My,how time passes

Well, I'm back. I've won the battle with Google over my password, which changed at random, without help from me and I couldn't remember where I had told them to send helpful information such as how to reset it when you can't access the account. Furthermore, they wouldn't tell me. So, I could access gmail on my iphone which remembers the password and which miraculously had it right, but not any other way. I still don't know how that happened. In the end they told mw what to do to reset the password. I've done that and hey presto......

So, no more Gordon Brown

The GB of TB/GB is gone. Well overdue. It's funny how some people fancy themselves as great leaders and don't know that they are actually great number 2s. GB was one of those. They almost never make good leaders. There's a book in that somewhere.....

How much happens in a few months

They say a week is a long time in politics. So it is, but the months since I last posted here have been a near lifetime of changes. We have all got used to the fact that Gordon Brown won't go away of his own accord, almost used to the fact that he is the Western leader with the least legitimate mandate, clinging to power by his fingernails and the inability of the opposition to land a knock out blow.

What a horrible country he and Tony Blair have created. And yes, they have been in power for long enough to be held accountable for what is happening as a result of their policies. Economic disaster, a health service which is a disgrace to the remaining loyal people who work within it - GPs work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday and then whole counties "are looked after" from 5 pm to 9 am by one or two (yes one or two) overworked locums who have no idea about the medical histories of their patients.

One new criminal offence a day since Blair won the first time. 25% of the world's CCTV cameras. Corrupt politicians. Unions resurgent, penal taxes, more in the offing. Spin, spin and more spin. Even the Prime Minister seems to be unable to get his facts right. Two apparently unpopular and unwinnable wars killing our soldiers with tragic regularity, at least one of them having been started illegally.

The education system is now being given overall more resources, ie, cut. It's bad enough already but overall literacy and numeracy levels are bound to fall yet more.

Why then can our loyal opposition not land anything like a conclusive uppercut to this bunch of pious hypocrites and clingers to power? I don't really know but their failure makes me wonder if they are any better.....

Tomorrow back to food, a much nicer subject.

This week in London

Well, it's raining. Drizzle and wind and grey skies. It brings out the worst in the variegated road users and brings a whole new breed of suicidally inclined drivers onto the roads who are only there to avoid the rain.

Behaviour on our great, largely unpoliced highways and byways through London continues to worsen. "The rules don't apply to me I'm a cyclist" infection has spread to scooter riders, motor cyclists and battery car drivers. The rules are of course the Highway Code and the Road Traffic Acts. A modest confection of homilies and laws.

What does the "Look at me I'm a cyclist" infection do to its victims? |Well, they think that they are immortal and unchallengeable by anyone. A red light is an invitation not to slow down, let alone stop. A one-way street is an invitation to ride up the middle the wrong way, a roundabout where one should go round to the left is an invitation to go round to the right. Pavements are convenient shortcuts. Pedestrians need to get out of the way as they are impeding the brave cyclists at work. Do not venture onto a pedestrian crossing if you are nervous - near misses by cyclists abound. Hooting at a cyclist even if he or she is about to become a whole lot thinner involuntarily and messily, inevitably leads to a tirade of abuse, violent gesticulations, various obscene gestures and, increasingly, hammering of fists on the car's bonnet.

What is this all about? I have to confess I am not entirely sure. I know cyclists are vulnerable but they do seem more and more to go out of their way to get themselves seriously injured or killed and I don't really think you can blame the poor motorist for that kind of behaviour.

Even more worryingly, why should one section of society be above the law? That's maybe why so many more road users are trying to find the limits. With the police obsessed with the so-called fight against terrorism, an activity which results in most of them being missing from our roads most of the time, I come back to where I began. No-one polices the highway any longer. Observing the law is optional. It just goes to show that without effective policing, things do deteriorate towards a lowest common denominator.

Back from Turkey

It's not all that easy coming back from three weeks on a boat. I am shocked by how unstable London has become, seemingly waving around in all directions and bouncing up and down. Dealing with traffic after three weeks where everything happens in relative slow motion has been unpleasant. Dealing with the surly attitude of everyone I don't know brings home how friendly, gentle and helpful the Southern Turks really are.

Laundry left at a Marina laundry service by accident (we sailed off without collecting it) was recovered for us by the wife of one of the little restauranters whose place we like to eat at without fuss and accompanied by a refusal to accept any form of payment except reimbursement of the costs of the laundry service. The charterers engineer drove 4 hours each way to where the boat was to sort an oil leak without complaint and without fuss about half an hour after we called to say there was a problem. Beat that in the UK. I don't think so really.....

