Four days in the queen city

So we spent four long and fun days in Istanbul / Constantinople with Korinna. I will put forward just a brief itinerary of what we saw and did in the four days with a hope to fill in more in a few days, especially after the photos are printed.

Day 1 was spent on getting to know the first hill essentially. It involved Aya Sofia / Aghia Sophia, the outside of Hagia Eirene, the ground floor and Byzantine rooms of the archaeological museum,



an unsuccessful attempt to identify what's left of one of the oldest churches in the city (in the copper workers' quarter), followed by a walk around yerebatan sarnici - the basilica cistern, the blue mosque plus hippodrome



and finally, the garden in front of the church of Sergius and Bacchus (kucuk aya sofia camii) which is undergoing pretty extensive looking renovation work.

We began day 2 with a trip to the pera and the galata tower, followed by a walk across the galata bridge to the new mosque (Yeni Camii), the Egyptian Bazaar / Spice Bazaar, where we bought a whole lot of cheap saffron. Next a taxi ride up to the Gul Camii (St. Theodosia) and a long wait for midday prayers for finish so I could have a look inside. Next up to Eyup Sultan Camii area where we learned why the little boys were wearing those funky outfits.



We tried to get into Yedikule, but were turned away on account of the rock concert going on that night, so we took a cab to the wrong Imrahor Camii, later discovering the right one was locked (St. John Studios) so we returned to Serge and Bach (rhymes with shake-and-vac) for some hookah smoking idleness.

On the third day, we made it in to Yedikule, and also went to the monastery of Constantine Lips (Molla Feneri Isa Camii) where we bumped into a mullah leading a Koranic class in the apse of one of the two churches. We then walked to the Kiz Tasi (the column of Marcian), and from there to the aqueduct of Valens, St. Polyeuctos (which was not what I had expected) and ended up having an icecream break right where Theodossios had built his agora / forum, opposite that bath house which is falling down but has the bits of column sculpture in its base. Next up was the covered bazaar,



the burnt column (Constantine's column) and a night trip to Asia by boat (return by cabbie).



The final day was more relaxed, beginning with the mosaic museum, we then went off to the Suleymaniye



via the kalendarhane mosque. At the Suleymaniye we also visited the turbes of suleyman,



his witch wife and his master architect. We then went shopping up and down the main street - the mese. We also had a walk around Binbirdirek sarnici and the myrelaion / bodrum camii environs, before finishing up at our favourite spot in the garden of Serge and Bach again for more hookah.

Exhausting stuff, oh yes.

Where have you been my blue eyed son?

And what did you see my darling young one?


Coming soon...

Long weekend

Long weekend destination. Click view image for bigger version.

More on return.

Live8

Over at w w w . P i n k F l o y d . c . o . m: "It has been confirmed that Roger Waters will join Pink Floyd to perform at the Live8 concert in Hyde Park on 2nd July."

Wow. I wander what they'll play - dare say "Money" will be on the playlist.

So we went to Marathon lake at the weekend for scrabble. My game of scrabble can be ridiculously varied and is very much dependent on getting the decent letters - something which is getting rarer and rarer...




If you know what to look for you can see the dam on the left. You can also spot the pill box over to the left there. The lake was like big-time important place during the war, and still is to a certain extent on account of the fact that it was (is) the (a) major source of the city's drinking water.

So Korinna won the scrabble match - again - with a well placed z and a well placed psi. We're probably going to go back there as it was a pleasant enough place.

Found my A-Level results

So I have found my A-Level results - which are required for getting my desmond recognised... my house must be tidier than I thought!

Back to Dersios!!!

Off tomorrow at the crack of dawn for Arcadian sinkholes.

Yay!

Recognition for Desmond

So, the time has come, almost a full ten years on from the graduation ceremony, to take my desmond to the Greek authorities and have it registered. My feelings on being awarded one need to be told at some point but it is too much to write easily and I intend today to write about why it is necessary to have the desmond acknowledged by the Greek state.

