Copenhagen

Braunschweig

Frankfurt

One girl and her cat...

Rome photos

Rome

Rome was good, but for some reason....
1. I don’t check the exact departure time of my bus, so hurry about of work, put pressure on the ticket man in the kiosk where I buy my ticket, dash on the bus and then have to sit for 20 minutes while it fills up.
2. I check-in, only to be told that I had booked for handluggage only and now need to pay €12 to check-in luggage. This annoys me as I specifically tried to find on the Ryanair website on Thursday whether I had hand luggage only or not. I go off to pay my €12 and am fuming at stupid Ryanair. I have bottles over 100ml so have no choice. Am also very annoyed at the terrorists who have so inconvenienced me.
3. a 2 hour delay is announced. TWO HOURS! We are now pushing the latest departure time from Beauvais as flights are not allowed to take off after midnight. If we miss the slot, we get driven to Lille and have to fly from there.
4. we are called forward for boarding and walk to the plane and queue. Someone realizes the back door is also open. 100 Italians suddenly race for the back door, pushing and shoving. One gentleman tries to cut the racing hoards by crossing the ropes in place to keep passengers away from the engines. This is met with whistles, yells and incredulous gesticulating by French ground crew before he finally crosses back over the ropes.
5. we board at 11pm. The plane is full of Italians. Boarding takes a long time. Captain announces that if we load quickly, we may be able to take-off and make-up time. This is followed a few minutes later by an announcement saying we can’t find 9 passengers and if they don’t show and we have to unload their luggage we will miss the midnight deadline.
6. the 9 passengers arrive but we miss our take-off slot. Take-off is now delayed by 20 minutes until we can get our next take-off slot.
7. we arrive in Rome. The Italians clap. This amazes me as we had a pretty harsh landing: we seemed to float out the sky and then hover above the runway for quite some distance when the captain obviously got bored and stuck the brakes on so we dropped out the sky.
8. the Ryanair bus is still there, so I make a run for it. Driver tells me you buy tickets inside. I go back inside. By the time I come out, the bus has left. I have to wait for the next one.
9. I get the next one with the last 2 remaining passengers. We travel the 40 minute journey into Rome in 20 minutes thanks to our teenage Italian driver and his amazing one-handed abilities while using a mobile phone and changing radio stations to find the most offensive techno music he can.
10. we split all bills, despite the fact I eat and drink substantially less than the two big English blokes who are part of our group. I protest at one meal only to be given the change I would have been given if the bill had been equally split, so I decide not to argue the point.
11. the queue for the Dome of St Peter’s is offensively long. I stand in it anyway. It is still offensively long 45 minutes later. I finally see the Dome and Rome from the Dome.
12. the toilet queue is huge. It’s not cool of me, but I am so annoyed at all the Italians pushing and shoving and blocking the door to get out and not moving aside even when I stand there for 2 minutes to show them that I can’t get out unless they move, which they don’t, that I push past anyway and step on a little girl. Not nice of me.
13. I get blisters on both feet.
14. everyone else gets sunburn. I am the only one who has brought suncream and doesn’t burn. Everyone askas to borrow it. This is no problem except that a) it is Vichy and I love it b) it’s the gel version so it’s extra posh c) I had tried to find some more last week but could only find it in factor 20, not 30. I share it round 7 other people. Everybody stops burning.
15. on Sunday, we take our bags to the station and leave them in left luggage because some people find that safer than in the hotel. The queue takes 35 minutes.
16. back at the airport, I have to pay another €12 to check-in my bag again.
17. I go through security. They notice 2 bottles. One is my water bottle: no problem. The other is my Vichy. It’s 150 ml. They take it.
18. it’s at this point that I crack. I have had enough. I go to the toilets to at least sniffle in peace. First toilet door lock is broken. Have to go to another one.
19. the flight is awful. Over the Alps we experience extremely bad turbulence and shocking noises coming from the engine and we descend quickly....but then level out, thankfully.
20. I hope that the flash I saw when driving home was a tourist camera flash and not a speed camera flash.

Driving in Paris

There's still nothing quite like making it round the Arc de Trimophe and down the Champs-Élysées alive, although it is rather confusing at the moment as there are blue lines everywhere to help the tanks know where to park for the 14th of July celebrations...as if Parisian drivers need any help in trying to make 4 lanes out of a 3 lane road.

