Category: 60 Before 60

Tea at the Ritz

Afternoon tea at the Ritz will be another challenge ticked off my list.

One of the more sedate challenges on my 60 before 60 list is to have afternoon tea at the Ritz.

When I first lived in London I worked at a sandwich bar on a hidden alleyway near St James’s Palace. I used to get the tube to Green Park and so twice a day I would walk past the Ritz on Piccadilly. I never ventured inside. Doormen in tophats and tails would swing the doors open for expensively clad people alighting from taxis outside; if it was raining they even held huge golf umbrellas to prevent elegant hairdos from turning frizzy.

I imagined the same doormen slamming the doors shut if I ever tried to enter in my old jeans and trainers. One day, I thought, I will go there and they will hold the doors open for me and I will go inside and have afternoon tea. (I considered afternoon tea to be the poshest of the posh when it comes to food.)

Although I’ll happily do most things on my own, this is one of those things that I think will be enjoyed more if I have someone to share the experience with. And as it’s expensive I knew it could take a while before I found someone willing. Fortunately, I’ve now found that someone.

A good friend and I were at the funeral of another friend this week. She was only 45 and died suddenly. After the funeral we went for a drink in her memory and got onto a maudlin discussion of how life is short and you never know what’s round the corner. I kind of know this already which is one of the reasons I have a list in the first place, but sometimes I need reminding of it.

By the end of the drink we’d decided that part of making the most of life should involve a weekend in London and afternoon tea at the Ritz. I went home and booked it.

Because we want a weekend date and don’t want to have afternoon tea at 7.30pm in the evening (that’s just wrong), the earliest date I could get is in October. At least we’ve got plenty of time to save up for it.

And maybe it will be raining in October. Even if it’s not, I might still ask the doorman to hold an umbrella over my head.

 

 

A year ago I was at Up Helly Aa

Up Helly Aa has been and gone again. It’s always on the last Tuesday of January and brightens some of the darkest days in the British winter. Shetland being so far north, it gets even gloomier than Manchester. Something hard to believe with the gloomy, drizzly weather we’ve been having lately.

Last year I was fortunate to be able to spend a week in Shetland and attend the festivities. I got to have one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life (and there have been a few!) and to cross a challenge off my 60 things to do before I’m 60 list.

I’ve been following it closely online this year and wishing I was there. I’ve just been reminiscing with my photos. The low light, rain and fast moving Vikings made it difficult to get good photos, but even the worst photos have good memories behind them and I love looking back at them. I’ve selected a few of the better ones and have put together a Flickr album.

Up Helly Aa

I’ve written a few other posts on Up Helly Aa and they can be found by clicking on the links below.

After my trip last year, I wrote about the day and the night parts of the festival.

I’ve also written an overview of what Up Helly Aa is.

My potted history of the festival can be found here.

The Up Helly Aa website can be found here.

 

Well that was easy …

Thanks to the advice of another blogger I’ve learnt how to export an old blog into a new one.

I’d mentioned in my last post that I wanted to transfer all my old posts on Blogger over to my new WordPress blog so I’d have everything in the one place. I anticipated this taking a very long time and thought I had around 100 hours work ahead of me. Then the wonderful Ruth over at coastalwalker chipped in with a comment telling me how I could bring the whole lot over in just a few clicks.

I’m not too bad at figuring out how things work when it comes to computers, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that this would be possible, so of course I’d not looked for ways to do it and was going to slowly copy and paste each individual post.

With Ruth’s advice I was quickly able to export my Blogger blog and import it into my WordPress blog in one fell swoop. How easy and quick was that!

Now I just have to tidy up the tags and categories AND get round to finishing all the posts I have sitting in drafts AND make more effort to post regularly. I don’t suppose anyone knows a quick way of getting posts to write themselves do they?

I’m moving to WordPress!

Why I’m moving to Wordpress.

