Backyard Action

Quite a lot of activity captured on my trail cam whilst I was away:

Day of the Wek

I have totally lost track of which day of the week it is.  It certainly doesn't feel like a Monday.  It's not helping that there is no pattern to the TV schedule, the football fixtures are all out of whack, and - as is always the case - I am suffering some really bad jet lag.  I've just woken up after having fallen asleep most of the evening and not having eaten this evening.  And now I probably won't get back to sleep and will probably be fully awake throughout the early hours...  Not good.    

Upgrade

I was getting annoyed with British Airways for having flown with them so many times this year, at a not inconsiderable expense, and not been upgraded once.  But yesterday they earned a reprieve by actually giving me an upgrade to business class for my flight back to the US.  This was actually quite unexpected - most of the rare upgrades I've received in the past have been from Seattle to London rather than the other way round.  But the omens were good from the moment I arrived at Heathrow - it wasn't nearly as busy as I was expecting, and I actually got checked in by a real person.  I don't know whether the agent or "the computer" granted me the upgrade, but I'll take it.  So what did I get with the upgrade?  Well, obviously one big thing is access to the airport lounge.  Instead of one of the lounges by the main terminal - which I guessed might be quite busy - I tried to go to a lounge nearer the gate I was departing from.  Unfortunately, as I quickly discovered, there weren't any lounges near the C gates where I was departing from.  The actual nearest was by the B gates.  Thankfully, it wasn't too busy.  Apart from being a nicer area to relax, the airport lounge is great for free food and drink - which was perfect for getting breakfast, having got there very early in the morning.  But I didn't get to stay in the lounge as long as I wanted to as the information board quickly said my flight was boarding, before even the time it said on my ticket.  Annoyingly, this wasn't actually true - so I ended up sitting around for an unnecessarily long time by the departure gate instead of the comfort of the airport lounge.  But the other big advantage of flying business is that you don't have to wait long to board the plane (helped also by the fact that this was also nowhere near a full flight) and you obviously get a much bigger seat.  You have more privacy and more space to stretch out.  I mean it's not perfect - I was next to the toilet (but fortunately it never really disturbed me), I didn't like not being able to see an airplane window from the angle I was sitting at, and you've just a little bit too far away from the TV screen to make playing games where you press buttons on the screen just too impractical.  But all in all you can't complain and I certainly got a lot more sleep on my flight than I might have otherwise.  And you get better food - well, it's still airplane food (for example, the beef fillet was like a ball of rubber), but they serve it to you in courses rather than all at once so it feels a bit more civilized.  I still felt like I probably didn't make the most of my time in business class (and I never feel like I belong or deserve entitled treatment - the socialist side of me really objects to there being any kind of class distinctions in travel).  I think people who travel in business and first class are probably more used to demanding and expecting better treatment than what I'm used to.  For example, rather than helping myself to extra food and drink from the galley I'm more used to waiting for an air attendant to come round with a drinks cart.  But it was a good journey back - not as much turbulence as I was expecting given the strong winds in the Seattle area, arrived back before schedule, passed quickly through baggage claim and passport control (you have to pick up your checked luggage now before going through customs - which is unusual, but works out well), and driving back home on a weekend was much better than it would have been on a weekday.  Let's hope it's not my last upgrade for a while!  

Back Home

I'm too tired to write a coherent blog post, but I'm safely back in the US now.  And all the various things I brought back survived the journey, despite my hard-shelled suitcase having a big crack in it.  Thanks baggage handlers.  Now I've probably got to add getting a new suitcase to all the other various expensive items I want to/need to get (leaf blower, portable generator, iPhone, ...).

Big

I caught a little bit of the movie Big the other day.  A film I enjoyed a lot when I was younger.  Now, it still has some charm but in many respects is quite disturbing.  For example, it is strongly applied that a 13 year old child (albeit transformed into an adult) had sexual relations with an adult woman.  Isn't that, technically or legally, pedophilia?  And at the end of the film the woman sees this guy who she slept with transform into a child.  How horrifying is that?  I can't imagine the kind of therapy you'd need to process something like that.  And I didn't even see the part of the film that covers the trauma that Tom Hanks' mum has to go through.  Yikes.  I'm surprised nobody has made a really dark version of this premise.     

