The Anonymous Widower

In Praise Of Slow Boarding

Easyjet say they changed their boarding system in response to customer feedback.

Some may prefer assigned seating, but I don’t!

With Easyjet, I just waited until the end and walked on last. I knew I’d get an aisle seat, which no-one wanted and often I would be first off.

As it was on this flight, I waited in line with no seats in the departure area.  So I suppose to save costs, they’ve done away with letting you sit down, whilst waiting for a plane.

If this boarding experience is now the norm, I think that they’ve lost a customer.

December 17, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

Boots To The Rescue

I got my toothpaste and deoderant confiscated at security, as they wewren’t in the right plastic bag. They’ve been in that bag through security several times before.  Luckily though there was a Boots, where I could get new ones for a small amount. Boots also sold me an adaptor for this computer.  Dixons wouldn’t lert me buy one, but why would I need two?

Boots are very much becoming one of my favourite shops, as they sell me what I want to buy. Not like some, who insist I multi-buy and give me loads of useless vouchers.

December 16, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | 1 Comment

Off To Majorca For Some Sun

I’m leaving in a few minutes to go to Majorca for a few days. It’ll just be a bus or taxi to Liverpool Street station and then the train to Stansted.

What could be more simple?

December 16, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | 1 Comment

Apple Maps Get It Dangerously Wrong

This story about Apple Maps being wrong in Australia, shows how relying on some forms of technology can be very wrong.

The story talks about Mildura in Victoria, which is one of the hottest places I’ve ever been.

C and I were flying around Australia in a light aircraft and on the leg from Sydney to Adelaide, we stopped at Mildura for fuel and a snack.

I can remember C holding the door wide open as we taxied in to the terminal. The temperature was at least in the high thirties, if I remember right. Wikipedia says this about the temperature in the city.

Mildura experiences some very hot days in summer with temperatures exceeding 40 °C on a number of days per year.

It may have been over forty that day, but I know that I’d never been so keen to get airborne and into the colder air at altitude.

On our trip, it was the only time we set foot in Victoria.

December 11, 2012 Posted by | Computing, Transport/Travel, World | , , , | Leave a comment

Squeezing More Airport Capacity For London

It is reported in the Sunday Times under the headline, Steeper descents to cut jet noise, that the National Air Traffic Service are looking at getting aircraft to fly steeper descents into London’s airports, to reduce noise. They already fly into London City airport at a angle of 5.5% as opposed to  the 3% at all other airports. As a former pilot, who used to be an avid reader of the aviation press, I seem to remember too that the separation at US airports, was less than that in the rest of the world.

As planes these days are effectively very accurately flown by computer with the pilot only there to push the buttons and if anything goes wrong, surely we could squeeze more flights into an airport like Heathrow.

The problem is that you might get nearly twice the flights over your house, but the total noise you’d experience would be the same or slightly less.

How people would react I do not know. I don’t get many flights over my house, but on a clear day, I notice most of them! Not that they are particularly annoying.

December 9, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

Standardising With Europe

The clock change highlights how we don’t have the same time as Europe, although we do generally change for summer time on the same day.

Although I poked fun at the European rules for hairdressers, I do think in most things we should be in line with most of the continent.

  1. I never use Imperial measurements and in fact don’t have anything other than metric rulers in my house.
  2. I work totally in Centigrade, although sometimes I have been known to quote temperature in Scottish units or Degrees Kelvin.  But that’s really only an extension of Centigrade related to Absolute Zero.
  3. My father once said that we should have changed to driving on the right-hand side of the road after the Second World War. It should have been done, but it’s too late to change now.

Interestingly, both trains and aircraft are left-hand-drive in the UK.

 

October 28, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel, World | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is The Jigsaw Of My Health Finally Fitting Together?

These lasty days, I’ve been feeling unwell and have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. I have tended to put a lot of this down to hangovers from the stroke, but is it more fundamental.

As a child, I was always off school, with what my doctor thought was some sort of allergy.  I hadn’t been diagnosed as a coeliac in those days, so when I was diagnosed fifteen years ago, I felt that could have been the problem. As a child, I used to sleep in a room with a big south-facing window and I do wonder if the room was rather warm and dried me out.