I’ve finally decided it’s time to make the move from Blogger to WordPress. Why? Because I want to start taking this whole blogging malarkey more seriously and get myself a proper website. Creating my own website is on my 60 before 60 list after all. And if I’m going to get all professional and incorporate my blog into a website then WordPress seems to be the way to go.

I’ll miss Blogger; I’ve got used it these past four years and can easily navigate my way around it. I started to explore WordPress yesterday and it’s all so different. I can feel a steep learning curve coming on.

At the moment, I’m not planning to delete my Blogger account (I’ve spent far too much time and effort on it for that), but I do hope to gradually move my posts over to this site so I have them all in the one place.

Although I’m feeling slightly daunted at the huge task ahead of me (creating a website AND learning to use WordPress AND transferring content), I’m also quite excited by the opportunities I’ll have to develop my skills, tick another challenge off my list and finally (fingers and toes crossed) have an online presence I can be proud of.

The future starts here; please come with me (it’ll get better, I promise).

My Blogger site can be found here.

Up, up and away

Finally! After waiting a year and a half and booking it nine times, I finally got to go up in a hot air balloon.

Finally!

A year and a half after buying the vouchers and after booking it nine times, I finally got to climb into a giant picnic basket and dangle from a big red balloon floating a kilometre above the earth.

I carefully monitored the weather reports all week. After all this time I feel like a bit of expert when it comes to knowing what weather is considered suitable and safe for a balloon flight to be able to take place. It can’t be rainy or foggy or misty. The wind speed can’t be over 6mph. The wind speed has to be checked at different altitudes, not just on the ground. The wind has to be in the right direction so the balloon doesn’t blow over built-up areas or anywhere it might be dangerous to land. Etc, etc, etc. I wrote about it here.

This time the weather actually seemed quite favourable; in fact, I was mainly worried that it wouldn’t be windy enough as the forecast was showing speeds of 1mph. If it’s not windy enough, the balloon would go straight up, hover around on the spot for a while and come straight back down again.

At the designated time of 11pm the night before the flight I rang the flight line number. Instead of the usual apology and explanation of why the flight was cancelled, I pricked up my ears as the pilot on the recording said ‘Please listen to the following information very carefully’.

He went on to say that the flight would be going ahead, but not from Bakewell as originally planned. Instead we would be taking off from the back-up site of Tissington. He gave the meeting time and directions of where to park and how to get to the launch site from the car park.

Instructions duly noted, it was then it a mad rush to get everything ready and still try to get a bit of sleep before my alarm went off at 2.30am.

After a detour for petrol, I got to my co-balloonist’s house before 3.30am and gulped down the coffee she had waiting for me.

It was starting to get light as we headed on empty roads towards the Peak District ticking off a (near) hit list of the kamikaze animals and birds determined to die under the wheels of my van. I like to think it’s because of my superior driving skills that I managed to avoid them all.

Arriving in Tissington at the same time as several other people, we parked up and walked the 10 minutes up the lane to the launch site. Through an open gate and into a field containing a very large (and very flat) balloon, a large basket and a herd of very curious cows. 

The cows were so intrigued at the strange goings on in their field they milled around us, stretching out their noses to sniff us and then skittering away when we turned round. They tried to get on the trailer that had brought the basket and balloon to the site. They wanted to get in the basket and they thought standing on a large piece of red nylon made a nice change from grass. 

The basket, which was already attached to the balloon, was lying on its side. A large fan stood to either side of it. Two men volunteered to hold the ropes of the balloon as the cows were shooed away and the fans were switched on. The balloon slowly inflated as it filled with cold air from the fans. As the insides expanded to cavernous proportions, the pilot walked around inside checking everything out. 

Once the balloon was fully inflated, the gas jets were turned on and flames roared into the balloon’s innards, heating the air and causing the balloon to slowly rise. As it rose from the ground it pulled the basket upright and we were instructed to quickly climb in. 

