Archive for June, 2008

30
Jun
2008
Categories
Journal
Tags

The Hop Farm, Paddock Wood

The Hop Farm describes itself as ‘one of Kent’s most popular tourist attractions’ and ‘the ideal place to visit in 2008′. I don’t doubt it. It was certainly popular at the weekend, after all, although we weren’t specifically there to look at the reindeer, pigs and chickens (although we did clamber into the chicken run to give them a tickle until we were chased off by a dog-sized rabbit).

We were actually there for the VW Expo. So lots of vans and campers and shiny polished cars all glinting under a clear blue sky, plus the usual mix of spare parts and trinket stalls, and proud owners showing off their vehicles to the panel of judges in the hope of winning rosettes.

Half of the farm itself was fenced off for an impending concert, so after wandering around the cars for a while I headed off to the farmy bit of the farm to poke the animals. They had the biggest horses I think I’ve ever seen, and two very cute pigs who lay side by side, as close to cuddling each other as their little piggy legs would allow.

Pigs

They were cute, but the funniest thing had to be the waxworks, which could most accurately be described as ‘mediocre’.

You could tell who the people were supposed to be, but some of them were so generic that the little descriptive notes proved to be more essential than just helpful. This picture (sorry for the blur – it was dark and I only had my phone there to take any pictures) is supposed to be Kylie.

Kylie

Shockingly, it actually looks like my cleaner.

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

13
Jun
2008
Categories
Travel

Macworld Awards (and the journey home)

Last night was the Macworld Awards. A fun night at the Dome as a guest of Adobe.

Getting home, though, was another matter. They’d fixed the torn-down overhead wires and the morning’s slow-running was a result of ‘residual delays’ and trespassers on the track. Later in the afternoon, though, a freight train derailed a little way up the line from Chelmsford and the fragile timetable was thrown into disarray.

I got to Stratford at half 11, and there was little sign of anything heading in the direction of home. In a half-hearted attempt to clear his platforms, the only person I could see on duty there directed me onto an all-stations train back to Shenfield that was so old it was one of the models I used to take to school more than 20 years ago. Not comfortable. And full of people eating burgers and arguing.

We were all turfed off at Shenfield and left to mill around on a platform. By now it was well gone midnight, and getting cold. I was still in the tux, which isn’t really the warmest thing to wear. Over half an hour later, by which point the connecting service was 25 minutes late but still marked on the boards as ‘on time’, a busy train finally pulled in. It took all the platform staff by surprise and they shooed us off from platform 3 to platform 5 like collies chasing sheep.

I’m not surprised; the real issue throughout this whole sorry episode has been lack of information. And occasionally the availability of disinformtation. As ihatenationalexpress points out,

They told the press that this was the first time this had happened and blamed vandalism. It turns out that this is the third time the lines have fallen down at Ingatestone and no vandalism appeared to be involved. Their relationship with the press needs to be questioned.

I did make it to my bed, eventually, but not before two this morning. This has been one of the worst weeks I can remember on the trains. It has almost rivalled the months of go-slow that followed the Hatfield crash. At least then we knew that there would be trains, even if they were slow.

This week, there’s not even been the guarantee of any service at all.

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Tags: ,
Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »

12
Jun
2008
Categories
Garden, Journal
Tags

Natural instincts

I had two companions while out watering the plot last night. Here’s one. The loveable lazy cat who likes nothing better than to be made a fuss of while slobbing out on the bed (the towel keeps his hair off the pillows).

2008-oscar-pillow.jpg

The other was this little chap, who sat by me and watched as I filled the cans from the water butt and hunkered down in the longer blades of grass.

2008-mouse.jpg

And then they met, and just where Oscar killed him, I found the rest of his family, picked off one by one.

2008-dead-mice.jpg

Tags:
Posted in Garden, Journal | 4 Comments »

11
Jun
2008
Categories
Travel
Tags

The trains… again

Yesterday was another day spent working from home. The fourth this year caused by problems on the trains. This time around it was a mile of overhead cabling coming down one station down the line from Chelmsford, which meant not getting home until gone 11 on Monday night.

Today, two days later, they’re still trying to fix it, and will no doubt have been slowed by news that some of the engineers were injured after their equipment ‘failed’ and were taken to hospital. The line was closed mid-afternoon, just after the accident, and further repairs have been halted until investigators have found out exactly what went wrong.

