July 2005 Archives
Blimey - who'd have thought I'd become so obsessed with my roof terrace veggies! The runner beans are coming on a-pace, and on Helen's advice I had an exploratory grope in the potato pots.... and - YES! - there's pots in them thar pots!!
I've finally managed to book Hazel and I onto a week's holiday in Yalta, with Voyage Jules Verne. We've not been away with them before, but their package seems an OK deal, and they have a charter flight to Simferopol, wheras scheduled flights only get you to Kiev/Kyiv. The Crimea isn't everyone's top destination, but the area looks really interesting, and Yalta seems very geared up for tourists. We opted to treat ourselves to a stay at the Hotel Bristol, rather than the vast soviet-era Hotel Yalta.
We'll need tourist visas, and VJV charge £65 all in to get one for you. The Ukrainian embassy website gives visa costs as being £40 (£20 single entry tourist visa fee plus - get this - £20 visa processing fee). The Embassy is in Notting Hill, open Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 12noon and application requires invitations and other stuff.... so H and I agreed that it was worth paying VJV the additional £25 to do it for us.
I found this handy website with LOTS of info about Yalta and the Crimea, and includes Hotel Bristol.
We fly in 8 weeks!
In /Reading, I faithfully include links to Amazon for each book, and in doing the entries for the past week off between jobs, I've become increasingly irritated by two of the new (to me) features: the adverts - aka 'sponsored links' - inserted between the initial information and the reviews; and being unceremoniously dumped into the new 'Search Inside" tab in the search results.
What makes these all the more annoying is that they seem to happen on a sporadic basis, so I'm not able to train myself to ignore them or to identify how best to work around them.
Just try searching for "The Star of the Sea", and see what you get with the Search Inside results.... time to tweak your algorithm, Amazon?
After weeks of waiting, I spotted my first runner beans today!! And from the size of them I wonder if I've been watering with my eyes closed this week... the same goes for the double-figure quantity crop of french beans.
And it's not just beans - two tiny tomatoes have apeared on Phil's tomato plant.
Green-finger-Good-Life-tastic!
Phil returned with copies of The City Lit's Courses for Adults 2005 - 06 guide the other night, and today I signed up for a couple of courses that start in September:
- HTML for beginners + Advanced web design and hosting + Learn to write Javascript - yes, I know it might look like I know how to do this already, but that's all due to the technological smoke and mirrors provided by Movable Type, plus Phil's skillz
- Ways into anthropology: part 1 - because I've always fancied delving more into the theory of why, in time and through time, people and places are so 'same same but different'
The last time I signed up for adult education classes, other than language ones, was in 1993, when Nadia and I did a term of calligraphy in Chester....
This afternoon and evening was spent in the Tardis-like Whitbread Brewery celebrating Bob and Yoz's wedding, with a warm up snack-fest at ours for the geeky gentile contingent. Thanks to Yoz's excellent "Beginner's Guide To Jewish Weddings" we were all appropriately attired and able to appreciate the significance of most of the ceremonies ... and didn't shout Mazel Tov too soon.
Lots of dancing, fantastic food and Yoz and Bob carried aloft on chairs - what more could you ask for? And the speeches led to a few tears on our table I don't mind telling you.
- Creating a Favicon, courtesy of Alice's StorTroopers and Phil's Photoshop Skillz
- Demoting "Mary Loosemore's Selected Services" from the banner to a template area heading, and promoting "The travels of Mary Loosemore" - a more accurate description with fewer 'fnar' overtones - in its place
- Playing around with heading font sizes and paddings generally
- Changing the layout to move the Rilly Special Links over to the left hand side and to include excerpts for the most recent entries to /blog and /reading
I wish I'd had a lego submarine kit and a Star Wars DVD box set when I was 8!
Jo's birthday tea with Grannie and Grandpa was lovely - a gorgeous summer evening with very happy kids. It always makes a sad day into a much much happier one.
Farewell Norton Rose ... hello (again) Simmons & Simmons.
It's a long story, best told over a few beers, but I'm heading back to Simmons & Simmons to take up a role in the training and development team in Personnel.
Cue quips about:
* bad pennies
* returning leaving presents
* overly long commute
Catherine, Danny, Grainne, Rich, Neil, Fiona, Gary, Anthony, Sonal, Sabeena, Nisha, James, Kasia, Rob, Ted, Rhoda, Amber - I'll miss you guys!
It's 11:36, and I'm in an office on Camomile Street, which runs between Bishopsgate and Houndsditch.
When I was walking to work from my flat in the Barbican, I went past Moorgate where they had just evacuated the station. Everyone seemed very calm, commuters and staff. I helped a guy with directions, and he headed off towards Liverpool Street station to get the Central line. I can remember thinking that if this had happened just after 9/11 I would have felt extremely un-nerved, but that x years later evacuating a station didn't have the same impact and I assumed that it was "just a bomb scare".
Continuing my walk along London Wall I noticed lots of police vans, ambulances and sirens but didn't really think that much of it.
In the office, the sirens continued to wail as lots of police and emergency services headed towards Houndsditch, and as people trickled in we got more stories of stations being closed and a loud bang at Liverpool Street. Then we spotted that the police had cordoned off Houndsditch and the roads towards Aldgate. People started checking BBC News and pictures and Sky News online and getting calls from colleagues, family and friends about the bombs. Initially we heard that there had been an explosion on the Metropolitain line between Aldgate and Liverpool Street, which then became a power surge before reverting back to an explosion. The emergency services activity suggested that it was something serious.
