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OSS December Dip 2011

2011-12-31T16:48:00.007Z

Where did December even go? It doesn't seem a month since I was back down at Parliament Hill Lido, braving the cold water for the Outdoor Swimming Society's fundraising 2011 December Dip.

Unlike last year's 0.1C Plum Pudding Plunge, this time the weather was much milder: no snow or ice, just blue skies, winter sun, and water at a balmy 8C. This year's celeb was Radio 1 DJ (and local swimmer, if I heard right) Edith Bowman who spoke some encouraging words alongside OSS founder Kate Rew, before the 300 or so dippers took to the water in three waves (each with their own coloured wristband and theme played by the live brass band at the poolside). There aren't any wetsuits at this event, with most people just wearing regular swimming costumes - however at least one man went the extra mile with his extremely impressive tinsel-decorated trunks (posted on Goggleblog, which coincidentally has another take on the event).

The dip itself seemed to go very quickly this time - like many people I decided I'd go in the first wave (to the tune of "The Great Escape" apparently, although after I'd jumped in I don't think I heard the band at all) and my gasping breaststroke took me there and back across the regulation two widths of the lido before I finally struggled out victorious:

Afterwards there were warm clothes, apple brandy, coffee and mince pies, and I think I could tell the difference in temperatures as I never lost feeling in my feet and got warmed up much more quickly this time. The dip itself is not pleasant, but afterwards you do feel very much alive which I suppose is the point (the event also raises funds for OSS activities including the OSS wild swim map, which aims to collect together outdoor swim spots of all kinds in the UK and across the world so that wherever you are you should be able to find somewhere nearby).

There was also some socialising with other dippers, and a real high point of this year for me was meeting two very cool fellow swimmers, Tara and her mum Jane, who'd come all the way from Penzance (where they are part of Nature Workshops) for the weekend. I really enjoyed talking to them and hearing about their swimming exploits around the Cornish coast and hope I'll see them again at another December Dip:

Since then it's been back to the pool for my swimming; catching up with my unread issues of H2Open; and thinking about possible outdoor swimming trips for 2012. I've bought myself a new wetsuit, already signed up for the 2012 Great Manchester Swim in July, and would like to have another go at the RNLI Sblash Llandudno Sea Swim in June after missing it this year. And as well as thinking about another Swimtrek trip, after talking to Tara I'm also seriously considering the OSS Dart 10K (which previously I'd thought just sounded a bit mad). So we'll see what happens.

In the meantime let me wish you a great 2012, and hope it goes swimmingly - whatever you're doing, Happy New Year!

Goodbye, Old Computer

2011-11-30T14:32:00.003Z

I've finally got rid of my old desktop computer, which I bought from Mesh Computers back in 2001: an 1GHz AMD Athlon processor with 30Gb hard drive running Windows Millenium Edition (possibly the worst operating system ever). In time I added more memory, a bigger hard drive, upgraded to Windows XP, and switched from dial-up internet to cable broadband (first wired in 2004, then wireless in 2005). While the software placed more and more demands on the old girl and she appeared to get slower, she still proved her worth in 2009 when I installed Ubuntu Linux dual-booting alongside Windows. And over the machine's 10+ year lifetime, the only serious problem I've ever had was a noisy fan. Truly, an epic machine.

Finally however I decided that I had to upgrade, and bought myself a new Intel 4-core machine with a 500 Gb HD and a nice flat panel display from Scan Computers. I couldn't think of a realistic use for the old computer, but doing a google search turned up Recycle-IT! , a not-for-profit business that recycles old computing equipment for various good causes. It requires a bit of effort on an individual donor's part to actually get the equipment to them (I'm paying the cost of shipping it there, but via Parcel2Go this turns out to be reasonably cheap and easy).

So, I wiped the hard drives using DBAN (I think Recycle-IT! might do that for you too though) and packaged up everything - computer, CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse and all the rest - ready for the courier collection:

And today, finally it all went. If I'm being honest I have to admit to feeling a little sentimental to see her go. But sad as it is I love the idea that my fantastic old computer won't be in landfill but lives on to be used by someone else. Goodbye old girl - I wish you great adventures!

Salford Quays Open Water Swimming

2011-11-12T10:50:00.006Z

Hard to believe in mid-November that the last open water swimming session of the year at the Salford Quays Watersports Centre was on a warm sunny late-September evening only a month and a half ago. I'd originally signed up in May, but in the end only managed to make it there for the last four Thursday night sessions - still it was good while it lasted, and the Quays themselves are a great post-industrial setting for a bit of swimming (see my pictures on Flickr).

The truth is that before then I hadn't managed any open water swimming since the Llyn Llyffant/Malham Tarn trip at the start of the summer. That had been a big fun adventure but had also reminded me that even though I love to swim, I'm not really a "natural" open water swimmer - and since my difficulties aren't with swimming per se, I'd started to speculate on what it is about being outdoors that I find more problematic than being in a pool.

So in the weeks after Llyn Llyffant I reflected on the different aspects of outdoor swimming that seemed to cause me anxiety, and it turned out there was quite a range - for example:

feelings of disorientation and even nausea, especially when swimming front crawl;
goggles fogging up and/or leaking (and not being able to adjust them once in the water);
not being able to see where you're going in general, which means that I tend to favour breaststroke over crawl outdoors;
feelings of pressure when there are a lot of people around me;
reactions to the initial temperature and taste of the water (which made me feel more reluctant to have my face in the water outdoors).

I realised that I also get anxious about walking on hard surfaces and rocks (I seem to have soft feet), and even about the preparation before swimming (worrying about what to pack etc - which probably won't surprise anyone who really knows me).

Breaking down and isolate the issues meant I was able to start thinking practically about how to overcome them. I realised that simply taking a bit more time to prepare before entering the water would deal with several of these problems, for example applying anti-fog solution to my goggles and then checking that they're properly seated on my head (a common cause of leaks is if one of the eye seals overlaps your swimming cap) dealt with the fogging/leaking issues. I also began to incorporate sighting practice into my pool swimming ("sighting" is periodically looking up in order to ascertain your position, while still maintaining your stroke).

However some of the other aspects could ultimately only be worked on by actually swimming outdoors, and so the Salford Quays sessions were ideal: it's a fairly calm, controlled environment with safety support, and by September wasn't too busy. So for each session I was able to focus clearly on my goals, specifically to slow down and prepare carefully before entering the water, and then to focus not on distance or speed but instead on maintaining a steady stroke, staying calm and relaxed, and sighting regularly.

I can't say that the four sessions transformed me into a born-again outdoor swimmer, but I did feel I made some valuable progress. Each time I was able to do a couple of circuits of the 400m course mostly swimming front crawl, and I felt that my sighting practice really paid off; but the most significant thing I got out of it was a sense of increased confidence, and more experience with to overcoming my occasional moments of anxiety and panic. I also learned a couple of new things (for instance, how to get out of the water at the end when there's no ladder), and got some good advice from a friendly fellow swimmer who I hope I'll see again next year when the sessions start up again.

There are still some skills that I haven't really worked on at all, for example being able to tread water comfortably (in fact something like the Art of Swimming's Deep Water Confidence course would be ideal - pity it's only being held in London). But I've already signed up for next year's Great Manchester Swim (this time in July, let's hope for better weather) - and before that of course there's also the Outdoor Swimming Society's December Dip at Parliament Hill Lido. See you there maybe? or else back at Salford Quays sometime in 2012:

Till then, happy swimming!

On the road again: Colwyn Bay to Rhyl

2011-09-04T13:25:00.009+01:00

After a tip-off from my friend Ed (now in Finland, good luck!) about interesting day trips on the North Wales coast, I finally headed off last week to Colwyn Bay with the intention of walking along the coast back to the seaside town of Rhyl. Actually this wasn't one of the routes that Ed had suggested - but I guessed it should be possible as I'd cycled from Prestatyn to Colwyn Bay and back about 9 years ago with some friends on a sponsored bike ride (I still remember my soup at Colwyn Bay on that trip).

I didn't really spend any time in Colwyn itself, instead I headed to the Victoria Pier which I remembered from years before. It's in a bit of a sad state now though, from years of neglect and vandalism - although it doesn't look so bad from a distance in my pictures:

Kyle kindly emailed me a link to the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Pier, which tells the rather story of the pier's slow decline over the last 50 years or so. It also looked like a new leisure complex was being built nearby while I sat and had a cup of tea there.

Heading eastwards much of the route is sandwiched between the coast and either the railway or the A55 road, and aside from occasional further dereliction (abandoned mine workings, water tanks and sea platforms) there isn't really a lot to see between Colwyn Bay and Abegele. But I liked the solitude, and was fascinated by mile upon mile of the coastal defences made from dolosse - hundreds (or more likely tens of thousands) of large concrete blocks piled up along the coast line like over-sized children's toys:

After 6 miles I finally reached the beach at Abergele and Pensarn, where there are holiday caravans, families on the beach, and fish and chips. (Apparently there's also a reef but it was high tide when I arrived). After toying with the idea of getting the train from the nearby station I decided to carry on to the next town, which I'm still not sure was the best idea - my feet were feeling pretty sore 4 miles later as I reached the seafront at Rhyl. But it was a memorable sight, and there was ice cream:

I didn't spend much time in Rhyl, which was perhaps a shame as it looked like a nice place to have a bit of a wander around. But it was a great day out, and as one of Ed's suggestions was to walk from Prestatyn to Rhyl, maybe I'll try that next time - though I need to let my feet recover a little first.

Great Salford Swim & The Twin Lake Challenge

2011-06-18T13:40:00.006+01:00

With starting a new job in May, it's taken me a while to get around to posting about the two outdoor swimming challenges that I took part in over a month ago: the first was the Great Salford Swim, and the second was my friend Hacky's "Twin Lakes Challenge" the following weekend - two quite different but equally memorable events.

Great Salford Swim: Sunday 15th May

The Great Salford Swim is part of the Great Swim series of mass participation swimming events, and this year around 2,000 people took part, braving the drizzly weather and cold water (14.4C, though I've felt colder so maybe I'm acclimatising) to swim a one mile "dock-to-dock" course at Salford Quays. Swimmers were organised into different coloured "waves" (I was in the yellow wave) and included various celebrities (such as Blue Peter presenter Andy Akinowolere, in the same wave as me) as well as men and women's elite races, featuring amongst others the British Olympians Keri-Anne Payne and Cassie Patten.

The organisation of the event was extremely impressive, with things running astonishingly smoothly in spite of the volume of people involved: I'd already received my race pack a couple of weeks earlier, which included my race number, official swim hat, timing chip and velcro ankle strap, and a baggage label (for the bag transfer between the start and finish). So on the day all I had to do was turn up, get changed and drop off my bag, and then head to the start line. After a quick warm up session (lots of people in wetsuits bending, bouncing and stretching - no doubt most entertaining for the assembled spectators) and dip in the "acclimatisation area", we lined up and were off into the water.

As I've said here before, although I feel I'm a very competent pool swimmer and have no problem swimming front crawl over a mile indoors (in fact I'd easily done 2km the week before, in the 50m pool at the Manchester Aquatics Centre), I often struggle to translate this to outdoor swimming. As a result I swam breaststroke for a large percentage of the course, with an occasional burst of crawl (including my favourite part, on the final strait to the finishing line). So while I felt that my time of 41m 41s was pretty respectable, I also felt I could have gone a little quicker (and I'm considering what things I need to work on for the future). But still, completing the one mile swim was an achievement to be proud of! Here's the official post-swim picture to prove it:

The Twin Lake Challenge: Saturday 21st May

The following weekend was a very different kind of outdoor swimming experience: Hacky's "Twin Lake Challenge", which involved a group of committed (or possibly certified) swimmers trying to swim the highest lake in Wales (Llyn Llyffant in Snowdonia) and in England (Malham Tarn in Yorkshire) in the same day. The challenge was two-fold - not only the distance between the two lakes, but also the fact that Llyn Llyffant is only accessible by a 7km walk which includes a 3,000 ft elevation to the lake. Like most of these things it had seemed like a good idea two months earlier (when I was sat cosy and warm in front of a laptop).

Through some impressive and ingenious logistical planning, Hacky managed to get eight of us gathered around 9am in the remote carpark in Snowdonia, the starting point for the trek up to the first lake. Buffeted by a persistent chilly wind (and with some ominously dark clouds lurking rather too close for my liking), I’m sure I wasn’t the only one feeling a little uncertain. But we were here now, and one way or another it was definitely going to be an adventure! and certainly the ascent to Llyn Llyffant was challenging, through a landscape of a spectacular and desolate beauty featuring huge walls, abandoned slate works, hidden bog puddles, and fragments of a WWII plane wreck.

With increasingly grim determination we finally reached our objective a few hours later, and were rewarded with a striking sight – a small lake with clear cold water rippled by the wind, and surrounded by rocks surreally peppered with more wreckage (including an engine and a wheel). We quickly changed into our wetsuits and with some trepidation (as least for me!) made our way into the icy water: the bottom of the lake seemed to consist of thick boggy mud over uneven rocks, and I felt my exposed hands and feet turn to blocks of ice almost immediately as I managed to breaststroke a width of the lake. Other hardier souls were able to stay in longer, but it was enough for me to say that I’d swum in the highest lake in Wales – made even more special by its remoteness and all the effort taken to get there - and to get the obligatory wetsuit picture (thanks to Jo Brown for this):

There wasn’t much time to savour our achievement however – almost as soon as we got out of the water the rain started, and the hike back was a gloriously miserable affair as we got wetter and wetter (more than when we were in the lake, even). No time to dwell on it though once we reached the carpark again – we still had another lake to get to! So began the long dash cross-country to Yorkshire, picking up more outdoor swimmers along the way before we arrived at the second lake.

Malham Tarn was a real contrast to Llyn Llyffant – a much bigger body of water, but more easily accessible just a short walk across a field from a carpark – and perhaps seemed a little ordinary after the adventure we’d had earlier in Wales. Still there was good swimming to be had here – the water again cold but beautifully clear, with the rocky lake bottom visible beneath and trees lining the more distant lakesides; and while the sky was overcast the rain held off long enough for our pod of 15 or so swimmers to get a good long swim. My favourite memories include chasing after a crowd of bobbing coloured swim hats (I’m not a fast swimmer); continually mistaking two pillars at the lakeside on the way back for two non-swimmers who’d come along with us; and leaving the water at the end through what felt like hundreds of “British Gas Great Swim” flip-flops, temporary abandoned by people when they’d first got in.

And then that was it – shivering as I ran back to the parked car, struggling into my warm dry clothes, and feeling the satisfaction of completing the challenge. Gathering in a pub nearby we were finally able to relax and reflect on our achievement. It might look like madness from the outside, but for me it’s during experiences like this that life seems to be at its most colourful. Thanks to Hacky and everyone else who made it such a fantastic day in so many ways: I know that the vivid memories of this Twin Lake Challenge – and Llyn Llyffant in particular – will stay with me for a life-time. Plus, Hacky also gave us a mug for completing both parts:

Since then it's been a bit quiet on the swimming front, but I'm now slowly getting back into a regular early morning pool-swimming schedule - so once things calm down I'm sure I'll be looking for the next swimming challenge!

Silver Screen Suppers

2011-05-03T12:24:00.000+01:00

For a while now I've been a quiet fan of the Silver Screen Suppers blog, written by a multi-talented friend of mine (let's call her Lya di Putti). The blog is about an ongoing project between her and a friend - collecting and recreating dishes from recipes attributed to movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Age - mixed in with episodes from her own often movie-star-esque life.

At the moment she's in the process of putting together a book of the best recipes (their stash now has over 4,000 so it's a big job) and she periodically asks for volunteers to act as test cooks and give feedback on how the recipes turn out. Since I like to think I'm a helpful sort (plus I secretly want to get into the book) I've tried a few myself over the last year: Veronica Lake's Spiced Beef and Peas, Gary Cooper's Buttermilk Griddle Cakes, Loretta Young's Walnut Loaf (in the picture above), John Wayne's Mustard Steak, Greta Garbo's Swedish Meatballs (oops, just blown my anonymity) and most recently Thelma Todd's Scripture Cake:

I'm not a great cook by any stretch: writing up my less successful attempts - the meatballs for example were a bit of a disaster - took me back to school science reports (an appalling experimental scientist, I was forever having to explain why my results didn't agree with theory). But it's been educational and fun, and there have been some real treats too - I've been thinking for a while that I should take another pop at Gary Cooper's delicious griddle cakes; Loretta's walnut loaf involved some interesting detective work and turned out surprisingly tasty; and Thelma's scripture cake was excellent (as well as being a clever Biblical puzzle to figure out the ingredients).

I've also been fascinated by the sparseness and simplicity of many of the recipes, which (alongside some baffling ingredients - for example, just what is the "spiced beef" in Veronica Lake's recipe?) hint at a time when people were more well-versed in cooking and baking: they already knew what a moderate oven temperature was without having to look it up, and didn't need every step or measurement spelled out in explicit detail.

The recipes themselves don't appear on the blog, so if you're interested in trying some of them then you'll have to either wait for the book, sign up to the Silver Screen Suppers email newsletter (front page of the blog) to get a monthly recipe (complete with video!), or offer to be a test cook. It's definitely worth a go if you fancy a culinary adventure, and you'll also get a mention in the book.

Now, where did I put that measuring cup...?

Walking in the Lake District

2011-03-23T11:18:00.001Z

Just over a week ago I spent a very enjoyable weekend with my friend Ronan walking in the Lake District. We seem to have ended up doing something similar around this time of year for a while now; this time the plan was to go to the western lakes around Wasdale, spending the first day trying to climb Scafell Pike (the highest peak in England at 978 metres/3209 feet), and the second doing something a bit gentler before coming back.

Since it's a pretty long drive from here to Wasdale even without negotiating windy narrow and unlit roads of the Western Lakes, we set off on the Friday evening in a rented 4x4 (looking completely like tourists) for lodgings in Arnside. The town is on the southern edge of the Lakes, on the estuary of the River Kent (the north-east corner of Morecambe Bay); by the time we arrived it was dark and the estuary was a strange silvery presence alongside our walk to the Albion pub, oddly quiet and slightly magical: trains moving slowly on the distant opposite bank looked like travelling buildings in the darkness.

The next morning we followed twisty roads up and down hills on the way to Wasdale. In spite of the overcast and slightly hazy weather, the mountains of the Western Lakes were an inspiring sight - as was Wastwater, with the steep mountainsides appearing to plunge directly into the lake. Arriving at Wasdale Head, our attempt on Scafell Pike finally began - Ronan had picked out a less direct route to the peak that we hoped would be more scenic, and we set off. Even our gentler ascent involved some committed walking but we quickly climbed up the side of the valley (in my experience it pays to stop and look back from time when going uphill, to remind yourself that you're making progress). In spite of the wind and rain it was a good walk up - the paths are generally well maintained and we were rewarded with a couple of wonderful-looking tarns, which I could imagine swimming in later in the year:

Eventually though we encountered snow and mist (low cloud, really); the visibility dropped and the snow was often loose and slippery so progress was slower, but finally we reached 920m:

Sadly this was as high as we'd get - we couldn't see the obvious route to the peak of Scafell Pike, though on the map we could see it was close. Even so this remains one of my favourite moments of the weekend - stopping by the cairn we seemed to have been transported to an eerily tranquil place (even the wind was silent), devoid of landmarks or people. It was a little bit magical.

After the highs of course you have to come down! The ascent was tiring but fortunately our overnight accommodation at Rainors Farm (a really nice friendly B&B that also offers yurts - maybe next time - and which I would completely recommend) was very welcoming after all the walking, and an (ahem) "interesting" evening out at a pub in Gosforth rounded the day off nicely.

The next day the weather seemed a little more settled and we wondered briefly about trying for Scafell Pike again, before deciding on something a little less taxing - the mountains aren't going anywhere, and it was debatable whether my sore feet and legs would actually be able to get me there. Instead we walked up to Whin Rigg on the other side of Wasdale, with commanding views of the surrounding countryside out to the coast (including the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant), and beyond. Incidents involving Ronan's lost hat - happily recovered on the way back - and a tin of chicken soup added some light drama (or maybe comic relief?) but nothing we couldn't handle.

It's always a little sad driving back after a great weekend, but a detour through Morecambe took the edge off: nothing like fish chips, a view over the bay, and a chance to spend a bit of quality time with one of the town's most famous sons:

Bring me sunshine, indeed. What a great weekend!

New Year Swimming

2011-01-31T21:34:00.008Z

Where did January go? It doesn't seem a month since I started the year off with the "Icebreaker Swim" (actually more of a dip) in the frozen-over lake at Manley Mere with two of the friends I met outdoor swimming last year. I'd thought after the OSS December Dip that it would be a lot longer than 3 weeks before I would be a) back in the water outside, and b) in a wetsuit, but in the event it turned out to be an excellent way to start the year. (It also persuaded me that it's time to invest in a pair of swimming gloves.)

Since then I've been swimming in the relative warmth of the pool, and working on my backstroke (which is starting to become a very relaxing stroke now that I can go mostly in a straight line) in between bouts of breast stroke and crawl. A lot of people are already making all kinds of big plans for epic outdoor swims later in the year, and as a result I'm feeling a bit behind already - so far all I'm definite about is an Art of Swimming weekend butterfly course (hopefully in Manchester, and hopefully using the voucher I got after my Scillies write-up got published on the Shaw Method website in December). I'm not so fussed about the smashing-through-the-water aspect of butterfly, but I've always been both fascinated and intrigued by the dolphin-like undulation of the stroke, and I think it would be fun to learn how to do it.

At the moment though outdoor swimming is still some way off in the year. I'm thinking vaguely about a Swimtrek weekend in the Lake District, but I think I'd also like to try some more sea swimming (like the Llandudno swim that I did last June, or maybe Burgh Island in September ... the danger of course is that while I'm still day-dreaming about them, everyone else has actually signed up and there won't be any places left by the time I decide to commit).

In the meantime I'm content to admire Hannah Booth's write up of her Greek Swimtrek holiday (and the accompanying pictures) from last Saturday's Guardian, and - at the other extreme - the amazing feats of people like Jack Bright, who's making a film about winter swimming. For now I'll remember Colin Hill's words from the December Dip, that the foundations for outdoor swimming is laid down by your indoor swimming, and keep on with my lengths while waiting for warmer weather.

