NOTHING MUCH

Little has happened since my last blog.As predicted the reply from National Express was pretty standard in that my side of the story has been pretty much discounted.I have written back saying that the reply received was not good enough ,and will see what transpires.
On the bell ringing front, we are making good progress and are confidently ringing on our own,next step will be following other bells and ringing the changes.
Woke up at 2.30am the other morning wondering where we should sit on the plane for our long flight to see Jonny in Aus in April,any suggestions please.
Had a open fire in the kitchen yesterday, and spent most of today clearing up.Most of the smoke came down the chimmney.Won't try that again in a hurry.
Thought of Jonny on Saturday when Bristo City drew 2.2 against Middlesborough at Ashton Gate.He would have been there I expect.
So thats all folks

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR PART 2

Lyn and I travelled down to London last Wednesday to see The Sound Of Music which Matt and Jonny had arranged for our anniversary and Lyns birthday.The deal was a night in The Strand Palace,pre Theatre meal and of course the show.We arranged our own transport down which was with National Express at £10.00 each return,bargain!!!!.All went well with our trip down.The Hotel was great as was the meal, and the show was awesome truly awesome.LesleyGarrett brought the house down and was for my money the star of the show,although Connie Fisher was not far behind.
The next morning dawned wet and extremely windy as had been forecast and it was quite a breezy trip to Victoria coach station for our 2hour 10min ride back to Thetford.At precisely 1.00pm our coach set off with 13 other souls and our driver John.Lyn and I settled back for the journey.Within a few minutes things started to go wrong as the Embankment was closed which resulted in a lengthy delay to get us back on track.I really didnt expect to see Big Ben twice in such a short period of time.We were now over an hour late.Approaching the M11 we could see the warning signs,and hoped they were referring to the M25 but no such luck the M11 was closed between junctions 6 and 10 so the driver decided to go on the M25 to take the A12,guess what that was closed,so back we come past the M11 to take the A10,guess what the slip road was closed,so we carry on to come off on the next exit to come back and approach the A10 from another angle ,via Enfield!!!!! .It is now 6.00pm and we are only about 12miles from where we started.After crawling through Enfield(NICE TOWN!!!!)we approach the A10 along with all the traffic in the South of England,guess what thats also closed.Now I have a pretty good sense of direction but I have no idea where we are.John our driver has during this time been trying to reach his office to tell them to send out a relief coach with driver as he is out of hours,guess what, no they are not closed but all he gets is a recorded message.He is now really pissed off especially as he was only driving for a favour to cover a driver off sick, and he is supposed to be taking his wife out to dinner,and now she has to get a take away instead.This mobile phone banter was quite interesting and we were all giving him advice as to handle the domestic situation which was developing.
Anyway back to the driving.We were somewhere near a place called Hertford near the A10 crawling along at a snails pace when John had a sudden rush of blood to the head and decided to turn round,now whether he had seen other drivers do this I have no idea,anyway he proceeded to cross the grass central reservation and promptly got stuck axle deep in mud straddling 4 lanes of road leaving only grass strips on each side for traffic to get round.Now I have never seen a 40foot 10wheeler stuck in such a position,but my reaction to his efforts would have brought the same reaction as that of a number of motorists "YOU F.......... WANKER"..All John said was I'm going to get nicked for this.Then he hatched a cunning plan for all us passengers to say that he had to swerve to avoid a reckless driver when the boys in blue turned up.Well it wasn't long before they arrived and I do believe he managed to convince them as to how he managed to avoid a nasty accident save the lives of all his passengers and prevent the coach from being written off.All the time this was going on the boys in blue were trying to keep the traffic moving,until they directed a huge artic to pass us,and yes that got stuck, so now we had one road down to a crawl and the other completely blocked,and by the way the police car had also broken down,his blue flashing lights were no more.But before long another had arrived and proceeded to organise a tow truck.We weren't allowed off as it was deemed too dangerous so we sat there continuing to watch the unfolding cabaret.Passing motorists from the other side were continuing to abuse anybody they could and offer advice to both police and John like" try pushing it you assholes"Have you ever tried pushing a 10ton monster axle deep in mud.Mind you I would have probably offered the same advice.Anyway to cut a long story short as this is becoming as long to write as our journey home took, the tow truck arrived and within minutes a team of highly skilled men soon had us all on our way.John had arranged a relief coach to come and pick us up, as he was by now definitely out of hours.It never turned up and after waiting for about 15 mins he decided to complete the journey himself.The rest of the trip was uneventful and we arrived at Thetford at 10..pm some 9 hours after starting out.John didn't get a tip and I don't care if he even got his takeaway.I have written to National Express, but not in such detail,and I don't expect to get a reply.
Thanks to Jonny Matt Kate and H for a super couple of days and to Lyn for keeping me warm at the back of the bus.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THIS IS YOUR CAPT..........

