September 2012 - Eduardo

Introducing Eduardo

This is for Coral and Catherine.

Our friend Coral is Head Teacher of a primary school. For entertainment she has a little teddy bear which gets up to all sorts of adventures and these stories are related to the children. We recently took Little Ted on holiday to Spain and have reported on the great time he had.

Catherine is our lovely granddaughter and loved seeing all the pictures of Ted in Spain so this Blog is for her so she can see Eduardo on holiday in England.

Catherine with a bubble-blowing machine

Ted's Spanish Cousin Eduardo made a return visit to England and some of his pictures are shown here for Catherine and the kids at Coral's school.

Eduardo at lunch

...driving a bus

...standing guard at the Palace.

... visiting Rochdale

... with The Green Man

... in an English pub

Eduardo meets a Pendle Witch

... in the Pendle countryside

Eduardo became the owner of a new pet whilst in England. This is his little dog Perrito.

Eduardo with his new pet

... with Michael

... at the Garden Party

... with Wallace...

... and of course his good friend Gromit

Taking the sun in Hawes

Meeting his big cousins the Hawes Teddies

Sitting on the head of a fox

Eduardo and Perrito meet Josh for lunch

Eduardo visited Cambridge to see Tommy and Norma and took a tour of the city on an Open Top Bus

On the Cambridge Open Top Bus

With Norma and the King's College Gatekeeper

Relaxing in the sunshine inside King's College

Looking very lost in the countryside...

At Catherine's sixth birthday party.

On the way home to Spain in a French hotel

And finally back at home in the mountains on the Costa Blanca.

Eduardo had a wonderful time in England and enjoyed meeting people.

He hopes to visit again in 2013.

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August 2012 - A Visit to Cambridge

 

Our friends Norma and Tommy, good friends we had met in Spain via the U3A, invited us to their house near Cambridge for a couple of days. We have never visited this part of England so we were keen to visit and take the promised "open-top" tour of the City.

 

On arrival Tommy took us for a ride around the lovely countryside in the area and showed us the farm he used to own before retirement. After that I settled down to one of my usual (and favourite) jobs, that of bringing Norma's MP3 player up to date and loading it with more talking-books and radio-plays. Norma took up listening to an MP3 player only two years ago after hearing some of my stuff whilst I was working on their PC in Spain. I bet there aren't many ladies who venture into MP3 listening in their eighties. Since then she has acquired a Kindle and both items help her to continue enjoying the books she loves without eye strain.

After a lovely dinner and enjoyable evening we retired to bed ready for our next-day tour.

Cambridge have provided a huge Park and Ride car park just outside the city and from there we were also able to board the open-top bus to take us on our tour. We were so lucky in this horrible summer of 2012 to have such marvelous weather.

What a marvelous service. On boarding (£9.00 for wrinklies) we were given a set of headphones each (small in-the-ear type) and advised that we could alight and re-board as many times as we wished throughout the day.

The route took us into the heart of Cambridge and the commentary gave out interesting facts about the route and about the major buildings and colleges which we passed on the route. We alighted in the city centre to do some shopping followed by lunch in an Italian Restaurant in the market square. We had a short walking tour around some of the colleges and quirky shops and Norma charmed the gate keepers of King's College into letting us in to take a few photographs without paying the usual entry fee.

Norma and the Gatekeeper. The Teddy you can see on

his shoulder (Eduardo) was on tour from Spain

and his story will be reported on separately

 

 

All around were young people politely asking us if we wanted to be taken for a punt on the Cam. Sadly we did not have enough time but if we go again we will definitely give it a try.

We stopped to listen to two violinists busking on the street and they gave a fabulous rendition of Winter from The Four Seasons.

All around us were old buildings and famous Colleges and about (so it felt) about 10,000 bikes. The constant mode of transport. Road bikes, mountain bikes, shopping bikes, all were being put to use to get around.

We later heard on the bus commentary that students are not allowed cars within five miles of their colleges but as this was the close-season for University Life it appeared that more than just students chose this are their means of transport.

We then visited what has to be the best stocked sweet shop I have ever seen. I asked, but they would not lock me inside overnight.

