Arcticterntalk.org

The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world

Archive for the tag “Heathrow”

29 Sep 2012

Reflections of Dublin


In the last 24 hours I have seen and met more strange people than in the preceding 6 months. An overnight trip to Dublin is to blame. Where to start? Well why not with a taxi driver who clearly had adult ADHD. He spoke at me the whole journey that was sadly longer than it should be due to the hideous friday evening traffic, shouted at various other cars and vans relating to perceived driving crimes against him, asked me to look at the strangest cars and have me compare some Avensis with some Passat for some reason………Impulsive, hyperactive and judging by his driving inattentive as well. Then there was the woman in my meeting who looked exactly like Margaret Thatcher, younger version around 40 years, but splitting image. Put her in Madame Tussauds and there would be no difference.

Then there was the large woman at the airport. Her waist size was over 100 inches. I noticed her because she was unable to sit in a chair without taking up 2-3 seats and I hoped vehemently that she would not be seated next to me on the plane. In fact she was a few rows ahead and spilled out at least 12 inches into the aisle and was unable to put down her armrest in the aisle.

But the food must also be mentioned. The traffic in Dublin was appalling, taking over 90 minutes to get from the airport to the city centre. But greater was my horror when I saw my proposed menu for dinner. Included were raw beef, squid, goat and rabbit. These are not foods that regularly grace my table, the cat maybe but not mine. Luckily the magic word chicken popped up and all was relieved. Thats French restaurants for you.

Overall, Dublin is not a bad city but is is very busy and seriously lacks the Irish charm that might be associated with Cork or Galway. I feel that I can say this being Irish, and anyone who doubts this can trace my family history back to and well beyond Charles Kendall Bushe who was Lord Chief Justice in Ireland in the mid-1980’s. He is written about in James Joyce novels and is described as morally perfect. Well something like that anyway, but I would say that.

Should you visit Dublin? In my view yes if you have lots of money or others are paying, but no if you want charm and to see real Ireland. Others may and do disagree. The streets were full of folks celebrating Arthur’s day, the annual celebration of Arthur Guinness. Well maybe that is a good reason to come along but bring a full wallet and watch out who your taxi driver is.

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28 Sep 2012

British Airways First Class Lounge- Reflections in a wine glass


After a good many life years I have finally got to be allowed into a first-class lounge. I will not bore you with the details as to why but it is a curious place. Hundreds of bottles of wine and champagne but with hardly anyone drinking. Most travellers are sitting or lying around with varying degrees of pained expressions that suggest terminal constipation. Maybe there is a rule that ” though shalt not smile in first-class”. Or maybe the butler does it for one?

Big chairs, huge piles of newspapers and magazines, uncrowded ( but there again who in their right mind with a life to live wants to be flying out of Heathrow on a friday evening?), lots of biscuits ( few less now that I have arrived) but no smiles and eternal warmth .

Curiously there are two life size horse statues guarding the way in and numerous other artistic efforts.

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09 Sep 2012

The Exeter University Heroes who cycled 4500 kms for charity. Worth your support? Real heroes


Thirteen Exeter university students have given up a summer vacation to cycle from london to Istanbul for Help for Heroes, a charity that supports wounded soldiers. Today they arrived back at Heathrow to what can only be described as a heroes welcome by their families and friends. Terminal 5 might not have seen such a noise for some while. they have cycled 4500 kms and really deserve our admiration.

 

This is what I wrote a month ago.

 

A week ago on 26th July 13 students from the University of Exeter commenced a 4500km cycle to Istanbul. Why? To support Help for Heroes. Many of these students had just completed their degree and graduated 2 weeks before. Somehow they found time to train,organise and generally prepare for this strenous trip. Aside from the obvious physical aspects there were numerous other planning aspects to consider. For example how to spend as little as possible on the trip, as this would reduce the sponsorship amounts for the charity. So, they spend most nights in tents and some nights in cheap hostels. The van they were donated is not of the Formula 1 category and rather like a beached whale is not deemed well enough to migrate the Alps, so will go around and meet the cyclists on the other side. To date they have reached Lyons and are having a well deserved rest day. My son Charles Bushe texted that he had spent a good day but things like washing needed to be done. They will have finished and be back in UK on September 8th. They deserve as much support as is possible. Even if you can only donate £1 then please do so and also importantly please pass on this message so that others can donate.

