Back Again

Well it's over a year since my last post - a lot has changed but then again a lot has stayed the same.  I went through a bad patch and really lost motivation which scuppered me for a lot of 2012.  There were some highs - new friends and of course the Olympics/Paralympics, and with the help of some new drugs (or rather a combination of old ones) I'm feeling more back to where I was last time I've posted.

One thing that's changed is that I've spent more time going round the underground system - and after a number of runs I've managed to get a faster time of 17:37:09 with a regular team mate called Glen.  It's far better doing it with someone else rather than on your own, as it's a long day.  I've also kept going with the poi spinning - and have now had a go with fire which is brilliant fun, and performed as part of a group routine.  I love my fire poi!

Anyway - this blog is going to be dedicated to much the same thing as before - me trying to improve my life, be it by getting fitter, doing new things or whatever seems relevant.  Check back for more posts :)

Tube Challenge - 18th November 2011

Right – well that’s one item ticked off the bucket list. The one about having visited all 270 stations on the London Underground network. I was lucky in that I quickly found the Tube Challenge forum, specifically for people who do the whole network. My intention originally was to just visit all stations, and then I remembered that some people at uni had attempted to visit them all in a day, so that became the aim – which was great as that’s what this forum was about!

I got lucky in that they had two teams doing it on Children in Need day. Not that I was raising money, but it meant I got a chance to go round with a team of people including a four times world record holder and a two times world record holder. So – no worries about not having enough knowledge or experience as these guys took care of that! Andi (the current world record holder) and Martin (known as Tangy – I never did find out why). Between them they seemed to have an almost Autistic Savant knowledge of London Transport. Which door of which carriage do you need to stand at when coming into Euston from the north to change from the Northern to Victoria line so that you’re right opposite the connecting tunnel? Ask these guys! Only they’ll tell you to wait until King’s Cross (you did pick the right branch right?) as the connecting tunnel takes less time. By now you may have gathered that there’s more to this then you might have realised, and the rest of this blog entry is probably best read with a tube map in front of you to get the most out of it.

Also along for the ride was Myles, who was also a tube challenge newbie. Well, he’d attempted it before, but due to an unfortunate accident when trying to cross a road to catch a train had collided with a car and had done major damage to his left knee, which was now hopefully recovered, but had meant that we’d cut out some possible runs. Runs? What was there to run apart from between different lines on stations? Well – take a look at your map. There’s basically a lot of stuff in the middle with various “spurs” shooting out from there – like the train to Morden, or Stanmore, or Upminster. Now, in theory you could go up to say Stanmore on the Jubilee line, and then come back in to Baker Street, transfer to the Circle and head towards King’s Cross to head up the Northern line to Edgeware, come back in to the middle from there etc. Or you could transfer from Stanmore to Edgeware at the end of the lines and use one to head out and one to head in. You’re allowed (under the Guinness World of Records rules) to use other scheduled public transport, so buses, trains, and indeed trams are legal, but not bikes, cars, taxis, or even things like Boris Bikes. Or if nothing comes then you can run.

It’s worth knowing that the tube map is not just a scaled down version of the network with irrelevant info removed. It’s what’s known as topologically equivalent, which basically means that the lines intersect in the same places and the stations are in the same order, but it’s not just scaled down. Here’s a scaled down version which shows more accurately the geographical placement of the stations. It doesn’t show all of the outer ones, but it does illustrate how two things that may appear way apart are in fact quite close. I’ve linked it as it’s too large to fit on the screen, and you can zoom in on the linked version.

Geographical Tube Map

Anyway, the two stations mentioned are quite runnable with a bit of fitness, as are several other pairings, such as Wimbledon and Morden (about a mile and a half apart), although other alternatives exist such as the 93 bus, tram and then a shorter run, or train and then a shorter run. It’s all about assessing the best options at the time (the 93 bus isn’t always waiting outside the station, or there may be lots of traffic which would hold it up).

Right, so you want to minimise doubling back, like up to Stanmore on the Jubilee and then back in on the Jubilee. Unfortunately, not all furthest points pair up in the way of the stations mentioned above, so what do you do with these? Well – you have to start somewhere and finish somewhere, so pick two of these. Classic start/finish is Chesham or Amersham, and then it’s usual to use Heathrow or Upminster. Not Epping though – apparently this has been tried but just doesn’t work too well as the trains are irregular early on and late at night. Note that there are ways back from each of these, but you ideally want to minimise time. You might think this is all getting a bit obsessive, but as you’ll see later, there isn’t necessarily that much time to spare to get everything done in a day. The world record is a smidge under 16 and a half hours, so longer than an Ironman Triathlon (okay, I know some have a time limit of seventeen hours, but sixteen is typical).