December Snow

2010-12-22T14:23:00.003Z

Last Friday night was another unseasonably heavy snowfall across the country, and on Saturday morning like everyone else I woke up to a bright white landscape. I know this isn't good news for everyone, but I still find a covering of snow to be a little bit magical. I suppose it takes me back to my childhood and memories of school being closed, the normal rules of life are suspended.

Buoyed by this feeling I decided on a whim I'd take my camera and go for a walk up to the park and round the river. These are places that I've been running through the past year, watching with interest how they've changed with the seasons, but heavy snow is something else again in the way it transforms our everyday surroundings. The familiar is rendered strangely unrecognisable: we can become disoriented as regular landmarks are hidden, while at the same time things that usually go unnoticed are suddenly revealed - or some cases not only revealed but transmogrified.

For example, just what is this?

It's a great opportunity to see the world anew, or at least just a little askew - even the familar Warrington landmarks can look refreshed with a silvery dusting:

As with all magic, the snow also has its dangers: travel can become hazardous and the everyday business of life can be disrupted. It's a reminder of how fragile the structures and routines of our lives really are, and of how little control we really have over them (and I'd rather be reminded of that by something gentle and relatively benign, like snow, rather than say by an earthquake). I think it's telling when people try (quite literally) to plough on when the sensible thing to do is just stop for a while. But if you are able to take time out then the world can suddenly seem like a friendlier and more relaxed place.

So even though I don't know if the snow will cause problems travelling back tomorrow to spend Christmas with my family, I'm feeling quite relaxed - I hardly dare say chilled in fact - about it. And even if all other modes of transport are disrupted, I know now that I might still have options...

Merry Christmas!

OSS December Dip: Plum Pudding Plunge

2010-12-13T12:01:00.007Z

About a week ago I travelled down to Parliament Hill Lido in London to take part in the Outdoor Swimming Society's 2010 December Dip (aka "the plum pudding plunge"), an annual fund-raising event for the OSS. It's pretty simple: a bunch of people line up at the edge of the pool, jump in and swim, with the aim of completing two widths of the lido before getting out again as fast as possible. Brrr!

The Dip was preceded by pep talks from Kate Rew (the OSS founder) and two great guest speakers - Jessica Hynes (actress, writer and comedian best known to me for her work on the insanely brilliant Spaced - my favourite ever TV sitcom) and Colin Hill (distance swimmer and founder of the Great Swim series of events). Jessica spoke about her enthusiasm for the Outdoor Swimming Society's mission to promote having fun of all kinds in water outdoors (the society is very egalitarian: all you have to do to call yourself a member is to like being in water outdoors, although by signing up for free on their website you also receive a regular email newsletter); Colin talked about the psychology of longer outdoor swims, and suggested ways that indoor pool swimming over the winter could help prepare (a point that outdoor swimmers don't always seem to concede).

After the talks came the actual plunge. I'd swum outdoors in London almost exactly a year earlier, but that was in the heated pool at the Oasis - this time the water was an icy 0.1C (32.2F), and with patches of snow around the poolside to add atmosphere. All through the previous week I'd become increasingly aware of the cold, until even washing my hands in cold water had made me think nervously about the event; but as the air temperature felt relatively mild on the day I didn't really feel worried until the last few minutes before when everyone lined up by the water (and I tried not to think of the risks I'd read about cold water immersion - hopefully this wouldn't be the last thing I ever did...).

Everyone had their own method of entering the water, but after my experiences swimming the Scillies my preferred technique is simply to jump straight in (one useful bit of advice is to breathe out as you enter the water so that you naturally take an in-breath when you surface) and then swim like mad. The cold water made it difficult to breath normally and impaired my swimming ability (while also making my hands and feet feel literally as if they were encased in blocks of ice) so I was glad to complete my two widths and jump back out again.

Afterwards it took a while to get warmed up again but to help there was hot chocolate, mince pies, ginger wine and a very congenial atmosphere. I talked to a few people about where they'd come from and the kind of swimming they did, which was good as I don't really talk to many other swimmers - I think that outdoor swimming does tend to be a bit more social than pool swimming. I'm not sure that I had an immediate endorphin rush but I did feel extremely mellow and relaxed for the rest of the day, and that's good enough for me.

There are reports of the event online from Sky News (which has video footage, although you can't see me in it) and the BBC. In hindsight I can't say that I had a particularly definite reason for doing the dip, except that it seemed like a good way to round off 2010 as a year of outdoor swimming. I'm continuing to swim indoors (I rarely stop these days), but now I'm also looking forward to more outdoor dips in 2011.

Happy festive swimming!

Delia Derbyshire

2010-11-21T16:20:00.005Z

Last summer I threw out a lot of my old cassette tapes as part of a big clear out, but amongst those that I kept was a recording of "Blue Veils and Golden Sands" - a BBC 4 radio play broadcast in 2002 about Delia Derbyshire, considered by many to be "the unsung heroine of British electronic music" due to her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s. She's probably most famous for producing the original arrangement of the Doctor Who theme music.

I kept the tape aside to listen to, before promptly forgetting all about it. In the meantime references to Delia kept popping up, most memorably in an article by Warren Ellis called "The Pops and Crackles of Vinyl Poltergeists" in Wired UK. In it Ellis talks about "hauntology" - a contemporary musical phenomenon which frequently references the often eerie 70's and 80's electronica produced by the Radiophonic Workshop. (As he suggests, tracks on Belbury Poly's relatively recent album "From An Ancient Star" sound like they could have accompanied "The Tomorrow People" or "Blakes 7", thirty years or so earlier.)

A couple of months ago the tape turned up again as part of another clear up, and this time I finally listened to it one Sunday afternoon. It focuses mainly on Delia's time with the BBC and her interest in "abstract sound" (in part perhaps inspired by the air raid sirens she heard as a child during the war), before she became disillusioned with the direction of electronic music in the mid-70's. This is cross-cut with episodes from her later life in the 1990's when a new generation of musicians (including Peter Kember, AKA Sonic Boom, played by himself here) rekindled her enthusiasm to return to music.

Given its 30 minute running time it's evitable that the play had to leave out a lot of detail about Delia's life and many of the projects that she was involved in, especially those outside of the BBC. However the dramatisation of how she put together the Doctor Who theme is fascinating - in an era before synthesisers, the process of creating these "electronic" sounds was simultaneously highly organic, extremely primitive and labour-intensive. Very ordinary sounds (for example plucking a guitar string or striking a metal lampshade) would be transformed by esoteric analogue equipment to produce other-worldly effects which were then spliced and looped on sections of tape.

To me the original Doctor Who theme still sounds incredible: haunting and slightly disturbing, like the universe that the Doctor himself inhabits. You can listen to it on the BBC website ("Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer"), alongside a number of other audio clips of Delia's work, including a couple from "Blue Veils and Golden Sands", produced for a documentary about the Tuareg people of the Sahara (the demo clip in particular gives some insight into how sounds would be transformed). Many more audio clips (including "Music of Spheres", which features a symphony of sirens) can be found - along with much more information on Delia's life and career (both of which sadly ended when she died in 2001) - at www.delia-derbyshire.org.

It looks like the play has been repeated on BBC 7 quite a few times over the last couple of years, but unfortunately it's not currently available on the iPlayer. It's definitely worth a listen if you have an interest at all in the history of electronic music, or are just a fan of the old Doctor Who theme, and want to learn more about the work of this amazing pioneer.

The Truth About Leaves on the Line

2010-11-06T19:14:00.004Z

As frequent travellers will be only too painfully aware, one of the staples of British rail journeys are the intercom announcements by train managers explaining why the service you're on is now delayed, redirected, terminated, side-lined, or whatever. These explanations can vary wildly from the sensibly mundane through to the slightly surreal ("bovine incursion"* is one of my favourites), to the almost completely cryptic.

For me the most recent example of the latter occurred during my last trip back from Oxford: the train manager haltingly explained that the driver had been forced to use the train's one-shot sand dispenser to come to a stop at a signal, as a result of which we were no longer able to run at full line speed and there would be a further delay when we did finally make it to the next station. I'd considered myself a fairly regular rail traveller and I thought I'd heard everything, but this was new to me. "One-shot sand dispenser?" What was that all about? It sounded technical, mysterious and possibly a bit dangerous, and the next day I did a bit of poking on the internet to try and learn more.

Stumbling across an enlightening article from the Independent revealed the shocking truth: trains really do have single-use sand dispensers that provide emergency braking assistance when there's reduced traction between the wheels and the rail. These slippery rail conditions can be caused by moist fallen leaf debris on the track - the infamous "leaves on the line" - and it's become a more common problem now because today's trains use disc brakes. These are generally superior to the previous block brakes - but unlike block brakes, they aren't as effective in "removing leaf mould and other debris".

It was a bit of an eye-opener. I'd found the idea that fallen leaves could be a hazard for several hundred tonnes of passenger train a bit laughable, and the phrases "leaves on the line" and "the wrong kind of snow" just sounded like nonsense excuses for poor service. It's odd but salutary to find out after all these years that it was a real issue after all, although it's also indicative of how poor train operators are at explaining these problems - or maybe of how little the travelling public expect to be told the truth.

So aside from the specifics, I'm sure that buried somewhere (maybe under more fallen leaves?) there's also a wider lesson about trust and communication, which could perhaps be applied to other situations where technical problems have to be explained to a lay audience. It might be worth thinking about next time you're (say) stranded at Stafford station due to leaves on the line.

* Cows on the line to you and me.

Swimming in the Scillies

2010-09-05T15:48:00.007+01:00

I've been meaning for a while now to write about my swimming holiday in the Isles of Scilly last month. I went with the company Swimtrek, which runs a number of similar holidays all over the world, and while the waters in Egypt or Greece must be much warmer, something drew me to the Scillies when I booked the trip back in February. I'd had a vague interest in swimming with seals, and the opportunity offered by this holiday to combine it with swimming between some islands seemed too good to miss.

It was a great experience, though quite intense - I'm not used to swimming in the sea and I'm not used to being around a lot of people that I don't know either. But the group I was with was great - a great mixture of experience levels and speeds, but all very friendly - and we were looked after throughout the trip by phenomenal guides Jerry and Cordelia, always supportive, good humoured and working hard to keep things running smoothly.

Before the trip I'd hoped to do the swims without a wetsuit, but from the first acclimatisation swim (a short sprint across the harbour and back on the opening evening) it was clear that the water would be much colder than I'd anticipated (at anywhere between 15-17C it was frequently and euphemistically referred to as "refreshing"). I managed without the wetsuit for the short crossing between the islands of St. Martin's and Tean, and for a much longer swim to Tresco - however by the end of that I had quite a severe case of the shivers. I was okay (and pleased to have accomplished it), but I wore the wetsuit for the rest of the crossings.

The advertised plan was to circumnavigate the islands over the course of the five days, with total daily distances averaging around 3km - but the changeable weather and tidal patterns in the islands meant that the guides relied on the advice from our boat's captain "Uncle" Ken (looking the part with his long white beard) as to what was possible each day. In the event we missed out some crossings and did others in the "opposite" direction, and I wish I'd kept note at the time of each as by the end they had begun to blur into each other - a feeling exacerbated by getting into a "flow state" during most swims, where my sense of time seemed to collapse into a single ongoing "now". For me that's the best that swimming can get - almost a transcendent experience.

Aside from the swims, there were so many memorable high points and funny incidents - just a few included: an afternoon swim with some locals in the cove at Peninnis Head (reached after a "hands, feet and bum" scramble down huge granite boulders); swimming over underwater "forests" of seaweed containing fish, crabs and starfish; the collection of ship-wrecked figureheads at Valhalla on Tresco; the wonderful Mincarlo Guesthouse where we stayed; listening to a performance of sea shanties; and of course, swimming with the seals:

Beyond that even, the Scillies themselves are quite amazing - especially when the sun is shining - and if I were to change anything I might have tried to stay a little longer to see more of the islands. We were at least fortunate to have a couple of days of wonderful weather: one evening we enjoyed a wonderful evening at the Turk's Head pub on St. Agnes before walking across a sand bar to see a magnificent sunset from the neighbouring island of Gugh:

On the last morning I was able to take a boat trip out round the Bishop Rock lighthouse - quite remote and just a little sinister, even on a bright sunny day. On the way we saw numerous meandering basking sharks just below the surface; more seals; a gannet diving out of the sky like an arrow to plunge into the water after fish (an incredible sight); and even a lone puffin, eyeing our boat with suspicion as it bobbed away from us. It was a great end to an amazing holiday.

I suppose even though it's been over a month since I got back, I'm still assimilating my experiences. For some reason I find it difficult to quite believe that I swam the distances I did in the sea, and while I gained some confidence with sea swimming but I've since still found it difficult swimming outdoors in a lake. However I now have a better appreciation of my own reactions to cold water immersion, and I've been enjoying my less intensive pool swimming, without the need now to practice going 2-3km each time. But I do know that I had a wonderful time, and I would love to go back to the Scillies one day - and maybe even do the swimming again!

How to make a vinyl record

2010-06-29T20:50:00.005+01:00

I saw an interesting article in Saturday's Guardian newspaper on How to make a vinyl record. It was in a section called "Disappearing acts", which sounded a little depressing - although actually it seems that a few die-hard bands are still putting enough material out on vinyl to keep the industry going for a bit longer.

It's a good read if you're at all curious about the industrial process used to press records, and it also touches on some of the reasons why vinyl still has its fans. I had to suppress a cynical snort when I read about the "superior sound quality" of vinyl (possibly true in principle, but in my experience often not realised in practice - I have some pressings that are so poor that it sounds as if someone was vigorously sweeping the floor during the recording) - however I agree with the appeal of a "personal, tactile relationship" with the discs and their sleeve artwork (surely there has been no greater canvas than the 12"x12" LP sleeve?).

Also, reading this article reminded me of another obscure pleasure of vinyl: the little messages etched in the run-out groove of some records (I guess made by the engineer when the original lacquer was cut). For example, my 12" of Suede's epic "Stay Together" has "A big hand to D D, Mr G K and company!" on the A-side and simply "For My Dad" on the B-side:

As I've written previously, my own record collection has of late been experiencing a bit of a quiet renaissance (helped by the purchase of a new needle for my turntable). There is definitely something almost ritualistic about the hands-on process of playing a record, compared to the ease of putting on a CD or MP3, and it continues to fascinate me. In the meantime it's heartening to read that my old friend vinyl isn't quite dead just yet.

Llandudno Sea Swim

2010-06-22T20:30:00.003+01:00

On Saturday I did my first ever real sea swim - 1500m along the bay between the Great and Little Ormes in Llandudno - as part of the Blue Seventy Llandudno Sea Swim run by Xtra Mile Events. I'd decided to do it in preparation for a holiday at the end of July, which will involve swimming between some of the Scilly Isles. As I'd never properly swum in the sea I felt I could use the experience in Llandudno to improve my confidence.

I'd been trying to think positive thoughts in the week beforehand, reminding myself that I routinely swim further than 1500m in the pool; that I'd done a number of outdoor swims in the last few months; and that my swimming instructor had told me my technique was fine. In spite of that I felt nervous by the time I arrived at the seafront, and it didn't help seeing the distances between the big yellow course buoys (before the tide came in, still lying on the beach) - it looked a long way! Also, in spite of the sun there was a persistent chilly breeze from the sea, and the waves rolling into the shore looked bigger than I'd expected. Was this really a good idea?

Fortunately I'd arranged to meet up with a great mother-and-daughter couple that I'd met through the OSS social swims at Hatchmere, and we gave each other moral support as we made our way to the start and changed into our wetsuits with the other swimmers. Everyone looked very serious (but I suppose that's the effect of wearing a wetsuit - whilst simultaneously making you also look quite ridiculous) and I was feeling increasingly tense waiting around for the organisers to give the safety briefing. Finally the rather fetching lilac race swim hats were handed out and we were off, staggering barefoot down the beach over hard pebbles (ouch!) to the starting buoys, which were now bobbing up and down vigorously with the waves.

I wasn't feeling too confident as I waded in near the back. The waves seemed rough as we made our way out into the deeper water for the start, and I felt like I was being pushed around a lot by the sea. The left lens of my goggles let in some water but I wasn't really able to adjust them. Really, what was I even doing here?

The signal was given for every one to set off, and I trailed the surge of lilac caps and flailing arms towards the first pair of buoys. The first few minutes seemed mad; I felt like I was being tossed up and down like a piece of driftwood without any control. Swimming breaststroke in order to see where I was going, I didn't feel like I could possibly make any headway in these conditions. The distance buoys marking out the course kept disappearing out of sight as the waves carried me several feet up and down. Surely I couldn't cover 1500m of this? Perhaps I should stop now?

And then quite suddenly something changed - I realised that I was already some distance past the starting buoys, despite appearances it was possible to ride the waves quite comfortably, and - shock! I started to relax and enjoy just being in the sea. Continuing with breaststroke (and occasional bursts of front crawl, as I felt more confident) I took in the sights as I slowly but surely made progress: sunshine, blue skies, the white buildings on the promenade to the left and the green waves rolling in from the right, the support kayaks bobbing up and down. I was swimming in a race in the sea! And it was fantastic! Yaay!

I stopped worrying about the distance, kept up a steady rhythm, and lost track of time. All of a sudden the last yellow buoy seemed to appear and I saw the support kayakers directing the swimmer just ahead of me back to the shore. I followed him and staggered up the boat launch back to dry land. I'd enjoyed it so much that I was almost sorry that I'd reached the end, and I was so glad that I'd done it. A lot of the swimmers had come to race but I was happy just to have completed the distance, and I'd conquered many of my fears of swimming in the sea.

I also felt that I learned a lot about what I need to work leading up to swimming in the Scillies trip. I think most importantly "sighting" (i.e. periodically checking and correcting your course), swimming in more of a straight line, and not getting too worried about going off course. People talk a lot about swimming being as much about good technique as about fitness, but I'm realising now that confidence and mental attitude also plays a big part, especially outdoors.

Afterwards I caught up with my Hatchmere friends (who I'd lost somewhere on the swim - I was the one in a lilac hat, didn't you see me? Um...). I think we'd all done really well just to start the race and achieve our goals of making it to the finish, but I thought that they both had reason to be particularly proud: the mother was recovering from a hip replacement, and her daughter had stayed with her to give encouragement and support. It was inspiring, and why swimming can be so great sometimes.

After a few pints at the pub with a group of their friends who'd come along to watch, it was time to catch the train back home in a pleasantly tired stupor. I couldn't have had a better end to a fantastic day than watching the north Wales coast roll past in the glow of the late evening sun, feeling a real sense of achievement and now looking forward to swimming the Scillies later in the year.

OSS Derwentwater Swimming Weekend

2010-05-29T17:45:00.009+01:00

Last weekend I went up to Derwentwater for a couple of open water events run by the Outdoor Swimming Society as part of the Keswick Mountain Festival.

Although it was only two days, it was a big weekend for me. Saturday morning saw a number of "swim clinics" taking place on the lakeshore - I'd signed up for the beginner's session, which (aside from the 9am start!) was great for me: I've swum twice this year locally at Hatchmere lake (my wetsuit proved absolutely essential in water reportedly at 15C), but I've struggled at times to translate my pool experience into the great outdoors.

During the session the two coaches Neil Bowers and Barry Jamieson had some excellent advice for cold water acclimatisation and swimming technique, which we were also able to practice during the session. Neil emphasised that the physiological reaction on entering cold water (i.e. gasping for breath) never goes away, and so the best way to acclimatise is to take some time getting used to the water before starting to swim, rather than zooming off as fast as possible. Splashing water on your face and neck can also help, as can putting your face into the water and breathing out slowly a few times (also a good opportunity to check the fit of your goggles).

Neil then introduced The Three R's of outdoor swimming: relaxation, rotation and rhythm. A relaxed state of mind means your swimming will be more comfortable; rotation of the body while swimming crawl provides a more efficient swimming style; and getting into a rhythm helps you to sustain a steady pace through the water. He also covered bilateral breathing (I feel smug since I do that anyway) and "sighting" (i.e. looking up periodically to check your course while maintaining your stroke), but The Three R's made the biggest impression on me and by the end of the (hugely enjoyable) session I felt much more confident about tackling a bigger swim.

That opportunity came on Sunday with the OSS mass swim on Sunday and 250 swimmers gathered back on the lakeshore. The original plan to swim around a small island in the lake had been changed at the last minute due to low water levels and the risk of blue-green algae blooms; the course in the end was a circuit around two yellow buoys (presumably left over from the earlier triathlon).

It was a shame not to be able to do the more scenic route around the island (and the buoys seemed to make some people think it was a race, with less confident swimmers like myself unable to stay out of the way of the wannabe triathletes). But it was also a reminder that swimming outdoors means respecting the conditions on the day, and I still had plenty of memorable moments: chatting to people before and after the swim; the sunshine and blue sky; seeing the lake bed a few feet below me through hazy greenish water; feeling soft spongey weed beneath bare feet when entering and exiting the lake; a trio of ducks flying low overhead as I turned to breath; and the whole "wetsuit soup" of swimmers having to stop for a few minutes mid-swim while a tourist boat cut across the course.

In the end I managed four circuits swimming a combination of breast stroke and front crawl; the swimming was still not as easy as I'd liked but worked best when I remembered my Three R's from the previous day and managed to relax, rotate and enjoy myself. And I felt a little emotional being helped from the water at the end by the OSS volunteers, including founder Kate Rew.

That afternoon I went to Kate's Q&A session where she talked about "wild swimming". The audience was quite small in contrast to the huge numbers taking part in the earlier swimming event, but I enjoyed hearing her talk about her experiences of outdoor swimming and her inspiration in setting up the OSS. (To get a taste you can see a short film with Kate on the Guardian website about Swimming in Byron Country.) For me, swimming outdoors is as much about experiencing the world in a different way to normal everyday life - feeling the cold water, being able to see the sky and trees - and it was nice to be reminded of that too.

(With all that going on I didn't do any walking while I was in Keswick - unless you count going between the town, the festival site and the lake. But I did visit the Puzzling Place, which has some genuinely fascinating sensory illusions - mainly optical, but don't miss the "anti-gravity room" if you ever go there - and took a boat trip around Derwentwater.)

