Grumpy & Living in Leicester

Progress - and some bean sprouts

2011-04-10T19:19:00.003Z

The carrot bed needed re-digging because it was like concrete! I've sown some of Aldi's cheap flower seeds next to the weed fabric (you can see the bare patch above - this is where the carpet had been).
The potatoes are all in now, and there's a few bean sprouts poking their heads up.
I've had a go at sorting the path out - yes there really is a path at the side!
Got an excellent crop of dandelions and, at the top end, a serious bindweed problem - bit lots of glyphosate spray should nuke 'em.
We were thinking today, that we might rotovate up by the sheds and get some grass seed down this Autumn.

A couple of hours on Sunday morning

2011-03-22T21:20:00.003Z

Now I've got some potatoes planted, along with beetroot, broad beans and the parsnips I planted last time.
I've inherited some rasberries as well as the ones that I've planted.
The potatoes bed that is on the right has been roughly dug.
The weeds are starting to grow!
I've met Richard the neighbour.

30 minute dig

2011-03-11T20:23:00.002Z

Spent £15.85 on seeds in Wilkinsons yesterday (their raspberries were expensive!)
Hoed and raked left hand side of bed 3 and planted three rows of parsnips.
Dug half of the right hand side of bed two (for Broad beans eventually).
Chilly
The weed control fabric has coped will with the wind.

Diggin' on a Wednesday

2011-03-09T14:14:00.003Z

Moved the carpet covering part of 'bed 7' and got the whole of 'bed 8' (the very far bed, above the flower strip) covered with carpet, plastic and weed control fabric.

Sandra finished off digging bed 3, and I planted one sowing of early carrots. on the top left hand quadrant of this bed.

I got the right hand side of bed 2 dug over and put three raspberry canes in.

I need to buy some more weed control pegs, parsnip seeds. and probably some more seed potatoes.

A good morning's work!

Tuesday dig

2011-03-08T17:04:00.004Z

Sandra helped today.
We cleared the last of the bundles of wire and more of the broken glass, I also swept out the small shed.
I measured the plot - it about 28 paces long by about 8 paces wide, excluding the shed area.
I re-dug part of the top bed, Sandra raked and hoed most of bed three, and I roughly dug a strip nearest the road (and found some rhubarb). I threw a mixture of annual flower seeds into this strip, but there's so much couch grass, I'm not sure that they'll do any good.
The weed control fabric arrived, and this is in the shed.

The new plot!

2011-03-03T20:14:00.005Z

Allotment plot update - 1st visit

In the second picture above - you can see the pile of rubbish waiting to be cleared from near the shed end

I have now cleared a lot of the rubbish and have roughly dug a row at the top (top is the shed end, and left & right are looking from the shed).
I have put a bit of ground cover over a row about 2/3 of the way down.

The greenhouse needs to come down. The path needs sorting out - this will help with the rest of the rubbish clearance. The sheds need sorting out.
The plan for digging is to rake the row already dug. Dig out three new beds - about 2-3 metres deep at the tow end. Also, a row at the path end.
The beds will be 2-3 metres deep, with a central path, and paths between the beds. There's only the path on the left hand side - don't bother with the right..

As regards planting these - the top and bottom rows are for flowers.
Bed 1, will ultimately for fruit - for now plant the raspberries here, top left, with carrots bottom left, and broad beans on the right.
Bed 2 - potatoes.
Bed 3 - keep clear.

Next work out where the middle of the plot is, and this is where the compost is going, in a 'bed' of its own.

Cover the rest in ground control fabric for next year.

Linux comes of age - finally!

2010-09-19T16:43:00.002Z

I've messed around with Linux before - and always ended up frustrated and angry, but this time I'm excited and happy!
Getting increasingly unhappy with the slow start up, and sluggish performance of my Windows 7 system, I decided to take the bull by the horns and try a dual boot system with Linux on my pen-drive. The distribution I've heard most about was Ubuntu, so this one it was - using (eventually) PenDriveLinux.com to install it onto my 8gb pen drive was straightforward - although I did need to learn a little about 'persistence'. Success - the PC played nicely. So, quickly reading a bit more about 'dual booting' I decided it was safe to install Ubuntu side-by-side with my Windows system - again this all worked splendidly - and now I get to choose which operating system to use each time I do a restart.
Bouyed up by this success, I decided to try to do the same with the Netbook version of Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire One netbook - this was less successful - I think I might have got a corrupted version of Ubuntu to do this, because I ended up completely reformatting the Netbook and installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix over the top of the Linpus Lite system, which had always been unsatisfactory.
Running Ubuntu is a dream - it's fast (and free), there's no worrying about the bl**dy 'Terminal Windo' and you can forget about the wierd and wonderful language of Linux (distros, dependencies, grub, wotever) - although you are left gurgling at the names of the versions - Loopy Leopard, Mouldy Mandrake, Nutty Narwhal, and so on - why can't they just use something obvious - or is to keep the rest of us outside their world.
Software is quickly and easily installed from the Ubuntu Software Centre and even my printer installed first time.
My file synch service - Syncplicity - which has served me well for a long time, does not offer Linux support, so I've moved over to ZumoDrive which looks to be a good alternative.
The only things that are still an issue for me are my Belkin USB Hub - which will not work with Linux at all ever. and I need to look at how my Garmin 605 might play along - I'd really like to get Sportracks to work under Ubuntu, and there doesn't seem to be an alternative - shame.
Goodbye Windows!

DFDS Weekend Mini-Cruise to Amsterdam

2010-07-27T11:58:00.002Z

A couple of weekends ago me and her decided to go on one of the car ferry mini cruises from Newcastle to Amsterdam with DFDS.
The booking process on the website is pretty straightforward - but you'll soon notice how the headline price quickly starts going up once you add the meals etc.
Don't forget to print out and keep safe your confirmation!

Parking at the dock - next to the Royal Quays shopping outlet on Tyneside is straightforward, lots of space, and only a short walk to the terminal. There is a bus service too, from the railway station in Newcastle.

In the modern terminal building there is a cafe / coffee shop for while you are waiting to board. Boarding is quick and easy through the terminal - past the scary woman checking the tickets (seriously DFDS need to look to their customer relations training - a number of their (female) staff seemed to have quite an 'attitude').

The cabin was OK - we'd gone with the straightforward two bunks - no window version. There was a little bit more room here than in the Brittany Ferries cabin, thanks to a small settee opposite the bed. There was a continental power socket, shower and loo. The cabin was spotlessly clean.

