The Exciting Adventures of Josh, Part Done(x+1)

When I got to Blackfriars at 08:52 I pulled £50 from the ATM there.

My working day started with a ten minute walk to a conference room for a big meeting / lecture;about a hundred and something MaCS employees (I don't know what MaCS is either) got presented to on stuff. I was bored senseless (Maz fell asleep twice) except for one interesting tibit: Sainsburys is setting itself up to be multi-currency capable. The reason they gave is that they expect that the Euro will be a dual cash-currency in the United Kingdom sometime around 2002, and non-cash by the end of 2000 - ie, Europeans will be able to come to England, spend Euros (which only becomes a cash currency around 2002) and get their change in Sterling. But I think the big opportunity is that if you set a computer system up for more than one currency, you may as well set it up for all currencies, which would make Sainsburys a money-changer to some degree. They also spoke about Y2K, and how they're ready, and that they're expecting lots of sales and preparing for their suppliers to fail.

People at both Cathy's work and mine rang through to announce that they were involved in a train collision and their arrival would be delayed. In the meeting we were told that there may be forty dead and 300 injured. I got a voicemail from Daniel, who were were planning on meeting for dinner - his plans had been affected by that. Not in that he'd been in the accident, but that he was planning on catching the Heathrow Express that leaves from Paddington station (15 minutes to Heathrow, with luggage check-in at Paddington, not Heathrow. All in all, a quite helpful arrangement). I later found out that it also meant the family couldn't see Legoland, major bummer. When I was a kid, that's all I wanted, Legoland and Disneyland. Once I'd seen those, my life would have been complete. It turns out that Daniel and Lori decided it would be cheaper to buy the kids some Lego.

After the meeting (three hours long!), I had lunch at company canteen with a couple of other guys from the Data Warehouse team; normally we're a bit too far away. I had to jump through various hoops to get food. Firstly, I had to obtain a smartcard (you can't pay without one) - that was £5 (refundable). Then I actually had to put money into it (I managed to scrape together £4.50). Then I had to grab a tray, stand in line and then get served. I have never seen a company canteen before, although I am familiar with the idea from TV (apparently they are very common in the UK); this one seemed quite nice, with appetizing food (I don't think Maz was impressed 'though). The woman serving my queue (yes, three queues existed for the hot food, there was less demand for the cold stuff - salads and all that) was apparently new on the job and didn't understand English terribly well, but I managed to survive that and acquire Cod in a tomato, onion and other stuff sauce; potatoes; croquets; cauliflower and spinich, which I took to the till, slotting my smartcard in. The bill for that was £1.83 (rung up somehow - perhaps divination - by the operator), plus I went back later to buy a 5p lollipop. Once we were done we walked back to the office.

When I was back at the office, Mum called; apparently she saw news about the train crash on the news and wanted to check if I was involved. I told her that in a city of twelve million people (daytime population) the chances of that were remote. I was very happy to hear from her, and got various news from home - the progress of tree plantings down at the holiday home, of the tribulations Rachael & Carsten's wedding (when I told her about Nicole's delicate condition, she related that there was some concern because Yezi - Rachael's bridesmaid - was in a similar state!). We talked for a long time, and eventually I thought I ought to get back to work and let Mum get to sleep.

Maz was really excited: he found a cheat sheet for vi, which I photocopied. Nothing else interesting happened at work.

Daniel called to arrange a 17:30 meeting at Earl's Court, next to the Dr Who phonebox. At the appropriate time, I traveled to Earl's Court, and found Daniel. Lori and the kids were already at the restraunt, and Daniel and I chatted (mainly about how insane the drivers in Rome are) while we waited for Cathy to turn up. We she did we trooped off to the restraunt, Belle Pasta. We had a good time, doing standard restraunt things coupled with having Jeremy (an almost-two year old). Isaac, at four, is the eldest child and was a delight to dine with, although not very talkative (a bit like Cathy, really). Jeremy bored more easily, but I think my tolerance for small children has risen quite a bit in the last five years. For example, I understood that he was bored - and not a monster raised from the pits of hell - and tried to do some interesting things for him. He liked that. The bill came, and I had made it clear during the meal that it was mine to pay (justified through some torturous logic about the comparative value of Australian and British currencies), although due to lack of appropriate change I did let Daniel add the (compulsory) tip to the £50.09 bill (how magnanimous of me). We all walked back to the tube station, said our farewells, and returned home.