So, the last few days have been a bit of a comedown from all that excitement. I'm looking forward to the next outdoor swim next weekend, but this weekend I'm having a bit of a break. In the meantime my pictures from the weekend are on Flickr (got them back from Boots yesterday!) ... and finally I'd also like to recommend the Cartwheel Guest House in Keswick - it's a really nice B&B near the centre of town, but owners Tina and Bernie are great people and went above and beyond in making my stay really enjoyable. And of course a big thank you to all the OSS volunteers who worked to make the swim clinics and the mass swim happen for the rest of us to enjoy.

Happy swimming!

May Bank Holiday: banana loaf, records and rain

2010-05-03T21:09:00.005+01:00

I've had quite a nice May Bank Holiday Monday, in spite of the fact that a) it's been a bit on the chilly side, and b) that apparently I single-handedly caused hours of rain in the afternoon simply by hanging out my wet sheets in the yard (a kind of British Summertime voodoo).

After running this morning I decided I would finally make a banana loaf using the over-ripe bananas that I've been uh "saving" (along with some out-of-date almonds that I found in the cupboard). It worked out really well - a big, heavy four-banana breeze-block of a cake. It's nice and tasty (even if it doesn't count as one of my five-a-day).

Also now that I have my records arranged in some proper shelves rather than a couple of old boxes I've been listening to a few that I'd forgotten about - including Massive Attack's "Protection" and "The Stars Are So Big, The Earth Is So Small ... Stay As You Are" by experimental (i.e. probably unlistenable for most of you) 1990's band Pram. I really like the cover:

So all in all it's been a very pleasant - if somewhat damp - day. Fingers crossed for better weather tomorrow when I'm in Manchester!

Job done

2010-05-03T17:00:00.006+01:00

In their 2001 track "Harder Better Faster Stronger", Daft Punk suggested that "work is never over" - in spite of this, I've just finished six months working as a contract programmer. It's been good: interesting, educational, lucrative and fun, and now I've finished it seems appropriate to reflect on some of what I learned from the experience.

Perhaps the biggest difference between this and my previous working life was that this time I was telecommuting i.e. working from home. This was possible because I was developing essentially stand-alone software projects, but before I began I was concerned about what home working would be like: basically, could I handle the isolation and the temptations to - oh, I don't know, wander off and do the laundry instead?

I found some relevant advice in a chapter from Miles Burke's book The Principles of Successful Freelancing. For me the most useful suggestions were:

Set up home office space: this was my spare bedroom with my old desktop computer (upgraded to dual-boot into Ubuntu Linux). Having a dedicated space (and machine) made it easier to start work and stay focused, by providing a physical environment that I associated with working.
Keep rigorous track of the hours you've worked: Miles' book recommended a bunch of online tools but I found that a simple spreadsheet worked fine for me. Keeping track helped me stay focused and disciplined - when I was on work time then I really did do work, and when I'd finished I knew that I'd really worked my full hours that week.
Have a work schedule set up ahead of time: this was especially useful at the start as I worked half-time and wanted to fit other commitments in around my work. I did deviate from the schedule sometimes, but it was good to have something to deviate from - and it also meant that for example I never felt I had to work weekends to catch up.

(Some other suggestions included things like getting properly dressed for work - i.e. not working from bed in your pyjamas - but that seemed quite obvious, and anyway since I'd usually go swimming or running before work, the pyjamas option didn't really come up.)

It turned out that I didn't really suffer from a sense of isolation, possibly because my collaborators were very good at staying in email contact. I also made visits to the physical workplace every few weeks, and while the travelling was often tedious (the one-hour stops at Birmingham New Street station will not be missed), contact with the project collaborators, end users and other real people more than made up for it.

Another major difference for me was working exclusively on one "closed" project at a time (I'd previously been used to juggling a disparate mixture of concurrent open-ended and cyclical projects). The resulting narrow focus gave me a sense of clarity that I'd often missed in the past; though at the same time, there was no escape if the going got tough - I just had to plow through it. Also as a contractor I felt less personal attachment to the actual finished code (although I remained deeply committed to doing the best job that I could), and less inclined to spend "work time" on learning about new stuff unless it contributed directly to the project.

Finally, I learnt a few things about being a contractor rather than a full employee that I wish I'd known beforehand - for example, since I used my own computing equipment I wished I'd negotiated some concessions for that, and I also hadn't realised I wasn't entitled to public or company holidays. Sometimes you pay to learn - at least I'll know what to check in future.

Overall though the experience was really good, both in terms of the actual work and also in terms of what I learned about myself. I feel more confident in my programming and in my ability to manage and deliver these time-bound projects. So while my time is now my own again I know there are aspects that I'll miss, but I'm also grateful to have had the opportunity while it lasted.

The hope of Audacity: vinyl conversion tips

2010-01-15T14:06:00.012Z

Avid readers of this blog may remember that one of my projects last year was to convert my favourite vinyl records to a digital format. It took me a while - in the end I converted around 660 tracks from about 120 different records (LPs, 12"s and 7"s, with a couple of 10"s for good measure!), which added up to over 40 hours worth of music.

I started the project sometime in mid-March last year and completed it sometime in mid-July, and having been listening to the resulting tracks on my laptop since then, I thought it was high time that I wrote up what I learned about the process. So here it is:

Hardware: I used my old Goodmans turntable (pictured above) hooked up to my old PC via a preamplifier unit. This set up seemed to work pretty well, although afterwards I wished that I had 1) invested in a new needle for the turntable, and 2) found a way to earth the turntable (to reduce the background hum on the recordings).

Software: my PC was running under Windows XP and I used Audacity (version 1.3.7) to capture and process the audio from the turntable arrangement:

As the PC is quite old I learned that it's sensible to close down all other programs and background processes (including screensavers) during the actual recordings - if the load on the system got too high then the resulting recordings sometimes ended up with skips that weren't on the original record.

Recording process: the procedure that I developed for each record was something like this:

Fix the recording level in Audacity: the idea is to set the input volume level as high as possible whilst avoiding "clipping" of the recorded waveform. I'd do this by trial and error, by making test recordings from parts of the record that I thought were likely to be the loudest. Once I found the optimum level I made a note of it, in case I needed to re-record later on if I discovered a problem during playback.
Clean the needle and the record: to reduce surface noise and the likelihood of pops, crackles and skips.
Record each side of the disc in a single take: while the record was playing I would listen for "defects" such as pops/crackles, skips, drop-outs, making a note of the timecode for each as I heard it. (A comfortable pair of headphones is recommended if you're doing more than a few recordings.)

Post-processing: once I'd recorded one side, I'd save it as a single Audacity project and then do some post-processing of the recording to deal with the sound defects. I found this quite time consuming as I got a bit obsessive over cleaning up the recordings. The strategies that I used included:

Click removal tool: Audacity's Click removal tool (under the Effects menu) sometimes worked for me when trying to remove pops and crackles, but I found it a bit hit-and-miss to be honest.
De-amplification: essentially highlighting the waveform around a pop and then applying amplification to e.g. -8db, using the Amplify tool (also under the Effects menu).
Copy-and-paste: very fiddly technique but could be quite effective, using the options under the Edit menu I would copy a bit of the waveform from elsewhere in the track and then use this to replace the part with the defect.

De-amplification and copy-and-paste techniques generally worked okay for crackles and pops that were very short. On a couple of occasions where the recording had skipped I was also able to copy-and-paste longer sections to repair it, although it could be difficult to match the inserted section up with the original track.

Once the defects had been dealt with I applied RIAA equalisation (under the Effects menu) to the whole track. At this point I sometimes also applied amplification to the whole thing, if it turned out that I'd chosen a recording level that was a bit too quiet.

Check the recording & split into tracks: the final part of the ripping process was to check each recording by playing it back through Audacity (to ensure that it was complete and that there weren't any unexpected skips which might necessitate a re-recording), and then to break it up into individual tracks. To do this I added "labels" to the project to mark the start of each track, and then used the Export multiple option to automatically save them as WAV files.

(An aside: WAV files are uncompressed so they are big! But because it's "loss-less", I reasoned that this would be a good "archival" format if I wanted to play around some more with a track later on. I've since wondered about converting them to FLAC, which would save disk space whilst preserving the data.)

Import into iTunes: since I use iTunes to manage my music for "everyday use", I used it to generate compressed AAC-format versions for each track as it was added to the iTunes library:

In Edit Preferences->Advanced tab, deselect "Copy files to iTunes Music when adding to library".
Select the files to add to the library using File->Add Folder option (n.b. drag and drop also works).
Once the WAV files have been added, right-click on the first imported track in iTunes, select Update info and add data about the artist, album name, number of tracks and so on. (Note that it's also possible to select multiple tracks and add data for several at once.)
Select the imported tracks, right-click on them and select Create AAC version from the menu. (The resulting AAC tracks will contain the artist and album data added in the previous step.)
At the end, the library will contain two versions of each track - the original WAV file and the AAC version - so I went through and deleted the WAV versions from iTunes (note that this doesn't delete the original files, just the references to them).

Hopefully this all makes sense. It can be a long process and there are probably better ways of doing things, however this worked for me. If I did it again I'd seriously consider investing in a dedicated USB turntable, but for now in spite of the tedium of the process I'm happy to be able to listen to my old tunes on my ipod shuffle.

Swimming on the Box

2010-01-08T19:48:00.006Z

I've been meaning for a while now to post something about recent(ish) swimming-themed TV programmes, but what with catching up after Christmas, New Year and all the rest I've been somewhat distracted until now.

Anyways: I love swimming, but ordinarily I find that watching things like Olympic swimming on the telly is just about the most boring thing ever. With competitive swimming it's almost as if the participants are in a rush to finish and get out of the water - whereas I sometimes think I'd like to stay in the water and swim around all day.

So it was interesting to see a few shows at the end of last year which seemed more relevant to my experiences as a recreational swimmer. The first was back at the end of November, with the BBC documentary "Virgin Swimmers" (part of the "Wonderland" series). This followed a disparate group of adults as they took a course of weekly swimming lessons together, and reminded me a little of similar classes that I took a few years ago. The people in the programme were just regular folk, but what was fascinating was how learning swim often seemed emblematic of a deeper need to take on a challenge and prove something to themselves. Somehow it's not just about learning to swim.

I suppose that people do all sorts of things - like, I don't know, rock climbing or hang-gliding - to challenge themselves in a similar fashion, and perhaps the "challenge" of swimming in a pool at a local community centre seems quite mundane. But what this programme brought out was that for the people that do it, it can be just as much of a challenge - and an achievement - as climbing a mountain.

The second programme was the two-parter "Robson Green's Wild Swimming Adventure", shown on ITV in December (certainly an odd time of year for a show about the joys of swimming outdoors). When I first heard about this, I'll admit I was a little sceptical and wondered if it was just an attempt to capitalise on the resurgence of interest in outdoor swimming here in the UK.

In the event, in spite of some contrived sequences (I'm wasn't entirely convinced by either the opening scene - when he's rescued from his swim in the freezing waters of the river Tyne in Newcastle - or the closing one, when he swims with his young son in the sea) Robson Green actually turns out to be a very engaging, humorous and enthusiastic host with a genuine love for swimming. He swims in various extremely pleasant locations and has interesting conversations with the various characters he meets there, but ultimately the focus becomes his desire to attempt a swim to Holy Island (off the coast of Northumberland) in memory of his late father.

As a result his outdoor swims leading up to this get tougher - including swims in a freezing Snowdonian lake with environmentalist and extreme cold water swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh, and across the infamous Corryvreckan whirlpool (which nearly did for George Orwell). Outdoor swimming seems to have been rebranded as "wild swimming", when it's usually nothing of the sort - but these swims were truly wild. So by the end I was completely convinced by his commitment to experience all the highs and lows that outdoor swimming could throw at him. Monumental.

Staying on the outdoor theme, the last set of programmes was Channel 4's "Great Swim" series, which covered the "Great Swim" events that took place at the end of last summer in London, Strathclyde, Windermere and Suffolk. Each one featured races between professional swimmers, however the main focus were the mass participation events where basically anyone could take part and swim a mile. Following my own outdoor swimming adventures last summer (nothing wild about those at all), I would really have liked to have taken part in one of these mass swims but it didn't work out; at least through these programmes I was able to watch some other regular folk swimming and talking about their motivations and experiences.

So... here's to some great swimming in 2010!

Wrapped up for Christmas

2009-12-24T13:43:00.007Z

Merry Christmas! I'm now back with my parents for Christmas (unless you're a burglar, in which case er I'm actually still at home) and after a busy couple of weeks juggling the buying of presents and writing of cards, I'm finally relaxing into the Christmas spirit. I always enjoy Christmas Eve and the wonderful sense of wellbeing that flows from knowing that there is nothing left to do except eat grapes and cake, and sit back for a day just reading about "The Man Who Swam The Amazon".

Recently though I've been thinking about the many contradictions of the season (with its peculiar mixture of happiness, anticipation and anxiety) and reflecting on how things have changed since I was a child. In those days, when my sister and I were very young, we would wake up desperately early on Christmas morning to find our pillowcases stuffed with presents from Santa - Christmas being one of the two occasions in the year (aside from our birthdays) when we could ask for the big ticket items - like a bicycle, or an electronic keyboard - that were out of reach during the rest of the year. In a sense even though it was focused on material things I suppose it really did still seem rather magical.

These days - being older and of independent means - the magic of Christmas is more about spending time with the family, and less about getting cool stuff (which to be honest I'm able to buy for myself any time in the year). Christmas Day has a different and more enjoyable rhythm, which thankfully no longer includes tearing off wrapping paper at 5:30am: it's about simpler pleasures, like bacon butties for breakfast, everyone chatting and joking together over Christmas dinner, and a trip out in the cold to watch the annual Boxing Day Matlock Raft Race - or a walk along the Seagirt boardwalk with Kyle. (I was very fortunate to spend last Christmas with Kyle in New Jersey with her folks, and I'm sad not to be with her and be able to spend time with them all again this year.)

I do still like to give gifts and send Christmas cards though, and I think this compulsion is what causes me the most (self-inflicted) festive stress - I worry about finding gifts that people will really like or want, and in the past I've found the business of actually wrapping the stuff to be disproportionately taxing. I think I can feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of small decisions (like, "will Dad like this book?" or "what's the best way to wrap this hexagonal box?"). But I'm also starting to learn that things get much easier once I stop worrying and (as Kyle suggested to me) try to just enjoy it.

Which brings me back to the feeling that I enjoy the most, which is when everything is finally done: cards written and presents wrapped. It's then that I feel I can actually take the time to enjoy the simple things - like how the ice on the pavement twinkles like glitter in the weak winter sun (something I'm sure that Kyle would appreciate!), the satisfying crunchiness of the snow underfoot, or simply being able to sit and read a book all day.

Hopefully you're also enjoying your Christmas Eve wherever you are. So before I get back to my book, once again: Merry Christmas to you!

Closing time

2009-12-07T18:44:00.005Z

It seems like a lot of things have closed down recently, of which my local Borders store is just the latest. I can still remember it opening back in 2005 and being thrilled to have a big bookshop - with a coffee shop and stationary section no less! - practically on my doorstep. The closure of this store is just part of a larger collapse of the parent company, so its problems can't be blamed exclusively on my reduced book consumption over the last year or so, but even so I'll be sorry to see it finally go.

This takes place against the background of a general feeling of things running down over the last few months, starting back in October when Yahoo closed its Geocities service (and with it my little website that was being hosted there) and bookended by the sudden disappearance last week of my local Spar shop (source of milk and Saturday newspapers).

Geocities provided free webhosting and I imagine that plain ol' economic arguments probably led Yahoo to pull the plug - but at the same time it seemed a shame that a lot of interesting and often wacky amateur web content was lost along with the service (though at least one of my favourites, a highly idiosyncratic and informative site all about swim caps seems to have been partially captured by the Way Back Machine internet archive).

I'm guessing that economics similarly contributed to the end of my local shops, and while obviously I'll survive their departures, it does feel like my real world - like the web without Geocities - will be ever so slightly little less colourful without them, at least for a little while.

A trip to London: visa medical, books and a dip

2009-12-03T21:54:00.007Z

No rest for the wicked... just two days after Kyle returned to the US (along with her unwelcome "gift" of an awful cold, sorry Kyle...) on Tuesday I went to London for the day to get my medical for the visa application. Given that the journey time by train from Warrington to Euston is now under 2 hours, it was a pretty easy trip down which gave me plenty of time to have my packed lunch and wander around beforehand - I decided to skip the "Identity" exhibition at the Wellcome Trust (maybe next time) and headed off to the big Waterstones near Birkbeck College in order to do some Christmas book shopping instead.

The medical exam was booked for 1:30pm, and after a brisk walk I got there about 10 minutes early and feeling quite nervous as I didn't really know what to expect. In fact it turned out to be pretty straightforward - a chest X-ray, blood test, measurements of height, weight and blood pressure, and a few other basic checks - and most of the time was actually spent just waiting. I watched other people coming and going who I guess were also there for visa application medicals.

I felt pretty good afterwards - I guess it was the relief of having gotten over it - and after chatting with Kyle on the phone for a while I decided that I would head to the Oasis Sports Centre for a swim. The Oasis was one of the outdoor pools that I missed on my London Lidothon in July, but this one is heated and is open all year around - and it was nice and toasty in spite of the frosty London air (and the lifeguards completely wrapped in their coats). The staff there were also really nice, and after my dip I had a tasty pasta bake in the cafe while watching people continuing to swim outside. I'd definitely like to go back sometime and swim there again.

After that I still had some time to kill - the off-peak rail ticket that I had wasn't valid before 7:30pm - so I went back to Waterstones to get my books for Christmas ... plus a couple as a treat for myself: "Swimming Games and Activities", which looked interesting even though it's really aimed at children, and "The Man Who Swam the Amazon" (about this crazy German guy who swam along the Amazon river and somehow survived). I'm looking forward to reading both of them sometime soon.

So all in all it was a pretty good day. I think it might have been fun if Kyle had been there too (although we probably would have done something different) and it was good to have completed another piece of the visa application jigsaw. As ever - onwards and upwards!

Bye-bye Baby

2009-11-29T14:08:00.007Z

Rainy Sunday, sigh... I got back from dropping Kyle off at the airport a few hours ago at the end of a wonderful week of having her here, and I'm feeling a bit sad. The flight status page on the airline's website shows that she's already halfway across the Atlantic, which seems more than a bit strange when I think that less than 4 hours ago we were still together (isn't modern technology - like planes and the internet - wonderful, and also slightly alarming like that?).

Although a week is always far too short, it was fantastic to have her here and I'm thankful that she made the trip at all - I'm grateful for all the time that we got to spend together. Kyle is a great documenter of her life, so for details of what we got up to (along with pictures!) I'd recommend checking out her blog (starting here). But mainly I'll remember just spending time together, having fun and just laughing so much together at the silliest things (LOLcats, anyone?).

So yes, I'm feeling a little sad here on my own right now without her. But when I think of the great time that we had together I feel better, and I know that I'll see her again soon. Love you Baby!

Designs for Life

2009-11-06T18:29:00.004Z

I've just got back from a three-day trip to the Diamond Light Source (the UK synchotron in Oxfordshire). On a previous visit I noticed a set of textile panels on the back walls of the atrium, which looked like art based on images from the kind of scientific research done at the lab - including things like diffraction patterns, mould spores and viral molecules - but I didn't have much time to really look at them.

This time I had a bit longer and remembered to bring my camera, so one evening I decided I would get a few photos - I think that these are the kinds of things that Kyle would enjoy seeing and maybe she would enjoy the pictures. While I was busy snapping away a woman came and asked me why I was taking pictures - I was sure that I was going to get told off! But it turned out that she was Anne Griffith's - Diamond's "artist in residence" - and had been responsible for the collaboration of different artists that had produced the work.

She told me that she has a studio in office space next to the synchrotron ring, and that the panels - collectively called "Designs for Life" - were one of a number of different collaborations between artists and scientists at the lab. She also told me about how the panels had come to be produced, including one that featured stitching from many of the scientists - including the laboratory director. She also pointed out some other artworks in the atrium that I hadn't noticed before.

It was interesting to hear about the stories behind the art. To me they bring some warmth to the grand but possibly rather clinical atrium space, and also reveal the beauty in the science which is appreciated by scientists but sadly not always made visible to a lay audience - and in this (and in the source of their inspiration) they reminded me of similar designs for the 1951 Festival of Britain (celebrated in last year's "Atoms to Patterns" exhibition at the Wellcome Trust.

Anne has a website at http://www.pocketmouse.co.uk/ which talks about the "Designs for Life" project (amongst others) as part of her residency at Diamond - and you can see some of the panels in my (totally unofficial and completely unauthorise!) "Designs for Life" set on Flickr. Enjoy the collision of art, textiles and science!

Spider Explosion

2009-09-30T21:55:00.005+01:00

I read in the paper at the weekend that there's been a big increase in the numbers of spiders this year, due to the temperate weather in the UK since last winter. This isn't too surprising for me - it feels like I've been finding them everywhere this year - even in the bed at my parents' house (shiver) - but it's reassuring to know that it's not just me.

While I'm not a huge fan of spiders (or of huge spiders, for that matter) but apparently this is good news, as spider numbers are an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. It's also good news for their predators (I'm not counting Kyle in that statement, in spite of the fact that she also hunts down and squishes any that she finds in her house - being more squeamish, I prefer to trap and release).

You can read more about the explosion in spider numbers here (warning: this article has pictures of spiders!). I know that a lot of people don't like spiders, but they do a lot of good controlling other insects - and after all the worries about bees and other wildlife species, it makes a nice change to hear something positive about the state of the environment literally in our own backyards. So viva la spider! (as long as it's not in my bed!)

On the run again

2009-09-23T19:23:00.006+01:00

Thanks to the wonders of jetlag I was awake at 4am this morning, which is kind of annoying but did at least mean that I could get to the gym by 7am for a run and a swim. It's pretty quiet then - really I don't know why I don't go at that time more often, haha.

While I was in New Jersey with Kyle I did some running around her neighbourhood, which was good exercise and also useful as a way of finding my way around the local area. Running outdoors is quite a different proposition to running on a treadmill, and it was interesting to compare the two this morning.

Probably the biggest difference for me was the lack of immediate feedback - the machines tell you your speed, distance, gradient, time and calories burned, whereas outside you have to rely on your subjective impressions, which I found out can actually be quite faulty. I think I run further and quicker outside (don't get excited though, it wasn't that far/fast, and I certainly won't be running any marathons in record time). And after a few runs I was starting to learn how to listen more closely to my body, to know when I needed to slow down or pick up my pace.

