Monthly Archives: April 2023

A Canterbury Tale?

Posted on by Craig

OK, that was weak, even by my standards.

I am, of course, talking about Canterbury Cathedral, which turns out to be tricky to photograph, at least with a smartphone.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I’d been told the entry price ( still not sure I understand how that works for a functioning cathedral ) was quite high, but I paid it anyway on the basis of “May as well, it’s a famous building I’ve actually heard of”, figuring that I’d spend a bit of time there.

this one does have a “Cathedral rolling in heavy storm” kind of vibe

I ended up getting three hours of entertainment out of it, because there’s so much to the place. There’s an enormous amount of history, and reconstructions, and repurposing. I’d assumed that the cathedral was basically one big churching space, but kept finding little sub-chapel areas as I wandered around, both in the upstairs bit & in the vaults below.

There was even one of those grassy area surrounded by vaulted walkway things which I’ve seen in movies & TV, so that was fun to wander around in.

There were some folks doing guided tours, but I wasn’t sure whether they were a join in & tag along or a paying patrons only sort of thing, so I tried to stay out of their way. And after a while, used earphones and a rain noise app to muffle the narration, when it got a smidge distracting.

One interesting overhead bit, if I understood it correctly, is that Thomas Beckett was murdered there, and eventually a shrine was built which was later destroyed by orders of the king, and there’s mention of the shrine, but aside from one part of a stained glass window, nobody ever described what the shrine looked like.

Time and money well spent, I think.

and I got a scone

The Traveler’s Tale

Posted on by Craig

I’m expecting to go through a few iterations of the packing scheme before I get it right. Today’s version had the everyday clothing in the low compartment, the stuff I thought I’d need as soon into a hotel room in the very top compartment, and everything else in the middle, as a sort of protection layer around the laptops.

waiting on a train at Aylesbury

It sort of worked. I’d thought the top compartment was too full, but it seems like the issue is that there wasn’t enough in the middle one to support it, so it droops over the rest of the pack. So some fine tuning to be done there.

Work happened. I checked out of the hotel & dragged the bag in, and had a mostly standard working day. There was a team lunch, a farewell for someone who’s moving to a new job in another company, and that was fun. ( Also kinda fancy – It was a very nice restaurant )

There were after-work drinks for the person who’s leaving, and I did go for one, while trying not to make her leaving do all about me & the Big Red Backpack.

waiting on a train at St. Pancras

The trip to Canterbury was pretty uneventful. Train to London Marylebone, tube to St. Pancras, train to Canterbury, and I got to the hotel at around 23:00.

Breakfast At Wetherspoons

Posted on by Craig

Had pre-work breakfast with many of the crowd from last night. The enthusiasm for a pre-work pint had faded, which is, I think, no bad thing.

Does it make me a bad person if I want to see what an actual American would think of the Spoons ‘American Breakfast ‘?

Pretty sure it does.

Maybe I’ll take some pictures and see whether I can start an international incident over pancakes & maple flavoured syrup.

For the very start of the day I worked from the hotel room, just to be sure that it’d work like I expected, then wandered into the office for the rest of the day.

My lunchtime excursion was to find a coin exchange machine, to deal with a giant cup of shrapnel I’d accumulated over the years.

No, I don’t really mind that they take their cut; The alternative was that I count all of those coins by hand. Worth the price.

After work tomorrow I’m off to Canterbury, to stay in a different Travelodge. And to do some touristy things. And to work.

I’m still figuring out how to arrange things in the bag, but that’s an ongoing process. Everything fits without an issue, but I don’t have a system nailed down yet for what goes where.

I’m leaning towards the idea that the top section, which can be accessed without undoing the straps on the rest of the bag but not if the bag is lying open, should be for the stuff I’ll immediately unpack at the hotel and/or for the wet/cold weather gear

Day Two – The Rockwood & The Rain

Posted on by Craig

The traveling kit, version one, is about as packed as it’s going to get. I suspect I’ve got too much electronic stuff, or packed it badly, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m still figuring out how best to distribute things between the three compartments, but I remember that changing multiple times over the course of the last trip, so it may take a while to get the system dialed in, or at least consistent.