I will be making an application to the UOA to read for a Master's degree (woo!). For this to happen, I have to have a degree from a university recognized by the Greek state. Fortunately I do have one of those - the aforementioned desmond - but how do I prove it? Well, to prove it I have to go to the nice people at DIKATSA and show them my degree and a ton of other documents and then they take a year to figure out whether the fekking university which gave me the desmond is on their list of approved universities. Then I get a bit of paper saying that, yes indeedy, my degree is from a recognized Uni. They then need me to sit a bunch of exams to give me another bit of paper which shows that my degree is as well-heeled academically as the equivalent degree here. Finally, they will not be able to certify anywhere that my desmond is worth the same as a Greek degree gotten with a grade of 65%, and this because I cannot get a transcript with my grades in every piece of written work I ever did.

It was a sportsman's desmond, anyway.

Anyway - I have the dilemma of choosing whether to have the degree recognized as equivalent to a literature degree or an archaeology degree. It's a little bit of a no-brainer, really. Ah but then they get to tell me that I ain't done any papers on Byz. stuff and that I have to sit a bunch of these - which would be fun in a general educational sort of way.

So to re-cap - they can certify I have a degree with just a bunch of papers I am collecting and €120. They can certify I have a classical archaeology degree if I sit a bunch of exams. They cannot certify how good a degree it is unless my Uni breaks with standard practice and sends them transcripts that they do not make.

I am going to keep all informed about how progress with my attempts to do a Masters degree go.

Shameless plug for James Blunt

Music isn't bad, either.

Your powers are weak, old man

There has been a lot of interest in climbing at the club recently - we have this climbing wall there and had a go at traversing the three meter length of it using only the blue, or only the green holds. Needless to say, I wasn't all that good and went off and downloaded a whole bunch of stuff from Eric Hörst's site. I'd come across his book in Elias' car when we were going to Propantes and it had got me thinking. Then I bump into his site after looking for how info on training for climbing.

So one of the hints he talks about for getting started is weighted (gravity+) pull ups. He then writes, like, don't do this unless you can do five sets of fifteen pull-ups with three minute rests in between… Hmm. And then he says if you cannot do five consecutive pull-ups at all, there's something else you got to start with to build up strength.

And so, gentle reader, this is where today's title comes from. I went home, sat myself under the chin-up bar determined to do the pre-requisite five consecutive pull ups so as to be able to proceed with the training plan for building to five sets of fifteen. Up went the hands, gripping the bar and up went the legs, suspending me below the bar.

OK - so I didn't really try that hard, but it was clear that I was not going to be doing five consecutive pull-ups.

This time back in 1992, when I was just getting my release papers from the Greek Army I could probably have done the five sets of fifteen without a problem. Wouldn't it be grand to be like that again? OK, so I like have some thirteen years extra wear and tear on me and of course the whole chronic illness bollocks to deal with, but wouldn't it be just great to be 60 instead of 74 Kg, and to be able to do pull ups and to wear that favourite pair of shorts again? OK, who's with me on this? Let's set targets: by the end of the year (six month target), back to 60 Kg (lowest ever since the highest was 56 Kg, but that just ain't natural) and I want to be lithe and supple again.

In April last year I would have said, "yeah, dream on, fat-boy" but now things are different.



PS - title slightly influenced by the fact that I am going tonight to see Episode III.

Rant about my bastard foot

Not sure if this is a rant about my bastard foot or about my cow-orkers. Summer is coming again, oh yes. Summer is as good as being here. It's hot out, but the cow-orkers don't acknowledge this and so I have to sit and sweat in my office while they complain whenever the airconditioning is put into operation. Hey - I'm fucking sweating here, can't you see???

I got a vest to wear from the states - paid a shedload in customs charges for the honour of having it shipped over. Remind me to rant about customs at some point soon. It's too early in the year and in the day to need to wear it on the way to work - I usually come before the temperatures get too high. Once here though, there is a fine line between annoying the cow-orkers and suffering too much and it gets crossed at exactly this time of year and we've crossed it.

I don't mind the sweating. I don't mind the feeling exhausted so much. Both these happen anyway, from time to time. What I do mind is when my right foot goes numb because of the heat doing what it does. The numb right foot acts as a reminder. "Hello!", it says, "you're going to die. I am your memento mori, sucker!"

It's no hassle to have the foot freak out when other parts are also arsing me around too - it's expected. It's when it's the only thing wrong I get annoyed. No L'Hermittes, no other numbness or tingling - just the numb foot. Grrr.

It's the bloody heat which set it all off. All winter I was fine as a fine thing - now the summer is coming I am not looking forward to it - and it seems to be about to be a very hot one. Must go caving then, I guess.

Ping-pong

So I popped over to Romania for a little bit of courier work, not unlike the trip described here.

I haven't been in Romania for a bout three years and feel rather more rusty on the language front than I dare admit.



Anyway, I had a few chances to walk around a bit in the evening and have three little panoramas for you all. The first is the "It" building just after sundown. The House of the People as it was so grandly named by old Nic is, according to lonely planet called just "it" by the locals…



We walked through the park to the right to go eat and walked back past where Nic gave his last public appearance in December 1989:



The final pic is from the morning before setting off for the airplane again:



The town seemed cleaner and fresher, with more vitality and optimism than back in 2002 when I was here last. Things are looking up for 2007!

Clicking "View image" on the panoramas will open a slightly larger version.

and while we're at it...

Three little panoramas I photographed with my trusty Nokia phone and stitched together with autostitch, this really quite clever little programme.

Clicking on the little thumbnails will take you to a slightly larger image for each one.




There was the most amazing sky on Saturday evening - we had set out for a meal with friends of Korinna from Uni and then the Masters in London. Meeting, as usual at the cathedral, I snapped the above skyline and the rather distorted view of the entrance to the cathedral itself, which is below.





I don't like the way it totally blows the edge out of the stuff which is closer, but there is not too much that can be done. I guess I'd have to go into photoshop and spend time on the straightening of curved edges.





This one I am very pleased with, and it seems that this is the sort of shot which autostich excells in. It is a view up the street which borders the Library of Hadrian (qv) and you can make out from left to right the old mosque which is now the folklore museum, the Library of Hadrian in the centre of the frame and the Acropolis over in the distance and to the right of the image. You get a nice idea of how the Erecthion sits on the edge of the rock and sticks out.

I rather like this one - taken as it is with dusk firmly in the air and with the street sellers busying about trying to get business all along the railings.

I will try to expand on the extremely long, rather than high panoramas.

Δος ημίν σήμερον

Kneading and then waiting for the little yeast kritters to do their stuff and bloat my little loaves out of all shape and proportion is something I used to do frequently before I met Korinna. I have not done the whole making bread thing for almost two years - the last loaf I had made back then was a little after we had started going out.

Yesterday I made bread, and it was good. I managed to break the INGO workbench in the kitchen, which was obviously not designed with kneading in mind.

So here are some before and after photos, of the bread in the just kneaded, just risen and just cooked stages of life.












More coming soon...

Seven seconds

Well, here I am, at the entrance to Propantes.

text moved

Dude, where's my engine???

Bollocks!

Bollock bollocks bollocks...

Propantes

This weekend.

my caver blog has the story

Two years together

Thank you for sticking with me, despite all my faults.

Your fifteen minutes start NOW!

Those who can read the language might like to have a look at the article about extreme sports as a stress release in TA NEA in which I have a significant amount of the column inches. There is also my photo which needs to be clicked on to be seen properly.

Sykia and Archedamos

So, we went to Sykia in the Panorama Voulas area.


Moved to my caving blog

Cyclopean Masonry in Nafplio?

So after all the bile swelling our livers had subsided enough to allow us to go back to Nafplio, we went and went in haste because all rooms we had tried to book over the phone were full. The only way to be sure of a room there after the Hotel Kapodistrias had shafted us was to go to Nafplio and find a room.

So we got in the car and scooted over the canal and down to Nafplio and parked in the public parking whatsit, and set off walking around the whole of the old town in a sort of anti-clockwise direction looking for places like hotels and rented rooms which might be suitable for sleeping in. We found plenty of places to sleep, but none had rooms for Easter weekend and we fell back on the Elena Hotel where we had stayed during the 7th Panhellenic Speleological Meeting in October.

So, why all the excitement?

Well, walking through the old town, and in a place where it was totally unexpected, what should we stumble across, but something which I had been searching for for years without success. I had read about it many times, but was always "digging in the wrong place". It is not really surprising that I had not found this thing, given its site and situation.

