Quality end to the European holiday

Today is a public holiday - All Saints - so things are fairly quiet out on the street, though they weren’t during the night when lots of young people were out and about yahooing and generally waking up old people in the middle of the night. Anyway, we didn’t have to get up quite so early this morning, even though we shifted out of the apartment.

The new apartment is about five minutes walk away (at normal walking speed: with our bags and Celia’s foot it took us somewhat longer), and it’s entrance is in a much narrower street again. In fact cars don’t go down it. There’s a square just on one corner with a statue of what looks at first like a skateboarder; think it’s some explorer, though. The trees in the square seem to be growing mandarins, or some equivalent, and outside one of the balcony windows is the back of the Cathedral with a door that looks as though it hasn’t been opened in some time.

The apartment is much more luxurious-looking than the other place, although both of us found the previous place to be very comfortable and up to date. This one has a lot more ‘antique’ furniture. It may actually be antique; I don’t know, but it probably came with the place when Nicholas, the owner, bought it. Again it has a superb oval glass-topped table, with six chairs this time, instead of four. There are all the mod cons in the kitchen and bathrooms (two of these again!) including a dishwasher again. We’re not much into bothering with dishwashers; most of our English rellies have them, but we’re quite happy to wash up as we go.

There are original paintings everywhere, some by an artist called Antonio Ferri. You can read a short biography of him here. Seems he’s a local painter, who’s spent some time in the States but has decided that home is best.

There’s even a hallway to this apartment, something our previous only pretended to have. In it is an antique couch with cushions, gold braid and so forth, and opposite a shelf with a delightful statue of a horse. Celia’s a bit iffy about being in a place with so many knickknacks of the antique sort; she doesn’t want to turn round suddenly and break something.

The lounge has two modern couches facing each other, another glass-topped (square) table, and more antique furniture. Plainly the latter isn’t hard to find in Spain!

Finally, there's an even more up-to-date tv and dvd. And a different collection of movies. We're having a blob day (after all our exertions yesterday) and Celia's watching something while I type.

I haven't mentioned that in both these apartments I've had free wireless for the Internet. The last place had one option - this has three!

The picture by Antonio Ferri comes courtesy of Galeria Estil in Valencia.

Meanwhile

Meanwhile, the computer’s mobile connect continues to play up, so that we can’t use it to go online. This had become quite an issue, as we hadn’t booked places in Florence or Rome, and we are due to go to the first of those tomorrow. The reason for delaying on this had been that the YHA had advertised a special deal in both cities in hostels, and we were waiting for a response from them. For some reason they’ve been very slack, and still haven’t replied - and we couldn’t get them on the phone either.
We finally found a Vodafone shop here in Milan today, and got a definite No from them in terms of help. They’re a different company, and don’t help UK customers. Finalmente! We found an Internet shop where we could use the computer for an hour for one euro. Very cheap! Found that my daughter had managed to cancel both the NZ cards, and had also found the address for sorting out my NZ driver’s licence. Later in the day we found a second Internet place where we surprisingly quickly booked hotels in Florence, Rome and Barcelona. Think they go from the sublime to the ridiculous, but at least they’re booked.

Travel writing in abeyance

Sadly, I can't get online to upload my notes about the trip at the moment. As I've explained in an email to some people, the mobile connect has gone AWOL - we've tried all sorts of things, like uninstalling it and so forth, but it's just not wanting to work. This means I'm having to rely on Internet cafes\shops, and though they're not expensive, it's not so easy to get things uploaded.
We went to the Vodafone shop in Corso Buenos Aires yesterday, but the young man in there refused point blank to help us. He belongs to Vodafone Europe - we belong to Vodafone UK. And trying to ring Vodafone UK from here doesn't work at all. We get a lovely Italian lady telling us something at great length, and then the usual English woman saying we appear to have dialled a number that doesn't exist.
Anyway, I've written up lots of notes and have them on my computer. If we have time I'll come in and put them on here. If not, know that we are still doing things! (In Florence, at present.)
PS Everything on Google is in Italian. Makes a change from German.

