Is rugby war?

Yesterday was odd; Marian was at a colleague's wedding and the final three matches of the Six Nations Rugby Championship were showing on BBC1 in succession from 1.30 to around 7.00 p.m. Yielding to temptation like that was easy, especially as the final game was Wales v Ireland. Wales needed to win by 13+ points to win the championship, while Ireland needed a straight win for the championship and the grand slam, which they'd last achieved 61 years ago. At half time Wales was 6 points ahead and Ireland needed the talking to they must have got, because the second half was a high tension game. Finally, in the dying minutes a penalty kick by Wales could have given them a one point lead, denying Ireland glory. The ball fell short and Ireland got the championship and grand slam. What a finish! Hopping channels before the wedding guest returned led me to ITV4's documentary on D-Day in 1944, which made me wonder whether the battered rugby champs were vicarious warriors for the six nations. We have had generations of relative peace in Europe, at least between nations. Today in Sydney airport two motor cycle gangs clashed, leaving one man dead. Aggression is deep in human nature, so thank the Lord if rugby has a safety valve effect. For me, though I am Welsh, I was able to cheer Ireland's victory; just as well, as I have an Irish daughter-in-law.

Is That You?

Fiddling with my MacBook is fun. Found an app called Photobooth that surprised me with this shot of me at home listening to Brahms on iTunes--using headphones--and fiddling. Watch out, 21st Century!

I Still Miss NEO

On leaving paid work I decided to move into the world of Apple and leave the frustrations of Windows and PCs behind, but I still miss one program that is fantastically helpful. It only works with Outlook and it's the Nelson Email Organizer, or NEO. At heart NEO is a set of instantly updated indexes of email messages; in reality it speeds the retrieval of any email instantly. And that's what I miss. Apple's Mail email client is good and has many strengths, but I still struggle to find that email I know I had from old Jones... The trouble is Outlook is such a greedy space gobbler I am glad to have left it behind, with its proprietary file structures and arrogant remoteness from other worthy email clients with whom it refuses to speak nicely. But NEO...

Really!

Just had an email from a web-site that holds thousands of sermons, the vast majority of which I have never listened to, nor will I imagine. There's a little graphic from a church in South Carolina, called Faith Free Presbyterian Church, a name that is crying out for a clarifying hyphen to eliminate the ambiguity. Or, are they just being honest?

A Discovery

Since retiring from Feba my only journey has been to Derbyshire for a holiday with my wife, Marian, last November (2008). We noticed how beauty, hills and proximity to wealth in cities made the proportion of 4x4s higher than in other places. Steep hills and a wintery imagination made Imagine this in the snow! a holiday catch phrase. The snow in February justified these beasts' existence, though. A different journey this morning: Exploring the word outwith. Grace Community Church, my home church, will welcome a new pastor in April. He's Scottish and has lived in France for 15 years, giving him challenges to begin to think again in English and get used to southern English ways. Erwin used outwith in one sermon at GCC. Another GCC member, also a Scot, used outwith since, whetting my curiosity. A Google search reveals this to be a word in current use in Scotland, even in a government web site about home schooling--children being educated outwith school, as it reads. Outwith means beyond or outside, just like the older meaning of without. In the Victorian hymn There Is a Green Hill Far Away Without a City Wall, the hill is outside the city wall, as later editions of the hymn have it, not a plot subject to possible enclosure. It's good to be on the journey still.

End of a long journey

Last evening my former company had an evening to celebrate my retirement. Since summer 2007 I have worked half time with them, having reached pensionable age then. Val and Jacqui organised it all, inviting former colleagues and current staff. We had a great time. My boss, John, is leaving one month later so we celebrated his time, too. That fact allowed him to steal a response I would have loved to make--that he hardly recognised the nice chap the speakers were talking about. Despite my memory now bringing back fine detail from the distant past and failing to match that for more recent events, I didn't remember some of the incidents recalled by others. Regrettably, I do remember times when I was arrogant and boorish. Thirty five years with one company is a long time, unusual in Britain these days where it is better to have multiple entries in one's CV. The long spell hides that I have, in fact, held many different positions with a variety of responsibilities. For 27 years they required international travel, explaining the title of this blog and my rather feeble attempts to write about some of the journeys. Now the frequency of travel will diminish, but the free bus pass will enable local travel in these days of green concerns. For me, the 35 years have gone by very quickly and left me with a brilliant set of memories of people, places and experiences. My colleagues gave me a 500GB computer hard disk to use as a back up facility for a new laptop just purchased. Converting good memories into computer files is impossible; if it were, 500GB would barely contain them all.

