All entries for September 2006

Broadband

Our house of 4 need to get us some broadband, anybody got any advice?

: 30 Sep 2006 17:09 |  Comments (43) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Backdane

It’s a very scary thing to mix one’s friendship groups but I gambled, inviting various friends to the marvellous cottage of Backdane. It’s a place I’ve been to four times before for the winter solstice with my hippy friends in a completely isolated spot over a mile from the nearest village and about ten miles from Leek, the nearest town. This time a couple of my hippies came, five friends from Warwick, one of Wins’ friends, and a couple of Caroline’s climbing people. We spent the evenings eating, drinking, playing guitar, building fires and generally having fun, while in the day we went ‘swimming’ in the river and walked to Ludd’s church, where we climbed over lots of rocks and Caroline took us for a squeeze through a hole in one of the rocks that she found half way up the side of the chasm.

Anyway, to those of you that came, thankyou for a fantastic time and for getting on with each other so well, and for those of you that didn’t you’re very silly and should think again about being busy next time we’re having an adventure. Our entry in the guestbook reads as follows,

Oh Kempez man he was insane,
He said “why don’t we go to Backdane?”,
We had lots of fun,
And we drank lots of rum,
And we’re sure to come visit again.

: 23 Sep 2006 16:16 |  Tags: Adventures |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why you shouldn't take the kind of job that Warwick Careers Service advertise

Writing about web page http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1859421,00.html

Having at times toyed with the idea of getting an extremely well paid job for a few years before switching to something less stressful I found the attached article very interesting. I was of course aware that highly paid city jobs do not sit well with an active social life or good health but the life described is far worse than I would have imagined. Admittedly I would not have experienced sexism at work (and find it highly unlikely that colleagues would suggest I got my job “because of my legs”) but I do believe that in a high flying city job I would be truly miserable.

My current plan is to delay the start of ‘the rest of my life’ for as long as possible, either by doing a PhD or by travelling the world.

: 04 Sep 2006 18:37 |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Arggh

The little clock in my blog’s head seems to think that it’s yesterday at the moment and isn’t publishing any entries on my blog homepage until it thinks it is at the time when they were written. So i suppose by the time anyone can read this it will be yesterday, so maybe the clock is right. Troubling.

EDIT: I suppose in one way it is reassuring that my blog doesn’t want to publish entries from the future, time travel can cause all kinds of problems as demonstrated by the Back To The Future trilogy

: 03 Sep 2006 10:38 |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Yay

This morning I woke up and reluctantly decided to watch News 24 Sunday for a lack of anything better to do. When I turned on my tv however i was greeted by Andrew Marr who is back from his holidays and as legendary as always. Now I am happy.

: 03 Sep 2006 10:26 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Which Island?

Follow-up to Dubrovnik from Kempez's blog

A week on Tuesday Caroline and I fly to Dubrovnik and i’m quite ridiculously excited. The plan is to spend the first night and the last three in a guesthouse in Dubrovnik which we have booked, and then for the other three nights to stay on an island off the coast, the only real decision is which island.

In my previous post on Dubrovnik I talked about the island of Sipan, which instantly captured my imagination because it’s only eight kilometres long and has only two villages. If we stayed there we wouldn’t book anything we’d just turn up and be met at the dock by various locals offering rooms. We could walk the coast of the island in a day and one of the villages has a bar and a restaurant.

An alternative would be for us to go and stay on the island of Mljet which is much larger but similarly undeveloped. Mljet claims to be the island where Odysseus was shipwrecked for seven years and seduced by the witch Circe, and also the island where St Paul was shipwrecked on his way to martyrdom in Rome. Half of Mljet is a national park and this half has several small settlements each with a couple of bars and restaurants and a shop, the rest of the national park being covered by olive trees and peasants. It has two lakes which are not actually lakes as they’re connected to the sea by a channel thirteen metres wide, and the guide book promises a beautiful eight mile walk around these lakes which can only be completed by swimming said channel.

The advantages of Mljet are that there would be more places to walk, eat and drink, and that we can book our accommodation before we go and have a reasonable idea about what it will be like. The disadvantages are that we wouldn’t be able to explore the whole island and get a feeling of familiarity with it, the sandy beaches are too far away from where we would be staying to be reached without a car, and that there would be more tourists on the island on day trips from Dubrovnik (although i’m not sure whether this will be a problem out of season, and apparently you can always find solitude off the beaten track).

So which island should we go for?

: 03 Sep 2006 10:24 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Lady Godiva route map released

Writing about web page http://www.ladygodiva-halfmarathon.co.uk/images/New%20Route%20Map.pdf

Well with the news that the half marathon in memory of everyone’s favourite nudist goes straight through the middle of campus theres no reason for not getting involved. Come on everybody, escape the Warwick bubble and meet some real people. In last years race I was behind a beautiful lady for the first ten miles but then I slowed down and she sped up, it could have been the start of something beautiful.

: 02 Sep 2006 18:35 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem