Personal

I'm sorry

For the record I was joking on Tuesday. It turns out to be less fun celebrating New Year's Eve when your date is as ill. But at least I know how she feels.

Angels

Exeter

I'm still hunting Angels. This one is just outside Exeter Central station.

Tech

Enter roundabout

I remember that Tuesday in March 1994. My supervisor at college and I jammed his car boot so that it just held an antenna in place. A cable ran over the coats on the back seat to a cranky laptop I carried. The screen showed the London A-Z and magically updated our location as we moved.

It was just under a year after the GPS constellation was completed and it was my first experience of satellite navigation. Two years later I had my own GPS receiver and have carried one on all my walks since.

Why then was I so impressed today with Emma's new in-car box of tricks? It politely guided us to our destination and took detours in its stride.

I think it was the way the device blended with the environment. That the technology was up to the job was no surprise; that it could do so without getting in the way was a delight. And unlike ten years ago the map showed us right on the road, not consistently fifty metres to the south in the lake.

Personal

Disobeying the weathermen

"Don't go out unless it's absolutely necessary," they said.

We had two inches last night out here just east of Peterborough. Nothing at all really, but when the snow dominates the news and just about everyone in any position of authority tells you to stay indoors it's hard not to view the two hundred metre drive to the snow-free main road as the most dangerous thing you'll do all week.

Personal

The Christmas diet

How to eat well on Christmas Day and be slim again by New Year's Day, in three easy steps.

1. December 25
   Stuff your face full of turkey and all the trimmings. (Make sure you have double helpings of pigs-in-blankets.)

2. December 26
   Don't just mingle with family; participate fully in any activity. Make sure you spend as much time as possible with the most likely disease carrying members (probably children).

3. December 27
   Wake up in the night with terrible stomach ache. Spend the remainder of the day feeling ill, refusing to let anything but a dry water-biscuit and a litre of lemonade past your lips.

If you follow this plan closely, by New Year's Eve everyone will be telling you how much weight you've lost and you'll be ready to over-indulge all over again.

Personal

Boxing Day

I have cancelled today.

Personal

The swings

Of course we'd be early for the family lunch. Just as well Ruth, Keith, Abigail and I drove past some swings on the way to Joanna's house then. Not exactly a traditional start to Christmas Day, but a good one.

Personal

Family Christmas

In an attempt to avoid the traffic I used the back roads today. I was driving to Luton on my way to a family gathering. And without really trying I found myself passing through the Hertfordshire village of Dane End.

My mum, my siblings and our families are all getting together. Ten years ago we used to do this with Dad's side of the family one day near Christmas and more often than not we met at Grandma and Grandad's house, a rectory just outside Dane End.

I can't drive through the village without turning off to look at Little Munden where they lived. Memories don't exactly come flooding back, but the place always makes me smile.

Within five minutes I was back on my way.

Tech

Panic buying

It would appear it's not just the shop workers who suffer from late Christmas shoppers. The software application on this kiosk in Woolworths had given up yesterday.

What disappoints me isn't that the application might crash; it's that the hardened kiosk platform doesn't handle such exceptions gracefully. A blank screen or one which simply says 'out of action' would present a much better image than this technobabble.

Tech

Obsolete

A Trivial Pursuit question which stumped me last weekend was "What household item has an ISO rating?".

I thought the answer was on the tip of my tongue for a while but didn't come close. The answer is "camera film".

How quaint. I just about remember using that.

Arts

Better than the JCB

We're told the current number one single was propelled there by its innovative animation. Well if JCBs don't do it for you, be sure to check out some of the animator's previous work - particularly this superb accompaniment to Radiohead's Creep.

Arts

Film: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

You know how in some James Bond films you can tell the goodies from the baddies by looking at what they're wearing? Bond and his compatriots are always neatly dressed in suits; his nemesis has less refined style and is surrounded by people in combats. This makes Bond an ideal Christmas film - you can nip out to prod the turkey and no matter how much of the film you've missed you'll always be able to figure out what's going on by looking at the actors' clothes.

Something similar is going on with Narnia. Whenever something good is happening a sumptuous sunset shines on the cast. Conversely at every moment of danger they are bathed in blue. It's a handy disambiguation device but it began to annoy me intensely.

That's pretty much the only complaint I have with the film. Narnia will always be an interesting story and this is a great adaptation. Best of all are the visual effects - we've come so far it's getting hard to spot the computer-generated animals from the real ones.

Personal

It's done

Forms filled.
Desk cleared.
Hands shaken.
Goodbyes said.

On to the next chapter.

Comment

How besieged we see thee lie

A banner on a wall in Aberystwyth:

For some reason I'm surprised to see this kind of international concern expressed out here in mid-Wales.

(In the top left corner, "O dawel ddinas Bethlehem?" asks "The still city Bethlehem?".)

Personal

Moving fast

Today raced by, just as the first half of December has. Tonight we ate well and gathered with friends round the cast iron stove in Emma's front room.

Personal

Christmas is for ...

... shopping.

Or so the designers of the Shrewsbury lights would have you believe.

On the other hand you would be right to point out that the reason I saw the lights was that I was Christmas shopping myself.

Personal

Daring to speak

I continue to be fascinated by Welsh.

Today I browsed the Welsh Bookshop in Aberystwyth. It's a small place, with little room to manoeuvre between the rows of books. Some of the books are in English (mainly books on Welsh folklore for the tourists), but the alphabet T-towels that line the walls clearly mark this Cymru territory. For the ten minutes I was in there I didn't hear a single word of my own language spoken.

I wanted to get to the back, to have a look at the maps. It was then I realised my Welsh doesn't extend to "excuse me"; if I opened my mouth I'd have been rumbled.

