Places on A Geek's Life

500 Leagues under the Sun

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 12:15:00 +0000

Of the things that still irk me, more than a year into my Arabian Odyssey, the sheer inefficiencies which seem baked into the system stand out for particular ire. Case in point: this past week to spend ten minutes picking up a letter from my employer and then delivering it at a government office fifteen kilometres away, I had to drive 250+kilometres. To my mind, it is something that can and should dare I say, be managed via an online portal but I found to my pain that this was not the case. It is no wonder then that in the short space of over a month I have driven just shy of three thousand kilometres, mainly between my outpost in the middle of nowhere, work (twice), the big city next door (multiple times) and the occasional trip to the provincial capital for some government thing or the other twice too.

Season's Greetings

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 07:28:00 +0000

It feels very much like my first Christmas up in the ‘Deen, what with being house bound, friends and family some distance away and there being a decided chill in the air. Now, as with then, I woke up to We Three Kings in my ears with all the rabbit holes of memories it brings with it.

The key difference this time is that the lockdown has given everyone practice of staying in touch across the distance. Fortunately or unfortunately, that means I have several family zoom calls to jump on. It is a small inconvenience I guess, given the year we have all had - the best of years and the worst of years to use that oft quoted line from Dickens.

On Lights, Language and that (c)old December Weather

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 02:18:00 +0000

Photo by Lawless Capture on Unsplash

In about as low key a manner as could be, lights - I won’t go so far as to call them Christmas lights - are slowly making their way on to trees around me. That they first turned up in front of the communal lounge and then a few houses here and there complete with inflatable Santas made me think they were put up by individuals. I am no longer so sure of that, given that some lights turned up on the tree in the middle of no man’s land in front of my house. Lights apart, you would have no inkling it was a week to Christmas - work continues apace and the only official holiday is the 3rd of January. For all the sameness that living in the bubble I live in seems to cultivate, it is these little differences that drive home the realities now and again. The positive is that I get to take the days off when I want which, all things being equal, should be soon-ish.

Got 'Til its (Kinda) Gone

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 22:08:51 +0000

The less common variant of the “Where are you from” question I get comes from the unconventional way my surname is spelt. Family folklore suggests that my great-grandfather, whether in a fit of pique or an attempt to be contrarian - no one is certain which it is, took his rather mundane Yoruba name, replaced a couple of vowels with consonants, and declared himself unique. To this day when I ‘goggle’ myself, every reference is to someone I know and have met, bar a frankly confusing article that includes TB Joshua, Togo and Canada. Make of that what you will.

The Diary: Jacqueville By The Sea

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 20:31:19 +0000

This has been sitting in my drafts for several months, so I thought I’d try to finish it off and post it here as a means to making use of the time I have on my hands.

If there is a silver lining to being a terrible sleeper it is that I usually manage to wake up in time for things, typically before my alarm rings. The blips on that record are increasingly regular - and spectacular - like this past weekend when I slept through multiple alarms. When I finally woke up (having failed to do so to the alarm on my phone and on my watch), it was ten minutes before my taxi was due, cue half-brained rushing about to splash some water on my face, brush my teeth and grab my travel bags. By the time that was done, there were already two missed calls from the taxi driver and the company on my phone. There was, I thought, a hint of irritation on the driver’s face when I finally emerged. All of that disappeared once we were on the way, and speeding, to the airport. The usual chit-chat revealed he had passed through the corner of West Africa I was headed for many years ago, and that he was Latvian, not that anyone could have guessed from his near-perfect Aberdonian accent. Scrambling for change at the airport, he waived the additional £1.20, helped me with getting my bags out of the car trunk and then promptly disappeared for the next gig. Bag drop and security took ten minutes at that time of the morning, by which time I was barely lucid and grateful for the cup of black coffee I poured myself once I was into the lounge. I was the first of my work party to arrive, which gave me some time to settle in and breathe a little, before the incessant chit-chat and mindless prattle began. It was a good thing I managed to catch my breath because the chit-chat, when it began, focused on the prospect of my leaving for greener pastures - being a traitor to the cause was the good-natured accusation thrown about. In those days before the oil price tanked, there were stirrings of growth and opportunities and I was only the latest in a long line of folk who had either left or were in the process of leaving. To cut costs, we had somehow engineered a tight connection at Charles de Gaulle, our turn around time being a grand total of ninety minutes plane to plane which left us hands full, running almost full pelt through the airport. We made it with some time to spare in the end and were delayed by a further hour for reasons unknown to us, all of which left me internally cursing the necessity of the awfully early start. We found out in the end that the delay was due to a deportation order being served on someone, cue police and immigration and all the malarkey that comes with those.

