This week has been pretty hectic, rushing around here and there. On Sunday I travelled out to Barcelona on EasyJet from Gatwick. I had a meeting over there on Monday and so had to travel out Sunday. Barcelona wasn’t any warmer than the UK at this time of year (around 10 degrees centigrade). I didn’t get to see a lot of Barcelona, although I did spend a fair amount of time travelling around.

On Sunday evening my boss, a colleague and I had a meal at Los Caracoles (The Snails), which is apparently quite a famous restaurant. As you walk in your have to walk through the kitchen in between the chef and the cooker. Was a nice meal, and we were accompanied at one point by a Spanish trio playing guitar, bandurria and tambourine.

Some of Sunday night I spent in the toilet in my room. My tummy objected to something I ate, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.

Monday, when I could keep my eyes awake, was spent in a looooong meeting, with people waffling on about medical stuff and computer stuff.

In the evening we ate at a restaurant called Senyor Parellada. Bloody nice meal it was too! And I didn’t have to pay for it. We didn’t leave the restaurant until gone midnight, so I didn’t get much sleep that night either!

Tuesday I spent in another meeting, desparately trying to pay attention to what was being said while at the same time trying to finish writing an academic paper that I needed to get to someone by Wednesday.

The taxi ride back to the airport was a hairy experience. The driver got cut up by some manic bloke on a scooter and a chase ensued. Swerving this way and that and cutting across three lanes of traffic then back to keep up with this nutter on a scooter. We got past him once but he pulled up beside us again, straddling lanes at about 70mph, grinning wildly and waving his mittens at us. Our taxi driver wasn’t best pleased. I was very glad when the slip road to the airport appeared and we left the scooter nutcase to dodge his way around the traffic.

With Daisy’s car in for repairs, and mine awaiting repairs, Daisy started to get pretty attached to my parent’s big cruiser. She picked me up from my boss’s house and I arrived back late last night.

I’m thoroughly shattered at the moment; I haven’t really recovered from the European dash. I’d barely had chance to say Hola to Spain before I was waving Adios to it from the window of an Airbus A319.

This week has been a bit of a task, really. As my car ran out of MOT last week, and I have absolutely no mechanical skills, I took it up to ‘the oracle of all mechanics’ that I call ‘Dad’. However, early this week he hurt his back so hasn’t been able to look at my car to see if it needs anything doing to it before it goes in to be examined by the inspectors – something it worries about every year!

Ok, no great problems. My parents have too many cars anyway, and they let me borrow one. Fine. But Daisy’s MOT (her car’s, of course) runs out this week too. But Dad’s still laid up. We could just send the car in and hope, fingers crossed, that nothing needs doing and based on last year’s advisory slip I’m sure some expensive things will need doing on both cars.

But even if we decided to do that we couldn’t because her car refused to move yesterday. So from a two-car couple we suddenly end up with one borrowed one. I put Daisy’s battery (her car’s, of course) on charge all last night but this morning it made no difference; it’s dead, Jim. So despite forking out £25-odd for a charger and water refill for the old battery yesterday, looks like I’m in for a £30-odd new battery cost today.

Tcsh, no wonder January is supposed to be the poorest and most depressing month!

So, last Tuesday I left home at 5:55am and headed on the 2 hour drive to Gatwick Airport in South London. I had already spent £30 on a car-parking space there as I knew I was going to be fighting the hoards of butterflies in the tummy. I caught the shuttle bus to the airport. I’d heard a week earlier there had been 3-and-a-half hour queues at security, so I was mightily glad when I managed to get through security in just 15 minutes, and I wasn’t taken away for a bit of the marigolds-where-the-sun-don’t-shine treatment. The plane flew and landed in Verona, a small city in Northern Italy where I caught a bus to the station, then a train that would take me to Trento itself, nestled beautifully in the Dolomite mountains.

I arrived around 4pm (Italian time) and flopped out in my room for a bit. I later met two collegues from Edinburgh who also travelled that day. We disembarked the streets into a restaurant where I had a very nice something or other (can’t remember now). The Christmas lights were still up and on in Trento. I took this photo on the way back to the hotel bar.

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Trento Christmas lights with the Cathedral in the background

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday saw me heading up the hill to the east of Trento to the University which lay in a suburb called Povo. It has absolutely magnificent views of the surrounding mountains. Silly me forgot to take photos of this though! Here’s some more pictures of Trento for you:

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The Cathedral with some Christmas lights

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A market was being held in the Cathedral square on Thursday morning

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The cathedral again

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Some buildings had murals painted all over them

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Here’s the train station; not wonderful looking, but check out the view!

