Saga - Yes I'm mature enough now!

Mr & Mrs Grumpy are in the Saga age range - only just mind you but we're in.
So.... we booked a Saga holiday, and this is our story. I'll try to write about the Saga experience, not the hotel, the flight, or the resort, but of course there may be some overlap, please excuse me!
We went to Turkey in November, we stayed in a large typical (but good quality) package hotel with an interational clientele of mixed ages. I obviously have no idea how typical our Saga experience was - but here it is!

Our first contact with Saga was on arrival in Turkey, where as usual, we were met by the rep' - there's always a tour rep at the airport, so no difference here - she shepherded the small group of arrivals onto a coach (where we waited ages for four non-arrivals - apparently it's not possible to communicate accross hundreds of miles using modern technology these days...grrrr...).
First difference: the coach to the Saga hotel dropped us off at the Saga hotel - we didn't drop off at 15 other hotels on the way - it was a single airport to hotel journey - how refreshing! And, it was the same when it came to going home time.
Welcome meeting the first day, at this point my heart generally sinks as these are usually a thinly disguised selling operation by a rep living hand-to-mouth on commission.
Second difference: the rep was barely interested in selling us any trips, in fact it became a bit of a challenge as the week went on to get her to run one of them! She knew the local area well and was quite competent, but a bit, well, vague.
The welcome meeting was in the 'Saga Lounge' - which we came to refer to as 'The Asylum' - the Saga Lounge (as the name implies) was a private retreat for Saga guests, with coffee making facilities, a TV, a private terrace with sunbeds and towels - nice. Apart from the other Saga guests - nice people, but, sorry, they were old enough to be our parents, and very, errrrr, middle class. I'll come back to the Saga crowd later!
Trips - now here's difference number three - the typical package holiday trip first picks up at seven hotels (yours is always the first to pick up and last to drop off) the commentary is in three languages and the English is always a bit shushpekt. The Saga trips were on the Saga coach with the Saga guide in excellent English. On one of our trips, to an historic site we had two guides, our regular guide was supplemented by an archeology proffessor from Istanbul Uni! Because the group on one trip was expressing an intrest in Islamic matters, the guide arranged a talk by an Iman. Definately not your average tour packages.
The overall cost of the Saga trip was almost certainly no more than the equivalent package booked on the high street, but the overall value was much, much greater. The only down side were the odd people in the same hotel - by and large it was possible to avoid them, but not on the trips, or if you wanted to use the Saga lounge. You might consider these people too high a price to pay - we don't we'll be booking with Saga again.

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Apollo Infini Carrier Rear Bike Lights

I ordered a couple of Infini Apollo lights for the carriers of tow of my bikes a couple oweeks ago from Chain Reaction Cycles (www.chainreactioncycles.com ) and so I thought I'd let you know how I was getting on with them.

Firstly, delivery was astonishingly fast - I've not dealt much with these people, but they do deliver and quickly - so far so good.

These lights are for fitting onto a standard European carrier with mounting holes - this may be the first problem - you have to knock out the right holes dependant on the spacing of the fittings that you've got - if you then were to move the lights to a different bike with different fittings, then there could be a problem with water seepage.

The lights are initially confusing - do not lose the instructions! There are four potential modes - solid, flashing, on/off, or movement/light sensed - all from one button - confusing - it will be!

The light is bright, very bright - there are three rearward facing LEDs and two sideways facing, with a large area of reflector (presumably EU or German standard).

I've left both of mine on the movement / light sensor setting, and so far they seem to behave as you might predict, coming on at a sensible level of duskness (is that a word?), and staying on for several minutes after movement ceases (it says four minutes in the instructions - I've not times it, life's too short).

Did I mention they were only just under £8 each - very much a bargain if you've got a carrier to fit one on.

Now for the front.

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Leicester's 'Continental' Market

During last week, Leicester City Coucil held one of their 'Continental Markets' in the city centre. We went along on Saturday, and were very pleased we did.

There were a number of stalls around the Clock Tower area, using the newly pedestianised areas very effectively. The stallholders were selling a variety of goods from, errrr, more than one continent. To me 'Continental Market' conjours up visions of stinky cheese and odd sausages rather than Peruvian knitting, or generic pot sellers - but hey! who's complaining?

We bought some stinky French cheese from a nice man from Normandy, who was happy to gabble in French to me, some nice French pastries and a few other odds and ends. Mrs Grumpy was rather dissapointed not to be able to get any Dutch windmill biscuits, I did remind her that this was not the Christmas market - just a random event.

Leicester tourism must do a better job of publicising this sort of thing. And they should re-instate the Leicester Continental Christmas market.

