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It has come to my attention that amongst my readers, there are some who find that navigating to my blog in anticipation of a moment of vaguely amusing silliness and finding that, yet again, there's nothing new there, is genuinely disappointing.  This is a negative result which is exactly the opposite of the intention of the blog in the first place, and I apologise for that.

To avoid disappointment in the future, I've fixed it so that the "follow by email" widget actually shows on the page.  Just stick your email in the box just above my head over there on the right and click the button, and magical electronical computatory internetworking wizardry will send you an email whenever I actually get it together to write something new.  With a bit of luck.

This is such a dull and functional post that I feel the need to enliven it with a random picture, so here is one, shamelessly borrowed from the internet:

Raspberries

One from my list

In keeping with this blog's original objective of chronicling my progress through the morass of retired life, I can now make an interim report on one of the things I claimed as an objective "when I retired".

I said I would get fitter.

A couple of years ago I started walking up the hill outside our house in the evenings after work. It's a little used lane for the most part, which goes past a few houses and then on into woods and countryside.  It's only 880m (according to Google Maps) but it is quite an effective hill, with some seriously steep bits.  Anyway, I took to  walking up it, attempting, where I could, to keep pace with some bangin' psytrance at about 120-140bpm (which is much too fast to walk normally, so I looked like a loony when this was successful).  The idea of this was to protect my knees, those being famously weedy and unable to handle anything more percussive than walking.

This carried on for a while and I gradually got faster (I think my PB was a whisker over 25min), even sometimes trotting a bit on the way down, until winter came, and the unlit lane became unappealing, at which point I gave up.  So that was that.

Anyway, couple of weeks ago I though it was time to take up the challenge again.  My first effort was a shade under 30min, which I was fairly happy with. I've been getting faster - and trotting more - doing the course nearly every day since.  And today I did yet another PB (a remarkable 23:05) by running all the way.

It's hard to express how surprised I am to be able to do this!  I can't remember when I could last run for 20 minutes continuously, but it was a LONG time ago. I suppose that my previous sedentary (working) lifestyle was very bad for my knees, and that my current regime of sleeping, wandering aimlessly about quite a lot, doing some hard labour on the house of luuurve from time to time, and occasionally listening to bangin' psytrance, has built up their musculature.  Or something.  Anyway, it's a really big milestone for me, and I feel great.

To celebrate, I drank beer.  Cheers!

Technik Lite

Second blog about the Speyer Technik Museum.  This time I'll let the captions do the work.

A Russian  on the way to space

A Russian coming back from space

Another Russian coming back from space

 

What happens to you guys up there?

A little bit of Russian Space Shuttlewiring.  What could possibly go wrong?

Really? A driver's shaving mirror?

Amusing Englander transport! Ha! Ha! how ve laughed!

No, you've hung it upside down!

Munch 2-stroke triple.  Actually looks OK to me!

Rescue boat caught in the act of giving birth!

There's nobody flying this thing!

Das Go Technik!

I've tried to avoid turning the blog into "what I did on my holidays", but there is one place we went which deserves special mention.  It is the Speyer Technik Museum in Germany, which is a transport museum.  As such, it's got all sorts of vehicles - motorbikes, cars, aeroplanes, railway engines, boats, submarines and spacecraft.  They've got a Space Shuttle!  OK, it's a Russian one, not an American one, but still pretty good.

Me standing under the Space Shuttle of Damocles

You can have a look inside - it's got a big space for cargo, a fairly standard-looking cockpit, and a very scary amount of wiring.

One of the things I like about this museum is that everything is mixed up in a seemingly completely arbitrary jumble, which makes for more surprises as you wander around.

Mixed transport, including fairground roundabout

Corvette, 3-engined Tractor, helicopter etc...

And, of course, it's in Germany, so you get a slightly different perspective from the one we are used to.  They are very proud of the service record of their Messerschmitt BF109, for example, and happy to point out that Maybach cars  unquestionably exemplify the pinnacle of equipment, luxury and quality in car manufacture.  Who knew?

interesting...

There's a huge space allocated to the Munch Mammoth motorbike and its illustrious, if little-known, forebears, and even evidence that someone once found something interesting to do with a BMW flat twin, along with tons and tons of other good stuff.  For example, venerable racing car maker Auto Union made a sort of Sunbeam Alpine (i.e. a small European Ford Thunderbird copy) in the '60s - quite cute, but with only 55ps? Really?

Auto Union Alpine-thunder-chicken

Outside, there are lots of big things, and the "it's German" difference is the preponderance of Russian stuff like Sukhoi fighter jets and Antonovs.  Oh, and there's a 747 about 30ft up in the air, which you can walk around in.  They ripped the inside out so that you can see the structure, which is good.

 Altogether, great stuff.  If you can't quite make a visit, check out the website:
https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en

Do you know what?  I've got so many pictures, I think I'll do another blog on this topic.  With jokes maybe!

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

As a deliberate celebration of my new-found lack of responsibility I decided to not take any kind of shaving device on our trip to Italy.  A tiny part of the justification was to save weight and space and clutter in the camper van, but mostly it was to avoid having to shave.  Of course I expected that I would get gradually hairier, but I didn't expect to end up looking like the Onion knight, Ser Davos Seaworth, thus:

Ser Davos

Me

I imagine that's why I got so many strange looks across the continent.  But of course, all such fripperies must come to an end eventually, and when we got back to Blighty, the lovely Jackie asked if I could possibly get rid of the beard, or at least make it a lot shorter, for the reduction of tickliness, and so that we wouldn't get stopped in the street all the time by gawping Game of Thrones fans.



And so I did - trimming right down to a rather more formal 9mm all over look as a starting point; but never imagining that the result of THAT would be that I would look disturbingly like ex-Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke.  Doh!

Me

Ben Bernanke

Clearly ths would never do.  After a very brief spell at designer stubble (it turns out that's not really my look either) there was only one place to go...

...and so I am now, for the first time in over twenty years, beardless!

Unrecognisable!

How long this will last, remains to be seen.  I certainly preferred the maintenance regime that went with the Ser Davos look (nothing).  Anyway, if you should see me on the street one day and wonder why you don't recognise me at all, it will probably be because I look completely different!

Pizza, Italian Style

A little anecdote this time.

We stayed with some Italians (in Italy) and offered to take them out to dinner to say thank you for their hospitality and great generosity to us.  They said, "Sure, we'll go to our favourite pizza place, it's just around the corner.  We always go there for meals out".  Sounds good to me.

So there we were, Italians in an Italian pizza restaurant in Italy, complete with a very long list of pizza toppings - all the usual ones and a few different combinations of the usual ingredients, but I didn't notice anything especially "whacky".  Imagine our amazement when one of our number was served her favourite - the chip pizza.

A chip pizza is a pizza base with tomato and cheese, completely covered with a layer of chips.  Actual fried potato chips.

Wow. Neither of us had the heart to take a photo, for fear of causing embarrassment, so you'll just have to believe me.

I have had to consider the Saturday lunchtime "macaroni cheese and chips" my mother used to make when I was a kid in a new light.  Maybe not so inauthentic after all!

In fairness to Italians everywhere, I should say that the young lady in question is only 13 years old.  She's also a gymnast of approaching national competition standard, and (needless to say) extremely slim and fit.  Ah, youth!  It's amazing what you can get away with when you're young.  Even so, I suspect her chip pizza days may be numbered.