Climbing aboard was harder than it looked. Gaps in the side of the basket acted as steps so it all looked quite simple. But the basket was angled slightly outwards meaning gravity was working against us as we tried to hoist ourselves up and get our legs over the side. It was then quite a long drop into the inside, particularly when you were trying to not flail about too much and kick a fellow passenger in the face. 

The basket was divided into five high-sided sections. The pilot was in the middle section with the gas jets directly above him. The sixteen passengers were divided into the four corner sections. The sections were narrow and the four people in each were close enough together to offer cushioning and support in case of any wobbles, but not packed so closely that it was uncomfortable.

Once we were all safely inside, the guy lines tying us to the back of the trailer were released and, waving goodbye to the cows, we drifted up into space. It was a very smooth take-off and we were surprised at how suddenly the ground seemed a long way below. 

Tissington Hall
A rival balloon

As we spent about an hour and a quarter floating above the Peak District, two things I’d been told about still managed to surprise me. The first is that the trees really do look like broccoli. When I’d heard this I assumed it was a reference to how children refer to broccoli as ‘baby trees’ and that because the trees look so small from this height they could be the broccoli trees referred to by children. Not so. They actually, really and truly do look like they are made from heads of broccoli. 

 

Campsite in a quarry

The second thing was the silence. Yes, I’d been told it would be quiet. Yes, I knew that apart from the odd time when the gas jets were blasting extra heat into the balloon there would be no noise from the balloon and that there would be no engines to give a constant background hum. What I hadn’t realised is how much background noise there is usually in our daily lives and how we are so accustomed to it that we don’t even notice it most of the time. Even in a quiet place you can usually hear cars in the distance, cows mooing, birds singing, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, a stream trickling by. Up here, there was nothing. Nothing. It was so quiet and still it was almost eerie. 

The eerie feeling was intensified by the lack of life below. We passed over campsites, villages, quarries, a factory. It was broad daylight but no-one was about. Of course this was because it was still unreasonably early on a Sunday morning, but as we’d been up for hours, it felt like it should be the middle of the day. 

Tiny sheep

The pilot had his GPS connected to a laptop and pointed out places of interest below us. We got a really good view of the ancient stone circle Arbor Low and saw lots of other mounds that looked like tumuli. I’m used to walking in the Peak District and feel I know it quite well. Floating above it gave me such a different perspective though. 

Arbor Low

About an hour after we taken off the pilot started to look for a suitable field to land in. It had to have access for the truck and trailer to enter to collect the balloon and basket. It had to be flat and preferably without crops or animals. And of course away from telegraph wires. 

About 15 minutes later we found a field and slowly descended. As we got close to the ground we were instructed to sit down on the foam seat that ran along the sides of the basket. With backs, bums and heads pressed across the side we gripped the rope handles opposite. Sitting in this position meant our heads and limbs were all fully inside the basket and we were braced in case the basket tipped over when we landed.

Two gentle bumps and we were down and remained upright. The whole flight had been so smooth and it really hadn’t felt like we were moving at all. At one point we were travelling at over 8mph, but it felt like we were still and it was earth below us that was reeling past. 

Climbing out of the balloon was a lot easier than climbing in. The truck driver was telephoned and informed as to where we were. Before we could deflate the balloon we had to get permission from the farmer whose field we’d landed in. The pilot told us that this is not usually a problem and the farmers generally get a bottle of whisky as a thank you. And of course, if any damage is caused, it would be paid for. 

I wondered how the farmer would feel being woken up at 7.30am on a Sunday morning by someone requesting permission to deflate a large balloon in his field, but then thought, ‘it’s a farmer, he’ll be up anyway at this time’. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of the few days in the year when he’d felt able to have a lie-in. He was in a good mood though and not only gave permission, but came out on his quad-bike to have a chat and open more gates so we’d have easier access to the road.

It took quite a long time to deflate the balloon and involved everyone tugging on a long rope to try to pull the sides down and then lots of rolling and stuffing to get it into its bag. The balloon and basket were loaded onto the trailer and we followed it out to the roadside where chamagne was served as we waited for the minibus to arrive to take us back to Tissington.

