Back to the Geovation hub to work today, even though I (correctly) expected it to be deader than yesterday. I stopped off at the coffee place from yesterday ( Goswell Road Coffee ) and hung around in there for a bit.
They may be winning the “weird decorating” prize.
Pretty sure that’s a Sinclair C5 (not my picture; from where I was sitting there was no non-creepy way to take a photo)
The hub was, as predicted, dead. Other folks have commented that it’s cliquey & techy, and I’d have to agree. I know they do networking events, and I’m guessing that’s the only time that people from different groups interact. Still, got some work done, which was the point, and left in the early afternoon, which was the consequence of some late-ass finishes earlier in the week.
Commuting through London when the footpaths & underground aren’t rammed? Pretty nice.
Moving through London when you get to a tourist bit? Not great. Kind of annoying, because people move really slowly and spread out to fill the space.
Still, I had a nice time, learned some things about actually working in this city, and now hold a firm opinion on a specific underground route, which feels like a win to me.
Someone seems to have moored a small building off Greenwich
The plan for Saturday was to get an early start & go to the British Museum before it got crowded. This didn’t happen.
What did happen is that I got there later than planned, got through some of the Mesopotamian & adjacent bits, and left earlier than planned because it was too crowded to move through & the airflow … wasn’t? Should have expected that for a Saturday.
Still, I saw some stuff, and marveled at the tiny tiny cuneiform writing, and learned about sealing up contracts in clay envelopes with a summary and rolled-on pictures on them as an anti tampering technique, so that was pretty cool.
Canary Wharf continues it’s impressive streak of confusing me, so well done there; Didn’t know there were ‘underground’ bits below the various plazas and parks. Also didn’t know there were parks.
Found some artwork though, which was nice
Greenwich on the weekend is a madhouse. People in all directions, and pity anyone trying to drive anywhere. I spotted someone who’d probably gone the wrong way, thought they’d found a route out that didn’t require reversing, and were then blocked by a taxi doing something weird.From that point, they were probably better off parking the car and recovering it after sundown, because the odds of them manoeuvring back out in that crowd were not good; Could be done, but you’d need a spotter and a lot of yelling at pedestrians.
I kind of want this to be a detective agency, or at least a pair of amateur but surprisingly effective investigators. Maybe they’re involved in the production or sale of their respective substance, or maybe they’re just importers who keep finding bodies/evidence of crime.
( OK, this does maybe link nicely to one of my Gen Con games – CHEW )
I could also see it as a wacky superhero cartoon, with a sentient bottle of champagne & wheel of cheese fighting superpowered food crime. Whatever that is. Kind of the opposite of Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad, for those who remember that.
It turns out that I’ve evolved a check-out routine without realising it.
Everything that can be packed the night before gets packed. Clothes for the next day get set aside.
On the day, everything is either on my person or on the bed, so that the rest of the space can be checked. As soon as something can be packed, it gets packed.
Google maps gave me all sorts of interesting options for getting between Greenwich & Paddington, including walking from Lancaster Gate because the stop is a lot closer than it looks on the standard map, but in the end I went with a three-line hop; DLR to Bank, Central to Oxford Circus, Bakerloo to Paddington.
Made it with an hour or so to kill, so I found a relatively sane bit of the station to hang out in, and checked the departure boards online. Got a window seat during the early phase when the platform was announced, which was lucky, as the train filled up with folks heading for Penzance whose train was for some reason starting in Reading, not Paddington. (People were standing in the vestibules in some carriages)
Leaving Salisbury went smoothly; I’d packed everything I possibly could, done the dishes, and even vacuumed the night before, so all I really needed to do was shower, put on the clothes I’d set out the evening before, and go, retuning the key to it’s lockbox & dumping some rubbish on the way out.
Me being me, I still did some paranoid checks of things, but the intention was good.
The train to London arrived confusingly, in that the SWR app and the station signs said it was approaching and between two stops, while the announcement said it was the empty train already at the platform. One final spooky mystery of the stay?
The trip itself? Uneventful. Pretty scenery, stops in tiny little villages, and eventually London Waterloo station. Because of my extreme cleverness of checking out on a work day Monday and not going for early check-in at my hotel, I booked another Brewdog Deskdog co-working desk, this one at their super convenient Waterloo Station site. (Which would be easier to find if they had consistent signage at Waterloo station)
view of the trainside of some Waterloo Station platforms
The Waterloo location is specifically called out as being more expensive, and I get why now; it’s purpose built for co-working. Open early, a lot of space, a few one person pods for calls & meetings, and in a space where someone wandering in would be really obvious.
