Ooops

Right, it's been almost a year since I put finger to key (so to speak)and I've got a few catch up blog posts to put on, including weddings, flights, cars, cocktails, dogs parties and a few countries but for now I wanted to say that I will be putting a bit more on here as I'm currently sat in the departures lounge at Brize Norton (again), getting ready to head back out to the Falklands. I know, the last post was about the Falklands but I did come back and I've seen quite a few friends in that time and even made some more.
As it is, this time I'm due to have a fat boy seat on the way down (woohoo!) but as is my want I'm not going to fully believe that until we're wheels up and I'm reclining the seat to it's lie flat position (after the pilot has turned of the seat belt light, of course :) ) and I managed to get away with not carrying too many books this time, just some ones for work and a Kindle - more on this gadget in a previous post but safe to say it's still wonderful and I'll add more detail soon! So much so that I found myself trying to turn off a normal book rather than just putting it down.
Anyway, time to grab a coffee. I'm on Skype now (when I can get connection) but email is probably the best way to contact me, or leave a comment on the blog and I'll see it doon thar.

Language

Kate sent something to me that I feel I must share, it's a little poem about the English language..

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

(some sources add a final couplet)

And yet to write it, the more I sigh,

I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.

Hope she doesn't mind me reposting it here. There's an American reading it here, but up here "dead" can indeed be pronounced "deed", and don't get me started on the Welsh year, here and ear, all of which are said "ur" or saucepan in the Townhill dialect.

One of the sources gives the following:

The poem...is attributed to T.S.Watt (1954) and appeared in the Guardian...

However, in the following publication it is attributed to Richard Krough, 
see: O'Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, W. and Katamba, F.1997. 
"Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction_, London: Longman, p.614"

Interestingly, following one of the links trying to find an author with whom to credit the work, I came across a version on the West Cumbria Dyslexic Association, which has an option at the top to very quickly change the background of the page. I'm wondering if this would be a quicker way to test if anyone does find particular backgrounds easier to read from. Or, in the case of Mac Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+8 to invert the page, although I personally have issues reading white text on a black background (persistence of vision is a bugger) it does make the text stand out better.

Right, last bit of packing listening to Tori Amos on the radio before the hire car turns up, drive to Inverness via work, fly to Bristol, pick up another hire car, drive to Exeter for a course in winter forecasting/explosive cyclogenesis/polar lows then home in time for the last night of the Proms!