We were walking along Psaromahala street (I think!) when we went past an abandoned building which did not seem to be in repair-and-rent mode. It was just the front of the building, the façade, and behind there was an empty yard and behind the empty yard was a wall.

And so it was, that after many years, I was finally looking at some of the original fortification of Nafplio / Nauplia. You read about the Mycenaean fortress at Nafplion, and stories of chamber tombs in the rock and what have you, but I had never seen any of this older Nafplio. I had always expected these traces to be up by the Palamidi fortress but of course, it makes so much more sense for them to be here.

I initially got over excited thinking that here was a stretch of legitimate LHIII Mycenaean fortification, but on looking at it in the sober light of Monday morning, back at work, on the computer screen, it looks more like a Hellenistic stretch here. I will add a comment if I ever find out what exactly that this is. It's interesting to see that it would have been right in someone's kitchen or living room originally.

There are two views, one from the road, through the destroyed building, the other from a height a little bit above the yard.

It was the ray of sunshine which made the futile searching for a room more bearable.



The through the window view



The view from above

Lycambes? who he? - Hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio rant

Yeah, so I never was one for invective and all that jazz. Well, not since a long time ago when I was experimenting rather haphazardly and awkwardly with lyric meter.

Anyway - a while back, in this post (before going) and also in this post (after being there), I mentioned the hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio and how it was a nice place to stay. Well, it is a nice place to stay, but the idiots who run the Hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio are idiots and have lost me for a client.

We had a good time in December, so I call them in early February to ask for rooms for easter weekend - which in our calendar is the weekend 30 April / 1 May. The girl on the phone asks me to phone back in March, so we phoned back in late February and are told again to phone back in March, since they weren't taking bookings for Easter yet. In early March, I am told to phone back in a few weeks and I asked them specifically, like, "you better not tell me there's no rooms when I call back in late March because I've been trying to book these rooms since early February" and they assure me that there will be no problem.

So on the weekend of 26 March we phoned, and they told us that they were fully booked, cunts that they are. I asked why they had led us along for so many weeks, and they told me that they had a group which had not yet put down the deposit, but did in the end and they didn't know whether or not they would have the rooms on account of this delayed downpayment, and for this reason, they kept telling us to keep calling back.

Would it have hurt them to tell us that they had a group which had not paid a deposit yet?

Idiots.

So, I will never stay at the Hotel Kapodistrias in Nafplio again, although I liked the place and had every intention to spend a number of weekends with them.

Another from the WTF pile...

So there I was wading through the 9/11 nonsense which has invaded AFU and I come across a guy quoting from what claims to be Bill Clinton's Blog!! "In-depth analysis of current events, personal stories and humor".

I have no idea whether this is real or a hoax. It looks slick enough to be real - but why would Bill Clinton be advertising Amazon in his sidebars?

Anyway - go to the site and you decide!

Cheers,

Nesting instinct II

So the last two weeks have seen two three day weekends - we don't get easter here for a few weeks yet.

These have seen another orgy of buying - from IKEA again. ..




Here is Korinna with a bunch of wood, barely able to sit properly in the car.

So, it's been quite a few days of putting together and fixing to walls and hammering nails, but things are shaping up. We wanted to avoid DEXION shelving in the little whaddayacall store room thing, so we got a bunch of the GORM range of shelves from you-know-who (no, not voldemort...)


One part of the GORM sits in the little store-room

So now we have pine-fresh storage space. Just don't put anything on the shelves straight, though, put things in a box or something, 'cos there's a whole bunch of resin waiting to get stuck to you. I know this because I have done this.



Here is a LACK in our kitchen



And like the photo caption says, we put a Lack shelving whatsit in the kitchen. A bit costly at about €90, if you ask me, but they look nice and it fits in with the rest of the Lack stuff we got.

Nesting instincts.

I know this, because Tyler Durden knows this.

Woo!!! Earthquake!!!!!

At 1311 - just now - shakey skaey...

No idea how big.

Wow!

Vampyroteuthis infernalis

Man, is this funky, or what? I often go down to Tolweb for a browse when I am bored and have exhausted other things to look at, and this week they gave us Vampyroteuthis infernalis: "It occupies meso- to bathypelagic depths throughout the tropical and temperate regions of the world's oceans."

This is one funky critter, although I am not sure why it is called sea-vampire.