Place

Mon, 18 May 2020 09:46:35 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #108:

\\\* Bound up in its faux pillars and its dangling chandeliers are the memories of stolen things, the tears shed here by the lost ones reverberating in our ears. Time disappears here, subsumed by the delight of truly feeling and of seeing, the art of each act a tribute to the ones who’ve come before.

On Returning to the City of Red Earth

Mon, 04 May 2020 18:18:19 +0000

With NaPoWriMo done and dusted for this year, I’m getting the chance to catch up on other stuff. The fifth (and penultimate) assignment for the Creative Non-Fiction Course I started in February was to describe a city and the feelings it engendered in us during our last visit. Here goes:

\\\*

In my more nostalgic moments, I call her the City of Red Earth, but that is as far away as possible from what I feel as I drag my bags towards the check-in desk ahead of heading back out there. The last time, H had just passed, and the three weeks which followed were consumed by the busyness of dealing with the dead. Everyone I tell about this upcoming trip shares cautionary tales; of the power industry grinding to a halt, the spiralling crime rates, and the rapidly disintegrating roads. Not to seem too dismissive, I smile and nod at their concerns whilst inwardly telling myself I’ll do a good job of passing; after all my pidgin English – lightly accented as it is – is passable.

The Diary: Malta

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 18:29:52 +0000

\\\* 4 am on a weekend is far too early to wake up, particularly when it is the next day after a late-night flight, but given my flight the next day is a 7.30am one I have to suck it up. The next day, having rushed through a shower, completed final bag checks and double-checked I have my passport, we find ourselves in a taxi speeding away on the A3 a little after 5am, barely lucid but glad I don’t have to do the driving. At Gatwick, we find lengthy lines bent double on themselves with baggage handlers thin on the ground. That EasyJet, that famously lean airline, deigns to apologise over the state of affairs is perhaps all one needs to know about just how dire the situation is. Thankfully, we make it through baggage drop and security just before 7am; just enough time to grab a Shake Shack breakfast bun and start frantically eyeing the departure boards for signs of our flight. It ends up delayed, no surprise there.

Stripping, (TV) Binges and Thinking About Thinking

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 19:53:03 +0000

By some unexpected twist of fate, I found myself heading into Central London on the hottest day of the year, a fairly tropical 37 degrees Celsius, and that for the first time since last December. The destination was the Nigeria High Commission on Northumberland Avenue, the plan to get my expired Nigerian passport renewed. To get here I had had to jump through several tortuous loops, not helped by the fact that my trips down to England are scheduled months in advance with impromptu trips being aggressively minimised due to the costs. My takeaway from my dealings with the appointment’s system was that the (re)scheduling system could be significantly improved - first, you sign up via a third party web service, pay the booking fees and then get randomly assigned a date, one you can only change to a more suitable one by emailing back and forth, no less than six in my case – which meant in addition to the heat I very much had my mind prepared for a terrible experience which could potentially take the whole day. It might have been my low expectations, but the experience was far less stressful than I expected, sans the slow pace at which things trundled along from picking a ticket to getting called for an initial review and then submitting my biometric details. If there was a silver lining, it was that the slow pace of things – and the very many other Nigerians there for similar purposes – increased the likelihood of running into people I had not seen in a long time; 20 plus years and two kids in one case. That the most unsettling thing from all of that was wondering what the scrawny lad I ended up sitting across from on the tube from Charing Cross to Waterloo was up - to whilst reading from 2nd Corinthians 1 in a huge bible - is a miracle of sorts (events at the High Commission didn’t leave me mentally drained as they have in the past) or perhaps only the symptom of my low expectations.