The food was - well - odd. We went for the 'all you can eat buffet' both ways. On the way back we'd got the hang of it - there was a sort of selection of starters, a selection of mains, a kids selection (which included chips, and it was fine for adults to get stuck in too), a few smallish cold afters, fruit, and cheese.
Drinks were very very expensive (cup of luke warm tea £3.10 - I don't think so! Bottle of beer £5 - just say no).
Breakfast, while we are on the subject of food, was more than adequate, plenty of choice - healthy continental stuff, greasy English stuff, or mix and match your salami with your bacon and yoghurt (yummy.....)

On arrival at Amsterdam (actually Iujmuden) there was a confusing scrum for coaches - some were just a shuttle into the city, others were a 'sightseeing tour'. We went sightseeing - with a guide who proceeded to tell us how aweful the city was, how we were likely to get mugged, and pointed out how the residents of the city didn't like the red light district exanding too far - no, it wasn't an enlightening trip. Anyway, we were dropped near Amsterdam Station, with details of when the buses back were to leave.

Amsterdam is an interesting city and the 5 hours or so you get there is plenty to get a taste for the place.

Going back, the coach 'guide' was completely obnoxious about letting us and other people onto the coach to get back to the boat - I really don't know what her problem was, it's not as though we wanted to get onto her bus for some nefarious purpose - she was just plain rude. Maybe we should have got a later bus - they were every 15 minutes.

Back on the boat, after a good meal we had a look at some of the entertainment - there was admitedly plenty of choice, we settled down with a guitar player and his selection of songs - not bad, but a little overamplified. The biggest problem was, that wehre we sat in that bar was under a vent that seemed to be taking its input from the smokers deck!

Arrival at Newcastle was prompt and getting off was easy - the only problem was that I was then abducted by my wife to go into the Royal Quays outlet shopping park (where everyone was incredibly friendly and helpful).

One last word - about the Orca Charity who organise wildlife watching on the boat trip - a very friendly knowledgable group of people who are doing a valuable job of keeping track of marine wildlife.

Musing on Cycling Clothes

2010-03-08T18:24:00.002Z

Nowadays, if you are intending on doing any 'serious' cycling, you are expected to wear the right clothes. There's a whole industry devoted to selling you the right outfit, from shoes, socks, legwear, tops, jackets, hats and helmets (and helmets is a subject on its own).
When I was a lad - lets say 35 years ago - we did our 'serious' cycling in, pretty much, our day clothes. The only togs I can remember going off to France with, or on my regular North Metropolitan DA Sunday runs, that were special, were my cycling shoes.
So, what's changed?
I wonder, if it's an increasing emphasis on sport in our communal lives. Cycling - along with much else - is focussed on sport, and commercial sport. And, who doesn't want to look and dress like their hero?
Certainly much cycling apparel makes cycling much more comfortable, and enjoyable. But, it also makes entry into cycling much more expensive, particulalry for youngsters. My cycling shoes were a huge dent in my paper-round money, would I ever have been the enthusiast I am today if I had felt the pressure to spend out on 'special' trousers, tops, and gloves?
If we look at pictures of club runs of the 1970s and before, all the guys and gals are wearing ordinary jackets, ordinary trousers, and suchlike.
So, is the modern cycle clothing industry a leech on the surface of the pastime? Yes, and no. Yes - this stuff is not necassary, you can go for a bike ride wearing anything you bloomin' well like; but No, if you can afford this stuff, it will make your bike ride more comfortable.
The knock on though, is that by wearing special cycle clothing, you need to ask yourself, 'am I giving the impression that you must dress like this to ride your bike'?

New Year Mini-Cruise to Rouen

2010-01-06T13:03:00.005Z

Over the new year break Mrs Grumpy and I went on a Mistral Holidays / Brittany Ferries mini-cruise to Rouen from Portsmouth.

Firstly, lets deal with the word 'cruise'. It's a big boat, with food (good food), and entertainment, there's a cabin, so, yes it's a cruise, but it's on a car ferry.

The Bretagne is a big, modern (or recently refurbished) car ferry which, I gather, does do the longer runs to Spain on occasions, so it's well equiped for this sort of jaunt. We were able to put our car on the boat for the duration of the trip, whcih in truth was no more expensive than parking it at the port. We were able to access the car while it was docked, although we had to wait for a crewman to accompany us to get to it.

The arrival, loading and departure times from Portsmouth were somewhat confusing and we arrived rather too early, and had a three hour wait to board. We bought a drink and used the facilities in the terminal building, which were OK - clean and adequate.

Once on board we easily found our cabin (we got the key card at check-in at the entrance to the car park) which was, lets say, bijou! We had a double cabin - that's bunk beds, with a stool, tiny table, and mirror. There was room for a case, and hanging for clothes. We had a shower, wash basin and loo en-suite. One needed to be supple to get on and off the top bunk, there didn't seem to be enough head room to get down easily! The shower was perfectly adequate, the water temperature went right the way up to 'superheated steam' level! There was a single (EU / Schuko) earthed socket which we used for our kettle. A hair dryer would have been useful to bring with us. The beds were comfortable, and extra pillows & blankets were available on request. Ventilation was through a rather noisy forced vent in the ceiling - perfectly adequate. Although our cabin was next to the stairwell we were not particulalry bothered by noise.
I beleive it was possible to upgrade to larger / outside cabins, but it was not clear how this worked, or what the prices were.

The selection of food was very good, and not over-priced (in our opinion). There was a self-service restaurant with good quality freshly prepared food - we eat there on two evening and although the menu was identical each evening found something to suite each time - spending about £12 a head each meal for two courses with a drink. The café-bar was always open with simple food (pizzas and panninis, tea, coffe etc) - we bought the breakfast tray (croisant, orange, tea/coffee) each day costing £3.50 each. We had booked for the New Years Evening 'gala meal' in the restaurant (Les Abres) which was a five course meal, and was truly excellent - equal to any that you'd get in a decent restaurant in France. If you hadn't booked for the gala meal, then the choice of food was severely restricted on that evening.

The entertainment was perhaps the biggest dissapointment. The main bar / dance area was too small to accomodate the numbers who wanted to be in there, and I would class the entertainers, what I saw of them, as bottom league working mens club - really rather poor! In the 'piano bar' there was a chap intermittently playing the piano - but strangely when the Welsh contingent started singing along, he stopped playing!
As an alternative, the reclining chairs on the boat were always available, and one evening we sat in one of these and watched a drama on BBC1. However there was no way of escaping the sound and vision from the screens when in these chairs. It would have been nice to be able to use some of these seats as a quiet retreat.
There were other seating areas, indoors and outdoors on the boat.

