Biking in Ipswich

I've become quite adept at bicycling in Ipswich. Now it's so familiar that if I'm not paying attention I can miss a turn and continue on a well-known route, like I used to do elsewhere.

It only took me a day or two to get comfortable riding on the left side of the road. With help from the Ipswich cycling map (PDF, 298 kb), I found routes that can get me to the train station and the city centre using almost completely bike-friendly roads - either with a dedicated bike lane, or low-traffic streets designated for bike use. And I used to ride the ramps to the tunnels underneath a major traffic circle, but now I ride in the circle.

Unfortunately, coming from Portland, I'm spoiled in terms of cycling routes. As you can see on the map, there are lots of miles of routes, but they aren't as well-connected as I'm used to - in Portland, you're rarely more than a few blocks from a bike route, and they're connected well enough to form a network, allowing travel from nearly any part of the city to any other part.

I'm much less likely to ride on an arterial here than I would be in the States. The roads are narrower, and there's no street parking on busy roads, so cyclists are pinned between fast-moving traffic and the sidewalk.

I do wear a helmet and gloves, but most riders I've observed don't. And like I mentioned before, most riders don't change clothes to ride, and I usually don't either. The only other kit I've got is a bike pump and lights - no panniers, tools, no rain pants. Since I have to walk my bike through our flat, and since I don't have complete wet-weather gear, when it rains, I don't ride. But fortunately, the weather has been much more accommodating lately.

The Type of England

If the UK had a national typeface, it would be Gill Sans. You see it everywhere.

A Band Name That's Cracking Me Up

We Work At Tesco¹, But We're Well² Gangsta, Innit?³

(For the benefit of our non-UK readers ...)

1 - A ubiquitous UK supermarket chain: www.tesco.com

2 - Similar to "very"

3 - "Isn't it": added to the end of a sentence, gives extra emphasis

Invisible Poo

You know what I mean? When it kind of swims down the bowl and ends up past the part you can see? Sarah had one recently. "Dad!" she shouted. "I had an invisible poo!" She told me how she'd felt it go out, but couldn't see it. She even showed me. Sure enough, I didn't see it either.

I tried to explain that it was still there and just past the part you can see, but I think she was convinced. It's interesting how easily kids will accept the magical explanation.

When I had one in the office not long ago, I immediately thought, "invisible poo!" and now I probably always will whenever it happens again.

Black Celebration

It's the end of a black week. We're glad it's past.

First, there was the weather. The week before we were just getting used to shirtsleeves Spring weather. Last week? Cold. Arctic cold. Perhaps the coldest it's been all winter. There was concern for the trees and flowers which had just started to bloom. And we got more snow than all winter also. I had to take taxis to the station all week - it was either snowing or raining or threatening to. I wore a scarf again. Today it's sunny and shirtsleeves weather once again.

Margo was on duty last week. Every fourth week she's on duty, which means that, in addition to her normal caseload, she is also on call to handle incoming cases. For us, this means she'll probably be home late a few nights, and that Margo will be extra stressed.

The week before last, we got a forwarded letter from the Canadian Immigration Centre in Buffalo, New York informing us that our immigration application would be closed if they didn't receive our medical exam results soon. But we'd had our medical exams in November and were assured the results would be sent to them. Panic! The week before I called the medical centre where we had our exams and received the name of the medical courier who picked up the results, plus a tracking number. I then called the courier and was told the name of the person who signed for them at the Canadian High Commission.

On Monday morning I tubed to the Canadian High Commission on Grosvenor Street in Mayfair. I couldn't meet with anyone as they no longer process requests in person, so I had to fill out a form and wait for a response within two days. I did get a phone call two days later confirming that our exam results had been received and forwarded on to the Buffalo office.

What to do? We don't want to see our application closed over events outside our control. This kept me on edge much of the week. I typed all this up in an email to the Buffalo office. (No phone numbers are available - the only way to contact is via post or email.) Days later I got a response that they would look into it. I feel I can relax about that now.

Margo got a nasty cold the week before last, spending several days home. I picked it up last week after trying to avoid it. It wasn't bad, but it's no fun to realise you'll be feeling awful for at least a week and there's not much you can do about it.

We also ended weeks of struggle in determining how to report our foreign earnings with our US tax return. We use online tax software, and when we tried to report foreign income, it kept shunting us to forms where we'd have to choose an income exclusion type. We haven't lived overseas long enough to qualify for the exclusion, so we couldn't claim it, but didn't know how else to report it. We tried setting it up as W-2 income, even setting up substitute W-2 forms, but they were considered errors by the software as we could not give a value for the federal employer ID numbers. Finally, after some online research, I found there was another way to add foreign income in the software, but doing so largely wiped out our refund amount. Margo did more research and found where we can enter the tax we paid in the UK as a deduction, bringing much of our refund back. We e-filed this morning, so it's good to have that finished too.

