Heathrow

I've always known Heathrow was either one of or the busiest airport/s in the World, and have often seen stacks of aircraft circling above each other, but never actually knew they had flight paths and stack locations like this...


I worked at Heathrow in Summer 1994 (building a car-park extension) and clearly remember being quite amazed at the miles-long line of flickering aircraft lights seemingly floating in the sky in a perfectly straight line rising slowly up into the distance. The planes would land at 50-60sec intervals.

It was quite exciting when the unmistakable roar of Concorde (much louder than all the other planes) could be heard at 11am for the flight to NY.

I got this whilst reading about the 777 that crash landed there yesterday. Thankfully (an quite amazingly!) nobody died.

Funnily enough, the co-pilot who actually landed the plane is called John Coward!

England in October?

Ice creams in a sunny Clapham Common in South London on the day we arrived.

Arizona? Nope - Teasles in Bedfordshire, England.
Nice blue sky, and a nice photo if I may say so myself!

Uncle Paul shows Lucas how to drive his "gay" (according to him) Audi convertible.

Me driving the said gay car.

Cool dude Lucas chillin' in an S-class on the way to Auntie Vicky's wedding

Hey! - This is the place we see on TV on a Saturday night!
Yep - it's Craven Cottage, home to Fulham FC.
As you can see, Lucas was pretty excited.

Fulham 0 - 2 Portsmouth.
2 goals scored right in front of us, and I even had the chance to catch the ball
after an off-target shot, but the guy in front of me stood up and got it - damn!

England Here We Come

I'm counting down to my trip to England with Lucas on Saturday night. Shame Jackie can't come as she has to look after her Dad who fell ill recently. I'm really looking forward to...

• catching up with my best pal Paul (and Sam the missus) and drinking the keg of Warsteiner he's hoarding in his house, taking Lucas to Woburn Zoo,
• going to see Fulham v Portsmouth on 7th October,
• going to London (a great city),
• going for some 10-15km runs around Clifton,
• forgetting about work,
• a change of scenery,
  
• not becoming sweaty within 10 minutes of a shower,
• shopping for stuff you can't get in Malaysia (which isn't much I must say) and...
  
• last but not least...spending some time with Mum, Gran
• and of course Vicky's wedding...but I'm not particularly looking forward to the speech!

The planned running is my way of getting back into training. I have done zero training since Ironman 70.3 Singapore. Soon I'll have a new "winter/spring" training plan put together once I've thought about my targets for 2008.

Snow

...continuing the Winter theme...here's my Mum's back garden and surroundings (last week).......

Snowdrops

For those of us lucky enough to spend "Winter" in SE Asia, here's a taste of England in February. These are photos of Snowdrops in the unusually-named village of Mogerhanger, Bedfordshire, SE England (just up the road from where I lived) - the first flowers of the year.


Nice bit of moss on this tree! - reminds me of a warm and comfortable night spent in a bivouac I made with some Scout chums in Central Scotland many years ago. We lined the floor with strips of thick moss that we tore from the forest floor...