Also, there are two levels, and there’s a slide.
By the time I was in the mood to try the slide, there were some kids having a great time on it, and I didn’t want to disrupt them
I’m liking the Deskdog thing. It’s an interesting space to work out of, quiet enough that I’m getting work done, and the fact that there are people around is something of a calming influence when you really want to call someone an idiot. Or worse.
There were a few other people using the ‘main” space ( set up with big tables & power outlets ), a few singles, a couple of people who seemed to be working on something together, and a group who acted like they knew each other who’d maybe all come together there for an in-person gathering.
Part of the point of this London week was to try out working in London, and to try out co-working spaces; The Company is part of one in London (Geovation), so I had an introduction session for that over teams. Felt a bit odd to be talking about a space from a different equivalent space, but it turns out that the Geovation thing is more of an incubator which has some office hubs; They’re big into networking & development & the like, which really didn’t come up when anyone at work mentioned the space. Work folks were all about hotdesks & meeting rooms.
I also did some rearranging of Gen Con Events; Gave back a ticket to something I wasn’t as keen on so that I could get something else. Not an unheard of process for me where the Gen Con schedule is concerned.
Worked from Brewdog until about 4, then scuttled off to the hotel to finish out my day from there before the Underground got too busy.
Had an early night, and I worked the Tuesday from the hotel so that I could sleep longer, which only sort of worked. Did go for a morning wander around Greenwich though, so that worked out ok.
Took this picture at Greenwich Markets as a “nope” image, but it was pointed out that this could be an outreach sort of deal by aquatic life, or a side venture by the band Eels
Remember Eels?
I have a desk booked at the Geovation hub for Thursday & Friday (security needs a 24 hour warning), and another Deskdog Waterloo booking for tomorrow (Wednesday). I’d initially thought they were booked solid at Brewdog, but a bit of playing with finish times makes it look like they have a large afternoon group booked, so I’m there until 3.
Went for an afterwork walk under the Thames (some brain donor had left a couple of ride share bikes in the tunnel), then took the DLR further in & wandered around for a bit until I accidentally found St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Deskdog Waterloo continues to be good. Given the size of the Waterloo bar, it did take a while to find someone to tell me where I was supposed to be sitting (the space from Monday was roped off), but I also found a coffee shop in the bar that I’d missed the first time. Explains the “whatever you want” reaction when I’d asked what sort of coffee they can do. The seat this time (actually a booth) had a view out of the building into The Outside World, and there were a bunch of folks doing work, having meetings, that sort of thing; it’s a nice environment.
Getting there from Greenwich in the morning was easier than expected, despite the absolute maze of Canary Wharf; I don’t think I’ve ever taken the same path through that place twice when going to or from the DLR.
The environment does make it easier to not take breaks, which could be an issue.
Went for a bit of a wander in the evening, and ended up catching, if not adequately photographing, a nice sunset.
Thursday was a Geovation Hub Co-working Space day. Getting there was surprisingly easy; DLR to the end of the line, thus avoiding the Canary Wharf Experience™, and the Northern Line to the closest station, which isn’t that close because of Farringdon just being like that.
Arrived in time to get coffee with an excitingly expressive name. They had merch, and I was tempted to get a sticker for the work laptop.
For a place that made suck a big deal about booking numbered desks, I didn’t see any actual desk numbers. I sat where the little diagram said I should, or at least where it said the desks my number was in were supposed to be, because again, no desk numbers that I could see.
Sat there in the more social area by the kitchen, did work, chatted to the one other person at the table about his startup & my work, and it was nice enough, but … Not the networking powerhouse I’d expected. Mostly small/medium groups who already knew each other, presumably because they work together, keeping to themselves.
Probably it’s different when there are more people in the hub, but it felt a bit dead. Back again on Friday, so we’ll see how it looks on what I’m assuming will be an even quieter day.
Took the Elizabeth Line back, just because I could, at least as far as Canary Bloody Wharf. It’s nice, and all shiny and new and vaguely purple.