Catch up entries 2

Second entry written about the 29/10/08

At the start of the year, actually at New Year's, I looked at what I wanted to do this year and of the four main ones (bike, drive, run and fun) I've amazed myself by completing one. Still got the first three left – to whit, get my bike licence, pass my advanced driving test and get fit enough to easily pass the Cranwell fitness requirements. The last, fun, partly covers not being single but is mainly about getting out a bit more and doing some stuff I wouldn't have thought of; not siting at home on my own every night. On both of these definitions I have succeeded. It's a bit odd that loosing three months down south has actually helped with parts of my aims. Not as much as I'd have hoped for fitness (my fault) but more than I'd have thought with the others. The bike test has been helped by the fact that the government have pushed back the implementation of the new test regime until early next year, so I've got a bit more time than I thought. For the AD side of things I'm going to have a serious look at the Kinloss group back up north, although I'm also going to get a different car as soon as possible. Not another new one, but something a bit bigger and with a bit more capability. After driving all the 4x4s down south I've realised that the bit more ability would have been great for the hills. It's not that my little Charade can't handle most conditions but I'm constantly driving it to almost the limit of it's range, and it does feel chuffing ridiculous when there's a whole row of big four wheel drives parked in the snow on Cairngorm and I'm struggling to get my snowboard into the city car that's hidden by the Landies either side. The fact I have to drop the passenger seat to fit it in is bad enough, although it was funny when I was happily driving out of the snow and the numpty in a big ol' Jeep was getting stuck. He just couldn't drive in snow, was revving the arse off the engine and getting absolutely no purchase. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain the car was able to handle the conditions but the driver definitely could not.
Anyway, I’m now on the way back from London and it’s been absolutely brilliant to see Tris again. I’d like to be able to see D’Abs and it'd be great to catch up with Rich, also getting across to the US to see Kev (actually I’d LOVE to be able to that one!) but time and money prevent those. Apart from that I’d have to say that once I’ve got to Andi and Sarah’s and stopped off with Tash and Chris, I’ll have seen pretty much all of my really close friends within two weeks.
I don’t know if I mentioned it in my recent posts (off line on the train so I can’t check) but a couple of days after I got back from the Falklands I hit a low point. I’ve hit these before, it’s a kind of after travel thing where you realise that the next day you’ll wake up and see the same thing you saw the day before. It’s not a new place and it’s not home. It’s something in between that isn’t so good as either and not as interesting as you’d like. At that point I was ready to call up my boss and ask for the 3 year tour of Gibraltar or a long tour down in the Falklands (preferable as Kate is down there!). Like I said, I’ve felt this way before but this was something different. I really just didn’t want to be in the UK at that point and while I think I know why it’s not something I can put into words. One of the reasons I didn’t was that I knew there was a good chance of seeing friends soon and so I held off. My family’s great but I know they’ll always be there for me, e-mail, phones and blueys aside, contact is easy with mum and dad and I think Matt understands.
As I said before, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see anyone, let alone almost everyone, but I’m so glad I was able to. What I’d hoped for actually happened, I’ve found an anchor to these green Isles (as an aside, if you don’t believe the “green and pleasant land” description, travel to somewhere with a much lower rainfall total then look at the grass and the trees here when you get back. This country is SO beautiful I was almost struck dumb when I got back. The sheer intensity of the colours and the vibrancy of the life was breathtaking!). This anchor is my friends. If the guys weren’t back here, and as much as I love my family, I’d have to say that I don’t know if I’d stay here. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this country. From the mountains of home to the rolling hills down south, from the vast emptiness of the Highlands to the crowded, noisy, smelly but ALIVE streets of London and Birmingham, from the snow covered north to the palm trees in the south, I love Great Britain. The thing is that I’ve seen a bit more of the world and I know that there are amazing things everywhere. The politics and the social situation in this country aren’t to my taste but I’d rather stay and try to help solve that rather than run away to New Zealand and with my friends here there’s no risk of me leaving any time soon.
So there we have it from the train back from London. I’ll write a bit more of this after Halloween and probably post it in a one shot deal.
By the way, I’m writing this on some of the new software I picked up in London. Still trying to source Leopard for the Mac but I’m working on the new version of Word for Mac and it’s rather sweet. Bit different to the NT version we use at work and pretty similar to the 03/04 Office suite. Might have another look once my pay comes in. I like open source software, and in the case of Office, NeoOffice (OpenOffice.Org for the Mac) is very compatible but I can’t deny that Microsoft (turn and spit) do make some decent software and with work going XP/2003 having a fully compatible system is likely to make things easier. Thing that’s been getting to me a bit recently are the adverts for Microsoft where people say “I’m a PC” where what they actually mean is “I run Microsoft, rather than Mac or Linux.” PC just means personal computer, so I’m working on a PC now, it’s just a Mac, rather than a Windows box.

Post dated - written first night back in the UK

So I’m back home, back to using a Mac, back to autumn, back to missing Kate and back to, well, back to Britain.
It’s been one hell of a deployment, all in all. I’ve seen some things that less than 1% of the UK have seen, I’ve travelled a LONG way, I’ve seen animals in their native environment, learnt lots of things about using a SLR camera, met a wonderful girl and had to leave her 8000 miles away, and have now got experience of flying in a number of different types of aircraft.
Would I go back? Hell yes. Even without Kate, I’d love to go back south; with her there it becomes more imperative.
Am I glad to be home? Yes and no. For one thing I’m not home yet, I’m at my parents. This is the first time I’ve felt this, that my parents house is not my home. I’m always welcome here but this is their house, their home, not mine. It’s great to see them and Matt, Becky and Ellen (who loved her penguin) but I want to see my friends, I want to get back to my flat and relax in my own (rented) place. Don’t get me wrong, it IS wonderful to be here and they are brilliant but a week or two here is going to be enough.
I’m starting to see what Twoflower meant in Light Fantastic when he said “you haven’t travelled until you’ve got back home.” Looking back through the 2129 photos I’ve taken, I stripped them down to “just” 437 good ones and some of them are really good, I won’t be short of good images for backgrounds for a while, that’s for certain. I’m going to get one of those digital picture frames and load the good ones onto it, but that’ll have to wait until the next pay check at least.
Obviously the biggest down side of coming home is leaving my girlfriend (still feels weird to be able to say that after all this time) and enter into a very long distance relationship. We’re hoping it will work but both of know that the distance is very large, four time zones and totally different worldviews. So we’ll see how it goes.
It will be good to see friends and familiar places again though, and to be able to drive my own car when I want, where I want and above 40 mph (!) will be fantastic. As it is I’m still a bit jet-lagged so I’m going to reset my body clock tomorrow and head into town, which is about10 times bigger than Stanley, and then maybe Cheltenham, which is almost 100 times Stanley.
Pubs and real beer are going to be good, having to pay more than £3 for a 6 drink round isn’t. And yes, for the guys in London, that would have been an expensive round. If you consider that a double of Bells was 16p in the mess, more than £3 for a single is going to hurt. How much it would cost in the capitol I don’t want to think…
I had some bad days down there, not all of them hangover based. There were a couple of days when my forecasts just wouldn’t settle, some days I just wanted to be home, and some days that it felt like I was really up the arse of the world. But not many, and most of them were at the start, before I found my feet and made the friendships and acquaintances that I did.
Flying over South Georgia I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d want to be, although I could think of some people I’d want to be there with. Some of my friends back here would have really loved it down there, Tasha and Chris especially.
I definitely drank too much and didn’t do enough exercise, but I’m surprised how little I’ve actually changed. Moustache aside, of course. I’m going to get my dad to take a few pictures of my with the south Atlantic facial fuzz still attached then it’s going!
Did improve my bowling though. I’ve also learned an huge amount of new weather skills as well. After all, I’ve been working at a level above my normal work standard with minimal information so getting back to Lossie with all the kit that is normal for a met office will be a welcome change of pace.
Actually, that’s another point, we’re changing at Lossie to have a regional unit as well as the local station one; and when I get back up we’re moving back into the office on the day I go home with the regional unit stand-up two weeks later. Joy.
Oh, and Richard, thanks for the great comment, I must say that was a really lovely poetic turn of phrase. And you're right, living on a mountain would be easier but I've tried that, the wind chaffs terribly. ..