Wet Weather Problems, Twittering about Tea and Loving at First Write

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:44:16 +0000

All it takes is an extended patch of wet and cold weather for things to descend into chaos on these islands, this latest batch of snow, heavy winds and cold weather culminating in flight cancellations and severe weather warnings amongst others. For the most part, I manage to survive - extra warm clothing, walking gingerly to and from work in the wet slush and almost continuous heating being the sum of the adjustments I have to make. It is at the weekend when the rooster comes home to roost in a manner of speaking. Having turned up at the airport for my 8.20pm flight down to Heathrow, delays till almost 11 pm are announced until at a few minutes before midnight we are advised the flight has been cancelled. Remarkably, everyone who should be on our flight is remarkably sanguine about it all, helped I suspect by the sense that the weather ‘gods’ have been at it again. Between the final announcement of delays and the flight being cancelled, we find (from Flight radar) that the ‘plane designated to carry us away to London has made several attempts to land at the ‘Deen but has failed due to fog rolling in. They eventually get diverted to Glasgow whilst we make an orderly line at the front desk to get our flights rebooked. I move my flight by a week and then head home, not before I find out that the woman in front of me in the queue has family in the same area of Surrey that I’m headed to, and very much like me, she makes this trip every two weeks so. Joking about being four-day spouses, does have a ring of truth to it though. For me, it offers evidence that this thing - having a foot in two different countries - isn’t exactly impossible to maintain, mild weather-induced irritation notwithstanding.

Riding shotgun, old things and a return to the reality of life

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 11:37:01 +0000

Between a dull headache, rheumy eyes, a rasping cough and my –at the best of times – dodgy night time vision, I suppose it was inevitable that I would ride shotgun for most of our time in Benidorm. Inevitable or not, that did little to settle the simmering discontent that gnawed at my insides each time we had to hop into the car and go somewhere. To compensate I offered directions, commented on lane switches and approaches to roundabouts and generally made myself as obnoxious as possible, particularly when other road users came close enough to see me sat in the other, non-driving seat. In my mind, that (ultimately useless endeavour) made it seem to others that I was in control, orchestrating things from behind the scene rather than being the mere passenger I was. Patriarchal tropes and stereotypes aside, it offered a front row seat from which to observe first-hand all the little discourtesies female drivers endure on the roads. Away from the immediacy of the moment, memories of Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece on the subject of learning to drive came to mind. Not that the fact that other men, far more intelligent than I, have struggled with this absolves me of blame here.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 27: My Place

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:11:11 +0000

The folk at AoM identify eight factors which feed into an assessment of the suitability of where one is at the moment. Given Aberdeen and Byfleet are currently it for me, a table with the pros and cons of each location seemed like a logical place to start. Here goes:

[gdoc key=“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IZdb5os_AQNEjVBwEAscnsPzq2u2uqcj11jiaMktMBQ/edit?usp=sharing”]

A different kind of the middle of nowhere

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 12:40:51 +0000

Image Source: Wikipedia

--- Nursing a double espresso in the Air France lounge at Charles De Gaulle, it’s the first time in a week that I get the chance to be by myself and reflect on what has been a whirlwind week. From being up at 5.00 am two Sundays ago (to catch an early flight westward from Heathrow to Abidjan via Paris), multiple flying stops to a number of offshore assets and then to this stop on the way back to normalcy, it has felt like a blur of perpetual motion. It has also, much against my natural bent, been a time spent overwhelmingly in the company of others - work colleagues, fellow travellers and the odd hustler looking to make a quick buck amongst others. With each change of location - Heathrow, Paris, Abidjan and offshore - there has been a progressive browning of my surroundings, one that means that by the time I arrive at the work site I am lost in a sea of similar faces. Not since my last job in this part of the world at the back end of 2008 have I found myself in this sort of surroundings; not in the minority but one face in a sea of similar faces.

Liquid

Fri, 18 May 2018 19:11:16 +0000

Rovinj, Croatia. For the WordPress photo challenge prompt, Liquid

#4 - Variations...

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 18:29:16 +0000

Hanging out with iron man, a few years ago in Manchester and then most recently in Marrakech.

For the prompt, Variations On A Theme.