There was one black note on the day and that was caused by the tour-bus driver who failed to stop for us at a designated bus stop when we wished to board to complete our tour. Kathie banged on the side of the bus and he then stopped but argued that he had already picked up his passengers some 50 metres short of the stop and did not see us. He was most rude and set off before we had time to take our seats thus endagering Norma and Tommy who are both disabled. We asked that he stopped again and he invited us to leave his bus but we declined and took our seats on the upper deck. Norma was to report him but I don't know if she did or not.

We continued with our tour and discovered more interesting facts. One of them was that Cambridge University used to employ people to stand in the Railway Station to stop students from boarding trains during term time and thus keeping them from the high-life of London etc. The car park at the station had the first double-decker bike rack I have ever seen and there must have been at least a thousand bikes parked there or chained to any immovable object.

Back to the house for drinks and dinner and to meet Norma and Tommy's daughter and son-in-law. Great company and a great evening. We left mid-morning on the next day (still sunny) after what had been a short but very enjoyable visit.

Our thanks to our new friends for making it so.

August 2012 - In praise of the iPad

Ever since the iPad was announced I have been telling people that it is not for me, it is just a large iPod Touch, it won’t run MS Office applications etc. etc. Add to that the number of colleagues who have bought iPads then spent the next weeks trying to turn it into a Windows mini-PC by buying apps to liaise with MS Office, apps to make it print, methods of adding storage, and any other thing you can think of to change the product from what it was designed to be.

I did however want a tablet PC for its size, portability, etc.

Whilst preparing for our seasonal migration to England I was looking for a better method of connecting to the Internet than the dongle we used in 2011. Living in the countryside, on a caravan park without our own telephone landline poses connectivity problems and our Internet connection has to be via a mobile phone network. Of the major networks we found Three to be the best for 3G in the area where we live in the Yorkshire Dales. O2's phone connection is good but they do not recommend using their network for the Internet.

Looking through the options on Three's website I found that they offer a laptop or iPad as a means of connecting to their 3G network. This gave me the push I needed and with a large chunk of mental rationalisation I went for the iPad-3, 32GB, 3G model. It costs me £25 per month and is like a mobile phone contract. I stay with Three for the two year contract, and included in the charge is 15GB of Internet traffic per month and no initial charge for the iPad itself. In Spain I have been paying 34 Euros per month for only 10GB of traffic from Vodafone and this does not include an iPad although it does include a wireless router. There are lots of pros and cons to argue about the cost of the contract in the UK but over 2 years I am happy to pay for this solution.

An so to the iPad itself. It is just a joy to use. I read all the pitfalls before I decided to buy it so was well prepared for the things it will not do. For instance it has only 32GB of on board storage which nets down to about 27GB after the operating system etc. This storage can not be increased neither can you insert a memory stick or card. By modern day standards this is not a lot but you have to remember what the iPad is for.

It is not a PC. It works extremely well as a supplementary PC as long as you have another one at home on which to store large amounts of data, films, music etc.

What it is though is a very stylish and easy-to-use portable device on which you can create documents and spreadsheets, receive emails, navigate using GPS, surf the net, take photographs and short videos, talk to people via Skype, play games (if you really want to, but not on mine whilst I breathe), read books in PDF, Kindle, or epub formats, read newspapers, and view your favourite photographs. It will act as a Wi-Fi hotspot so that you can connect other PCs to the Internet. It is instantly "on" when you open the case or slide the unlock icon on the screen and a full charge will give you up to 10 hours of use. The display is the best display you will ever see.

The new Operating System to be released in the autumn of 2012 promises even more features.

Applications for it are either free or are usually quite cheap. Apple produce their own version of a mobile Office Suite which produces files which may be saved as Microsoft compatible files. Compatibility is not 100% as some of the clever things which may be created in Pages (the word processor) will not work in MS Word. However the finished document can easily be saved direct from the iPad as a PDF document thereby keeping all that clever formatting. The spreadsheet application is called Numbers and to date I have not really given it a thorough workout but I expect great things from it. Both applications come with a huge supply of templates so that you can begin to easily create beautiful looking documents or spreadsheets from the off. Total cost for both apps is less than 14 quid.