The central heating made the room a little too warm this morning.

In general, the English office-worker male has no dress sense. I just saw a guy wearing a purple shirt with a purple and green tie. Slicked-back hair seems quite popular. I've seen guys walking around with pink shirts and pin-stripe (or even chalk-stripe) blue suits, single breasted. Combined with slicked-back hair, they look like gangsters. The fact that guys wear chalk-stripe suits is enough proof to me of their inability to dress. The pink shirts may be an accident, like when Bart Simpson left his lucky red hat in a load Homer's white shirts; or perhaps they're trying to be identified as a real go-getter, as Homer was. I've even seen a guy with naked woman cufflinks. The standard behaviour in my office is to wear a yellow shirt on Thursday (being right before Friday, casual day). The attrocities just don't stop.

That train crash is big news.

Cathy says that the last time she came to England, she lost weight. I can see why - I'm freezing to death here, and all this shivering must be burning up huge amounts of energy. Perhaps I shouldn't feel so bad about the fatty food I keep eating. For lunch had a turkey Bap (that's a big bun) and a cherry slice (£3).

One the of the guys I work with, Nishit, changed his mind on something and I re-did a whole pile of work back to the way it was. Maz left annoyed again, because Mark got him into a meeting at 16:35 and Maz wanted to leave at 16:45 to catch his train. What with Paddington station being shut down and all, Maz hasn't been looking forward to the 'heaving' crowds now expected to be on his train as people take an alternative route home.

The same Mark is getting married this weekend, so the office went to The Punch Tavern for drinks after work; I met Cahty outside Blackfriars and led her there. Afterward a few hours there and at a following pub, Cathy and I made our exit and we had some McDonalds.

We wanted to catch a bus to a station, but ended up walking to Temple and tubing home.

At 18:30 Cathy and I had a look at this place:

Brixton - 1 bed flat, fully furnished, fitted kitchen and bathroom, 2 mins tube & shops, £140pw. 0171 274 4568

At lunchtime Cathy bought return tickets to Paignton, £55.80 each. That was lots more than I was expecting. Cathy paid on her visa. Cathy booked us into Park View Guest House at 19 Garfield Road. It'll be £48 for both of us for the two nights including breakfast. There's no ensuite and they're not doing evening meals at the moment (well, they are a bed and breakfast). They know we'll be arriving fairly late.

The train services are stuffed because of the train crash. There's a train at 18:35 from Waterloo which gets us to Paignton at 23:23. To get the one that arrives at 22:24 we need to get to Reading before 19:30 but the timetable from Waterloo indicates that you need to catch a train at 17:30 to do that. Cathy spotted something cheeky in Loot while looking for a room: an ad for a room with our Landlord's phone number. Later we'd find out that the other Australian couple are moving out. We cooked up leftover things for dinner.

Clapham Park - spacious 1 bedroom fully furnished flat, TV, video, stereo, 1st floor Victorian conversion, £1000 deposit, £700pcm standing order 0181 678 1721

Did lunch with Maz, which necessitated pulling out £150 to cover lunch and the coming weekend. He dragged me across the city to dine Yum Cha (called Dim Sum here) at a Chinese restraunt in Chinatown, just off Leicester Square. Yet another long lunch, and I was almost incapable of moving after that. Being in Chinatown, I took the opportunity to buy a cheap knife steel for £4.50. I'm not sure how good an investment that will turn out to be. That lunchtime sojurn consumed two of my remaining three Carnet tickets.

Cathy found some information on the AEC website so we could make informed decisons on the referendum.

