We had a bit of an incident on my latest whitewater kayaking trip. As always we’ve got a trip report on the canoe club website. Normally these are not so interesting, if you’re not into kayaking, but I wrote the trip report for last weekend’s trip to the river Dart, and this time you may be interested to read about a helicopter rescue! (twas very exciting)

It’s like a snowman… only made of rice

When I’m shaving in the morning, a strange reverse psychological phonomenon often ocurrs.

“I’m running late…” I think to myself (most mornings I’m running late)

“…so I’ll get this shaving done quickly.”

“Now how can I optimise the process of shaving off all this stubble, so that I don’t miss any bits, but also I don’t go over the same patch unnecessarily thoroughly”

So then I concentrate on the shaving process, carefully planning the path which my electric shaver must take across my chin to achieve this fine balance. I don’t want to leave any patches of stubble, or individual hairs which will later irritate me throughout the day, but at the same time I don’t want to waste any time shaving too thoroughly. I repeatedly feel my chin to see if I’ve smoothed it off sufficiently in all areas. …and the whole process takes a minute or two.

Now the funny thing is… other mornings I don’t think about shaving at all. I just do it. Maybe because I’m too zonked out to think, or maybe because I’m not in hurry. Either way, I always manage to shave much more quickly, when I don’t think about how to do it quickly.

I’ve proved this to myself over and over again, and it annoys the hell out of me.

Just now I was all psyched up to finish work early and go catch at train to the airport. I go to printout my flight details, and there it is in black n white. “25th Feb”. Could have sworn I asked for a flight booking on the 18th.

So I won’t be back in England till next week. I will have to ring my Brazilian lady friend and cancel our plans. I will have to email Tom and Mallinson and Peter and cancel the Saturday night pub plan. And I will have to go get drunk in Zurich instead.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

This weekend it seemed there was a shocking lack of Saturday night enthusiasm. Since I’d been away for a few months London had closed down into a depressed ’staying in on Saturday night’ state. The streets were empty. Tumbleweed blew across Leicester square. Big Ben’s bell chimed, but no-one was there to hear it. Realising I had left the city to fester for too long, I knew what I had to do…

I stepped out of my house and took a breath of cold London winter air. As I did so, the pissed tramp living in the park across the street started screaming with delight. “Harry! Harry’s going out tonight!”. Someone else whipped out a mobile and started calling people frantically. People saw me as I walked to the tube station, and as I reached it, the streets were packed with party people dressed for a Saturday night out. By the time I reached Picaddilly Circus, the Christmas lights had been turned back on, and every bar and pub was full with happy party goers; music and people spilling out into the street. The city’s fire had been re-kindled.

I resolved never to deprive the people of London of my presence for such a long time again. Especially that nice brazilian woman I met on the dancefloor.

I am watching the zero air temperature height line. Will it drop below the height of the Flumserberg ski lifts, by the time Clare and Beezly come to visit in a few weeks?

I’ve been working abroad for nearly a year now, and it’s come to my attention that I’m missing quite a lot of goings ons. My company has hired new people and people have quit. I got a new housemate, and then she left again. I’m now living with my little brother, except I’m not, because I’m only there about three or four days per month. It’s weird. Most upsetting of all, a year ago I could count the number of single women I knew on one hand. Now at least three of them have paired off with someone.

I’m in fairly regular contact with housemates, workmates, and canoe club mates electronically. And I fly back every now and then. But sometimes it feels like I’m struggling to maintain a tenous connection to my real life. Especially today, after three weeks here. But I’m off to the airport right now, in time for drinks with workmates in London tonight!

I just got back from a kayaking holiday in Canada. We took three posh businessmen’s hire cars and totally wrecked them, strapping kayaks to the rooves, and driving them up bumpy dusty logging roads on a 3 week trek around the rivers of British Columbia. The whitewater was excellent, and I got to see a wild bear, and I caught a salmon, and… and… and… the others didn’t want to eat my salmon because they said its face looked diseased, but I think that was just because I’d shoved it head first into the end of my kayak, so I ate it, and it was good.

Today in Upperthong the cloud base is at approximately 673 metres…
…acording to the Upperthong weather station

I get on my train back to Baden, on my way back from the end-of-season snowboarding weekend in Flumserberg. I have a ludicrously red sun-burnt face. Zurich Hauptbahnhof is bustling as ever, but this time there’s not so many skis and snowboards being carried around. Seems the Swiss dont bother much towards the end of the season.

On the platform there’s a guy with a moustache and a guy without a moustache. They stand there together, while everyone walks past. They have their arms around each other’s backs.

My impression of Switzerland so far has been based on the family-oriented church-going communities around Baden. I’m imagining Swiss society to be a little backward with regard to homosexuality, so I’m a little surprised to see these blokes in a homosexual embrace in such a public place. But then again, Zurich is a big city, and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see it in London.

A middle-aged woman is sitting near me. She’s chubby and has a motherly look about her, which seems to be typically Swiss. She’s like every other family-oriented church-going Swiss woman I’ve seen living around Baden. She stares at the man with the moustache, and the man without a moustache. I am imagining it is a disapproving stare.

But the train starts to move. She waves to them. She presses her face to the window, and continues to wave until they are out of site, and then she slumps in her seat and is obviously trying hard not to cry.

…weird