Fortunately I had some excellent Italian red left over from the Mothers' Day meal I'd made last weekend (it's celebrated earlier in the UK) so we were able to celebrate the week's end properly last night.

Red Nose Day

Today is Red Nose Day. It's a fundraiser for worldwide poverty, but mostly in Africa. I'm watching "The Big One" Comic Relief special on BBC One as I type. Already 2.5 million pounds have been raised. And this happens every year.

I've seen Live Aid and Live 8 on DVD, and I'm quite happy to see something similar in real time. Tonight's show is seven hours of comedy with Catherine Tate, Ricky Gervais, Dawn French, Sting, Ant and Dec, Mitchell and Webb, Billy Connolly, Sugababes and Girls Aloud, Rowan Atkinson, Russell Brand, Little Britain, and lots more.

We bought a red nose for Sarah from Oxfam and she wore it at school today along with lots of other kids. The proceeds went to the charity.

I think it's so great when events like this take place to focus peoples' attention to worthy causes by bringing together lots of talented performers, and it's great to take part in it as it happens.

Office News

I probably didn't mention the purchase of my employer. I was hired by the GraphData Corporation (GDC) of London, makers of geographical information software, largely for UK government councils. GDC has been privately owned by a few of its principals throughout its 20-some year history.

Last month GDC was sold to the MapInfo Corporation of Troy, New York. Just my luck to be working for a UK company just to be bought by Yanks. MapInfo is a worldwide leader in location intelligence, and GDC had been a strategic partner of MapInfo for 17 years. Acquisitions had been floated long before, but GDC staff had been reluctant to sell because they didn't trust the leadership at MapInfo. A recent reorganisation at MapInfo quelled those fears and allowed the deal to proceed.

Today we learned that the MapInfo Corporation was purchased by the Pitney Bowes Corporation of Stamford, Connecticut. The big fish eat the little ones.

MapInfo makes sense, but a maker of postal machinery? Will we start writing postage software? From what I've been told, the company is cash-rich and was looking to make some good investments. The message, as always in a takeover, is "business as usual". I was skeptical of the company at first, thinking how embarrassed I'd be to answer, "Where do you work?" But after doing some dirt-digging, it seems they're in the top half of the Fortune 500, are in the 100 best companies to work for, they have a good record in business ethics, human rights, and the environment, and seem to take a genuine interst in their employees' welfare. I tried to get some dirt on the company's CEO, and it turns out he's been the president of the National Urban League, and the closest I could get to a political affiliation was a $2000 donation in the 2004 presidential election to Joe Lieberman. So maybe it's not so bad.

In other office news ... have you ever worked in a condemned building? It's an interesting experience. Things break, and if they aren't essential, they don't get fixed. Things like blinds. Bathroom tiles. Windows stay dirty. We still get cleaning service, but you can see the writing on the wall. With the last merger, we were assured of getting even swankier offices - the office across the street deemed not good enough to be the site of MapInfo London. Now with a multibillion dollar company owning us, our next office might be that much nicer.

And I haven't told you about the first floor. Every morning around 8 am there's loud techno music accompanied by whoops. If you look down into the windows you'll see a bunch of people in suits (high street suits, sometimes with black trainers, and white socks) rallying themselves. You might wonder what kind of work requires a daily rally. That work would be marketing. Street marketing, I guess. Door to door selling. Of stuff. I don't know what kind of stuff, but I've heard it's mostly useless stuff.

I'm the first one in the office so I get to unlock the doors and disarm the alarm. Thursday and Friday mornings there's often a truck parked in front and a chain of people passing boxes through the doors into a beeping held-open-too-long elevator. Sometimes I go out for coffee and pass quickie interviews in the stairwell. There must be a high turnover. And each morning all these young men and women in cheap suits, often minorities, haul their wheeled zip-up bags onto the sidewalk and go out and try to sell this stuff. Sometimes we hear the whooping and are drawn to the windows and we wonder aloud what it must be like to work down there, and are grateful to have our skills and jobs.

Sarah Reads and Swims

We've wanted to see Sarah read and swim and she's making progress on both fronts.

This week at Sarah's school there have been progress reports. I met with Sarah's teachers yesterday. They were quite positive and had no problems to report. Sarah is making progress in reading, trying several strategies when speaking unfamiliar words, and she's doing well with maths. Her word scores have improved 300% since she was first measured.