It was a very pleasant train ride to Salisbury. Lots of scenic countryside rolling past, and occasional stops in tiny little villages, or at least places which looked like tiny little villages from the train.
This place also uses the lockbox with key system for check-in, and had very good instructions for finding the front door, which is always nice for the trickier spots. It’s an upstairs one-bedroom place with a kitchen that I won’t get that much use out of because I’m only here for 4 days; I am looking forward to being able to prepare even simple things, or use plates.
Worked Thursday/Friday, though I found that rather than using the kitchen table, I preferred sitting on the couch & working at the little coffee table. Not much else I can say about that.
I did some wandering around before the weekend, but the standard situation of “tourist stuff is closed after working hours” applied here, as I expected it to, so I saw the outside of scenic things.
And also advertising for a play I’ll not be here for;
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a ‘normal’ production of The Tempest – Prospero’s Books was a very strange movie, there was a production at Auckland University which went a quite modern with the costumes & is probably the most normal, and there was a movie which set it in the Louisiana bayou.
Saturday was my “Go See Stonehenge” day, and there’s a whole post on that, so … Go see that post?
Started poking at the Gen Con wishlist in the evening, just to get some items on the list. Spotted a few odd ones out there, so that’ll be entertaining. Or awful. Or both
Sunday was for Gen Con Event Registration, but also for a bit of a morning off, so I went to a cafe for breakfast & got a Croque Madame. The Gen Con stuff I’ll put in another post, but the rest of the day was some wandering around, a nice breakfast, packing up for the very early trip to London, and a late night wander down to the cathedral, mostly to take a walk after a less-than-ideal event registration experience.
I enjoyed Salisbury; Seems like I prefer the quieter places like Salisbury & Bournemouth, which I’m sure will make my next destination of London a bit if a hit to the senses. I’m staying in Greenwich though, so there’s still some ‘quieter’ to be found.
This didn’t go well. I have stuff to do, and games I’m looking forward to, but … it didn’t go well.
Starting at the start, over the previous week or so, but mostly in the hours before wishlist submission, trying to come up with a suitable balance of events arranged to take advantage of the priority system. In my case, this means that my backups have backups.
See? All perfectly sensible.
The jury is out on what went wrong. At my end, I got the worst queue position I’d ever had, in the 9400’s. And then the Gen Con servers ran amazingly slowly, so it seems like something didn’t work as planned at their end; Maybe their load testing missed something, maybe whatever they’re using to scale up for demand just didn’t work right, or maybe they just dropped the ball.
I’m usually done with events after a few hours; My list this time didn’t even get processed until 2¾ hours after it was submitted.
Eventually, I was offered some event tickets which weren’t sold out. Threw back some duplicates, then spent maybe the next hour looking for games to fit into gaps in the schedule, and in the end came away with something I’m pretty happy with that doesn’t look like a trainwreck waiting to happen.
I tried to convince myself that I’d totally be able to do an 8am game, but in the end could not, because that’s insane and there’s no way I’d actually make it.
I’m still tweaking the schedule a bit in places, trying to get that balance between “that looks fun”, “do all the things”, and “downtime is important”.
I figured it deserves its own post, seeing as how it’s the reason I came to Salisbury
The bus trip left from the train station, which is right by where I’m staying, so that was very convenient. I’d picked the bus tour option because it means I didn’t have to pick a time slot to go and see the stones, I could just rock on up whenever.
(A much more diverse crowd, age-wise, than the Bournemouth bus trip; I might have been the youngest person on that bus at times)
Bus takes you to the visitor centre, or more accurately the visitor centre coach park, and you slightly confusingly bypass one queue for the shuttle bus to the stones in favour of walking to the actual visitor centre to join an entirely different queue for the shuttle bus to the stones. I took the shuttle, but in hindsight kind of wish I’d walked, because seeing the thing as you walk over the hill would probably be a pretty awesome sight. If I go back, and I might, I’ll do that; I walked back, and it was quite pleasant.
It’s out there somewhere, behind all the people
It was simultaneously bigger and smaller than I was imagining; Taller, and the stones are somehow more massive, but also way more compact in its footprint.
I’m not really sure how one is supposed to ‘do’ Stonehenge, but what I did was to read the plaques, look at it and at the surrounding countryside, and do a very slow circuit of the thing, taking photos from time to time if I saw something that looked interesting.
