Saturday, August 04, 2007

Island Holiday



San (The Wife) is missing my blog entries, even though she knows what I'm up to. So, here's an update. I spent most of July in a small village on an oceanic island. Sounds a bit more glamorous than 'I was back in the UK for three weeks'. However, we do forget that there are some pretty places on our island. I mailed a link to some pictures of Cadgwith and Kynance to my Indian colleagues and some of them were mightily impressed. 'Only seen places like that in the movies!'.


I had a good time back in familiar territory. I even had a quick trip up to Brum, and popped into the head office. I took advantage of the trip to the metropolis and bought a shiny new 17" MacBook Pro with pretty much all the trimmings. Since I live outside the EU I can claim back the VAT; a decent saving. It got some approving comments from colleagues in in Birmingham, and predictable derison from the Philistines ;). The rest of the Birmingham adventure was spent in the pleasant enough Ibis Hotel on a roundabout by the inner ring-road. Not as bad as it sounds: the room was fine, and suffering from 20 months of wine withdrawal, I splashed out and bought a bottle of 1989 Chateau Musar. Rather better than the pints of Carling offered in the bar below. The salesman in Selfridges asked if I'd had it before. Yes. He replied that it was magnificent stuff, and then we got into the normal conversation about how it is miraculous that they produce anything at all considering the location.

Enough on living the high-life in the second city; back to the Southwest on Virgin's much maligned trains. I thought the trains were great, especially the power points for plugging laptops into. I was happily watching Life on Mars on the way back. I'd heard that Life on Mars was a good TV series. In fact I'd heard enough to buy the box sets of both series. It is brilliant. I don't think I've seen a two series TV show where every episode hits the mark since Fawlty Towers. It's that good.

My Dad and one of his friends have/will celebrate their 60th birthdays this year. As part of the celebrations they held a party on the Cornish cliff-tops. A more than good time was had by all. The situation, on the cliffs above the village, was fantastic. Added to that was a top band and some good local beer on tap. Can't go wrong. To top it all there was an amazing sunset - it looked like the sky was on fire.

The one downside to the holiday was that the airline KLM/NWA managed to lose my hold luggage on the way out. This meant that I arrived in clothes that I had been wearing for 24 hours with nothing to change into. A phone call to KLM got me €100 which was promptly spent on Tesco's finest attire. I was awarded a further €200 after the luggage failed to materialise days later. Weeks have passed and there is still no sign of it. More €€€ to claim...

On a more positive note I got a ride in my Dad's 60th birthday present to himself - a Porsche Cayman S. It's a bit nippy. It could haul round some fairly tight bends at quite a lick with a very unreasonable lack of drama. Overtaking was proved not to be an issue after a few demonstrations. The most impressive thing about the car is how calm and quiet it is when cruising; yet when you let rip it sounds like hellish furies have been unleashed. My Maruti 800 feels inadequate.

ATTENTION SAN (or anyone else whose been on the Moon for the last few months) - Life on Mars spoilers follow. Don't read the last paragraph until you've watched it.











And then back to India - this time my luggage made it. By now I had compulsively watched every episode of Life on Mars. Returning back to India I was reminded of the last episode. Sam had returned to the real world, but jumped off the roof to return to 'Mars'. I know why he did it.

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