Aside from that, running outdoors is more varied and I suspect more stimulating mentally. It was also good to see a few other runners on the street and do the runner's equivalent of the Masonic handshake as we passed. So I missed that a bit this morning - maybe I'll start running around my own neighbourhood in the next few weeks.

Afterwards in the pool I was practising my front crawl exercises again, after a six week hiatus. It's coming together but I still have problems with breathing, especially on the right side. However I do have a lesson tomorrow which will hopefully put me back on track. I have some other vague swimming plans but I think they'll have to wait until things settle down a little, in the meantime I'll just keep on running.

Back in the UK

2009-09-22T21:51:00.005+01:00

I feel like the world's worst blogger, I'm back in the UK and I feel like I hardly blogged while I was out in New Jersey. I guess I was having too much fun with Kyle! and now I'm here without her again I'm missing my Jersey Girl. (I'm also missing her fast internet connection, but I won't mention that in case I sound unromantic. Oops!)

We got a lot done while I was in the US though - as well as our vacation in Myrtle Beach, we did a lot of wedding planning. We looked at a number of different possible wedding venues trying to find somewhere that worked for us, and although at times it felt like a real struggle in the end I think we came up trumps. So our ceremony venue will be the Huisman gazebo in Belmar, which is right next to the beach, and the reception will be at the Waterview Pavilion about a mile away. The town is close to Kyle's parents and looks like a great place for my UK visitors (with a rail link to New York for those who prefer the big city).

We also did a lot of work on various ideas for invitations and other graphics, and came up with some cool stuff. In the process I've also learned a lot more about the image manipulation program Gimp, and a little about other software such as Scribus, which has been fun, and I also learned that Kyle is a real whizz at making rocking miniature laptops. (Kyle has been collecting all our wedding idea stuff together in a set on Flickr, if you want to take a look.)

We're tentatively setting the wedding date for mid-May, but we're going to wait until my visa application has come through before sending out invitations, and now I'm back in the UK I'm getting together the final documents to complete the application. The process seems long and involved but I know that the end result will be worth it - and I'm inspired by the fortune cookie message that I got at PF Changs last Friday:

Sounds like great advice to me!

An Englishman in New Jersey

2009-09-09T18:21:00.004+01:00

Kyle and I are back in New Jersey after a week's vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (all sea, sand, miniature golf and good Southern food - a great time was had by all). Coming back was a little bittersweet, even more so since while we were away it seems like summer has turned to autumn back here. Perhaps that was to be expected since Monday was Labor Day, a national holiday here in the US which - like the Late Summer Bank Holiday last week in the UK - unofficially marks the end of the summer.

Our Labor Day was spent getting reorganised after our holiday, but we also made a trip to the Menlo Park mall to pick up my wedding ring from the jewellers (so now we have both rings), followed by a visit to the big Barnes & Noble store next door. Kyle was looking for books on stretching and back pain while I was looking at magazines (and manfully resisting the urge to buy more books on software).

There were two cashiers at the checkout: an American woman giving Kyle the hard sell about how much money she would have saved on her purchases if she'd had a B&N membership, and a rather dapper and well-spoken middle-aged Englishman who rang up my mags. It still surprises me to hear another English accent here, and while I was paying I wondered whether I should acknowledge the fact that we were both Englishmen in a foreign country.

But all I could think of saying was something along the lines of, "So, you're English too?", and that seemed pretty lame, or "You're not from round here, are you?", which seemed even more lame. So I just let it pass (as did he), and afterwards I felt a little bemused - I'm sure there isn't any proper protocol for this kind of situation, but somehow I felt like there should be.

Anyway: since then we've been getting back on track with our wedding planning and are homing in on venues for the ceremony and reception. It's been intense but hopefully we'll be able to pull things together in the next week or so - stay posted (and in the meantime check out my slender selection of pictures from Myrtle Beach, and Kyle's more substantial collection).

Caught in a New Jersey hurricane!

2009-08-25T16:02:00.010+01:00

I've been doing a particularly poor job of posting to this blog since I arrived in New Jersey, and tomorrow Kyle and I are flying out to Myrtle Beach so the situation is unlikely to improve over the next week.

In my defence, it's been a busy couple of weeks. In fact, just like the very real hurricanes swirling out in the Atlantic this time of year, it feels like we've been caught in our own metaphorical New Jersey hurricane - in between visiting our lawyer, buying our rings and attending the very rocking bowling alley wedding of our friends Chris and Christine, we've also been designing our wedding stationary, and checking out possible venues. Kyle has been doing a great job keeping up with this whirlwind in her blog (start with her "Wedding logo draft posting" and work your way forward, if you want more details or check out our great designs!).

In the odd minutes left over from all that, I've been enjoying being back in New Jersey now that it's summer - it's warm enough to go out without a coat, and the air is filled with the loud high-frequency clicking sound of the cicadas. It's pretty neat. Meanwhile there's also a few changes on the Princeton campus, which seems to be undergoing maintenance before the fall semester: the "marching figures" have disappeared from the front of the Art Museum, Upstart 2 has lost its black paint job (now more in keeping with the artist's intentions), and until earlier this week my favourite fake Picasso sculpture had also been under wraps.

Also, random people seem to be more talkative now. They're often interested in where I'm from, and how the weather differs between the US and the UK (my take: generally the climate in NJ is quite similar to back home, although a bit more consistent than back home, and with greater extremes - the summer being much hotter, and the winter is much colder). They're also interested in knowing if I follow soccer, and seem disappointed when I say I don't (I might start trying to bluff my way through it in future).

Anyway, fun as it is all is, after running around for the last few of weeks it'll be fun to finally get away to South Carolina for a bit: sun, sea and sand, miniature golf and great food at the K&W. I'm sure Kyle will be blogging in real time while we're there, otherwise - see you when we get back. Aloha!

From Ingleton to Princeton

2009-08-13T15:43:00.010+01:00

What a difference a week (or so) makes - I'm now back in New Jersey with Kyle for a month or so, but just over a week ago I was wandering the Waterfalls Trail in the village of Ingleton ("Land of Caves and Waterfalls") in North Yorkshire, followed by a swim in the heated outdoor pool there.

It seemed like quite an inauspicious day, overcast and with intermittent rain both on the train journey to Lancaster and on the number 80 bus to Ingleton itself, and the start of the waterfall trail was pretty dark and muddy beneath the overhanging trees. The first part of the trail follows the River Twiss and the second section returns along the River Doe, so the sound of the rushing water is almost constant, with even the largest waterfalls seemingly hidden from view until you get close up.

Probably the most spectacular of many spectacular waterfalls - presumably well-fed from the recent rains - was Thornton Force (incidentally my choice of pseudonymn when I start writing thrillers: "Another novel from the pen of Thornton Force"). Getting between the two rivers involved a walk across farmland which thankfully also featured an ice cream van.

After walking for 3 1/2 hours, I was feeling like a swim. The Ingleton pool was last on my small list of pools that I'd planned to visit over the summer, and while it's not so large, the place is big on character, with the nicest voluntary staff ever - when I arrived it was full of kids fooling around but the woman running the cafe very kindly let wait until the break at 4pm then I could have a little swim on my own before they came back at 4:30 (so as long as I promised "not to drown"). The sun came out and for twenty minutes I had the pool to myself - blue skies above, blue water below, nothing else like it. Bliss!

At 4:30 the pool filled up again with the kids and also people who like me had finished the Waterfalls Trail. It was a lot of fun and a complete constrast to the tranquility I'd been enjoying a few minutes earlier. A hot cup of tea from the cafe was the perfect way to relax afterwards, although I was denied fish and chips from the Inglenook cafe as it's closed all day Tuesday. I ended the day waiting at the bus stop (where a crowd of Hasidic Jews were also waiting for their own coach).

(My pictures of the waterfalls and other things around Ingleton can be found on Flickr.)

The rest of the week was spent preparing for my trip back to the US, which is where I am now. It's great to be back with Kyle again! And the weather in New Jersey is definitely much warmer compared with when I was last here in January. We have plenty to do over the next few weeks, including some wedding planning (see Kyle's recent blog postings for some of what we're up to), but I know it's going to be fun. Stay posted!

Stanage Edge

2009-07-28T19:48:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I had a day out walking along Stanage Edge, according to Wikipedia a "gritstone escarpment in the English Peak District". It's not far from the village of Hathersage - which I'd been to last month for a swim - and armed with an Ordance Survey map (OL1), a magnetic compass (in the event fortunately not required), a pair of borrowed waterproof overtrousers (since I'd left mine back in Warrington), and a generous packed lunch from my Mum (very tasty). So I felt pretty well prepared.

I had a couple of possible routes printed out: one from the Guardian (which I think is actually from a company called WalkingWorld; see a version here, without the map) and another from a great site called Walking Britain (in the event I didn't use this one but it had been useful to see it before setting off).

Getting to Hathersage was pretty straightforward but unfortunately there didn't seem to be a direct walking route to Hook Car (where my Stanage Edge route was supposed to begin) so it took me a while before I was even at "the start". Never mind - once I'd ascended the path up to the escarpment I felt like it had been worth the journey just to soak up the views over the Hope Valley. The sun had come out and the air was fresh as I set off north along the edge. Aaaah!

It turned out it was lucky that I'd borrowed those waterproofs, as about 40 minutes later the skies darkened and the views disappeared for a while as the downpour began. There was no shelter so I simply carried on and waited for the rain to blow over while I took a wrong turning (ending up below the escarpment again) and then wandered through an area littered with old millstones before managing to find a way back up again. Back at the top and with blue skies restored at least for the time being, I took a break for lunch. The views are fantastic and I was a little sorry that I was on my own.

Lunch over it was time to press on a bit further along the edge, below doubling back on a path that took me back to the littered millstones and through another heavy shower (both seemed familiar from earlier in the day), before turning off in the direction of Hathersage. I think that the views of Stanage Edge at this point from "ground level" were also well worth seeing - from below the cliff faces looked like they'd been constructed from huge cubes of stone.

Finally after a long walk across several fields full of grazing sheep I arrived back in Hathersage. I'd entertained vague hopes of fitting in a swim in the outdoor pool there, which I think would have been a great way to finish off the day, but unfortunately I'd arrived at the end of the public swimming session. So instead I got a cup of tea and a flapjack at the cafe and then headed back home on the train. It had still been a great day out, and I'm really glad that I went and got some more use out of my walking boots!

Big thanks to Mum and Dad if you're reading this, for helping me out. And you can see all my pictures on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oblong_dog/sets/72157621749256541/ if you're interested in seeing what it looks like.

Ilkley & Liverpool: a lido, a moor, and "The Mole of Edgehill"

2009-07-24T15:28:00.007+01:00

It feels like it's been a busy few weeks, what with my London Lidothon, cycling and restarting swimming lessons, and so my trips out to the Yorkshire town of Ilkley and to Edgehill in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago seem to have slipped through the net (as far as blogging is concerned).

I went to Ilkley principally to visit the lido (an outdoor swimming pool and leisure facility), but while I was there I also had a bit of a wander on the famous Ilkley Moor (and yes I went "baht'at", as the song goes - but I managed to survive all the same).

I was interested in the outdoor swimming pool after seeing it in a list of Britain's top ten lidos. It's a classic lido design, with a curved pool and a fountain (there are some nice pictures at http://www.ilkley-town.co.uk/ilkley-pool.html). The lido was open for the summer, but the water is unheated and the cooler summer so far this year meant that it was a bracing 18C (around 65F) - no wonder it was so quiet! I felt like all the breath was sucked from my lungs when I first got in, but after a few minutes swimming around I adjusted and began to enjoy the view of Ilkley Craggs in the distance.

I swam for around 20 minutes or so (feeling a little envious of the triathletes in their wetsuits - must get me one!), and afterwards I'd planned to get something to eat at the lido cafe. Unfortunately it was closed, so I settled for fish and chips back in the town centre before heading up towards the moor. I'd printed out a guide from the web so at least I thought I had some idea of where I was going. First stop though was the White Spa Cottage, which offered a mug of tea and a big piece of fruit flapjack served with a spectacular view over the town across to the hills opposite (I even spotted the lido, a splash of artificial blue next to a cricket pitch).

After that I spent a few hours following tracks over the moor. It's quite beautiful in a desolate way, and apart from the sheep it was pretty empty - I only passed one person, although I did see others occasionally in the distance. Some parts even reminded me of the volcano area on the Big Island of Hawaii, and I was entranced by patches of silver-white "flowers", as well as the distant wind turbines (always a favourite!) and the mushroom-like domes of the early warning station at Menwith Hill. All in all I really enjoyed my long walk and would love to go back again sometime - I think Kyle might have enjoyed it too.

(See all my pictures from Ilkley on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/oblong_dog/sets/72157621355190058/)

A couple of days later I met up with my friend James on the outskirts of Liverpool, to visit part of the Williamson Tunnels that have been excavated and turned into a tourist attraction. The tunnels themselves were originally built in the 1820s and 30s by Joseph Williamson ("the Mole of Edgehill"), an eccentric local landowner and philanthropist. Aside from the very colourful stories about Williamson (there must be a film in there somewhere!) there are some wild theories as to why he built the tunnels. The most plausible seems to be that it was a form of land reclaimation - the tunnel roofs spanned gaps left behind by sandstone quarrying.

Only a small fraction of the tunnels have been cleared (they were used extensively as landfill for building rubble after Williamson's death), and an even smaller part is actually open at the moment. But the workmanship is pretty amazing - huge brick arches that are still solid today, nearly 200 years later.

Hopefully in the next couple of years more of the tunnels will be open and it will possible to go even deeper into this secret world. In the meantime you can see my (not so great!) pictures from the tunnels at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oblong_dog/sets/72157621386627854/ or check out the official website at http://www.williamsontunnels.co.uk.

Swimming lessons

2009-07-22T14:30:00.004+01:00

For some reason I woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:30am this morning and decided I'd go swimming at the gym before the pool got too crowded. I love swimming but I've always struggled to swim a "relaxed" front crawl that I can maintain for longer than a single pool length, and so I've been taking lessons for a few months now to try and improve my technique. (I've often wondered if I should refer to the lessons as "swim coaching", as most people assume you only have lessons if you can't swim at all.)

I'm learning the Shaw Method of swimming front crawl with a great teacher called Linda from Swimtime. This has consisted of practising individual exercises that relate to small parts of the stroke, which are then built up to the full stroke at the end. So you only really get the benefit if you can stop yourself trying to swim the full stroke and instead be disciplined enough to keep repeating the exercises in between the lessons (which have been pretty infrequent really - I think I've had six since February).

The learning process has had its ups and downs. The patten seems to be that new exercises are initially frustrating and difficult, since they modify the patterns mastered in the previous step. Slowly they become easier through repetition, and the next set of exercises are then introduced and the cycle begins again. Looking back, I think that I've found this step-wise "stop/start" approach quite challenging at times, since it doesn't give always give me the feeling of continual improvement - instead, progressing to the next stage (starting a new set of exercises) can initially feel like a step back rather a step forward.

Standing back though, by diligently practising the exercises several times a week, over the months I clearly have made progress - I'm nearly up to swimming the full stroke now. It has reinforced an idea that I really do believe in (and which Kyle touched upon in her post yesterday), that for most things you've got to put the hours in if you want to see results. Or, as someone else has put it more eloquently: "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

The Screech and the Fury: Southport to Warrington by bike

2009-07-21T15:26:00.003+01:00

Almost one year on from our cycle ride along the Transpennine Trail from Warrington to Chesterfield, last Saturday the three of us (Ronan, Charles and me) were once again tackling the trail with our bikes.

It was all Ronan's idea: to cycle the 40 mile stretch from the western-most point on the Irish Sea at Southport back to Warrington. It's pretty flat and generally well paved (unlike last year's section, which took us two days to travel 90 miles and had the Pennine hills right smack in the middle) so it seemed quite reasonable that we should be able to manage it in one day. My only concerns were the weather (we'd had torrential rain just the day before), my old bike (now squeaking pretty much constantly whenever I pedalled, and screeching whenever I braked), and myself (since I'd cycled relatively few miles since the start of the summer). So, no worries then.

Everything turned out fine. After some initial confusion about meeting up at Southport station we got to the Millenium Marker on the seafront, where the trail begins (it was easily visible due to the gaggle of other cyclists stood around the base), and we were soon on our way. And although the wind never really dropped, the rather omnious grey clouds had by the end of the day turned to blue skies and - miraculously - we were never troubled by rain.

The route itself is pretty gentle with relatively few road sections. Long sections are converted from old railway lines so there are lots of neat bridges and tunnels, and in places we were cycling between sandstone walls now overgrown with thick foliage - like something from a Harry Potter film. Other little highlights on the way included the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and "Wally's Steps" (which have a groove to make it easier to wheel your bike up and down) and the Silver Jubilee Bridge across the Mersey Estuary - a magnificent piece of engineering. (A slightly different highlight was the excellent and very inexpensive food at the Morrisons supermarket cafe in Speke.)

As the evening was very pleasant we decided to stop for a drink at the Ferry Tavern pub on the final stretch about two miles from Warrington. One drink turned into two (and two into three) while we talked about this journey, last year's, and life in general.

It was good to kick back for a couple of hours, but finally we had to complete the last section. I'm not sure whether the drinks helped or hindered us on this part (they may have been partially responsible for a sudden outbreak of racing at this point) but we soon got back to Warrington, and Charles and I continued up to the Millenium Marker on Knutsford Road, where we had started from last year. It seemed a fitting place to stop (at least for now).

You can see the pictures from the trip on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oblong_dog/sets/72157621743836736/

Alternatively check out the slide show:

After all that I'm ready for a bit of a rest. But I still need to catch up with my trips to Ilkley and the Williamson Tunnels in Liverpool, so stay posted!

The best laid plans of mice and men

2009-07-17T16:10:00.005+01:00

As a coda to London Lidothon (and at Kyle's request), I thought I'd write about my complicated morning trying to leave my friends' house yesterday. They had gone to work, leaving me to pack and get a taxi to the train station - once I was ready all I needed to do was lock the front door behind me as I left, dropping the key through the letterbox.

At 9:40am I'm pretty much ready to go, when I'm surprised to see one of their cats chasing a mouse around my backpack next to the front door. Feeling a bit sorry for the mouse, and to save my friends from finding a dead mouse when they got home from work, I reluctantly cornered the two animals in the downstairs bathroom and shooed the cat away. As the poor rodent cowered in the corner I picked it up in a towel, opened the front door to step outside, and tried to release the mouse.

The first problem was that when I got outside, the mouse was not in the towel - it must have escaped and was still in the house - bad news for the mouse but only a minor inconvenience for me.

The second problem was that in closing the door behind me (to try and prevent the cat catching the mouse again) I had managed to lock myself out of the house. This was bad news for me (and absolutely disastrous for the mouse).

I think it took a few moments for my mind to catch up with the reality of the situation, which began to take on a slightly unreal quality. I underwent a rapid series of perceptual shifts that started with the most obvious fact (the door is locked) and extrapolated to the final consequence (I'm outside the house - thankfully dressed - but without shoes and carrying a hand towel, all my things are inside, my friends won't get home for another 7 hours, and it looks like it might rain). It was like being in one of those lateral-thinking brainteasers: "You're trapped outside a locked house. If you call your friend he can come and let you in, but you need your phone for his number and it's inside the house." Surely there's some solution? Does it have something to do with wheel nuts? Matchsticks? Is the answer printed upside down at the bottom of the page?

I mean, how could this even have happened? Until that moment I'd had no idea that you could lock the door without the key. While I stood considering the turn of events, the cat slunk out of the cat flap in another door and gave me a withering look as it crossed the road.

I knew that the key was still in the lock on the other side. Maybe I could reach through the letterbox somehow and get hold of it? The slot looked quite narrow though, and I pondered the wisdom of trying it: the current situation (i.e. I'm locked out) isn't good, but it's better than the alternative (i.e. I'm still locked out but now my hand is also stuck in the door). I tried it anyway, to no avail. So there was nothing else for it: I knocked at the neighbour's house.

I'm extremely lucky that my friends have such a wonderful neighbour. She didn't know their phone numbers but she made me a cup of tea and let me use her phone and internet (I'm not sure that I would have trusted me if the situation had been reversed, but I'm glad she did). She suggested calling a locksmith to open the door, and half an hour later a man called Tim pulled up, stuck a length of bent metal through the letterbox and instantly popped the door open.

Inside the mouse lay dead on the carpet, and Tim was required to charge me £75 for his 10 seconds of work (suddenly locksmithery looked like a very interesting and lucrative line of work). I called my friend and explained what had happened - he laughed so much that I thought maybe I should charge him too - and was soon on my way home.

Afterwards I did feel sorry for the mouse, and I thought to myself that there hadn't been any winners that day. Well, except for Tim (obviously). And possibly my friend, since he had enjoyed the story. And of course the cat.

London Lidothon: day 2

2009-07-15T23:14:00.004+01:00

Today was the second day of my "London Lidothon" and I managed to make it to another three pools - starting with the pool that I didn't make it to yesterday.

Pool #4: The Serpentine Lido, Hyde Park

After some ineffectual wandering around Knightsbridge trying to find Hyde Park I finally made it to the lido on the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park around 11:30am. Unlike all the other pools that I visited on this trip, this lido consists of a section of the lake that has been roped off for swimmers - although you still have to share it with various geese and other water fowl.

In the context of the lake the lido area seems relatively small but it's actually over 100m long so swimming a few laps can quickly add up to a considerable distance. I wore my swim cap for the first time because I was afraid that the water would be cold, but it didn't seem too bad (according to the lifeguard the water temperature was 21C/68F) and it was pretty quiet. It's pretty neat to swim in a lake! And the lido staff were really nice, so this was a real treat overall.

See http://www.serpentinelido.com/ and http://www.serpentineswimmingclub.com/

Afterwards I got a sandwich and a cup of tea at the Lido Cafe next door and then headed off to the next pool...

Pool #5: Parliament Hill Lido

With my wet towel making me feel a bit like Arthur Dent from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", I took the tube from Knightsbridge to Leicester Square, changing to the Northern Line to get to Kentish Town, then walked to Parliament Hill and arrived at the lido around 1:40pm. It's a great brick building with an enormous 60m pool with an unusual stainless-steel lining that shimmered in the sun and made the pool look like a small lake.