I had a meeting in our main offices at 10, and coming out of that c10.45 Reception confirmed that the tube network had been shut down and that we had BBC News 24 playing in one of the main conference rooms. We went to watch, and saw reports of the bomb on the bus in Tavistock Square, and an incident map showing Edgare Road, Liverpool Street station/Bank and Aldgate.
About 20 minutes ago, the police evacuated the offices between ours and Aldgate and we heard reports of a bomb there on the news, but we've not heard anything and the police update to our IT Director was that they were only evacuating offices to give them more civilian-free space around Aldgate. We were told to lower the blinds and to stay away from the windows.
Now I'm feeling like I did with 9/11.
11:36 - I got Phil to sub my work email to Haddock so that I could get their updates from other parts of London and further afield. Anno and Ian mentioned that Brighton and Swindon stations were closed.
The office analysis is that it's linked to the Olympics decision yesterday, although the G8 summit could be a factor.
11:37 - email from Hazel, responding to Helen Vicars, saying "I'm fine - just got to Bank station just as they were closing the network down".
11:58 - email from Rachel Whorton (Vezey) saying that she's alright and asking if I was.
12:00 - BBC news reporting
Two people died and large numbers of casualties were reported after at least six blasts on the Underground network and a double-decker bus in London.A police spokeswoman confirmed there had been two deaths at Aldgate and UK home secretary Charles Clarke said the explosions caused "terrible injuries".
12:07 - We've just had an email update:
This to let you know there there is no substantial change to my last message.About half an hour ago there was a rumour of a bomb in Hounsditch, but the Police have told us this is not correct.
We (along with all London organisations) have received the following message:
"The number to contact for the Casualty Bureau is 0208 358 0101".
I will continue to keep you informed of any developments.
12:15 - We decided to venture over to the canteen for lunch. Whilst the roads are eerily quiet, there are some cars and vans trying to find a way through the road blocks. There is a cycle-policeman and horse-policeman at the Houndsditch junction and policemen further down Camomile Street towards Aldgate. Today of all days I left my digital camera at home and my mobile is almost out of battery power. Gallows humour over bubble and squeak and chips, with the older hands reminiscing over the two bomb blasts that Norton Rose has been through in its lifetime.
12:45 - Recharging mobile, courtesy of Danny.
12:55 - Flickr photos
13:19 - BBC picture of the bus, BBC news report on transport disruption, and Stef's realtime tube disruption map
13:29 - Reading blogs on Haddock and The Guardian. Phil's safe at home uploading links being posted to Haddock.
13:40 - Gary's brother is in London today for a meeting in Holborn, and he's reported that the police are evacuating everyone westwards towards Paddington.
14:17 - Ian's sent in a link to pictures of Brighton station.
14:24 - A siren, the first for a while - sounds like it's going down Bishopsgate, or Houndsditch.
14:31 - TfL and National Rail Enquiries have got their homepages set to running updates on transport options. Earlier this morning, TfL just had it's normal page, without any indication of the disruption.
14:43 - Reading BBC's consolidated "In depth" coverage
15:41 - email telling us that the police update is that things seem to be calming down and that cordons are being reduced.
16:26 - Heading home now.
17:21 - Home and reading emails from family and friends. I'm strangely chuffed to have sent the first email about the bombs to Haddock. But then again, my emotions today have been all over the place. It was very weird walking back through the City... as quiet as a weekend, but with lots of lines of people snaking their way towards the suburbs. All under blue skies and sunshine.
The BBC is now saying that there are more than 30 dead. Matthew Somerville's BBC backstage enabled rolling log of changes to the BBC News site must come into its own on days like today. Ditto Flickr as a photographic record of the day, the news coverage and people's reactions.
19:32 - Just to end on a lighter note, I took some photos on my phone camera on my way home, and having discovered I couldn't get them off using InfraRed or anything like that (not having PC to load the PC suite onto...), I thought I'd mms them to Phil... until i got distracted by the 'send to e-mail' option which has worked like a dream. I'd assumed i've have to input some too-complicated-to-bother-with settings, but no - simply type in the email address and send! So the resolution is rubbish, but they capture my views of the calm evacuation of Houndsditch, and the eerily quiet homeward-bound lines of commuters on foot.
.... who've just won the New Stateman New Media Awards 2005 for TheyWorkForYou.
No doubt they are all celebrating in style at Fabric as I type.
Having lived a stone's throw from Battersea Power Station for almost a decade, it's fascinating to see the building's insides, courtesy of the BBC.
From our London Transport Museum visit, my money is on Phil loving image 5.
Phil and I went to see In My Father's Den at the Barbican this evening, and really really enjoyed it. Set in modern day New Zealand, it's a gently paced film that turns from an awkward family reunion to a still slow-paced whodunnit/whydunnit.
A quite breathtaking and beautiful film.
But the *best* bit for the laydeez is the main male lead.... the gorgeous Matthew MacFadyen playing the deep and meaningful Paul Prior. He will be the perfect Mr Darcy.