Internet despair

Would you believe it's been over a month and I still don't have my internet service from Orange? I think I've worked out the problem, but they obviously haven't. If I didn't have a million other things going on in my life I'd mount a crusade and raise the masses in a huge anti-Orange campaign.

My parents have arrived safely... and left safely to Ireland! I pick them up again on Sunday, so hopefully they're having a lovely time. The weather's bound to turn again before they're home, so they'll never believe me when I say we've been having bright blue skies here in Mossley.



On this day we went on the train to Marsden, a village near Mossley. We got there on the weekend of the annual jazz festival - I'm sure it's not this busy normally! After some classic fish and chips for lunch (and I convinced Mum to try some mushy peas, local delicacy - Dad wasn't quite up for it though), we went for a ride on one of the longboats along the Huddersfield canal into UK's longest tunnel - 3 miles. It was very interesting.



Now this isn’t that tunnel! But it is the same canal, which goes just past my place. Lots of history, pre-railways etc. There’s a lovely walk alongside where the horses used to pull the boats full of industrial revolution textiles. My friend from Newcastle, Paul, came for a walk with Ulrich and me from Mossley to nearby Stalybridge on that first day of sunshine (it’s been nearly a week now!).

Quick update....

As a friend from Perth recently pointed out, it’s been a very long time since I last updated this blog. Now part of that is while I did eventually with Orange, it was short lived. I’ve had some sort of technical fault for the last month that’s meant I haven’t had broad band, an absolutely unbelievable situation that I intend to milk for my financial advantage as much as possible. Nonetheless, I have a workaround for now.

Tonight was another difficult night as I was forced to stand in an English pub watching England win the semi final (in rugby) against France. Last week, just before I picked my parents up from the airport, I had to suffer the absolutely incredible situation of watching (in that same pub just across the road – it’s my only television at the moment) England beat Australia. If that wasn’t bad enough, as I was waiting for mum and dad to make it through immigration, I got a message from Ulrich in France to say that France had beat New Zealand. I mean seriously. What’s going on? Here in England, on the other side of the world you tend to get a real fondness for your “antipodean” mates as they term it. So for the major players of the southern hemisphere to be knocked out in one day was jaw-dropping. I’m not sure, but I think I might have to actually support South Africa against England next week.

Mum and Dad are hopefully having a good time, in between painting my front room and various other tasks. Today we went on a long boat ride along the Huddersfield canal into the deepest, longest canal tunnel in the UK. Very interesting. I took a photo of a car in the carpark which had windscreen wipers on the lights.

I’ve now settled into my little terrace house in Mossley, a little stone built village about 12 miles out of Manchester at the foothills of the northern end of the Peak District. It’s a traditional 2 up, 2 down terrace, which literally means two rooms on the bottom floor and two on the top (with one truncated to add a bathroom). But with the attic and cellar as well, I’ve almost got a proper size house, just vertical rather than horizontal. It’s funny what you can adjust to. Running up and down the stairs has just about made up for the change from walking 15 minutes to work every day to sitting on a train for that long instead. Of course, the train gives me a good opportunity to learn more French, so that’s ok.

Everything’s rather busy but in an ordinary sort of way (no more exciting holidays for a while) so I’ll leave it at that for now. Mum and Dad take their bus tour of Ireland next week, so hopefully they’ll love that. We’re planning all sorts of other adventures as well, not least of course will have to be a trip to France.