This definitely felt like the coldest pool that I swam in! and I wore my swim cap again (the lifeguard told me that the water temperature was 20C but it felt much cooler to me - possibly because the sky began to cloud over and a cool breeze developed, creating waves on the surface of the pool).

I really liked this lido, the staff were really nice again but also had a great sense of humour (for example, when knocking on the reception door to deposit my clothes before swimming, the attendant inside said "What's the password?"; and another attendant warned me that it was especially busy just before I entered the near empty pool - maybe you had to be there for that one). And there were lots of colourful photos on the walls that celebrated the lido's history.

Not to mention the very cool multicoloured cubicles in the vast changing room. Overall I really liked this place and my only regret (aside from the temperature of the water) was that I didn't have longer to spend there.

See http://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/content/contacts/non-council-contacts/contact-parliament-hill-lido.en

Pool #6: London Fields Lido

From Gospel Oask station (next to Parliament Hill) I took an overground train to Hackney Central and then walked to London Fields and got to the lido around 3:40pm.

The London Fields Lido is a heated pool (I didn't get the temperature but it felt a lot warmer than Parliament Hill!) so although it's much smaller than most of the other pools it was also a lot more popular. The pool is lined with multicoloured changing cubicles and lockers that are very reminiscent of those at Tooting Bec Lido, with the swimming area divided into different sections for lap swimmers of different speeds.

I swam around in the "slow" lane for a while looking at the darkening sky until I finally decided I had to leave and get back to my friends in Datchet, since we were planning to have dinner that evening in Windsor (thanks again to them for letting me stay for the two days!).

See http://www.hackney.gov.uk/c-londonfields-lido.htm

I had a lot of fun and I'm really glad that I made the effort to visit the pools. But after two days of swimming I'm also ready for a rest! So tomorrow I'm heading home. A couple of acknowledgements are due however before I finish:

Janet Smith's "Liquid Assets", Kate Rew's book "Wild Swim", and the websites Lidothon'09 and Oliver Merrington's Lidos in the United Kingdom were all sources of invaluable information,
London Transport did amazing work moving me around London, and
My friends Steve and Ingrid have been fabulous hosts allowing me to stay at their place while engaged in this little adventure.

It's been a blast! Happy swimming!

London Lidothon: day 1

2009-07-14T23:03:00.003+01:00

I've completed day one of my two day trip to visit some of the pools and lidos in London, and it's been fun. The weather has been pretty good and I've really enjoyed swimming in the pools.

I'd hoped to make it to four pools today, but I suppose I underestimated how long it would take to get between them (I should have remembered from previous trips to London); also I think I made a bad transport choice between the first two pools that cost me a lot of time. But that's ok, because I still have tomorrow.

Pool #1: Pools on the Park, Richmond

I arrived at Pools on the Park around 10:40am - it's just a short walk from Richmond station so it's really convenient. The indoor pool is currently being refurbished - you could see workman wandering around inside - but the outdoor pool is still open.

The pool is heated (supposedly today to 27C) so it was very pleasant, and is divided into lanes for different levels of swimmer - I started off in the "nice and easy" lane, because basically I was there to have fun. It was great to swim on my back and see blue sky with the airplanes flying overhead (it reminded me a little of the pool at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel on the Big Island of Hawaii).

See http://www.springhealth.net/richmond/facilities.html

Pool #2: Tooting Bec Lido on Tooting Common

I took the 493 bus from Richmond to Tooting Broadway tube station, which I think turned out to be a bad choice as it took forever to get there - and then I still had to get the tube to Tooting Bec and walk to the lido, arriving around 2pm. But it was well worth the journey - the pool at the lido is an enormous expanse of blue water. At 90m long it's the biggest pool I've ever swum in, and it looks fabulous - curved toilets and shower blocks at the entrance, and rows of changing cubicles with different coloured doors lining the sides of the pool. It looks like a fabulous place to spend an afternoon.

The water is unheated and at 19C was a little on the chilly side at first. Now though I think the trick is to get in and swim on your back for a few minutes, to acclimatise and get your circulation going. After that the water doesn't feel so cold (honest!).

I swam 10 lengths (trying to avoid the hose from what appeared to be an underwater roomba, cleaning the pool floor maybe?), watching trains whizz past periodically, before getting out and having a cup of tea and a hot dog at the lido cafe. Then it was time to head off for pool #3...

See http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/Home/LeisureandTourism/Sports/Facilities/tootinglido.htm

Pool #3: Brockwell Lido, Brockwell Park

Getting to here from Tooting Bec seemed a little involved too - tube from Tooting Bec station to Stockwell and then to Brixton, then transfer to mainline rail to Herne Hill before walking a short distance to Brockwell Park and the lido.

Brixton itself had real buzz, almost a carnival feel (even late on a Tuesday afternoon) compared to Richmond and Tooting. The lido (also known as "Brixton Beach") is a classic 1930 brick building. The pool itself is pretty big and really nice to swim in, although again unheated (the board claimed it was 21.5C but it felt colder!). There is also plenty of space beside the pool for sunbathing and quite a few people were sitting or lying down soaking up the rays.

After my swim I got a cup of tea and some tasty toast at the cafe (currently being refurbished but thankfully still open for business).

See http://www.brockwell-lido.com/

At this point it was too late to make it to the Serpentine, so after some more messing around with the underground I decided I should head back to my friends place in Datchet. They have been really great at giving me somewhere to stay and looking after me with food and drink, so a big thanks to them. Tomorrow I'll head back into London to swim in a few more places - but for now, it's time for bed!

Getting ready to swim!

2009-07-13T22:52:00.006+01:00

I just arrived at my friends Steve and Ingrid's place near London this evening ahead of two days swimming in the some of the pools and lidos of London - very generously they're letting me stay here for a few nights.

Hopefully the pools will be slightly warmer than the lido that I went to in Ilkley last week (will blog that when I get home) - at least now I have a swimming cap from the Outdoor Swimming Society online shop (it arrived this morning just before I left, a good sign?) so that should help to keep warm.

I guess I'll get to bed soon and get some rest before my "London Lidothon" begins tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Warrington Walking Day

2009-07-05T17:33:00.004+01:00

Last Friday was Warrington Walking Day and since I'd never actually watched the procession before I decided to go up to the town hall to see the start of the parade.

Most of the week had been hot and humid, but on the day the weather was wet (and somehow strangely still a little sticky too) so the people assembled on the lawn had to march out through Warrington's Golden Gates in the rain. I imagine that the crowd was smaller than in years with better weather but the turnout was still good - a small forest of umbrellas - and the walkers themselves put on a brave face as they passed the mayoral party, waving back from their little shelter.

I wasn't sure ahead of time what the Walking Day procession would actually consist of, but essentially it's a parade made up of the local churches and community groups. Most of them carry banners or flags (often quite colourful) and there were also a few marching bands, including pipe and drum, bagpipes, and full brass. I'm sure that on a sunny day the whole thing has quite a bit of a carnival atmosphere.

It took around 30 minutes for all the walkers to clear the gates and set off on their route around the town centre. For a while the rain eased but then came back with a vengence, so after watching the parade for a bit longer in Bridge Street I decided that the best thing to do would be to head home for some tea and dryness. I hope that the people marching didn't suffer too much in the downpour - I was certainly glad to have finally seen something of this grand Warrington tradition.

My fairly ordinary pictures from the event are now on Flickr if you're interested in seeing what it looked like (I've realised how difficult it can be to get interesting photos from a distance with my rather basic camera, although I think I managed a few good ones). There is also information about Walking Day on the Warrington local government website.

Friends

2009-07-04T23:38:00.004+01:00

As an addendum to last week's post about beer, I had a great time with my friends last weekend and hopefully they all enjoyed it too.

As well as drinking most of the beer, we also went to Liverpool on the Saturday and spent much of the day in different parts of the Albert Dock: Steve and I went to the Tate gallery (which currently features work by Sol LeWitt, who incidentally also has a piece on the Princeton University campus) as well as seeing some great prints by Carol Lander in the Whistlefish Gallery. The others visited the Beatles Experience (which Kyle and I had already seen last year). This was followed by a drink at the Pumphouse and dinner at Nandos, which sadly left no time for a Mersey boat trip (maybe next time), but at least they also got to see something of Warrington.

I was sad to see everyone go on Sunday - it seems that we don't see each other as often as we would like - but clearing up afterwards I found some solace in this inspiring message from my Friday evening fortune cookie:

So I'll drink to that and look forward to seeing them again soon!

(With thanks to Stephen for his photo of us on the way to Liverpool.)

Beer

2009-06-26T12:30:00.004+01:00

Some friends are arriving at various times today for a weekend at my place, and wishing to act the gracious host I have been cleaning and tidying and getting in supplies - which includes staggering back from Asda with a backpack and a bag laden with various beers, ciders and wines. Should get the weekend off to a good start - cheers!

Nantwich Brine Swimming Pool

2009-06-23T22:14:00.004+01:00

Taking advantage of some nice weather this morning (some light cloud and a bit of blue sky and sun), I zipped over to Nantwich to swim in the outdoor brine swimming pool there. I gather that it's the only inland brine (i.e. salt water) pool left in Britain now, and having swam there last September I thought it was worth a return visit.

My swim was good, and although the pool isn't quite as nice as the one in Hathersage (to be honest, it's hard to compete with the hills of the Peak District visible all around) it's always nice to be able to see sunshine reflected on the bottom of the pool, and clouds and sky when you float on your back. There seemed to be a lot of people swimming very seriously, which I think is a bit of a shame when you could be enjoying just being in the water on a warm sunny day. At least the dolphin shaped litter bins on the poolside looked like they were having fun (unfortunately photography isn't permitted but you can see someone else's picture of similar bins on Flickr - pretty neat).

Nantwich itself seems like a nice place (and has a sports shop selling swimming stuff) but after my swim I felt I just wanted to get home, so I caught the bus back to Crewe via the village of Willaston where I saw some signs advertising the "worm charming" championships being held next weekend. I'd never heard of this before but apparently it's a tradition going back to 1980 (if you're intrigued then read more about it at www.wormcharming.com). Funny sometimes what goes on in your own backyard.

Now I'm back home and I think I can still taste some salt on my lips (although it's probably just my imagination). I'm also getting a bit of a taste for this outdoor swimming, and so I might go back to Nantwich sometime in the summer to swim again (and maybe next time also look around the town afterwards). In the meantime Chesire East Council's Nantwich Outdoor Swimming Pool webpage has more information about the pool.

Trains

2009-06-22T09:35:00.004+01:00

The trains at the back of my house are on the move again this morning and making the entire house shake. This isn't a particularly unusual occurance - my terrace backs onto railway sidings that are used by freight trucks, mainly carrying coal for the nearby power station these days (years ago I'd also sometimes see stacks of motor cars, but not any more).

I've never counted how many cars form each train but they are very long and very heavy - much longer and heavier than passenger trains - and when they move it can sometimes feel like a scene from the 1955 film classic "The Ladykillers" - everything in the house can vibrate, including the floors and cheap IKEA wardrobe, and occasionally the bedroom door will swing open slowly. I'm sure that my original stereo got slowly shaken to bits as a result, and it has also caused me a degree of distress (and plenty of needle-wobble) at times while recording my old LPs.

Even so, I do like the trains. I find their constant to-ing and fro-ing reassuring somehow, and it's interesting to see the edge of the otherwise secret world of rail freight. Plus it's fun sometimes on a grey Monday morning to imagine that you might be in a classic Ealing comedy.

A trip to Crosby: wind turbines, 100 iron figures and a mile of sea-borne junk

2009-06-17T21:25:00.011+01:00

Yesterday I took a trip out to Crosby Beach and the Sefton coast, just north of Liverpool. The main attraction was to see an artwork called "Another Place" by artist Antony Gormley, which consists of 100 cast iron figures (cast from the artist's own body) placed in the sand. I figured after that after seeing them I could walk up the coast about 7 or 8 miles to Formby point for a nice afternoon out. I got more than I bargained for I think.

The figures themselves are fascinating, spread out quite far apart from each other, some close to the sand dunes and others partially submerged by the sea even at low tide. They're corroding in interesting ways and some are even covered in barnacles. Add them to the farm of huge wind turbines just off-shore and you can't help wondering - if humankind disappeared tomorrow, what would future beings make of this peculiar landscape?

I spent a while wandering between the figures taking pictures of them and the turbines (I love wind turbines! and how they dominate the seafront here) and the beached jellyfish slowly evaporating to nothing in the sun - one of the quietly strangest things I've seen for a while. It was a great place to spend an hour watching ships coming and going, and distant flocks of seabirds darting around like swarms of bees - an angry smudge out to sea.

Walking up the beach I passed a UFO-like building that turned out to be a leisure centre with a very nice looking swimming pool visible through the tinted glass, and I was sorry that I'd decided not to bring my trunks and towel. I like to swim in new places and my recent trip to Hathersage pool had reminded me of the kind of fun water can be when you give up on swimming lengths once in a while. Maybe I'll come back out here again sometime and give it a try.

The Gormley figures are dotted along roughly 2 miles of the beach, and after a while I started to get that Groundhog Day-like feeling that surely I'd already passed this figure a few minutes earlier? In spite of the potential that the figures seem to offer for "decoration", only a couple stood out - I suppose that the sea and other elements take their toll and clean the figures up pretty effectively. Elsewhere the beachfront reminded me a little of the boardwalk around Seagirt and Spring Lake in New Jersey, with big houses set back from the beach behind the sand dunes.

Finally past the figures I followed the trail through the sand dunes, seeing some interesting trees, flowers and butterflies, but at some point I must have missed a turning because I ended up in what looked like a rather well-appointed suburb in Hightown. From here I struggled to find the trail again, eventually finding a path that skirts the Altcar rifle training camp from where I heard sounds of gunfire from behind the sand dunes as I plodded onwards. Finally I found a path that headed back towards the beach, lured by the sight of the blades of the wind turbines (which looked tantalising close but - like the moon - are actually always the same distance away wherever you are).

The stretch of beach that I came out on was like a wasteland, devoid of people but with a line of debris next to the dunes that disappeared into the distance - wheels, road signs, rubber gloves (so many rubber gloves!), trees, gas cylinders, on and on and on. The whole scene was reminiscent of something from the film "Addicted to Plastic" - with the oddest sight being this collection of odd shoes:

I'm guessing that I walked past at least a mile of junk before I finally reached Formby Point, footsore and ready for something to eat. I figured that I would walk to the station and get a train back to my starting point near Crosby, but even that turned out to be less than straightforward - the police had closed off the access road to investigate a fire-bombed building (I've since read that it was the result of an arson attack on a restaurant).

Eventually however I made it back to Crosby beach for high tide and a last look at the figures before heading home. It was a long day and more than a little surreal in several places - to be honest the desolate beach with washed up junk was probably the strangest, and my pictures from there don't convey even a fraction of what it was really like. But it was certainly a memorable trip and I'm glad that I went.

See my pictures of the Gormley figures, wind turbines, debris and other stuff on Flickr.

Swimming at Hathersage

2009-06-12T19:53:00.004+01:00

Today was a wonderful hot and sunny day and so I went out for a swim in the outdoor pool in the village of Hathersage. It takes about 45 minutes to get there (via Sheffield) but the pool itself is only a couple of minutes walk from the station.

I didn't take any pictures inside the pool (I wish I had asked now) but you can see what it looks like from the Hathersage swimming pool website. There's a set of changing cubicles next to a lawn and a bandstand on one side of the pool and a small covered grandstand on the other. The water itself is nicely heated and there are views of the surrounding hills (Stanage Edge is nearby and clearly visible) as you swim. The great thing about swimming in an outdoor pool on a day like today is being able to see blue blue sky above and the sunlight dappled on the tiles below. (The thing that I always forget about swimming in an outdoor pool is that you're also liable to get slightly sunburned.)

After an hour's swim I went to the pool cafe and sat outside under a parasol eating a toasted cheese and onion sandwich, extremely tasty and served with a little salad that included apple and kiwi fruit and very nice colesaw. While I sat there a cat wandered between the different customers looking for some love and attention. It was a nice way to spend lunchtime.

With around an hour left before my train back to Sheffield I asked the waitress at the cafe if there was anywhere nearby that I could walk to. She recommended going to see Little John's grave at St Michaels church, which turned out to be a great tip - it was only a short walk to the churchyard, with great views over the hills (and also some cows, which I think Kyle would have enjoyed), and the grave was quite easy to find (it appears to have a parking meter next to it, but on closer inspection this turned out to be for donations to maintain the church and grounds).

The journey back was quite uneventful (really, the best kind of train journey to have). The Hathersage pool is really nice and I really hopefully there will be an another opportunity to swim there again later in the summer.

Sunsetting

2009-06-03T20:01:00.004+01:00

Yesterday evening I went out walking for a few hours around Frodsham with my friend Ronan. It was a nice evening after a very hot sunny day and we followed a section of the Sandstone Trail which rises above the town and through the woods. There's about 30 miles of trail in all but we probably only did 3 miles before we had to turn back.

The great thing about this time of year is how long the days last, and so on the way back we were treated to a beautiful sunset over Liverpool, from the top of the hill above Frodsham that overlooks the Mersey Estuary. We were surprised to come across a whole group of people taking photos with some very expensive-looking pieces of camera equipement (there are more of my own pictures on Flickr). Fingers crossed that we get another chance to walk the trail later in the summer!

Cake

2009-06-02T16:10:00.004+01:00

On a whim this afternoon I decided I would have a go at making banana bread out of the mouldy-looking bananas left in my fruit bowl (too soft to eat "raw", even for me). I considered just throwing them out but I'm haunted by reports that as a nation the British throw away around a third of the food they buy, and I don't want to become just another statistic.

The recipe that I've been using for a few years now is neatly written in my best schoolboy handwriting on a page torn from an old notebook - I think it must date from when I did "home ec" at secondary school. (I sometimes wonder how profound an influence the random choice of home economics and Latin, rather than woodwork and metalwork, has been on my later life.) Later someone rather pompously told me that the recipe is actually cake and not bread, but I've since forgotten what the distinction is.

Anyways this effort came out ok on the outside but a bit undercooked in the middle (I used a skewer to test whether it was cooked inside but probably in future a knife would be better). As this has happened before I've wondered a few times if the cake tin I have is the wrong shape somehow, or else maybe I need to cook it at a lower temperature for longer. Or maybe I put too much banana in it. Or all of the above.

It's not too bad with a cup of tea (especially as I like my cakes to be a bit moist), however I'm not sure that I'll be offering anyone else a piece of this one - maybe next time.

Wonderful Horrible Life

2009-05-31T09:46:00.011+01:00

A couple of nights ago I finally watched "The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" on DVD. Riefenstahl was a remarkable woman - born in Germany in 1902, she was by turns a dancer, actress, mountaineer, pioneering film director and photographer, who learned to scuba dive at the age of 70 and died in 2003 aged 101. I first read about her a few years ago in Charles Sprawston's cultural history of swimming "The Haunts of the Black Masseur", in a section where he talks about the incredible diving sequences she filmed for her own documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics (they are amazing to watch even now).

The most controversial part of Riefenstahl's life however was her involvement with Hitler and the Nazis during the 1930s and 40s. She famously made a film of the 1934 Nazi party congress ("Triumph of the Will") and continued to work during the war. She later claimed ignorance of the Nazi atrocities, and was determined to be a "fellow traveller" rather than a Nazi activist by post-war tribunals, but her film career was effectively finished after the war and she was vilified as "Hitler's film-maker" for the rest of her life.

The film is principally based around interviews with Riefenstahl (aged around 90 at the time) by the director Ray Mueller as he talks to her about these various episodes of her life. It's fascinating to see how in spite of her age her mind was still very active - especially when she is arguing with Mueller and his crew about how to shoot a particular sequence, recalling the technical details of shooting her films in the 30s, or reviewing underwater footage that she had shot earlier in the day. She seemed to light up when talking about editing machinery, film stock and camera angles - and in that regard she appears basically to have been what you might now call "a complete geek".

I think that the tight focus on Riefenstahl to some extent obscures the broader picture, though there is some attempt to contextualise the films with her life especially during the Nazi era (the account of her life after the war is disappointingly vague). To his credit Mueller does ask some direct questions about her past, but I felt like the documentary as a whole shied away from really challenging the view that she puts forward. The picture that emerged for me was of someone who wanted desperately and above all else to make her films, and didn't want to engage with the reality of her times. This self-delusion is the most troubling part of her story (and is elaborated on in an excellent review at Bright Lights Film Journal).

What is clear though is that she was a truly gifted and innovative film maker, pioneering techniques (for example the use of cranes and tracking shots) that have since become commonplace. One of the joys of "Wonderful Horrible Life..." is having the opportunity to see the beautiful footage that she shot (some of it previously unseen), and based on this the comparisons with Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock don't seem inappropriate (all the more impressive for a woman working in a male industry). Ultimately though her involvement with the Nazis - whatever the truth of it - is likely to always colour the perception of her life and work: wonderful horrible life indeed.

Get the buzz

2009-05-29T15:04:00.011+01:00

A few weeks ago I saw a TV programme called Who Killed the Honey Bee? about the recent and worrying decline of honey bees around the world. Bees of all kinds are the principal pollinator of plants on Earth (including most of the food crops that people depend upon) so the loss of bees would be an unimaginable disaster.

The TV programme visited various places looking for the cause of the decline - various possible culprits were suggested, including loss of diverse habitats from crop monocultures, increases in the use of pesticides and parasitic diseases, but the blame couldn't be pinned firmly on any one cause and it seems most likely that it's a combination of all these factors.

I was reminded of this because over the last couple of days while out in my weed-infested yard, I've noticed a couple of bees visiting the we- er, flowers, there. I don't know where they come from to get to my "garden" (apparently they routinely travel 2 miles, but will fly up to 6) and also these are actually bumblebees, but according to this Guardian article Ten Things to Do to Help Honeybees, I'm doing the right thing (at Kyle's prompting): number 3 is "plant your garden with bee friendly plants." And I guess that as shabby as my own contribution is, I still feel a little pride now that it's doing the bees some small good.

Bzzzzt!

The Inconstant Gardener

2009-05-24T22:17:00.006+01:00

I don't have a garden, I just have a paved yard. When I first moved here it looked like a bit of a sterile environment, and I remember I had this idea that I would get some big stone or terracotta pots and have some flowers to brighten it up.

Unfortunately I never got around to it, for various reasons. I'm not a natural with growing things (although I had some success one year with tomatoes), especially things that flower - maybe part of the problem is that I don't really like getting my hands dirty. Also someone warned me that the pots need regular watering, which was a problem since I was frequently away.