While the cruise lasted a total of four days (two days on the Seine or at sea and two days at harbour) we had a day and a half in Rouen. A coach trip to Paris (90 mins each way) was available, and people we talked to who went said it was good, with time for shopping and a meal, with a good sightseeing tour included. Rouen is a really nice historic city with plenty of bars and restaurants. There were no big supermarkets near the port if that's what you are looking for! A half-hourly shuttle bus was laid on between the boat and the town, this always seemed to be full to standing, but we didn't see anyone turned away. It is perfectly possible to walk into the town from the port, but it does look a bit of a distance (more than the stated 15 minutes!).

The Brittany Ferries staff were without exception friendly and accomodating; almost all were French, but spoke perfect English (and pretty good French too!). There were lots of staff around at all times. Mistral staff were also on board for assistance.

The crossing was smooth on the way out and 'lumpy' on the way back, I was surprised how much the Bretagne rolled! We set off and arrived back precisely on time from Portsmouth.

I was a little concerned before the trip that the boat might be full of short necked men with tattoos and their be-blinged chav wives drinking their way to France and back. As it happened there was a cross section of society - mostly over 40, with almost all 'making an effort' for the gala meal, with dicky-bows and long dresses being in evidence (and even a couple of cumberbunds!). There, strangely, seemed to be a lot of Welsh on board - but maybe New Years Eve in Wales is a bit dull!

This was a good way to spend new year, it was interesting, and enjoyable, at the right price. It might not suite everyone, but I'd do it again!

What Services Am I Using?

2009-02-01T19:55:00.002Z

For email I use GMail - I've tried Thunderbird with POP & IMAP support, but always go back to the web based interface. My GMail email is also collected by Zoho Mail, but I don't use that interface - it's a backup in case my employer ever blocks the GMail interface (they block Hotmail, but not Live).
For a Calendar - after a long afair with Google I now use Zoho as it seems to have a nicer interface.
For web clipping and note taking I use Ubernote, I'd love to use Zoho Notes, but can't get the hang of its overcomplicated interface. Evernote - doesn't somehow float my boat, but I can't work out why.
I do use Zoho Writer (and occasionally Zoho Sheets) but I'm willing to be persuaded by the Adobe offering Buzzword, which has a nice clean interface and really nice fonts.
I like Syncplicity for synchronisisng my important files and accessing them anywhere, but I'd like to be convinced by Microsoft's Life offering - Livedrive if it would only do auto-synching of selected files.
I've got a GMail Drive (which is just an extension of GMail) which is occasionally useful.
Connected to Adobe Buzzword is Symantec's GoEveryware (or GoEveryWhere) desktop - it's ratheer cool, but an application looking for a purpose.
My main browser is Firefox with lots of extensions (probably too many !)
I do use old-skool newsnet using X-News as my reader.

Double White Centre Lines

2009-01-04T20:12:00.003Z

I wonder how many of the great motoring public really know the meaning of the Double White Line in the middle of the road?

From the Highway Code (see http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070306 Rule 129, ) I quote:
" Double white lines where the line nearest you is solid. This means you MUST NOT cross or straddle it unless it is safe and you need to enter adjoining premises or a side road. You may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less."

Now folks that's me - when I'm going down the hill at 25 ish on my bike, that means I am doing *more* than 10mph and thou shalt NOT overtake me. In fact most of the time - unless I'm struggling uphill - I'm doing more than 10mph and though shalt not overtake me.

Why do they do that?
(and don't get me started on Rule 163)

On Trying To Find a Holiday

2009-01-04T19:19:00.002Z

Mrs Grumpy and I are looking to go on holiday in February - and because of Mrs Grumpy's chosen profession we are limited to the half term week.
So - being an organised sort of person I want to search the internet for a holiday during that week, within our budget and from one of our prefered airports (ie not Gatwick).
You'd think that was easy - uh? Well no actually.

My preferred engine of choice www.directline-holidays.co.uk has the largest choice, but appears to have the highest prices; next best was a new one to me www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk which frequently crashed and had a very limited selection of tour providers, and generally gave me holidays well outside my date ranges; closely followed by www.teletextholidays.co.uk. which had no - and I mean no - holidays that matched our requirements.

Surely it can't be beyond the wit of the clever people out there to design an aggregator that allows me to rank my departure date, price ceiling, and departure options - and then give me accurate results to select from (in the manner of holiday hypermarket perhaps).

Oh yes! My local friendly high street travel agent? Well I suspect that's where we'll end up going. I know that they are on commission and will point us to whatever is giving them the best rake off - and I know I won't have the chance to get the dirt off of Trip advisor - which, by the way, is becoming seriously difficult to get a consensus from - but at least if we have a sh*t holiday, I can go back and whinge at the poor counter staff!

Saga - Yes I'm mature enough now!

2008-11-05T20:56:00.002Z

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

2008-10-08T15:16:00.002Z

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

2008-10-07T15:06:00.002Z

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.

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

East Midland Food Festival 2008

2008-10-06T12:06:00.003Z

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.

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!

2008-09-26T15:15:00.001Z

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

2008-09-25T08:46:00.001Z

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

2008-09-24T15:45:00.001Z

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!)

Dutch Flyer Update

2007-08-31T19:33:00.000Z

A while back I posted comments about my difficulty getting my Dutch Flyer tickets out of One / Stena. Well, as I reported, I made the booking, and now we've done the trip.
First I need to say we had an absolutely cracking weekend in The Netherlands.
One Railway's service to and from Harwich / Liverpool Street were the only let down - dirty, crowded and just plain unsuitable for people with large amounts of luggage - I have written to them asking if they are proud of their service to international travellers!
Stena have a splendid service, but are taking the mickey with the price of non-alcoholic drinks on their ships - lager is cheaper than tea - work that out!
The reliability of dutch railways is legendary - and all true!
We travelled from Hoek van Holland (Hook of Holland to you) to Leiden by way of Rotterdam - on fast clean comfortable trains.
At Leiden we were able to find left luggage lockers for the case and had a good look round this splendid city - visit Leiden, you'll not regret it (just don't go on Mondays if you want ot go to the museums!).
We travelled to Noordwijk van See by bus - again quick, clean, reliable. We stayed in the Strandhotel on Parrellel Boulevard, which is a very friendly, clean and conveniently situated small hotel - highly commended (even if there are a surplus of elderly German ladies there).
I shouldn't have been surprised, but it seemed that *everyone* in Holland spoke English, which made it an easy weekend.
Noordwijk itself has a huge sandy beach, and plenty of restaurants at most price points - it's a laid back family sort of resort, not at all what we expected - but we were pleasantly surprised.