The crow was careful to stay on the correct side of the boundary rope, unlike at least one asshat I sawThis is because crows are very keen on historical preservation of things you can perch onI tried to get a low angle shot of this line marking the solstice sunrises, but owing to mystical energies people felt compelled to stop right on that line & just stand there.
As I said, I decided to walk back. It was a nice day, and it looked like a nice stroll through some fields.
Also, there was an ice-cream van Somewhere back there are the stones.
The visitor centre had a bunch of interpretation exhibits, models of how the site had developed and been reworked, that sort of thing.
Second part of the tour bus trip was Old Sarum/Sarum Castle, one of those “absolutely everyone who ever lived in this area saw this hill and built stuff on it” spots with a history going back thousands of years. Most of what’s still visible as a construction is comparatively recent, so less than a thousand years old, but some the earthworks are much older.
Looking at Salisbury Cathedral from inside the outer ring of defenses As seen from the outside As seen from the inside Inauthentic bridge to the inner bit, with authentic English Heritage Gift ShopI just liked the image; Giant tent with cathedral spire in background
I’m writing these a bit asynchronously, but hopefully I covered the leg thing when talking about leaving Bournemouth. Short version is that walking was painful but got better over time, and that I was hoping it was a dehydration/exertion thing, because the symptoms were worryingly close to The Great L5S1 Rupture Of 2015.
Lambeth Bridge at night
Slept well, didn’t wake up in the night with massive leg cramps, and while walking was still painful, I could at least walk somewhat normally. Well, normally for me, given the litany of injuries over the years.
Accidentally met a colleague on the way to hotel breakfast, so it was nice to chat. CB & I don’t work together, and our jobs in no way interact, so it’s fun seeing what things look like from a different perspective.
I’m sure I could have found the venue, but ended up accidentally following a management group, so chatted with various of them on the way there. Turns out the former CTO worked on the same thing I work on, 2+ generations of products ago.
I was issued with my purple stewarding polo shirt, and I have not included a picture of me in it. You’re welcome. Things went well on the crowd control front all the way through the opening plenary (“the stairs to the third floor plenary are to your right” × 1,000,000) , and then they fell off and exploded at the first session on the floor I was assigned to.
Two entry doors we could cover, but there was a bonus set of stairs, and the room filled so fast & so much that the conference centre facilities people declared it a hazard & forced people out. In an exciting period of rapid crowd management skills acquisition, we (there were a few stewards) blocked off all but one door to entry & herded everyone that way so that we could keep the numbers under control. Folks were mostly understanding of my Purple Gandalf “You Shall Not Pass because we need people to use the other door as a crowd safety measure” routine, though I did occasionally have to do the arms spread wide “I Am A Barrier” bit to make people stop and listen.
Some lessons to be learned there, and it identified a need for a way to tell all of the other rooms when a space is full, so that they can tell people not to bother heading in that direction.
My best moment was when someone jokingly tried to bribe his way in with a pair of Ordnance Survey Socks. After regretfully saying no, but complimenting him on an awesome swag item, he gave me a pair. 😁
We had a team dinner afterwards, which was a nice reward/comedown from the madness of the conference. It went late-ish, but didn’t turn into the sort of bar crawl where you get in at 2am, unlike some previous years. 2018, I am looking in your direction.
Next day was a team meeting. Breakfast this time featured one of those “hey, can I join my friends over there?” exercises which I suspect the staff hate, as the group expanded across multiple 2-seater tables when people arrived or noticed the growing cluster.
My leg was almost completely better by this point; Some twinges & soreness, but that’s it.
My hearing after a full day in the conference centre in a corridor and lift lobby? Yeah, I could hear what was happening close to me; The rest was just muffled noises & ringing.
Not a lot to say about the team meeting, partially because of commercial sensitivity, and partially because it’s probably a bit dull. It was livened up by one team member being spectacularly unwell & attending remotely, and for a while I was acting as the JonathanBot, pointing my laptop camera at whoever was talking.
In hindsight, I had my folding phone tripod in my bag, so we could have had someone with MS Teams on their phone call him & use the phone as a much more portable camera.
Not nearly as funny though.
The trip out of London was very simple & easy. Wandered the short distance to Waterloo ( the leg was almost completely better by this point ), hung around for a bit, then tried not to fall asleep too much on the way to Salisbury. I needn’t have worried; They stopped the train there and made all onward passengers change.
