Entertainments

[juliet]

kitty_goth & I were delayed by an accident on the M40 meaning that the Ox Tube was slower than usual; so by the time we'd arrived, had dinner, & had a couple of pints with my friend Richard in the Gloucester Arms, we didn't actually reach the Randolph till around 2200. This was, in fact, about right timing, though - got in a couple of hours of wandering round in Posh Frock & mask (cheers angelmine for mask-loan!), danced for a bit (and then remembered that Posh Frock, whilst v nice, is not all that when it comes to, ahem, retaining one's modesty when dancing energetically, i.e. e.g. viz. Escaping Breasts. Oops), and then sodded off home when they finished the music at midnight. Posh Frock can now go back into retirement for another 4 yrs or whatever, I suppose.

marnameow & I went round to visit dr_meg & angelmine & chat about assorted & various things; then later on we decamped to St R for a bit. I stayed for nice curry before heading back home to spend the evening watching Princess Mononoke with Pete. Which is v good indeed & I thoroughly recommend.

Sunday featured me learning to snowboard, hurrah! Well, OK, starting to learn to snowboard. Ben, Simon W & I went up to Milton Keynes, where they have XScape which has pretend real snow inside. Most bizarre. I spent 3 hours learning to go down a hill backwards, and then forwards, and also from side to side. And fell over a lot. My arse still hurts (I would note at this point that all possible jokes on this matter have already been made by Pete & Ben. Often repeatedly). It was, however, Much Fun, and has confirmed me that I will be boarding rather than skiing in Saas Fee in Feb. Much less likelihood of buggering further my already buggered knees. Further 3-hr session in a couple of weeks, which should get me up to able-to-get-down-slope-alone stage before Switzerland. Whoosh!

I had a DAY OFF on Monday, hurrah. So I stayed in bed, & then watched silly film & knitted. Have finished my lovely furry jumper, and lo! it is lovely and furry. Then off to see PWEI, who kicked enormous amounts of arse. Hurrah for the Poppies. I do not like the Shepherds Bush Empire much, though. They need to either move the bar all the way to the back, or reduce their capacity by 10%; and carpet the floor. I spent the latter half of the gig expending far too much energy trying not to fall over, growl. Still a bloody fine gig, though :-) [bounce bounce]

Yesterday a nice chap came round to put concrete all over the floor; today he is putting Marmoleum (lino stuff) on top of that. This is v exciting, no, honest. As a result the kitchen smelt funny so P took me out for dinner. Splendid. The Italian round the corner is really quite nice.

Many of the above activities involved Trains. Trains are ace. I point you at this post here of dogrando's where he recommends mailing your MP about the Railways Bill, under discussion tomorrow.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I might tell my MP later that I think the train lines should be concreted and turned into express coachways, allowing for more regular journeys to more varied destinations at a much lower infrastructure cost, employing more staff, and being just as fast for the short-hop journeys most made by working class people.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Ten gets you twenty the government after next turns 'em into normal roads.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Normal roads wouldn't help much - they largely map the route of existing roads - so the WCML follows the M1, give or take, for quite a long way, and the trans-pennine railways and the M62 are close together, ditto to a lesser extent the ECML and the A1.

Low-traffic high-cost commuter toll roads, maybe, I can see Michael Howard doing the maths.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I've yet to meet a coach that was even half as comfortable as a South Central 1960s slamdoor rattletrap of death.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

That's because trains use space fairly inefficiently, so they can be comfortable, although it's a matter of opinion when they're full. It wouldn't be all that hard to make a more comfortable kind of coach if you had more room to play with.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I can see the tenders to run the damn things being awarded to Stageroach and Worst...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Well, probably. You know me, I'd just do it, but in fairness they're not too bad for inter-urban services, it's local services they cut corners on because they're not profitable in most places.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

I use the X2 and the X5. They went through a period of repeatedly making the service worse for me over that combination of services.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Oh well, my Councillors manage to get to meetings on them. Well, more the X4 I suppose. The X6 is similarly hopeless, partly because the money which could be spent on decent bus connections for those kind of journeys is being spent making it cheaper for commuters to dart around the country on trains.

Step one, abolish national rail enquiries and route everyone to the integrated journey planner, so that for instance my friends in Oxford realise it is an hour and a bit and six quid return to come and visit me, not over two hours and thirty quid return.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Step one, parallel process: persuade Stagecoach to improve late-night service so that cross-Midlands daytripping by bus is feasible.
Idle thought: Has the state of the art in concrete roadways improved to the point where they're not desperately noisy?

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

The former will happen once we build enough houses to make the numbers stack up, which should happen within the next decade. The latter - erm, I don' think roads are noisier than railways, no. Also you can plant trees at the side of roads in a way that the railways people try to stop you doing with railways. I mean, buses aren't often cancelled because of leaves on the tarmac, are they?

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

I was speaking of concrete relative to tarmac, rather than relative to rail.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I used concrete metaphorically, you can use whatever hard surface you actually want as far as I'm concerned.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Umpteen occasional trips from Worthing to Salisbury convinced me that although concrete roadways are much sturdier than tarmac, they're also much noisier, which makes me picky about the difference.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Not really, as far as I'm aware. To make it quiet you really have to make it squishy, and then it's just tarmac and you may as well have stayed in bed.

[chrisvenus]

Damn! Didn't realise you were there! Would have come and said hello if I'd known (and of course recognised you). And if you now tell me that we did talk then I shall die of embarrasment. :)

[taimatsu]

I bumped into her rather unexpectedly and had to pee at her fo a while and listen hard to work out if it was really her :)

[juliet]

No, I didn't realise you were there either until afterwards :-)

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Mmm... skiing...

Just remember, getting up the slope is a lot harder than getting down.

[juliet]

I love skiing, but with the knees thing I was getting increasingly underconfident, which obviously is No Good; I think I'm going to enjoy boarding more primarily because of that. However, we shall see :-)

[rgl.livejournal.com]

Isn't boarding just as hard on the knees? I'm not sure - I got further with boarding than I did with skiing, but not very far with either. I do actually own a pair of snowboarding boots, though!

[juliet]

I think it depends on what you have wrong with your knees. Mine are perfectly functional for non/low-impact things (so cycling is fine, walking is OK for anything up to a couple-three miles, running is Right Out), so both boarding & skiing are fine for that. The problem is that they're not very resilient to being turned in awkward directions - on such occasions, loud crunching noises and pain happen, and the pain tends to continue for a while afterwards. This has in the past happened when standing up or turning awkwardly, although it usually has to be a bit more dramatic.

Anyway: with skiing, when you fall over, your knees have a tendency to go in opposite directions, and often directions in which knees would prefer not to be. Hence, loud crunching noises, pain. And, consequently, a tendency for me to be a bit under-confident about attempting things, because I know what the consequences are if I go splat. I think it's true of a lot of physical things, but certainly my experience of skiing (& it's also true for boarding from what I've heard) is that confidence is a major factor in being able to do stuff successfully. With boarding, your knees are strapped nice & securely in the *right* direction, so falling over, whilst bruise-inducing, is not knee-crunching. At least, this is the theory - I certainly know other folk who've switched to boarding for similar reasons. Hence, we hope, more confidence, and thus more fun.

[rgl.livejournal.com]

Aaah, yes, that makes sense. Actually I just did a quick google, and snowboarders tend to injure their knees less and their arms more (e.g. this article (http://www.adksportsfitness.com/november2003/articles/health_fitness.html)).

[juliet]

Heh. I like this line:
"Remember that wearing a helmet does not make you invincible and even if you are wearing a helmet, the tree always wins."

(I shan't be wearing a helmet, personally. Nasty things.)