Photo credit: © 1999 Brad Seibel
Image used without permission, if you don't like that, let me know.

Funky, huh?

Express service or how I stopped worrying about my FIAT and learned to love driving

Gotta say, I've really got my money's worth out of Express Service. They've picked me up, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, about six or seven times.

So what happened now? well, there I was, cruising down Kifissias when all of a sudden the gears disappear. The forks had done something inside the gearbox or something and I was left with third gear, permanently in gear and no way to change out of third or into neutral.

The fun I've had with this car...

Byz Mus

Well, it's so there, like in your face every time you go down to Syntagma or pass by Kolonaki, sitting there in all it's courtyarded synmmetry next to the uber-modern leggo-brick of the war museum. You cannot get away from it, and this time, seeing as I had about 30 minutes left to spare in between IKA and the Aiginitio, I decided to go for it.

Comments? well... wow bob wow!!

I had been back before the famous Sicilian expedition of 2001, back in the age of innocence, before the events of September, and the museum was in the old central building and not too exciting, a little cramped and badly lit.

Now, well, totally different. I was really quite overawed. The last real exhibition of Byz stuff I had seen, if we exclude the collections in St. Marky-Mark's in Venice, was in the Louvre, where I had been bowled over by the representations sorta in-situ of the Coptic stuff.

The exhibition is organised a little bit chronologically, a little bit thematically and a little bit geographically. The labelling is as good as any you'll find elsewhere and the stuff in there is good stuff - like, I had never seen anything like the marble icon of the BVM from C12th Salonika.

I am not much of an icon man, but this one stuck in my mind: (bring out the mobile cam...)

It's like "squirt, gush" John Boorman's Excalibur meets the crucifixion... woo!

So, time for more pics, then:

Here's a bit of lacy plant material, similar to what you'll find in Justinian's churches in Istanbul, if you go:

'cept it's really nice and clean here and you can get right up close to it and all. They have some nice floor plans of Basilicas and whatnot, some drawn on the ground, to give an idea of scale, but one thing that jerked me off a little was the way they have put up iconostasis members and bits of doors and stuff and then behind it, put in a picture of San Vitale from Classe (WTF??) or Hossios Loukas (better, but still jarring). Quite obviously the bits you are displaying never existed in San Vitale - it was always totally open, but no, you gotta claim that as Byz - fine. Moot point.

What I did not find was quite as much Gothic stuff as I had hoped. Korinna and I have this running Gothic Joke, probably because our first trip out of Athens took in a rather fine Gothic monastery out at Isova, but maybe not.

All I got (and please remember I was not in there for too long) was this:

Pretty Frankish, really... hmmm. Actually this bit belonged in the church at Andravida (about half way down the page) we visited with the Jockster.

This is meant to have considerable gothic influence in it too:

I'll let the reader decide.

Need to go back with my cameras. They have the lighting in there all at low incident angles to bring out the sexiest shadows possible from the bas-reliefs.

Well... must scoot - I am very happy that I chose to pop in there, though.

Cheers,

Posted to rcp...

Last weekend I acquired some 200 firebricks - the ones displayed here.


They were going to be used in a fire-place but never made it, so I asked the uncle who had them whether he would mind parting with them.

My original plan was to make a kiln along the lines of the one on this site and I have been in rcp before asking for help and have been helped considerably by those who have answered.

Now - the bricks I have got are not shaped like common house bricks... they are shaped like 22x11x4cm or 8.7x4.3x1.6 inches. If I build the Brisbane 250 with these, I'll get a fire chaber
and firebox of about 8 cm height or 3.2 inches high - not so good.

If I switch height and width, apart from stability problems (trying to balance 25 courses on 1.6 inches base...) I figure I'll have problems with how thin the walls of the kiln will be.

Whatever happens, I don't have enough bricks to do anything right at the moment.

One idea is to stand the bricks up on their thin side, and then have another layer of bricks outside them to insulate. If I cannot get other bricks, does anyone know a reason why I should
not use the stones which are sitting around in the garden? These are big limestone blocks, some of which are squared and have been used in the past as masonry. I don't think we'll be approaching lime-kiln hot (but I don't actually know how hot lime kilns get, although a first google search show 2,000F). Hmm answered my own question there probably.

