Walks

Walk: Darmsden and the Gipping Valley

Distance: 3.90 miles
Ascent: 87 metres
Duration: 1 hour 42 minutes

Despite the cold, despite the drizzle, Emma and I got out for a short walk this morning.

The walk was beside a disused quarry about to be given a new life, across farmland thick from ploughing, through a wood and beside a river.

I packed a lunch but left it in the car. We found a disused church with a porta-potty loo. We walked under fizzing power lines.

But all these things are incidental. We talked as we walked and I realised how much I miss company on my regular trudging round the country.

Comment

Lights done right

Just so we understand each other, let me explain that I don't mind Christmas lights. It's the tacky ones I dislike. Once in a while though, someone gets the lights right. Allow me to present the square on my doorstep.

Personal

Back but not back

We're back in Woodbridge today, with a few days to chill before heading back to work.

Personal , Tech

Miranda's brave new world

A conversation today led me to dig out the very first piece of coursework I did on my degree. Here it is:

times :: num -> num -> num
times m n = 0, if m = 0
          = (times (m-1) n) + n, otherwise

I smile at this for so many reasons. It's a multiplication program written in a language called Miranda. The language was unlike any I'd seen before, and sadly unlike anything I've used since graduating.

Today I chatted a while with Simon Peyton Jones who works with Haskell, a direct successor to Miranda. Simon talked of his work and how Functional Programming - the class of language that Miranda and Haskell belong to - continues to influence modern software development.

All the time, at the back of my mind I wondered what happened to that sense of excitement and wonder at brave new world Miranda introduced me to. Just when did I become happy designing network devices rather than engineering software?

Angels

Another house, another angel

Spotted during the Bennett family get-together in Oxford, another pair of angels.

Not pictured: small children looking cute/crying; a cat chewing/guarding the presents; yet more food.

Personal

Circuit

Over the next two days I'll undertake an anticlockwise circuit around London.

Heading out from Mum's house in Sussex, I'll drive east then north to get to Emma's Mum's in Cambridgeshire before returning to Mum's via the west. It's hardly an epic expedition, but something in me finds circling the M25 noteworthy in a mundane way. (Don't expect to hear anything exciting of this trip.)

Angels

Happy Christmas

Personal

The trouble with small cars

Last night I surveyed the neatly stacked piles of things I needed to pack in the car this morning. Things I needed to drop off at Mum's in Bolney; things for Ruth and Keith in Luton; things for Emma in Helpston.

Then my eye rested on one large parcel. It looked so neat propped up against my armchair, but slowly I came to understand its size. (It's not so much 'large' as 'bulky'.)

This morning it was the first thing I tried to fit in the car. Too large for the boot. Too long for the parcel shelf. Too wide to sit in the passenger foot-well. In the future I'll take transport into consideration when selecting gifts.

The Generous project has an alternative solution. Maybe next year.

Arts

Jesus Walks

This week's driving accompaniment has been Pip's Selection Box - his tracks of the year.

There's plenty of diversity in there, but one track stands head and shoulders above the others. Who is Kanye West, and why have I never heard of him or his track Jesus Walks before?

Comment

Wasting time

If you've got plenty of time on your hands over Christmas, check out the notpron puzzle.

It was just beginning to bug me today, but I've decided to give up - not least because the author seems to expect everyone to be using Internet Explorer on Windows. Ah well, I'll just rely on my bumper book of wordsearches to see me through to New Year's Day.

Personal

It's a wrap

I'd like to proudly declare that I have completed my Christmas shopping. I'd like to announce that I did the whole lot in one hour and six minutes at lunchtime today.

I'd like to, but I'd be lying.

Inevitably back home I realise there's a couple of things I've forgotten - not least some Sellotape. But I'm most of the way there, and tonight's carols on the Market Hill (a near perfect clone of last year's) has set me in the mood to finish tomorrow without a huff.

Personal

Decided

Finally I can answer the question, "what are you doing for Christmas?".

I've been putting off making a decision for ages, but have at last agreed to go visit Ruth, Keith and Abigail. I'm sure sometime tomorrow the realisation will hit that I've hardly started my Christmas shopping, and I'm working every day this week. But at least I've made my mind up.