Her class keeps reading logs, and we as parents need to keep better track of the reading she's doing at home. Sarah's handwriting also needs practice. She still writes in all capital letters and occasionally some letters and numbers are reversed.

Sarah can now read books mostly by herself with a little help, provided they're simple books - a few lines per page and simple enough words.

We're happy with her progress and we look forward to the day when she is reading by herself. This is mostly for selfish reasons as our favourite pasttime is lying about and reading and trying to keep Sarah from pestering us, so when she's reading on her own, we can all hang out more harmoniously ;) .

Sarah's had slower progress with swimming. When we moved to Ipswich, we signed her up for a "ducklings" course for first-time swimmers. She's on her fourth ducklings course now. For quite a while, she would avoid getting her face wet. I did some work with her in the pool getting her face wet by degrees, but we saw a complete change recently. Now she gleefully dunks her head in and fans about in the water. But her next challenge is to get her feet off the bottom of the pool. Sometimes she can get her body mostly horizontal, but often it's her torso flat, then legs going straight down. And then she needs to regulate her breathing so she can travel further than a single breath ... but that will come soon enough.

Menswear

I bought a pink shirt today (well, pink and white checks really) and I realised I hadn't written about menswear much at all.

You see, I've had to put some serious thought into what to wear. I didn't bring many clothes with me - just the ones in my suitcase plus one box (unlike Margo - but then the relationship between women and clothes is a well known condition that I needn't get into here). I knew I couldn't keep wearing what I used to wear to work. Rugby shirts can only go so far in life.

When I was interviewing, things were still pretty easy: I had my black suit. I even had a blue shirt with a spread collar. But once I got hired I had to figure out what to wear, and fast.

I did a bit of experimenting my first week or so. I wore my suit trousers. I wore a belt. And I wore some things that I've since observed aren't worn very often. Like chinos. I almost never see those Dockers-style trousers - no tan, no olive, no black. Button-down Oxford shirts are rare. I brought one dark blue twill shirt - I've never seen its like.

In those first days and weeks I combined all my prior analysis and current observations and did my calculations and arrived at a basic wardrobe.

I started with a few shirts from one of the high street shops, Moss. They don't sell their own branded shirts like lots of the department stores do, but instead resell brands like Hugo Boss and Yves Saint Laurent at a decently low price (£20 - 40). They all have spread collars - it seems impossible to buy a collar with corners at less than a 90° angle. I also got a 3/4 length wool overcoat in black. I even wear it on weekends so I can walk around with my hands in my pockets looking moody and English.

There are lots of Gaps here, so that's where I got my trousers. Every day at work I'm wearing either dark blue or black jeans (or, rather, "pressed denims"). Faded jeans are too casual. And I'm still not into wearing suit trousers every day - maybe I don't feel old enough ...

I also wear my black leather jacket on occasion, and now that it's warming, I wear my black three-button jacket. I'd bought that in Portland in anticipation of two years in Europe, and thinking that men wear jackets everywhere. (As it turns out, lots of men do, especially older men.) Not a suit jacket - mine is thicker, in corduroy, something you wear to actually keep you warm but still look smart in. And I considered tweed, but black goes with everything.

I knew I'd have to update my shoes for the office. The first few weeks I wore the black made-in-England Clarks that I brought over, which I'd bought about ten years ago in Olympia and which have worn like, well, leather. They're now a bit scuffed and just starting to wear in the soles, so they probably won't return to North America, but they were too casual for the office: I needed shiny shoes. Fortunately Clarks shops are all over - they're like the McDonalds of shoes here. I went to one of the two in downtown Ipswich and ended up with a pair of black loafers (definitely Old Guy shoes) for just £30.

So if you've been paying attention, I've got shoes, trousers, and outerwear sorted. That just leaves shirts. And shirts is where there's so much delicious choice here.

I am learning to dig nice shirts. I think my taste is getting better too. I was digging French cuffs before coming here, and they're pretty common in shirts here, especially in solid colours. I brought my silver cufflinks and Margo got me a pair of glassy blue ones for Christmas. And now and then, reading the paper on the train, I'll glance down and see that classy, manly, so-smart combination of jacket sleeve, shirtsleeve with cufflink, and watch, and think to myself, Yeah.

Shirts don't have pockets here. They have at least spread collars. Some are cut back even more - I recently got some with extra-high collars that just about brush my ears when I wear them, with two buttons at the collar, and those collars are swept back like the air intakes on an F-15.