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Dante (perhaps that’s his peak?)

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The cathedral is the main attraction

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Piazza Del Duomo: The cathedral square

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Some of the old city walls jammed in amongst the newer buildings

I was there for a techy computer-people meeting where we were attempting to integrate some software into one neat package. Although we didn’t finish, it was very productive. It was a very international meeting; there were 2 greeks, 1 brit, 1 russian, 1 dutchman, 1 italian, 1 romanian, and 2 spaniards. Oddly, the host of the italian meeting was the russian!

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Here’s us geeks doing our international geeky thing.

I ate lots of pizza and pasta, of course. There is something incredibly good about italian pizza. I have never had pizzas outside of italy anything like as mouth-wateringly scrumptious. They have the perfect knack of making the base thin and crispy, yet not hard and gum-slashing, or soft and squidgy like we get over here. The edges are crispy, but not hard, and the cheese tasty and melted, but not stringy enough to induce a coughing fit by connecting pieces of food you have already digested to pieces still on your plate. It might sound like an easy option and unhealthy, but you just have to have a pizza when you go to Italy.

Saturday morning 10am, I left for the return journey; the exact reverse of what I had done previously. I was surprisingly not nervous for any of the journey; I put that down partly to having a good book to read, although I suppose it might have something to do with the fact I had already done the journey once, so I knew what I was up against!

I arrived back home at about 6:30pm on Saturday, pretty knackered from all the travelling.

It would have been good to have a nice restful day today, but life doesn’t stop and I had spend most of the day catching up with my spare-time web-design work. However, I did take half-an-hour out to spend weeding the garlic, hoeing over the veg-patch and enjoying the company of the chickens.

So I spent yesterday evening getting all my stuff together, and I spent yeterday night not sleeping (well, I got 4 hours sleep), and now it’s 5:20am and I’m about to head out into the windy weather towards one of the main London airports and over to Italy. Yikes, travelling scares the shit outta me.

Last year, Daisy and I were in Wales when my Dad phoned me to tell me that the new food we had bought for the chickens wasn’t going down well, and that they were steadfastly refusing to eat anything. At the time, it was an easy fix: just go and buy the food they did like, which isn’t organic. Dad sprinkled some of the corn around the chickens’ pen for them to peck at, or, in fact what actually happened, for them to completely ignore and allow to grow. Since then, the sack of corn has been taking up bags of space, literally, in our garage. However, one day, Daisy had the bright idea to soak some of the corn so it would soften and maybe then the chickens would like it. Sure enough, they did. Examine key evidence below.

Ok, I guess I better re-think my plans. I have been told today I have to go to Barcelona at the end of January, after Trento, before Amsterdam

I haven’t even been to Italy yet, and I’m now having to start to think about a trip to Amsterdam at the end of February. The reason I’m not leaving it until the week before like I normally do, is that Daisy is probably going to come with me and we might make a holiday of it, or at least a holiday after my meeting. I think a week is too long to stay in Amsterdam, so if anyone out there knows of other nice relaxing places to go in Netherlands or nearby do let me know. I have already bookmarked the Amsterdam VirtualTourist page!

So, I’ve spent my first morning at work (at home at work) investigating the best way to get to my meeting next week. I’m off to a small city in the north of Italy called Trento (or sometimes Trent, or Trentino). As always, there’s a good page about it on wikipedia.

I was quite surprised that British Airways prices are pretty good, so I’ve booked with them. They maybe nearly twice the price of Ryanair, but it will be more comfortable and the airports they fly from and fly to are slightly easier to get to and from. It’s costing me about £200 for a return flight.

I’ve got a reservation at a hotel (although it’s not been confirmed yet, so let’s hope they’re not full). I’ve worked out the buses go from Verona airport every 20 minutes for €4.50, and drop me off at the train station from which there is a direct train to Trento that will take a couple of hours. I leave next Tuesday morning, so I should arrive in Trento in the evening. I’ll then travel back on Saturday afternoon.

Last time I went to one of these week long, nerdy meetings I tried to fit everything in a small bag and carry it on. I managed it, but I couldn’t take my camera. So this time, I’m going to check-in my small bag, and carry on my camera. It does mean I’ll have to battle the carousels, though. That said, I’m not going for quite so long, so I might fit it all in one bag… hmm, we’ll see.

