This may be the beginning of a goodbye...

...from West London.

I have just accepted an offer on my flat in West London and, whilst I know not to count my chickens until the deal is done, it could mean the end of life there - at least for a while. I'll be looking to buy a house in Brighton, and then the plan is for my partner to buy a small pied-a-terre back in town.

Of course, this is also the beginnig of what we are told is one of the most stressful possible life events, so also watch out for the odd frustrated blog!!

Train vs Plane

My partner and I recently went to Limoges (in France) for the wedding of some good friends of ours from London. When we got the invitation, one of the first questions was (of course) how to get there. We don't have a car, so driving was out: apart from the cost of car hire, the thought of driving 800-odd miles on a week-end - and the August Bank Holiday in the UK to boot - was just too much.

That left public transport. A quick bit of research showed that the options were to fly with either Ryanair from Stansted, bmi from Southampton, or take the train all the way.

A check on the dates proved that bmi was going to be too expensive, so that ruled them out. Ryanair started well enough with the low initial fare, but of course - as anyone who has used their website will know - the add-ons creep up pretty quickly. Because we would have to take check-in luggage (I suppose you could get a man's suit in hand luggage, but you really don't the French laughing at the sartorial faux pas of wearing anything so crumpled), we would have to pay the fees for checking in the luggage and, if you do that, no-one in the party can check in on-line, so adding the cost of boarding passes for each person for each leg of the flight. Add in taxes and the booking fee, and the whole thing rapidly soared over the £200 mark. And, of course, for us there's the cost of getting to Stansted to add in, not to mention the horrible thought of going anywhere near Stansted Airport on the Bank Holiday.

So we went for the rail option: £79 returns on Eurostar, and £40 return on the French leg from Paris to Limoges (astonishing value for a 600-mile round trip on SNCF). It worked out about the same as Ryanair on cost but, although although it was longer, the trains are pretty comfy and you get to watch the scenery flash by. And 7 hours actually compares favourably with air by the time you add in getting to the airport and allowing for check-in time.

And the result? Well, the journey there was bliss. We had an early start - checking in at St Pancras at 6.45am - but there were no queues, the new terminal seems to run very smoothly, and we slept all the way to Paris. The Gare du Nord is not my favourite corner of Paris, but we still reached Austerlitz station in less than half an hour on the metro. From there, the Corail Teoz service - TGVs don't operate this route - was a lesson in civilized travel. Bags of leg room, bags of luggage space, reclining seats in Second Class, and perfect conditions for yet more sleep. Arrival at the very impressive Gare de Benedictins (above) was the perfect end to the journey.

The return leg was pretty good as well, except Gare du Nord Eurostar terminal needs some pretty major expansion to cope with Bank Holiday crowds. Still, all in all it made for a very civilized week-end.

Oh, and the wedding went pretty well, too...

A close encounter with a seagull

Picture: courtesy of freenature.com

Last week I was on my way to Brighton railway station, to catch a train to Newhaven, when I was attacked by a seagull.

Inevitably, everyone that I spoke to found this incredibly funny, but I was left rather shaken by the event. I was simply walking along a street of terraced houses in Brighton when I received a hard 'thud' to the back of my head, followed by much cawing from a specific seagull. When I put my hand up to rub the spot, my hand came back covered in blood, so I can only presume the gull's beak had dug in.

Apparently, this is not a particularly rare event. For a start, it's nesting season, so the gulls are particularly protective of the area around their nests. Secondly, Brighton has replaced kerbside collections of plastic bags and wheelie bins with large new communal bins. These, whilst controversial, have at least been effective in reducing the amount of food debris strewn around the place, which has dried up a major part of their food supply, so making the seagulls that bit more frantic.

And I for one shall certainly be wearing a hat when I walk along that street for the next few weeks...

A thought on celebrity...

With the news media dominated today by the news of Michael Jackson's death, it set me wondering about the modern appeal of celebrity.

Mr Jackson illustrated, perhaps more than most, the terrible price that fame can extract: a number of tributes have testified to his loneliness and how unhappy his childhood was. And all this hard on the heels of Susan Boyle's well-publicised strugles to cope with the surge of media attention after her appearance on "Britain's Got Talent".

Yet, still we seem obsessed with celebrity, whether deserved (as in Mr Jackson's case) or not (as in the case of the late Jade Goody). Perhaps now might be a time to ponder whether a focus on more important issues , more lasting pleasures, and hard-earned, real achievement would be a good thing for our society?

Barcelona's new airport terminal

Barcelona's shiny new airport terminal opened this week, and very impressive it is, too. Shaped like a futuristic plane (rather resembling something out of Star Wars, I recall), it is beautifully finished inside and out, and the Catalans are justly proud of the this new addition to their infrastructure.

The departures area is particularly spacious and airy, with an enormous shopping zone called the 'Sky Centre' - the complex overall boasts 73 shops and 43 bars and restaurants. The only downer for now is that the train and metro links will not be completed for a few years yet, necessitating a change onto a shuttle bus from the railway station at the old terminal.

But that may sound a little grudging, particularly as it succeeded in handling 35,000 passengers and 250 flights on its opening day without a hitch - in rather sharp contrast to the fiasco of Heathrow's T5 opening: an achievement which leaves me wondering why it is that major projects in the UK always seem to be beset with teething troubles...

Epitaphs

A visit to the churchyard where my partner's ancestors are buried brought home to me the lost art of writing epitaphs. Some time around the late 18th century we seem to have lost the art - or the confidence - to write interesting epitaphs which are not either hopelessly mawkish or sentimental. Two of my favourites - both from Sussex churches read thus:

The first is to one John Parson, dated 1633, in West Tarring churchyard. It carries a short, deftly informative but painfully evocative verse:

Young was his age
Virginity his state
Learning his love
Consumption his fate

A more philosophical one can be found in the porch of St Nicholas' church in Poling: It is dedicated to Alice, the wife of Robert Woolldridge, who died on 27th May 1740, aged 44 years. It has a wonderful rhyme, and one which is not entirely inappropriate for our own celebrity- and wealth-obsessed times:

The World is a round thing
And full of crooked streets
Death is a market place
Where all Men meets
If Life was a thing
That money could buy
The Rich would live
And the Poor would dye

I wonder if you could get away with saying that, now?

Ideal Home time again

The walkway I use to and from the underground station at Earl's Court is constantly thronged by people, so I surmise the Ideal Home show must have arrived at Earl's Court exhibition centre. (That also helps explain the puzzle of why Ikea posters have appeared all over the station like a rash).

This year the whole thing seems a little subdued, however. I suppose an event so inherently built on the idea of property ownership is bound to have lost some of its glow, given the slide in house prices and the fact that it was the housing bubble that helped get us into the current mess.

Still, there still seem to be plenty of stalwarts intent on a good day out. The publicity promises a very different event from the ones I was dragged around when I was a child. Although the show homes are still there, the emphasis is as much on the outside as the inside these days, with gardening makeovers as popular as new gadgets (noticeably fewer of those emerging with the crowds, this year). And the visitors make good fodder for the rounds of TV programmes filmed in the exhibition - is it me, or is there something faintly ironic about going to look at an exhibition and then being filmed yourself?

Most interestingly of all, however, are the posters that I have finally noticed, promoting the sponsors, EDF. They are bright pink, and make quite a big thing about CO2 emissions and climate change. Now that's an encouraging sign of the times.