Saturday was a day of work. Not in the office, but at Mac Expo, manning the MacUser stand, smiling, shaking hands, handing out free software, making tea and buying cakes for the ladies selling our subscriptions.

This year’s show was much better than it was in 2005. It was far less iPod-focused, and more about the Mac as a computer, rather than an entertainment platform. It was smaller - slightly - so easier to get around, and I got to talk to pretty much everyone I wanted to, picking up all the freebies from our competitor stands and hiding them under our counter where they wouldn’t be seen.

Chris of the Phin had picked up a copy of the Times on the way in and showed me the quarter-page BT ad on page 20, trumpeting their success in our Awards, which was good to see.

The only trouble with Expo, though, is that it’s in Olympia, like all the major London shows, which is a pig to get to. It took me three hours from leaving home to arrive at our stand, and at least that long again to get home after we’d finished breaking it all down and loading it into the back of a van after its three days of hosting our quiz.

Sunday, though, was a lovely day. The sun was shining from well before eight, and I buzzed up the A12 to head for the beach with Rich. Not for sunbathing, of course; it may have been sunny, but it wasn’t warm. Instead, we headed out with matching cameras to take pictures and spot for each other. Neither of us took more than a dozen or so, as we spent most of our time sitting on the pebble banks chatting as we looked out across the salt marsh with the waves crashing behind us.

For a while we cut away from the shore and out across what looked like drier land, but it was veined with streams and brooks that often blocked our path, and had us weaving an uncertain path through grasses six feet high that blocked out the wind, the sound and the flat, wide views around us. We walked to the next town up the coast with the sun slowly sinking to one side of us, faster than we’d have liked after the clock change. It was down to the horizon as we turned around to walk back, and we spent most of the next hour scrabbling along an unsteady ridge of pebbles in the failing light.

It was the perfect end to a hectic fortnight that’s seen me travel into London every day for the last 14.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 12:52 am and is filed under Journal, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.