Birmingham & Its Jewellery Quarter

2007-07-04T19:15:00.001Z

The grumpys all took a trip on the train to Brum one Saturday. Now, Birmingham gets a bit of a bad press hereabouts, but as a big city it has a lot going for it - a good pedestrianised city centre, lots of shops, and a very central railway station. Mrs Grumpy was desirious of seeing the canalside and the jewellery quarter. Lunch at 'The Handmade Burger Company' set-up by the canal, almost opposite the NIA was taken - not too expensive, but left us with a bit of a 'upmarket McD' feeling - and yikes! it was noisy - they do need to find the volume control on that sound system.
So, after lunch, we set off to follow the signs to the 'Jewellery Quarter' - and follow them we did, and follwo them, and follow them..... for a very long time. Following these retched signs took us through some less desirable bits of Birmingham city centre, introducing us to the down-and-out community and Brum's litter problem!
When we got, what we took to be the 'jewellery quarter' - it was closed, or at least as much of it as we could find. No! I lie to you! there was a small parade of shops selling seriously expensive baubles, each with a hustler outside. No sooner could we say ' only looking' were we bundled inside to look at the wares - I tell you these people had been taking lessons from the good souls in the Marrakech souks - and now the Marrakshis can learn from the brummies!
I had to use some magnificent subterfuge to get out with my cards still intact.
Now while this was alternately amusing and annoying, it left a seriously bad taste in my mouth - it was not at all the English way of doing things, and sets a very bad impression in the mind of the tourist.
Birmingham - get your house in order!

Garden Lighting (and mice)

2007-05-28T14:38:00.000Z

The grumpy garden has, for some time, had a number of LED solar lights - bought from Macro - glimmering away, and also slowly falling apart. While in B&Q the other day, I noticed a selection of 12v garden lights reduced. I'd never intended to have wired lights in the garden, but Mrs Grumpy was getting, well, grumpy, about the state of the solar lights, so I took the plunge. These are Select-A-Lights from Ring, who are based in Leeds.
This is a 12 volt DC system, and I bought the 60w transformer, the PIR/Timer unit, 25metres of cable, 6 LED post lights, and 4 path lights. Not cheap in the end, but the effect is good.
The photosensor is set too dark - so I need a way of getting the thing to come on earlier in the evening, of course there's no adjustment - don't be daft! The PIR is very sensitive - which in my mind is a good thing. I'll probably leave the unit to come on at dusk, leave the setting to 3 hours (there's also a 6 hour setting, and a dusk-to-dawn) until it's too cold to use the garden much then set it to use the PIR.
The lamps appear to be well made, but the connectors are an abomination! I resorted to using the block connectors, wrapped in self-amalgamating tape, then closed up in the daft little boxes supplied. The transformer, intended to be left on all the time gently warms up, so it's using power all the time - not too green that! I'll put a timer on it, so it's only on between, say 5pm and midnight.

I was actually in B&Q looking for mouse traps - for the garage. Sorry, but forget humane, these little beggars need to DIE. The plastic 'modern' traps are not very impressive, but the traditional wood and wire traps seem to be working - two deaths so far , using peanut butter as bait. Yeeeaaah!

Far, Far, Away

2007-05-21T20:31:00.000Z

Mr & Mrs Grumpy spent the weekend away - we went to a stupidly expensive hotel in Derbyshire. We went to Losehill House Hotel near Hope. This is a 'country house hotel' - not our usual style, you must appreciate!
Losehill House is an early 20th century (?1915 ish) large country house, which I think was built as a CWH hotel, and must have been sold and renovated in recent years - and renovated very tastefully indeed.
On arrival. your first impression is not altogether positive, because the car park is far too small - and everyone will arrive by car - mostly Audi, BMW or Saab as far as I could see. There does not appear to be any concession to cyclists or motorcyclists.
The greeting at reception is very friendly - a theme that continues throughout the weekend - everyone, without failure is accomodating and very welcoming.
Our room was overlooking the back of the hotel - a room about the size of our living room at home! Very tastefully decorated. (Why, oh why, does every room have to have a retched television in it.... grrrrr; hanging off the wall completely out of place. I'd have prefered a decent radio, rather than a cheap clock/radio).
Rather suprisingly the bed was a standard double, rather than the super-huge size commonly found in hotels these days. It didn't feel comfortable on first bounce, but gave a really good night's sleep.
My only real beef - and its not much of a beef - was with the food, which was good solid grub, certainly not designer or foody - and plenty of it (eat as much as you want / self serve / carvery) - but totally out of character with the rest of the place. This could be sold as a virtue - good old fashioned fare, true English farmhouse cooking - but instead, the food is left unmentioned and unloved. Afternoon tea is another matter - very good, splendid cakes - taken in the orangery. (Orangery? What is an orangery other than a middle-class rebranding of a conservatory, extension, or lounge - don't be prissy - this was the lounge.)
Like just about everywhere else, the choice of non-alcoholic drinks was unimaginative and very restricted (they need to contact Lono for some stocks).
Mrs Grumpy tried out the pool and the outdoor hot tub and speaks highly of them.
We took one of the suggested walks, which is a story in itself - maybe for another time!

If you've got a few quid, and a weekend to spare then we thoroughly recommend a weekend spoiling yourself at Losehill House Hotel.

Tesco Direct Delivers (mostly....)

2007-05-13T16:51:00.000Z

Having a few spare bob in the bank, we decided to order a new tele and some living room furniture - and doing a search it looked as though the best buy coupled with the range of furniture we wanted was from Tesco .

So we had our self assembly furniture and 32" LCD television delivered, on time, as promissed. They even rang before delivery to make sure we were in.

