Swimming and gravy (that's and, not in)
Oct. 20th, 2009 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaEvery now and then, someone on my friends list will write a post declaring LJ dead, either because people are journalling elsewhere or because keeping a journal is a dead concept. And then I read all the posts by the people on my friends list who use LJ as a journal and wonder why the complainers aren’t reading the journallers. And I like to think I use LJ in something like its intended form myself, so here’s yer traditional post about what I’ve been up to.
See, it all got a bit messy after New York. I was zonked for Tuesday, and then did some actual work on Wednesday, and then we went for a night dive with the Sussex club on Wednesday night. I found a leak in a hose when buddy checking, so I didn’t go down, but my buddy went to join the others as a three, but this contributed to communication difficulties, and Chris ended up having a fast ascent and having some potential DCI symptoms that justified calling the Royal Navy dive doctor. He decided there was nothing serious wrong but advised a trip to A&E for a full check, where they found that Chris’s pulse was going at twice what it should be but he was otherwise fine. That demanded ECGs and nasty arterial blood tests, but they couldn’t find a reason for it. He was kept in overnight and though the pulse had returned to normal in the morning, neither of us got to sleep much before 4am and it was like having jetlag all over again. So half of Thursday got lost, and then Des came round to visit on Friday and we also started on attacking the heaps of shite in the lounge, and on Saturday morning we went to buy more storage equipment, and went to Lewes for a very brief bit of a 30th party and to London for rather more of Clidive’s 40th party, and then a surprising amount of Sunday was spent making and eating a roast dinner and then breaking and attempting to fix the plumbing of the friend’s house we were staying in, and Monday involved more work and then building and filling serious shelving units, and now it’s Tuesday again already.
And it’s been an odd one. Traintimes.org.uk told me I could get a cheap day ticket train to St. Pancras at 8.15 am, but the station insisted it was 9 so I hung around the station for a while, and then the rest of the day since feels like it’s never recovered. I went up to the office today to arrange claiming my expenses for the Niagara trip, and also to screen print 20 glass slides with P25 for some Germans I met at the conference. The expenses claim took so much to-ing and fro-ing and trying to find people that I haven’t even finished it; my kindly ex-office-mate is going to get it signed and delivered to the right people tomorrow. It was still half six by the time I’d done the screen printing and left, and then I had another mission to fulfil.
My 101 Things list has proved to be an only patchily accurate forecast of what I’d be doing with the next nearly-three years. I’ve done *much* less music stuff than I thought, while the section I wrote called I Miss The Sea, dedicating myself to visiting various lidos in lieu of real sea, seems a bit daft given the diving I’ve done this year, from the Scillies to St. Abbs. It was only on pretty much the day I moved out of London that I noticed there was one open-air pool I’d listed but failed to visit, which was the one that started me on the idea, the Oasis Centre at Holborn, so I took the chance to go there after work today. It’s a normal 25 metre pool, proper diving depth of 3.6m at the deep end, although for some reason Holborn Divers, the scuba club that trains there, use the indoor pool. It was odd walking out into the cold outdoors to get to the pool, but once in it, it’s not much different to any other pool, what with it being heated. It’s a bit elderly – you don’t want to look too closely at the bottom - and it was pretty busy, but the lane speeds were being sensibly observed. Also my goggles are slightly shaded, which was a sensible idea for going swimming in sunny lidos, but not so much at night. Thing is, I might be going again; I’m convinced I gave them a tenner when getting in and only got change for a fiver back, but they couldn’t be sure til they’ve cashed up which will be when I’m most of the way back to Brighton, and so they offered me two free swim passes instead. I’m unsure when I’ll get to use them, but it’s better than having paid £8.90 to go swimming. Mind you, I heard tell, via a devious route, how much people used to pay at one of those individual endless pools in Canary Wharf, before the crunch hit; what sort of an overpaid wanker do you have to be to think £65 is a sensible price for an hour’s swimming?
The final part of my mission was going to the Rock And Sole Place on Endell Street to get chips and gravy, and that was nearly scuppered by the bloke putting vinegar on without asking me. I dislike vinegar generally, and I detest it on chips. I protested loudly and they got rinsed in the fryer (this was before the gravy went on, luckily) and served to me again. I have been served in English chippies run by people of just about every nationality in Europe and Asia, and I think that might be the first time someone’s failed to ask. It was kind of disorientating, especially in such a long-established place. Oh well; I’m back to Brighton on the train, where gravy is harder to find, unless you go for a pub dinner at the Shakespeare on Clifton Hill, where there’s about eight different types available. Mmm, gravy.