So, predictions that it would be finished by eight tonight now look hopelessly optimistic. The latest estimate I’ve seen is early tomorrow morning, by which point it will be into its fourth day of disruption.

This wouldn’t be so galling had the penalties for these disasters not been so weak. Network Rail, which maintains the infrastructure, was fined £14m when overrunning engineering works meant a late return to work after Christmas for many commuters, but still managed to pay out £55m in bonuses to its staff last week, with the chief exec bagging a £500,000 salary, £305,581 performance-related bonus and additional £205,000 ‘incentive’. Clearly the £14m wasn’t enough if it can still afford such lavish rewards.

Meanwhile I’m off, with some trepidation, to see what state the trains are in tonight. If I get home before ten, I’ll be surprised.

Tags:
Posted in Travel | No Comments »

08
Jun
2008
Categories
Journal

Racing at Snetterton

VW Beetle

Noisy, noisy, noisy. We went to the races at Snetterton today, setting out under cloudy skies, wrapped up tight in coats that we had to take off before lunch. By the end of the day we were burnt and stinging, such are the vagaries of a British summer.

It was a meet of the British F3/GT championships, about which I knew nothing before we went, but the best races of them all had to be the Volkswagen Racing Cup, which is a wide field of regular cars racing against each other, with a couple of vans thrown in for good measure. This is classed as a support race, as it’s not the main focus of the day, but it is certainly more entertaining than the F3 cars, which buzz around the track like wannabe Formula 1 cars.

Despite the wide variations in the specs of each car, though, some clever maths lets all the entrants in the VW Cup compete on a level playing field by balancing power and weight ratios.

Yet the van – my favourite as the visual underdog – performed poorly throughout, and put out great clouds of black smoke, like it was trying to put off its pursuers in some kind of film car chase.

Snetterton

For anyone who knows little or nothing about car racing, though – me, for example – it’s the perfect introduction to the sport as you get to watch all manner of races in close succession.

A kind of car racing tasting menu.

It doesn’t help you write more informed blog posts about it, though, so you might like to try this one instead.

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Journal | No Comments »

05
Jun
2008
Categories
Media, Television

QI

QI takes two whole hours to record. That’s not two hours of stopping, stalling and chopping bits out, but two hours of full-on, unbroken chat. I know because we got tickets to see a recording tonight, at the London Studios on the South Bank.

The show, now in its sixth year, was all about the letter F (series one was about the letter A, series two about B and so on), with this particular episode majoring on Families, as it’s due to go out on Children in Need night. That was strange enough, as the studio was decorated with Pudsey Bears and it won’t go out until November. Last week, though, they did the Christmas episode which must have been even stranger.

Anyhow, being Children in Need night they had Terry Wogan on as a surprise guest. A bit hmmm, but at least they balanced him out with Ronnie Ancona and David Mitchell (and Alan Davis, of course).

We were lucky to get in. Doors opened at quarter to seven, and we were told to get queueing (beside the people for Have I Got News For You) from five, but that doesn’t really work with general office hours, so we were much later than that. When we got there they were queueing around the block, with burger and ice cream vans doing a good trade by the kerbside. But of course we did get in, although only by the skins of our collective teeth: just a few spots further back and we’d have been turned away.

As ever with these things, once we got inside we found everything to be smaller and slightly tattier than it is on TV. We also found it hard to work out what would make it to air out of the two-hour recording. I’m guessing Wogan’s admission that he can understand why a parent would flip out at their crying child would most likely be trimmed, though, as this will be shown in the news break of a charity show about child abuse and poverty that he himself will be hosting.

He seemed to have calmed down about the Eurovision voting, acknowledging that countries that share similar musical tastes will probably vote for each other. That’s not what he was intimating at the end of this year’s contest.

But it was a fun night and I’ll tune in on 14th November to see how they manage to squash down 120 minutes of recordings into 30 minutes of airtime. By then I’ll probably not remember much of what we saw live, so I doubt I’ll spot the cuts.

I’ll probably forget the surprise guest, too.

Technorati Tags:

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Media, Television | 2 Comments »

  • Essentials

  • Categories

  • Blog Stats

    • Posts 1,893
    • Words in Posts 657,333
    • Comments 1,428
    • Words in Comments  57,086
    • Tags 222
    • Categories 26

  • Monthly archive

  • Recent Comments