First the furniture : if you are familiar with Ikea stuff then this is almost identical, perhaps slightly better quality, and certainly better instructions! My biggest concern with this type of furniture (Ikea Tesco or anyone elses) is the use of a single bit of re-enfororced cardboard nailed to the back to maintian the 'squareness' of the units. No complaints. Happy bunny.
Now the television - we went with a Bush 32inch with inbuilt Freeview - it's got some incredible model number IDLCD32TV22HD ! Great picture, too many features to comprehend quickly, good (but not great) sound - excellent connectivity. Strange that the main power button is on the back - you have to fiddle round the back or leave it on standby - bad design there chaps. The problem - there has to be one - was the remote control dying on me while I was setting it up. I could get many of the functions to work with an old Bush CRT remote, so it was definately the remote, not the set. So - I rang up Tesco - first mistake, big mistake! They offered me a refund of £20 or an exchange television - but they couldn't swap out the remote; only when I got assertive did I get the advice that I should have had in the first place - and I should have tumbled before I picked the phone up - to ring Bush directly. (Excellent manager on the phone at Tesco - bloke called Silas - who calmed me down a treat, and told me what I needed).
Bush's phone number was not that on the instruction book, but hey-ho! I spoke to a very nice young lady (possibly in Newcastle) who offered to send me a new remote, which I received two days later as promissed. This didn't work either - so I rang bush back, and got an Indian call centre this time (how does that work?) - who was flippin' useless - all she wanted to do was to send me another remote. Only when I asked if there was a way of resetting the remote and the TV was I given that info - for the remote you hold the left, right, down and 1 buttons down together for 4 seconds - this sorted the remote out, and now its' fine. (Before you ask- that did not cure the original broken remote!).
To reset the TV apparently you leave it unplugged for 30 minutes and that does the trick.
So great TV, great service from Tesco Direct delivery people, mixed service from Tesco Direct support, and Bush.
My faithful Phillips SBC RU 865 universal remote copied the codes off the Bush remote fine.

The other new toy is a Bush 2500 amplifier from Richer Sounds. Great price, easy to operate, does what it should. The only irritating thing is that the display on the front should have an option to change the source name, because I don't have a DAB radio attached, but I do have a satellite tuner, for example.

Don't recognise the living room now though!!

More on our Bath trip

2007-04-12T19:53:00.000Z

Something I forgot to post last time - When we stayed at the Travelodge at Aust / Severn View services, we went looking for a pub for our evening meal, and stumbled across The White Horse at Northwick.
This is a good, old fashioned pub serving good quality hearty food at reasonable prices - the sort of pub grub that pubs used to do before the chains started mucking around with pub food.
The landlord was friendly, but not overbearing, the pub was clean(ish) and there was plenty of room in the car park. The only improvement will come when the smoking ban comes into force!

The kids in the pub seemed to like the garden, but we didn't investigate.

This bub is conveniently sited on Sustrans Route 4.

The Grumpys Go To Bath

2007-04-10T19:14:00.000Z

Well, we had booked a couple of cheap rooms in Travelodges for a trip to Bath.
First stop was at Thame, where we didn't manage to see anything of the town, but the Travelodge was clean and conveniently situated - and it was good to chat with the cyclists on the Denmead 300 Audax who were using the services as a final control.
We drove on the next day to Bath - which is supposed to be a world class tourist destination. Well, I know it was Bank Holiday Monday, but, frankly it was a disgrace. The amount of litter was astonishing, and there was no visible attempt to clear it up; the pavements were covered in chewing gum, there was tacky advertising everywhere, and, smaller things, like railings that hadn't seen a lick of paint in years. The traffic in the centre of the town was noisy and intrusive - quite unusual for a modern British town, and the standard of driving was surprising aggressive - witnessed by a road rage incident involving a bike rider in Queens Square (the driver was using his car as a weapon, and the bike rider took exception, and laid into the driver). Queens Square garden was noisy, the benches covered in pigeon sh*t, the grass scrubby, and generally not a nice place to sit.
The gardens overlooking the river were pleasant enough, even if the cream tea was overpriced, the toilets, though, like all toilets in Bath were frankly disgusting. What messages are we sending to the tourists who are propping up the British economy if we can't even keep the loos clean?
Bath rather absolved itself the next day (Tuesday) when we came back to look at the Roman Baths, which were well presented, interesting and not overcrowded - which they so easily could have been.
We had tea in the Pump Room Restaurant - not cheap, but not bad value either. The staff were doing a splendid job in the face of too may stupid tourists who could not, or would not, read simple instructions!
Mrs Grumpy speaks highly of the Thermae Spa (and linked here)- again not cheap, but not bad value - she went with the 2 hour session. Her main advice is to be sure to take your own towel as someone will nick your hired one while you are in the sauna! The towel hire is a bit on the steep side, but it's a captive market isn't it! This facility is a fine example of how a local authority can get things right occasionally - professionally done, and well presented.

We stayed overnight at the Bristol Severn View Travelodge which is situated at the M48 services by the old Severn Bridge in what used to be Aust Services. Although it seems to be in the services, it's probably one of the quietest spots we've found for a Travelodge - high up on a hill, with a partial view of the bridge, no traffic noise, and no cars coming and going in the night. Well recommended.

Well we're glad we've been to see Bath, but It'll be a long time before we go back.

Tea & Vistaaaagh!

2007-04-07T19:28:00.000Z

Two things come to mind today-
Rooibos tea, otherwise known as redbush tea (although that's a tradename of Redbush teas) is something you either take to or you don't. I have. It's quite a pleasant alternative to proper tea and it comes in a number of flavours - one of my favorite varieties is the Dragonfly Cape Malay Rooibos Chai from Dragonfly Teas, which has a very comforting aroma. Although their evening blend is also very peasant, and closer to the standard Rooibos teas - such as Tick Tock (also from Dragonfly as well as Tesco). Lidl sell a very peasant Vanilla Rooibos.
Redbush offer advice on making Rooibis tea on their website, but my advice is to let the teabag stew in the cup for slightly longer than you would with a 'normal' teabag, and then add a very small amount of skimmed milk - maybe a small amount of sugar as well if you are used to sweet things.
Rooibos teas don't stain cups like normal tea, and they don't contain any caffeine. The only cafe or teashop I've found offering Rooibos was in Madiera - in Funchal!

A note on Microsoft Vista - for some reason (I think it was an exhortation by a newly installed program) I turned the User Access Control (UAC) back on - BIG MISTAKE! I couldn't access functions in the control panel, some of my programs wouldn't start, and nothing would delete! And, I couldn't get into the UAC control in the Control Panel to turn UAC off, or to get to a restore point! In the end I had to restart windows in safe mode, turn UAC off, and then all was well. I've seen so many complaints about UAC in various places, it makes me wonder if it really is worth all the extra security it's meant to provide!

More thoughts while standing at a bus stop

2007-03-27T18:21:00.000Z

Where I wait for the 302 bus is almost opposite a side turning and in clear view of a pelican crossing. It's a great opportunity to observe the raging stupidity of the car driving class.
It amazes me the number I see careering out of the side turning, one hand on the wheel, and the other with a mobile phone clamped to their ear; and, the astonishing number of motor vehicles that go through the traffic lights on red, not just changed, but clearly on red. But, explain to me, why so much huffing and puffing goes on about 'lycra louts' going through lights on bikes, when the dangerous stupidity of car drivers goes unnoticed, and unpunished? While the number of bike riders is much less, I rarely see them doing anything completely daft (or illegal) - maybe the lack of a cage makes them more safety concious - or conversely maybe a metal cage makes the car (or van) driver so removed from the environment, they just don't care!

