I feel quite pleased with myself today – I cycled over to the Tooting Bec Lido and swam there with some friends from the civil service. The pool is 90m long; make a bit of a change from normal swimming pools! Anyway, I swam 12 lengths, so just over 1km,...
Two strange experiences this morning – one good, one bad. I was waiting for the N35 night bus from Beford Road to Liverpool Street station. The bus stop was quiet at 03:45, but then a drunk man swayed his way towards me. Oh no, what now? But I need not...
I haven’t written much here over the last week for a number of reasons. Firstly, I spent 4 days in Sweden for Midsommar, sitting in the sunshine eating färsk potatis and jordgubbar. Secondly, I’ve been working away from London quite a bit and have not mustered up much energy (or,...
I’ve just watched the second half of the Angola vs. Portugal World Cup match while sat on the small balcony / fire escape outside the kitchen of my flat, with the sky darkening and the clear summer sky cloudless and disturbed only by the odd jetplane landing at Heathrow. It...
Summer is normally the time I get a bit more active and do some sport – mosting inline skating. But I seem to have been very lazy this year so far, put off by lousy weather and not being in London on many Fridays to join the Friday Night Skate....
As I alluded to here a while back, I am suffering quite a lack of motivation to do website work at the moment. I have all the responsibilities for the Europäische Bewegung Server but seem to have lost track of the reasons why I am actually doing that work any...
I went to a branch of Barclays Bank in central London yesterday in order to make an international bank transfer. Should be fine you would have thought? London, international banking centre etc., etc. Firstly, you have to fill out an enormous form in the bank – it takes ages. But...
The local Lidl supermarket puts flyers through doors in Clapham, letting the locals know about its latest offers. Some things are quite amusing – they were promoting care products for your horse (yes, indeed, in Clapham!?!) a few weeks ago. Anyway, this weeks promotion tops all the previous ones. The...
I seem to be writing all my posts here in the wrong order! I write about the journey back to the UK after the Easter weekend before explaining what I was doing over the four days… Anyway, Helena and I went to visit Elina and Antti (friends from JEF) in...
I have just finished reading The Art of Possibility by Rosamund S. Zander and Benjamin Zander (link to Amazon’s page about it). Helena’s mother had given it to me to read after some interesting debates about management and leadership a few months ago. The book offers a series of Practices...
Whenever I fly with Ryanair I always seem to have the bad luck to end up sat close to some Aussies in the plane. Does not even seem to matter where: they have been on flights to Stockholm, Altenburg, and now to Berlin. Now I would not wish to generalise...
Every able bodied Muslim is supposed to make a pilgrimage to Mecca during their lifetime, and yet it seems this duty is bound to involve fatal sacrifice for some. This year 345 people have died today (as I write – the number may increase) and more than 1000 have been...