OK - so buy more bricks is the way to go. If I run out of the fire bricks, does anyone have an idea where they should be put and where it is not 100% necessary - I realise the whole kiln can be made without firebricks, but since I have them, I would rather they be used where there is high temperature.

I have not tried anything like this ever, I have not got a very acute sense of planning in 3D (to the extent that following the detailed plan course by course on the above mentioned web site
would have been a challenge), and I am not even sure whether I can find suitable blocks with which to make a model and see what I can do to maximise the benefit of the fire-brick gift.

I am willing to learn.

Weekend brick fun

So, I have this little 899cc car I am very very fond of - and last weekend it braved the rain and wind and weather for me, laden with some 200 fire-bricks, the poor bastard.



The wheel ain't meant to sit that low down on the suspension, oh no... normally it sits like in the right hand side photo.

So 200 fire-bricks each weighing 2Kg, makes about 400Kg - or the equivalent of six people on the back seat. Ouch!




And here they are. And there they are after Kostas the friendly Albanian helped me move them into my mother's garden...



That's 200 bricks, with dimensions 22x11x4 cm.




The next step is to ask out on r.c.p what I can do with them, other than make a midget two foot kiln. I am looking for ideas on making them into a Brisbane kiln, but want to use these bricks only where absolutely necessary.

I'll cross post my questions to rcp to the blog, and probaby any answers too.

Cheers,

Riddle solved, probably

So, we have an answer to the what was this stone, before it became a stone, question... Christof Kuhn gives us the answer over in usenet: "one of the strangest bivalves that ever existed" - it seems this cheeky chappy was a cretaceous Hippurites!!

Woo!

Piraeus panorama

On Sunday I went for a coffee with Kostas and Olympia and some family, to Profitis Ilias - the prophet Elijah - on top of the Kastelli hill down at the Piraeus.





Place has a stunning view down the coast facing south, but also across to the city, with the parthenon clearly visible, amongst other landmarks. Not really visible in the version attached, but you get the idea. Got to go back with K - the viennese chocolate was really rathergood.

The pic above was put together using a funky bit of demoware called autostitch which belongs to some sort of Canadian educational establishment - and it sure is good at sticking stuff together, oh yes. The inputs were crappy little nokia phone camera images. There'll be more autostitched images coming here soon...

Cheers,

WTF

The following site has been brought up on the Aegeanet mailing list recently. It seems to be being presented with a straight face. How anyone could have learned so much as to present his parody so convincingly as real scholarship without any tongue in cheek elements is really quite amazing.

Have a look for yourselves and let me know - is he taking the piss? If not, where did he leave the rails? Can we expect more archaeological eras to be presented in the same way?

Click here to broaden your mind...

Follow the link and scroll down if you get bored reading, you’ll know when to stop scrolling.

Cheers,

Unidentified rock - can anyone help??

This cheeky chappie was given to me by a great uncle about ten years ago, with another specimen of the same size and shape, which I have not photographed. The provenance is most probably from the former Soviet Union or Iran - great aunt was a diplomat based in both Moscow and Teheran at some point in the '70s and '80s. They went to other places as well, but these are the most probable countries of origin for the rock.

It's heavy rock, and displays ribbing here and there and what seem to be growth rings, on close inspection. I figure it is some sort of coral, but I know very little about coral and the like.

I’d be grateful for any hints as to what this is and how long ago it used to live. If there is something I should do to aid recognition, please someone let me know.


Here is the front face:





Here is the back side (showing the vertical ribs):






This is it side-on, standing up (some of the concentric rings are visible):




OK, here you can see the vertical ribbing more:




And here again the broader ribbing - seems to be two sizes of little ribs, those about 10-15mm wide and those about 1-2 mm wide.




This is the top (or bottom) end showing, though not very clearly, concentric internal structure:




Any help gratefully received...

Cheers,

glut

330 euros damage done. Shelves, bookcases and small items.... not even half the full shopping list, but what the hell.




Had a number of comedy moments carrying everything into the car and up to the house from the car, but this sort of thing cannot be helped. Got a lot of work to do at the weekend now.

nesting instinct

So, seeing as I moved house in January, it's about time I got the place sorted out and tidied up. Nesting instinct, and what better nesting instinct than the IKEA nesting instinct?