Both of these major apps have their detractors but what doesn't. Some of the comments I have read are from people who have bought an iPad and are expecting it to act like a full blown desktop PC. Get real! If you want all the bells and whistles of MS Word then pay the price for MS Office (about £170) and there they will be. All of this extra functionality (and there is not really much extra you can do in Word) can then be used on a net book if you want portability.

Over the coming months I will be exploring the useful apps which are available for this device and seeing what more I can do with it.

From all this it may be gathered that I have been converted to being a fan of the iPad. I would like to become a fan of Apple overall as I also love the iPod and iPhone but alas their computers are outside my price range at present. Add to that the fact that my friends in Spain who I teach in our Computer Group are all on MS Windows then it becomes less of a viable move.

If the lottery comes up then blow it, I will have both.

July 2012 - A Tale of Two Networks

When you buy a phone on contract it remains locked on the network who sold it to you until they issue an unlocking code to allow it to be used on another network.

In the case of iPhones it is Apple who supplies the code to the networks.

Most contacts with O2 are conducted via online "chats" with their Gurus who listen to what you say and are then supposed to help with advice or answers to problems.

Contact with Three is made by telephone and you actually speak to human beings on a help desk who then help you with advice or answers to problems.

"O2"

On June 9th my brother-in-law, John, gave me an iPhone which had originally been lost but was found again. The loss had been reported to O2 but not its finding.

I wanted to get this phone working again for Kathie so I inserted an O2 SIM card which would not fire up the phone. I contacted O2 and asked for the phone to be activated. This was on June 10th. The "Guru" from O2 raised no queries about this, told me the phone would be activated and unlocked from the O2 system and all would be complete within 10 days.

After the 10 days were up, and nothing had happened, I contacted them again and was reassured that this time everything would be OK and the phone would be unlocked.

Another THREE calls later I was advised that the phone was on the lost and stolen list and could not be activated until the original owner had called them. I asked John to call them and he on 29th June spoke to another four Gurus before the phone was eventually released and it would work. Here semantics played its part as John only asked for the phone to be unlocked but as it still had the lost and stolen bar on it, nobody advised him of this and the phone stayed barred. In all of this nobody from O2 had the wits to send a simple text or email to us laying out the situation and stating exactly what steps we needed to take.

On the 10 July the lost and stolen bar was finally lifted and the phone became functional but the Gurus had neglected to raise the unlocking request so it would only work on the O2 network.

So now I took over from John again and started the process of having the phone unlocked. Each time I contacted a Guru from O2 I was assured that all was well and that the phone would be unlocked.

By 20th July between us we had spoken to THIRTEEN different Gurus and having absolutely no faith in what they were telling me I asked for a manager to take over the complaint. I received a call from a manager who told me that the advice from numbers twelve and thirteen that the phone would be unlocked within 72 hours was wrong and that it would be 10 days from 20th July.

Finally on 29th July I received a text to say that the phone had been unlocked and could be used with a non-O2 SIM.

Fourteen different people and forty nine days to have a phone activated properly.

I had earlier consulted the O2 website regarding complaints and was invited to send in an email as one of the choices. The complaint would be answered within five days it advised. I sent an email but the automated reply increased the response time to fourteen days.

"Three"

I have another iPhone and an iPad on the "3" network. On 26th July I telephoned their Help desk asking for both devices to be unlocked from their network so that I may use them in Spain.

On 27th July I received a text saying that they had both been unlocked.



Conclusion

And so Dear Reader I leave you to draw your own conclusion.

All logos (c) O2 and Three

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June 2012 - To England

And so begins the Wildebeast-like annual migration across the Continent to find greener pastures.

This time, on advice from friends, we are to travel to Santander in Northen Spain in order to take the ferry across to Plymouth.

Due to the successful efforts of a pickpocket in Cartagena we had no camera for the journey so all photographs were taken on my HTC phone. As it turned out the photographs are quite good with nice colours and a good aspect ratio. Gets a bit shaky in low light.

The good thing about this relatively short journey is that we do not have to leave at the crack of dawn to reach our destination. We hit the road at 10:00am heading for our overnight stop in Aranjuez.

