We then asked the ‘opposition’ lawyers where we should go for dinner and ended up going eating and drinking with them. My suit got doused by a bottle of beer that decided to blow out the glass bottle base: dripping wet sleeve and more beer over my shirt… which was nice… Fortunately, it is going to be cleaned anyway as a week working with chain-smoking Greeks has left me with a filthy, smelly suit!

200 leva later and ‘our’ lawyers rang to tell us they’d moved to the more comfortable Sheraton – thanks for leaving us! – and to meet them there for drinks. Who were we to say no? So we walked to the Sheraton – going past a Fetish club that looked interesting – and went downstairs to the “Scandal” bar for drinks. The general low ambient light levels and red upholstery rang some alarm bells; the pole dancers more so! Funny how the hotel website doesn’t seem to list this ‘facility’.

Katy, the English stenographer, and I then spent the next hour or so being bitchy about the pole dancers and more particularly their poor choices in lingerie before being asked by our lawyers to mark them out of 10. Very few got over 5/10 though one did have a nice bum and another clearly used her pole for exercise! The Greeks seemed to rate them somewhat higher…

At this point, I did the News of the World reporter bit: made my excuses and left. Somewhat underwhelmed by my first visit to such an establishment – I clearly lead a sheltered life…

Some dabbling seems to be spreading around their hotels when it comes to the Premier Inn “eat as much as you like” breakfast: whereas before it was all freshly cooked to order (or at least it seemed to be that way), now they appear to be rolling out a hot buffet style. I saw this for the first time recently at the Premier Inn, Norwich Central South where there was plenty of food laid out but invariably it wasn’t piping hot, the beans and the eggs were drying out under the hot lamps and it just looked generally not as fresh as one cooked to order. OK, if you ask, they’ll do you poached eggs and vegetarian sausages especially for you, but even so…

And as of this week – much to the chagrin of the chef! – the Premier Inn Wigan (M6, J25) is doing the same thing. I was told that they used to do this if there were 40+ guests staying, but today, for instance, there were only 15 people and of course the restaurant is open from 7am until 10.30am. The buffet therefore has to have sufficient food cooked and on display but of course it dries out or cools down and of course there’s the wasted food to consider.

I suppose the benefit is that a buffet is quicker for guests in a hurry, but for those of us who plan enough time to eat our breakfasts, the quality of the food suffers.

Oh and whilst I’m moaning, it would be nice if the Premier Inn published nutritional information for the food it serves. I was told that because the restaurants are operated by different groups, they couldn’t tell me, but that’s rubbish as the breakfast menu is the same at every location.

To end on a positive note for Premier Inn though: of the budget hotels, they’re by far the best. Travelodges are atrocious and appear to me to be generally tatty – I went to one where the leg of the bed was broken! – and the buffet breakfast I had at the Hilton Express in Norwich was simply dire.

The villa had its own heated pool as well as a heated jacuzzi which meant we could relax around the pool, have a night-time  jacuzzi or swim to cool down.

We used it as a base before driving out to other parts of the island or to the long, long sandy beach and dunes.

Then our evening would consist of heading into Corralejo itself for a really nice meal in one of the nicer restaurants before heading to the Rock Island Bar to chill out, have a few drinks and listen to some live acoustic rock music. And my girlfriend and friends could keep tabs on us with the audience webcam!

Anyway, here are a few photos including one of the baby mouse that I rescued from our pool one morning!

The British do this sort of thing so well and the happy couple looked just that: happy.

Then out to do some shopping: a new LBD for GT to go with her Jimmy Choos as it’s the start of formal dinner season again for me; the first one is coming up in less than two weeks’ time. I actually enjoy going out shopping for clothes with my partner: my chance to play Gok Wan and choose dresses, bags and shoes for occasions. GT is a tall, leggy athlete with a great figure so choosing the dress was relatively easy and we soon ended up with a great ensemble: an asymmetrical, above the knee black dress and a black clutch bag with silver clasp and chain that will go very well with those Jimmy Choos, some silver drop earrings and her long, black hair curled over to one side. For good measure, we also bought a stylish black raincoat that we’d been trying to sort for a while. And yes, the coat and heels go very well without anything else on

Travelling back this morning, I decided to take the Victoria train instead of the Waterloo train as I wasn’t in a hurry to head back and felt like a change of scenery for my route home. London has plenty of that and my new route on such a beautifully sunny day reminded me why I love living in London. London is a great place to live and work and my frequent visits to see my partner of four months are enjoyable and hassle-free, especially when compared to the weekly 7 hour round-trip drudgery (let alone the hideous expense) I used to have to endure to see the cheating, lying, slut ex-girlfriend I had the misfortune to have up in Grimsby, itself a horrid and depressing place to have to visit, let alone live.