We weren’t going for a record, so we decided to make the start at High Barnet and the finish at Cockfosters. This has the advantage that for those not from London, they can have one hotel somewhere between the two and start and finish are easily accessible. This is, incidentally, one of the pairs of stations that you normally get a bus/run between. This does however mean that two stations that would normally be start/finish (because they were the furthest out) now had to be both got to and then back from, which automatically added to the time.

Okay – take a look at your tube map, square B2. You can go in and out of Harrow on the Hill (get off one train from North Harrow and get on another going down to Uxbridge) but this means waiting for another train, so you can run from North to West Harrow (only a few hundred yards) or even from North Harrow to Rayners Lane (just under a mile). You have to pick up West Harrow later, but without going into too much detail you tend to pick that up naturally later. Today Andi had gone for the middle ground, as Myles’ leg wasn’t up to too much running. Similarly, the top bit of the Bakerloo line can be tricky, as it doesn’t actually intersect with the Metropolitan, but there’s a couple of hundred yard run between Northwick Park and Kenton (square B3)., and then in and out of Harrow and Wealdstone.

Right – so armed with our plan, here’s what happened! I met up with the guys at High Barnet (known as Amy Winehouse). I’d already got my zone 1-9 travelcard (yes, there are zones beyond zone 6!) and we got ready on our train. This was due to leave at 5:40am, and head down to Finchley Central to switch up to Mill Hill East. Now, this is one of the great potential time wasters – as the trains don’t run that often. We had two minutes to spare, but then our train left two minutes late which cocked that up. The train to MHE was there when we arrived, and in spite of some amazing up the stairs sprinting by Andi and Tangy, it left just as they got to the platform. Myles and I were about 30 seconds behind, but the guys could have held the door if they’d been twenty seconds earlier. This was the first time I realised just how much fitness was needed – not just for two mile jogs but for short bursts of explosive speed.

Now, we could have just waited for the next train up to MHE, but decided to run it. This was unlikely to catch us the next train down from MHE (this one really is a double back, there’s no time efficient alternative) so in many ways was a waste of energy, but as Andi said you never know, it may be running late. As it turned out we got slightly lost on the way, and if we hadn’t had a lot of luck catching a bus halfway and done some pretty frantic stair sprinting and door holding, we’d have missed the train after that – which is the one we’d have got if we’d waited for the next train out of Finchley Central. So – it nearly wasted us time. Time is critical, as our original schedule with tight connections, because of our start had an estimated time of just under nineteen hours, but because we weren’t on the best stations (distance-wise and last trains-wise) we only had 40 minutes to spare before missing the last train.

We headed into London, and because we were a train down, we made a decision to switch plans, and change to the other branch of the Northern line, picking up Mornington Crescent. This meant a longer change to the Victoria but actually didn’t cost us a train, and it turned out to be useful. We were on our way out to Walthamstow. Where then? Well – this is one of the ways to get onto the Central line, but it’s either a run of nearly two miles or a complex mix of running, buses and trains. We made it, and were at Snaresbrook, although Myles’ leg was giving him trouble by this point. Although we had been a train down, we did well on this section and got lucky in that we had good options. From Snaresbrook you have to take out Epping and the odd loop off through Hainault (and incidentally Grange Hill – which needed the obligatory theme tune singing). The trains synched up well, getting us back on schedule. It was odd passing through stations I’d seen on the map but never really realised actually existed. I’m not sure if I thought they’d been put on the edge of the map for a joke or what! The tube is overground at this point, although oddly it does dip underground for several stops on the Hainault loop. By this time people were on board commuting into London, and it was odd to think that this was the morning rush, when we’d already been on the go for hours.