Cromer - Gem of the North Norfolk coast

We haven’t got quite so much access to the Net at the moment, so things are a bit quiet on the travel blog front At present we’re in Cromer, which is only a few miles from Sheringham, the famous town that my wife couldn’t wait to get back to and see. In fact we went been back there again a couple of days ago checking the place out, and had a look at the old alma mater (the caretaker who came out to see what we wanted had been to school there himself and originally couldn’t wait to get out of the place) and then at another part of it which I hadn’t heard about before: Upper Sheringham. This turned out to be a delightful place, not large, but with its own church, and full of those houses that are made of the local beach stones. Even the newer buildings were made to fit in with the old houses. In the centre of the village was a large round wall less than a metre high, with a gate in it. It turned out that inside the wall was a pool and the water was pouring out on either side of the gate, and presumably being channelled back into the pool again. It may originally have been a horse trough, according to my sister-in-law.
We walked into Cromer yesterday - my sister-in-law is a keen walker - and then back again a different way. Both of us have started a new regime diet-wise, as we’re both needing to deal with our weight. Being on holiday is not conducive to exercise or healthy eating. So we’ve gone onto the Weight Watchers’ approach - my sister-in-law has used it in the past, and continues on a maintenance diet - and we’re keeping track of what we’re eating. I certainly need to deal with my tendency just to munch away, and I certainly need to get some more exercise. I’m used to walking a lot more than I’m doing at present.
Anyway, we walked into Cromer and did the op-shops, and then in the afternoon we took the car part of the way and walked back into town again from there. Unfortunately, even though the weather seemed lovely when we set out, it rapidly turned off, and a chilly wind blew up, and it began to drizzle. We checked out the secondhand bookshops - there are three, but only two of them were open. The two we went into were packed with books, and I found a Studdert Kennedy (The Wicket Gate) for a couple of pounds, which I suspect was a bargain. In the morning we’d found that one of the op-shops was also a Christian bookshop, with both new and secondhand books available. I found an F W Boreham book there for 75p. His books are highly sought after - in NZ, Australia and the States anyway - so that was a bargain. Also bought a new book on Christianity and Islam, which I started to read when I got home.
We got soaked walking back to the car, so I popped into the bath to warm up, and read.
Cromer doesn’t have quite the appeal for either Celia or me - perhaps it’s because it’s so close to Sheringham. It’s still an interesting town, full of those typical English seaside buildings, three storeys high for the most part, with balconies and large windows. They only seem to appear in seaside towns. There are odd alleyways, and streets going off at peculiar angles (which isn’t good for the traffic that trawls its way through the town), and then there’s the beach. It’s way below the town - about three storeys below - and there’s even a modern lift for people who find it difficult to get down or up. We haven’t been down to the beach yet, but no doubt will as we’re here until next Wednesday, when there’s a Carnival procession.

Interneting in the Rain

Yesterday we tramped around in drizzling rain trying to find one of the pubs in Northampton that has internet access available via The Cloud. The first place we went to was under new management, and the staff knew nothing about Internet access. One of the blokes at the counter suggested another public house a street away: this turned out to be only BT (British Telecom) wireless access, which wasn’t any good to us. We only discovered this after we’d bought a coffee and tea. (Strong, strong coffees and teas.)
Finally we made our way to Abington St and found two Cloud access places opposite each other. If it hadn’t been raining so hard we could probably have sat out in the street between them (it’s a no vehicular traffic area) and picked up the signal. In the end we chose Lloyds No 1 over the Wedgewood, because the music was too loud at the latter.
Lloyds No 1 is part of a chain of pubs around the country, and provided us not only with great tea and hot chocolate (covered in cream, the latter was) but with inexpensive meals. We got through some business on the Net and some blogging, but no Skyping. However we were back in town this morning because we wanted to look at the Market in Northampton (where some woman was selling very good DVDs, but changing the price to suit the customer!) so we skyped two of the kids and had a conference call with them.

Korea to London

Forgot to say that we came across a chapel at Auckland airport, and sat in there for a while together, singing and praying out loud - since we were alone. There was also a prayer room at Incheon, but it was multi-faith, and had no focus: no cross, no nothing, just a blank wall at the end of the room. It looked a bit like it had been spare space, rather than a designed prayer room. The Auckland one was obviously designed as a chapel. The Incheon prayer room had a few shelves at the back. On them were a very small number of Bibles and Korans in various editions. And a novel by Kathy Reichs. I went in the room first, before Celia, and another man, a Korean, came in after me and bent over to pray. And his cellphone rang. So he answered - quietly, at least - and then prayed a bit more.
Celia told me that in the toilet there was something like gladwrap around the edge of the seats. If you pressed a button the old gladwrap rolled away, and a new lot rolled in! However, the gents weren’t so well favoured. On the other hand, the men’s toilet seats have a gap in the front; something that makes them slightly more convenient for men, I think, as a full toilet seat can be difficult to get everything comfortably situated on (!)
While we were waiting, we came across free internet for transit passengers. Celia was pleased, as I’d been tempted to use the computer in the hotel room, until we discovered it would cost about 20,000 won, which she worked out to be about $40NZ. So we got the same for nothing, and another bonus: I’d sent an email to the kids, and was just writing one to my granddaughter, when my son Ben popped up on the gmail chat. It was fabulous being able to type back and forth, and we did it for several minutes. I think this is a thing that’s making us feel not so far away from home. We have the means to communicate easily,and sometimes surprisingly!