Food on the Move

2007-03-25T19:04:00.000Z

Last night Mr & Mrs Grumpy went out. Due to a special promotion through her employer we got a dinner trip on the Great Central Railway.
First, let me say this was a thoroughly enjoyable evening - good, plain food, in amiable surroundings, at a pretty fair cost (remembering the special promotion).

I was rather castigated by Mrs Grumpy for trying too hard to analyse the evening though. It wasn't really about trains - even though there was a proper steam engine pulling the genuine BR coaches; it wasn't about 'fine dining' (whatever that is) - even though the food was very good (particularly the vegetables and the sweet). It wasn't a romantic meal, or an opportunity for dancing the night away.
If the trip had been in almost any of the 8 months that the trip had been in daylight then the experience might well have been different, as it was, we sat over the Kinchley Lane viaduct completely in the dark, unable to see the reservoir!

A major grump of mine with the GCR was the astonishingly poor range of non-alcoholic drinks on the train - they seriously need to get on to the LoNo drinks company to get a proper selection of drinks for those of us that can't or don't want to drink alcohol.

However, as I said, a good evening out, and to be recommended. We might even be persuaded to consider their Murder Mystery trains, or even the New Years Eve trip!

Thoughts for the day

2007-03-23T19:59:00.000Z

Standing at a bus-stop gives you a chance to observe life. I concluded, while waiting for the 302 yesterday morning, that parents who let their kids eat toffee crunch bars, crisps, and drink fizzy pop on the way to school are possibly stoopid, but who is saying to these people "feeding your kids this crap will mean their teeth will fall out, and they will grow up fat, and get diseases"?

I like Brando products. They do what they say they will do, they are reasonably priced, they last, and even though they are ordered direct from Hong Kong, they arrive quicker than a lot of stuff from Amazon that I've ordered recently. My latest Brando purchase was a hard-case for my Palm T|X. The leather flip-case was excellent, but when trying to use the Palm as an MP3 player (with Pocket Tunes) the case fired off the screen to create a bookmark, making the player skip. The hard case arrived today. It's a very nice, rattle free design , that closed with a good 'click', and there's cut-outs for all the important connectors (and the SD card strangely?). The case is nowhere near as nice from a tactile point of view as the leather one, which is silky smooth, but the payoff is that I've now got a reliable MP3 player for the bus and the bike.

My weather site using Weather Display is running well, and I've managed to customise the built-in site - so go look at it! My ISP is Metronet and uploads never fail and as far as I can tell I'm going to stay within my monthly upload / download allowance without incurring any extra PAYG costs. Metronet have been consistently reliable, although I did have a couple of issues with them not actually reading the support tickets I put in when my MaxADSL speeds started dropping. I think that the takeover by Plusnet has now bedded in, and some of the problems may have been resolved by now.

Final gripe for today - for the second year running the Institute of Biomedical Sciences have fouled up my direct debit, meaning that my subscription to this august body is overdue again. I think this is less of a criticism of the IBMS, and more a whine about the whole direct debit system, which leaves the paying customer out of control of their own money. Standing Orders - now there's a good idea......

On-Line Calendars - making me grumpy!

2007-03-21T20:45:00.000Z

I like on-line calendars, they are convenient and simple to use.

I've got a Palm TX which I use to carry around my personal calendar (as well as it being a superb MP3 player).
Google-cal (GCal) is pretty and has useful public calendars, and has been well accepted by the rest of my family.
Airset allows integration between Palm Desktop the TX and GCal - in that direction only.
What's missing is integration between the Palm TX and GCal; that's direct two way communication between the palm (or Palm Desktop) and Google Calendar.
While Airset is useful as that bit of 'middleware' to allow some integration, and it's a nice clean application, I really see it as an unnecessary step - what would change this? Well, if Airset included an equivalent to GMail, I might be tempted to use it more.

I don't need integration with Outlook, and I appreciate that many others do. My employer makes me used Outlook with a Dell Axim at work. I don't use these for personal calendar items, and I don't try to synch them - but to be able to do so - while retaining categories - might be a plus for me.

Why is it so complicated?

The weather today in LFE...

2007-03-19T11:10:00.000Z

I was bought a weather station at Christmas - a LaCrosse-2300 - and up until yesterday was using the supplied software to view, record and publish on the web, the weather from my back garden.
The software supplied with the 2300 is HeavyWeather, perfectly adequate on a basic sort of level, with export facilities to Excel to make pretty graphs.

Yesterday I downloaded Weather-Display from www.weather-display.com which is an alternative display and publisher - and more! It's not cheap at 70 usa dollars - which comes to about £37, but it has a lot of functionality including FTP and e-mail facilities, lots of calculators, and web page creators and editors. There's also facilities to upload data to sites such as wunderground and others. There's also the ability to set up a telephone weather station!

Very pretty, and plenty to keep you amused on a dull day (or month) - but there are downsides, apart from the cost. It's very processor hungry, and it can be slow. The interface was designed by an icon designer on speed - and too much time on his hands! It can be accessed through your home LAN with a free client viewer.

You can see my station using the inbuilt web page at my weather page. This was my second attempt at using weather-display to make a page to show the weather in LFE (that's Leicester Forest East to you).

Dentists.....

2007-03-14T19:07:00.000Z

Like everyone else, I don't like dentists - but having a dentist you can get on with makes a lot of difference. The demise of NHS dentistry means that going to the dentist is not cheap - but having a dentist you can trust not to rip you off also makes a big difference too.

I've had a LOT of dental work done in recent years, and yes, it's been bloomin' expensive and pretty unpleasant. I've had several crowns (all white ceramic) and two implants. The implants were a real challenge as they got infected and the front of my gum sloughed off (yuk!) - however the arrangement with my dentist was that the work for a fixed price, whereas, I'm aware, that other dentists charge by the hour (more likely the second!). This is an excellent reason to think twice about 'dental tourism' - heaven alone knows how I would have fared if this had happened to implants done in Outer Macedonia!

I'm not including a weblink or a phone number, because I don't want anyone to believe that this is in any way a solicited testimonial - if you want to find my dentist you can look him up in the phone book. I know that he does take patients from all over the country, and is developing an excellent reputation for his uncompromising attention to detail.