Found the place without issue, and it’s quite nice. Got a bedroom, a nice wee lounge, and a kitchen. It’ll do nicely for a few days.
Google Maps, or more specifically the directions part, has no idea what to make of Bournemouth. The streets as perceived by a person on the ground are very different to what it thinks is going on, so it’s directions tended to tell you to go the wrong way. Me, I just followed the mapped route and ignored the times it said I should turn left to go right.
The pedestrian mall area was amazing for this, because there are no street names, so the directions are even more useless. On that note; If you’re giving the street address of a hotel, the house numbers don’t help if everything is a hotel and nothing has a number. ( To be fair, that’s partly my fault; I overshot based on where the map said the place was, and didn’t think it might be behind me and on the other side of the street )
The Silver How (no idea why it’s called that) is a hotel in the AirBnB sense; A code for the front door, a combination lockbox outside your room with your room key in it, no reception desk, and no sign of anyone who isn’t a guest.
Or, indeed, of anyone at all. I occasionally heard other people, and some rooms had TV noise as you passed by, but the only times I saw another person in that place were;
A builder leaving at the same time as me. ( They had some building work going on, which might have been nice to mention when I booked )
Someone entering as I left after ‘checkout’, where checking out means putting your key back in the lockbox.
A glimpse of someone on the landing of the floor above.
A couple on the other half of the balcony.
If you’re getting a Doctor Who/Sapphire & Steel vibe, don’t worry; I got it too. I remember noticing that the place was in fantastic condition inside, but as time went by I started noticing scuff marks on the wall, and then some inexplicable nails in the wall at regular intervals, and then a giant watermark on the ceiling of the room. Had those things always been there? Was the hotel jumping forward through moments in time? Was anything watching me from the mostly bricked up fireplace in the room?
The whole area seemed to be Hotels or B&Bs, some big and modern, and some very much old and traditional, or at least looking that way from the outside. Didn’t see anything recognisable as a house, but that said I wouldn’t have spotted the difference between a hotel and an apartment building. The place across the street seemed to constantly have multiple big-ass tour coaches outside, so I’m assuming they’re part of a package holiday system, aimed at the silver-hair set from the look of the folks going in & out of the place.
At the end of the street were the West Cliffs, with a nice clifftop park & some pretty awesome views. Also goats.
So, for the working days, I worked. I’d have a bit of a wander down the hill ( the clifftop path was way nicer than the road route ) to get lunch, then wander down again after work. I’d been told about the bizarre Deskdog co-working space offered by the Brewdog pub chain, so I tried it out on day 2; £10 for a table from 12:00 to 17:00, unlimited tea/coffee, and a pint at the end of the day, though I never bothered with the pint. It worked pretty well, though the situation would probably be different for someone who drinks more than me, and much of the time I was outnumbered by the staff.
This was a better hotel to work from than the Canterbury one, partially because the room was better suited to it & was a bit more comfortable, but maybe also because the town was just quieter & more relaxing, so I enjoyed myself more? Hard to say for sure.
I can report that having balcony doors you can open for airflow & general ambiance is something I like, and that sitting there in front of the open doors ( on the floor, using the bed as a backrest ) with a hot drink while it absolutely pisses down with rain outside is something entirely awesome.
For the things I did? Mostly wandering around in a “where does this path go?” sort of way, and doing the occasional tourist thing on the weekend.
I’d spotted The Mary Shelley on the way to the hotel, but it was a few days later that I found out why it’s called that; Mary Shelley is buried in the churchyard opposite. Yes, I visited the grave. No, I didn’t take a picture.
My initial thought on seeing the sign was “tell me that you’ve never read Frankenstein without saying that you’ve never read Frankenstein”. Then I thought “Neither have you”.
Rode the Funicular Railway/Cliff Lift, partially for the experience, and partially because that climb up from town/beach level gets old when you’re doing it multiple times a day.
Went out onto the pier a few times, once by buying a ticket, then again after the ticket office had closed. Unless the 3 or 4 funfair rides appeal, not worth buying the ticket; The view’s the same.