For the first time I felt like a foreigner in my own country. Even worse is the thought that I'd be shunned if I was outed. I know there are many in Wales who'd have things this way, but it made me feel very uncomfortable.

Personal

Frustrated

In the movies, after a frustrating time everything comes together for our hero on a personally significant date. Like their birthday.

In real life things don't work out that way.

Hopefully I'll have good news on Monday.

Angels

Albert's Angels

Angels are everywhere at Christmas, but I just had to photograph these.

Hidden from view all the time I was at college, eight Angels top out the most extravagant piece of public art in the country. If you've not yet seen the Albert Memorial since the restoration work was completed you're missing out on something spectacular.

Personal

A powerful metaphor

I walked from Westbourne Green to South Kensington this afternoon. For two years I did this daily.

I passed under the Westway, where I learnt to unicycle; quickly across the long, narrow railway bridge which brought back haunting memories; in and out of the library where I used to study, far from the distractions of home; past the bustling shops on Queensway; through the park to college.

You might suppose I'm trying to turn back the clock. Seeking to start again. But remembering walk. I own a Mac. I've fallen for Emma.

In Princes Gardens two huge machines were ripping apart one of the college buildings I knew so well. Through the dust and rubble the dome of the Brompton Oratory was visible from the square for the first time in fifty years.

Time to pause. Then move on.

Personal

Slow food

I'll spare you the pictures but my Sunday lunch was a success, as were the mince pies. How long will I continue to cook using a device other than the microwave?

Walks

The winter light

Back in 1999 I described the walk past Benacre Broad as the most beautiful segment of the Suffolk coastline. I hadn't forgotten this, but even so the sight of the tree-fringed broad bathed in warming winter sunlight took my breath away.

Distance: 4.94 miles
Ascent: 84 metres
Duration: 1 hour 32 minutes

Walk 7: Covehithe and Benacre

When I came this way last time I walked along the beach. This time I parked at Covehithe and followed the cliff path to the north. Signs in the village attempt to dissuade walkers from taking this route but I found a well-maintained path which presented no problems.

On the north side of the broad a line of silver birch trees is gradually succumbing to the sea. It's a powerful sight as one after another they gracefully bow before lying down and giving in to the waves.

The walk continues north, then swings inland to complete a circuit of the broad on farm tracks and country lanes. If I were coming this way again I wouldn't bother with this section - the scenery was rather uninspiring after the beach section.

Far better to linger a little longer on the soft sand and bathe in the winter sun.

Tech

The voices

In my mind's eye I followed my words as they zig-zagged across the globe. The number I dialled was in the UK but before finally reaching a human I'd heard an Irish, a British, an American, an Australian and an Indian accent.

I'm not overly fussed about where call centres are located but this kind of whirlwind round-the-world tour leaves me giddy. There can't be any technical reason I had to connect through four different automated voices.

Personal

Decision time

I've been offered the one on the left.
Just in case you were wondering.

Comment

Dickensian

Oh how our local paper likes to be grumpy.

One shop's decision to put up its own Christmas window display rather than pay a local firm to erect Christmas trees on their behalf has been branded as "mean" and failing add to "the Dickensian magic conjoured up in the historic market town".

I feel an urge to point out to the paper that the "Dickensian magic" presumably refers to "A Christmas Carol", and ask what that novel would be without Scrooge.

Personal

Out of reach

Why didn't I think of this before?

At lunchtime on Thursday I wiped out the credit on my Girovend card at work and handed it in. Net result: I can't use the chocolate machine in my building so it's a walk across site if I'm feeling peckish. So far this has stopped me buying snacks. And if I were to cave in to temptation I'd be getting a little exercise as a result.

Sometimes there are simple solutions to problems.

Arts

Embankment

Here's something else to do on a Saturday in London: explore the latest work in the Unilever Series of massive installations in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

The popular comparisons are easy to make. Rachel Whiteread's sculpture looks like a stack of giant sugar-cubes or an abandoned yet pristine warehouse. Just about the only one I find hard to see is the work's title, Embankment.

Once again it's a piece that filled me with a sense of wonder. Five minutes later the sense had worn off - I didn't really connect with it. The feeling I come away with is that of a tourist who's ticked off another sight.

On the other hand, I am interested in how Tate will store this work once it's dismantled. I imagine Anish Kapoor's Marsyas rolled up in a tent bag somewhere. Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project probably neatly packs down into a couple of boxes.

With Embankment, the art is the boxes. In six months time when it is taken down perhaps it'll become that abandoned warehouse it seems to be in the first place.

Personal

Timeless

Two years is nothing in East Anglia. You need at least a millennium or two before you can hope to change anything round here. It's two years since I last visited the Christmas Street Fair but everything's the same: the same young enterprise stalls, the same Punch and Judy man, the same packed Throughfare.

Thankfully the piggy baps were just as good as I remembered too.

Greenbelt

Spitalfields, 9.30pm

Post-brainstorming, post-curry. Full.

Arts

Film: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Hurray, none of that time-wasting "let's all go to school" stuff that took up way too much of the first three films. It's still two and a half hours long though.

At one point there was speculation the book would be made as two films, and it's tempting to suggest that the two halves would have been meatier than the single instalment which was eventually made. That said, there's sufficient plot to keep the film going although a consequence of cramming everything in means at times it feels a little emotionally thin.

It's an entertaining film. Less formulaic than the first three and authentic to the source material.

Personal

Something new

If these lemony mincemeat buns look like they were iced by a four year old, that must be because it's probably the first time I've iced anything since I was that age.

What's important is that they taste delicious.

December always seems to make me do something new.