Anyway, across town to the far end. We had planned to visit Kensington Olympia en route, running down from Shepherd’s Bush. This is another of those tricky trains, as they only run every twenty minutes, and we estimated with Myles’ leg that we’d have missed it. Or at least it was close, and if we failed then it meant waiting so long that it wasn’t worth the risk. Instead we kept going to the end of the line, heading up to West Ruislip. From there a run down to Ickenham, up to Uxbridge and then down the Picadilly. By this point we were getting updates that the Picadilly was having delays in some places, as well as the Bakerloo in places. We needed to take out Ealing Broadway, and we hadn’t collected West Acton (the central line heads up towards West Ruislip before this, so we ran from North Ealing to West Acton – a quarter of a mile or so, but Myles’ leg was really struggling by now. From there to Ealing Broadway, and back down the District through Acton Town and beyond.Here we had a decision – did we take out Heathrow now or do it later? Due to the troubled Picadilly we decided to leave it until later. We kept an eye out (you can look across to departure board on opposite platforms as you got in the other direction) but kept going. This picked us up places like Chiswick Park which can be a tricky one to get later so did have benefits.

There’s now a number of options – and it’s all about getting the timing right. You have to go down to Wimbledon, but then you have to take out the loop up from Earl’s Court and round the Hammersmith and City line back to Hammersmith. Plus we needed to head out (from Marylebone) on a fast overground train to Amersham, one of the furthest extremes (north west), and then come back in on the Metropolitan. The Amersham trains run every half an hour, and as mentioned before the Olympia trains run every twenty minutes, so we juggled these around to minimise hanging around as best we could. I actually can’t remember what order we did them in, but it worked well! We caught the Olympia train with fifteen seconds to spare; at Marylebone we had about two minutes wait, so ordered pizzas for collection at Amersham, which also worked well! On the way back in from Amersham we needed to pick up West Harrow, so did the north to west run, switch to the Bakerloo, in on this, and then back to pick up a few stations in the middle. Myles left us at this point, as his leg was preventing him running and he was in a lot of pain.

Having killed off all these sections, we headed down to Heathrow. The Picadilly was somewhat recovered, but the indicator boards were out of synch. We wanted to go to terminal four first, but ended up missing a couple of trains due to poor announcements. Anyway – we got out there, but we were now behind schedule. The buses back weren’t great – we had a choice of three and they all turned up at once, meaning we had a long wait. Then train from Feltham to Richmond – took out that funny branch of the district, and headed back to the middle. You can run from there to pick up Chiswick Park but we didn’t need to as we’d got it earlier. We did the odd loops inside the circle line to pick up a few stations and then headed down to Wimbledon. From there we checked over towards platform nine or ten, where you can either get a train or a tram – both of which have alternatives to a mile and a half run. Both end about a quarter of a mile away, but it’s quicker. We got a tram, had two minutes wait and then were off. A sprint up the stairs and a quick run. Andi kept telling me how far to go, whereas of course it’s my corner of London and I probably knew it better than he did! Anyway – we hit Morden, got onto a train, about a minute’s wait and then back into the middle.

Next target was the East end of the District line to Upminster. This line at one point actually went all the way out to the Essex Coast near South End, which surprised me. There’s still a line of course, so it’s more a change of which company is running it rather than anything too amazing. It’s an overground line to the coast! If you have a look back at some of the old tube maps, it is referred to.

Underground To The Coast?!?

Zoom in and have a look in the box on the right hand side, it says Southend!

Anyway, we headed out. As mentioned before this is traditionally a potential end point, but there is a nice fast c2C train back in that only stops at a few stops. We originally intended to go all the way out on the District and catch the c2c back in. However, Andi had an inspiration and we switched to a c2c out to Upminster part way. We then needed to get a district back in to cover this bit as each station has to be visited and that includes stopping. The c2c doesn’t stop and in any case is not on the same track, so doesn’t count. Anyway - Andi's switch saved us five minutes! We didn't come all the way back in, we got back to West Ham, switched to the Jubilee and we were off to Stanmore at the far north end. We then had a run, as the next bus was seven minutes away. Now, as it turns out we caught it on the way to Edgeware, so it might seem like a waste of energy (and we nearly missed it anyway as we weren’t at a bus stop when it came – we had to do some serious waving and bus holding), but if the indicator board had been wrong we’d at least got on the way. Anyway, from there back into town on the Northern, and we only had a few stations to pick up. We were fortunately on the right branch to go down to Moorgate – and here we were glad we’d picked up Mornington Crescent earlier. We’d been battling for the last four to five hours about 30 minutes behind schedule, which meant only 5-10 minutes to spare to allow us to catch the last train out to Cockfosters. At this point we’d got it back to 15 minutes to spare, and I started to feel we were going to make it bar a major disaster. The change to the circle back to Great Portland Street worked well, we left the underground to run to Warren Street (about 400 yards), back down two escaltors and we were heading to Leicester Square for the final train up to Cockfosters.