I forgot to put a little flashing sign saying, "cue: raucous laughter" there where it says January above, because I moved house in January 2004, you see, not 2005. ha bloody ha. So many people giving me a hard time about that it's not so fun. At least K isn't being too tough on me, making her the one who more than others deserves to have the nest.

Nesting instinct, and Ikea, and the fiat cinquecento of doom, then. Didn't tell you about the comedy return from Paloumba two weeks ago... ridiculous short-circuiting meant that if I wanted any of the following to work: headlights, central locking, ventilator fan, I had to have the full beam lights on,but not switched on, no, no, I had to have the little whaddayacallit stick thing pressed towards me, otherwise notihing at all worked. Very good fun trying to turn without taking your hand off the full beam switch, or else risk losing the only source of light you have on the road.

Fixed that by yanking the wires around in the rain in a fit of complete annoyance.

Now we will break all records by trying to jam into the car more Ikea DIY flat furniture than ever before. My current best is two full length BILLY bookcases (60cm variety) plus assorted sundries.

The current plan has me getting three of the buggers in there, plus a few LACK shelves and bookcases and a bunch of GORM shelving too.

Utter chaos. It so totally won't work, it's gotta.

Meanwhile in other news, I have been wondering just how much coffee I need to do any better than bouncing bobcat on the BBC's reaction time test. I have managed the rocketing rabbit only twice.


Hmm. That'a all for now, then. More later.

where are my snow-chains??????

I really really do need them this weekend, dammit.
Might have to go buy new ones. humpf!

Weekend worries

So, here I am with streppy-throat and lemsips all a steaming, and feel like shit and worried for my liver. How the hell come is it that everything that has some sort of action beneficial to you in an analgesic or anti-inflammatory way shafts the liver well and proper?

I have become a little more aware of my liver in recent months, ever since the SGPT and SGOT and the gamma GT jumped and caused me a little concern. I mean what the fuck are all these numbers and letters all about anyway? I’ve done my reading, oh yes, and now I know what the numbers measure. I also know I can live with much higher numbers than those I am currently scoring on my "to what extent have the interferons fucked your liver" scale.

So I am all throated out and fluey at the moment.

Nevertheless, I am still going to lead a rag-tag fugitive fleet to Pal - no wait, that’s something else, I’m in charge of a group of cavers, not a Starfleet. So we going to Pal tomorrow morning. Oh yes.

Between Vityna and Marko's junction there is settled snow on the road. Marko's junction is where the hairpin bend is after Zatouna. Mother had trouble getting as far as Zatouna yesterday, although the sunny weather should have made things better for today.

The plan is to set off at 06:30 hours tomorrow morning from the club and meet at the kiosk at 07:00 hours. From there we scoot to Pal as fast as we can, to meet the mayor who will give us the 4x4 and someone to take us to the holes. Temperatures in Paloumba are currently at about 7 degrees.

We have about 110m of rope - three twenties and a fifty. We have about five little ropey things and six belts plus some wire rope, got about twenty anchors and plates for rigging, but hope to do most of it without having to hammer the rock anywhere.

No idea what we’ll find - so quite excited. Worried about how all the team will sleep and how they’ll be accepted by the villagers, etc.

Generally got a whole bunch of worries on my mind.


And now a quote from his Bobness:

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

talk about going to eleven!!!

So I get home yesterday, and there's a big 12" square envelope waiting for me with big magic marker letters on it in the instantly recognisable hand of Jockey.

All the way up to the flat, I am thinking to myself, what this is... obviously some vinyl, otherwise no need to write DO NOT BEND in big letters on it: but what sort of vinyl? and should I worry that there seemed to be a bit more 'give' in the envelope than there should have been?

Once this was noticed, the possible gift came to me in a cascade of recognition... what vinyl would Jockey be sending me? what vinyl is not perfectly round? what vinyl is shaped like a megalithic monument? how much better a birthday present could this have been?

None - none, more better...

Thanks, Jock man.

Below, a photo of my shaped vinyl copy of Spinal Tap's "Bitch School"



Oh - and as an extra treat: two photocopied photos of the moocher!!!

Birthday trip to -90m

So 32, eh? Well, it's not all that bad.