The Royal Wedding and my thoughts about those wasted years reminded me that the ex-girlfriend had always been really keen to get married and was always banging on about it: the identity of the unfortunate groom is less important to her than actually being married which is her true priority – anyone will do! Must be the cakes and flowers she’s so keen on

Right! The call of a nice pub lunch on the Thames calls! I love my life!

I recently travelled through Humberside Airport on holiday. This is not a busy airport: they say they are:

“…a key national and international gateway to Northern and Eastern England, connecting over half a million passengers to 30 destinations every year.”

On the day I returned to the UK, they were handling roughly one incoming flight per hour. Which was just as well, as it took the UK Border Agency over an hour to actually allow me back into the country along with all the other pissed-off passengers on the charter flight.

The UKBA say:

“With tougher checks now in place at the border you may have to wait a little longer to get into the United Kingdom, especially at peak times. We use scanners to ensure that passports, visas and other official documents are genuine. Our officers are trained to detect forgeries and check that people have the right to enter the United Kingdom.

“An officer will check your passport and give you permission to stay, if you need it. We aim to see you within 45 minutes.

“If you are a national of the EU or EEA, you can use the separate EEA/EU channel, where we will usually check your passport or national identity card more quickly.”

ORLY?

Well at Humberside there’s one channel for non-EU travellers and there’s the main bit. The two numpties on duty when I came through looked as though they were on day release from an old folks’ home and clearly relished the opportunity to have a chat with each and every passenger. Presumably these two are what the UKBA refer to as “scanners” because they didn’t actually use any equipment other than their reading glasses and mouths… So after an hour’s queuing, I finally got through their vigorous entry procedures. Just as well it’s not like this at the UK airports I usually travel through on business…

I always counter that with “define ‘wrong’ now and in the future”. What may be acceptable now might not be acceptable in the future.

Taking speeding and speed limits. Now I regularly speed but I believe I am a safer driver when ‘pressing on’ given that my attention is fully on the road ahead, traffic, etc. The other trite line trotted out by the Government is that “speed kills”. If that truly was the case, there would be no Traffic Division police officers alive, would there? It’s the inappropriate use of speed that’s the issue, but that’s more difficult to police without human intervention.

The Nanny State has announced that it intends to reduce speed limits where there is a higher risk of accidents but that’s bollocks as usual: speed limits will simply be reduced for no good reason as a revenue generator.

A case in point: the section of road between Wymondham and Thickthorn Services on the old A11 in Norfolk (now the B1172) used to have a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a national limit, then a 50mph limit through Hethersett before becoming a national limit again.

Over time, the 50mph limit has been extended towards Wymondham despite there being no additional housing or changes in use, etc.

I noticed recently that the limits have now been changed to a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a 50mph limit then a 40mph limit through Hethersett. Why’s this?

Similarly other rural roads in Norfolk have had 50mph limits imposed despite no changes of use or apparent increases in crashes.

Ridiculous!

Started off OK with the second flight out to Dublin from London City Airport. As I was about to board the plane, I received an e-mail from the Client asking to postpone our meetng by half an hour until 3,00pm. Not too worrying as I wouldn’t hace to leave site until 4.30pm anyway.

By the time I’d landed, they’d e-mailed to cancel the meeting but my big boss had said I’d go along anyway as I was on a plane!

As it turned out the meeting – further dwlayed by another half hour – went OK and I headed back to Dublin airport, grabbing an expensive sandwich and Guinness when I got there.

Boarded my Air France flight back to London City Airport and off we went: flight due in at around 8.10pm.

As we began to descend into London, the Captain told us it was stormy over London and lo and behold the flight was a bit rock and roll but we gained height again and were told we were stacking due to standing water on the runway.

After a while, we were then told that due to our low fuel and the fact that City was still closed, we’d now be diverting to London Stansted. Ah…

Finally on the ground, we then waited in the Arrivals Terminal for news and were told we would be getting a coach back down to London.