Walked along the beach a fair bit, sometimes as a ‘going for a walk’ thing, sometimes because I’d taken one of the paths down to it & was walking along. Somewhere in the distance of this shot is a chine ( stream-carved gully ) which was also the end of the section of park by the hotel, so you could walk along & down & back. Lots of little seaside huts, mostly locked up, though I did see a few in use over the weekend; A wide variety of beach stuff, chairs, tables, … all the sorts of things one might want at the seaside.
My various thoughts were “are they habitable?” ( not really, and you’re not allowed to ), followed by “if you could fit one out with power & internet & maybe an inner door with a window, what an amazing office shed that would be”.
Over the weekend I did one of those hop-on/hop-off bus tours. Honestly, I liked the riding around looking at the view and listening to the recorded commentary bit the most, though I did spend a few hours in the nearby town of Poole; Nice, in the same way that every town with a pedestrianised area to which they try to attract tourists is nice, though Poole does also have a working harbour.
Overall, I enjoyed Bournemouth. It has a certain “this place was awesome in the 50’s” vibe, and there are areas of the pedestrianised/tourist zone which are clearly not responding well to civic improvements, unless boarded up chop windows is a new architectural style. The park running through the town centre is very nice to walk through, and the beach/promenade is good; I liked it there. Not sure I’d up and move there, but I had a more relaxing time than I did in Canterbury.
Leaving On A Monday is where things got a little interesting. I had to go to London for the Esri UK Annual Conference, and at the time I booked I hadn’t figured out that checking out on a workday and traveling in the evening creates the problem of where you work from during the day. My solution was a bit odd, perhaps, but it worked almost all the day.
Start work early, having packed everything but the work stuff
Stop work maybe 15 minutes before the 10:00 checkout, pack up, and go ( putting the key back in the lockbox )
Walk over to The Mary Shelly to get breakfast & work from there for a few hours ( it was fairly empty, so I wasn’t taking up a table, but nobody seemed to care )
At 12:00, head to Brewdog and work until 17:00
Where the wheels came off was on the post-work walk to the station. I’d done the walk yesterday to pick up my ticket & burn off some nervous energy, so I knew the way, and was confident that I’d do it in 20-25 minutes. Well, that didn’t happen.
What did happen was that maybe 2 minutes into the walk I got hit with a massive cramp/knot in my right calf, to the extent that I really couldn’t take a step with it. Stretching it out helped a bit, trying to gently walk it out helped a bit, fairly aggressively stretching it out at multiple points along the way helped more, but it probably took 40-50 minutes to make that journey, and I was in a fair amount of pain and a foul mood for most of it. ( No, I don’t know why I didn’t double back and find a taxi – I clearly wasn’t thinking clearly )
Made it with time to spare for my train, though the overbridge in the station wasn’t much fun. Kept trying to stretch out the muscle on the journey, but the same “can barely walk at first” thing was happening when I got to London: Again, it worked itself out to the point that I could walk normally, if a bit painfully, by the end of the trip to the hotel. ( Again, I can’t account for why I didn’t just take a damn taxi )
My theory for this at the time was a bit of dehydration and too much walking the day before, so when I got to the hotel I drank as much water as I could stomach. It’s only afterwards that I remembered that these symptoms, while being the sort of thing that can happen with dehydration/electrolyte issues, are also really close to how I found out about my spinal injury; A sudden and persisting cramp in that same place. Fortunately, the first theory looks to have been the right one.
As a final bit; Gen Con is fast approaching ( in August ), and I saw the opportunity to take an “I’m outside the hotel; Where is everyone?” picture.
The trip back to Aylesbury from Canterbury was more or less uneventful, and fitted into the middle of a working Thursday. Going to try not to do that again, because it was kind of disruptive, but it worked out.
Visiting a post office with a giant-ass pack isn’t as fun as it looks in travel advertising. It’s a bit tricky navigating the aisles.
The same goes for quaint little souvenir shops where the till is right at the back.
Staying in the guest quarters at Chateau Guineapig while I’m in Aylesbury, as one does when one is visiting Buckinghamshire. The vague plan was to rethink the packing/bag system, to marvel at The Glorious Coronation Of King Charles III, and most importantly to celebrate a birthday.
I tried really hard to take the Coronation seriously, and mostly succeeded. It was a big ol’ spectacle of a thing, as you’d expect. The Rockwood decorated with bunting, flags, and plastic hats, as demonstrated below.
