Month: September 2003

Very busy today with meetings, travel and amusing phone calls, followed by dinner and drinks at the hotel. Time for rest before a repeat performance tomorrow.

"Slagroom" is the Dutch for "whipped cream". That may say a lot about the Dutch. Or my mind.

Written today:

Hmm. Well, a very fruitful day at the trade show. I’m pretty tired after wandering around it all day, but I made some good new contacts and renewed a few existing ones. And a good bit of advice from a friend in America proved invaluable today too.
Anyway, I left the show with plenty of time to get to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. My very friendly taxi driver got me to Winsford railway station with plenty of time in hand (I can safely recommend Lawton’s Cars). However, my train was twenty minutes late. No worries, thinks I, as I have plenty of time in hand. Upon disembarking at Runcorn, now nearly 30 minutes late, I looked around the station for signs of the promised shuttle bus to the airport (it says so on the RailAir website or somewhere, I’m sure). No sign at all. Why? Because it doesn’t exist. But a very helpful chap at the station said "Don’t worry, go outside and get an 82A. That’ll take you there, and there is one in ten minutes." Sure enough, just a couple of minutes late, an 82A hoved into view.
I was then treated to the most tortuous journey through the less than salubrious areas of Widnes and Speke. I can safely say that Widnes is less than wonderful but not too bad. But Speke is unspeakable. I was worried at every bus stop that a bunch of kids would run out from the nearest boarded-up home and leave the bus propped up on a pile of bricks!
Anyway, in spite of all these delays, I got to the airport with time in hand. Thank goodness I didn’t go for plan B, which I had seriously considered, which was to cut it fine and spend an extra hour at the show. Thankfully, my instincts for not cutting it fine where travel plans are concerned kicked in, and I made it ok.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport has that half-built feel to it. Not quite as bad as some of the worst excesses of Spanish and Canaries airports (I remember the airport on the south side of the Canaries [what was it called?] that was more plasterboard and duct tape than concrete and brick), but still half built. And do any airlines other than EasyJet operate from here? I’ve not seen any evidence of them yet. There can’t be more than two hundred people in this big modern terminal, and a third of them are staff.
Most amusing was the guy who just ambled through security as I was repacking my pockets, wearing a yellow jacket with a hand-wirtten note on the back – "If found, my name is XXXX and my address is XXXX". Amazing. As the guy on the security desk said, somewhat reminiscent of Paddington Bear!
Right, time to finish this pint and get ready for boarding. Let’s just hope that Mike has booked us into a hotel with a phone point in the room, or else you poor souls are going to be deluged with a huge amount of reading on saturday night (or Sunday morning if I decide to go straight to the pub)!

Written yesterday:

A less-than-busy Virgin train allows me to upgrade my seat from the non-table seat reserved for me to a tabled seat, complete with power point for powering my laptop without draining the battery. How handy! Now I can give you a running commentary on my journey! (Of course, I should really be working, although I have written a variety strategy report and we’ve not even reached Oxford yet).
The Oxfordshire scenery is looking rather beautiful, if also rather dry. The grass is closer to yellow than green on the hills as we pass by. I much prefer sitting on a train to driving, as there is so much more opportunity to look at things, like the absolutely fabulous range of barns we just passed near Closey, with tilehung sides and large old wooden doors – beautiful.
The journey up from Chichester to Reading was uneventful, with only a bloke who went to the door of the train at every station for two hurried puffs on a Marlboro Light, much to the amusement of his friend. At Reading, a pair of teenage American lacrosse players got on the train. One immediately realised that she had left her jacket on another platform. She asked me when the train left, and I suggested that she asked the guard to hold the train whilst she went and found it, but in the end she was back on board before the train moved off. Her travelmate bears an almost shocking resemblance to Penn, only younger. At first, I even thought that it was her, as Penn lives just outside of Reading and could feasibly be catching a train there. But unless she has suddenly started dyeing her hair auburn and taken to speaking with an American accent, then this girl is doing a fairly lousy impression.
Two rows behind me, i.e. the row behind the one I should have sat in, a child is playing with some toys whilst his father (or maybe grandfather or uncle – hard to tell) dozes next to him. It sounds like a lot of people are getting hurt and blown up in his imagination, and there seem to be plenty of car crashes. I guess it says a lot about me that, as a child, one of my favourite toys was a Britains combine harvester with which I would "harvest" the circular straw coloured rug that may parents had on the living room floor.
Two people have sat next to me and are conversing in rapid sign language and working on a series of forms and business documents. It’s hard to imagine how much of a hindrance profound deafness must be to everyday life, let alone holding down any sort of job that requires interaction with others. And I can’t even speak another spoken language, let alone sign language.
I could really use my bag of sweets right now, but their packed in my computer bag, and I can’t get to it without disturbing people. I’m usually better prepared than that when getting onto a train or plane. Bah. I may have to go for a contrived loo break to get to them, although the coffee I had at Reading is making the contrived nature of such a break less necessary by the minute.
OK, loo break achieved. Spiral notepad with important meeting notes that I need to convert into strategy reports – retrieved. And, mst importantly, bag of wine pastilles retrieved and disappearing fast.
The train has just left Banbury. As you leave the station, on the right are several industrial units. One of those is clearly the home of a manufacturer of golf buggies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many golf buggies parked together in one place in my life!
Just passed a huge patch of yellow toadflax just a few hundred yards north of Leamington Spa station. It’s a plant that seems to grow well on railway embankments, clearly enjoying the free draining nature of the ballast tat forms the trackbed. It’s a plant that I often see growing along Centurion Way, the cycle route that follows the course of the old railway line from Chichester to West Dean. I’ll walk up there soon and see if I can get a photo for you.
Right – we’re heading into Birmingham, and I’m pooped. Time to switch this thing off and maybe have a short rest. Travel is tiring.

Well, Holmes Chapel is the back end of beyond. Not only that, but the back end of beyond in a power cut. But the Swan Inn is friendly, and I think I’ll stay there next time I come to the area, not least because it is right next door to the station. Instead, I’m in a TravelLodge. Top tips for TravelLodge guests – get the disabled room. It is at least 25% bigger. Secondly, don’t eat in the Little Chef. The food is lousy. But it is reasonably priced and is comfortable.
But there is no phone point in the rooms, so I can’t update from here. Gah! Or check my mail. Oh well, I’ll have to do that when I get to Holland.

And, apparently, Ian is back. Yay!

Peter West, RIP.

We’re all going to DIE!!

Today’s objectives:

• Run errands at bank and elsewhere.
• Submit planning application for new windows.
• Pack bags for trip to the Netherlands via Cheshire.
• Have lunch.
• Travel to Cheshire.

Expect reduced content provision for the rest of the week.

I was told earlier this evening that I need to be careful that people might be intimidated by the new globe-trotting businessman that is Graybo. I’m not sure that this is fair or true – I think that the true me is still here for all to see and experience and share. But I have changed in the last six months, for sure. For the better, I think, too. Dunno.

I’ve decided that frizzyLogic should be in my list of websites to visit regularly.

Beer with Nicky and Claire, with sightings of Gary and Jeff. Stood up by Paul F.