We hit the platform, glanced at the departure board and…. NOTHING! Had the earlier delays left trains out of place, or were the lines shutting early for the weekend maintenance? We needn’t have worried. A couple of minutes later a departure popped up, and shortly after – the train! We counted down the stations, and thirty minutes or so we’d done it. Nineteen hours, twenty-four minutes and fifteen seconds. The slowest time for the other two guys but for me a major achievement. If they’d been on their own they’d have abandoned the attempt at Heathrow, but they were good enough to stay with me for the rest of the journey so I could complete it. Could I have done the rest without them? Well – maybe, but I might well have missed a train or two on the way which might have been critical as far as completing. I told myself on the way that even if we did miss the last train, I’d still visited all the stations at some point in my life, as I’d been up to Cockfosters before, and that was my original goal, but I was very glad that we did complete. It was the thirty-seventh fastest recorded time ever!

So – we ended up 25 minutes down on the target, pretty much all due to the Heathrow shenanigans. It’s taught me how important fitness is, even at my just over ninety minute half-marathon fitness these guys would still have been faster than me. It’s an odd mix of short runs (up to four kilometres) and short explosive bursts to do stairs and corridors to interchange, plus several 800m or so runs. It also involves planning beforehand, knowledge of door positions (seriously – on a couple of changes late in the day which the guys didn’t do on their usual route we were about ten yards out and this cost us a couple of connections – there’s the time to do the ten yards plus a few people may get into the connecting tunnel ahead of you which means you need to dodge. So rather than just costing a few seconds this cost about five minutes as we had to wait for another train. Plus most fun is the on-the-fly planning to cope with cancellations etc. It’s a mix of brain-power, fitness and endurance. I was pooped! Sadly my phone battery ran out just before the photo at Cockfosters.

Would I do another one? I’m interested in doing another one to get a faster time, plus I did get a buzz from it. I’m going to wait until I get my fitness back until I do a serious attempt (so probably next summer), but I might try to get a faster time (say under eighteen hours) by using a better start/finish. I still have very sore legs two days later so we’ll see!

Down in The Tube Station at Midnight (and the rest of the day too)

Right, well the bucket list continues to take shape. Last night saw me do my first poi class. Poi is originally from New Zealand and is a traditional art of spinning stuff around your body on strings. The most spectacular stuff is twirling stuff that's on fire, but generally it's best not to start with this! Here's a link to a video of a previous group from my class.

Anyway, the class was great fun, pretty intense in terms of new tricks, but I can already see a fair number of what we did last night in the routine in the video above (only without fire - we basically just swing tennis balls on strings with tails on them to make them colourful. I managed to pretty much do all but one of the building blocks in the class, but struggled with one, so today I've worked on getting consistency on the basic ones and working towards the one I really struggled most with called the shoulder reel. Not that I was a million miles away from it last night, but in terms of executing it I only managed about one out of twenty and that was more down to luck. A lot of it is to do with timing and angles and I think I was just a bit out. Anyway, today I've absolutely nailed it with my right hand on its own but the left hand is struggling. Then I need to put the two together. I have made a lot of progress and I'm confident I'll have it for next week's session.

Anyway, as a Londoner I've always been fascinated by the tube. All those tunnels linking up, knowing where to interchange (at least on the limited number of routes I did frequently), and also by the history. Some stations have been renamed (Charing Cross was Originally caslled Trafalgar Square), some have been shut down. For instance, the Metropolitan line used to go way beyond the already way out (zone 9 - who knew there was a zone 9) end point of Amersham.
Well, all this tube pontificating led me to a new bucket list item - I want to visit every one of the current stations (270). This started out as a general objective but then I remembered a group from uni (first time round, back in the 1980s) attempting to do the feat in 24 hours. In reality there's slightly under 20 hours when the tube network is operating, so the stations won't be open outside of that.

The research started! The more I read the more fascinated I've become, and then I found out that there was a world record for it, with teams competing to be the fastest to visit all 270 stations using public transport, taking a tube either in and/or out of the station. I.e. you can't just drive station to station.