Stuffed

Too.  Much.  Food.  I have definitely consumed much more food than normal on this trip back, particularly over the Christmas period.  I think I will make a more concerted effort to eat a bit more healthily in the new year.  Which isn't fun, but feels necessary.

Christmas TV

Merry Christmas to all.  Hope you had a good Christmas, despite the absolute dross on telly.  There was, and is, absolutely nothing I really cared about watching.  And that includes the King's Speech.  If I noticed correctly, ITV appeared to show 2 hours of Tik Tok videos during prime time on Christmas Eve.  Wow, talk about giving up.  And I see that BBC are bafflingly showing yet another new episode of Mrs Brown's Boys tonight - perhaps the most excruciatingly worse TV series ever made.  There are shows that I can tolerate being on even if I don't pay attention or care about them, but then there are shows that I cannot.  Shows like Mrs Brown's Boys, Strictly Come Dancing, The Masked Singer, anything with Michael McIntyre that are inexplicably popular yet so very bad.  I'm very much on the fence about Gavin & Stacey, a show that has, and has always had, one glaringly big problem - James Corden.  Someone who I couldn't tolerate watching, even before it became popular to hate him so much.       

Kew to Hammersmith

One more London walk yesterday - this one a longish (5 mile) trek in west London, going from Kew to Hammersmith via Chiswick.  Mainly following the Thames, plus a detour through the grounds of Chiswick House, this was a good one to do to successfully avoid the Christmas shopping crowds.  And, again, it was a walk that goes through some very nice neighborhoods - this particular one featuring some attractive 18th century houses.  Surprisingly for a walk that isn't in central London, I seemed to pass an awful lot of those blue plaques.  

Going Stupid

I was never any good at "intelligent" quiz shows like University Challenge and Only Connect.  But watching a bit of these quiz shows this evening, I absolutely suck.  Not even close to getting any correct answers.  Who or what to blame?  America?  Age?  A general decline in my mental acuity?  Yes, yes and yes.  But then these quiz shows have deliberately obtuse and obscure questions, so it is not really a fair comparison.  Better instead to consider a quiz show that is more logic/common sense and less general knowledge.  And a whole lot less pretentious.  The 1% Club.  Now I can pretty reliably get most of these answers correct, even the 5% or 1% questions.  Which makes me feel a bit better about myself, though I suspect I couldn't pass the Mensa entry test now unlike when I was a teenager.        

Box of Dismay

I noticed that The Box of Delights was available on the BBC iPlayer, so I had to start watching it.  A show that, I think, haunted me as a child.  Well - after watching the first episode - the only thing that haunts me now is the quality of acting and production values.  It has not aged well.  Take the very first shot of a train.  It is very clearly a model train.  And it is startling how obvious, and obviously bad, that is.  I'm not expecting stunning special effects on a show that may be around 40 years old, but this wasn't a good start and it only went downhill from there.  I'm not quite sure why people still feel a lot of affection for this show - it didn't even retain much charm for me.  Will I still try to watch the entire series?  Probably.        

Marylebone

Another London walk.  I wondered round Marylebone yesterday - a place that I only know as (1) a station in Monopoly, and (2) somewhere I'm not entirely confident how to pronounce correctly.  I wasn't even entirely sure where Marylebone was located (basically it is the area immediately north of Oxford Street).  It proved to be a pleasant walk around an area I don't think I've been to before - not particularly photogenic, but still full of history.  The walk took me through various old squares, past some interesting architecture, along some very upmarket areas, and mercifully away from the Christmas shopping crowds on Oxford Street.

President Musk

Oh boy.  To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the early signs are that the next 4 years are going to be a total car crash when it comes to America.  And, as much as I hate it, I will undoubtedly turn into a total rubbernecker.  I'm already predicting that this blog could turn into a daily moan about Trump.  My apologies in advance.     

Painshill

A trip today to Painshill - an 18th century English landscape park in Surrey.  An attractive, if expensive, place to take the dog for a walk.  It would be interesting to come here another time of year - I imagine it would be even prettier in spring or autumn.  There is a certain artificiality to the various reconstructed buildings scattered around the park, but they make for great focal points to either take photos of or take photos from.