Street-O is a go-go

Had a practical 4 hours out on the bike yesterday getting 49 out of the 50 controls identified for the street-o next month.

Phew! Pressure is easing on that front. Having enthusiastically produced the map last May when I should have been working on my MSc, I've let it gather dust for about 5 months doing remarkably little.

What is noticeable when doing these things is the difference between modern housing estates and older areas. Modern estates, with their underground cables and hidden features, are incredibly dull with very little to use. The only features are numbered lamp posts, but I don't like using these as in some instances it is possible to count them as they are almost always sequentially numbered.

Older estates have things like telegraph poles that are far better. They are numbered so randomly - which makes a dream feature for a course setter! It took a fraction of the time to find control sites in these areas.

Helmshore should be a tough street-o. I reckon it would take almost 2 hours to clear the 50 controls on a bike - so the runners stand no chance! Even Quentin...

Goodbye 'Shagged Piles' Carpet

Alas, this is a sad day in Upper Ramsbottom as we wave goodbye to all the carpets in our house to be replaced by a new set of browney-cream things.

Of particular sadness is the loss of the 30-odd year old yellow 'shagged piles' carpet upstairs.

This carpet was magical in that it would fill the bag of the vacuum cleaner single-handed every time you hoovered it. It also looked really vulgar and appalled every visitor who saw it - though most people politely tried not to comment on it.

We'll miss it really...

Actually I'm lying. Good riddance...

Phone boxes are now rubbish

In a moment of madness, the car decided to lock me out at the Tod Harriers mini mountain marathon yesterday .

Not a problem I thought. There's a phone box 50m away and I can call Cath and get her to come out with the spare keys. Cost around 20p?

Oh no. Walk in and it has the coin insert bit sealed. What were the options on the instructions:

a. Cash - Errrmmm, that's out because it is sealed.
b. Debit card - Swipe your card in the swipe thing. Errrmmm, there isn't one. So that's out.
c. Reverse charge - Dial 0845-'scam-a-landline' and reverse the charges. £3.50 connection and an unstated minute rate that can be found out upon request. (later found out to be 50p/min)

WTF????

So BT are actively discouraging the use of phone boxes and scamming the fools who do use them with extortionate fees (so people use them even less). What a shabby service! I wonder what visitors to this country must think of our cutting edge facilities?

Went into the pub instead and phoned home for the princely sum of £2.30, including a free pint.

Much better value!

Fun in the pool

Was persuaded to join Caroline at the Aquanatal class last night. Lots of fun, though I don't know how much it counts as exercise. My stomach muscles certainly got a good workout though from all the giggling as I looked round and saw what we all looked like!

Baby seemed to enjoy it too, as he didn't stop his own workout until about 10 hours afterwards.