Adrenaline

Ah, weekends away.  They are a treat, aren't they?  Spending time with friends, away from home and domestic drudgery bliss, enjoying the chance to catch up and relax.

I recently went to Centerparcs with a group of girls.  Ladies.  Women.  Most of us are over 40, but this time there were a few youngsters too.  It's something we've done a few times before.  In fact I think it is the 11th year we've been there as a group. 

Last time I went, I noticed how downmarket the place was getting.  Readers, I have to report that things have not improved.

Once again, our group was staying in one of the posh villas with the hot tub and sauna and so on, which was lovely.  However, there are even more new villas crammed on the site, and they are building a series of "tree houses" which are being heavily advertised, so I anticipate increased visitor numbers.  It all meant that there were queues for everything, and that most of the activities - the selling point that Centerparcs advertises heavily - and treatments at the Spa were already booked up, meaning that a lot of people will have arrived and found that the only thing they could do all weekend (other than walk or cycle around the park in the pissing rain) was use the swimming pool and slides. 

We stood and watched the slides for a bit.  It was like watching a nature film of spawning salmon, dozens of people all rammed together, sqeeeeeeeeaking slowly down the slide in unison.  One day I might break in, wearing the bear costume, and stand at the top, swiping at the slower ones with a huge clawed paw. 

A new attraction since my last visit was this, the "Aerial adventure," described on the Centerparcs website thus: 

A thrilling combination of Tree Trekking and Zip Wire for the serious adrenaline junkie. You are connected into the ExpoGlider safety harness system whilst you tackle our Aerial Adventure course, experiencing many individual challenges.

Yes.  Well.

Looks nice and straightforward at the start, doesn't it? You climb up a short ladder, walk along a wooden log onto a platform, and then make your way along a series of rope and log traverses, strung between the trees.  Yeah.  Easy.

Except, it gets higher as you go along, because the ground slopes away. 

 And higher.

 And higher.

 And then, as if that wasn't quite enough, you have to zipline across the lake to get to the end, where tea and medals await you. 

One of our group* went for a walk one morning, and found herself walking alongside the Aerial Adventure.  She was enjoying the sunshine, probably whistling to herself when she heard a "terrible screaming."  She stopped, as you would, and looked around to see what was going on.  A woman was standing on one of the wooden platforms, in her hard hat, safety rope clipped to the guide cable**, part-way along the Aerial Adventure.  She had stopped having an adventure and was instead having a huge panic attack. 

Apparently it took half an hour for one of the staff to coax her along the walkway thingy - a series of short logs artfully strung on ropes like a wobbly plank bridge - to the next platform.  She was shaking so much that the entire walkway was shaking with her.  When she got to the next platform, even higher up, of course, she refused point blank to go any further, and they had to rig up a special abseil rope to get her down.  When she got to the ground, there was copious hysterical weeping and the medics had to be called. 

Ah, adventure.

Her husband/partner was just behind her on the walkway, probably having persuaded her to give it a go - "You'll be fine, love, it's not that high!  It'll be a laugh!" -  so I like to imagine the painful, stony silence they drove home in. 

Other highlights included a roebuck calmly eating his breakfast right outside our villa kitchen window.

We stood and watched him for ages, it was lovely.

And in less than two weeks I am off to Ragdale Hall for a Spa minibreak with Middle Sis. Hurrah.  This not working malarky has a lot to be said for it. 








*Hello Viv!
**Safety first

Fish and chips

Today I have been hauling logs about like some sort of serf. A serf with a wheelbarrow and a bad attitude. If I had had a mud-brown sackcloth tunic on, I would have looked like a woodcut from the Fourteenth Century.  Terry Jones would have used my picture in one of his historical programmes, with some hilarious animations to make my head fall off.

Why?  Well, I'll tell you.

A few weeks ago we had the apple tree in the back garden pruned.  It has been reduced by about a third, maybe more, to try and encourage it to grow more healthily.  I hope it works.  The pruning meant that a huge heap of branches were left on the lawn, much to the interest of the birds.  Today was the day we dealt with them.  I loaded up the wheelbarrow and dragged the larger logs to the woodshed*, grumbling fluently the whole time. 