Seeing each other

While in the midst of all the Skype stuff (talking through the computer rather than a phone) Celia has also considered the possibility of a Web Cam. One of her favourite occupations has been looking at the Sheringham (in the UK) Web Cam that’s focused on the car park. Sounds boring, doesn’t it, but to her it’s a way of seeing a little bit of home. And it changes every thirty seconds!
We haven’t gone any further with the Web Cam idea, since it would mean someone here would have to buy one, as well as us. One of the kids may have one that he’s never used, but if so, it would still mean everyone in the family would have to gather round at a certain time to show their faces on the computer. Think this is one to put on the back burner.

Drifting away

My wife, still searching for the best options internet-wise, while we’re overseas, checked out wireless hotspots last night, and came across The Cloud. We discovered, after some digging, that it would probably be more economical to sign on with them for a year, even though we’re only going to be there six months, than to buy cards for limited times. As far as we can make out, if we sign on, it’ll only cost us 144 pounds, compared to 180 pounds for doing something different over six months. I can’t remember now what the something different was, as I was becoming a bit boggled by that time.
So I think we’ll go for that approach. There are plenty of hotspots around the country, though it might cost us a bit in coffees! But we’ll have access at relatives’ places, I imagine. If not, we’ll be out and about looking for hotspots a good deal of the day. Interesting way to spend a holiday!
Someone at work said, but why would you want internet access a lot of the time? I should have said: why wouldn’t I want to breathe, but I refrained from such sarcasm. There’s enough of it in our office already.

Geeks have their uses

My tame geek has finally conquered the wide yellow column down the left side. First we tried to do it off-line, by downloading the page and re-hashing it. This appeared to work until we posted another column at which point the great yellow slab re-appeared. Finally the tame geek had a go at the Template section and did something that has now made the page look like it belongs to a normal blogger (if such a thing exists and not to a mad artist from the fifties).

I'd like to continue the vein of Mike Crowl's Scribble Pad and write about writing and the arts generally in this blog - give it some focus, so that it's not just a blob (as opposed to a blog - the blobber has a certain valid ring to it too, especially in regard to some of the blogs I have read).

Of course, if I'm going to write about writing, I'd have to start with the frustration of having sent off another query to InfoTech only to have them ignore me again. But then I expect instant reaction from emails - though don't know why I should, as obviously there are plenty of people out there who regard emails as some kind of mysterious creature that you should never reply to on the same day as you receive it. That gives it a sense of being real post as opposed to this fancy electronic stuff.

I guess I'm also frustrated at being on this writers' list and hearing of the successes people on it have, while I'm struggling to get one piece off the ground. Of course, I do have to take into consideration the fact that at present I'm also trying to produce/musical direct a show of just under two hours which is badly in need of being further forward than it is, and that there are only so many rehearsals in a week, and so many days to rehearse in. Nevertheless, the people in Opera Alive are doing well all things considered.

I keep feeling as though I should be adding links here, left right and centre and upwards and downwards probably too. But nothing so far that I've written appears to need to be linked to anything, so blandly unlinked it all remains.

I am going to do an article about being bored with the Net, though I find it's not a frequent occurrence with me. But certainly I can see the possibility of such a thing, even if I don't quite appreciate how it could be. There's a great tendency to spend your time not actually surfing, but paddling. It's easy to stay close to the shore and not get into those shoals where oddball creatures lurk ready to corrupt your brain with their conspiracy theories or pervert your morality with their ugly views on life, sex and more sex. And if you stay close to the shore where the little waves are, it's unlikely you'll have that kind of serendipitous experience that the Net can give. So much of the oddball lies quite close to the shore in fact - you don't have to be a good swimmer to get to it. Put a word or phrase in the average search engine and all manner of strange things turn up unbidden (well, in the sense that you never expected to come across them while you were searching for something straightforward, like how many other people have the same name as you). There's a quirkiness about the Net - it's one of its greatest features. I don't know how many times I've gone searching for a basic bit of background material to a fairly ordinary idea and wound up discovering stuff I never knew people thought about, let alone experimented with - and I don't mean in the sex and more sex area, either.

I've learned more on the Net in the last few years than I ever learned in school (which doesn't say much) or more to the point, in my normal researching over the years via the paper media. The Net has the ability to pull together all manner of things that lie hidden from your normal daily routine. It's a way of tossing the world around like a salad and coming up with not only the vegetables that were hidden below, but a couple of caterpillars that had made their way in, as well.