I can remember an incident in my first job at Enfield Rolling Mills, where my gut felt awful and just like it does today. I worked in a laboratory over a factory and I do remember it was very hot.

My health did improve, when I went to Liverpool, but then I didn’t live in a hot room. In fact quite the reverse.

For the next forty or so years, I didn’t have a problem, but this might be because I was living with my late wife, C. She was a fairly assertive woman and probably kept the temperature to a reasonable one for herself and me.

I do remember, when we had the house in Antibes, I did find it rather hot. In those days we’d generally flown down in my Cessna 340a twin and I’d cool myself down by taking a flight up the coast.  In fact, in the whole time, when I was flying, I don’t ever remember suffering from this problem.

I also had various episodes with very dry eyes.  When I had my first eye test for glasses with a retired eye surgeon, he said that my eyes were some of the most sensitive he’d seen. In one case I even had a small operation.

When C died, my health deteriorated and I started to get all sorts of itches.  I’d also taken to showers and improved the heating in my bedroom. So was I heating myself.

When I had the stroke in Hong Kong, I was in a room with the sun streaming in and it could have been very hot. They were also obsessed with measuring my urine and despite drinking masses of water and having various drugs, I couldn’t pass anything.

Things seemed to be better when I returned to Addenbrooke’s, but a couple of months afterwards I had an eye test and the nurse said my eyes were awfully dry.

So do I respond badly to the heat?

And is the pain I get in all my old injuries down to the heat and dehydration?

October 24, 2012 Posted by | Health | | 1 Comment

The Airport Battle Hots Up

We’ve had proposals from Gatwick and Stansted in recent weeks, so now Luton has joined the fray with this proposal.

I’m sure Lorraine Chase will be pleased.

In some ways though building a major airport at Luton does make sense.

  1. The train lines will be good to London, the North, the East Midlands and the South Coast.
  2. The airport will be just off the M1 and could easily be linked to the A1.

I doubt there are many people, who think that Bedfordshire is a county with any great landscape, that wouldn’t be improved by a well-designed airport. It also seems to have produced a lot of writers, but few artists, which probably says they had nothing to draw.

October 24, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

Cabin Baggage

Apparently, an airline is going to cut down the amount of cabin baggage, we can take on a airliner.

It took me about forty years to moderate C, my late wife’s packing for holidays.  In the last year of her life, we had seven holidays and by that time we could do a weekend with a small bag between us.

Sadly she died of cancer in 2007 and I doubt at 65, I have enough time to find or train another lady.

I would solve the problem in another way. Some of the things we take are quite bulky, like hair rollers, laptops and books, but they could easily be picked up or even rented at the other end.

If we were really seriously about cutting the weight on flights, which of course is the way to better fuel efficiency and lower fares, then all passengers should be weighed and charged accordingly.

Since C died, I did meet one lady, who had an obsession about buying the largest case, that she could use as hand baggage.

On the subject of weight with aircraft, there’s always the story of the charter pilot, who used to fly the flat jockeys around in a Piper Seneca.  Brimful with jockeys and a few saddles, he could fill the fuel tanks completely and not exceed the maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft. After a summer flying jockeys around the UK and Europe, he then had a job to fly a group of businessmen to a meeting. He followed the habit of the last few months and filled the tanks, only to realise that with his passengers, the plane was too heavy.  So he had to drain some fuel out of the plane! He never made the same mistake again!

October 12, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

A Stray Airliner?

In my exploration of the Gospel Oak to Barking line, I decided to follow the line on Google Maps. All went well and I was able to see where the electrification stopped and kicked in around South Tottenham. And then I found this image, as the railway passes south of Seven Sisters station.

I wonder how many stray planes are available to view on Google Maps?

Can anybody identify the tail to determine the airline? Judging by the silhouette, it looks like it’s some variant of Boeing 737.

If you want to find it, type “Seven Sisters station” into Google and then select maps.  The plane is just south of the station.

As someone, who has over a thousand hours in command of an aircraft, you are taught under Visual Flight Rules to fly with the line feature on your left. So it could be they’ve taken off from Stansted and they’re following the railway. But then, they wouldn’t be under these rules over London, except in very special circumstances.

Identifying the airline would help solve the puzzle!

September 20, 2012 Posted by | Computing, Transport/Travel | , , , , | 6 Comments

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