The half glass of champagne was quite nice, but felt like a bit of a contrived attempt at being classy. And at this time in the morning and after being up so long, I would have preferred a cup of coffee and an egg butty. 

We were presented with certificates and looked at a series of photos on the laptop. A camera had been strung from the balloon taking photos of us all as we floated about. We could purchase the 30+ photos for £15, but as they were all pretty much the same, one would have been enough. £15 seemed quite a lot for what was effectively the same photo, so I didn’t bother. If I could’ve bought one or two for a reduced price I’d definitely have done so as it would have been nice to have a picture of us all inside the balloon.

The minibus arrived and we were soon back in Tissington where I made coffee and egg butties in the back of the van.

Was it worth the wait?

Yes, definitely. The whole experience was even better than I thought it would be and we got a perfect day for it.

Would I do it again?

Probably not. Partly because it’s expensive, but mainly because of all the hassle of having to keep so many weekends free; having to stay up to make the phone call; finding out it’s cancelled; having to book again, and so on. I don’t blame Virgin for this (and I’m very glad they take safety seriously and also try to ensure that the flight is enjoyable by only going on good days) as I realise no matter how powerful Richard Branson is, he has no control over the weather.

Would I recommend it?

Absolutely. But only in a place near to where you live so it’s easy to get to at short notice. 

How to pay tax?

There are so many ways to pay tax. It’s all very confusing.

Now my ‘gap year’ is coming to an end and I need to start earning some money again I’m realising I have a lot of things to consider. Not least, how best to get paid and how best to pay tax. In the past I’ve had regular jobs and been paid on PAYE. This is easy: I turn up to work every day and at the end of the month my employer deposits a sum of money into my bank account having already deducted tax and NI. Now that I’m hoping to earn money from various sources and in different ways, it’s much more complicated.

I’m just starting teaching through an agency and they’ve offered me the options of PAYE or being paid through an umbrella company. If I choose PAYE I’ll get paid in the same way as before which seems nice and simple. However, I won’t be able to claim expenses (and supply teaching can involve long drives each day) and could get complicated when I start to earn money from other sources, particularly if it’s not taxed at source.

I’d not come across umbrella companies before (at least not in this sense – I think of them as the big multi-nationals that own a multitude of smaller companies), but they seem to be a kind of middle man. My pay would go to them and they would work out my tax and NI, pay it on my behalf, then give me the remainder of my pay. If I use an umbrella company, some of my expenses would be tax-deductible, but I would have to pay a fee to the company. As I’ll be (hopefully) earning money from different sources, I’m not sure this will be the best option for me as I’ll probably need more flexibility and advice than they can offer.

My other options are either to set up a limited company or operate as a sole-trader. At the moment, the sole-trader option (which basically means self-employed) seems the most suitable. A limited company would cost more to set up and has more complex (therefore more expensive) accounting procedures. On the other hand, setting myself up as a sole-trader seems quite straightforward and has simpler accounting procedures. Another advantage to being a sole-trader is that if I later want to switch to a limited company, this would be quite easy, whereas switching the other way round is more difficult.

Some time over the next few weeks I’m going to have to find myself an accountant and get some proper advice, but in the meantime my internet research has thrown up this infographic which helps makes sense of the options.

 

Greek Orthodox Easter – the video

A short video to capture the sounds and atmosphere of Orthodox Easter.

If I ever want to get good at making videos, I need to start actually making videos. Greek Orthodox Easter in Crete provided me with a good opportunity for a first attempt, as photographs alone couldn’t do justice to the occasion. I didn’t have a tripod or a specialist video camera, so I just pointed my usual camera and pressed the record button. I think I’ve done okay at capturing some of the sound and atmosphere, but I obviously have a LONG way to go to perfect my filming technique! 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pgL0KQyiQlw%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded

Hitting the airwaves

My first radio interview.

