It turned out that the Grahame-White Factory and Watch Office had been newly opened in March. They’ve relocated, restored and rebuilt the whole thing and installed all the museum’s early aircraft in the factory (to the left of the watch office in the picture below). As I entered the Watch Office it felt like I had travelled back in time. As I walked around the factory, I could visualise it in its heyday, building Avro 504K’s.

It wasn’t very busy when I was there, I think that’s because it’s not obvious that it is open to the public, I hope more people take the unprepossessing path to the right of the main museum entrance and explore this insight into aviation in the early 1900′s.

So, drop in if you are passing, and travel back in time

Even though I’m “retired”, I’ve been kept almost fully occupied, so much so  that I sometime wonder how I got stuff like this done back in the day when I was working and I only had weekends and the odd day off to get “social & domestic” jobs done. Hmm, I’m sure there’s a time management theory about that.

Another thing I’ve found is that I haven’t thought about – or missed – my old job. Actually that’s not quite true. Now I think about it, I have missed the internal politics, the escalating expectations of our masters of us to do more with less, dealing with idiosyncratic staff & customers, the commute, having to use bloody Microsoft products and waiting three years for our masters to sell us down the river (also known as outsourcing), to name but a few.

So, I’ve not missed it much then! I have however missed the interaction with a few of my colleagues (a little bit). I try to keep in touch with the few I consider friends and of course I can always flip through Facebook occasionally.

Still, I don’t regard myself as “retired”, if I was an actor I’d probably use the term “resting”. I’m on the lookout for a suitable part time job but the focus is on doing something I enjoy, I don’t want to end up in the rat race again. Meanwhile I’ll just carry on being retired.

Oh, and my new lifestyle hasn’t resulted in any lie-ins. I’m still the first person to get up in the morning.

It concerns the on-line purchase of merchandise from a very well known charity. Ordered on the 31st October the goods had not arrived as promised by the 5th November so I emailed them. No response. On the 14th I rang them. After being in a queue for a very long time and being frequently assured that my call was important to them  I eventually spoke to someone who said they would have someone check it out and get back to me. Well they never did, so eventually I had my bank recover the card payment. This Friday I finally got a response to my original email, which began thus (suitably redacted to protect the charity concerned):

“From: REDACTED@REDACTED.org.uk

Subject: FW: REDACTED

Date: 25 November 2011 15:28:45 GMT

To: REDACTED<REDACTED@REDACTED.com> <- that’s me

—–Original Message—–
From: REDACTED Supervisor [mailto:supervisor@REDACTED.co.uk]
Sent: 21 November 2011 10:20
To: REDACTED                            <- to themselves???
Subject: RE: REDACTED

Good Mor         <- Eh? What???

Dear Mr REDACTED ,

Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding.

Your order was dispatched on 06/11/11 so I am surprised you haven’t received it yet. etc., etc.“

Stunning, eh? They sent it to themselves before  forwarding it to me. I responded to this by emailing them a PDF of the letter I had meantime sent by snail mail. Their automated reply to my last email signed off with this:

“Please bear with us at this difficult time”. Bear. BEAR!

I’m done.

My OH has been pestering me for a new coffee maker for ages and, having seen a Curry’s ad on TV last night, I gave in. I went on their website and reserved a fancy coffee machine for collection at my local store.

Now, I’ve experienced the Currys slash PCWorld service before, so it was with a certain lack of enthusiasm that I went to collect my purchase today. I paid for the item and waited while a member of staff went to retrieve the item for me. So far so good. I waited for quite some time, finally a second member of staff commented that his colleague had been gone a while, so he went to find him. After about 5 minutes he returned with the news that my coffee machine had been sold to another customer and there were no more in stock. He offered me an alternative which I declined, so he refunded the purchase.

I have to say that he was courteous and, luckily, I’m not the type to rant uncontrollably in public. However, come on Currys, what about the rubbish service you provided? Do you really expect customers to have any confidence in your company? Someone at your store made a fundamental mistake which not only wasted my time and diesel but also damaged the reputation of the company who pay his/her wages. Please don’t expect me to buy anything from you anytime soon.

Ultimately, I did what I should have done in the first place, I ordered the goods from Amazon for the same price.

Compare and contrast the above with my experiences at Apple’s retail stores:

• Interested, engaging and knowledgeable staff
• Slick and reliable purchase transactions
• Helpful technical support and speedy repair/replacement service.

British retail operations (with the exception of Apple), I submit that you are rubbish.

I rest my case.

You Tosser.

We’ve moved to some chairs as there’s still no sign of the plane. We’ve been here for ages, having checked in on time and expected to board at 19.05. First off, the flight info screen showed the flight as delayed, followed after a while by boarding and a gate number. When we got to the gate there was a plane there – from another airline! It left and was replaced by another (still not ours) which also boarded and left. To this point we’d not been told anything.

21.23: We’ve just been called to the gate. Again. So here we are in the queue, however I can look out onto the apron and there is still no plane outside. Hmmm.

21.29: Activity! I do believe we will board soon, at least getting on a bus. Hopefully it will take us to the plane and not drive all the way to Gatwick.

22.20: Take-off! Successful old-school boarding of plane using old fashioned stairs, after the usual platitudes from the flight deck we subsequently got a second announcement, an apology even; apparently the plane had a bird strike on its approach to Alicante so the delay was due to the safety checks needed before they could declare the aircraft serviceable. It Would still have been nice if someone had given us more information in the airport, instead of leaving us all in the dark.

Even with the adjustment of timezone, I still think it will be after midnight before we get out so I expect to be charged for an extra day’s parking.

At the moment though I’m just pleased we are airborne.

Update : Landed at Gatters. Now able to post this

Have a really great birthday, Madeleine!

And, just to embarrass you slightly, here’s a picture of you from those early days!

The script goes something like this, Seb Vettel starts from pole, leads into the first corner, runs away and hides. Not to denigrate his wins but it has been a bit boring. Add to that the (in my opinion) fake overtaking opportunities which DRS has produced and my interest in the racing part of a GP weekend has waned.

This weekend I watched as much as I could of Eurosport’s coverage of the LeMans 24 hours. Even at 3am it had me riveted to the screen. If only our local lad Anthony Davidson had finished first… Ah, well there’s always next year. I figured that the Canadian GP would be a bit rubbish after that (based on my view of the season so far) and it certainly started out that way. I mean, starting under Safety Car rules. WTF?

And then things got interesting. Hamilton was up to his usual tricks, nerfing people off left right and centre. F1 experts far better qualified than I have already put their thoughts in print on this subject sooo, ’nuff said. Then Jenson had a spot of bother with Alonso which dropped him to 21st and dead last. Add to that the stoppage due to the rain. I nearly gave up watching at that point.

I am so glad I watched the restart! Button clawing his way up the field and my old favourite Michael Schumacher doing fastest lap after fastest lap, faster than Vettel! For a while there I thought Schuey was on for 2nd or maybe a podium, but thanks to that ridiculous DRS Webber was able to pass him easily. Still, 4th was a brilliant position for Michael. On top of that, Jenson had caught up with and passed everyone up to Vettel. Then Seb made a mistake and Button was through. [adopts Murray Walker voice] Fan. Tas. Tic!

So, even with umpteen safety car periods and all that rain – a brilliant race.

Roll on Valencia.

Whenever I see and hear one of these aircraft, especially The Lady herself, I get shivers down my spine. Bloody marvellous!

For the technically minded, the flight comprised the Lancaster, a Hurricane and a Spitfire. I managed to grab a short video.

http://flic.kr/p/9SsTcn