The best route is a tricky problem to crack (I remember from my maths and computing days that it's the travelling salesman problem) and for the mathematicians amongst you, it's NP-hard. Now, I could link here to a large body of maths, but jkust take it from me that that means it's f**king hard. In short, you can't just feed all the data into a computer, stand back for a few weeks and get the optimum route.

Further research unearthed how secretive the protagonists are - maybe at best revealing the start at finish stations for their routes, not wanting to give away secrets that others might use to beat their time. Plus it's quite fun to work out better and better solutions to problems. For starters, going all the way up and down the outshoots of the centre (like routes to Cockfosters, High Barnet etc) and then back in again is wasting a load of time, althoguh quite acceptable if you don't mind spreading your trip over a couple of days. You need to be aware of the concept of "topological equivalence", which I learnt in maths aged twelve, and have never used in any other context. Basically, the physical layout of the tube stations is not necessarily the same as the map. i.e. it's not just a scaled down version. Sure, the stations stay in the same order (it'd be sod all use as a map otherwise) and you can interchange at the same places, but other than that you can't rely on much. So - two stations that look near on the map may be quite a way apart, as can be seen on this geographical representation (which doesn't cover some far out bits). The map, incidentally, is produced by one of teh previous tube record holders. It also shows how it might be quite easy to run between the end of two lines - e.g. Cockfosters and High Barnet, meaning that you could go out on the Picalilli line (say to Cockfosters) and then back in on the Northern, saving going out and back in on the same line, wasting loads of time. At a quick glance you could also easily swap between the District Line to Wimbledon to the Northern at South Wimbledon (although I already know this since it's fairly local). Sure, you have to nip down to Morden to "collect" that scalp, but it's a lot better than doing the whole of each line in both directions. I'm rambling, but it's already becoming an obsession!

Funnily enough, one group of former record holders went to my old school (I know this as they commented on their former art teacher being at Morden when they finished. Now, having used Morden myself, unless it's a massive coincidence, I've seen my former art teacher working there too. Ok, I guess it's the same person, but they could have gone to an alternative school and he worked there as well as at mine. Not that it matters. Anyway - no record attempts just yet, but...

In the process of all this, I discovered that a group from the Tube Challenge (as it is known) Forum are doing a trip around all 270 stations on Friday 18th for Children in Need. It's not being done for speed (my running isn't up to it now), but will mean a decent route (the people organising it are all former or current record holders) which saves me a lot of planning and I'll be sure of getting a decent chance of completing thiss bucket list item in one day. Not that anything's guaranteed, signal failures etc can always scupper prospects, but it's a real gift horse so I'm going for it unless they want a super fit runner. One of the most recent record holders runs marathons at 3 hour pace, which is fast,and gives him an advantage as he may make trains that slightly slower runners may miss. Remember that the runs are often at the ends of lines, where train services are less frequent, and two minutes difference in run speed can lead to a ten minute delay.

Right, so all being well, my bucket list gets an item crossed off, as well as what should be a great (but tiring) day out.

Born and Bread

Well the word learning continues, and they're mostly courtesy of Mr Stephen Fry. I've just finished the book and I have mixed feelings. It does come to an end rather unexpectedly, but then I guess if you're going to split your life up into portions for different versions of an autobiography, that's always going to be the case when you don't suddenly drop out of the public eye. Generally I found it an enjoyable read, as I'm a big fan of comedy, and there's lots of links to other performers and programmes I remember such as Saturday Live, The Young Ones (Stephen Fry is on the opposing team when they appeared on University Challenge, and actually appeared on it properly, reaching the final). Hugh Laurie, incidentally, rowed in the boat race. I'd have thought he was too short, but that's probably because he looks short compared to Stephen's six foot five or thereabouts. Anyway - an entertaining read, although Stephen does get a bit self-absorbed at times. I guess that's inevitable in an autobiography, but he does rather repeat the same point.



Anyway - next step as well as tidying up was to start the baking challenge. I followed this recipe. The nice thing about soda bread is that it doesn't need any faffing with kneading or waiting for the bread to rise. Anyway, here's the story in pictures!

First picture shows all the ingredients, laid out on my newly cleaned work surface. Ta-dah!



After that it's pretty much a matter of mixing everything up, no kneading, no waiting for it to prove or anything. Just mix it all up in a bowl. Those scales are rather neat (gadget freak alert) because you can reset them to zero. In other words, you don't have to measure each thing and then pour it into a mixing bowl, just reset to zero, add new ingredient until it reads the correct amount, reset to zero, add next ingredient, etc. In other words, less washing up. This is a GOOD thing!!