And the food, oh, the food. That's for another post.

Next stop Cowes IOW

No more planes this week. From the sublime (Istanbul, Port Camargue, Estoi in Portugal) to the maybe slightly less so, firmly set in the 1950s and clinging resolutely onto those halcyon years of architecture, design and cuisine. The architecture is unremittingly Bungalow and buildings that exhibit an unfulfilled yearning to be Nissan huts but somehow sadly lost out when the planning genes were randomly distributed.

We are off to Cowes for Cowes week. Being based in East Cowes, you soon learn the vagaries of the timings of the chain ferry from East to West Cowes, of the effect of the tides and whether you may just as well give in and drive all the way round via Newport. Yup, no tunnel, no bridge. One ferry, very old, inclined to get cranky.

Fish and chips is haute cuisine here. You see lots of holiday makers in great locations like Ryde beach eating chips for lunch with eggs and sausages and chips for their evening meal with fish and mushy peas and the odd saveloy.

Ah yes, the saveloy: "A saveloy is a type of highly seasoned pork sausage, usually bright red in colour, which is served in English fish and chip shops,"^[1] sometimes fried in batter. The word comes from the French cervelas, a pork sausage, at one time sometimes made from pigs' brains" (Wikipedia).

By contrast, in West Cowes in the early morning the twenty somethings who are crew on the bigger racing boats all fall into the high street sandwich shops to buy expresso and hot bacon baguettes and nurofen for the hangover they worked on for most of the evening and night in the beer tent. Then in their colour-coordinated and logo bearing outfits they fall into the hot showers and onto the boat to head out to the Black group start, praying there is enough wind - no, not for the racing but to blow the cobwebs of the hangover away and get them thirsty again.

More California

It's been a while since I last posted. Too taken up with the joy of finding some fresh air (almost anywhere in the UK, after LA) and the delightful schadenfreude of the MPs' expenses saga. To say nothing of cheese free food.

I'm off again on Sunday. Better prepared for the psychological onslaught. Better equipped with local knowledge, who does cheese, where you can avoid it. Familiar if complex freeway routes (pronounced routs as in row and rowt not root), knowledge that LAX is still a building site.

Wondering if any of the State's recently issued IOU's will be floating around, thrown away in despair by those who would prefer hard cash from the world's 5th largest economy (that's California btw).

Happy days are here again...

California(1)

Well, I'm here. LAX is a building site. It seems to have been that for the last 15 years. One day it may be finished. Maybe. 15 minutes in a bus going round all the terminals (7+the Tom Bradley International building site) before taking me to the car hire place.  Then to the airport exit and the journey to Long Beach.

Most signs on the freeways are neatly located just after the relevant junctions. The GPS ("Neverlost" ho ho) issues such convoluted instructions that you have passed the junction by the time it is finished, unless they designed it so that the end of the instruction co-incides with the road-signs.

I make it in the end. Round and round and round the I-405N and the I-710 S and The One (the 1 or the Pacific Coast Highway) until I finally get to the right on ramp leading directly to another off-ramp. It's easy once you realise that your freeway journey is less than 200 yards on the main carriageway. The problem is that the onramp leads into the right hand or outside lane and the off ramp is from the inside lane where the carpool ends. It's amazing how many lorries,sorry, trucks, thunder past trying to stop you changing lanes.

California, Long Beach. Home of the Ahi Poke stack. (Tuna, raw, piled on top of raw carrot and beansprouts liberally soaked in soy sauce and wasabi). Home of the California roll. Now with added jack cheese.  Home of the salmon sushi with added creme fraiche. Yes, really, truly, cheese is now king. In one restaurant this week there was NO dish on the menu that did not have cheese. Parmesan croutons. Parmesan breadcrumb coated fish. Melted Jack cheese. Mixed cheeses. White wine garlic cheese sauce. Provlone with everything. Tomato and mozzarella salad. Cheeseburger without the option. Turkey sandwich with melted cheese. Cheesy fries.....I could rant on for hours reciting the menu. I left and went to the Chinese. MSG, sugar,salt, deep fried sweet and sour pork in batter, food colouring, real food at last. 

What with that and the grey cool cloudy weather I could learn to loath this place quite quickly. I do hope I'm wrong.