Ssh! Can you keep a secret?

I'm not allowed to discuss this until next year, but...

I have discovered that there are not four, but SIX pubs on a bona fide loop effected by turning left or right out of my house.

It is my birthday in early February.

Hows about a birthday pub crawl?! Hurray! Hats in the air etc...

The pubs are, in clockwise order:

The Regent (yes its a Wetherspoons and yes it's an old cinema)
The Walton Working Mens Club
The George Inn
The Bear
The Old Manor
The Swan
The Anglers

Each of these pubs are 2 minutes walk from each other.

This arrow in this Google Maps link is pointing at my house.

To do the above pubs you turn right out of my house onto Church Street (where the Wetherspoons, the Working Mens Club a chinese, a chippy, a kebab van, a pizza place and a curry house can also be found), then along to Bridge Street (home of the George and the Bear) and then back onto Manor Road for the Old Manor, the Swan and the Anglers.

Would any of you gentlemen care to join me? I'm thinking Saturday the 3rd or the 10th Feb.

I've just had an email from Alex James off of Blur

I don't get emails from millionaire pop stars every day, so I thought I'd share....

Last week I interviewed Alex James off of Blur about some VH1 thing, and it went reasonably well. He was, as you might expect, a very nice man. Afterwards I asked if he was still involved in Britain's Space Programme and he told me he was speaking at some conference in December and gave me his email address. So I emailed him and this is what I got in response:

Hello,

enjoyed talking to you.

I'm speaking at the Appleton Space Conference at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire on Dec 6th.

The RAL is Europe's largest space research facility. It is to space science what Willy Wonka's chocolate factory was to confectionary. They have the world's most powerful laser, a vast particle accelerator, all kinds of crazy stuff.

The Appleton Conference is an annual round-up of what's up. It was excellent last year. I particularly remember a very clever man saying he wanted to land a balloon on the surface of one of Saturn's moons, and no one thought he was mad. In fact we all clapped.

There's lots of ideas flying around. Space is a faster growing economic sector than China.

I've attached the programme. I do hope you decide to come. It's a surreal day out.

All the best,

Alex

1) I always suspected Alex could be our Greatest Living Englishman.
2) Does anyone else think he could write for helenandjo?

Blogmania!

They're all at it! Blogging that is. If you're a 'rak like me, or just interested in life, there's some fascinating stuff out there.

Here's the chain of events.
I had been recommended the excellent Martin Kelner's Piss Poor Podcast; and on it, he mentioned John Baish's blog, which was odd as he (JB, not Kelner) phoned me about ten minutes later.
ANYWAY...
If you're interested in the behind the scenes workings of the BBC, JB's blog had a fascinating link to the BBC's Director of Global News (great job title!) Richard Sambrook's personal blog.
Bear with me.
This reminded me that I hadn't read the BBC Editors' blog for a while, and stumbled across a posting by Radio 1 Newsbeat editor, Rod McKenzie. I thought he might have some interesting things to say that I could steal for the RED (formerly URE) student radio training session. This could make me appear as though I have deep insights into what "da kidz" want from their news.
Instead I found Rod - the big news cheese, head honcho of fact - calling Nick Wallis "a perfect gent and a top reporter" and describing a hilarious Wallis-esque encounter with Halle Berry.
Read it here.

PS: Separately, Matt Deegan correctly suggests that Chris Evans' BBC blog is *much* better than you might expect - a great example of actually sharing a little bit of yourself with the listener...

No need to go outside to your pub shed anymore...

One for all the Pub Guide widows, this. What to get your pub-anorak husband/boyfriend for Christmas.

A pub in your kitchen

Beer. On draught. Actually in your house. Admittedly it looks like you're restricted to Carlsberg Export, but it's beer! On draught! Just like in a pub!

Go get one!

Challenge Will, or Will as it may be called after this

Challenge Will - Oxford Tube has a problem. In fact, let's not kid ourselves. It has more than one problem:

1)The one thing I have to do organisationally and see if the Oxford Tube coach services does a day ticket. This once seemed likely (that they do a day ticket), but a recent anecdotal conversation suggested they may not.