Here's a pic of it all with the buttermilk poured in, all ready to mix in. The whole thing only took about five minutes. Still got to stir that in, then "Lightly blend it with your fingers", whatever that means, but it only took a couple of minutes. All jolly quick and easy.

Next, into the oven for half an hour, not much tidying up to do, then take it out and stick it onto a cooling rack. Then taste it. That was the most frustrating bit. In the end I couldn't, and cut a slice when it was still slightly warm. Nomnomnom! Really tasty, can't wait to eat some more of it. Still got to work out how to balance the diet with the baking initiative!

Swinging My Balls

So - what have I been up to?

Well - for starters, I've been getting on with my word a day task. I've signed up to this website which kindly emails me words, and I've been looking up new words in Stephen Fry's book.

Word a Day

plus I've got a couple of baking books from Amazon - yay! More details on that once I've tried some of the recipes.

A couple of days ago, I went up to town to this shop:

Oddballs

to buy some poi. Now poi are basically just balls on bits of string that you swing around. The ideais that you start with balls and build up to bits of fire resistant cloth that can be soaked in paraffin and set on fire. I decided that these probably weren't the best to start with but that I'd work up to them. Maybe. Once I got any good. If I got any good. Bearing in mind that I quickly managed to whack myself in the back, the head and all other parts of the body within the first ten minutes, this was, I suggest, a good move.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) the shop was full of all sorts of other exciting stuff. I started with some juggling balls (I used to be able to juggle five) but my balls were a bit worn out and I needed some new ones. Hmmm - I'm looking back at that last sentence and wondering if I ought to re-word it.

Anyway - the other thing that I got was this:

I suddenly remembered that I've fancied giving one of these a go for years, but not known where to get one. Now - a friend pointed out that having broken both wrists last year, this probably wasn't the best way to avoid doing that again, but what the hell, you only live once.

I've given it a couple of tries, and it's blooming difficult. As well as the usual side to side thing for bikes, you can also fall forwards or backwards if your body weight gets behind or in front of the base of support. You can alter the base of support by pedalling forwards or backwards, but that's a tricky balannce. Anyway - it'll be a fun skill to develop, although I might just search online to see if there's the unicycle equivalent of stabilisers.

Anyway, on my way back from there, going down the backstreets of an area of London I believe is called Fitzrovia (to the non UCL side of Tottenham Court Road) I saw a group of people taking photos. I thought nothing of it, until I thought I recognised one of them. It was Dynamo, who I've only seen recently but he's a sort of British version of David Blaine. I used to love magic as a kid and I must get back into that at some point.

Since then, I've enrolled on a beginner's course with these people.

Perfect Circle Poi

Had a chat on the phone with the teacher as I was a bit worried about my wrist, talked through a few other things and learnt some techie terms such as fisting (oo-er) and fingering. She seemed hilarious and I think I'm going to have a brilliant time.

The other thing (on a completely different note) was that I've had my blood pressure monitored over the last 24 hours. It's the same as a basic blood pressure machine involving a cuff around the upper arm, but there's a unit that a) has a timer that inflates the cuff every half hour - even at night! and b) records the readings. I was advised to stand still when it was doing a reading, which can work fine but not if you're crossing the road when it goes off. Plus it woke me up quite a lot during the night, although for some reason not every time. Not sure what made the difference.

Right that's it - more news later!

It's Only Words...

...as the Bee Gees said. And Boyzone.

Oh dear, that's not a promising start to a blog entry. I can see my readers heading off in droves.

Anyway - I thought I don't read as many (non techie) books as I used to. Plenty of techie books on gait, amputee rehab and various other specialities, and all jolly interesting they are too, but it's not a way of relaxing from work. So - on seeing the book below on sale cheap with a copy of the Times, I went for it.

I've always liked Stephen Fry - his humour, and above all, his use of words, because I too have a fascination with words. I love puns, and I'm captivated
by stories of the origins of words. Plus I like the way Stephen plays with words on programmes like Qi.

Anyway, I'm about a quarter of the way through so far, and it's all very much what you might expect. Tending to digress at times, but they're funny diversions, at least to me, and he has the ability to paint wonderful pictures with words. He almost had me wanting to try a pipe with his description of pipe smoking, as well as throwing in fancy words like dottle. Plus he's quite happy to coin new words like the adjective "cardiganny", which is perfect for some groups of people

Anyway - what's this all got to do with my bucket list?