Mr WithaY, meanwhile, was manning the chipper.  This is not, as the name suggests, a machine for turning potatoes into delicious hot chips, to be sprinkled with salt and vinegar.  No.  It is a frankly terrifying machine that you feed with sticks and it spits the resultant woodchips into a suitable container.  It's more of a monster that needs appeasement than a garden tool. 

You feed it with sticks which the machine grabs, sucking them into the whirling Blade of Doom.  It spits chunks back out of the top at high speed, aiming for your eyes.  If it decides to keep all of the stick in the grinding, roaring innards, it jams bits of them in the workings, forcing the user to poke at them with other sticks until they too are minced up.

It's all very unsatisfactory and alarming.  If the whirling, chopping blade grabs the branch while you're still holding onto it, it whips it about in your hand, which is painful and scary. I was harbouring fears of being sucked in and shredded.  Not that I'd fit, of course, but it wasn't an entirely rational fear.  It was like feeding the maelstrom.  With sticks. 

Also, given Mr WithaY's track record, I was yipping with alarm every time he poked the machinery with the Poking Stick.  No wonder I was relegated to the lowly Serf With Wheelbarrow position.

Other news:  Friday night we were in the pub, chatting to some mates about films we've watched recently.  Mr WithaY and I were talking about "In Bruges", which we watched before Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed.

"Oh, I saw that!" said a friend.  She went on to tell us that when she watched it she was struck by the incredible versatility of the lead actor, especially his convincing Irish accent.  She said it was some considerable time before she realised that Colin Farrell was the man in question, not, as she had at first thought, Will Ferrell.

"I saw him in "Elf" the night before, and was amazed how different he looked!" she told us.  Bless.

Also, we have bought some more fish.  Ten little neon tetra, which just light up the tank beautifully.  No more fatalities since the hideous outbreak of shrimp-eating, which is encouraging.  The fish shop we go to also has a garden centre with lots of statuary on sale.  I was most taken by a giant Chinese stylee stone lion.  I have no idea how much it is** but I already know where I will put it if I do ever buy it.

Maybe later in the year, when things are more organised out there.



*Where I didn't see Something Nasty, thankfully
**I'm guessing A Lot

Travellers' tales

I'm still afflicted with Lurgy.

Bloody London germs, with their sneaky infectious ways. In general, I am careful about avoiding people who are obviously sickly...you know, covered in boils and scabs and oozing pustules.  Also about washing my hands before I eat anything, and not licking the handrails on the Underground escalators, but you can't be too careful, it seems.

It seems to be passing off a bit, but I had a high temperature for a couple of days (and nights) and a headache which has only just eased off. I feel wiped out, tired, weepy, listless and grumpy. I must be a joy to be around.

As I am feeling less pathetic than I have been since the weekend, here are some pictures of London. Mostly taken from high up in the London Eye, which was most impressive. It's a fantastic bit of engineering.

There were no creepy blokes clinging to the outside asking us if we wanted to go faster, which was disappointing.  I'd have thought they'd have at least spun the car around a few times to make us scream. 

I was intrigued by this sign:

I like to wonder how many times they had visitors plummeting past the security guards before they thought "We really must put a sign on those doors."

It is especially pleasing that DO NOT is underlined for added emphasis.  Is that in case you aren't sure why they are telling you not to lean on the doors as you slowly rise hundreds of feet above the river?  And, I note,  the sign is only in English.  Is that because other nationalities are less likely to lean on the door? Or do the London Eye health and safety team simply not care about non-English speakers? 

We must know.

Anyhoo, we were bloody high up.  Look:

That's Waterloo station, from a million feet up.

Houses of Parliament.  If you look carefully you can see the police raiding MPs' offices for evidence to pass to the CPS.

We also went to the Aquarium, which I enjoyed far more than I expected to.  I even managed to do the Shark Walk.  No, not a dance where you wriggle on the floor and bite the furniture.  It was a suspended platform with a glass floor that you walk across, above this:

It's a bit blurry because NO FLASH.  But that's a shark in there.  Yep, a shark.  There were several others too.  And I walked over their heads.  Ha!

I was very taken with the Ray Pool, too.  Look:

They* were playing tranquil music, and we stood and watched the fish in there for ages. 