Dr Amit Kotecha of Warren Lane Dental Practice is the man - he has a real sense of both professionalism, and of community, and family. He is a really genuine man, and if you want professional dental treatment, possibly extending to cosmetic work then he's your man! But be warned, this sort of quality does not come cheap (but I can't compare with other dentists).

I believe that his surgery is happy to consider children as NHS dentistry patients.

Moving on with Vista

2007-03-04T21:36:00.000Z

Well I finally bought a new laptop, to partially replace my aging Toshiba. This is a Fujitsu-Seimens Amilo (don't ask the model number etc - all I know is its got a gig of memory and an 80gb hard drive).

I got it from Makro in Leicester - I know the people there are paid a pittance, and work hard for it, but why do they have to be so bloody rude to the paying customers?

Anyway, this thing has got Microsoft's Vista pre-installed (Home Basic) - I expected all manner of problems and a steeeep learning curve - but, as it happens, it's all been pretty plain sailing.

It's a nice clean interface, and while not everything's where you expect it - the interface is pretty intuitive.
As regards compability issues - well, to my surprise both Money 2004 and Railroad Tycoon 3 installed and ran without a hitch. What didn't - well my old faithful Bricks-2000 didn't (now replaced with a 'gadget'), the Solwise Homepower tool for monitoring the Homeplug network won't run once installed; I know that the Palm Installer will not run under Vista so I've not tried (that could be a real bummer!); and most seriously of all - MusicMatch JukeBox (is it 7 - the last decent stable version) is not compatable, because of IE7 issues.

To replace MMJB I've gone for MediaMonkey, which seems to have enough flexibility to do what I want - the main thing being the MMJB AutoDJ function - which MediaMonkey copes with using Smart Playlists - it does seem to have an issue picking up the MMJB rating tag - which MediaMonkey interpets as a Quality rating, but at least everything's there!

By the way - an update on the Dutch Flyer saga - the tickets never came, the payment wasn't on my credit card statement, so I re-ordered, but this time used Internet Explorer (rather than Firefox) and the order went through, and the tickets came in the post 3 days later. Great service - crap website!

Madeira M'dear

2007-02-18T18:13:00.000Z

Well - family grumpy have just got back from a week in Madeira. We stayed just outside the capital - Funchal, and there was very little to get grumpy about - in fact we had a jolly good time!
We booked with the Ilkeston Co-op travel agents branch in Leicester (I had a bad experience with an on-line booking, so I now prefer to go and talk to someone!) with Sunspot holidays. We flew with TAP on a scheduled flight from Heathrow (now there's somewhere to get grunpy about!!!).

TAP's staff showed a remarkable disregard for the normal rules of safety on both the way there and the way back - on the way out, they let a sleeping woman lie accross three seats with no lap-belt on during landing, and on the way back the video screen swere left down, and the lights on full during landing. Not impressed.

The transfer to the hotel was a seriously scary introduction to Madeira's curious driving regime. Speed limits are a challenge to the more masculine male!

The hotel was the Jardins d'Ajuda apartment hotel - and very good it was too. We were unfortunate in being assigned a 'sea view' room - which gave a good view of the main road - what you want here is a garden view room! We were staying half-board, and cannot fault the food or the staff.
Mosquitoes! We got bitten during the night, and I don't ever get bitten! That I don't understand!
The hotel is a little way out of town, but there is a good hotel bus service, and an even better public bus service. Car (and motorbike) hire is available for the brave.

Funchal is not a place for the young, kids or teenagers, the whole place is geared up to the 'more mature' visitor, something it does extremely well. Everywhere sells tea and cakes. (We recommed the 'Loja do Cha' in Funchal centre - tea milk shake, anyone!)
We found 'living costs' to be very reasonable - we spend a lot less here than we did in previous weeks in Croatia and Morrocco!
Everyone (except the german tourists) speaks at least some English, and the currency is the sensible mainland Euro. (Why do we persist with the little-Englander pound? )

A week wasn't long enough to wind down, and to get the best of the place - we'll be going back!

Rant Alert! Parking on pavements!

2007-02-07T13:55:00.000Z

What is it about a certain part of the motoring public that thinks that they can block pavements by parking on them?
Pavements are for people - roads are for cars.
Round here there are a number of partially sighted people, old biddies in those dreadful motorised shopping carts, lots of mothers (and probably fathers too) with push-chairs - so why do selfish bl**dy drivers think that these people don't exist?
Parking on the footway, even just a teeny weeny bit of it, is not only is dangerous, because the poor old pedestrian has too go out into the road to get round the tin-can, but the tin-can is damaging the footway too - which has to be paid for out of taxation - that is the council tax.
AND another thing! Don't get me started on the selfish winghing of the poor motorist when it comes to "Car Tax" - get real -there is no such thing - read it again Car tax does not exist - what the keeper of the car pays (that's the keeper, not the driver) is Vehicle Exise Duty - which is a tax that allows him (or her) to keep the car on the road. VED does not pay for the roads, it does not buy a patch of roadspace, or a parking space - it is a general tax.
I seem to recall reading (no I can't reference it) that if the motorist had to pay the true cost of motoring the tax would be somewhere nearer £2500 a year.
The roads (and footways) are paid for out of general taxation - most significantly out of Council Tax, which everyone pays, including pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, and bl**dy selfish car drivers. Remember motorist - when you moan about cyclists, or pedestrians not paying road tax - they are paying for that road you are driving on, and not using the benefit of that payment.

Don't park on the pavement, it's dangerous and its' anti-social.

-------------------------------------------------------------

No I've not received my Dutch Flyer tickets. No there's still no contact details on the DutchFlyer website - and yes it's looking like a shambles.

Integrated Transport? Maybe....

2007-02-03T19:56:00.000Z

So, we thought we'd book a couple of weekends away in the summer......
First we went for The Dutch Flyer - a website which lets you book tickets from any One Railway station in the UK, a ferry ticket, onwards to any Dutch railway station. Good Idea! We fancied a weekend away in Noordwijk on the Dutyc coast - sounds good, doesn't it!
Wellllllll..... first, the nearest One Railway station to Leicester is probably Cambridge (or we could have gone via London, Liverpool Street), but the site doesn't let you order connecting tickets, or let you even look at timetables - but, never mind - carry on regardless.
It's a bit of an odd site, where you have to book the UK rail trip, pause, then book the ferry, and the Dutch bit just falls into place (I think).
So, I did the required messing about, gave it my credit card details (secure site etc etc), and Hey Presto! "This site cannot be displayed". I've no bloomin' idea whether I'm going to get my tickets, and no idea if some scoundrel in Kurdistan has got my credit card details - and there's no contact details on the website, and the WhoIs leads to an advertising agency.
I'll wait and see if my tickets turn up (I've waited a week already now).
Next.
Sailrail, is another great idea - integrated rail and ferry tickets from any UK rail station to any Irish railway station via almost any ferry route. Great! Lets work out which way is the most econonomical, whenI can go, polish the credit card and.......... Oh, I can only buy the tickets by phone or at my local railway station. How very modern!
I think I'll try that at Leicester station at about, say, 8:15am one Monday morning!