Marrakesh

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 18:20:30 +0000

Marrakesh, with its ochre-coloured buildings, towering minarets and bustling souks is quickly becoming a distant memory, the joys and delights of roaming its streets being progressively replaced by a sense of having returned to drudgery. Although the three weeks of work I have gotten under my belt since my return have provided fertile ground for that feeling to fester, the seeds were sown in Marrakesh, everything from passport control and its lengthy queues, an hour and a half spent waiting for a bag to turn up and even more queues at the body scanner as we waited to exit the airport all setting the tone for what seemed like running a gauntlet. Once through all of that bedlam and outside the airport, the smell of smoke - somewhat like the linger of the remains of a thousand spit roasting fires - was a warm welcome of sorts.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Windows

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 18:32:00 +0000

Somewhat fortuitously - long story for another day - I have somehow found myself working bang in the city centre for most of the last six years, the chief joys of which include being able to stroll leisurely into work in twenty minutes tops, and this - views of the harbour through the window of the canteen on the third floor.

Between the middle ship and the green ship, if you look hard enough you’ll see the remains of seagull poop. For now at least, these two are constants, ships and seagulls.

Weekly Photo Challenge - Layered

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 18:01:24 +0000

One Friday this summer, S and I decided dolphin watching would be a good thing to do, which was how we hopped into the car, drove to the Aberdeen harbour and paid for a harbour cruise. The dolphins had other plans - 92% chance or not - and we ended up not seeing any. We did get the joy of about an hour of cruising round the harbour along with other equally disappointed would be dolphin watchers. Good bonding though, I guess?

The Diary: Notes From The Northern Isles

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 12:30:42 +0000

What could have been. Image Source

---

It is in the middle of shovelling rice and chicken down my throat that just how similar to prison these cubby holes I pop into from time to time are. For one, there are a number of hoops to jump through to get here - in my case a 5.30am check-in followed by a fixed wing flight up to Scatsta in the Shetlands and then a further helicopter flight out to the platform - and the overwhelmingly maleness of everything, tattoos and all. There are also the shared rooms, the strict meal times and the restricted choices there tends to be for meals. The one statistic which goes against the prison narrative is perhaps the proportion of ethnic minorities in prison vis-a-vis the general population, but that is neither here nor there. And of course, we’re all out here by choice, getting paid a premium of sorts for the joy of being out here.

Weekly Photo Challenge - Structure

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 17:00:15 +0000

Aberdeen’s Mercat Cross, which dates back to the 1600’s. A different sort of structure from the lines, freckles, and tiny hairs which were ostensibly the subject of this week’s photo challenge but a structure nonetheless; in that other concrete, physical constructed sense of the word.

– For the weekly photo challenge, Structure

Weekly Photo Challenge - Bridge

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 17:42:42 +0000

A reminder of transitioning from full time study to full time employment at the back end of 2009, the Forth Road Bridge a symbol of hope of sorts on the journey from Newcastle in the North East of England to Aberdeen in the North East of Scotland for interviews.

In the end there would be a fair few trips but in the end with December came the set of interviews that led to a permanent move up North. The rest as they say is history.

#17. The Crathes Conclusion

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 17:52:16 +0000

The smell of old things. The past, present and future colliding in a cacophony of bagpipes and squealing children. Flower-speckled greenery. The colour of spring.

Weekly Photo Challenge - Dense

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 16:54:04 +0000

An exploded view of a Formula One Racing Car, a memento from the weekend’s frolicking at the Mercedes-Benz World in Brooklands. For the prompt, dense.

Green, a collection

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 21:01:43 +0000

For the challenge, Green.

Wish

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:00:54 +0000

St Albans Cathedral, one December day. For the prompt, Wish:

For fulfilled desires, For the Loved Ones to return Again in peace. Wish.

The Road Taken

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 21:02:53 +0000

Me, Benin City and an intense desire for fried chicken was how I ended up here; walking along Airport Road looking for a Chicken Republic. Having spotted it from the window of the speeding cab ferrying me from Ring Road to the neither-here-nor-there hotel I planned on sleeping over at on Ihama Road, I grossly underestimated the distance. That only became apparent once my cravings had gotten the better of me and I was back on the road, in the sweltering heat, plodding along whilst wondering what had gotten into my head.