The sudden shifts between “For all people of all faiths” and “Church of England above all else” were jarring. Bit of a mixed message there.
Oaths to support and maintain the church administered by the representative of that church have a certain “maintain the job security” feel to them.
The bit where screens are brought in reminded me of the “23-19” scene from Monsters Inc.
Or for another angle, any comedy bath bit, where increasingly ridiculous objects are passed over the screen or draped across the top rail as storage.
King Charles looked a whole lot happier by the time the coronation concert happened the next day. There are probably expectations of being formal during your coronation, plus there’s the whole “here’s your late mother’s job” aspect, so it’s understandable, but it was nice to see him laughing at a Kermit the Frog bit.
K’s birthday celebrations went well, possibly in two parts; I’m not sure whether the Friday trip to a fancy rooftop cocktail bar was part of the festivities or not. Probably was.
The official Birthday event was slightly re-vamped due to a whole bunch of rain the previous day, but went well, apart from a couple of unplanned balloon detonations. It might have been better if one of those hadn’t been confetti-filled, but you’ve got to accept that sort of thing when playing tennis with a balloon in a room with a textured ceiling. ( It rained during the coronation, and a commentator did go so far as to relate all of the other coronations where it had been noted to rain, as some form of Coronation Tradition, and not the fact that said coronations happen in England )
Bag re-thinking happened. Big Red is good for lugging stuff around, but because it’s basically three compartments, getting at anything involves moving almost everything, and it makes it tricky to actually live out of. Attempt number 2 uses two bags, a 35l sports-adjacent backpack with a laptop sleeve & a 22l clamshell carry-on backpack with a laptop sleeve; I’ve divided things roughly into daily clothing + personal electronics in the 22, and work things and occasional items into the 35. We’ll see how it goes.
I discovered, long after I got Big Red, that there are backpacks made with the digital nomad, or at least the more urban traveller, in mind. I may end up getting one, but I’m not yet convinced that this travelling while working thing is something I’ll enjoy long-term, so I’m a bit reluctant to buy anything just yet.
After A+K talked me down from a spot of panic when I figured out that my planned next destination wasn’t going to work because the hotels filled up very quickly, they pointed me in the general direction of the seaside town of Bournemouth, so that’ll be the next stop.
I’m trying to combine a round-up of all of the other bits of Canterbury, plus some sort of round-up of how the working process went. Let’s see how this goes, shall we?
The Roman Museum Did this on on the Sunday, partially by accident because while I’d planned to go to it, I was just out for a wander and happened to spot the sign down a sidestreet. It is, I think, aimed at a younger audience; The audio tour certainly was. Lots of reconstructions of ‘Roman Stuff’ with models & life-size displays, but also actual historical information & artifacts scattered in there. Mention of the existence of slaves, but not dwelling on what that actually means. It was a bit difficult to figure out what they were trying to say in some places; The layout of pictures and descriptions of Roman Canterbury through history meant that it took me a bit of cross-checking to get “the city grew, and then people just stopped being there anymore, and we don’t really know why” as the high-level summary.
That said, it was interesting and fun, and they have a thumping great section of mosaic floor preserved where they found it, which is kind of cool.
Generally Wandering Around I did a lot of this on the first few days, partially to get a feel for the place, and partially to get out of the hotel room for a while. The side of the main street which hasn’t been developed into a giant roofless mall, still has some of the ‘narrow streets and slumping buildings’ feel of old cities; A lot of cafes & restaurants & places selling tourist stuff, and also an art gallery and a Harry Potter shop.
There’s a chunk of the main street which is being paved, or re-paved, or something, but it means that a wide pedestrian zone is reduced to two narrow walkways which get clogged with people almost immediately, and can be brought to a screeching halt by an uncooperative toddler or a few confused tourists. Was glad to have a rough idea of the twisty somewhat parallel streets when that happened.
There wan’t much to photograph which hasn’t been captured a thousand times already by better photographers than me, so I mostly went with things which amused me.
A fraction of a second later the young woman in the headscarf did a grinning double metal-horns gesture at my camera; I’m sorry I missed it.
The Westgate; Not perhaps their best attempt at naming, though it is at least in the North-West of the city. Canterbury West railway station, on the other hand, is almost due North of Canterbury East railway station.