See, it all got a bit messy after New York. I was zonked for Tuesday, and then did some actual work on Wednesday, and then we went for a night dive with the Sussex club on Wednesday night. I found a leak in a hose when buddy checking, so I didn’t go down, but my buddy went to join the others as a three, but this contributed to communication difficulties, and Chris ended up having a fast ascent and having some potential DCI symptoms that justified calling the Royal Navy dive doctor. He decided there was nothing serious wrong but advised a trip to A&E for a full check, where they found that Chris’s pulse was going at twice what it should be but he was otherwise fine. That demanded ECGs and nasty arterial blood tests, but they couldn’t find a reason for it. He was kept in overnight and though the pulse had returned to normal in the morning, neither of us got to sleep much before 4am and it was like having jetlag all over again. So half of Thursday got lost, and then Des came round to visit on Friday and we also started on attacking the heaps of shite in the lounge, and on Saturday morning we went to buy more storage equipment, and went to Lewes for a very brief bit of a 30th party and to London for rather more of Clidive’s 40th party, and then a surprising amount of Sunday was spent making and eating a roast dinner and then breaking and attempting to fix the plumbing of the friend’s house we were staying in, and Monday involved more work and then building and filling serious shelving units, and now it’s Tuesday again already.
And it’s been an odd one. Traintimes.org.uk told me I could get a cheap day ticket train to St. Pancras at 8.15 am, but the station insisted it was 9 so I hung around the station for a while, and then the rest of the day since feels like it’s never recovered. I went up to the office today to arrange claiming my expenses for the Niagara trip, and also to screen print 20 glass slides with P25 for some Germans I met at the conference. The expenses claim took so much to-ing and fro-ing and trying to find people that I haven’t even finished it; my kindly ex-office-mate is going to get it signed and delivered to the right people tomorrow. It was still half six by the time I’d done the screen printing and left, and then I had another mission to fulfil.
My 101 Things list has proved to be an only patchily accurate forecast of what I’d be doing with the next nearly-three years. I’ve done *much* less music stuff than I thought, while the section I wrote called I Miss The Sea, dedicating myself to visiting various lidos in lieu of real sea, seems a bit daft given the diving I’ve done this year, from the Scillies to St. Abbs. It was only on pretty much the day I moved out of London that I noticed there was one open-air pool I’d listed but failed to visit, which was the one that started me on the idea, the Oasis Centre at Holborn, so I took the chance to go there after work today. It’s a normal 25 metre pool, proper diving depth of 3.6m at the deep end, although for some reason Holborn Divers, the scuba club that trains there, use the indoor pool. It was odd walking out into the cold outdoors to get to the pool, but once in it, it’s not much different to any other pool, what with it being heated. It’s a bit elderly – you don’t want to look too closely at the bottom - and it was pretty busy, but the lane speeds were being sensibly observed. Also my goggles are slightly shaded, which was a sensible idea for going swimming in sunny lidos, but not so much at night. Thing is, I might be going again; I’m convinced I gave them a tenner when getting in and only got change for a fiver back, but they couldn’t be sure til they’ve cashed up which will be when I’m most of the way back to Brighton, and so they offered me two free swim passes instead. I’m unsure when I’ll get to use them, but it’s better than having paid £8.90 to go swimming. Mind you, I heard tell, via a devious route, how much people used to pay at one of those individual endless pools in Canary Wharf, before the crunch hit; what sort of an overpaid wanker do you have to be to think £65 is a sensible price for an hour’s swimming?
The final part of my mission was going to the Rock And Sole Place on Endell Street to get chips and gravy, and that was nearly scuppered by the bloke putting vinegar on without asking me. I dislike vinegar generally, and I detest it on chips. I protested loudly and they got rinsed in the fryer (this was before the gravy went on, luckily) and served to me again. I have been served in English chippies run by people of just about every nationality in Europe and Asia, and I think that might be the first time someone’s failed to ask. It was kind of disorientating, especially in such a long-established place. Oh well; I’m back to Brighton on the train, where gravy is harder to find, unless you go for a pub dinner at the Shakespeare on Clifton Hill, where there’s about eight different types available. Mmm, gravy.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 11:01 pm (UTC)Even after The Great Everyone Is A Paedophile Purge, and the Russian takeover, rumours of LJ's death were greatly exaggerated. Those who think Faceache is better are idiots because everyone there has so many "friends" (who aren't really) that any post disappears off the bottom of the page with in ten minutes, and everyone who thinks Twitter is better has the attention span of a goldfish.
I ask you... where else could I write my Iceland review with 3,500-odd words for each of 15 days? And now, back to writing day twelve...
no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 12:10 pm (UTC)Night diving is so disorienting it really is.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 11:35 am (UTC)do they have like a gravy sommelier?
(edited to use gravy icon ;))
no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-21 10:03 pm (UTC)i still haven't been to Oasis either (did i tell you about it?) i like the idea of swimming in the early evening surrounded by offices and cold air.
used to really like Rock and Sole Place, but i think they changed, maybe 2 years ago, not as good now been disappointed when i've gone. There's a place on Marylebone Street (or is it Lane, i'm not sure) north of Oxford St which is good though, if you're in central.