Some of them stuck their noses up out of the water, which was interesting to see. People leant in and petted them, despite the many signs saying "Do not pet the fish."  I didn't. 

It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

The Natural History Museum was a zoo, ironically. 

We sped through the minerals gallery and looked unsuccessfully for the giant tree thingy, but eventually the hordes of proles with squealing howler monkey offspring drove us back out into the rain.  Bastards. 

I tell you what though, I couldn't live there.  London is great to visit but the traffic!  The crowds!  The sheer balls-ache of trying to get anywhere if you aren't near a Tube station.  Gah.  Sod that. 

I'd rather be here, where even though you get stuck behind tractors and run off the road by combine harvesters and delayed by herds of cows, you can at least get from A to B without having to reverse the entire length of a street because there isn't room for two cars to pass**.

*The Aquarium people, not the fish.  I'd have paid extra to watch the fish playing ambient chillout music. 

**Although to be fair sometimes you have to reverse all the way back down a little windy lane to let a big oil tanker truck get past. 

Sparky

Every year, about this time, I start looking contemplatively at the books in the big bookcase in our sitting room. 

How many of them will I read again?  Can I bear to part with those that I won't?  Where could they all go, other than in here?  Could any of my friends be trusted with them if they wanted to borrow any of them*?

Mostly on a day like today, though, I think "How quickly could I get most of those books upstairs and away from any floodwaters as they engulf the house?"  Obviously, the books get saved after the guitars are all stashed away in comfort.  Oh, and the amp. 

It's been like the End of the World today.  High winds and lashing rain, dark at 4pm (well, nearly), the whole house shaking as cold gusts force themselves down the chimney and up our trouser legs.  Brrrr.

I went into the kitchen earlier on, and looked out into the blackness of the back garden.  There was a brilliant white flash, and I thought perhaps Wiltshire's finest** had stuck a portable speed camera on the main road that I was seeing through the trees. 

I kept watching, and sure enough, a few moments later there was another flash.  And a cloud of smoke, or possibly steam, and a huge shower of white sparks.  Not from the main road, either.   At first I thought it was a firework.

"What on Earth are next door doing with fireworks in this weather?" I thought.  It was, after all, pissing with rain and blowing a gale.

I was mistaken.

The flashes and sparks were coming from the power lines stretching across to the wooden pole in next door's back garden.

I assume that a tree branch was smacking into the lines as the wind blew, making it short out.  That, or a line had broken and was snaking about wildly, shorting out on the ground.  The sodden, saturated, ground.

It's too dark to see from the house, and I am buggered if I am going out to take a closer look.  The weather out there is bad enough, but the possibility of being slammed full of a billion trillion volts of electricity is even less appealing.

I'll have a look tomorrow.  From a safe distance.





*Answer:  None.  I don't lend books.  Not after losing my entire collection of Leonard Cohen novels to a friend when I was at school.  It still rankles.

**Ha

Stormy Weather

It's like the Apocalypse outside. Howling winds, crashing rain, trees blowing wildly, the occasional car sploshing along the road. All the lights went out a while ago, plunging the entire village (as far as I could see, at least) into pitch darkness. Which was fun.

The darkness only lasted for about a minute, quite long enough for me to decide to go and light candles, and start cooking supper, in case it happened again. So far so good.

I bet something bizarre happens to the house while Mr WithaY is away. It usually does, usually involving the boiler.

We have had the old TV aerial taken off the chimney, so that no longer reverberates through the whole house every time we get a gust of wind.

I thought about lighting the fire this evening but I am rubbish at getting the bloody thing to stay lit. All those years in the Girl Guides and nothing to show for it, except the ability to remember all the words to "Singin' In The Rain*," and to weave stupid, temporary, flimsy, pointless campsite gadgets out of twigs and string.

I wasn't very good at being a Guide, really. Not a team player.


*Which at least has the virtue of being relevant this evening.

Water

Next door's meadow is flooded. Something that has not happened in the almost 8 years we have lived here. The water is probably about 100 yards away from our house, which is scary.

The forecast says no more rain until next Tuesday, but it was torrential on Friday night, so it will take a while to drain into the river, I suppose.

I have moved my guitar upstairs for safety.