tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53780042009-10-04T09:44:28.586+02:00Wigan ExpressOne man's struggle to come to terms with leaving Wigan.Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-14981987334997700302007-09-14T10:51:00.000+02:002007-09-14T11:40:42.972+02:00So... no baby yet. If it's not here by Wednesday they're going to get the jump leads out I think. Isobel was induced, too - she came out at a whopping 4.2kg.Talking of Isobel, she's starting a dance class next week. Here in France nothing is simple, though. So when we signed her up for the year we didn't just hand over a cheque: we had to show her certificate of accident insurance (nobody likes Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-23893554079251184892007-09-12T15:15:00.000+02:002007-09-12T15:38:33.974+02:00So... what's been happening with me?Well, I'm still in Paris, and still in the same job (which is a bit of a record for me). I've moved out to the 'burbs though and bought an apartment in a nice leafy suburb. It's good to be out of the city and away from the tramps, the trannies and the dogshit. We used to live in an area that was cosmopolitan to say the least - so it'll be good not to be woken Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-27818492705485109052007-09-12T13:31:00.002+02:002007-09-12T13:38:17.637+02:00Crikey, it's been a long time. June 9th 2006 was the last time I posted here, so I thought I'd bring myself up to date a bit.Wigan Express started as a blog about six years ago now, right when having a blog was quite a hip thing to do (I notice while I'm writing this that the word 'blog' isn't recognised by the Firefox British English spellchecker). But I gave up when blogging was the big thing. Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1118321853795644282005-06-09T14:53:00.000+02:002005-06-09T14:57:33.800+02:00Things I am old enough to remember.Number One - TV1. Three channels2. No TV in the daytime apart from Pebble bloody Mill. I knew it was crap when I was four.3. The test card4. Waiting for the set to warm up5. No remote controls6. Programmes in black and white7. Announcements like 'John Inman is apprearing in Aladdin at the Octogon theatre, Bolton'8. Actors reading the news9. Ken and Deirdre Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1118181771279406862005-06-08T00:02:00.000+02:002005-06-08T00:02:51.283+02:00This is my new nephew, Alex. Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1118138168111357972005-06-07T11:54:00.000+02:002005-06-07T11:56:08.110+02:00But an even more exciting thing happened on Monday, when I became an uncle for the first time. Alex James Steed was born at 11.35 in England, weighing in at a healthy 4kg. Everyone is well, but tired.Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1118138092397949192005-06-07T11:45:00.000+02:002005-06-07T11:54:52.403+02:00Interesting day on Sunday, when we took a trip to the Champs Elysées for a look at the Champs Olympiques, which they did for the Paris 2012 Olympic bid.Basically, what they'd done was transform the whole avenue, from the Place de l'étoile down to below the Rond-Point, into an exhibition of all the Olympic Sports. the most spectacular thing was the running track they'd laid from Avene George V up Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1115977787276703122005-05-13T11:46:00.000+02:002005-05-13T11:49:47.276+02:00You wait ages for a post, then three come along at once.It seems Wigan is going to get its own version of Monopoly after it saw off (what must have been tough) competition from Bolton and Preston.Needless to say, we shall be buying our copy. After all, it'll teach Isobel both how to play Monopoly AND about the geography of the NorthWest's most depressing town. Actually thinking about it, that's Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1115977454469492572005-05-13T11:43:00.000+02:002005-05-13T11:44:14.740+02:00All those people wandering around Manchester carrying 'MUFC NOT FOR SALE' banners haven't quite grasped the idea of a public company, have they?Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1115977372139957552005-05-13T11:41:00.000+02:002005-05-13T11:42:52.146+02:00Well, it went for £67. I did quite well, actually. Two more have been up for sale, and the most either of them has gone for was £40. Wahey!You have to be careful with eBay though - it can take over your life.In other news, my nephew is imminent but not yet here.Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1115121448498713862005-05-03T13:56:00.000+02:002005-05-03T13:57:28.500+02:00Two days and three hours to go, and the mystery package is up to £31. I have a feeling it may go through the roof...Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1115023727064703412005-05-02T10:29:00.000+02:002005-05-02T10:48:47.066+02:00Gosh. No posts for six weeks.What's been happening? Not a lot, frankly. I've been working away, we went to Brittany for the weekend last weekend, and we had some friends over this weekend.One thing that's happened is that I was doing a bit of research into Internet games for one of my clients the other week, and found out about something called Perplex City - which is one of those big puzzle Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1110736914831924262005-03-13T19:01:00.000+01:002005-03-13T19:01:54.830+01:00Isobel's official birthday portrait... Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1110723482857300132005-03-13T15:18:00.000+01:002005-03-13T15:18:02.856+01:00Isobel's Third birthday today - and she wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower for a treat. As you can see, it was a little cold, but here we are looking out over towards where we live.Everything was going swimmingly first thing this morning. Isobel woke up about 7 as usual, and we gave her a new DVD my brother had sent to watch while we got a little bit of a lie-in. Then half an hour later or so she Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1110631029015996782005-03-12T13:37:00.000+01:002005-03-12T13:37:09.016+01:00The IOC were in town this week Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1109721598446710482005-03-02T00:59:00.000+01:002005-03-02T00:59:58.446+01:00Here's an interesting article from the BBC about school dinners. the section about France was written by someone I know!Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1109669048818320112005-03-01T10:11:00.000+01:002005-03-02T00:58:18.343+01:00My parents are here this weekend, so Samantha and I took advantage of a bit of free babysitting to go to the Louvre. It's not a place we could really take Isobel, and I feel a bit guilty for not having been there before.Well, as you can imagine it's huge - and we barely scratched the surface in the time we could decently take advantage of my folks' generosity. But being shallow philistines, we Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1109584154685618572005-02-28T10:48:00.001+01:002005-02-28T10:50:04.346+01:00Samantha and I have been together ten years this week. Which is nice.Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1108257009074941682005-02-13T02:08:00.000+01:002005-02-13T02:10:09.076+01:00When I was a kid, school dinners were school dinners. They consisted of meat pie (what sort of meat exactly was never really discussed), potatoes and vegetables that had been cooked with reference to a calendar rather than a kitchen timer. You ate what was in front of you, and if you were lucky there was some weird psychedelic dessert like blancmange, sponge pudding with pink custard or (and I Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1107768646224144662005-02-07T10:14:00.000+01:002005-02-10T23:28:43.713+01:00No smoke without fire
I have a theory that the cost of living, if you aggregate everything, is pretty much the same all over the world. Take the comparison between Singapore and Sweden, which are at two ends of the spectrum in terms of how their economies are run.
In Sweden, you pay a lot of tax - up to 50 or 60%. But that means healthcare is pretty much free, the transport network is very Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1107506092068291332005-02-04T09:32:00.000+01:002005-02-04T09:34:52.070+01:00Toilet Humour
This internal email was forwarded to me by a friend who'd better remain nameless. I think it speaks for itself:
We have the situation where someone deliberately blocked toilets in both of the Gents situated in the Office area of the factory, sometime between 2.00 and 2.30 pm this afternoon (Wednesday). If you heard a lot of "rustling" (as almost a complete roll of paper was Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1106574966295673802005-01-24T14:55:00.001+01:002005-01-24T14:56:06.296+01:00Bit of a trauma last night. We bought some new furniture at the weekend that necessitated me moving my PC. Not a problem, as it gave me a chance to take the system apart, dust everything down and untangle all the spaghetti at the back.
Everything went swimmingly, until I plugged everything back in and switched on the monitor. Not a sausage.
I eventually tracked the problem down. I’d plugged theJustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1106573825562814682005-01-24T14:36:00.000+01:002005-01-24T14:37:05.563+01:00Only in France
There was a bit of a commotion outside the office today. When I went to look, it turned out it was an office over the other side of the Avenue George V that is on strike, and the noise was the usual picket with megaphones and so on. This is France after all, so there was nothing unusual about that.
Except for one tiny thing. The office over the road is La Croix Rouge Française.
Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1106300642942368732005-01-21T10:38:00.000+01:002005-01-21T10:44:02.943+01:00As I think I may have written here before, I didn’t like living in Singapore much. After all, the country that gave us the merlion as a national symbol can’t really have too much going for it, now can it? And boy, is it humid. All the time.
In fact, apart from a few colleagues, the only thing I really miss about Singapore is the food, which was fantastic. Although I worked a long way out of townJustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5378004.post-1106129443077708992005-01-19T11:10:00.000+01:002005-01-19T11:10:43.076+01:00Yay! I can post pictures to my blog at last. here's one of Isobel wearing a crown she made at playgroup. Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07973817929300637389noreply@blogger.com0