We have never travelled in the Spanish hinterland and were pleasantly surprised as we travelled north to see how green everywhere was. The day was beautifully warm and we stopped at a very small village where the owner of the local cafe seemed very pleased to serve us with lunch. It was absolutely marvellous to sit outside in the sunshine in the middle of nowhere and enjoy the food he prepared for us.

We arrived in Aranjuez at our hotel, the Mercedes, and parked our car in their car park. I mention this because parking is at an absolute premium in this city so to have a hotel with its own car park is a bonus. The hotel was very clean and well equipped if somewhat old fashioned but along with this came old fashioned manners and courtesy. The air conditioning was already switched on in our room and because we did not have one of those card-in-the-slot devices were able to leave on the A/C whilst we went out.
Ten minutes walk saw us in the grounds of the Royal Palace in the 36 degrees of heat. We immediately decided to visit the palace as there were no queues or crowds and we were able to stroll around the beautiful building at leisure. Treasures inside date from many different centuries up to the 19th.

Afterwards we repaired to the nearest cafe and drank wine (of course) under the massive shade trees and chatted with three ladies from Australia who were doing a whistle-stop tour of "The Jewels of Europe". The had done Italy and France and this was their final Jewel before their next-day flight to Melbourne. They had absolutely no idea where they were and were just about "palaced-out".

The next morning we visited the grounds of the Palace of which about 60% is totally shaded by trees.

Onwards to Santander leaving Aranjuez at noon. The hotel restaurant had served an excellent evening meal and a large buffet breakfast. Total cost was €119.

We had motorway for most of the journey, skirting Madrid and heading up the A1. This was against advice as we were warned that there may be roadworks further north but they came to nothing other than driving at 40kph for about 10km.

We were surprised at the size of Santander, expecting a small port but finding a very large town along the lines of Biarritz in France. Lovely beaches and large Victorian houses once outside of the centre. We dined in a pavement restaurant and were surprised at the northern prices. Everything was dearer by about 60% than at home on the Costa Blanca.

Now the part we had not been looking forward to began. The ship sailed at 21:30 so we had to check in no later than 19:30 so as to have the dogs checked over by the DEFRA vet. The dogs had to be left on the dog-deck once on board. Kathie was all for smuggling them down to our cabin but we left them with all the others in the howling, barking cacophony having given them tranquilisers to calm them down. As it turned out they seemed less worried about the cages and noise on the dog-deck than did Kathie. The trip over was uneventful and boring. I had an excellent night's sleep but it was strange to wake and feel the sway of the ship.

Arriving off Plymouth it was announced that high winds might prevent us from docking. (Oh joy) This was after we had been instructed to put the dogs in the car and leave them there as it was not allowed to stay in the car during entry into harbour. The Captain enlisted the help of a tug boat and docked only fifteen minutes late. Once unloading began it took over an hour to get off the ship and through customs. No complaints about the ship, it was very nice and we had a comfortable cabin. Breakfast was excellent and all the crew were most pleasant, helpful, and polite. It's just not our scene.

Decision made -  we are not used to all this waiting about so will return via the Channel Tunnel and France.

And so off to Cornwall. We booked a room at Marazion and this could not have been better. The owner described it as a Bed and Breakfast Guest House but to call it this is like calling the QE2 a boat. See their website here.

The family room we had was fully 70 square metres in size, with one King Bed and two large Singles. It was equipped with a full sized fridge, (kept stocked with fresh milk and orange juice), electric kettle, large glass table and four dining chairs, massive TV, DVD player and supply of DVDs, ample supply of coffee both instant and ground, tea bags, sugar, drinking chocolate, and a large bowl of fresh fruit. The large bathroom had a whirlpool bath.

We met with John and Helen on the first night (Kathie's brother and his partner) and spent most of the next two days with them visiting the sights of Cornwall and eating copious amounts of food.

Sunday saw us making the seven hour trip to Settle where we found our lovely park home safe and sound, ending our journey.
We had filled our car with diesel in Torrevieja and Santander and if we hadn't been to Cornwall it would have got us all the way to Yorkshire on two fills.