Last Friday I did something that was a first for me. A local BBC radio presenter noticed one of my tweets and through this found my blog. She contacted me and asked me to go into the radio studios to record an interview. I’ve never been into a radio studio before, let alone done a radio interview, so this was all very exciting.


On Friday evening I went along to the posh new Media City in Salford where the BBC are now based. On my way from the car park I strolled past the shiny new glass edifices that have sprung from the wasteland that was the Salford I remember. The buildings reminded me of those in Hong Kong or Canary Wharf; buildings in which billions of dollars are transacted daily. Except the buildings in those places aren’t brightly labelled CBeebies.


Once inside, and with a visitor’s pass strung round my neck, I was escorted several floors up and into a small studio. I chatted with the presenter for a while and explained what my blog was about. Then she clicked ‘record’ and the interview started for real. We talked about why I’d started the blog, the types of challenges on my list and how I see having a list as a good motivational tool for life. The whole interview lasted just over eight minutes. This might not seem long in ‘real life’ terms, but in ‘radio life’ this was so long that when it went out later that night, it was played in two parts with a music interval midway through. Although I’m very chuffed with getting a radio interview, I think I’m even prouder of the fact my first interview got an interval!

Sheffield Adventure Film Festival

I managed to have a great day at film festival without actually seeing any films.

Is it possible to go to a film festival and not see any films? Well, on Saturday I did just that. I spent the day in Sheffield at the Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF). The festival lasted the whole weekend, but Saturday was the only day I could be there as on Sunday I was supposed to be in a hot air balloon floating above Bakewell. It didn’t happen AGAIN, but that’s another story. Back to ShAFF.

ShAFF has been an annual event for a few years now and is a brilliant showcase for the (usually short) films made by (usually young male, but not necessarily short) people who are making their lives all about adventure. I was really interested to see some of these films and get myself a good dose of inspiration, but was far too distracted by all the great workshops, forums and talks that were on offer.

First up was a travel writing workshop run by Phoebe Smith, editor of Wanderlust magazine. I made lots of notes and was really pleased to hear a lot of what she said tallying with what I’ve found out from all the research and reading I’ve been doing over the past year. It’s so good to know I’m on the right track!

Rushing back to the ‘lecture theatre’ (aka the bar area) after a quick lunch of rather tasty fennel and potato soup, I found it already filling up for the cycle touring forum. The only seats left were on the front row, right in front of the panel. As one of my personal mottoes is ‘live life on the front row’, this was definitely not a problem. 

Leon McCarron (young, male, not particularly short) led the panel which included another solo male cyclist and a couple of couples (half of each couple was female. YES!). The six had done very different tours and had different views on speed with Ed Shoote being the most zoomy. They each spoke a bit about their cycle tours and then answered questions from the audience. Cycle touring is on my list of things to do so it was quite interesting to hear what they had to say. Though I’m not planning on cycling round the world as Laura and Tim Moss did or even cycling 2,500 miles along the Great Divide from New Mexico to Banff in Canada as Hannah Maia did for her megamoon (a longer, more adventurous version of a honeymoon) with new husband Patrick. A week in the Netherlands might be quite enough for me. 

After a coffee and cake break, it was time for a film making workshop. In the first half Paul Diffley showed techniques for interviewing people on camera and explained how to set shots up. The second part of the session focussed on sound with Chris Prescott making us aware that good sound engineering is just as much about the sounds you remove as those you leave in. This is all really useful as I’ve used video a lot in my teaching and at some point I do want to make a short film of my own – this being another item on my list of things of do.


The final session of the day was a series of Shed Talks. These were modelled on the slightly better known TED Talks, but as we were at ShAFF in Sheffield the moniker ‘Shed’ sounded more appropriate. The talks were all motivational with the most moving speaker being a climber with terminal cancer who, after diagnosis, set up the charity ‘Climbers Against Cancer (CAC)’. The charity has raised thousands of pounds internationally and I felt privileged to hear founder John Ellison tell his story in his brief ten minute slot. When diagnosed he was given two years to live. That was three years and four months ago.