Left work at 18:00 to get to London Waterloo station at 18:20 (there goes the last Carnet ticket), and then Cathy and I boarded the train, finding our reserved (via having a little bit of computer-printed paper stuck into the headreast) seats. We were in non-smoking seats, two seats away from half a carriage of smokers. It seemed most of the carriage was people commuting home from work. For most of the journey to Exeta St Davids my eyes and throat were dry and stung (I found a little relief in taking sips from some Coke Cathy had brought along with some sandwiches). There we changed to another train (where the whole carriage was non-smoking) for the hour ride down to Paignton, where we arrived at 23:30. We followed a map of the local area we had grabbed from the Internet, going too far up the street but eventually backtracking and finding the Park View Guest House, where we greeted the operator (filling in for her mother) and retired for the evening, exhausted. In brushing our teeth, we discovered the water here is very sweet tasting; most pleasant to drink compared to London. We filled the water bottle.

We walked to the place hiring a car to us, asking a Postie for directions along the way - the map we had printed off from the Internet was good, but not quite good enough (here's another). We hired a Vaxhall Vectra for £60 for the weekend (I asked for a small car, this is considered a small car?) from a little place called Centre Bay. When I spoke to Prue (the woman hiring us the car) originally, the price was going to be £65 for the weekend plus £100 deposit, so I ran my bank account down to nearly zero. But no-one would be around to return the deposit on a Sunday, so they just took my credit-card number instead, and I think she knocked the price down because she hadn't washed the car - that didn't bother us, because we were used to driving a 1982 Toyota Corona which only gets washed by rainwater. The tank was also only quarter full. The car was covered in scratches to indicate where the car is easy to knock against things like walls and other cars (Prue explained them away by claiming that the last driver didn't quite know the dimensions of the vehicle). Suitably warned, I got first drive and reversed out of the rental place. A bit more driving (that car has a lot more grunt and pickup than Cathy's Corona) saw us on the way to Torquay. We pulled into a service station and put £10 into the tank; at 80p/litre ($2/litre), that's about 12 litres. I washed the windows while Cathy was pumping the petrol.

We found ourselves a lookout point after meandering through Torquay. It had a ramp down to the sand, and we walked down and along the water's edge, up at the end of the beach and along the beachfront which had changing boxes with rusted locks. I suggested that we could drive down onto the beach and do doughtnuts. Cathy thought not. She's no fun.

We tried to get out of Torquay, where just like in London the roads wind all over the place. Perhaps even more so. We were driving along, lost (the map we had was for touring Britian, not Torquay), looking for a way out towards a castle Cathy wanted to see when she spotted the Torquay muesum. We screached to a halt, paid our £2 each and wandered around looking at muesum like stuff (how does a small muesem justify itself? Or even survive?). The major attraction was an Agatha Christie exhibition. Cathy spied a map and got her bearings.

Then we managed to exit Torquay and got onto English country roads; they are very narrow, with hedges going meters into the air blocking any line of sight to oncoming traffic. An English country road is supposedly able to take two cars, side by side. And it does, but I'm not sure how space-time is manipulated to fit them in there. There are spots where the road is a little wider and a car can pull away from the oncoming traffic. The attitude of the drivers seems to be the faster you go, the less likely you are to prang into each other. All I could think about was how much it was going to cost, and how much it was going to hurt, when someone clipped the car. At least the car came with a driver's side airbag. We got to the castle, which was closed. We swapped drivers, and Cathy took us to the next castle. Cathy did not enjoy driving those quaint English country roads.

We arrived at the Berry Pomeroy Castle, and parked at the gate that entered the wooded grounds. The sign there said it was a half mile to the castle. Another car drove in, but we decided to walk it, given the breakfast we'd eaten. The road was steeply downward sloping and after a couple of hundred metres, Cathy realised she'd forgotten her camera. Up the steeply upward sloping hill we went to retrieve it. Then down again, all the way to the castle, which after paying £2.20 each at 14:47 we entered. It really is a ruin. We traipsed around and did touristy things, and tried to figure out why anyone would abandon a perfectly good castle, and how it could fall apart so quickly (given castles are meant to protect you from an enemy attack, they ought to last a long time even if neglected). Once done there, we walked back up the hill to the car. Cathy decided I could do the driving.

