Nov 20 2007
long time no see
After showing someone how WordPress works yesterday I realised that I had not posted for a couple of months - whoops! A catch up: I didn’t travel back over in September, rather staying out for the wonderful weather in Brisbane and coming over a couple of weeks ago.
So what have I missed? Tescos now has two floors and a gladiator style travelator for the pikeys to play on, there are quite bland looking £20 notes and there seems to be a need to speak Polish as well as English to get anything done.
Lets not even go into the murky weather, which is fine when you are going around the green fields of Nantwich as it looks quite quaint, but venture towards Liverpool and the hellscape of Stanlow/Ellsmere Port area loom up like some prehistoric volcanoes erupting with smoke and fire. I half expected to be swooped by some pterodactyl, however it turned out to be a pigeon that has been breathing in the fumes too long. Nice.
Saying that, the 3000BC burial chambers on Anglesea are quite cultural, anywhere else it would be £15 to get in rather than jump over a gate and away you go. It was good to go through North Wales into Snowdonia, the proper bit of Wales, with proper welsh weather sadly.
The main thing that has struck me looking ‘outside in’ on the UK is how parochial things can be, established systems such as legal, banks, companies house, the post etc can be slow slow slow - yet no one complains. We nipped down to london the other day (don’t stay at the Grange City - it isnt 5* like it claims) and so being an internet type, I bought the tickets online. Get to Chester station and the machines are broken, and I am asked why did I bother to buy online?! Nothing like customer service.
Also, I just have to mention this, £1.05 for a litre of petrol!? Try 43p 
Again, do you see anyone complaining? What is wrong with people?
Brisbane, Singapore, Duabi and London so far this month, and we are looking at a mini euro tour as well, so hopefully some nice geo-located pictures up once the new gadget arrives - so more then!
We ordered tickets to London online, found out on the way home we were ripped off and the ticket guy gave us a refund.
I currently pay £1.04 for diesel, there is supposed to be a fuel strike coming up shortly. On the minor plus side the new high speed line is running from St. Pancras now so you can get to Paris in like an hour and a half. Although train fares are going up for 2008. You would have thought the fuel duty would subsidise in part my ridiculous train fare to London every day, but no, I have to pay another £360 per year (estimate).
I had recently notice there are more people of a Polish origin around, not that it is a bad thing, one of my best friends at work is Polish.
Just thank God you don’t have credit in this country, we are all screwed.