In the past few days I have been witness to 2 acts of driver-related kindness and 1 act of grave stupidity. On my push-bike the other day, a driver in a little white micra was on my right on a one-way street and a scooter was ahead of him. In trying to over take the scooter by passing on the left, he did a quick yank of his wheel to the left, then checked his mirrors. Having seen my startled look, swift braking and clear yet decisive evasive manoeuvres, he slowed down, allowed me to pass him again and as I drew level, took both hands off the steering wheel, faced me, adopted the praying position and begged for my mercy. I smiled to show I had accepted his apology but simultaneously threw him a stern look to remind him to look first next time. Then I sauntered off. However, the other morning I was on my way to work on the scooter when ANOTHER little white micra over took me on the right hand side NOT on a one-lane road (tut tut). He was awfully close and I got a big fright but his progress was slowed by a big truck ahead and a taxi on his right, between which was a scooter. The next idiot in the white micra took the right hand lane, the truck in the left, the taxi further right in the taxi lane and me behind watching it all. At one point on Rue de Rivoli, the taxi lane and right hand normal lane are suddenly physically separated by a solid white curb with a platic cone as the only warning. I'm not sure what happened by the taxi was clearly in his lane, the white micra was pushing to get past the truck and the poor scooter literally ended up driving straight into the cone. He was ahead of the micra so the driver should have let him through but was obviously an idiot. The scooter man bounced slightly off the cone, lost his balance, had to put his foot on the floor, the bike went over the curb, the engine cut, the bike started to lean, the white micra stopped, the bike fell over, the driver jumped off, and the bike landed in front of the micra. All traffic came to a standstill except for the truck who kept going and me right behind it. Needless to say, everyone in my lane stopped for a better look, so I sailed onwards with clear roads. And finally, yesterday on my way in by bike I was bombing along the Quai as per my usual route, when the bus up ahead of me stopped, dealt with his new passengers and kept waiting. As I couldn't pass between the curb and buss, this forced me to join the fast moving stream of traffic to pass the bus. Only as I was passing did I realise there was a red light about 100 metres ahead and the only reason the bus wasn't moving was because he thought he may as well wait at the stop as at the red light. However, as I had been forced to risk life and limb to pass the bus while he snoozed, when he saw me he stuck his hand out the window and made apologetic gestures and, once the light was green, gave me a friendly beep as he passed. Couldn've been the blonde hair streaming...could've been a bus driver just having a good day. Either way, even if they make mistakes, at least they still know they are and feel bad. I just wish I could trade that for chocolate.....

zzzzzzzzz

I went to sleep last night in the recovery position – you know half on my side etc and once I’d settled, Jack jumped up on the bed, walked over to me and tried to climb up my back to find a comfy spot to sleep. But because I was at an angle, he kept sliding off. He ended up with his weight on his back legs supported by the bed, stretched out across my back with his front paws and head on my side behind my arm. And like that we slept.

Summer rain

Just because you're down in one area of life, it doesn't meant that everything else suddenly goes your way. Take last Monday evening for instance. I'd progressed from crying in the work toilets to crying in the Church toilets (bad day), but I was only in Church because we had a council meeting, during which, it was sprung on us that we would be having our photos taken for public display. I haven't seen the outcome yet but I'm told photoshop changes red eyes to blue. As we were finishing up the sky darkened, which is not unusual at 10 o'clock at night, but very soon the heavens opened. And I mean to-r-r-ential rain. My heart sank yet further because I had chosen that day to ride my bike. There was nothing for it but to ask around for a rain jacket? Umbrella? Hat? Plastic bag even? The best we could collectively come up with was the Lost Property Box. I didn't find a rain jacket, umbrella, hat or plastic bag, but I did find a ma-hoo-sive blue down-jacket. The thing was a size 22 and had a little plastic hood that came out of the collar. I put it on and it swung around my knees. I rolled up the arms to the wrist, did up the hood so it almost choked me and looking like a gnome, I went out for my bike.

It's hard to bike when the stinging rain hits your face. It's also hard to bike when the once feather-light jacket you are wearing is absorbing water like a nappy and weighs a ton. Not only that, but it's hard to bike when the spray of buses, taxis and cars drenches the lower part of your legs that might otherwise have been protected by virtue of being located below a horizontal thigh, and what the buses, taxis and cars didn't achieve was provided by zipping scooters, whose lighter spray was borne by the wind smack into my face. I was cold, wet, slow and distinctly unhappy.

There's no happy ending: I still had to carry my bike up the stairs, negotiate it through the front door, on to the plastic sheet, and sit on a damp saddle the next morning, but it looks like I live to tell another tale....