World Cup from the start of September. The most exciting bit of that trip is not actually knowing when I’ll be heading back across the channel. Open ended jaunt. Why not?

…

Jobs all done. Fire lit and crackling away in the grate. Quite appropriate for a cold winter’s day. I am wearing a warm and cosy woolly pully. It feels as if I should have a cup of hot chocolate to hand but this is not the case.

‘tas been a beeootiful day in Lincoln. Started sub zero but gradually warmed to, oo, three or four degrees by tea time. For the uninitiated, tea time is three thirtee. For those in the know, it is also three thirtee. Note new spelling. Sfine.

Somewhat sluggish here. Should have gone out for some exercise.

Dusk, a periodic visitor, has moved into the vacuum between the shed and the house. The shed is otherwise illuminated only by a pair of monitors and my new Lagunitas sign, a truly worthy addition to the interior lighting arrangement.

The switch for the Lagunitas sign has been made easily accessible and held in place by a couple of cable clips which is an improvement on its predecessor, a mere ‘COLD BEER’ sign that required me to reach under the shelving to turn on. This only matters to me.

Start packing tomorrow for t’ next trip. ‘sit for a while then.

Seat 1E BA208 MIA to LHR. V comfortable. It’s the new seat. Newer than on the way out anyway. I’ll be sleeping most of the journey. Just get a few champagnes and cognac in early on. No nosh. Ate in the Flagship lounge. Burger and fries. Bit of a trek from the gate. Also flight was delayed and the gate was v warm and stuffy. Not ideal. Moreover a drip started where I was sat and I had to stand up. Sbeen a whirlwind trip. Seems a long time since we arrived in Miami. Off home for a cuddle with Anne. And a proper cup of tea. Taxiing now. There is a baby in first. Row behind me. Will need to root out earplugs. Just in case. Would anyway.

…

Fantastic night’s kip. Woke up with two hours to go of a seven and three quarters hours flight and went to the loo. Back to sleep again for another hour and a quarter. Perfect timing. Changed back from pyjamas to shorts and t shirt and bunged my jumper on, everything back in the bag, mug of tea and I’m ready to hit the arrivals lounge.

…

Skipped the arrivals lounge. Took a while for my hold bag to come through. It was carry on on the way out but I figured I could do without the weight to lug around in the airport. In consequence I gave the arrivals lounge a miss and made it to kings cross with roughly forty five minutes to spare. Charles rocked up with my new neon sign – pics later.

The train is rammed. Not sure what’s going on here.

Walk, don’t walk. I crossed the road in front of the hotel to the beach. To the left of me were sun loungers camped on by hotel guests who had had a ‘resort fee’ imposed on their room rate and felt they should get their value for money. I didn’t bother.

Standing on the beach, staring out to see the next landfall is the island of Abaco in the Bahamas and after that Western Sahara. Didn’t realise that was a country. A vast emptiness by the looks of the map. Not somewhere to be stranded without water and protection from the sun. Obvs.

A luxurious position of having plenty of time to prepare for the journey ahead. I am sat inside the room with the door open to the balcony. It’s too exposed to the sun out there. 

On the ground floor of the hotel there is a Mexican restaurant. Top notch beef tacos with habanero sauce and a side of refried beans for lunch fair play. Stayed off the pop. V sensible me!

Fort Lauderdale is quite a noisy place today. Sounds like lots of building work going on. They call it progress. It is a Wednesday, apparently.

Sat in a windowless conference room in a Fort Lauderdale hotel. The speaker is a retired analyst with 47 years communications industry experience. His level of detail is high. 

The first thing that springs to mind is that how does one cope with having spent 47 years working essentially in one, albeit hugely evolving, space and then stopping. My second thought is how boring.

In all fairness his one headline message is quite good. I won’t trouble you with the message.

I have one hour and forty five minutes left of conference time, finishing at noon EST. The flight home is at 21.30 and checkout is 4pm fair play. There is clearly a window of opportunity to relax and prepare mentally for the journey home.

A careful packing strategy is called for. The United Kingdom is a somewhat cold place to be at the moment whereas Florida is, following the dip in temperature last weekend, back to its usually very pleasant shorts and t shirt weather.

I need a three sets of clothing strategy: Florida, plane and UK. Hawaiian shirt, comfortable t shirt and woolly jumper. Haven’t actually brought a warm jumper with me. Layers will have to do it. The warm clothes will have to be readily accessible when I land in London. 

My mind has clearly wandered away from Unified Communications.

Yawn. Headsets. Yawn. Poly/HP sales pitch. Woot!

The audience is meant to be the service provider industry. In reality 75% of the people in the room are vendors rather than service providers.

Twas wild night in shire. Blowy. Early start. Sleepless set alarm. Tea cup early. Station drop. Awaiting bacon roll. Four just walked past me to next carriage! Mine arrived. Not particularly good. Serves purpose.

Long day ahead.

Nuarque arrivée. Blameless platformed passengers bear coats. Cold. Brought my Black Yak beanie. Needless Miami. Final destination. Airport meet Joe Marion at. Few sherberts. Late for me.

Sky grows lighter. Clouds, medium grey. Shade twenty five.

Half way to London. Just leaving town. Dressed comfortably for the flight. Flight of the Trefor. Put on phones. Listen to fave tunes. Need to consider downloading some vids for flight. Rarely anything I want to watch on the in flight entertainment. Not my thang.

In my own world on the underground 

The Express train for Heathrow Airport pulls gently away from the platform and gradually picks up speed. I am alone in the compartment. Three members of staff join me en route to their shift in Terminal five.

First Class check in is a dream.

We breeze through security to the haven that is the Concorde lounge. Leisurely breakfast sets up the day.

…

Slept five hours on the plane. Good kip. A pot of tea before landing and 15 somewhat chaotic mins from the gate to the exit from security. None of the escalators were working occasioning large queues to get onto the stairs. Took Charles almost two hours. The difference was entirely down to Global Entry versus non Global Entry. There was only one passport booth open for ‘foreign’ arrivals whereas Global Entry had two. Hooray for Global Entry.

Picked up the v cool Mustang convertible hire car which friend Joe Marion who had met me off the plane drove to the hotel. Took us a while to figure out how the valet parking worked but we soon ended up in a bar called Cucu’s Nest just down the street. Bit noisy so moved on to the National Hotel over the road. Joe (son Joe not the one I met last night) and I are staying there a couple of nights in early February to finish off our dad and lad trip.

The pianist and chanteuse in the bar at the National were also quite noisy but we weren’t moving again. Also I was only wearing a tshirt whereas a sweater would have been totally appropriate. Not warm inside or out – air con versus January weather.

Headed on a bit of a road trip to the keys today so will dress a bit warmer. 

Huevos Rancheros breakfast beckons.

Catch ya later.