I thought of how much he’s achieved and how important it is to never waste a second of the life we’re given. With that sobering thought we repaired to the bar to sample Abbeydale Brewery’s special ShAFF IPA (no, not Indian Pale Ale, but Intrepid Pale Ale of course).



ShAFF is held at the Showroom Cinemas and Workstation close to Sheffield train station. As well as films, workshops and talks, there are stalls advertising or selling adventure related products and a second-hand kit stall where you can sell your old kit and use the proceeds to buy someone else’s old kit.


The website for ShAFF can be found here.

Thinking about New York

New York might be cheaper than I’d thought. I’ve found a flight and an apartment. Now I just have to find the money.

New York has been on my list of things to do since long before I ever had a list. I keep my eye on prices of flights, accommodation, etc. and always give a slow shake of my head thinking ‘no way’. The cost of flights during school holidays can be astronomical and I really wouldn’t want to pay that much for a week somewhere. I could go for longer, even the whole six weeks of the summer holidays, and that would make the cost seem a little more bearable if I divide the price by the number of weeks holiday I’d be getting (anything to make it seem more like a bargain), but then the cost of actually being in New York is so high I don’t see how I could afford to stay more than a week. So my New York wish has remained firmly on the wishlist.


Recently I saw someone mention on their blog that they’d booked really cheap flights to New York with United. Interested, I looked at United’s website and searched for flights outside of school holidays and way in the future. They weren’t anything like so cheap as the other blogger had mentioned, but they were cheaper than flights I’d looked at previously. And that was only one airline.


For some reason all the cheap flights went via Washington DC. Hm, seems a shame not to jump off and have a look round there too. And I hear all the museums are free. So I changed my search to see if I could maybe have a week in Washington DC and then a week in New York. Now I wanted to go to Washington and actually get off the plane, all the cheap flights went via New York. Huh? (That’s an American term – I’m practising).


Ok, so it was looking like if I do this I have to change at Washington in both directions but won’t actually get to see it. But if I’m thinking of 2 weeks maybe I could do 2 weeks in New York and have time to see more than just the main touristy stuff. Hell, (another American term) maybe I could spend a whole month there and have the time to get myself a regular coffee shop where I can sit, read, write, watch the world go by. And possibly drink some coffee. Though Amercian style buckets of watered down, lets add a whole cow’s worth of milk, coffee really annoy me. Maybe they’ll taste better when they’re in the right setting.


I was already liking this plan, but wasn’t sure if I’d be able to spend a month camping in Central Park unnoticed, so thought I should look for some paid accommodation. First stop, the YHA website. How much??? Jeez (yet, another Americanism – I’m starting to feel fluent), is this the Youth HOSTEL Association or the Youth HILTON Association? Next, I looked at private hostels. They were cheaper, but still way too expensive for a month.


Ok, so how do I really wanna (there I go again) do this? If I want to spend a month and try to get under the skin (I know, I know, it’s only a month, but it’s four times better than a week), then I should really get an apartment and pretend to be a real New Yorker.


So next up, was the AirBnB website. I’d heard of this, but never had reason to use it before. It seems to be people basically renting out rooms in their homes (or sometimes their whole homes) on a short-term basis. There are some luxurious places on there, but they didn’t grab me. And although they are probably a great price in the big scheme of things, they are way out of my price range. Then I found a wonderful apartment with three bedrooms that are rented out separately. The apartment is in Brooklyn which I like the sound of (‘I live in Brooklyn’ sounds so much more me than ‘I live in Manhattan’). The apartment is small but quirky and rather than the stylish designer pads I’d been looking at, this one reminded of Monica’s apartment in Friends. I know I could be at home there, I know I could. The price was ok and even a bit cheaper if staying for a month.


So I’ve found a flight (November seems to be cheapest) and I’ve found an apartment. Now I just need to find the money to pay for it. If prices have gone up by the time I get the money together, I won’t be going in November. But now I know I can do it, I will be going sometime. I’m already working on my itinerary.