Also a nice park which eventually wraps around towards the other railway station, following the path of the remains of the city wall. I did take a few walks along the wall, and up the Dane John mound, but didn’t take any photos. Nice place to walk along though.
On To The Overview I enjoyed Canterbury. It didn’t go perfectly, but it was fun, and I learned a few things about remote working & travel in the ‘what to do differently next time’ department.
Having a working location right in the heart of things isn’t all that useful if you’re working a standard job; Most tourist things are closed by the time you’re free.
Big Red, as a pack, is great for moving stuff around, but it doesn’t have much in the way of internal structure, which means a whole lot of unpacking every time you look for … Well, anything.
An improvised workspace is OK for a day or so, then it gets annoying.
I did not need all of those connector cables.
Getting sink-laundry dry is much easier in hotel rooms with air conditioning & in places with warmer weather; I can dry a shirt in a few hours by hanging it in front of the air-conditioning vent in a humid city, but that doesn’t work nearly as well with a wall-mounted electric radiator.
It is possible, if you time it right, to cycle through 50-100 channels of television and hit nothing but advertising.
Hotel breakfasts will turn on you; Do not trust them. This may be a smidge unkind. I had a few days of feeling unwell, which may have been the standard “you’ve relaxed, time to get sick” immune system response, but also might have been one too many poor choces from the breakfast buffet options. Or both. Erring on the side of caution, I made better choices & dipped into the traveling medical kit. One of them worked.
English hotels continue to fit bedding designed for arctic expeditions. In this case they also fitted a heater I could get at the controls of, and a window I could leave open, so that was easily solved.
Leaving On A Big Train Something I’d not figured out soon enough is that hotel check-outs happen during the working day, leaving you with nowhere to work if, hypothetically, you’d decided to take the afternoon train back to Aylesbury. I was able to do some shuffling around of hours to give myself a nice long ‘lunch’ break on the last day, so that I could pack up, check out, post a postcard at the world’s slowest post office (the machines were offline, so I joined a short queue which took forever, partially because the guy behind the counter was a very slow typist, and partially because those few people ahead of me wanted to post very complicated things – by the time I got to the head of the line the machines were open again, but also had a scrum of people around them and a lot of red lights, so I stayed in line), and wander down to the train station to get back to Aylesbury via London so that I could work the afternoon from the office. Even got my old desk back.
The hopefully none of you who’ve been paying attention to the dates of these posts may have noticed that I’ve worked from Canterbury for five days & haven’t said a damn thing about how it went. This is for deep & compelling reasons; I wasn’t sure how to make it interesting.
Having given up on interesting, I’m instead going to go with potentially informative, and give a bit of a rundown of what worked and what didn’t.
The room was huge, and had a single trundle bed in it as well as the actual bed, so I had something to sit Big Red on. What it didn’t have was a desk, or more than one chair; That last one’s a shame because there was plenty of room.
There was a sort of workspace, where the kettle lived & 2 of the 3 power outlets were, and it was deep enough to make a pretty good impromptu desk. On the downside, it faced away from the windows. ( I’d had plans to try one of the local co-working spaces, but then things went hilariously wrong on a project in a way that made me suspect I’d be making a lot of calls, which seems kind of obnoxious for a shared space )
( dramatic action shot of workspace )
It was a functional workspace, if not scenic, and the hotel WiFi was fine; Took a while to connect, and it did crap out for a bit on the second day, but that can happen anywhere. No issues with remote machines, and the giant download I had to do would have taken a while in any circumstances.
Didn’t pass the Enjoyment test though. In theory, staying in town means that the tourist/sightseeing stuff is right there. In practice, it’s mostly closed after working hours, and after a day of work my energy levels can be pretty low, so there’s not a whole lot of advantage to being in the midst of it all unless the accommodation itself is in some way worth it.
And with all due respect to the Travelodge Canterbury Chaucer Central, … , It’s just not. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a good hotel option, but nobody is going to recommend it as the focus of a holiday.
On to the tech stuff. I tried to keep track of how much of what I brought I actually used, and it’s a pretty short list; Going to have to go back through that bag of connectors & ‘might need it’ items to see what on earth is in there.
( the ‘how do I fit all of that crap back in there’ shot )
Overall, working from the hotel was a success, in that I got work done, but I’m not thinking it’s the way forward for me. That’s fine, that was part of the point of this trip.