Specsavers - The end of a long relationship!

2007-02-01T16:28:00.000Z

I've been a customer of Specsavers in Leicester for a good many years, and both my kids and my wife have been their customers. Their prices have always seemed fair, their staff knowledgable, and the shop clean and comfortable. There's never seemed to be the pressure to spend 'just a little bit more' that I've heard of from customers of other chains.
So, what's gone wrong?

Last July I replaced my ageing varifocals with a new pair, as you do! I've recently noticed that in some light conditions they look as though they are dirty, and when held at an angle the lenses look crazed - or at least the coating on the lens looks crazed.
These lenses had the same non-scratch surafce that my previous pair had, which served me well for, what must be, four years, and they never looked like the new ones.

So I took them back to Specsavers for them to have a look. It seems that I've either been heating them up to very high temperatures or mistreating them. The treatment they had was no different to the old pair that lasted five times as long.

I was particularly upset at the offhand way I was dismissed as a serial spectacle abuser! I was not looking for a refund, but an offer to look properly at how the non-scratch coating had broken down might have been more re-assuring - or a small discount on a replacement pair.

I have heard good things about the Opticians at the local Tesco.

Voco Clock

2007-01-16T16:46:00.000Z

Seduced by the write-up in The Independent I ordered the clock described at www.voco.co.uk .
It's a bit of a mixed bag! It arrived really quickly once ordered off the website, well packaged - but when it was opened my first reaction was that it was a really cheaply made bit of tat!
The clock is very lightweight plastic, and surprisingly the face does not even have a cover, so the hands are open to the elements (as it were).
There is no luminous or reflective coating on the hands, as you might expect from a bedside clock.
The clock is very easy to set, and the knobs are easy to find. The unit takes three AA batteries which are not supplied.
The 'voices' as adequately described on the website, are the clocks main feature, and they work very well, both as relaxation, and as a way to get you up on the morning. Stephen Fry's voice and diction is perfect for this product.
So, the bottom line.... Have I Been Fleeced? No, I don't think so; but I am a little disapointed in the build quality, in particular the lack of a 'glass' for the dial.

Prices on television adverts - grrrrr!

2007-01-02T20:13:00.000Z

Well, if I'm meant to be grumpy of Leicester, let's get really grumpy!
My number one irritation is how prices are pronounced on television (and some radio) advert - for example: "A new 359SX with all the gizmos for three-nine-nine, go get it" NO it's "A new 359SX with all the gizmos for three-hundred and ninety-nine pounds, go get it" Spot the difference? It's 399 of your British pounds, not 399 bags of calcium carbide, or 399 left footed boots. Actually it's advertisorial laziness, pure and simple, and if I could I'd boycott Curry's, Available car-dot-com and all the rest of the ignorant lot of them.
There, said my piece.

Happy New Year!

TheJazz - what's that all about?

2007-01-01T20:48:00.000Z

No one can ever accuse me of being a jazz fan. However I will confess to coming to appreciate some aspects of jazz as a sideline to 'chillout' music over recent years.
So I was quite pleased when I heard that the owners of the splendid Classic-FM were going to launch a jazz DAB station.
But what a let down. Why on earth is it in mono, and at the lowest quality they can get away with?
Don't get me wrong - I relish the variety available on DAB radio, but this is an insult to a serious musical genre.
TheJazz - sorry, it's TheJoke.

Low & No Alcohol Wine & Liqueurs

2006-12-29T19:42:00.000Z

I've had a number of health problems of late which have meant that I can't partake of the usual alcoholic seasonal fare. Not, mind you, I've ever been a great drinker, but, you know how it is when you can't have someting.....
A little while before Christmas I ordered a case of drinks from a website www.lono.co.uk and received very quickly a well packed selection of exactly what I'd ordered. Also enclosed (a nice personal touch this) a welcome note from one of LoNo's staff!
During Christmas lunch I finished off most of my bottle of Zinfandel, bottled from a dealcoholised californian wine by Ariel. While I'm no wine buff, this was really very good, slightly sweet, with a rosey blush without being a rose whine, very light, very nice - and without the alcoholic bite. A very nice drink!
I've also opened my bottle of Frutaysol Manzana Verde, which describes itself as "original magic schnapps". This is a green slightly viscous drink with an enormous aroma of apples, and the taste of an orchard. I've never tasted real Schnapps, but I strongly suspect that this is not it - but it's a very pleasant drink all the same - however, as it's a 'sort-of-liqueur' you really couldn't drink much of it. I've been sipping it neat, but it might go down at a greater speed with ice, or diluted with water (I don't hink lemonade would cut it, but I might have a go).
LoNo also sell a Pernod substitute - Ricard Pacific - I've had a bottle of this in the cupboard for a couple of years. I love the taste and smell of anise, so this stuff is great. I generally dilute it about 1 in 4 with cold water, as suggested on the bottle. However, I find Pacific a little dissapointing - it lacks that certain something, that I imagine the alcohol brings to Pernod. But never mind - it's a pleasant drink
It's actually quite nice being able to drink this stuff without all the after effects that C2H5OH brings!

Bus services along the Hinckley Road

2006-12-24T13:23:00.000Z

So, what's new round here?
Arriva buses is the main bus company, which has recently greatly improved the service along Hinckley Road with a very regular service on the 158 between Leicester and Earl Shilton on to Hinckley and the badlands to the West. Stagecoach have also revised their offering to the same neck of the woods with a revamp of their service which is now route 48. This means that their is proper competition between Coventry and Leicester, and within Leicester, along Hinckley Road. The Stagecoach 48 buses seem to more comfortable, but the locals (in Leicester) don't seem to get it - they often pass people standing at bus stops along the way. Probably because, in Leicester, Arriva, Stagecoach, and First Bus (the other main operator, leaving aside Centrebus, Woods Coaches etc) don't seem to undersstand the concept of integrated transport. Will Someone Please Explain To Me Why - we can't have a single day ticket or season ticket? The Arriva Day ticket at £2.50 is currently excellent value, but I dare say, someone in Head Office will soon notice that!