Shirts can be solid, but also checked, and striped, and striped with different widths. And you can have any colours you like, almost. A man can wear pink or purple or yellow without people assuming he's gay. And some of the colour combinations are so fun.

I've got a functioning wardrobe of shirts now, enough to go about a week and a half without needing to do laundry. The downside is that I have to iron shirts almost every weekend.

My first few were from high street shops in Ipswich. Three from Moss before starting work, then one each from Debenhams and Marks & Spencer. But then one of the Jermyn Street tailors had a sale, where shirts normally priced at £75 - 100 go on sale for £25 - 30, and I haven't gone back. These are seriously nice shirts. They're extra-thick, often double. The stitching is noticeably nicer. And it's almost assumed that they'll be all-cotton, whereas it's not uncommon that high street shirts will have polyester and other manmade fibres added.

I know you can wear a shirt untucked but I haven't figured out the rules yet. I know I could get away with it going to a nightclub (fat chance of that happening) or if I were onstage in a band like Razorlight (not exactly part of my career path) but probably not at the office. But I've done it on weekends.

I've learned I don't have to change my wardrobe for bike commuting - I just slip on my reflective vest, don my gloves and helmet, and put on my ankle clip. Most cyclists here don't wear anything special, including a helmet.

Also, I've been flirting with growing my hair out. I thought, if the prime minister can have long hair, so can I. Well, my hair has started curling at the back and sides a bit, and it's gotten to be about as long as Tony's before my last trim. I'll probably cut it back to spikiness with the warming weather, but it's a fun lark for now.

Weekends

We've hit a pretty comfortable (and predictable) pattern with our weekends when we're not travelling, which is most of the time.

Saturdays we get up sort of early to get ready for Sarah's swimming class at 9:30. We drive downtown to the Crown Pools. I usually cross the road to get the Saturday Guardian and maybe some coffees. After class, I usually stay downtown and do a bit of walking and browsing on the high streets while Margo and Sarah may go grocery shopping or head home. I'll take the bus or walk home.

If Sarah's been invited to any birthday parties, they'll be on a Saturday for about two hours surrounding noon. In the afternoon, there might be a good family movie on one of the BBC channels, or maybe Sarah and I will kick a football around in the yard in good weather.

On Sundays I'm usually up before the others so I'll walk to the corner shop and get the Sunday Times before it closes at noon. Margo usually makes us pancakes with golden syrup, based on honey instead of maple. Once we're well fed and I've finished washing the dishes, we gear up for our housecleaning chores. Margo cleans the bathroom; I vacuum and mop the floors; and Sarah cleans her room (a massive undertaking, to go by Sarah's resistance) and she often helps in the bathroom by scrubbing the tub, for which we pay her one pound each time.

Depending on the weather and our whims, we may lounge around reading the newspaper, or go on a road trip someplace nearby, or other activities. Many Sunday afternoons, if I'm downtown, I might find myself inexplicably in The Dove with a pint in front of me. If I'm home, I'll often have a pint or two with some snacks - crisps, peanuts, mixes. There's a TV series here named "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" and that's a pretty simple definition of happiness for me, especially on Sunday afternoons.

Margo likes to make a roast on Sundays - the Sunday Roast is an English tradition, and many pubs will serve it. After dishes, there might be something good on the telly, and that's our weekend pretty much sorted.

Spring?

All week I've been wearing my wool overcoat, and today - shirtsleeves weather! I actually worked up a bit of sweat cleaning windows. It's about 16° C and everything is different.

Sarah Goes Victorian

Sarah's Victorian costume for school today ... can you not see the joy she is feeling? Her love for looking ancient and girly?

Weekend in Norfolk

Margo planned a bed-and-breakfast weekend for us in King's Lynn in the Norfolk area of East Anglia. If England looks like a bunny to you, we spent the weekend on the top of its bum.

On Friday Margo picked up Sarah and drove to King's Lynn. I took a train from London to Cambridge and another to King's Lynn, arriving in time for a late dinner consisting of a sandwich, crisps and a chocolate bar I picked up at a petrol station along the way to our bed and breakfast.

Our B & B cost a mere £20 per person per night, and it was just worth it - but no more. The establishment is a converted duplex. The interior has funky smells of cooking. Our rooms were wee. Margo and Sarah had a single bed each, and I had a single in the next room.

After breakfast the next morning, we drove to the town centre and walked about. Our first destination was the tourist information centre but it wasn't yet open, but we did walk a few steps past to the riverfront. This statue is of George Vancouver, he who charted much of the Pacific Northwest coastline. He was originally from King's Lynn.