Against The Odds, A Haiku

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 20:02:48 +0000

For the Photo Challenge, Against The Odds

– Sometimes, between a Rock and a hard place, beauty Springs. Against the odds.

Shadow

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 21:56:41 +0000

Shadows at the Tate, for the prompt Shadow

One-Word Inspiration: Solitude

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 18:56:02 +0000

With a riot of Colour, the breaking dawn births Peaceful Solitude

For Day 3 of the Everyday Inspiration course, and the prompt Solitude

Loved Things, A Brain Dump of Sorts

Thu, 02 Feb 2017 06:31:43 +0000

Chilli flavoured plantain chips
Peri-peri chicken (having a cheeky Nandos is a thing, you know)
The scent of warm waffles
Friday nights (the prelude to the only truly quiet times I have)
Catch up TV (for how easy it makes indulging my fascination with Leroy Jethro Gibbs)
Postcards (sending and receiving them)
Running into old friends in the most unlikely of places.
When a shuffled playlist throws up a particularly apt song
Early morning runs by the beach
Scoring a late (winning) goal in Football Manager

22. (Not) Crying Wolf

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 17:34:14 +0000

Source

There is a lot I enjoy about my work, not least being a purveyor of the somewhat esoteric knowledge of materials and how they perform in a variety of service environments.

Most of the time I am advising, providing insights into what types of degradation can occur, how likely it is to progress and what actions we should be taking to assure ourselves of the future integrity of the kit we look after.

21. Routine

Tue, 24 Jan 2017 11:55:17 +0000

Two mornings during a typical work week, I make a pit stop at the Starbucks in Union Square.

Over the course of the last year, it has become apparent that quite a few people have a similar routine. I now recognise — and share the odd nod with — an older gentleman who usually arrives at the same time I do and unfailingly buys an espresso machiato which he proceeds to nurse for all of thirty minutes before shooting off to what I assume must be work.

19. Waiting

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 08:12:55 +0000

… For the flight to Manchester that will leads to a train to Sheffield and then a weekend of meeting S.’s folk….

Then the Wait, actively I suppose, for time and life to work its magic and meld these two journeys — separate, distinct but converging — into a coherent whole…

#Hopeful

17. Anticlimax

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 17:34:52 +0000

The promised snowcaplyse never quite materialised. At its worst in my corner of the world, it deposited a layer of snow all around, the result of the intermittent dribbles of snow and gale force winds. The effect of that, and the small rise in temperatures followed by a freeze which thawed the snow for a bit, was to leave slippery layers of black ice on the pavements; treacherous for us runners and brisk walkers. A friend did fare slightly worse, the small matter of a fortuitous gap between her car and the one in front of her being the difference between safety and a minor crash when she skidded on a patch of black ice.

15. Finding My Rhythm

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 17:59:02 +0000

Beach Boulevard, Aberdeen, 2016

One of the things I’m looking to achieve this year is to run a 10k race, which is why three to four times a week I grab my gear and hit the road. I use the MapMyRun app which paces me during the week from a leisurely 2k easy run on a Tuesday to a longer (now 5k+) run on the following Sunday.

As my run times improve and the distances lengthen, what I realise is that my natural predilection for just hitting go and running works fine for speed but works against my distance, as I am often far too winded to post a useful time once that initial burst of energy has fizzled out.

12. Snowcalypse

Sat, 14 Jan 2017 01:24:51 +0000

11. Incoming

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 20:22:00 +0000

Gale force winds, thunder and snow from Canada, a reminder to be thankful for the relatively mild winter we have had so far.

Given we had had quite a few days where we were warmer than London, I suppose a correction was always on the cards…

09. Epic Fail

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 20:14:15 +0000

Uneven shelf — BUT functional

The plan — if stopping at the B&M across town and picking up two wall mounted shelves and a spirit level with no inkling of what to do with either counts as one — was to spend the evening measuring, marking, drilling and putting up two shelves. The objective was to provide storage for books, a journal and my phone in a location accessible from my bed. I was certain it would be an absolute doodle, given my decent score in woodwork in my secondary school days, and my machine shop expertise during my undergrad.