However every year it seems the yard takes on a life of its own, as some extremely tenancious plants appear each spring clinging to the most precarious toe-holds, and it's become a garden of sorts. They may be weeds, but they're my weeds! While it's not exactly the Chelsea Flower Show, the small flowers do have their own charm, and sometimes there are some surprises (such as the purple flowers above - I have no idea what they are, by the way).

Usually after a few weeks I reluctantly go out and pull them all up - they're not supposed to there after all, and I doubt that the landlord would approve. However when I told Kyle about it this year, she made a succint plea for clemency:

"i think your garden is fine, let your flowers be--they have gone through a lot to be where they are now."

which seems like a fair point. So for this summer I'm going to let them be, and just enjoy the view.

New shoes

2009-05-12T21:22:00.004+01:00

So, I finally bought myself some new running shoes today. Pretty nice, huh? My current pair have been doing stalwart duty for the last 200 years (ok, last 8 years more realistically but that's still about 7 years longer than you're supposed to use them) so it's hardly an extravagance.

I went to Up and Running in Manchester, since I'd heard that they do "gait analysis" to help you choose the right shoes, and I was curious to know what this actually involves. It turns out that you put on a pair of shoes, get on a treadmill and then run for maybe a minute while your feet and lower legs are filmed by a little video camera. Afterwards the salesperson reviews the footage (no pun intended) with you on a laptop, and explains what's happening and what sort of shoe might be best.

First off I tried a "neutral" shoe (one with no special support). Looking at the footage the guy thought that I might benefit from a shoe with some extra support as my feet seemed to be "rolling out" a little bit too far at the end of the stride (I think that this is "overpronation" or "supination" - there's a nice simple explanation at Runnersworld). This seemed to be particularly pronounced on the left foot, which is interesting since when I've observed myself running at the gym I do seem to turn my left foot out (I'm hoping that over time Alexander Technique will help me reduce that somewhat). With the support the rolling out seemed to be reduced.

I tried some different brands and ultimately settled on the Asics shoe (GT 2140 if you want to know the gory details), which is the same make as the ones I have already. As the sales guy said, if you know that you like them already then it's a good bet. I'm always a little unsure going into shops to buy "technical" products when I don't really know my stuff, but I really enjoyed the low-key low-pressure approach.

They will need some breaking in I gather. However, hopefully having new shoes will make running a bit easier on the old pins, as well as providing some extra incentive to keep my running up through the year. Wish me luck!

I'm gonna miss your love, the minute you walk out that door

2009-05-03T13:14:00.006+01:00

I took Kyle to the airport this morning so she could fly back to New Jersey after a week here in the UK. We had a really fun week and I'm feeling sad now that she's gone back, although that's the way of things and we'll see each other in a few months time when I go back to the US again.

We had a pretty full trip, which included a visit to Southport as well as meeting with my folks and with some mutual friends here in Warrington. Kyle is a champion blogger and diligently wrote up our adventures each night before bed - start here and work backwards if you'd like to read her posts (she also has some great pictures on Flickr).

Since we didn't get around to taking any engagement photos when we were together in January, Kyle decided that we should do an informal photoshoot last night, using her classic "mirror photography" technique. She posted the results on Flickr too. I liked quite a few of them and in fact have stolen one to head up this post, on account of not taking any pictures of her while she was here (oops).

It's pretty quiet here without her now (and not the good kind of quiet, if you know what I mean). It's great to share your space with someone that you love, and be able to do a lot of fun things together. So the drive back was a little sad. But I have great memories of our time together and I'm looking forward to seeing her again soon. Thanks for coming here Kyle - love you baby!

One Man Book Club

2009-04-21T15:25:00.002+01:00

I've got a number of projects on the go at the moment - one is ripping my vinyl LPs to digital format, and another is to finally read the stockpile of books that I've acquired over the last few years. As you can see from the picture it's quite a collection (and that's not even all of them).

It's quite timely - not buying more books when I already have so many to choose from will definitely save money. Some were gifts from friends but most are ones that I bought myself, and I think that the selection is quite eclectic, taking in nature, philosophy, science, art, architecture, sport and so on (but interestingly not much in the way of fiction). I don't know whether this should be interpreted as the mark of a lively and open mind, or simply as an indication of a short attention span. Maybe I'm some kind of "anti-Renaissance Man"?

The likeliest reason why most of them remained unread until now however is that not that I thought they'd be bad, but that either I'd got more interested at the time in some other topic, or I thought that they would take longer to read than my interest would sustain. But I've been pleasantly surprised and encouraged by how much I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

I think I'm making reasonable progress - so far I've averaged about a book a week over the last six weeks - so we'll see how the project goes. It's certainly good to doing something that's both educational and economically prudent.

On Yer Bike

2009-04-02T20:47:00.011+01:00

If you're a fairweather cyclist like me then you'll know that every year there comes a time when the days lengthen and the sun is shining and you look out of the window and start to think, "Hmm. Maybe I should get my bike out again." Well, for me in 2009, today was that day.

The first part of the process is always to get the bike into the yard, clean it up (fortunately I'd actually cleaned it properly at the end of last year), pump up the tyres, check the gears and brakes, and lubricate the moving parts. Being a strictly part-time cyclist, I'm ashamed to say that I always look to do the bare minimum - this time the gears seemed okay but the brakes were a feeling bit (ahem) "soft", so I adjusted the brake blocks to add some more "immediacy" to the braking.

My bike is getting pretty old now, so there are always a few minor niggles, and things that squeak gently as I pedal along (still a few more adjustments needed). I suppose bikes age a bit like people do. When I took it to get serviced about a year ago, the guy in the shop told me it should be "condemned", but it can't have been that bad - after all, it got me the 90+ miles from Warrington to Chesterfield one weekend a few months later.

Anyway, it was a great evening for cycling - sunny, with a slight breeze and a hint of coolness (a little reminder that winter hasn't gone completely yet). I picked probably the worst time of day to cycle through Warrington, but once I got onto the back roads it was much quieter. I love the sense of freedom that I get from cycling, and how aware I am of my surroundings. On a sunny spring evening is there any better feeling? (Well, probably - but it's still pretty damn good.)

I like to cycle with an end in mind, so I decided I'd go out to Moore Nature Reserve. Moore is a village just outside Warrington, and I'd cycled through it for several summers going to and from work but had never been to the nature reserve. Somewhat ironically the road leading to the reserve is also used quite heavily as an access road for a haulage depot, but it's actually very nice once you get into the woods, with several ponds and various paths through the trees. Unfortunately it turned out not to be particularly well-suited for cyclists, since most of the paths are for walkers only. I still got some nice photos (my favourites are probably the sun over the lake and an interesting "frog crossing" sign) but I think I need to come back another time with my walking boots. (In the meantime you can see the pictures in my "Around Warrington 2008-9" Flickr set.)

After that I meandered back to Warrington with a few detours on the way - firstly to see Appleton reservoir (which looks like a great place to swim, even though it's not allowed), and then along part of the Mersey to try and get a look at the Warrington Transporter Bridge. The bridge is another relic from the town's industrial past (read about it on Wikipedia), but I wasn't really able to get very close to it this evening.

Finally, after all that it was time to head home for dinner. I'm not sure how my legs will feel tomorrow morning - but now that my bike is back on the road, I'm looking forward to more cycling in the days to come.

Laptop Hijinx

2009-03-27T19:54:00.009Z

It's been nearly a week since my Dad fixed my laptop for me. I like my laptop a lot - it's a nice-looking black shiny DV6000 series machine from Hewlett-Packard - but this line does seem to be a little prone to problems. It's been back to HP for repair twice since I bought it, both times for a fault with the built-in wireless. The second repair was free even though the laptop was out of warranty by then, so kudos to HP for that, but this latest problem is the third hardware issue in less than 2 and a half years. Hmm.

This time the built-in speakers suddenly stopped working after a short train journey (not so great on a machine marketed as a "media centre laptop"). After digging around on the web it seemed that this has also been encountered by many other DV6000 owners, including someone who posted an interesting little video on YouTube:

which is pretty much what I saw (except that my power light still worked).

It turns out that there's an issue with the ribbon cable connecting the speaker assembly and the power button. In my case, when my Dad opened up the machine we could see the ribbon was almost "folded" at one point, and as a result the connections were damaged causing power to be lost to the speakers. I guess if we'd left it then eventually the power button would have failed too and it would no longer have been possible to turn the laptop on. There's more info about the problem and the fix on one of the HP forums.

Luckily for me however, my Dad's a bit of a whizz with this kind of stuff. Once I'd given him permission to open it up (all the while I was having kittens watching him prise the keyboard and speaker assembly apart) he was able to cut off the damaged part of the ribbon, expose some new contacts and reconnect the cable. Hey presto, speakers (and power button) working, good as new! Thanks Dad.

In the longer term I guess the ribbon cable needs to be replaced. I found someone selling some for £7.99 each on eBay, which seems pretty cheap compared to getting a new laptop so that's good. It was also interesting to take a look inside the laptop and see how it fits together. And I think that my Dad was pleased to have been able to fix the problem, and I'm sure that he'll be very happy to know that it's still working - almost as happy as I am!

Ripping Yarns

2009-03-15T14:55:00.005Z

I've just started ripping (for non-geeks: recording) some of my old vinyl LPs and 10" and 12" singles into digital format. I've connected my old Goodmans turntable to the line-in on my computer via an equally old battery-powered pre-amplifier (see picture), and I'm using Audacity to do the actual recording and editing according to some great instructions I found online.

I'll admit I'm no connosieur, the equipment was cheap and is old, and I'm doing the bare minimum (i.e. check the sound level on the input, then record, trim, split into separate tracks if necessary, save and next!). Even so it's time consuming - unlike copying CDs, you have to record everything in real time - and I'm getting every snap, crackle and pop from the needle on the surface of a (sometimes quite warped) disc. Well, that's the magic of vinyl. I suppose it's like life: you can choose to focus on the hiss and crackles, or you can choose to enjoy the music instead.

It's a good excuse to go back and look at my collection of records again. It's been a while since I bought anything on vinyl, and most of my stuff dates from 1991 to around 2003. There are some obvious choices for digitisation - I have a bunch of Disco Inferno EPs that I still play relatively frequently - but it's also been nice to rediscover some things that I'd forgotten about (for example the first three Bardots singles, Bang Bang Machine's "Geek" EP, Pale Saints "Hunted", blah blah) and that Suede really did make some amazing music with some brilliant B-sides. (You do know what a B-side is, don't you?).

It's also fun to revisit of the whole rather labour-intensive process of even just playing a record, with its endless manual interventions (remove it from the sleeve - and maybe an inner sleeve - place it on the turntable, check the speed, lift and drop the needle, repeat for side two ...) - it's a reminder of an era when I suppose I felt like I had more time to just sit and listen to music, rather than having it on as background to some other activity.

Of course there's a lot of mediocre stuff in there too, and I'm not sure how far I'll get on even the good stuff before I'm completely fed up with the process. In some cases it might be easier to try and buy the tracks again on CD. But right now I'm making reasonable progress, and it's great that the music that I loved can have a whole new lease of life.

City Swimmers

2009-03-13T20:22:00.003Z

"City Swimmers" photo by Ruth Corney

A couple of evenings ago I watched an interesting little documentary film called "City Swimmers". I'd been trying to get hold of it on DVD, until I discovered that it was available for online viewing via Journeyman on Booserver for the princely sum of a pound.

The film tells the story of the campaign to keep Hampstead Heath Ponds in London open for free swimming in 2004-5, when the Corporation of the City of London (who are responsible for running the heath) were threatening to either close one of the open air ponds or start charging people to use them. As a result the swimming assocations that use the ponds (including the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association, which the film focuses on) began a battle to maintain the free access and keep all three ponds open (there are ponds for women only, men only, and a mixed pond for families).

This campaign coincided with another fight to maintain longer hours of use of the ponds in the absence of lifeguards (particularly in the winter months), which chimed with similar campaigns elsewhere across Britain by swimmers who found themselves increasingly prevented from accessing rivers, lakes and ponds. (It was interesting to see that the campaign to maintain access to Hatchmere Lake also appears in this context in the film - I swam there a couple of times last summer.) While many of these restrictions were in the name of "Health and Safety", they more often turn out to be either local councils trying to insulate themselves from the risk of legal action, or private interests trying to profit from previously public places.

By the end of the film (in mid-2005) it seems that the campaign in Hampstead Heath was at least a partial success, as the Corporation decided to keep the ponds open and institute a policy of "voluntary" charges, at the same time a judge ruled that it was legal for swimmers to use the ponds without a life guard. However I think that the longer term future of the ponds is still at risk (although I'm not fully aware of the current situation), and equally while access to rivers and lakes elsewhere is improving there is still an ongoing campaign to preserve the right to outdoor swimming in many places.

(If you're interested in knowing more about the London Pools Campaign then their website has information about various swimming facilities in and around the capital http://www.londonpoolscampaign.com/, while the River and Lake Swimming Association website has more general information on outdoor swimming http://www.river-swimming.co.uk/.)

Aside from telling the story of these campaigns, the film also features images of the ponds and of the people (and particularly the grand ladies of the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association) swimming at various times of year, from warm summer days (when it is easy to imagine yourself enjoying the park) through to the icy depths of winter (probably not so much). For me these sections showing ordinary people enjoying a swim in the beautiful natural pools sums up a lot of what is great about the activity of swimming. So overall "City Swimmers" was pretty good value for a pound!

Kew and the Zoo too

2009-03-10T15:50:00.002Z

About a week ago I had a wonderful long weekend with Steve and Ingrid, two good friends from university who live near Windsor and who are just the nicest people ever. They had both taken a couple of days off from work for my visit and it was great to spend so much "quality time" with them, since normally we would only have one or two days at most. As a result we were able to take the time to do quite a few things, which included trips to Kew Gardens on the Friday and London Zoo on the Sunday.

I'd been to Kew Gardens with them a few years earlier and it was nice to go back and wander around the various Victorian glass houses - I even faced my fear of heights to wander around the "tree-top walk", which wasn't so bad (but I was glad to get back to terra firma at the end). Much of Kew's grounds are essentially parkland, so if you lived in or around London and were able to make the trip there a few times a year then buying an annual membership would be an excellent investment.

I don't think any of us had ever been to London Zoo before, and I think we were a little ambivalent about the ethics of keeping animals in zoos. However it seemed quite different to how I remember other zoos being when I was a child - there seemed to be fewer of the larger animals (no elephants here, for example), and a lot of effort seems to be going into giving those that remain much more natural (and much larger) environments. One example of this is that the famous Lubetkin Penguin Pool has been deemed no longer suitable for the penguins, and so they have moved to a new and less dangerous pool (the Lubetkin pool is a design classic however and still remains, unused); another is the Snowdon Aviary, which is an impressive wire mesh tent for some of the larger birds. (There is a great page on the London Zoo website about these and other bits of the zoo's architecture.)

It *is* amazing to see many of the animals so close up, and given that the zoo is basically in the middle of London, it seems much bigger than you might think - we spent all day there and didn't quite manage to see everything. So I'd certainly consider going back again in the future.

Aside from the day trips, much of the time was spent just hanging out at their place. I was completely spoilt by their excellent cooking (my measly contributions started at peeling some apples and ended at helping to clear the table) and by the fact that they looked after me pretty much the whole time. Steve also introduced me to a wonderful Playstation game called LittleBigPlanet, which I'd never heard of before but which turned out to be incredibly addictive (as well as being beautifully rendered eye-candy and with a great soundtrack - check out the LittleBigPlanet website, go to "Game Info" and watch the trailers to get a good idea of the game's look'n'feel).

The weather overall was very pleasant for late February, with a goodly share of sunshine - perfect for a bit of cycling around the local area on the Monday. On the way out Steve took me past Dorney Lake near Eton, which is used for rowing practice as well as for triathlons (it also has a really nice cycle track around with a surface that was as smooth as cream to ride along!). But there are lots of other nice places along the Thames too - including the pub we stopped at for a pint on the way back. I finally asked him if he would be my best man when Kyle and I get married - a big thing to ask particularly since other than the fact that it's going to be in New Jersey, we don't even know when the wedding will be yet, but luckily he said yes. Alright!

The weather had turned darker and wetter by Tuesday, they both had to go back to work, and it was time for me to return to Warrington. It was a shame to leave after having such a great time, but I know that we'll all meet up again sometime soon.

Coniston

2009-02-24T20:19:00.004Z

A few of weeks ago my friend Ronan suggested over a post-swim pint that we should go walking somewhere in the Lake District, so last Saturday morning we set off up the M6 motorway for a weekend trip to Coniston. Ever since I'd read Griff Rhys-Jones' book "Mountain" (and saw the great scenery in the companion TV series) I've been thinking about going walking in the Lakes so I was thrilled to be given an opportunity to actually do it.

It's pretty amazing that in just over 2 hours you can travel from the hustle and bustle of Warrington to the relative peace (and spectacular views) of Cumbria. Ronan had the maps and the basic plan - to walk up a small mountain called "The Old Man of Coniston" on Saturday, and to wander around nearby Grizedale Forest on Sunday - and I had all my brand-new gear from Millets (which only added to my feeling of being a complete newbie as far as this whole walking marlarkey was concerned).

This time of year Coniston seemed fairly quiet, which is the way I like it, and the weather was a little cold but otherwise very pleasant. We checked into the Bluebird Lodge guesthouse (a nice little bed-and-breakfast a short walk from the village), paused briefly for a baked potato lunch, and then set off for the summit of The Old Man.

It took us a few hours to ascend from Coniston to the top, which is 803m (2635ft) high. I guess that it is technically a mountain (even more technically, it's actually a "fell", which according to Wikipedia is a particular type of mountain) but the fact that I was able to get to the top (with Ronan's encouragement) makes me feel somehow that it can't really be one. All the same I found it challenging enough, especially towards the top where we were inside the cloud scrambling through left-over snow, and I did felt a sense of pride on reaching the cairn at the summit. Once we'd made it we placed our own stones on the pile (which Ronan told me was the traditional thing to do), and since there wasn't really a view to admire, we went back down again.

It wasn't just about climbing the mountain though, there was a variety of different landscapes along the way - great views back into the valley below, eerily derelict buildings and equipment left over from mining operations, mind-bogglingly enormous piles of slate, and even a small lake (the amusingly mis-named Low Water tarn) above the cloud line. And our pints of beer and dinner of Cumberland sausages followed by cheesecake back in Coniston later that evening tasted all the better.

The next day we enjoyed a more leisurely walk around trails in Grizedale Forest. We stopped for a while at a vantage point, to soak up the views (and to daydream about a more carefree life where you could see this sort of landscape every day), and then back at the car Ronan cooked up some tasty noodles on his portable burner so we could enjoy a warm and hearty meal. Afterwards we took the ferry across Windermere and checked out the town of the same name, which seemed pretty busy for a Sunday afternoon in winter - it made me feel glad that we had decided to stay in Coniston instead.

There wasn't a lot of the day left after that since we needed to get back to Warrington that evening. On the journey home we made a small detour into North Yorkshire to visit the town of Ingleton, most of which - unsurprisingly - seemed to be closed (we were at least able to see the outdoor pool there, though that is closed until May too).

Back at home on Sunday evening I was left feeling pleasantly exhausted, with some great memories and a bunch of nice pictures. Hopefully Ronan will suggest another weekend away doing something similar in the not-too-distant future!

Cupcake Throwdown

2009-02-15T14:56:00.013Z

So much has been going on recently that for a while I completely forgot about Kyle and my unofficial "cupcake throwdown" one evening back at the end of January.

We'd been inspired after reading some online reviews of some of the bakeries in Princeton, in particular The House of Cupcakes and The Bent Spoon. We liked the ones from the House of Cupcakes but a number of the reviewers had compared them unfavourably with the Bent Spoon, so we decided that we would get cupcakes from each location and then have a "taste-off" to compare them ourselves (while also enjoying a sweet treat). The Little Chef bakery doesn't appear to do cupcakes but we also got some pastries from there.

Here's what we got:

The cupcakes from each place are quite different - for me, the House of Cupcakes seems to focus on the cupcake icing, which is deliciously (almost indecently) sugary sweet and which I loved to just let melt in my mouth. The actual sponge is a little bit bland and seems to act mainly as a vehicle to carry the icing, but it's not bad and is quite light.

In contrast the Bent Spoon cakes seemed a bit heavier, and the sponge was moist and tasty while the icing was a bit stiffer and not as sweet. The flavours in The Bent Spoon cupcakes also seemed to be a bit more complex. However overall I personally preferred the cakes from the House of Cupcakes slightly more.

The pastries from The Little Chef were also really really delicious. Well, I'm a sucker for puff pastry and cream (and as an aside, it was a source of amusement to me as a Brit that in the UK Little Chef is a chain of motorway restaurants). Also - as a postscript - a few days later on our way to meet the lawyer Kyle got some more cupcakes, this time from La Bonbonniere, which I think were better than either of the others. But that doesn't mean that I thought the others were bad, and of course it's always good to make up your own mind where food is concerned. Go forth and taste for yourself!

Best Valentines gift ever

2009-02-14T16:35:00.008Z

It's normal that Kyle and I don't get to spend Valentines Day together, but we do still share gifts. This year Kyle sent me a fantastic handmade book that she put together from photos, cuttings along with her inimitable sense of humour. It was a wonderful surprise and full of reminders of places we've been and things we've done over the last 4+ years, plus lots of in-jokes and other funnies that most likely wouldn't make sense to anyone else but which made me laugh so much that my ribs hurt. Like her it's totally fabulous and completely unique.

There are a few more pictures on Flickr (but not the whole thing!). I think it's amazing and the best Valentines gift ever. Thanks Kyle, I love you - happy Valentines Day!

The B of the Bang

2009-02-11T20:18:00.009Z

I heard this evening on the radio that Manchester city council have decided to dismantle and store the B of the Bang, the eye-catching public artwork that currently stands outside the Manchester City stadium.

The sculpture is a prominent feature on the city skyline and is visible from trains leaving Manchester Piccadilly station for Stockport, and was inspired by a quote from the sprinter Lindford Christie, who said he started races "not merely at the 'bang' of the starting pistol, but at 'The B of the Bang'". To me it looks like the glorious cartoon explosion that its name suggests.