Spent the day with family and not too much hoo-ha, then spent yesterday out at Vouliagmeni. It has what we term a Gruiyere consistency - holes everywhere. Not exactly my cup of tea. Very hot too - up at 26 C inside which makes you sweat just from standing there. I must have lost a few K in sweat yesterday.

Next weekend, we go exploring in Paloumba - finally!

and who are these cheeky chappies??

Find out soon, when I write up the Venice trip...

Where the hell are my snow chains????

and all the channels, scum-suckers that they are, are trying to induce mild panic in the population about the oncoming bad weather. And I'm sitting here thinking weather/schmeather cos like they always go over the top and tell us there's going to be a flood and it doesn't even rain, and when they say nothing, that's when the snow comes down, oh yes.

I have never needed to put on my snow chains. The car does just fine, even on snow, without them. Still - it's good to have them in the boot, you know - so where are they? Who wants to own up and let me know what they done with the snow chains?

Neek's birthday and other things

So it’s neek's bidet and we're still at home and we'’re meant to be buying shit - like useful shit like ice for the party and that'’s all a little stressful - but at least I have managed to cross the "scan Helidorea photos" task off my list. So now we can show everyone the entrance to the cave:




It's all of about four feet wide, oh yes.

And there's Eri, too!

Blogger sacked for sounding off

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Blogger sacked for sounding off: "Blogger sacked for sounding off"

Hmmm - not good. They say the first in UK, which probably makes it the first in the EU...
Rather funny to see what it is exactly he got fired over. Tame stuff.

Photos looking good...

Just went and got my prints back from Stelios on Soutsou street.

They are looking good, with only 2 unprintables on the 260+ potential frames, and only about ten which show more camera movement than is acceptable.

Most of the photos were taken in difficult conditions, either hazy / misty or inside with hand held shutter speeds of 1/30 or less, so I am not complaining. I'll publish some along with a text about the trip.

In an unrelated bit of news:
My caving side-site got 300+ hits over the past two days, after someone sent the address to the uk.rec.caving group...

Going to Byzantine Italy

It all started about three weeks ago, when we realised K would have a full week off after the new year. Usually this is not the case - schools open in Greece the feast of St. John.

What to do with a week? We said it would be nice to go to Karpenissi for some mountainous fun and I started all the planning. It all looked a little expensive for me - high priced rooms and what have you - so I met K's suggestion to surprise her with a whole lot of excitement. I had already gone and looked at costs for going to Venice and it seemed to be about within the same budget scale as Karpenissi for a week (what does that tell you about post-Euro prices, huh?).

The idea was to plan this whole thing without her knowing. Not too tough, as it turns out. I made some clues, which Ill put in here: "space for clues" when I get back. The clues all point to the destination, and whatever I don't care what anyone has said to me about the obtuseness of them all, but she got the destination without any help and not too long after being given the clues. Qualia? Talia est mihi, I am happy to say.

I am currently on a cross-Adriatic ferry that bears absolutely no relationship to the ferries of my memories from childhood drives from the UK to Greece. The only thing in any way similar to the ferries of the past are the slot machines - and these are only superficially similar as the older ones were hand-cranked and not push button affairs.

The plan is to stay on the Lido for two nights, leaving after the conclusion of the Befanio Regatta for Ravenna, and to leave there on the Saturday for Patras again.

While in Venice the plan is to see St. Mark's, possibly the Accademia and Torcello. Anything else is left up to whatever fate has in store for our feet and legs. We may go up to Murano to look at the glassworks - childhood memories I think are enough, although a fresh look now may not be too bad.

I have not been in Venice since about 1987, maybe one or two years (but no more) later. I have not been on a ferry across the Adriatic since about the same time - although I did cross the straights to Brindisi in 2001.

Ravenna should be good - I have never visited and it has definitely been on my wish lost for a long time. K and I have been giving the old wish list a good going over these past 6 months...

One thing I'll say about the ferry before I close is that it ain't half hot in the rooms. Far too hot for a fatman in my condition.

I doubt I'll be able to post again before returning, but check back, just in case, why don't you?

I'm on the Adriatic

Yes yes!!!

I am currently on route to Venice. Full news when I get back - around the 12th of January. Happy new year and happy travelling to all those reading.

Cheers,