They are all good folks and already it is clear that they have bonded well together and are supporting each other when needed. For example the first day of their cycle down to Folkestone the temperature was well into the 30′s C, and there were obvious heat problems. A couple of them have had minor injuries such as a fall and tendonitis but they all keep going.

The links are below.

http://www.justgiving.com/Charles-Bushe

Charles bushe

Heroes returning Exeter Uni[gallery columns="1" orderby="ID"]

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01 Apr 2012
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Slovenia. An amazing place


Occasionally one travels to a country and finds immediately it takes your soul.  This is Slovenia. The people are pleasant, helpful and vibrant. They smile and do not complain. The mountains with snow on top look beautiful. The city is a place to walk and look, eat ice cream at cafes ( hazelnut and raspberry are recommended) and drink coffee. The bard look enticing and the prices most definitely not european. This is a good place to come to. The contrast cannot be more stark. Heathrow airport is a vile place, full of heaving, pushing people, expensive drinks and little to do or see. There is no customer satisfaction. These views were not made better by arriving back at  Terminal 1 friday evening around 11pm to find that security staff for BAA had kindly locked one of the corridors stopping any passenger either to get to or from their gate. Thanks. And of course gone home. I only had 2 days in Slovenia and the lectures I gave were recieved with interest and politeness, and humour. A quick trip to Lake Bled allowed me to see the castle perched on a cliff. Whoever you are, you should go there.

Lake Bled in March

Castle overlooking Lake bled

Someone's Back Garden

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28 Mar 2012

Heathrow to Slovenia


For some unfathomable reason I have done little travelling this year such that this mornings early morning visitation to Heathrow reminded me what a shocking place it is. Crowded, with people pushing aimlessly, expensive and generally not a good place. However thanks to Lufthansa and Adria Airways I reached Slovenia mid-afternoon and on time.

I was taken to Lake Bled for lunch which is potentially a tourist spot about 45 km from Ljubjana  and had a nice large schnitzel by the lake. The thing that strikes one immediately about Slovenia is that it is calm and the people seem happy. They also seem remarkably young compared with New Malden.

This evening however is work as I set about distilling 110 slides into a sensible 45 minute talk on Adult ADHD for tomorrow.

The river that runs through Ljubjana

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02 Nov 2011
1 Comment

Cruise around Spain


Not so sure what one writes about a whole weeks cruising. Grandeur of the Seas was the boat. A 2 am wake up call for a 6 am flight to Palma and lunch on the boat at 10.30 UK time. Not bad. Appalling lack of food choices at Gatwick and frankly Gatwick and Heathrow must be in competition for the worst airport in the world. Thomson airways, decent charter airline.
the places were quite interesting. Barcelona, Ibiza,Malaga and Gibraltar. No deaths on board this time unlike xmas but there was an emergency helicopter evacuation and a return to port at Malaga because of another medical issue. huge number of dolphins seen in a dolphin safari in gibraltar. What was astonishing though was the food. It was pretty much available 24 hours a day and yet folks had to push and shove in a frenzied way each mealtime. The size of the cohort on board was frankly again worrying and appalling. The average BMI had to have been 30. Photos will follow later this week

