Home Sweet Home (And Back)

This last week has been spent back in sunny Manchester, which ended up very much busier than I'd have liked, and in the end I was glad I had a full week. I'd wondered if this might be too much at one point!

As I only have a motorcycle now in Manchester I was hoping that the recent talk of snow was exaggerated somewhat. The photo taken from my flight from Gatwick on Saturday 7th shows otherwise. It was like this from takeoff until a few minutes before landing - a complete whiteout from the South of England to the edge of Manchester. Luckily for me Manchester appears to be mostly immune to severe weather due to its physical location, but it was still bloody cold all week, and ice patches remained a threat. I did cope with the switch back to clockwise roundabouts ok though.

On first arrival home, I got to inspect my path which the gasboard had dug up to fix a leak accoss the road, and was pleased to see they'd done a good job. Lucky I think, because they'd screwed my neighbour's up. My second check showed that my fish were all ok. I guess six weeks at this time of year isn't enough to test their resolve without regular dinners anyway (they don't eat when cold), but it was nice to see nevertheless.

I also had a stack of mail the size of my arm, not including the free crap like charity bags, flyers and newspapers that I can't disuade some dizzy bastards from delivering. I mention this because much of this correspondence could have been dealt with over the phone or via the internet. Cue BT's surprise gift - they'd knackered both, and then couldn't get them working again until 5PM Tuesday. Cretins.

My final welcome surprise, also on Tuesday, was a fixed penalty notice of £30 for riding on the pavement (for 6 feet max) to get around some muppet who had lodged himself diagonally across two stationary lanes of traffic at the Dane Rd lights. The jobsworth copper had been going the other way and couldn't have even seen my wheels through two stationary lanes, but he still felt obliged to fulfill his oath and so he turned round, parted the blocked traffic with his siren and followed me through to Glebelands where he collared me at the off-licence. A narky little twat he was too: "What seems to be the problem?" followed by "You what?!". I went first in that exchange BTW. He was already thumbing through his bumber book of tickets by the time I'd sat in the car. Purely out of spite for this idiot I've written to the Chief Constable explaining that I can't possibly plead as the idiot failed to record the time and date on the ticket. Oh, and I've asked that he contact me at my current address in France if he wishes to take this further too.

In between all this fun I managed to visit a few friends and see my mum (who always feeds me when I visit :-) I also got to see some of my old chums from SEMC for Friday lunch and they seem to be counting down their days with some fine black humour. It makes me wish I'd stayed, more-so given that they might yet outlast me in the works stakes. I'll be doing my best to get back for whatever end of term party they end up throwing.

Not much else to report about the week really. I was pretty glum leaving my house behind again as I set off to the airport on Sunday, and there seems to be a lot of organising/checking involved with this. I'll have to streamline it a bit or it'll start to overshadow the last 24 hours of each home visit too much. Part of the glumness was definitely due to the 5 hour connection time at Gatwick on the way back (which serves me right really - see previous entry). This turned out better than anticipated though, as The Red Lion showed both the rugby and the football on Sunday afternoon, which soaked up most of the time, and a meal plugged the remainder nicely.

BTW Toulouse airport only charged me 23 euros for 9 days of on site parking. Puts into context what Judge Dread wanted to charge me for 6 feet of whatever he couldn't see ...