Disconnected Jottings

This my journal from my trip to London with my Grandpa Day One

The flight down from Edinburgh was smooth, but I had earache during the descent into Heathrow. When we were waiting for our luggage I saw Miss Stein, she was my teacher when I was in P5!

The express train into London Paddington is very fast, it only takes 15 minutes to get right into central London, then we took a taxi to a pub called ‘The Queens Head and Artichoke’, just across the road from our friend Dan’s flat.

Dan was waiting on the pavement, so we went into the pub for lunch, then across the road to Dan’s flat, which is in a basement but is bigger than I thought it would be. Read the rest of this entry »

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It was one of those group psychology moments that you read about, where each team member is waiting for someone else to suggest a better plan, like sleeping in the car, or going back to the pub, or just going home. Read the rest of this entry »

The images are from personal visits to this fascinating mediaeval walled town in the verdant and beautiful countryside of Tuscany (click here for a good website about the history and attractions of the area). Read the rest of this entry »

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Blame global warming if you like, but the hard crisp winters of happy memory are just that – memories. The pattern in more recent times has been for a dump of snow and sub-zero temperatures around the end of November (we all think ‘this is it’!), then a return to higher temperature levels and constant rainfall. Read the rest of this entry »

Something to get straight from the very start – there never was a tribe of Indians called the ‘Anasazi’. Read the rest of this entry »

We made three separate trips on this famous narrow gauge railway, from Durango to the old mining town of Silverton, 9,300 feet up in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Read the rest of this entry »

Counting down to the financial and gastronomic overload of the festive season, I saw a post on Rick Seaney’s blog giving advice to US ‘Road Warriors’ on how to maintain their Frequent Flyer VIP status during the coming year. Apparently, the fix is to become a ‘mileage runner‘ and book yourself on the cheapest long haul flights (to any destination) that will allow the accumulation of enough air miles to maintain your ‘Gold Card’ status throughout 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m posting this page from the departures lounge at the new Hong Kong airport. So that’s it; the 2007 big trip is all over – except for the grim business of the return trip to Glasgow and a few restless nights until we are over the jet lag. Read the rest of this entry »

My memories of Singapore as being rather like a concrete tropical garden were valid. Although it has been almost twenty years since my last visit, the pace of change and urban development seems to have accelerated , with new high rise apartment blocks and condominiums everywhere and construction cranes sprouting like an of invasion of giant birds. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, thats it, our down under sojourn is over, we’re en route to Singapore for a quick gin sling at the Raffles Hotel, then on to Hong Kong for a look at whats been happening since the Brits left back in 1997. Read the rest of this entry »