In a stroke of brilliance, I put all of the stuff I know I’ll need for the Gen Con trip but won’t need while traveling around the UK into the carry-on bag ahead of time, so that it’s all already there in one place when it comes time.

Combined Farewell & Abhi’s Birthday – Me, Abhishek, Alex, Kayleigh, Jordan, Becs, Jen, Izzy, Tony

A bunch of us got together at The Rockwood as a sort of ‘goodbye even though you’ll be passing through often and seeing a bunch of us on office communication systems’ event, which was also a slightly early birthday for Abhishek.

It was fun, but got cold as the weather took a turn for the worse, so we didn’t stay out too long. This turned out to be a good thing, because when the rain started it escalated fast; I could hear it from inside my hotel room.

Day One – Pancakes & New Shoes

Posted on by Craig

Slept ok. Better than the admittedly terrible idea of a night on the floor, but I kept waking up from dreams about cleaning, or with a panicked thought that I’d forgotten to clean something or clear out something.

I figure that I’ll have plenty of time for hotel breakfast buffets over the course of this thing, so for the first ‘official’ day, I went out for pancakes. I do not regret this decision.

My sneakers were on the way out, and the cleaning/moving process essentially finished them off, so I dealt with that in the morning; I’m sure there are shoe stores in lots of places, but I already knew where this one was.

Sports Direct have almost perfected the most annoying way to buy shoes, I feel. You can see all of the options, but in order to try them on you need to get a staff member to go & get the particular shoes in your size. As soon as there are more customers than staff, which is almost all of the time, the whole process slows to a crawl.

I say almost perfected because, in the case of their “these are on sale” shoes, they just have the various boxes of shoes out there, so you can do it yourself. I’m sure the “can you please get me a UK 10 in this” system cuts down on theft, but it’s so annoying.

I’m still sorting out a few things, so today’s effort was putting all of the “I’ll need this for the Gen Con trip in July/August” into my carry-on so that I know where the hell it all is, and taking that to the storage locker. And also the modem/router from the flat, because I forgot to ask them what I should do with that; I’ll send an email sometime.

this is more space than I need

Lunch with a friend ( waves at Terry ) at a pub named Honey Bee, which seems entirely surrounded by light & medium industrial facilities, but is a classic English pub/restaurant. They’ve stopped short of gastropub territory, and instead do very good high-end pub fare.

Dinner with Kayleigh+Alex+Tony at a “why don’t we come here more often” Italian place. It’s in an odd spot between two squares, and it’s easy to forget about, even when you’re walking past it. Very good food, leading to food envy as you see what everyone else ordered.

I tried Burrata, which I’d never had before and initially confused with Bruchetta. Not sure I spelled either of those properly.

Day Zero: Moving Out, Moving On, Moving Slowly & Painfully

Posted on by Craig

( posting this from day one, but let’s not get too concerned about that, shall we )

The last of the furniture went away on day -1, and I’m already regretting this numbering system. I’m also somewhat regretting my decision to make a bed on the floor for the last night; I slept ok, and felt ok, but I feel that the sore … everything … by the end of the day may have been the result of that decision.

The flat is done. All of my stuff is out of it, and it’s cleaned to the extent that my time & energy permitted.

My stuff and I are in the Aylesbury Travelodge. There’s still some final sorting out to do, but nothing major; Documents to be sorted through, a few things to be donated, and some final decisions on what comes with me & what stays in storage.

pretty sure I have room for a few more things

:: editing to add things as they occur ::

It’s much easier to remove oven cleaner foam if you put a towel in the bottom of the oven & use an old spray bottle as a water gun to get the tricky spots around the grill.

An unexpected (to me at least) benefit of starting at the top of the space & cleaning down is that you can just drop any cleaning rags/paper towels when you’re done with them. Or fling them over your shoulder, which is oddly fun.