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Écoutez gratuitement Louisy Joseph sur Voila et découvrez d'autres titres en affinité avec vos goûts musicaux !

East Midland Food Festival 2008

Mrs Grumpy and I went to the East Midlands Food Festival at Brooksby Agricultural College yesterday - and it's difficult to know what to be grumpy about - it was a jolly fine trip. This food fair ran over two days at Brooksby College just outside Leicester.

It was held in a series of linked marquees - away from the weather (which was pretty dire) with car parking in the adjoining fields. The car parking was free and controlled by local paramilitary groups such as the air cadets (I know they aren't really paramilitaries, but there's something strange there....). Entrance to the food festival itself was £7.50 each, although there were reductions for advance purchase.

There was plenty of food to eat for free as tasters from the various stalls, and a fair amount to drink as well. Mrs Grumpy was upset that there weren't more cider producers giving out free samples. Say no more!

There was a good selection of food stalls selling their wares to eat on the premises or to take away. There were also plenty of freebies - with cloth bags being the fashion of the moment.

We bought some excellent wholegrain mustard, to improve the mashed potatoes; some interesting wheat crisps, some nice bread, and a really nice sweet Polish cake for the stupidly low price of 50p - I think this was from a bakery in Melton. They could easily have sold these for twice that price. Yum.

All in all it was a very good trip out and one I'd heartily recommend to the younger Grumpies for 2009.

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Écoutez gratuitement Louisy Joseph sur Voila et découvrez d'autres titres en affinité avec vos goûts musicaux !

116000 - ever heard of it? No, me neither!

When there are rules they should be obeyed - and this applies equally to governments as to citizens.

The EU has made a ruling (a directive) that governments must introduce a common telephone number 116 000 to allow for the rapid reporting of missing children across the EU. Well guess what? The only countries to have done so are Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Hungary and Portugal of the 27 EU states. What has Britain done - well the website http://www.eumonitor.net/ reports that the UK expects to do so 'Early September 2008'. Hello! it's the 26th!

Now I'd never heard of the 116xxx common number range, but it's a EU standard for 'social' numbers - so 116123 is reserved for 'emotional support' helplines. Good idea - no action.

See http://www.eumonitor.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=106575&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0  for the full lowdown and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7339335.stm linking this to the McCann story.

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TableTable - Forest Lodge LFE

The other evening Mrs Grumpy and I decided to eat out, and as I'd got a voucher for triple Nectar points at TableTable we decided to go up to the Forest Lodge in Leicester Forest East.

Now, leaving aside that TableTable is a bloomin' silly name for a pub / restaurant chain it was a pretty pleasant meal.

 

The Forest Lodge has gone through a number of iterations to get to its present state, and is looking very good indeed. The decor is by-and-large very pleasant, realxing, but modern, with a number of little alcoves for semiprivacy. The rugs on the floor and the pictures are modern without being pretentious. But why on earth they feel the need to poil the ambience they have tried so hard to create with wretched one armed bandits I don't know.

 

We found a table, and were very pleasantly surpised to find that we could order at the table, rather than this nonsense that has crept in over the years of finding a table, ordering at the bar, then it being brought to you, but you order you sweet at the table. Our server - an interesting young lady named Victoria was helpful and polite - a little too slow to bring the bill - but hey! we're all European now, and that;s the way they are on the mainland :)

 

The food was good, without being great - I'd rate it as good pub grub rather than restaurant quality. Initially I thought "haven't got much here" - but there was ample - I decided that the plates were too large for the food and the portion sizes were just about right. My only complaint was that my lemonade and lime was flat - are they watering down the lemonade?

 

The bill for the two of us with a drink, main course, and sweet, came to about £36 - certainly not cheap, but not expensive either.

Recommended.

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Barclaycard Cashback Card

I used to have a Morgan Stanley credit card - it gave a pretty fair
cashback, and as I paid off the balance every month the interest rate was
great!
However, Morgan Stanley in their infinite wisdom have transfered all their
credit card customers over to Barclaycard - with a new cashback card. This
card has a number of advantages over the old Morgan Stanly card - the
cashback is put onto (credited) to your account each month rather than
accruing and having to be reclaimed, and it has the new contactless
payment system built in - even though this is only available in London at
the moment.
But - yes there's a bloomin great BUT. I tried to set up the account on
line so I could set up a Direct Debit (now there's another subject!) to
pay the balance every month but Barclaycards servers are having none of
this - after multiple calls to their Indian call centre (on an 0844 number
-heaven alone knows what that's cost me) they finally told me that the
servers cannot register the migrated Morgan Stanley cards.
So with trepidation I will change my PIN and make a couple of test
purchases, and we'll see what happens when the bill comes (or if I'm in
luck no bill will come, ever!)