Ramblings of a different kind

I took advantage of this gorgeous late burst of summer warmth [It'll come to a cold and wet end on Friday: Ed] and went on a hike through the countryside this morning. The route began at Uxbridge and led along the Grand Union Canal, past its winding confluences with the Colne and the Frays Rivers and the marinas full of barges and pleasure craft near Denham. Then across almost deserted, open countryside and into the dense woodland of the Bayhurst Country Park, then into the woods around Ruislip Lido, across the golf courses that straddle its northern extremities and up to the  heights of Haste Hill before the final burst through the woods and back to beautiful Ruislip. A tad over 9 miles, one of the longest walks I have done in years.

Just think, I might have spent that time doing a cash flow forecast or processing a batch of invoices.

After the holidays

I still work a little as a consultant and today I visited my main client, in Farringdon. After a couple of weeks on holiday in France the tube felt like a real culture shock, particularly coming home soon after 4pm. I had figured the trains would be pretty quiet. Wrong. No trains to Uxbridge were signalled so I took the first Hammersmith & City train in order to change at Baker Street. Gosh, it was crowded, at least up to Kings Cross when enough people left for me to grab a seat. Glad that I missed the real "rush" hour.

A tour of Tours

To France, for a week in the Loire based in the beautiful city of Tours, and then a week of pure self-indulgence cruising the Seine with a programme mainly consisting of consuming great food and wine plus waiting for the next meal.
Regulars will know that I am keen on trams and whilst we we were there we saw the final tests on the brand-new system in Tours. In fact it was due to start today. So we were unable to ride any of the futuristic, glittering trams but here is a picture of what you can expect should you go there.

Where have all the scammers gone?

Prompted by a newspaper article saying spam was still on the rise, it occurred to me that it has been a long time since my contacts in Nigeria have been in touch. I am due a considerable amount of money – probably at least $500,000,000 (FIVE HUNDRED MILLION as they would undoubtedly put it, since I am patently unable to understand a number unless it is spelt out) and all I have to do is just send a small amount – about $2000 should do it – to one of the Bank Presidents or Lawyers or Government Ministers, all of whom (strangely) have Yahoo or Hotmail email addresses, and all whom require cash sent via Western Union.

I don’t how to account for the drop in this fascinating correspondence. Maybe they don’t think I am worthy to receive this unexpected beneficence. Perhaps my failure to respond to any previous emails has put a black mark against my name. All the DEAR FRIENDS and the dying widows, the ex-politicians and the children of air-crash victims – who are they inveigling now?

And on the same theme, the “Compensation Help Line” who phoned about my terrible accident and promised at least £4300 in damages – well I have not had any accidents but maybe they know something I don’t – but they haven’t been back, they didn’t write to confirm and so I am left here, hurt and alone, bereft of aid.  I mean to say, can’t you trust anyone these days?

Windows 7

After many years using, and occasionally swearing at, Windows XP, I have taken the plunge and upgraded to Windows 7. And one of the little goodies it has presented to me is a program called Windows Live Writer which effectively replaces the old Blogger for Word software which at one time I highly praised, only to find Microsoft removing support from it not long after and replacing it with a built in function in Word which in turn ceased to work after a while.
So this little bloggette is written using Live Writer and now I will press the little button that says “Post draft to blog” and see if it works. Note, if you are reading this then it has worked.