Should have finished "TAIN SPEAKING,WE ARE ABOUT TO CRASH BRACE ,BRACE,BRACE".but I did'nt have time as we went in from 500feet straight into the runway at Luton airport at about 200 knots.
Let me explain.Lyn for my 60th bought me a simulator experience on a 737-300,and yesterday was my day,so I found myself at Luton airport feeling pretty confident and a degree nervous prior to my take off slot of 11.00 zulu(sounds good but haven't a clue what it means) there were a couple of other novices on this shared experience together with our instructor,a young Ryanair 1st officer.He explained how the session would proceed in that we would each have 20mins in the left hand seat and 20 mins in the right with a futher 20mins in the jump seat.Now I have seen lots of pictures of flight decks and also caught glimpses when flying,but to actually sit in one is quite awesome,there are sooooo many switches and dials all in what is quite a confined space.There must have been at least 20knobs and levers just to get the seat feeling right.Anyway I managed to get in the left hand seat first which basically meant I would be flying it for the first 20mins.I say flying loosely as it was going to be the other way round and it was going to flying me !!!! The instructor set us up for a departure from Luton,and the it was time to release the parking brake (even that was difficult) and increase the power setting to a predetermined level and then we were off zigzagging down the runway,with all the feelings and noises of a real plane.The instructor called V1 and shortly after V2 Rotate so I pulled back,perhaps a little too hard as we shot off like a F16 in a near vertical climb all pinned to our seats until the inevitable happened we stalled with a loud chattering noise shortly followed by a violent automatic forward movement of the control stick,which shoved the nose down to get us out of the stall,which it did thankfully.Once we were in level flight it was relatively easy to keep the thing straight and level,basically you have to follow the Flight Director by keeoing a small square box right slap bang in the middle of the cross hairs of the Director and where that moves you move,always keeping the box in the middle.After a gentle turn to the left the instructor set me up on an 8 mile final into Luton ,and again all I had to do was to follow the Flight Director ,well on a landing it all seemed a lot harder trying to keep the box in the middle what with the flaps coming down as well as the landing gear,one mintue it was telling me to go up then down,it was very very hard to keep the thing straight and level.All this time I had not looked ahead once, as the instructor says even a brief look out can disorientate you. It felt just like a porpoise movement,and must have been terrible for the 150 souls in the back,but at 500ft I glanced out and saw this small stretch of tarmac coming up very fast with (Matt )2 reds and 2 whites so we were at the correct height and on the centre line.The next few seconds went very quickly before I heard 50, 40 , 30 ,retard retard 20,10 and then a bone crunching smack as we slammed into the runway,a quick dose of reverse thrust and hard on the brakes and we were down and stoped on the runway with no burst tyres but a few loose fillings.The next takeoff was better as I managed to follow the Flight Director much more accurately and we were soon established in a smooth climb to 5000ft before levelling off for another 8 mile final into Luton.This started ok but got worse and worse the nearer we got,I was putting in too many less than smooth inputs and the auto throttle was having difficulty in keeping up,and the porpoise motion got worse and worse,the more inputs I put in the more violent the reaction to the point where I couldn't follow the Director at all, and with 500ft to go I managed to nose dive it into the centre of the runway.At least we hit the runway,so we were straight.The next 20mins were spent in the Jump seat getting more and more queasy as my fellow trainees threw the thing all over the sky. For last 20 mins I was in the right hand seat doing the flaps, gear, height and heading so at least I had something to concentrate on and the sicky feeling soon went.The first attempt at landing by Shane(one of the Trainees) resulted in a go around as although we were still flying there was no way we were going to get down.The last and final attempt (despite super human efforts by our instructor with manic movements of the throttles ,and control column)resulted in us shooting off the end of the runway at 140knots and ending up in the long term carpark.The violent nature of this landing knocked the instructor off his feet and also knocked the whole simulator off its hydraulic jacks, which resuled in quite a bit of resetting.
So ladies and gentlemen I trust you had a pleasant flight and we look forward to welcoming you aboard ARMAN AIRWAYS once again in the not too distant future.Give us a few weeks to dig the plane out of the ground and settle the insurance claim.A safe onward journey to you all.
Thanks Lyn brilliant

PLOUGH MONDAY

We attended Plough Monday this week which is a very old country tradition,not unique to Norfolk,but not practiced widely throughout the UK.Basically a plough is drawn through the streets and blessed at the Church to ensure good harvests for the coming year.The drawing of the plough is accompanied by Molly dancers who are not disimilar to Morris dancers,but more colourful and are men dressed as women.It was a good evening and a dry one thank heavens.We ended up at a local barn for mulled wine and sausage rolls.

BOTH AWAKE AT 3.36 AM

You will recall that a few weeks ago I reported that I was pleased at long last to have something to worry about.Well it has been 3 weeks since we last rang the bells so this past Thursday was our catch up night,would we be ok or would it be a complete disaster.As it turned out it was fine, to the point where I was left to ring by myself with only minor supervision,Lyn was not far behind and only as Lyn can soon had everybody in fits.I swear the laughter was louder than the bells.As the evening progressed I got more and more confident and was asked to follow one of the teachers to see if i could keep in some sort of time with him,actually I had to be just behind him.Well up until now I have had a fixed frontal stare as I have been ringing rather like a rabbit that has been caught by some headlights, now I had to actually look at somebody else.I think I managed about 4/5 complete pulls before losing the plot completely,and as for followig him I don't think I even saw him.Lyn was still in fits as was everybody else with her antics.I think she is going to write a book. BELLRINGING CAN BE A LAUGH !!!
So we were both awake,me worrying and Lyn laughing .Happy days
Wednesday was Quiz night,and we didn't come last.A nasty general knowledge question.On a clear day what is the furthest object you can see from the top of Ben Nevis.We put the Blackpool Tower, someone else put Sweden, both wrong.Answers please.And we came second last,before our trusty torch saw us home yet again.Lyn is at this moment making a lemon tart which again should be a laugh.