Personal

Just a dusting

From the summit of Pendinas this afternoon we looked across and saw the freshly dusted flanks of Plynlimon, Cadair Idris and Snowdon. Anywhere over 400m had been dusted overnight, making my twilight drive over the pass through Eisteddfa Gurig magical.

I think I've finally found Christmas.

Personal

Half a timezone away

I continue to be surprised by the obvious consequences of living on the opposite coast to Emma.

Today's contribution: understanding that the sun sets half an hour later over here than it does in Suffolk. I'm strangely thrown by this. I can no longer look at how dark the sky is and reliably estimate the time. It's amazing what difference just five degrees longitude make.

Personal

Rendezvous

The biggest problem with going out with someone from the opposite coast is that spontaneity just doesn't happen. Or rather, it's very difficult to surprise. You have to cover up a five hour drive, then run the risk of failing to meet up. (And face the consequent five hour drive home.)

Thankfully today I knew where Emma would be. And I just about got away with not quite lying last night about being in Woodbridge rather than Luton.

But the upshot is: she'd not twigged and seemed happy to stumble into me. (And I in turn was delighted - not just because it saved me from driving back home after a failed rendezvous.)

Personal

Easy

Well that was easy.

Tonight for the first time (I think) in my life, I've been babysitting. Why ever did I not do this as a teenager? Easy money: just sitting in someone else's lounge all evening.

OK perhaps Abigail's just a particularly easy baby to sit for. After all, she is my niece and only five months old. I imagine it won't always be this way, but until she's old enough to answer back this is the kind of favour I can easily do every once in a while.

Arts

Film: Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason

I should have paid heed to Liz's wise words. Once Primal Scream's Loaded provided the aural backdrop to a trippy scene it was clear the rest of the film would be one cliché after another.

Distinctly mediocre.

Arts , Comment

Memorial Day

I'm not usually a Lamacq listener, but catch parts of his shows from time to time. Listening last night as I drove home from the GB meeting, one track blew me away: The Perceptionists' Memorial Day.

"I never thought of this the day that I enlisted, that I'd be dodging bullets seeking weapons that never even existed. For someone else's personal beef I risked my health while the commander-in-chief would never come and fight himself."

The US election may be over, but it seems the pressure's not off yet.

Angels

Celestial call-centre

Spotted at Liverpool Street station.

"It's business as usual in Heaven
Lines to God open 24/7"

(It's a plug for the re:jesus website.)

Comment

Rudolph is redundant

Of course you could use your flying reindeer, but when you're visiting a classy town like ours you have to arrive in style: at the Tide Mill, in a boat, with hundreds of adoring children at your feet.

(I'm trying very hard to feel Christmassy, but it's just not working.)

Personal

Same old

I tried Christmas shopping today. A bad idea - way too early. Besides, it seems wrong to do it before I've got my birthday out of the way.

It seems I've fallen into a pattern: the late-night shopping, the , the Christmas Street Fair, the train to Ipswich. I'd even planned to drive to Shingle Street on the shortest day.

Time to mix things up a bit. (I just need some inspiration first.)

Personal

Late-night shopping

After last year's brass band, what entertainment has been laid on this year to entice the residents of Woodbridge out for a bit of late-night Christmas shopping?

From outside Woolworths I hear the shouts, bells, an accordion and the sound of wood against wood. Morris Dancers! (I should have guessed.) This lot are in full black face-paint and trying to teach children to dance to Waltzing Matilda. It's a curious fusion of customs but most seem to be getting into the spirit of it.

There still aren't that many folk out tonight. The picture here gives the wrong impression. Further down The Thoroughfare, the Punch and Judy man was struggling to pull a crowd. Once again it's the quietest I've ever seen Woodbridge's shops. If you need small-town shopping over the next month, these late nights might be just the trick.

Comment

Seek and reconcile

Tonight saw the first AGM of the Woodbridge and Melton Riverside Action Group. I joined the group back in July but today was the first time I heard the group's aims described so clearly and succintly.

They are to "seek and reconcile" the views of all about the riverside.

What a great phrase. The group could so easily have been set up to "oppose all plans for development" or "maintain the river as-is". But instead there's a tacit understanding that the riverside will change and that there's an opportunity to influence that change.

This is a group I'll be lending my support to much more in the coming year. But when volunteers were sought to stand on the Steering Group it was just within my powers to avert my gaze from an old acquaintence on the current Exec whose eyes were asking, "Paul?".

