A Walk Near Sheriff Hutton

I bought a couple of walking books yesterday in the AA series (North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire). Having used these books in the past I have found the walks are generally good but the instructions are occasionally on the ambiguous side.

Me and K drove out to Sheriff Hutton today to do one of these walks. Perhaps optimistically it was a six miler that didn't even come with a map. I think we managed about 2 miles before realising that we just couldn't work out where to go any more. It said go left but the only thing there was a locked gate which didn't even look like it had a path on the other side of it. But we were definitely in the right place as we had just gone through a field which narrowed in the top right, and then an unusual combination of stile-footbridge-stile. But then we were stuck. It vaguely looked like someone may have built an electric fence in the way of where the walk was supposed to go. Not helpful. So we turned around and retraced our steps.

It was a good walk apart from that.

Animals we saw included:
Black Sheep
White Sheep
Cows
Bulls
Rabbits
Assorted Birds and Ducks
Brown Sheep



Moo!

Bacon Wraps

Today I went up to Edinburgh for an Institute of Actuaries seminar on Wraps. It was being held at the head office of Standard Life which I had never visited before, though I did know where it was. I got there in good time for the 9:30 start and upon arrival at the reception I was directed to a little waiting room to await the organisers to take us to the seminar room.

I didn't recognise anyone else who was also waiting, but this didn't surprise me as I hadn't expected to. So I waited for a short while. Then a man came along and indicated that we should follow him to the room. We went through "security" and along a corridor into the rooms where the seminar was to be held.

Rather excellently, they had bacon rolls for us to go with the normal coffee. I grabbed one and sat down. Said hello to a few people whilst eating, but still didn't know anyone. There seemed to be less actuaries than I'd expected, but since the day was open to non-actuaries too, I didn't let this worry me.

As I was finishing my roll, I noticed that a couple of the people standing at the front appeared to be looking at me strangely and I think I heard one of them ask the other if I was with them. She came over and said hello and then after a quick exchange quickly determined that I had not arrived at the Wraps Seminar as I had thought. I had in fact managed to crash some kind of sales consultant development day (or something). Whoops. She advised me to try the room next door. I left slightly sheepishly.

But hey, I'd had a free bacon roll!

I tried this one, but it was empty apart from one organiser type person. I introduced myself and to save more embarrassment checked whether this was the Wraps Seminar. It wasn't. I despaired and headed back to reception.

This time they didn't send me to a waiting room, they advised me to go straight to the seventh floor (in a "special lift"). I couldn't find this lift but did then bump into some actuarial types who took me upstairs to where I was supposed to have been all along (which in my defense was not where it said on the joining instructions). I was happy to finally be in the right place.

Moral: It's really easy to sneak into Standard Life and steal bacon.

I believe that children are the future

I'm not keen on the current trend in TV where shows aren't having proper opening title sequences anymore. Lost was the first one I really noticed - just a rubbish noise with the word "Lost" turning on the screen a bit. But it seems to be becoming more widespread, even on UK programmes. Torchwood for example, has an opening title sequence that's about three seconds long. And the otherwise fantastic Heroes has one that's very much in the Lost vein.

Thinking about it, even 24 doesn't really have a proper title sequence. I guess that's more excusable though, since it all takes place in real-time, which doesn't normally have a two minute break for a song every hour or so.

I don't want shows to start this way. I want tunes. I want songs. I want the main cast members doing things (with optional cheesy smile shots) one by one, with their names and actor names on screen - how else will I ever know anyone's name. Without this, type of thing, Tom Cruise would never have learnt Katie Holmes' name, and he'd still be calling her "that pixie-like girl off of Dawson's Creek". That may have stymied their relationship.

But most importantly, I'm thinking of the kids. I spend approximately 95% of my time singing old tv theme tunes. I'm particularly keen on Mysterious Cities of Gold and The Littlest Hobo. If we are to leave a similar legacy for our own children, we need to act now to restore songs to opening titles. This is actually important.

Someone should start a petition that could be given to Tony Blairs. He could try and sort it out.

5 Things

1. Yesterday I had my first mince pie of the festive season. Yum.

2. This Life is currently being repeated on TV. I never watched it much the first time round, but now it's mostly entertaining because of Jack Davenport's hair.

3. I'm enjoying series 2 of Prison Break, but surely this has to be the last one?

4. Lost is still going good guns, and the last one I saw was great - Monster! But do the flashbacks really generally add much? I like the way though that they have now introduced two survivors from the original crash who so far have never done anything at all, but are now able to look at things afresh and point out obvious things the regular characters have been too stupid to spot.

5. Speed Quizzing is cancelled on Tuesdays until after Christmas. This is just for information to avoid anybody reading turning up at Kennedy's expecting to put their fingers on some buzzers.