Their number 01865 772250 was once a 24/7 line. I called it about a year ago and it wasn't any longer. It is now office hours only. I keep meaning to call back.

2) It's a fucking tedious way to get drunk.

We will have to meet in London, get on a bus, get off a bus, tramp to a pub, wait for another bus, get on another bus, get off, walk, etc, ad inifinitum.

I said to Nic that we could just meet up at Victoria, have a pint and then go to Oxford and have a gentle stroll around the beautiful pubs in the city centre. But then she pointed out that it wasn't much of a challenge and should therefore be just called Will.

My feeling was to wonder why on earth we'd bother going to Oxford - which involves at least three hours travelling (ie not drinking) and sitting on a coach, when there are plenty of lovely undiscovered pubs much closer to home.

I suggest the Challenge Will is us meeting up on Saturday 9 December. Where and how can be debated nearer the time. This has all the advantages of us meeting up and going for a drink, with none of the disadvantages, to which we can add nice pubs, less travelling and more people. Might be a nice Christmassy thing and still, given how busy and distant we all are, represents something of a challenge.

SO. WILL. ALASTAIR. ANYONE ELSE. ARE YOU UP FOR THIS CHALLENGE?

The Walton-on-Thames Wallises

First Willesden, then Weybridge, now we have become of Walton-on-Thames.

The first thing I want to know is why we are Walton-ON-Thames and them down the river is Kingston-UPON-Thames. And Newcastle-UPON-Tyne etc. What are they so "up" about?

When i can be arsed to shaked off my cold, go outside with a camera, take a photo, plug the camera into the computer and go through the endless palaver of uploading it, I will post an image of Wallis Manor here:

Just you see if I don't. Or if by the time you read this, I already have, then truly I am a man of my word (I have now put a photo up and I would like to reassure anyone reading this that our house does have a roof - it just appears to be invisible in this photo).

Assuming the photo isn't there yet I will attempt to describe its sprawling magnificence to you. Though of course, mere words won't come close to recreating the extraordinary tinge of yellow in the paint which the previous owners saw fit to splash liberally throughout the dining room.

Previous owners please note: I'm exaggerating for comic effect. It's a lovely yellow.

Annyroad. It's a 3 bed "Victorian" semi. Victorian is in quotes because no one, including the previous owners, estate agents or lawyers, seem to know how old it is. This is odd because people seem to set quite a lot of store by a house's age when it comes to getting mortgages approved and all, when actually it doesn't matter at all.

What does matter is whether it's in imminent danger of falling down or not, which modern surveyors are almost pathologically reluctant to investigate. Any surveyors' report I've seen tends to take the view that yes, from a distance it's almost certainly a house (this assertion is advisory only in no way submissable in court).

And they didn't want to look too closely in case they uncovered something really nasty.

So yes, we're here, and we're in, hoping not to breathe out too loudly in case mortgage rates go up again.

The increased space for Amy's benefit means that her mother is now taken away from her 3 days a week so that we can earn the money to pay for it. Now if she were 13, this would be the perfect arrangement, but at the moment she is still expresses a quiet mixture of bewilderment and heartbreak when we drop her off. She also becomes overwhelmed with joy and happiness when we return. The start of some long-term deep-seated psychological damage or "character building"? There is often very little difference between the two.

That apart, things are going well. There's a CAMRA-style pub walk (ie 4 pubs on a half mile loop) which starts quite literally on my doorstep. If you turn right you start at a High Street Wetherspoons and get progressively classier until you end up at the Anglers (see WPG passim). If you turn right you end up at the Wetherspoons, but have the added attraction of being within slowly revolving distance of a curry house, a chinese takeaway and the worlds dodgiest looking kebab van (apart from the one that turns up around 8pm on St Giles in Oxford. And the weird one that hangs out outside the Waitrose in Weybridge High Street). Mmm. Gourmet cuisine.

I think I've blethered on enough. But now I've managed to get married, become a father and move house within two short years, can we finally set a date for the Oxford Tube Will's Challenge? Will?