Neil Hopcroft

First tranche of photos – these were all taken since returning to the UK, I’ve still got a whole bunch of Japan pictures to upload.
Blenheim Palace

Shame its not an electric blanket

There was me happily thinking that it was just historically important places like Cambridge which had parking problems on saturdays – how wrong? Who visits Hitchin on a saturday, more importantly, who drives there? Well, us, but we’re the good guys, aren’t we?

So I’ve got one message for the great unwashed[0]:

– don’t drive to your own town! Thats why you’re all getting fat, walk, damn you!

I’ve been steadfastly refusing to go shopping properly since I got back to the country, these kinds of experiences aren’t going to help. How can I divorce myself enough from society to escape these infuriations?

Oh, and the guitar shopping was something of a failure on several fronts.

[0] if you’re reading this then this message isn’t directed at you![1]
[1] but it probably wouldn’t do much harm to get more walking done [2]
[2] like I keep meaning to, but end up driving into cambridge instead…oops

finalgoodbye.ppt – “If the subject matter weren’t so heavy, we’d probably use it to train his replacement”

Any Oxford people going to be about Sunday lunchtime?

(considering a plan, nothing solid yet, depends how lively I’m feeling and if Grandi can rustle up some of the usual suspects)

Further to yesterdays thoughts – anyone know what the visa requirements for either USA or Canada are? (I hold a standard, machine readable, UK passport with no complications) I’ve found a return to New York for around 150quid (ex taxes, I presume) and wondered whether I could take advantage of it….

I’ve been thinking about holidays. More specifically I was poking around at Expedia to see what they could do for getting me to Fiji next month, but I hadn’t reckoned on 40 hours of plane-y badness, thats rather more than my jetlag addiction can sensibly cope with. So maybe I need to go somewhere that isn’t beyond the other side of the world. Obvious candidates are Vancouver, Montreal, Copenhagen and Munich, all of which are reasonably sensibly priced at the moment. But you lot are better travelled than I, so…

…clearly I’d be in danger of actually making a plan if I take any suggestions too seriously. So instead I’ll just end up jumping in my car and driving the wilds of Lincolnshire again, but its worth pondering some other possibilities on the offchance that a plan comes together.

From “low-hanging fruit” I passed on less than a week ago to:

“…reports last week that the on-board computers of several Lexus models in the United States had been infected via cellphones….Melamed said about 150 000 cars in the US had been affected last week….Many of the vehicles also had their security codes breached”

…in a beautiful piece of scaremongery. Who is this guy?

“garisen – one who is physically attrected to thin people”

What kind of an insult is that?

“Given all this I feel it best I step away from this role at this time, to allow you…to find someone more able to fulfil the current needs.”

…with which I hope to become ‘resting’ for a while after the begining of March. Anyone else need a holiday?