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18 Oct 2011
3 Comments

Toronto Canada – Dissapointing


Travelling is always an interesting occupation. There are so many not average people. For example I seriously considered on this flight to Canada if David Walliams might be a flight attendant in disguise. Furthermore a definite age limit exists and I am not objecting. No employee shall be under the age of 60 years at any time.
Another aspect worth consideration is the chauvanistic one. Only on a plane can so many presumably competent males become incompetent and need redress from the air hostess. The clever males ask clever questions. Such as what wine? Then having been told the answer they pretend cleverness by asking for French. Seemingly unaware for the last 1000 years the French have made white as well as red wine.
The toilets are also a topic worthy of mention. Despite a plane being of small size they remain incredibly well hidden with a series of hieroglypics on the wall that mean nothing to 21st century man.
But the food is nice but not necessarily quickly produced. This always surprises me. Cold salmon is not often found at 30,000 feet so a delay of more than 2 hours flying time before the obligatory starter appears seems curious. However it was very nice and came with a 20 ml bottle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Can these be bought albeit in larger quantities in UK? Meanwhile clever male behind talking in one one of those deep voices made for TV has now forgotten if he evn had red or white wine. I suspect he has forgotten if indeed he had wine. But he manages to say yes or no. And that’s exactly what he did say!
The air hostesses are now falling out. ” I have no idea what SHE is doing…..”
Entertainment without need for TV.
Now the food conversation. Cold Salmon a nice starter. Main course of standard of Co Op ready meal. Fish and mash and fennel and what is described as ratatouille. Hmm. I ate it all. But yup co op dinners are sometimes my preferred option. But for the others here paying £ 3500 for business class? Can I be cynical and presume that airline marketing shows that business travellers have an n= 1 for number of flights? Can this be the best food to be eaten 35,000 ft in the air above Greenland? Not sure. Would I pay 4£ at co op next saturday? Yup. But I did get 2 bread rolls as well that were definitely not as good as co op. Gor those who do not yet know know, bread rolls at co op are the best.
Having arrived at Toronto airport I can say that the airport puts Heathrow to shame. Clean, quick etc…..you get the picture. Heathrow is really the worst airport I have anything to do with.
Toronto however is grey, drizzly, crowded, streets full of pushing rushing people……….have not seen anything desirable to date. My hotel is dreary, expensive and food average at best. For some inexplicable reason all signs detailing the breakfast offerings were in Chinese??? Was expecting english or French maybe.
The hotel room is cold. Trying to work some heating scale on the wall led to the room being colder, seems the options are either cold or even colder ( with cold air being blown out).
Anyway enough moaning. Off to the ADHD congress to see what I can learn.

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24 Sep 2011

Oldham 0 Brentford 2


An interesting week but one sadly that ended with me getting up at 4 am to travel to Heathrow and head for Dublin for a day of work. Why saturday? good question but the Irish often hold meetings then and I agreed to give a lecture on ADHD. Actually it all went well over there, nice audience and nice people. but to be waiting for a taxi booked for 5 am when it did not turn up was not idyllic. the guy rang me and said where was I, to which i replied outside my house. He was somewhere else, anyway then he arrives and the next piece of joy when he tells me in a very foreign language that this is his second day in the job and he has no idea how to get to Heathrow! now at 5 am i am cutting it quite fine timewise, thinking who else would be on the road. Well it all worked out. security at Terminal 1 did their best too to make me late. They stopped a sikh guy as he had what looked like a keyring and instead of just pulling him to one side and getting on with it, they stopped the whole security queue from moving. Anyway got picked up in a nice Mercedes limo and whisked off. Central dublin was so empty.

Return flight  in the middle of the afternoon meant no football for me today and that is painful, so no photos to upload. The tannoy announcer at Heathrow made me laugh as he sounded just like the ” compare the meerkat, compare the market” voice. Flights both ways on BMI who have that look of an airline in freefall. The staff are all generally morose and they seem to stop flying to where I want to go (Glasgow, Leeds, Durham Teeside) and initiate flights to where no-one in their right minds would want to go, places with Kazakstan, BAKU and tripoli, all come to mind. flight was maybe 60% full at best.

Brentford seemed to have played well at Oldham. They were 1-0 up and Llera got sent off for two yellow cards, but then Weston got a second. Season is looking good. If we can win a few home games then things could be interesting.

Kim may have reached Honduras by now. she had a wretched flight series with a 8 hour stop over at Newark, amounting to overnight and then a 2 hour delay on the final flight out of Houston but still seems happy on her blog.  www.seniorbushe.wordpress.com. We will see her in about a month when she has qualified as a trained Scuba instructor.

The last produce from the garden was eaten tonight, before you get excited, they were 5 small strawberries from the eternal strawberry plant. We leave it out each winter where it gets rained on and snowed on and frosted, yet comes back stronger the following year. Our potatoes also seem to be growing somewhat, so homegrown charlotte potatoes for xmas are planned.

During the week had a few nice meals out. Red Peppers in Esher is worth a mention and Reds in Wimbledon and using my lovely Taste card getting 50% the food bill, it is quite cheap to eat out except when wife decides to have copious quantities of vanilla vodka………….

Finally work has been busy this week. I took part in a debate over ADHD at the UKAAN meeting at a venue that was next to the Savoy hotel, called IET Savoy Place. Great venue. Old fashioned lecture theatre with modern frills. Loved it. Am becoming increasingly fascinated with ADHD and things will be interesting next year when more adults start getting diagnosed with ADHD.

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