Last October I finally made a trip out to see it up close and take some pictures. Disappointingly the sculpture was fenced off, which I found out later was due to safety concerns - some of its enormous steel spikes had come loose shortly after completion in 2005. But it was still an impressive sight and it's sad to hear that it will be taken down, in spite of all the controversy over the cost and other issues that seem to plague public artworks in Britain.

It's not clear when the B of the Bang will be taken down so it's probably worth a trip out there now if you want to see it before it goes. The council have said that the sculpture could be reinstated if the technical problems with the spikes are overcome (for example, replacing them with new ones made from lighter weight materials) however they are unwilling to spend more public funds on it now.

I guess that's fair enough, but I for one will miss its spectacular presence on the Manchester skyline when it's gone and the view is a little less interesting.

Me and KDB

2009-02-09T21:45:00.005Z

Hopefully by now everyone that I know has found out personally from me or Kyle that we are officially engaged (there's a ring and everything!) and that we've started the K1 fiancee visa application that will ultimately allow us to get married in the US and live there as husband and wife. Yaay! (and apologies if I know you and this turns out to be the first that you knew. Sorry.)

Kyle has already written an excellent blog posting about our engagement and the gory details of the visa application process - so if you'd like to know the ins and outs then I'll direct you there rather than trying to rehash them now. Suffice to say that it looks like it will take a while - a long while (as in, 10 to 14 months long) - as well as involving the collection of a whole bunch of documents.

However this girl is worth it, and then some - she's like no-one else I know and I'm so happy that after 5 years of transatlantic to-ing and fro-ing, that she finally said yes to getting married and being together for the rest of our lives. Having her in my life makes it feel richer and more meaningful, and I think that as well as sharing a common outlook on life, wordplay and miming to muzak in the supermarket aisles on a Saturday night, we are also able to bring out the best in each other.

We both know that it won't always be smooth sailing, and right now the process seems very long, but I'm excited about our future beyond that, and I know that after all this time that we can make it work. I love you Kyle!

At least now the process is started - Kyle recieved the USCIS filing receipt for the petition today - and we have a little time still to plan our wedding on the Jersey Shore!

Artworks of Princeton

2009-01-22T14:15:00.013Z

Over the last couple of months I've been taking pictures of the public artworks that are scattered around Princeton, both on and off campus. I'd been aware of some of the more obvious pieces from previous visits (such as the "Marching Figures" outside the University Art Museum), however it turns out that the University has an extensive collection of outdoor sculpture which includes some more well-hidden works. So I began a little personal project to find and photograph as many as I could find.

My starting point was the 1995 online article "Strolling Among Sculpture on Campus" by Jennifer Sheppard, which gives a good overview of many of the pieces as well as hints on where they can be found. I also bought a copy of the "Sculpture of Princeton University" guidebook from the Art Museum shop, which cost around $5 and has drawings and more detailed descriptions for 24 of the works on campus. It also has a map which proved invaluable in locating many of the pieces.

As I've gone along, I've been adding the pictures to a set on Flickr called (unsurprisingly) "Princeton Artworks", as well as building an interactive Google map which shows where each of the artworks are, to the best of my abilities. On my wanderings I also came across what I considered to be artworks but which weren't in the book, for example the many tiger statues that are dotted around campus.

You can click on a marker below (or in a larger size map) to go on your own virtual tour:

View Larger Map

I think that the project made me look at the artworks in a different way than I might have just walking past them every day. Looking for interesting angles for my photographs also gave me a reason to spend more time looking at them, and I think that in some cases this made me appreciate them more - particularly the ones that I initially didn't find that interesting. Also, searching them out gave me an excuse to explore the campus and in doing that I stumbled across other things that I wouldn't otherwise have found.

It's hard to pick favourites, however if I really had to choose then Upstart 2 and Mastadon VI are probably the ones that I liked the most from the official collection. I also liked the metallic tiger statues outside the stadium - it was seeing pictures of these elsewhere that got me started. Of the "serendiptiously found" works, I think maybe Clouds Nine is the one that I would pick as my favourite. But really I think that all the artworks have something in them that I like - I didn't take pictures of the ones that didn't.

You could argue that the project isn't really complete: there were a few pieces that I wasn't able to find, such as Eduardo Paolozzi's "Marok-Marok Miosa" (I think it has been relocated or stored for now), and other sculptures or murals that could also be considered artworks. However for now I think it's enough. So I hope that you enjoy looking at the map and the pictures.

Welcome to the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America

2009-01-21T14:36:00.007Z

You don't usually get advance warning that history is going to be shown live on TV, but yesterday I stayed at home and watched Barack Obama's inauguration proceedings for much of the day. (It was cheaper than going to Washington DC, and warmer).

I don't remember paying much attention to previous US presidential inaugurations so I think that the 10 week gap between the election of a president and the time when they actually take power initially came as a surprise (back in the UK the winners assume power the day after the election). Although I suppose it's intended to smooth the transition from one administration to the next, it seemed to mean that George Bush more or less disappeared from view after November (the odd shoe-flinging incident aside) while Obama has been warming up on the sidelines, not yet in the game.

I really enjoyed watching yesterday's inauguration events and the carnival atmosphere that surrounded it - on TV the crowds were so large that the colours were strobing on the small screen in Kyle's bedroom - and I'll admit that I also clapped and whistled along at home. As with all these formal state occasions there are certain traditions to observe and rituals to be performed, and I had some interest in seeing the mechanics of the transfer of power (for example, I learned that the transfer occurs at 12 noon regardless of when the incomg president is actually sworn in). But what I found more than a little thrilling was to actually see those rituals come to life, and to feel the oath of office become something more than just words spoken by the latest successful job applicant. I can't compare it with previous years but yesterday with Obama it felt like a powerful connection was made with the past, all the way back to the origins of the United States, that the presidency is not just a job, it's a calling.

Something else that struck me again was just how historically significant the election of a black man to the office of president really is here; I don't know if I would have really appreciated how strongly people feel about it if I hadn't spent time here. But aside from that I think that Obama is someone special. I find his speeches really inspiring - he appeals to great ideals - but I also sense that he is a pragmatist: he seems to recognise that there is a real opportunity now to move forward by laying aside blame for past mistakes (whoever made them) and instead looking together for how things can be made better.

I like that he is pushing the responsibility to make a difference back onto the American people, treating them as adults and reminding them of the role that they have to play to fix the mess that everyone is in now: the greater world is made through individual actions and decisions. If the previous administration made people feel powerless over the course of their nation then I think Obama sees his first job as reversing that, to make people feel that what they do matters again.

Today is Obama's first real day in office and so we finally get to see him in action, and see how he lives up to the expections that people have placed on him. To me Barack Obama feels like a very different kind of politician, someone who sees politics and the office of president as the medium through which he can achieve greater good, rather than being ends in themselves. I hope that as a result we'll ultimately see a model of a very different kind of politics, although it won't happen overnight (if ever). It's an exciting prospect.

Mo' Snow

2009-01-20T14:42:00.004Z

We've had more snow here in New Jersey over the last couple of days and it looks really pretty, as long as you don't have to get anywhere in a hurry.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, which is a public holiday for many people, including the schools, so I saw quite a few families out playing with small children in the snow. It wasn't enough to give Kyle a "snow day" off from work but at least some students at Princeton were able to build some cute snow-people. (Why is that we assume that the largest figure is the dad, the smallest one is the child, and the one in between is the mum?)

Today isn't a public holiday, but judging from the pictures on the television a lot of people have taken the day off anyway to see the inauguation of Barack Obama in Washington DC today. They don't have any snow but it is pretty cold both here and there, so I'm glad to be inside watching the events on TV this morning - it's like New Year all over again!

Aloha â hui hou! Hawaii Trip Retrospective

2009-01-19T14:01:00.016Z

Last night Kyle posted links to both her and my photos from the Hawaii vacation that we took during the second half of November. Shame on me for not writing something earlier about that trip after I finished posting my own photos. It feels like it was a long while ago now however it's good to reminisce a little about good times, so here goes.

We've been to Hawaii a few times now - this was my fourth trip with Kyle - and people often seem aghast and think that you must be loaded to be able to do it so many times. The truth is that Hawaii is an expensive place to visit and stay, but saved up some money for this trip and offset the cost by using frequent flyer miles and travelling during the off season (Hawaii's winters are still better than many of the recent summers I remember back home in the UK).

During our two week stay we spent a week each on the islands of O'ahu and Maui, with a day trip to Kaua'i (pronounced to rhyme with "Hawaii", if it helps). We stayed in Waikiki in a really great studio apartment in the Pacific Monarch, a few blocks back from the beach with a really great view of the ocean as well as the mountains. It was great to wake up in morning and be able to look out over Waikiki, and spend time having breakfast on the balcony.

Waikiki is often looked down on as not being the "real Hawaii", and it's certainly true that it's not particularly representative of the islands as a whole. It's also true that the beachfront does look like a giant stripmall. But Waikiki does have a kind of mad energy that is really fun to experience, and both Kyle and I love it.

We also found a few gems that were new to us: the nightly free hula shows on the beach front were a real eye-opener, as they featured real Hawaiian performers (both musicians and dancers) performing a variety of modern and traditional songs and hula dances. I love the fact that Hawaii has this whole traditional culture and I felt like I understood more about it after seeing these shows. There was also a great open market in Kapiolani Park (past the Aquarium) on the Sunday which featured crafts and local goods. Another treat was seeing the King's Guard at the Kings Village, who lower the Hawaiian flag each night and then perform a routine where they juggle with their rifles. Afterwards they pose for photos and when you get to hold one of the guns you realise how heavy they are. So it's pretty amazing.

(Also in the King's Village we found a small musuem of vintage Hawaiiana, including a lot of cheesy stuff from the 1950s to the 1970s. I really loved seeing that stuff! But I think that the museum was only temporary, so I don't know if it will still be there in future.)

The other great thing that we did while on O'ahu was to take two of the Robert's Hawaii tours. The first one was the Grand Circle Island Tour, which takes you by bus around O'ahu to see the rest of the island outside of Waikiki. Kyle and I had ventured into O'ahu on our previous trips so we'd seen some of the places before, but still this was really great - beyond the city the island is very green - and our driver Duke was a local Hawaiian who was able to take us to places that I think we would have had some difficulty finding otherwise. He was also able to give us lots of backstory as well as a favour of what it's like to live in Hawaii these days. Basically, it may be paradise, but if you're a regular working stiff then the wages aren't so great.

The second tour we took from O'ahu was actually a day trip to the island of Kaua'i, which Kyle really wanted to visit since she had heard so many people say that it is their favourite island. This trip involved getting up at some ungodly hour to catch a plane to Kaua'i, before getting on the bus there. The great thing about the tours though is that the Roberts people really look after you, so long as you turn up at the start. On Kaua'i we were on a small bus with a great driver called Nani, who also had lots of stories about growing up and living on the island (including stories about the storms and how things have changed over the last 40 years). She was also incredibly helpful, taking pictures of people (even when they weren't in tour group).

Kaua'i itself was really beautifu, the most lush and green of all the islands that we visited, and we were part of a great tour group that included some Australians and even an ex-pat Brit from Birkenhead. It wasn't an island that I knew much about before going there but I think it would be fun to visit for longer than a day if we ever get to go back again.

After spending a week on O'ahu, we spent the rest of our vacation on the island of Maui. This was also a new island for Kyle and me, and although we'd done some research it was still pretty much unknown territory for us both. It's always a surprise to me that in many ways each of the islands is so different from the others, both in terms of the geography (which also influences how you can get around) and also just the things that you can see there. We stayed in a condo apartment in a small development in Kihei, which suffered from a few air circulation issues but which I really enjoyed, and also felt like a good base location from which to explore different parts of the island. (Across the road there was also a great Indian restuarant called Shangrila-By-The-Sea.)

We did quite a lot on Maui: we visited the 'Iao Valley and saw the 'Iao Needle (the guidebooks make it look like an arduous hike but it's about a 5 minute walk from the carpark), visited the town of Lahaina (home of the world's second largest Banyan tree) and the Maui aquarium (expensive, but a great place to see turtles up close), and went to the summit of Haleakala to watch the sun rise over the clouds. We also had lunch at Longhi's in Wailea (expensive but well worth it) and took a trip on the Reefdancer, which is a "semi-sub" that lets you see the reef and its inhabitants without having to don snorkel or SCUBA gear.

(The Reefdancer trip was also fun because the woman diver turned out to be yet another Brit, who was mistaken for an Australian by a lot of people on the boat. When I talked to her she asked me "Which part of Australia are you from?", and I told her "The same part as you.")

We took our last Roberts tour on Maui, this time a trip on "the Road to Hana", which is actually a circular trip around the south-eastern "bulb" of Maui which passes through the sleepy little town of Hana. The guidebooks all rave about driving this road, which features many different waterfalls and other sights on the way, but both Kyle and I were glad we took the tour rather than driving it ourselves since the road is narrow (sometimes only a single vehicle wide), winding, and often yet close to the edge of high cliffs! Hats off to our driver Tai who drove us around whilst providing an entertaining commentary. I did wish a few times that we'd had more time to stop in some of the places, but the great thing about the tour was to get a chance to see so much in a single day.

Our last day in Hawaii was actually Thanksgiving, so we watched a bit of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV and then went down to the beach for an hour. It was pretty quiet and we watched a lone snorkeler and a couple of kayakers paddling around in the ocean.

In spite of having spent over 2 weeks there, we were sad to leave Hawaii at the end of the trip (although snagging first class seats with my frequent flyer miles on the way back took the edge off a little), I was already thinking about what I'd like to do next time. I think that the tours were the biggest eye-opener for me - they can be expensive, but with Roberts at least you definitely get what you pay for, plus what you're saving is your own time in Hawaii. I think in future if there is a specific activity that I want to do then I would look at seeing if there is a tour to do that activity.

So that's our Hawaiian vacation in a (rather large) nutshell. If you're interested in checking out the pictures then mine are on Flickr:

The "best of Hawaii" album (about 112 pictures, around 5 minutes if you watch a slideshow)
The full Hawaii album (around 270 pictures and videos, only for the committed!

Kyle also has best of Hawaii and full Hawaii albums, as well as blog postings from the first week of the trip (starting with this one) that have more details about what we got up to. Enjoy!

New York City

2009-01-13T19:52:00.004Z

Today my friend Christine sent me a link about the store "Love Saves The Day", which I'd gone into with her a couple of weeks ago when I'd visited New York and met up with her and her fiance Chris. It turns out that the place is closing soon. I wish that I'd taken a picture when I was there, since it was packed to the rafters with all kinds of kitsch stuff from the seventies and eighties (read: my childhood and teenage years), including old copies of Penthouse and vast numbers of original plastic "Star Wars" figures. (I think that there are still a whole bunch of mine left back at my parents house, and they may actually be worth something now.) It's was a cool place and sad to think that it will be gone soon.

Anyway: I'd meant to write something about that trip shortly afterwards, but really I do suck at blogging. It came out of an offer Chris had made to meet up with him one day for a visit to the city between Christmas and New Year. I was able to take the Surburban Transit bus from Princeton directly to the Port Authority bus terminal, which was easy for me.

First stop was lunch at the Hell's Kitchen location of Vynl (that's not a typo), which was glitzy glam, all mirrorballs and glass. Then we headed off to the Rockefeller Center to see the famous Christmas tree, and visited Radio City, where Chris suggested we take the tour so we could look around inside. Radio City is an Art Deco mecca and well worth the visit - I took a few pictures but I could have taken more - and we even got to see some a little of the Christmas Show and the Rockettes performing one of their trademark set pieces (collapsing in slow motion at the end of the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers - I didn't know that this was so famous, but Kyle knew what it was the instant I described it), followed by a brief opportunity to meet a Rockette.

Our tour guide talked a lot about the design and engineering of the auditorium, and Chris told me that it's truly amazing, so it was a little disappointing not to be able to actually go into it and see for myself. After the tour we were turned loose to wander around the lobby of the building for a bit. It was really neat to be able to see so much of the interior still looking good in all its 1930s goodness.

After leaving Radio City we met up with Christine to wander the streets looking for bars (as well as visiting "Love Saves the Day" briefly). Perhaps I should have tried to see more but New York is a pretty big place and I was only there for the afternoon - besides which, who's to say that visiting a few bars isn't as equally valid an experience as visiting the Metropolitian Museum of Art? It was fun just to walk around the streets, ride in a couple of taxis and talk politics over a drink.

Anyway, it was a great day out for me and my two hosts were excellent guides who also bought all the drinks, so I owe them big - thanks guys if you're reading this. Unfortunately I don't know if I'll have a chance to see them again before I head back to the UK but hopefully I'll catch up with them time later in the year - maybe in New York again, when the weather is slightly warmer!

Plastic Fantastic: "Addicted to Plastic"

2009-01-12T01:57:00.007Z

On Friday evening Kyle and I were back at Princeton Library to see the "US festival premiere" of "Addicted to Plastic", as part of the Princeton Environmental Film Festival. The previous evening's events had drawn quite a crowd (see my previous posting) but for this event the room was packed, with people even sitting in the aisle and along the walls.

"Addicted to Plastic" seemed a bit more focused than the "Trashed" film, in that it concentrated solely on the manufacture, use and disposal of plastic products. It begins with a trip to the North Pacific Tropical gyre, a region in the middle of the Pacific Ocean which due to the action of ocean current systems has become an enormous "garbage patch" of discarded plastics.

Essentially anything that gets washed out to sea eventually ends up in the gyre. As the film points out, for a material that is supposedly disposable plastic is incredibly durable - it doesn't break down naturally, so every piece of plastic ever made still exists somewhere. In the gyre large pieces of plastic can be seen floating on the surface (some now homes to marine life like limpets, mussels and crabs) but mostly the plastic objects are broken into smaller and smaller pieces which are either eaten by fish and birds which mistake the fragments for food, or eventually become so small that they form a "soup" of plastic particles that are absorbed by filter feeders such as jellyfish.

This is bad news in lots of ways - at a macro level, the birds ingest large amounts of plastic products which fill their stomachs and kill both them and their offspring, while at a micro level the plastics also bind toxins at much higher concentrations than the surrounding seawater. So animals at the bottom of the food chain which consume the poisoned plastics contain high levels of toxins which are propagated up the food chain (ultimately to us).

"Addicted to Plastic" uses the state of the gyre as a starting point to investigate the origins of modern plastics (initially a way to use the waste products of fuel production), the reasons why we now consider them to be disposable (the very ubitiquity of plastic products makes us blind to them), the effects that large amounts of plastics in our environment has on us physiologically (for example, via the leaching of chemicals from plastics into our water and food), and what the future might be (for example, better recycling efforts and the development of "bioplastics" which are biodegradable).

After the screening the director Ian Connacher got up for a lively Q&A session. He was a witty and engaging speaker and I think gave some great answers to the questions that came up, as well as elaborating on some of the things that in my opinion weren't covered so deeply in the film. His feeling was that the solutions should include better recycling of plastics along with increased use of the new environmentally-friendly plastics. He touched on some of the frustrations of current recycling efforts, and in particular the distinction between "true" recycling (where for example used plastic bottles could be recycled into new plastic bottles) and "downcycling" (where the recovered material is lower-grade and cannot be used for the same products).

(Interestingly though the one potential solution that he didn't seem to talk much about was that of reducing consumption. I don't know why, as it seems obvious that the less we consume the less there should be to discard.)

"Addicted to Plastic" was a really great documentary. Afterwards I think I realised again how ignorant I am about the origins and effects of the plastic products that I use and that I throw away, and I'd recommend the film to anyone that is interested in learning more after reading this. In the meantime, it's pretty easy to find out about the state of the North Pacific Tropical gyre, which is the principal image that stayed with me after watching it - just type the phrase into Google - but here's a 2m:40s film on YouTube about the garbage patch anyway, just to get you started.

Princeton Environmental Film Festival

2009-01-09T14:31:00.021Z

Yesterday Kyle and I went to see some of the events at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, which is taking place at Princeton Library (though since she had to work, I saw some of them on my own).

The first was Tom Weidlinger's film "Swim for the River", which followed a guy called Chris Swain during his attempt to swim the length of the Hudson River in 2006. As part of this effort Swain comes into contact with the various communities along with the effects of industrial use of the river both in the past and in the present day. A couple of things that he discovers on his trip are pretty shocking, for example the massive amounts of industrial waste being pumped into the river from a factory at Glenn's Falls, and an underground oil spill leaking into the water at Newtown Creek. But equally depressing was the fact that none of this is particularly hidden, most people just don't seem to see it any more - they're no longer connected to the river.

I was interested in the film because it reminded me of the growing outdoor swimming movement in the UK which broke into the mainstream last year. The Outdoor Swimming Society is one example of many local and national organisations promoting the benefits of outdoor swimming while also campaigning for better public access and cleaner water. I think that there are similar problems in the UK to those highlighted in "Swim for the River", to do with people not feeling a sense of connection with the lakes and rivers around them. I think that you care more about something if you have to swim in it. After the film Jim Waltman of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association led a discussion and said that he was inspired by the film to do something similar here, so I hope that goes well.

The rest of the day seemed more focused on "trash". The second event I saw was a talk on "Garblogging" by Leila Darabi, who has a trash-related blog at everydaytrash.com. Much of her talk was a shout-out to various other "garbloggers" (who include artists, "dumpster divers", and people who are just trying to live sustainably) but it was also interesting to hear her own story of how she got into writing on the subject in the first place.

In the evening we went to see Bill Kirkos' film "Trashed" (warning: the website has a soundtrack so you may wish to turn the sound down on your computer before visiting it) which is broadly about the waste management industry in North America. The screening included a short Q&A with the director himself, and was followed by a talk by author Elizabeth Royte about her books "Garbage Land" and "Bottlemania". There was a lot to take in from both the film and the talk, but one of the general points that I took away was again just disconnected we are from both the production and disposal of things that we buy and consume. Where does this stuff come from? What's required to make it? Where does it go once we throw it out? We're so habituated to throwing things away that we're almost blind to the sheer volumes that we're disposing of. And why do we think of some things (particularly plastics) as being throwaway in the first place?

I think that "Trashed" had more immediate impact because as a film it was able to show things that are normally unseen - the size of landfills and the amount of rubbish being taken there. It's pretty depressing stuff. But there were some hopeful things too, like Ray Anderson's company Interface transforming themselves into a sustainable enterprise.