And so it was that at around 10.00pm we boarded the coach. It’s going to be a long night…

What am I talking about?

Today I had a dental appointment in Wymondham at 11.15am, so I left London in plenty of time. By 10.50am, I was 20 minutes away (maximum) on the dual carriageway section of the A11 Thetford By-Pass between the Brandon and Watton interchanges when I had to come to a halt. Why? Some dickhead driving a tractor and towing a trailer of vegetables had managed to turn the whole thing over and blocked the southbound carriageway. Remember, I was heading northbound.

Like a well-oiled team of professionals, the police’s traffic division and the Transport Agency’s Incident Support Unit had mobilised to get things sorted out.

Between then and 11.45am, I sat in stationary traffic and watched as most of the police vehicles drove off having done … er … nothing at all. One police motorcycle went down the southbound carriageway, around the roundabout and then back up the southbound carriageway the wrong way for no good reason at all. Maybe he was getting a bit warm in the summer sun and just fancied going for a spin to cool himself down. Bless!

Traffic announcements confirmed that the southbound carriageway was blocked and that there were long southbound queues. Apparently the traffic going north was slow as people were slowing down to take a look, according to the AA team.

Obviously that was as far removed from reality as the Labour Party are from unity. As I discovered when I did eventually get past the next roundabout, the southbound lane was actually flowing pretty well. And no-one was rubbernecking in my lane – we simply couldn’t get past the roundabout because of the southbound traffic effectively turning it into a lane of southbound traffic.

In the olden days, a policeman or policemen would stand there directing traffic like human traffic lights to ensure that traffic flowed as freely as possible every way, but instead this bunch of lazy idiots just wanted to sit around with their thumbs up their arses doing absolutely sod-all.

And as a result, all the northbound traffic had been at a standstill for almost an hour.

So I missed my appointment thanks to their complete lack of any positive action. Well done you! It’s really no surprise I have absolutely zero respect for them. They always set low standards and consistently fail to achieve them in my mind.

I won’t even start to go on about how South Blunderside Humberside Police have failed to take any real action against a harassing, violent and abusive drunkard (with overtones of child abuse)…

And thanks to the AA’s radio traffic reporters for rubbing it in by reporting absolute crap and insulting those of us who were stuck in the jams the police had caused.

Now then, let’s have a little think about this. I drive a 1999 Ford Mondeo ST200 which would qualify in a few months’ time. I bought this second-hand at less than a year old and got a whopping discount off the new price. So woohoo! Let’s go and buy the new equivalent Mondeo.

Except there’s not really an equivalent, but there is a 2.5L 220PS version though not as nice looking.

In 2010, I will pay £205 to tax the ST200. On the basis of the Ford’s emissions figures, I would pay £245 a year on the new one but in the first year, I’d pay £550!

So let’s do the sums: the Government discount of £2,000 is probably £1,000 more than mine’s worth. So I’m up £1,000. Then I would pay £350 more for tax in the first year, so I’m only up £650 now. And that’s around a 2.3% discount in real terms. No doubt the dealers won’t want to add their own discounts on top of this if they can help it and of course buying new and turning the wheels would lead to a huge reduction in value that would dwarf that discount.

And of course every year I’d be worse off because the VED is higher on the new one than the old one.

If I go for more of a performance car then the numbers simply don’t stack up especially as the first year’s VED would go as high as £950!

No doubt the banks wouldn’t want to lend me the money anyway…

The other day, I turned up in Birmingham and realised I hadn’t packed a tie, so I needed to wander off and find one. Not knowing the area, but having found a likely shopping centre on Google Maps, I decided to fire up Nokia Maps on my Nokia N95-8GB and use its built-in GPS to give myself walking directions. I had been using this application quite a lot since the start of the year whilst wandering around Birmingham staying in different hotels and having to find my way on foot to a Client’s offices.

So I was disappointed to realise that my subscription to the navigation element of the app. had expired, so I reluctantly renewed it at the cost – whatever it was – and used it to find me way there and back.

Now I prefer the Google Mobile Maps application to Nokia Maps, but that only had driving directions and public transport … except that a couple of days after renewing, I saw an article which mentioned the directions on foot facility in the latest version of the software. Now downloaded to my mobile and yes, indeed it does have foot navigation. And it’s free…

Bugger!