The only form of coffee break worth having... clearly at least 50% gallic.

I think that I will start telling people that I am half French. Just not sure which half, though I would say it is the half that feels that this is How It Should Be:





Not faceless highstreets, not microwave food, not shrink wrapped, not uptight about health and safety but unconcerned over quality or substance.

“It is a tragedy that something as powerful and wonderful as personal computing should be in the hands of a rapacious businessman like Bill Gates rather than a creative individual. Gates has sold the world the idea that he’s a geek and he’s not. I don’t think he’s written a line of creative code in his life. This is a man who, in the early ‘90s, said he saw no future in the Internet. Gates is an absolutely rapacious, brilliant businessman and like all of them since Rockefeller he has anti-competitive instincts and fundamentally terrible taste. If you have a monopoly of personal computing, as he has, then it is unforgivable to design something so… bad. So badly designed, shoddy at every level, the icons and the interface are achingly inadequate, It’s without thought, without care, without love, without passion, without emotion, and that is unforgivable.

The genius of Jonathan Ive, who designed the iMac and the iPod and all the other things that people love so much, is that he understands there’s nothing wrong with having an emotional view on these things you use every day. Beauty is not an added extra, it’s fundamental.”

Stephen Fry in Word, October 2005.

Boats are good. We don't use them enought these days. There should be more use of water based travel and transport, just like all the closed Victorian branch lines should be re-opened.

I would rather travel to work like this:
















Yes, boats should be everyday transport - after all we live on a small damp island.

Equally, I would like to travel from Hull to Skegness via a ferry over the Humber. I don't want to go via Doncaster, though Goole would be OK.

is that there isn't one. It is not my job (on the contrary), it is not a habit of mine to air my personal thoughts that (or this) publicly. I don't really think that there are more than about seven people out that there who would really care anyway - and I see them more or less often in real life anyway so that is not even an issue.

No, it is just about writing isn't it? Like a diary is just about writing things down and like writers like to just write.

I am just re-adjusting back to work after a holiday somewhere Scandinavian. It was good in an almost unexpected way. It made me consider my love for the place that will always be my rooty home (spiritual? In a way - just not that one), the place that will always be to me the most beautiful I know

... about the dust settled on a Cannondale downtube, the insect humm and rattle and intense summer heat reflected in a ray of low evening light before the last manic downhill home ... the wave of burnt oak gold slowly falling canopy that rolls away over several horizons ... the village woodsmoke that perfumes the air and you realise that the evenings are closing in for winter ... the early spring mornings blanketed in mist that you know will clear to crystal light and fresh new blossom... the way that words do no justice to being there and feeling at home

but Norway was new (OK, so I've been before - just not to explore like this time) and stunning and so generous in proportion for such a 'small' country. What with the last trip to France, it was all enough to inspire me. To get me excited again about ideas that I am almost sure that I have. To maybe make me write again - even though I didn't realise it while I was there - so here I am. Blogging would you believe it?...

Hull is still here. Back from our second summer trip, that it is for now.

Ahead is an autumn of making our home special. We have lots of plans and more to do than we will get done,... but we are determined to make some progress on this project before Christmas arrives.