Block Copy Coders

10:35

I am sitting on a bus in the St Catharine’s bus depot in Ontario.

Wearing a jaunty blue patterned poloshirt and a thinnish brown jacket isn’t the wisest thing to do. 3 minutes standing in the “bracing” Canadian weather has just made me colder than I can remember being. When I bought my ticket the guy at the bus station said “So you’re dressed for going summer break, eh?”. I didn’t smash his teeth, my hands were too cold.

Currently also tad worried as a massive snowstorm is inching it’s way westwards toward Toronto where I’m supposed to be flying from later today. I should get to the airport around 12ish and will try to change my flight to an earlier one hopefully missing the blizzardgeddon. Alternatively it may mean staying here for some extra time which is something I don’t want to consider happening the day before valentines.

We’ll see. The bus guy is closing the luggage doors so I think we’re off soon. Looking forward to getting home.

13:06

I am now on what can only be described as a filthy big double decker train sitting on platform 1 at Union Street station. The bus dropped me in downtown Toronto and instead of getting a taxi between the city and airport I’ve decided to be a bit more adventurous and train it and as said before this is a behemoth of a train, the sort you wouldn’t want to get in an argument with. Unfortunately unlike any sensible city the nearest train station to the airport isn’t all that near and it’s going to mean a 10 minute bus trip once I pull into Malton.

I am so very cold and have been dashing between bubbles of warmth most of the day; the MS guy’s 4×4, the bus to toronto, the ridiculously large underground shopping mall (it’s like a very well heeled evil genius’s underground lair but with loads of Starbucks and McDonalds instead of death rays and nuclear subs) and now the train. In the battle for warmth it’s the 2 minute exposures to the Canadian winter rather than the more lengthy ensconcing in heated environments that are making the biggest impression. Brrrrr!

Anyway we’re off.

16:32

That was horrid. Being dumped at Malton it was a bit of a shock that there was nothing at the station apart from tracks and a hastily departing very big train. No bus or cab to the airport and worse of all no shelter. And it’s blisteringly cold and as mentioned before I’m not best dressed for it.

Scenes from Malton

Luckily I have a mobile so it’s a quick phone to Scotland to K who googles me some taxi numbers. Unfortunately I’d told him I was at Milton, not Malton, and after half an hour of berating the taxi company for not turning up I realize my mistake. By this time my hand are going blue and using a pen to write down the new taxi firm number K is realing off from the Dundee takes a herculean effort to render anything legible. But I manage and within 10 minutes am starting to thaw in the cab.

The business work I came here to do got done a lot quicker than expected so I try to change to a flight that leaves 3 hours earlier, otherwise it’s a 5 hour wait in the airport. I’m told that it’s simply impossible in much the same way someone would tell you sneezing 12 cats out of your nose is impossible. Not in the best of moods I check in anyway. The silver lining is that I blagged my way into the BA first class departure lounge despite having a cattle class ticket and I’m there now typing this. Crisps and pop in limitless supply.

I can feel myself being perceived as not being quite tidy enough for these environs by those who’ve dented their wallets for the full lardy dah ticket so by some subtle fidgeting about I use body language to tell them to go fuck themselves post haste.

I am now starting to clam down. You won’t know about any of this for for a while; as will as not having a train station Toronot Airport is also stupidly unique in not having wifi, either free or tariffed. GGGnnnnnnnnnnnGGGGGGGGGGG.

18:49

Found some wifi, had to leave the comfy environs of the first class lounge but an uncomfy seat and some net is better in my books. I’ll be boarding in and hour and a half and it looks like I got a bulkhead seat. That, seeing the mrs and also the excellent prospects of a couple of cats in the house from tomorrow are putting a grin on my face.

It’s been hectic so here they are:

Very Good Food is Very Good

A couple of weekends ago we went to The Fat Duck
, one of only three 3 Michelin star restaurants in the UK. This one is owned and run by the fabulous Heston Blumenthal who you have seen acting the mad scientist on his TV program In Search of Perfection. Heston likes to bring molecular chemistry into the kitchen and uses the sort of equipment NASA uses to detect dead pulsars in space to make bacon ice cream. It all sounds a bit faddy and whacky but the end result was delicious. And a bit expensive. But mainly delicious. The service was very good. Before going I was a little worried they’d try and pack too many servings in the night to get as many people through the door as possible. Luckily they did the opposite and had one sitting from around 8 until late and we served by people who perfect attentiveness that didn’t seem in anyway oppressive.

