Here I stand on the East bound District line platform at Acton Town, having missed the fucking train by 1 second again. My fault though, I had to top up my Oyster card with another monthly ticket.

Maybe I shouldn't be topping up on a monthly basis, the guys at work have decided not to risk it and are just topping up weekly. At least we're not to the point of buying day tickets! Not yet anyway!

We made it back yesterday after a long day's travel. We had to do the following to get home:

Walk to Vernazza train station
Get train to Genoa Bridade
Get train from Brigade to Genoa Principe
Get bus from Principe to the airport.
Fly from Italy to Gatwick
Get mini-train from Gatwick North to Gatwick South.
Get train from Gatwick to Victoria
Get tube from Victoria to Barons Court.
Get train from Barons...

Hello from the lovely little village of Vernazza in Italy. Vernazza is one of 5 little villages in an area of Italy called Cinque Terre.

We got up way to early on Friday morning and jumped in a cab out to Gatwick airport. The cabby obviously had a “If it’s my day to die, it’s my day to die” attitude, we were flying past other cars on the Motorway.

Sarah said to me once we’d arrived “It was awesome, it’s not often you get to go that fast and know you’re not going to get arrested for it.” I think our plane probably didn’t get much faster than our Taxi did, but we arrived in Italy without any dramas.

There was a huge queue at the customs point, we had to wait about 30 minutes from when we got off the plane to when we actually made it through passport...

I spent all Saturday working, so I only got a one day weekend. A bit sad really, but another day of work is another day on the books. Which means Easter will work out almost even.
Sunday was the one day we got to have a proper relax together, which was nice. We went down to Chiswick for breakfast and then purchased our dinners for the week from M&S. I always pay out the British ready meals, but M&S' are pretty good. Proper food, you just have to cook it. Not heat it, actually cook it. So it's quite tasty and less hassle. Plus they also have nice fruit!

Stuff last weekend though, this weekend we're off to Vernazza in Italy. The bit of Italy that didn't get hit by the earthquake. Poor Italians, I'll feel a bit guilty sitting there in the sun while some people are suffering...

Last weekend daylight savings rolled in to greet us, which is just fine with me. I'm rather sick of getting out of work to find that it's dark and gloomy already. Now instead you can have a nice pint of beer after work as I did last night with Vinod. The man who seems to know every pub in London.

I feel asleep on the tube on Wednesday night (nothing to do with beer, just tired) and I was dozing nicely, slightly registering each stop in my brain before dozing back off to sleep. I must have fell into a slightly deeper sleep during the stop at the station before ours, because I never heard it annouced. Thus I was dozing nicely still when the tube announced "This is Acton Town." It took my snoozing brain a few seconds to realise that was my stop, at which point I bust...

Hello! It's been one hell of a day, work has very suddenly ramped up major in the amount of work we've got to do and the amount of time in which we've got to do it. I spent most of today in various exchanges, plugging in cables, removing cards from routers, unscrewing bits from said cards, plugging in bigger, more expensive bits onto said card and putting them back into the router again.

The sort of stuff that I guess I'm rather good at, given my time at TelstraClear, but not the sort of stuff my role should really be doing. Still, it was fun to get back to my roots as it were, even though I am now filthy dirty and all dried out, having sat in front of a rather large air conditioner for the best part of 8 hours. Joy!

Tim

[Originally written on the tube home...

Hello from the Thorpe Park Hotel and Spa. We drove up late last night and then got up bright and early (way too early!) to head into Castleford, so Sarah could meet up with Lynn and Ruth to go wedding dress shopping. While they were doing that, I looked around the fun packed place that Castleford is.

That took about 30 seconds. As was pointed out to me, Castleford's "a bit rough." The weather is really lovely today though, beautiful and sunny. Which is of course why I'm sitting into the hotel bar having a beer right now!

Sarah's having a 2 hour Spa treatment at the hotel spa. I went for a bit of a drive around for an hour in the hire car, but there really wasn't a lot to see and there was too many busy traffic queues. So I thought I'll come back here, have a...

I went to the hearing Dr today to have my ears tested. I got locked into the little soundproof booth while a series of beeps and boops were played, then static in one ear and boops and beeps in the other. Heaps of fun as you can imagine!

Turns out I am going a bit deaf in the ol' left ear. It's hearing is mostly good, except for around the area of human speech that picks up the "c" and the "h" in cat/hat.
So when you next see me and you want to show me your new pet cat, don't be too alarmed when I look at you a bit funny.

So that's a bit annoying, but it's not terrible. I was worried that any hearing problems I have might have been caused by my ipod, but he assured me the amount I listen to mine (max an hour...

We bought a new shower curtain today. If you're still reading, you're doing well. We got a two-for-a-pound pack of shower curtains the other weekend and you can imagine the uber quality of those ones. So today was a nice day, we woke up rather late and walked down to B & Q in the sunshine. Now we get to stare at fishes all morning while cleaning ourselves.

My contract got renewed the other day for another 3 months, taking us up to at least July. Which works out rather well for our grand plans, not that we've got a concrete one yet.

Also, my hearing with the employment tribunal about my Vanco bonus has been postponed. Which I'm glad about, it's been postponed until after the results from two of my workmates hearings are in. They actually ended up having a joint hearing. Because their claim is exactly the...

Poor Sarah. The credit crunch has bitten her! Everything's going under! Our favourite Saturday morning Cafe told us this weekend that next weekend will be their last.

Not enough customers apparently. It's such a shame, it's a little organic cafe with lovely food and great coffee. But it's in Acton, and the sort of people that live in Acton couldn't really give a toss about organic food. Cheap and nasty is the order of the day, thus why McDonalds and KFC is always packed. Poor old Vanilla, I feel really bad for them. But we did support them most weekends, so it's not our fault.

I just got back from Karate and I've got really busted up arms. We were doing kicks and blocks (one person kicks, one person blocks) and my partner was taking it really serious. Which is a good thing, I'm not complaining. My blocks were...