I won't say that I had any kind of epiphany or that I'm suddenly going to transform my life. I'm still processing what I saw and heard yesterday, and the main feeling I'm left with is that I'm pretty ignorant about the impact that I have on the world with the way that I live. I find myself wondering if the proliferation of blogs about sustainable living reflects the fact that it's neither obvious nor straightforward to make a big difference. But that's no reason not to try, so I'm going to check out what other people are doing (beginning with the advice on Sustainable Dave's site) and start from there.

2009: looking back, looking forward

2009-01-07T16:20:00.005Z

Happy New Year everyone! I realise that it's a little late, but it's taken me a few days to get adjusted to the fact that it's now 2009.

The start of the year seems like a good time to look back at the last 12 months and think about the things that I would have blogged about at the time. Some of the nonsense that I got up to included cycling 90 miles across the Pennines from Warrington to Chesterfield with my friends Ronan and Charles, and driving 140 miles to Cardigan Bay in Wales to take swimming classes with Swimming Without Stress. As a result of the swimming classes, which are based on the Shaw Technique, I also started taking lessons in the Alexander Technique. Aside from that I went swimming outdoors for the first time (if you don't count the sea): two swims in Hatchmere Lake in Cheshire (the first in May involved a 26-mile round-trip cycle ride from my house and back, the second in September was with a friend and the water was chilly to say the least). I also made a trip out to Nantwich's outdoor brine swimming pool at the end of the summer, and watched the demolition of the Tinsley cooling towers near Sheffield.

And of course, I have this great opportunity to make an extended visit to New Jersey to spend time with Kyle, which has been really fantastic and which included our two-week vacation in Hawaii (which, um, I have still failed to blog about, although some pictures are available if you're interested). It has been and continues to be great to be able to spend so much time together. That adventure goes on!

Of course as well as looking back, New Year is also a time for making resolutions and setting goals for the next 12 months. I don't usually bother with any of that stuff, but over the last few days I thought about a few changes that I'd like to make in life. Many of them are quite simple and small but I think that they could make a big difference to me if I keep them up. They include resolving to talk to people at the swimming pool when they join my lane and then start swimming around apparently at random. I'd also like to stay more focused on finishing projects that I start (sort of "doing less with more"), and remember that saying yes to one thing often means saying no to something else. I'd also like to cut down on my consumption (I was particularly inspired last year by Kyle's last year resolution to reduce her bottled water consumption).

There are some other things that are a bit more specific. I'd like to find ways to enjoy my swimming more again, and to get back to practising my Alexander Technique exercises more regularly (as well as taking the lessons again). I want to answer my emails more promptly (already doing ok with that) and be more spontaneous with my blog postings (that last one's going to be tough I'll admit - this post has already taken seven days to write). I'd also like to try boxing (but more the training than actually fighting with another person) and to finish and deploy the web application that I'm (sporadically) working on right now.

I realise that most of these aren't really tangible goals yet with, y'know, real deadlines and stuff. But then this is life and not project management. And I know that research indicates that both writing things down and publicising your resolutions makes it more likely that you'll stick to them. And since one of my resolutions is to blog more spontaneously, I'm going to end there for now - and simply wish you all the best in your own attempts to make the world a better place in 2009.

Good luck!

Helvetica

2008-12-24T15:03:00.014Z

I finally watched the DVD of "Helvetica" yesterday, it was pretty interesting (as well as having a kickin' soundtrack). It's a documentary about the Helvetica font, which was created in 1957 by Max Miedinger and Edüard Hoffmann for the Haas type foundry in Switzerland (the name "Helvetica" is taken from the Latin for Switzerland) and eventually took over the world - at least that's how it appears. The film is filled with images of the signs, posters and notices that fill our everyday lives, with Helvetica being used just about everywhere.

The film features interviews with various font and graphic designers (including the guy who worked on Verdana with Microsoft, Matthew Carter), talking about the history and usage of Helvetica. It was intended to be a neutral font with no intrinsic meaning: a clean, legible and "rational" typeface that could be used in a wide variety of signage. (Although not mentioned in the film, the British "Transport" font - used since the 1960s on all UK roadsigns - was also created in 1957 and shares similar design aims of legibility.)

Some people love Helvetica and some hate it, often for the same reasons. For some it's neutral, a blank canvas onto which a designer can impose his or her vision; for others it's a safe, lazy choice that indicates a lack of imagination and creativity; for others still it's a thing of beauty, the "perfect font". Some even see it as oppressive, almost fascist - the font for faceless corporations and government organisatons - and for them using it is less a design decision and more a political statement (I find that a bit hard to take seriously).

The use of Helvetica really took off in the 1960s, and it was interesting to compare (for example) the adverts for Coca-Cola in the 50s with those in the 60s. One of the commentators in the film observes that the rise of the personal computer - and the use of Helvetica as default in so many publishing packages - is another factor in the continuing ubitiquity of the typeface. Interestingly, the web wasn't really mentioned at all, although arguably that's where a lot of people come into contact with typography these days.

Personally I like how Helvetica looks, but I do think that it's also a bit overused sometimes. I believe that the choice of font can contribute to creating a particular mood about the text - but then, I also feel that the shape of words and paragraphs, and how they look on the page, also creates an impression aside from the actual content. So I enjoyed hearing one interviewee wax lyrical about the letterforms, the shapes "inside" and "between" the letters, and how even the spacing between the letters can change the character of the typeface.

Kyle thinks it's hilarious that I watched an entire film about a font. However if you're into fonts then you might like to try the What Font Are You? game from the PBS website (I came out as "Helvetica", which is "classic", "reliable" but also "slightly boring" - not sure if that's a good thing or not). I saw from the website that the director's next film is "Objectified" and is about industrial design of everyday objects (toothbrushes, iPhones etc). I've read a couple of books like "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, and "Small Things Considered" by Henry Petroski and this sounds like it might cover similar ground, so it could be interesting too.

Helvetica film website
[v]ocabulary blog posting about the soundtrack which includes the track listing

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-23T18:35:00.015Z

I'm so grateful to Kyle for repairing the buttons on the one coat that I have here - over recent days the temperature has plummeted, and the snow that fell at the weekend is now covered by a hard shell of ice. In the bright winter sun it looks beautiful, like giant cake frosting, and gives a satisfying crunch underfoot, but it's at the same time it can be very slippery (and I also saw alarmingly large chunks suddenly sliding off the rooftop of the nearby KFC and crashing to the ground when I went out for milk earlier). It certainly feels like winter now - appropriately, since winter officially began with the solstice on the 21st.

It's only a few days now until Christmas and everyone seems to be wishing us "Happy Holidays!", which to me has always felt like one of those quintessentially American turns of phrase - it's hard to imagine someone in the UK saying it. For Britons it's "Merry Christmas!" all the way. But "Happy Holidays" does reflect some of the multicultural flavour of the US, and the fact that Christmas isn't the only December holiday (religous or otherwise).

For example, if you go into a card shop looking for a Christmas card you will most likely also see a very nice selection of "Happy Hanukka!" cards, since the Jewish festival of Hanukka falls in December (it started on the 22nd this year). Then on the 26th December the week-long African American holiday called Kawanzaa begins. I'd never heard of Kawanzaa until I saw a poster for it in Princeton, but apparently it has been celebrated here as an "alternative" holiday to Christmas since it was instituted in 1966.

(At the same time I'd note that there are some British traditions that Americans don't share, for example they don't seem to have Boxing Day or Christmas crackers.)

Historically the Winter Solstice has been a significant date for many cultures and has been marked by various feasts and festivals through the ages. So I suppose the phrase "Happy Holidays!" is a good way to wish someone well in the spirit of the season, without reference to a particular religion or belief system. It also seems quite appropriate for people celebrating a form of "commercialised Christmas", which Kyle and I like to refer to as "Giftmas", and which retains the traditions of tree-decoration, gift-giving, over-consumption and angst whilst dispensing with just about all religious elements.

Anyway, in spite of how near we are to the 25th, I'm still waiting for Kyle to finish working on Christmas Eve before I can really feel like Christmas is here. And it's a little odd not to be spending Christmas with my folks this year, for the first time ever - but I'm still thinking of them and wishing them well. Happy Holidays everyone, wherever you are!

Foods of the World

2008-12-21T16:15:00.014Z

Kyle and I went to the local Stop and Shop supermarket last night for our weekly shop, and I finally remembered to take my camera to get some pictures of the "International Foods" aisle there. (I felt a little concerned that someone might be upset that I was taking pictures of the shelves, but Kyle assured me that it would be okay as long as I wasn't noting down the prices.)

So what? you might be thinking. What has always fascinated me about this particular section of the store (aside from a sign indicating the sale of "international beans") is that it includes a selection of "British" items such as jam, PG Tips tea, and various digestive biscuits, crackers and chocolate products (click on the image to see more detail):

A lot of brands really are international, including Tetley teabags, which are actually in the main tea-and-coffee section. I'd always believed that Tetley was some parochial Yorkshire-based firm after seeing all their 1980's TV adverts, but it turns out that they're actually an Indian-owned multinational company which is also the second largest tea company in the US. Twix and KitKats are also available here.

But it's interesting to me that in a world of global brands like Starbucks and Macdonalds, familiar things such as Bounty bars and PG Tips tea can still be "foreign foods" to people here. It makes them seem more special than they would be on supermarket shelves back home. I wouldn't try to make a case that Jacobs crackers and Lion bars are somehow significant symbols of British identity, but seeing them is a pleasant reminder of back home every time we go shopping - as if there is a supermarket shelf in the Stop and Shop that's selling a little taste of England!

Coffee Shop Culture

2008-12-16T20:38:00.021Z

I've been hanging out in some of the coffee shops in Princeton, such as Starbucks, Chez Alice and Small World Coffee, as a change from the University cafes. They're good places to sit and drink tea or coffee while reading, playing with a laptop, or just pondering existence (yes, it can be a tough life sometimes).

I'm not enough of a connoisseur to really comment on the coffee, but I'm intrigued by the fact that each place has its own atmosphere and its own rhythms. For example, Chez Alice is also a cake shop, so there are outrageous-looking wedding cakes in the windows as well as more modest ones that you can have with a drink. It seems to attract people of all ages who are taking time out from shopping or who are meeting up with friends, so while there's some background chatter it's a nice place to sit and read for a while.

In contrast, Small World Coffee seems to be a much busier place. In fact, I'd almost describe it as raucous: there's plenty of background music competing with what feels like dozens of simulataneous conversations, and people are constantly coming and going (including a share of "laptop campers" - people who park themselves for a few hours at a table and tap away on their laptops while sipping on their drink of choice - sometimes I'm one too).

They seem serious about their beverages here too: I had a latte there that came in a glass with no handle, and yesterday my tea order came in an elaborate set of lab-like glassware along with a cup and saucer.

Starbucks is also friendly to laptop campers and doesn't seem to mind people plugging their computers into the wall sockets, but it's a bit more subdued than Small World Coffee. I'll have to admit that I'd always harboured a somewhat fuzzy and rather lazy prejudice against Starbucks, as a "Macdonalds for coffee drinkers" and for that whole "tall, grande, venti" nonsense (though this never extended as far as actually boycotting their products). But recently my attitude towards them has softened - for example, at every one of the Starbucks where we've asked for tap water, the staff have always provided it to us for free without any argument (and in a fancy Starbucks-branded plastic cup complete with lid and straw, no less).

Of course they also vary depending on the time of day, with the ebb and flow of customers going about their business, and I try to avoid what I think will be the busiest times. Maybe if you're really into your coffee then you might have a different take these places, but I like the fact that they're all different and that there's something to suit whatever mood you happen to be in.

Now, is it time for another double-expresso-mocha-choco-latte?

Bettie Page

2008-12-14T16:53:00.019Z

It was sad to read that the 1950s pin-up queen Bettie Page died last Thursday in hospital in Los Angeles. Even if you don't recognise her name it's likely that you'll know her image - "killer curves and coal-black bangs" with a smile that always looked like she was having fun even in the most bizarre of pictures.

She pretty much disappeared from the public eye after the 1950s, while at the same time the popularity of her pictures has soared. This has had the curious effect of freezing her image in time, so even though she died at the age of 85, she still remains the iconic young and playfully seductive pin-up. I think that part of her appeal is summed up in the quote from a retrospective article from Reuters: "Bettie Page embodied the stereotypical wholesomeness of the Fifties and the hidden sexuality straining beneath the surface."

The news of her passing can be read in lots of different places (including the BBC, where I took the picture from), however I think that one of the fullest tributes is the obituary at http://www.bettiepage.com/ - well worth reading if you're interested in knowing more about the life and times of "the notorious Bettie Page".

Warm weather, suddenly

2008-12-11T02:17:00.018Z

After several very cold (around 30-40F) but dry days here in New Jersey, last night and today have been wet and unseasonably mild, with temperatures reaching the mid 60s.

It seems really strange to me - back in England you just don't suddenly get spring-like weather in the middle of winter. Nobody else seems particularly perturbed - apparently it's due to southerly winds blowing (relatively) warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe they're just enjoying while it lasts, since it's already getting colder again this evening.

In the meantime I thought that I would take advantage of the rain to get some pictures of things reflected in puddles, loosely inspired by M.C. Escher's lithograph "Three Worlds". My photos weren't ever going to be a patch on Escher's original, but it was an interesting exercise and provided an excuse to stop and look at some familiar things in a slightly different way.

The forecast for tomorrow and the rest of the week is more rain, perhaps even snow, which sounds more like winter to me. Perhaps I'm just odd but personally I prefer the colder weather. This warm stuff just doesn't seem quite right in December - and certainly not like it's nearly Christmas!

Stars on 78

2008-12-07T04:32:00.009Z

Kyle is going though one of her periodic rounds of ebaying at the moment (well, 'tis the season). She often gets interesting stuff to sell from her parents and their neighbours, which this time includes a box of about thirty 78rpm records.

As someone who used to be an avid buyer of vinyl this is a slice of history. Most of my music collection pre-1997 consists of 33 and 45 rpm records (these days it's almost exclsuively cds and downloads), and I've always felt a lot of affection for vinyl discs. Admittedly vinyl is increasingly anarchronistic these days, but I still enjoy picking out some long-unheard record and giving it a spin on my turntable.

A lot of it has to be pure nostalgia on my part. Viewed at a purely practical level, as simple containers for music cds are infinitely more convenient. And while I've heard the arguments that analogue is far richer than digital, the sad fact is most often neither my record player nor the discs themselves are of sufficient quality to match the clean sound that comes as standard with cds.

But it made me think that maybe sometimes there's more to listening to music than just hearing the sounds. Taking a record out of its sleeve, putting it on the turntable and dropping the needle takes a little more time and effort than simply popping a cd into a machine and pressing play, and I only tend to do it nowadays if I feel I have a bit of time to stop and listen. There's also a more direct physical engagement with the process. I'm not saying that it's better experience, just different, and that sometimes it's good to stop and listen to music rather than simply treating it like a background soundtrack to life.

Anyway, back to these 78 rpm records. They feature various artists that I'd never heard of before who turned out to be big names in the 1950s, such as Fran Warren and Claude Thornhill. Physically the discs remind me of the 10" EPs that I own, but the most noticeable difference is how heavy and substantial the 78s are in comparison.

Since we don't have any way to play these records, we don't know what condition they're in. But hopefully they'll still sound good and will end up with someone who loves hearing music on old vinyl discs and has the time to enjoy them. For me, it's just been great to have a chance to see a little bit of recording history up close and personal.

Electricity

2008-12-05T14:30:00.007Z

Bzzt! I keep getting zapped at home by static electricity discharge, some days so frequently that I feel like I'm taking part in some sort of Pavlovian experiment. I get charged up with static while shuffling around the house and then get a small shock when I touch something metallic (e.g. light switchplate screws, washing machine/tumble dryer, metal blinds, girlfriend and occasionally even my laptop). Sometimes there's even a visible spark and an audible crackle.

I think that understanding something is the first step in addressing it, so yesterday morning I decided to do some research. Initial results suggest that the static buildup only happens to when I wear socks and/or slippers, and only when I'm upstairs (which has different carpeting to the downstairs). Although my fleece crackles with static when I take it off it doesn't seem to be a factor in this case, so it looks like the buildup is principally due to the interaction between the upstairs carpet and what I'm wearing on my feet.

Looking on the web I read that the accumulation of static charges by clothing or footwear is most likely to happen in dry atmospheres such as heated houses in winter. Humidification and ionization of the air might help but seem a bit impractical in this case - the suggestion of wearing cotton or linen rather than wool, silk or synthetic materials seems more realistic. Or I could walk around barefoot, however this has its own problems in the winter.

I suppose that the alternative to prevention is mitigation. One suggestion was to turn off light switches with your knuckles to minimise the pain of any discharge (I try to present the flat of my hand at the moment) or else touching the metal surface with a key or other metallic object so that any spark doesn't directly come from your skin (I hadn't thought of that before).

But I think that I'd rather find a way to stop it altogether, before I train myself to instinctively avoid touching all the things listed above (especially the girlfriend).

Ma ka hana ka `ike

2008-12-04T05:46:00.017Z

Kyle and I came back almost a week ago from our most excellent two week holiday to Hawaii, and as I predicted pretty much all the trees are bare now. New Jersey is nice but so much colder than the islands (even though it's winter both here and there), and since the time difference is the same as that between New Jersey and the UK, I've also been experiencing a degree of jetlag (part of the reason why I'm blogging in the middle of the night).

When we first got back I had this idea that I would get all my photos uploaded to Flickr and then write a big blog posting describing my most favourite parts of our trip. In a way this "review" part is my way of finishing my holiday. But sorting the pictures out has turned out to be a much bigger job than I'd thought (I don't know why, since it's always taken me forever after every other trip) and didn't want to post the summary of the trip until I'd done that, and meanwhile there are other things I wanted to write about that are happening now.

Basically I've been suffering from blog constipation. I suppose I have this dumb idea that I have to do everything in "proper order", which in this case means posting stuff in strict chronological order. And for some reason today was particularly demoralising and I was beginning to feel really fed up with the whole process (added to that, I got kicked out of my lane partway through swimming this evening, to make way for a class - gah!).

Then this evening Kyle and I watched "The Daily Show", which had Arianna Huffington on as she's promoting a book about blogging. (She's the editor of a political blog called the Huffington Post, which I've never read.) Aside from being good fun to watch, she suggested that blogging can be about just writing what you think now, without overanalysing, and think that's what I needed to hear. Also I've been thinking about a Hawaiian phrase that I've been turning over in my mind for the last few days: "Ma ka hana ka `ike" - literally, "in the work, the knowing", but meaning "one learns by doing. Participate!".

So: I will finish sorting my Hawaii photos and I will write a bit about the trip. But I'll try not to let that get in the way of writing about other stuff in the meantime (I guess that's some kind of lame epiphany).

Ok, and now I'm off back to bed. Sweet dreams!

New Jersey is beautiful in the Fall

2008-11-12T15:53:00.010Z

All week I've been emailing people telling them how beautiful New Jersey looks this autumn - at least this particular corner of it. The colours of the leaves are vibrant shades of yellow, red, orange and even pink. I gather that New England is reknowned for its bright Fall leaves but I can't believe that it can get much better than what I've seen here in the last few weeks. Kyle tells me that this is "peak week" for the leaves, so when we get back from our two week holiday I expect to see that the trees are all bare.

Green Lady with Snake

2008-11-07T14:50:00.011Z

I've finally discovered how to set things up to allow me to post photos from my account on Flickr directly to Blogger. I had kept going around and around in circles, looking up FAQs on both sites without any success, but the solution turned out to be embarrassingly straightforward - I'd simply failed to click on the correct link.

So this is a test post. (The picture isn't significant - I saw it last year in some rubble dumped behind my house and was intrigued by the green lady with the snake, I have no idea who or what she is.) I've had to do quite a bit of tweaking of the HTML generated by Flickr for the post and I'm not sure that it's worth the effort to be honest, but I'm happier now at least I've got it to work if I want it.

Obama Wins!

2008-11-06T01:36:00.012Z

A friend back in the UK emailed me this morning asking what it was like to be in the US the day after the historic presidential election victory of Barack Obama. The campaigning had been going on for so long now and the coverage even back home was so intense, that I don't think that I'd really given it much thought until he asked, but it has certainly been interesting to have seen the election "up close".

One aspect I'd never really thought about were just the basic mechanics of the US electoral process. All along I'd somehow assumed it was essentially the same as a general election in the UK, but in fact there are significant differences: the UK prime minister is not elected directly (instead you vote for a member of Parliament) whereas here in the US, people get to vote directly for who they want to be president. These presidential votes are independent of who they want to represent them.

Also, each state is made up of a number of districts in each state, and the result for an state is dependent on the results from all the districts. Since the districts declare their results independently, the eventual winner in the state develops over a period of time (so the news networks would "project" the winner based on a subset of districts that had already declared).

Finally, not all states have equal weighting - some have more say than others in who becomes president (I guess based on the number of voters living there). So it's not a straight count of who won the most states.

Well, I imagine that this is all basic stuff for American voters. However I don't think that this is what my friend had in mind when he asked what it was like to be here for this historic election. The reality was that most of election day was pretty dull - there were no rallies on the streets around here, there were no long snaking lines when Kyle went to vote (she was done in about 4 minutes), and there were no results until the polls started to close (which of course didn't stop the TV networks providing non-stop pseudo-analysis and coverage).

Even when the results did start coming in, it didn't feel that exciting (but perhaps we were watching the wrong channel - we decided to watch the Daily Show's "Indecision 2008" programme). However at 11pm Jon Stewart announced that Barack Obama had been declared the winner (ok so we had to check with a real news channel before we really believed it), I think it started to dawn on me what a historic event this was. Also I hadn't fully appreciated how much race is still such a huge issue here.

Obviously the US and the world are facing enormous challenges, and getting elected is not the end but the beginning. However listening to Obama when he speaks is very inspiring, and he makes me believe that he really does speak for everyone and that maybe it is possible to overcome these global problems. Good luck to him, and us all.

The autumn leaves were falling, hearing Nature's calling

2008-11-04T15:48:00.012Z

It's November 4th and the autumn leaves are falling here in New Jersey. While most people here are electing the next president, I'm writing the first post for my blog. Not being entirely sure of what's involved in the whole blogging enterprise, I've decided to fall back on columnist Guy Browning's advice on "How to blog".

So, welcome to ironic button: No manifesto. No agenda. No content.