To top it off we stayed at one of the nicest and friendliest hotels I’ve ever visited. It’s called Red Roofs in Maidenhead and run by the excellent Colin and his wife. Colin, so the taxi driver told us, used to be the manager of Status Quo. It’s a great part of the world to visit since as well as the 3 Michelin starred Fat Duck the equally decorated Roux brothers eateries, The Riverside Inn is also very close. If you’re up for a bit of a gastro weekend we can both heartily recommend a visit and stay over.

There’s a few pics to be found here. Alternatively click on the loevly Suze below:

I Get Flustered At Airports And Often Do Something Stupid

Luckily the stupidity is usually limited and controllable manifested by tempoary losses of important documents of ill advised purchases from the very odd collection of shops they tend to have in departure lounges. Always handy being able to buy a briar pipe, a £1000 bottle whisk and a teddy dressed as a beefeater within yards of each other. Today I am in St Catharines but yesterday I flew from Heathrow to Toronto and my does of stupidity this time was buying some hopeless biz wank magazines and a Neuro Linguistic Programming book. Quite minor stuff this time and funnily enough the book turned out to be pretty good but that’s far more down to luck than judgement.

The worse case I had of airport induced brain shutdown was at Gatwick a few years ago feeling a bit pressured for time and had to nip to the loo for the some sitdown ablutions. Mid ablute I lent back on my pew not aware that the toilet flush was triggered by proximity to a detector on the wall. The toilet flushed. Unfortunately for the toilet also turned out to be heavily blocked and the water rose very quickly indeed to the top of the brim then pouring over the top like a yellow Niagra. Missing my trouser but straight into my grundies which were strung between my legs about knee hight like a mini-safety trampoline suitable for acrobatic rats.

Nightmare.

The flight was going pretty soon, all my clothes had been checked in so the only option was to flush the offending pants down the kazi. A floridian sea manatee is probably swimming around in them by now.

I Need To Get An X360 Test Kit

Llamasoft’s Space Giraffe is Alpha Testing. Jeff and Giles have done a cracking job, a fair proportion of my mates are testing it and completely loving. I’m playing Tempest 2000 on the Jag in Harry Enfield sulky teenager manner. This is quite frankly wrong and a situation that I’ll be rectifying pronto presto.

I’m pretty excited though, one of the guys playing it, and one who’s displayed quite impeccable judgement on a lot of things in the past, has Space Giraffe pegged as Llamasoft’s masterpiece. There’ll be pics, movies and even better, the game itself in the near future.

I Miss My Wife

A bit bittersweet to say that. Bitter in that I do miss her. I’m only away for a few days but this is the first time we’ve spent apart since we were married. We’ve been through a lot since then including the wedding itself, the very exciting honeymoon and now having moved house. And sweet in that the words “my wife” feel both very natural and really exciting to say in a way I never anticipated. Big grin And It’s been nice talking on Skype Very much looking forward to landing back in the UK on Valentines day

Sky +

I don’t have much fun with PVRs. This is the 3rd Sky+ that I’ve had go tits though to be fair it is bust after spending 6 months in what turned out to be damp storage. First PVR I had was a Tivo and that met it’s end by being sprayed on by my cat when the lid was off it. Anyway. Sky+ has no been replaced with Sky HD and jolly stunning it is to.

Wireless Router

Now this is partially okay in that I can connect my computer via ethernet and everything is tickety boo. Connect via wireless and stream a lot of data (torrents *cough*) and within 10 minutes it’ll conk out in a nasty manner. At first I thought it may be crappy service from the newly installed NTL but in the end bit the bullet and bought a new one. It’s all fine now.

The Wii

The front end works nicely but trying to boot into Zelda results in a black screen and no Zeldaish heroics. This could be bad and I need to investigate further to see if it’s the wii itself or just the Zelda disk. I have a brand new and as yet unplayed copy of Wario Smmooth Moves and the obvious thing to do is pop that in the slot and find out what’s at fault. A little bit of trepidation on my part’s stopping me mostly because I’m pretty sure whatever the answer it’s going to do damage to the next casualty of the move which is:

My Wallet

All of the stuff above cost to fix. The Sky not working had me relying on download TV for a while which in turn spurred me onto getting a Mac Mini to sit under the telly which was worked excellently. There’s a nice little bit of software called iTheatre, basically a feature light version of XBMC, that I’ve been using to watch Season one of the excellent Dexter.

I think that’s the lot though. God bless you Sky+, The Wii and the money that used to be in my wallet. You have served me well and will be warmly remembered