We next sought out the Saturday Market that Margo had read about, only to find that it disappointingly consisted of a mere two stalls of fruit and veg. So we spent a while walking the high streets, visiting a few charity shops and Woolworths as Margo was on the hunt for materials for the Victorian costume that Sarah is expected to wear Monday. (These costumes are a contentious issue that I've encouraged Margo to post about separately.) Then we took a break in a coffee shop.





We returned to the car and drove northeast to the next town of Hunstanton, which was right on the coast. (We also passed near Sandringham, the Royal Family retreat.) Like many coastal towns, it has a boardwalk that we strolled a bit.







By now it was after lunch and we were getting hungry so we looked for a roadside restaurant where we could get lunch and pints. On a lark we chose the Caley Hall Hotel and were pleasantly surprised to dine on the finest pub food we've yet had in the UK: Margo had a lamb shank, I had a chicken-and-mozzarella ciabatta sandwich, and Sarah voluntarily chose pasta with tomato sauce, so we achieved the near-impossible feat of having a pub lunch with no fried ingredients. Only two taps though, and nothing interesting, so I settled for a bottle of Fuller's London Pride. But it was non-smoking, and the nearby sunny lounge, with leather chairs, bookshelves and board games, overlooking a large patio, was so inviting that we got brochures and would consider a future retreat there.

Since we'd dined as well as we could have expected for dinner, we decided to return to our room and relax and nap for a while. We later walked to a nearby pub for snacks and pints, but it wasn't worth writing about.

In the morning, we couldn't think of much reason to linger, and had laundry and cleaning to catch up on back in Ipswich, so we made our return.

Covent Garden

Last night I explored the Covent Garden area a bit. If you're visiting from the Northwest, Covent Garden will probably seem the most familiar. I saw two things I haven't seen before in the UK that had me missing the Northwest: a microbrewery and a large independent bookstore.

I began my tour by getting off the Central Line at Tottenham Court and walking the St. Giles High Street to the Seven Dials area. It's a city block where seven small shop-lined streets radiate out from a single point. I'd glimpsed it as our company's Christmas party was held at the Belgo Centraal restaurant here and I wanted to come back and explore it further.

The shops are overwhelming. It might have taken me hours to explore each of the streets; as it was I only walked a few. Unlike most high streets, these seemed to be almost entirely independent shops. In general, high streets in the UK are ruled by chain stores, sometimes with two or more instances of the same chain in different parts of the same street. So you can visit the high street in probably any city in the UK and you will see a Boots pharmacy, a Marks and Spencer department store, a WH Smith bookstore, several Starbucks, a McDonalds. So as you get to know the chain stores, seeing a new high street in a new city isn't overwhelming like seeing hundreds of unique independent shops is.

I walked past a window and saw a big aluminum beer tank with signage about a brewery around the corner and could not pass it up. As it turns out, I'd been there before - the establishment is a nightclub across the street from the Belgo, to which most of us had migrated after our Christmas party dinner. I didn't remember the tastiness of the beer on my previous visit due to the extenuating circumstances of several prior Belgian beers and spirits, but I very much enjoyed my pint of red this time.

Another link to the Northwest was provided by some American brands in the area: an Urban Outfitters store and a Sunglasses Hut. I also saw the Rough Trade record shop (their second, after their Notting Hill flagship) and stopped in but didn't buy anything (mostly because I didn't recognise most of it, and the organisation threw me off).

I'd decided to continue my evening in nearby Soho, and while crossing Charing Cross road I came across Foyles Bookshop. I almost walked past it, but was curious. Once inside, I realised with joy that I'd entered the first major independent bookstore I'd seen in the UK.

From the street you don't notice its five storeys. I couldn't avoid thinking of Powell's in comparison. When I found the computer books on the second floor I felt like weeping for joy. I hadn't realised how much I'd been missing a good bookstore. The chains like WH Smith and Waterstones stick a few Dummies books in the Business section; this was the real deal. I noticed there's a new title in the Martin Fowler Signature series on Refactoring to Patterns that I'll probably have to buy some day. It's like a movie sequel: you can imagine the voiceover: First there was Design Patterns ... then came Refactoring ... now there's Refactoring to Patterns.

I sated myself with the minor purchase of the latest issue of Mojo and continued my journey. I stopped into Sister Ray to look for a few CD titles and didn't find any; then it was on to Oxford Street to HMV's megastore, where I found one of the titles I was looking for, Frou Frou's Details, and decided to toss on a £5 copy of Junk Culture from Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark. Then I went Underground at Oxford Circus and headed home.