West Sussex Again

The weather forecast for Dallas was for rain. On Sunday there were wisps of cloud around in contrast with the perfect blue dome the previous Wednesday. I can't rate Dallas/Fort Worth airport very highly; my pre-flight wait was pretty boring. After arriving in good time at Detroit our plane had to wait twenty minutes for someone to find the illuminated wands a ground staff person uses to guide the plane to the gate. Then there was no one to drive the air bridge from which we deplaned. All in all not very impressive. Unusually, the rail journey to Worthing was fast because the train had a fault, making it 19 minutes late out of Gatwick, so the slow stops along the coast were cut out so it could get back into step with the planned timetable. Is this a boring post? Not as boring as modern international travel; airport taxes on this journey from London to Dallas were higher than the cost of the ticket itself. And we all know why that is. Who is winning what war, I ask? Outside our home are a fir, an oak, a silver birch and a sycamore (E&OE). The gutters are deep in rich brown leaves. Autumn is here.

Target not reached

I never made it to the Target store. While in transit from the hotel to the meeting place the van crossed the bridge over the seemingly impossible junction. There is a pedestrian walk way over the bridge, so it is theoretically possible to go to Target on foot. Instead I was taken to the Apple computer store in Plano, where I bought some software for the Apple computer I plan to buy soon. While fully appreciating the discipline necessary to run a company's IT, I get fed up with Microsoft's bloated software and storage needs. Currently my Outlook 2007 at home takes a couple of minutes to open up its files and nearly as long to shift an email from one file to another. Don't ask why I do that; I know my cyber-life could be simpler. With an Apple it may be complicated, but it will look nice. Apple has great visual impact; by my keyboard is the business card of Todd, the young man who helped me earlier. It is clean and classy. Unlike the floor of the eating place this evening, which is strewn with empty peanut shells. See my earlier post. While we waited for an empty table, pigeons and some black birds waited for any peanuts that might come their way. As the sun went down, hundreds of birds started gathering on the high voltage electricity cables on the far side of the highway, beyond which lies Target. It looked like it could turn into a Hitchcock event if those HT birds decided to really get more peanuts. My steak was delicious.

As a walker in Texas

Walking is a minority activity here. Yesterday I saw only four other walkers. One was not really walking, just standing in the middle of a road turning, dressed as Father Christmas alongside a resurrected Elvis in white cat suit. They were jiggling sign boards around in the hope drivers would turn in to see the pre-Christmas sale of apartments, standing back a quarter mile from the main road. Most of the time I used side walks (pavements in UK, but here the pavement is the roadway--important to know that) but sometimes they just ended either side of some green space. At junctions with bigger roads there are pedestrian signals with a time span favourable to quick reactors and the nimble of foot. At access points to parking lots I have found drivers invariably courteous, holding well back so I could walk on. I did see one man leaning over to peer at me as he turned right ahead of me. So, are the drivers holding back for my safety or theirs? Solitary walker, huh? What do I make of him?

Texas and Large

Texans' reputation (in British humour) is that everything in Texas is bigger than anywhere else. I walked down for supper to Logan's Roadhouse, the nearest one to the hotel. It was fine, with crackly floors. Each table has a galvanized bucket of unshelled peanuts where Brits might expect bread. Emptied shells are dropped on the floor. I saw no spittoons. As a Brit, I find the portions huge and there are no other vegetables than potato. I had potato soup to start, nice with cheese and bacon. Then thin slices of beef on Texan toast, which was really just white bread toast, next to a heap of mashed potato cradling thick brown gravy in a dip. Not a solitary veg; nothing green, orange, red or yellow. Except in the mini dessert of cheesecake, served in a miniature galvanised bucket, the kid brother of the peanut holder. Apart from dessert the portions are huge, no wonder so many people there were overweight. A South African Feba colleague once joked that when beef is on the BBQ his vegetables are pork. In India I learned: After lunch rest a while, after dinner walk a mile. Which I did, stalking out the Target store for the weekend.