So we did, driving to a town called Totnes and parking at 15:46 in a 'Pay and Stay' carpark 20p for 30mins. We went to the main drag, buying something for lunch, and then wandering up to a small giftshop, where we found some generic gifts at 16:09. We walked on, and then decided to return to the car. When we checked the time, it looked like the ticket was about to expire. We power-walked back to the car, to find all was happy and we hadn't been booked - but then, we still had time on the ticket. We returned to Paignton.

We parked at the tourist information centre, which was right next to the local multiplex. First we got information on local tourist attractions, and some maps. Then we found out what movies were showing when that evening. We walked down to the beach, which Cathy had been led to believe was sandy - it was, but it was red sand! Freaky. So freaky we took a photo of it. The sea was exceptionally flat; so flat that we saw a waterskier (they seem to do a lot of that here, they just don't have any surf).

Then it was off to explore the wonders of Paignton Pier, which is not disimilar to Brighton pier, if only one sixth the size. Unimpressed, we exited and I bought some rock candy at sovienier stand at 17:13 for 30p. We decided to walk up the main drag towards the station (checking out possible dinner venues at the same time), and popped into a couple of shops, eventually finding somewhere with good stuff. At 17:50 we bought two beach towels for £5 each, plus a pretty candle for £1. The place was decked out with Christmas decorations - well, I suppose it is 'only' twelve weeks to Christmas. We returned to the car and drove it back to the B&B, dumped our purchases and headed out for dinner.

US$21 on DVD

One weird film

We returned to watch the movie. The movie was weird and long and kind of lost; but the theatre was great. It was one of the best theatres I've been to in Britian. It had a sound system, and a decent (not huge) sized screen. The seats were nice. It was cool.

We went back to the B&B at almost midnight and struggled to open the door for a few minutes, until we figured out we were turning the key the wrong way. Doh! We slept soundly, even though the room was very hot (centrally heated).

Up in time for a 09:00 breakfast (this was, after all, a Bed and Breakfast we were staying in) of cereal followed by a English Breakfast (one sausage, an egg, potatoes, tomatoes - which I didn't eat, yuck - and lots of bacon), juice and Cathy also had coffee. Yet again, that was very filling (and tiring). We packed our gear into the car and handed in the B&B keys.

We drove down to the beach so Cathy could go for a swim. The number of one-way streets even in country towns is amazing. Naturally being Autumn (the British word for Winter), the beach and water were freezing cold, but that only detered Cathy for a short while (I sent her back in after a solid scolding for being such a wimp), and she leapt in a swam around happily. I chatted with some people; an old guy walking an old blind dog and a foreigner who went for a swim (you don't see any locals doing it do you?)

We drove to what we expected would be a good lookout point, but there were too many trees in the way. We walked from there down a very steep hill or cliff with paths cut across it to the water's edge. People were fishing. All this walking was warming Cathy up after her swim in the icy waters.

We drove to Oldway Mansion, which I think are the local council offices. We walked the grounds, which were made out in the manner of a formal English garden. It was nice. There were squirrels.

We paid £3 each to enter Torre Abby, which had lots of art and stuff, some of which was exceptionally good. It too had an Agatha Christie room, but not as grand as the muesum's. We saw a painting of Castle Berry Pomery, and some really good (and old) watercolours, and a bust of Othello in black brass and white marble. In the attached tearooms we had a Devonshire tea with clotted cream (thick, really thick cream) for £4.80 - as you must, this being Devon and all.

Next it was off to see the model village, but we balked at the entry fee of £4.60 a head. Instead, we got some exercise walking a long and windy path down a steep slope to the bottom of a cable-car at the seaside. I bought a daffy duck iceream. Couldn't walk up the path we wanted, so we kind of followed the cable-car's route. We were quite tired at the end of that, then dropped into a shop to buy postcards. "I'll write them on the train" said Cathy.