Well - it's spawned a few new bucket list entries. I want to read more books, and I want to learn new words. So - one target is to learn new word every day (at least), and read at least one non-techie book every month. Fan-bloody-tastic! (which is an example of tmesis, for anyone interested).

Life in 3D

Morning (although by the time I've finished it'll probably have gone noon).

The last few years have been mad. Studying on a full time course has been great, and I've loved all the stuff I've learnt, but it did take up a lot of time and energy. I enjoyed as much of uni life as I could, doing rowing, socialising with the guys on the course, but now it's over and many of the people I knew there have moved away, and I'd lost touch with a lot of the people I knew before. Plus while the uni life was great, I was so busy with study that I have rather lost touch with a lot of things that I enjoy. Now I've started work so much of life seems to be about work - at work, studying for work, recovering from work (twelve hour shifts can take it out of you and mess up any activities that require a regular commitment, even at weekends) that life has become rather one dimensional - and that dimension is - WORK!


Now don't get me wrong, I love learning new stuff - it really excites my brain, but there's also quite a bit of repetition. In any case - even if I was winning a Nobel prize or something then I think most people need a rounded life, so however brilliant I am at work, life would be missing those other dimensions.

Right - so how to accomplish those other dimensions? Well - my good friend from uni Madhu (see link to blog on right) has got me thinking about bucket lists. Now, I don't quite understand why it's called a bucket list, but I'm starting to do one. And it's really got me thinking. I'm thinking about stuff I used to enjoy, stuff I want to get back to, even small personal stuff that give me a bit of a satisfied glow. Or possibly really sets me on fire with excitement. In other words - gives me emotional energy (heck this sounds poncy) rather than just practical stuff like earning money. Not that I can ignore money, but it's all got me thinking.

Early days yet - but so far I have things like:

• bake something new every month
• cycle Land's End to John of Groats (not every month)
  
• get back into a regular fitness routine
• Learn a new and exciting skill

I may chuck some work ones in too, but I particularly want to get away from work stuff!

Baking
I love to cook, not just baking but all sorts of stuff. I haven't done it for ages though. Too often I've got home from work mentally exhausted and just crashed in front of the telly with beans on toast or something like that, Or possibly sausage in batter from the chippie I unfortunately pass on the way home. Now, of course I don't have to go in, but somehow the aroma of salt and vinegar attracts me like the Pied Piper of Chip Shop.

Now, the Great British Bake Off (or whatever it's called) has been on telly recently, and I've been nomnomming to myself every week, so - it's going to be baking. I'm gathering recipes as we speak!

Cycling
I've got a friend (Heather) who is currently cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats. Another friend did it a couple of years ago. Their tales are fantastic, plus I've always had a fascination with the extremities of the British Isles (and other extremes - I used to avidly read the Guinness Book of Records). Plus having once been north of Glasgow (to Oban) and seen how beautiful that part of the world is, I want to see more of it. And there's a heck of a lot more of it north of Oban, even though that felt like falling off the edge of the world (nearly).

Plus I love cycling, and it's a challenge, rather than just generally pootling around on the bike, although that's fun too.

Fitness
I used to be pretty fit (cue sniggers). I've done the London Marathon four times, and a half Ironman Triathlon (the Vitruvian).. For those that don't know, that's a 1.2 mile swim, 56 miles on a bike and then a half marathon (13.1 miles) run. Plus I used to regularly do spin classes, weights etc. Plus rowing.

That's all gone out of the window now. Being a one dimensional work junkie, I spent too much time outside of work mentally recovering, or missing classes as I had to work, and my eating habits have gone to pot (see above). Busting both wrists when I fell off my bike 18 months ago didn't help either.

Anyway - time to get back to it! Just got to hope all that yummy baking (it's going to be calorific not um - hmm I can't think of any slim type baking) doesn't counteract all this effort. Plus I think exercise improves my mood.

Exciting
Don't want life to get dull (it has lately) so - how about a new skill. I've got several ideas but one that I fancy is this, which a student I used to teach who I'm still friends with on facebook does.


looks great eh? Fortunately you can start without fire, otherwise I'd have the fire brigade on standby!

Anyway - that's just a taste of what's in the big plan/bucket list. I'm still working on it but also need to put it into action and not just plan.