The moon's upside down!

I had a blog entry written out but now that I'm in the cyber cafe I thought I might as well just bang one out (jokes to the usual address).
Well, here I am.
Managed to get pretty much everything organised before I flew out, the flight was long and rather boring, although watching the sunrise over Africa was brilliant. We stopped off in Ascension Island and I got to leave the cage to meet the local Met guys, briefly, before we were herded back on for the next part of the trip.
Arrived after about 18 hours on the plane and got a quick tour of the base and the office.
Limited to what I can actually say about the base but it's pretty good, there's a long corridor from our living area to the main mess (about a mile long) and it's a bit chilly at times - glad I brought my down jacket.
I'm sat in the cyber cafe right now, something dad didn't have when he was here, and soon I think I'll nip to Oasis for a cup of tea and a cake. Life can be pretty civilised at 52 degrees south. It's cold mind, but then it is winter, we had a day of glorious sunshine but most of the time has been dull and drizzley. I'm expecting snow this weekend.
Erm what else, oh we've got a 33m heated swimming pool, a climbing wall, a great gym (had my induction after work this morning - 3 minutes of the timetable being read and the pti asking "everyone seen the rules before? Right see me if you need anything else.") a cheap bar (whisky costs about a third of a the price of a chocolate bar :D ) a bowling alley (the pins are on cable - it's hilarious) that I got invited to on the first evening - great but I was dead on my feet by the end, library, couple of shops, few places for tea and coffee, a cinema that shows some fairly recent shows, and all this is just inside the mess complex.
I've had the landrover training and been hooning about in the works van as much as I can and I've come to realise that I like defenders! Hoping to get off the base at some point this week but I'm working this weekend when the rest of them are going off to Stanley, maybe next time. There's often chances to go on flights which I'll grab when I can but not just yet.
Work wise, it's harder than back home and different with more briefings and different conditions. Different products too. I was worried that I couldn't do it for a bit but I think that was just the newness of the situation. I need to speed up production but that'll come. Work also, like most sections down here, has a cat. He can be a bit annoying when he's begging for food but it's nice to be able to take a couple of seconds pause and say hello to him. I'll stick up some photos of Krusty, and other things, when I can.
It's the little thing that keep throwing me, I went outside and thought "Hang on! The cloud's in the wrong part of the sky and the wind's going the wrong way! My forecast is rubbish!" Then I realised I'm in the south and the sun is in the north. I'd automatically lined myself up and got it epically wrong. I also don't recognise ANY of the stars down here yet. Okay, apart from the Sun, but we don't see our local star much. I think I've seen the southern cross but need to check on that.
In general, I think I'm going to like it down here, but give me a week of work in evil weather on my own and then ask me...

Where will you be, the day after next Thursday?

Had one of those days today. The Reds turned up, which was cool, and I got asked if I wanted to do a detachment down south for a few months.


So, next week I'm catching a plane.




To the Falkland Islands.

Yeah, 8000 miles south for three months.
Yikes.

First I've got to sort out everything up here, get an ID, get checked out on Landrovers and get vaccinations for Yellow Fever, Polio and Tetanus.
I should be able to keep everyone up to date but there may be longer than average gaps between posts...

And again, yikes.

Some things that made me laugh

1. go to Google
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box) hit enter
6. scroll down to step #24
(Thanks Strawberry Pip)

And from the Office news groups:
An American woman has found the cause of global warming...