Now it was time to go and find a copy of Sunday Business, which was running a thing on "Adventure Capitalists", or the top business people in Britian; it would be something interesting to read on the train home, to decide if I shared attributes with those who have made it big. We drove into the town centre, parked the car and started towards a newsagent that we'd seen. We got diverted into a gift shop and came out at 16:44 with a dragon (£2.99). We made it to the newsagent's and discovered they hadn't heard of Sunday Business, but were able to suggest a competitor, who did have a copy.

Drove to and parked by the Paignton Harbour, killing a little time before we needed to leave. We saw a sailboat fall in the water. The way that happened was quite comical. These guys had pulled the boat out of the water onto a trailer, and that was sitting on the boat ramp all on its own. They were standing there chatting, when they looked around and noticed the (rather heavy) boat/tailer combination rolling down the ramp. Grabbing the trailer didn't stop it, and they stood there helpless as the trailer completely disappeared under water and the boat happily floated off. I think I've mentioned earlier how warm it isn't, so naturally they were hesitant to enter the water to pull the trailer that they couldn't see out. In a little while they figured what they were going to do, and one of them hopped into a tiny dingy and paddled out to the boat, grabbed the tiny piece of string that was tying the boat to the trailer and used that as a communication line to run some decent rope between them and to the people standing on the ramp. Then with much effort they pulled the trailer and boat back onto dry land.

The Reality Dysfunction

While they were recovering the boat, we packed everything into as few bags as possible, and generally the travelpack. Then we drove to the main street, and I dumped Cathy and all of our belongings. I drove back to the car hire place, gave the car one last check-over, and returned the keys. Then I spent five minutes jogging back to where Cathy was. A minute later and dinner emerged from the fish & chips shop, and we walked it to the 18:23 train (the only train to leave Paignton on a Sunday) where we consumed it. Very fatty, very filling. We were in a non-smoking compartment. I read my paper, noterised the weekend's events and read my book. Cathy read, happily ignoring her postcards.

Four and a bit hours later we were at London Waterloo. I had to buy a one-way ticket to Clapham Common, and then we walked from there to home. One shower later and I was in bed, asleep.

Didn't have breakfast, but we bought stuff from Sainsburys instead (£1.12 for doughnuts, a loose roll and a couple of breakfast bars). Also a travelcard again.

Grabbed lunch at that odd sandwich shop, today there was the girl with the long nails (the one who cuts huge portions, yummy) and some other woman. I went to the bank and paid myself a month's allowance (I really must tell you about that at some point).

Ran out of work again. I got lumbered with some crap. They really have nothing for me to do, I wonder why they hired me? I get to write a SQL*Loader script, that is so stupid. SQL*Loader scripts can be very fast, if they're set up right; they're not set up right here. They aren't using direct loads (because of a bug with our particular version of Oracle), so it goes soooo slow! And after loading, they step the data through two more tables before it settles down. Reminds me of a similar project that I came across at Australia Post.

Properties I checked out today:

Clapham Junction, 1 bed flat, ground floor, completely redecorated, very large, gch, 2 mins station, £165pw.

Brixton Hill, dble rm in stunning 4 bed Victorian hse, 2 recp rms, 2 WCs,huge kitchen, all mod cons+digitalTV, new decor thrghout, 10min walk from tube, avail 24 Oct, ref/deposit req. £444 cal/mnth exc.

On the way home I grabbed another £20 spending money at 17:31 at Blackfriars station. I also went shopping, buying food for a pork stir-fry (we really needed some vegetables after that weekend) for £5.05 at 18:11. I also collected the Reward Voucher that was due on the spending we'd made. When we got home I cooked dinner; net cost was about £4. It was quite yummy.

This evening's flat hunting involved walking to check out a room in the top half of a Victorian place at 19:30:

Clapham Common, lovely 2 bed flat, needs 20s male, female or couple to fill main double bedroom, between Clapham South & Junction stations, £500pm for single, £700 for couple inc council tax.