08. Returning

Mon, 09 Jan 2017 18:41:02 +0000

The quietness of
Old haunts, to which one returns.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Life

07. Of Sons and Prodigals

Sun, 08 Jan 2017 18:03:22 +0000

Amidst the rolling, changing landscape that is my recollection of growing up, two things remain as immutable constants; the university communities I spent most of my growing years till turning seventeen and churches— searching, attending, serving in, and leaving them.

In my first memories of church, my father and I are in Benin City, at the Air Force officers christian fellowship. The University Chapel in the next town, Ekpoma, becomes church for the five or so years following our relocation; the desire being to bring both sides of the family together for good. The trigger for a change of state is, in my memory, an acrimonious debate about what direction to take the chapel in, one which leads to us joining up with a fledgling pentecostal startup in a city further north, eventually leading to us being foundation members of a branch of that church, when it rolls into our corner of the world.

06. Chilled

Sat, 07 Jan 2017 21:31:40 +0000

The Joy of slow days
Only broken by the need
To stretch my feet. Bliss

04. A Requiem for the Unseen

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 17:47:33 +0000

For the bank on the corner of King’s and Union which I pass everyday, only stopping to use its ATM on the odd occasion I need cash which has been closed for over a month. A closure I only noticed today because I needed cash.

Unseen.

Nine Fridays of Summer: All Good Things Come To An End

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 11:49:23 +0000

It feels like only like yesterday when the prospect of free Fridays had me all excited, wondering what I would do with myself. Somehow, nine Fridays have come and gone since then, with proper 5 day work weeks left to look forward to till the offices shut for Christmas in late December. These Summer Fridays were especially important to me being the very first ones I was entitled to, even though I had worked in the same team for almost five years.

Nine Fridays of Summer: Notes from Vienna

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 11:30:29 +0000

As far as first impressions go, my first ones of Vienna - shaped as they were by images seen from my window seat as my flight in from London drew to a close - were largely pleasant ones; green fields and the Danube snaking away into the distance being evocative of chilled weekends and evenings filled with coffee and cheese cake, not hard work. I suppose those who have to live and work out here must necessarily see the city differently, their perspectives being rightly more functional and less head-in-the-sand r omantic than mine. Over the course of the weekend, I would gain a more nuanced view of the city, the good significantly outweighing the bad and the ugly to such an extent that if a role worth which was worth my while came up, I wouldn’t think twice about upping sticks and moving permanently.

Nine Fridays of Summer: Sleepers, Stratford and basking in Sunshine

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 19:39:06 +0000

She is wolfing down a doughnut, cup of coffee in hand when I appear, trying to find my assigned seat. I feel like I have startled her somewhat, given how quickly she begins to organise the stuff she has all over the place. The sense of having intruded on a private, unguarded moment is made worse by finding my assigned seat is across from her, in seats so tight our feet play that dance of hide and seek beneath the table until we find a system that works.

Of Weddings, Cheesecake and Paper Planes

Tue, 10 May 2016 20:58:31 +0000

The somewhat impromptu trip to Lagos was designed around three main objectives; making an appearance at a (self-proclaimed) protege’s wedding, dinner with the Lagos based elements of my old work crew and appeasing my father, who as early as New Year’s Day had begun to sound his dissatisfaction at my conspiring to avoid making what used to be an annual trip to Nigeria last year. For the wedding, the plan was to arrive at 10.00 am, 9.00 am invitation notwithstanding. That decision was one I rationalised away by assuming that as with all things Nigerian, a certain element of tardiness was expected. By the time I arrived at 10.30 am - sweating profusely following my ill thought out attempt to walk till I found a yellow cab - I was as undressed as I could be, my tie slackened to let what precious little fresh air there was get to my skin and my suit dispensed with. That meant I had to find somewhere to cool off for a few extra minutes and get my outfit put together again before popping into the venue. In the end I had to settle for the wing mirror on a parked car, studiously avoiding the gaze of the soldiers sat on the bench only a few feet away. Once in the building proper, I managed to find a seat next to a rotating fan to ease my pain.

#91 - Grand Central

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 21:15:47 +0000

In which I make a quick dash to Birmingham and Grand Central…

#NewCity #Travel

#75- Waiting

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:03:58 +0000