Weekend and beyond
Apr. 27th, 2010 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaI think I'm going to slightly miss this deadline for another two chapters by the end of the month. It's a self-imposed deadline, so it doesn't matter if I go slightly over, and they'll be done soon after, but still. I've now got my examiners agreed on and asked and forms are finally being sent off this week and some sort of June submission is looking likely. Just got to finish doing it. It will get done, honest.
I had a good weekend at least. Friday was actually my birthday, but 34 isn't a particularly interesting number, so we did nothing in particular on the day other than go to a couple of pubs and drink some nice beers (Thornbridge's Murmansk Porter is lovely lovely lovely, to be drunk slowly on account of being seven point something percent, but so lovely you don't mind that.) Saturday afternoon was diving, in a week when the visibility seems to have suddenly improved massively; Wednesday's dive had been good, but Saturday's on the City Of Waterford was excellent. It's difficult to tell definitively whether you've got nitrogen narcosis, since it's a bit like being drunk, where it doesn't really hit you til you try doing something requiring co-ordination. I may have been narked when we hit 27m, the deepest I've dived in the UK this year, or I may have just been thinking WOW THIS IS REALLY LIKE, GREAT, MAAAAN because it was really like, great, man. Dive calls at the moment keep warning that you'll need a good torch, but even at 27m, all I needed it for was looking in holes or under things, not looking at the things in front of me. Giant swirling shoals of pollack, which seem to be a feature of Brighton, and jewel anenomes on one side of the wreck, which I thought weren't.
Then on Sunday, in the spirit of enjoying doing stuff in Sussex while in Sussex, we went for a walk on the Downs. It was a 13 mile route starting from Lewes, heading east and south to Glynde and Firle, where we had a very good roast dinner in the Ram Inn, up to Firle Beacon and along the South Downs Way til you fall off the end of the next hill at Southease and Rodmell, then up along another ridge to Kingston and then back to Lewes. The thing about Sunday's weather was that although it started nasty and then cleared up, there was still low-hanging cloud sitting on the ridges. So the bits at floor level were sunny and warm, with birds singing and fresh green leaves and flowers everywhere, and the bits up the hills were in strong wind and streaming cloud over chalk barely covered with turf, where half the time you couldn't see into the next field, never mind the distant views, and Chris had to stop wearing his hat because it had no string and he was going to lose it in the wind. Still worth doing, since streaming mist is also part of the wonderful Sussex weather, and the skylarks were still going nuts with the singing up the hills. Two important conclusions were also reached: one, the people running on the South Downs Way are even nuttier than the cyclists, and two, there's no way Norman Baker is losing his seat. He's a Lib Dem, and in 1997 he stopped the Lewes constituency being Tory for the first time since eighteen something or other. After that people decided they liked him, because he's a devil for asking awkward questions in the House, and the current general Lib Dem enthusiasm can't be doing him any harm. We walked all over his constituency and saw vast numbers of his jaunty orange diamonds, and only one poster anywhere for anyone else, which was a Conservative called Jason Sugarman who, no, okay, he lives in Arlington so that wasn't his house that had the poster outside in Glynde, worth checking though.
More diving tomorrow, probably off Palace Pier, which I've been wanting to do since coming back to Brighton. I had to go to the club arch for cylinder fills tonight, which is just east of the Pier, and the view over the still sea as the sun was setting was splendid. I hope tomorrow looks as good.
I had a good weekend at least. Friday was actually my birthday, but 34 isn't a particularly interesting number, so we did nothing in particular on the day other than go to a couple of pubs and drink some nice beers (Thornbridge's Murmansk Porter is lovely lovely lovely, to be drunk slowly on account of being seven point something percent, but so lovely you don't mind that.) Saturday afternoon was diving, in a week when the visibility seems to have suddenly improved massively; Wednesday's dive had been good, but Saturday's on the City Of Waterford was excellent. It's difficult to tell definitively whether you've got nitrogen narcosis, since it's a bit like being drunk, where it doesn't really hit you til you try doing something requiring co-ordination. I may have been narked when we hit 27m, the deepest I've dived in the UK this year, or I may have just been thinking WOW THIS IS REALLY LIKE, GREAT, MAAAAN because it was really like, great, man. Dive calls at the moment keep warning that you'll need a good torch, but even at 27m, all I needed it for was looking in holes or under things, not looking at the things in front of me. Giant swirling shoals of pollack, which seem to be a feature of Brighton, and jewel anenomes on one side of the wreck, which I thought weren't.
Then on Sunday, in the spirit of enjoying doing stuff in Sussex while in Sussex, we went for a walk on the Downs. It was a 13 mile route starting from Lewes, heading east and south to Glynde and Firle, where we had a very good roast dinner in the Ram Inn, up to Firle Beacon and along the South Downs Way til you fall off the end of the next hill at Southease and Rodmell, then up along another ridge to Kingston and then back to Lewes. The thing about Sunday's weather was that although it started nasty and then cleared up, there was still low-hanging cloud sitting on the ridges. So the bits at floor level were sunny and warm, with birds singing and fresh green leaves and flowers everywhere, and the bits up the hills were in strong wind and streaming cloud over chalk barely covered with turf, where half the time you couldn't see into the next field, never mind the distant views, and Chris had to stop wearing his hat because it had no string and he was going to lose it in the wind. Still worth doing, since streaming mist is also part of the wonderful Sussex weather, and the skylarks were still going nuts with the singing up the hills. Two important conclusions were also reached: one, the people running on the South Downs Way are even nuttier than the cyclists, and two, there's no way Norman Baker is losing his seat. He's a Lib Dem, and in 1997 he stopped the Lewes constituency being Tory for the first time since eighteen something or other. After that people decided they liked him, because he's a devil for asking awkward questions in the House, and the current general Lib Dem enthusiasm can't be doing him any harm. We walked all over his constituency and saw vast numbers of his jaunty orange diamonds, and only one poster anywhere for anyone else, which was a Conservative called Jason Sugarman who, no, okay, he lives in Arlington so that wasn't his house that had the poster outside in Glynde, worth checking though.
More diving tomorrow, probably off Palace Pier, which I've been wanting to do since coming back to Brighton. I had to go to the club arch for cylinder fills tonight, which is just east of the Pier, and the view over the still sea as the sun was setting was splendid. I hope tomorrow looks as good.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 10:08 pm (UTC)34 is a pretty interesting age - remember Rule 34!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 09:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 03:54 pm (UTC)