I guess I better start thinking up some italian phrases I might need.

• Voglio andare a Trento (Vo-lee-oh an-dah-ray…) – I want to go to Trento.
• un biglietto solo andata (oon bill-ee-et-oh..) – one way ticket.
• Dov’é il Hotel Accademia? – Where is my hotel?

Any others you might think are useful are greatly appreciated

Awww, so tomorrow I’m back to work and the lazing around stops. I have forced myself over the Christmas period to avoid doing any work at all, and I think it’s going to come as a bit of a shock to suddenly have a full day’s work and then attempt to motivate myself to do some web- or graphic-design work in the evenings again. I’m also starting to stress a bit about flying to Italy; I don’t speak italian and it looks a bit convoluted to get to the place I need to get to (a taxi/bus, a flight, a bus, a train then a taxi).

Never-the-less, I did my best to enjoy my last day in slumberland. Although I didn’t manage to have a lie in (our bed is causing me to wake up with back ache these days), Daisy returned from work nice and early and we were able to go for a walk in the brisk winter’s sun, make some churros and chocolate (see the Barcelona post for the breakfast I’m talking about), and watched the film March of the Penguins, which was very touching.

I weighed myself today. I expected the worst. Christmas has always been a time when my jowls lengthen and I begin to look like the typical british bulldog. I convinced myself that I must be pregnant with triplets. I was most surprised, though, to find the scales pop up the same number they did a few months ago. Ok, if I had long teeth I could still be mistaken for a walrus, but I’m most chuffed that all the chocolate binging has had no effect. Daisy and I always say “we must go back on the diet”, or “we must do more exercise” but I find that being so busy in the evenings really does affect the motivation for such activities (at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).

So, tea tonight will be some lovely organic “hot spanish” sausages (from our local farm shop), fried eggs (from our chickens) and chips and parsnips (from our organic veg box). Can’t get better than that All to be followed by more chomping through the pile of chocolate we received for Christmas.

So, 2006 is over and 2007 starts with rain and wind, as is usual for the UK. 2006 went by in a blink of an eye, it seems.

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Salseros – FactoBrunt and Daisy

It’s been quite a productive year starting off with Daisy and I starting ballroom dancing. Since we had been dancing salsa we had considered doing ballroom and I’m very glad we both decided to go. This year we’ve learnt the basics to the Waltz, Quickstep, Rumba, Cha-Cha, Jive and Slow Rythmn. In April we took our salsa medal tests earning ourselves our bronze and silver medals.

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Our Chickens

In the last year we really started on our quest to become more eco-friendly. Having seen reports that Tesco and other supermarkets were putting pressure on organic regulators to lower standards, we decided to boycott them as much as possible, which seems to have been better all round. We now shop at local shops and local farm shops for most of our stuff. Right at the beginning of the year we also started getting a Riverford Organic Vegetable Box delivered to our house. This means we get lovely fresh, organic vegetables as well as cutting down on our packaging – in fact, we have next to no packaging as the boxes they come in are sent back for re-use. Of course, one of the big moments was in May when we got 4 hens to occupy the hen house we’d bought some time earlier. We’ve never been short of eggs since!!

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Las Ramblas, Barcelona

This last year has seen me incredibly busy in the evenings doing web-design work for various people. I can’t complain about being so sought after (after all, it pays money), but it means I have had next to no time to do my own thing (one of which was sowing the seeds of an online retail business). My new job(s) at the start of the year means I’ve been travelling more than ever and I hate travelling. I have been to Barcelona twice, Lloret De Mar once, Edinburgh twice, Amsterdam once, Birmingham once, and will be travelling to Italy in 7 days. On the plus-side, though, I’ve met some nice people who are working at these various other sites around Europe.

I have realised with our jumping on the green bandwagon that being eco-friendly, growing my own food and being good to the Earth is more important to me than I originally thought. I am dying to get away from the office-worker’s suburban life, into something more exciting and self-sufficient, but I have a good salary and a wife to think about! Much as I’m looking forward to a peaceful new year, I think I will be working my butt off all year again earning money so that I might persuade Daisy it’s a good idea to move to a smallholding in Wales. I often spend a few minutes perusing Rural Scene or The Small Holding Centre to see what’s available at what price. It’s never at what we can afford, and that’s why 2007 will hopefully see us save enough to be able to extend our current bungalow so that it will sell for more.

Anyway, I hope whatever you’re all upto you have a good new year