Personal

Staggering

I've just found an advert for the house that's being built behind mine.

The price? £595,000.

I don't know what to say. That was way more than I was expecting. And what do you get for it? Just three bedrooms. I don't mind telling you I paid less than one tenth of that price for my one-bedroom house seven years ago.

It's clear I'm not an estate agent: I just can't understand the property market.

Personal

Know your strength

Today, I pulled a brand new door completely free of its hinges. There was a ching as the hinge pins fell onto the floor. I'd like to think I don't know my own strength, but the more likely explanation is that hanging the doors upside-down is just the latest in a long line of mistakes made by the folk who fitted our new doors at work.

(Examples: fitting the wrong handles; replacing the handles only to discover the correct ones smash against the entry keypad; using an electronic lock that burnt out on both door sets within weeks; a design of crash bar that doesn't open in emergency.)

Nah, they can't possibly have hung the doors so that gravity pulls them apart; I'm definitely stronger than I used to be.

Tech

Removed

Astonishing.

I asked a company to remove me from their mailing database, and not only have they done so, but they've also sent me a letter telling me they've complied with my wishes. It's great to see that one year on some companies take the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations seriously.

So congratulations Borland, you're still leading the industry in a small way.

Comment

Spot the baby Jesus

Lest you believe everything is twee and Christmasy in Woodbridge, let me present the case for the garish.

Ah, it's Mary and Joseph tending after baby Jesus, all made out of coloured lights. Perhaps a little garish? You've not seen half of it. Click the thumbnail to reveal the full scene.

Yes, the town that brings you hundreds of tasteful Christmas trees with white lights is also responsible for much of East Anglia's energy shortfall. See if you can find baby Jesus now. There he is, hiding behind Santa Claus. No, not the Santa on the chimney, or the one dangling precariously from a helicopter; the one who's trampling the flowers on the gate.

(I counted fifteen Father Christmases. Can anyone beat that?)

Personal

Unexpected

That was unexpected. I headed out this morning to take photographs of the Woodbridge Christmas Street Fair. You know the kind of thing: barrel organs, tombolas, spit-roast, mulled wine, stalls touting tat, the obligatory balloon modelling.

Instead I found myself in a room overlooking the Market Hill. I had a Burmese cat called Chindit asleep on my lap and a second glass of Chilean wine in my hand. I was watching a retiree very deliberately conducting her stereo as Juan Diego Flórez burst from the speakers. ("He's gorgeous," I'm told.)

My eyes are a little puffy now from the cat. My belly's full from a piggy-bap bought on the Thoroughfare. It's been a surprisingly relaxing way to pass the day.

Coastwalk

Allhallows-on-Sea → Gravesend

Distance: 16.5 miles
Ascent: 160 metres
Duration: 5 hours 2 minutes

Regeneration
« Allhallows | Greenhithe »

Taking the scenic route, it's 867 miles from Sandbanks in Poole Harbour to Freiston Shore on The Wash. And as of today, I've walked every single one of them. Finally I've closed the gap and have walked the entire coastline of south-east England. (I'm very happy.)

Comment

The Woodbridge Westside

From a council newsletter, delivered to my house this week:

"The Woodbridge amnesty was extended to four weeks because of its success that saw over 50 items binned, including a machine gun, five shotguns, two rifles, three handguns, two swords, and a machete, plus 39 knives and daggers!"

I'm not sure what's more telling: the paragraph I've quoted, or the fact that it astonished me.

Felixstowe only managed to muster up "smoke flares, ornamental daggers, a flick knife, two deactivated revolvers, eight kitchen knives and a quantity of bullets". Top marks for style, but I think Woodbridge just nudges ahead on points.

We await the results from Saxmundham and Leiston with baited breath.

Personal

Wond'rous star lend thy light

I'm three days late, but everything else is on time.

I pulled on my cosiest fleece and headed out into the dark. The melancholic cello struck up as I passed the violin shop. I count one hundred and ten Christmas trees. Laughter drifted down from bedroom windows. Wood-smoke danced with a cold mist on the square.

But the things I noticed most were the stars, their bright light punching through the fog. Familiar shapes, sometimes guiding lights.

Angels

Roadside Angels

It must be December. Pink panto posters have popped up right across town. The Angel Players present Cinderella. I may not be planning on visiting the production, but the publicity makes me smile.