Whilst I did delete all of the Google apps off my phone, barring YouTube, within a few weeks they were all back and I was basically back to where I was originally – reliant on many of the services Google offers for free.
But recently I have managed to cut back on my Google dependency.
Contacts – iCloud
I used to use Google Contacts to keep my address book in sync between my various devices – iPhone, Mac, and Windows desktop at work. Originally I used Thunderbird at work which had a couple of unofficial extensions that synchronised the address book with Google, and my Mac and iPhone both natively supported contact sync.
And then we moved to Office 365, at which point Thunderbird just wasn’t up to the job. So I now use Outlook 2010 like everyone else, and there’s no easy way of linking Google Contacts. iCloud, on the other hand, works fine with Outlook and my Apple devices (obviously) so I successfully migrated a few months ago.
Mobile web browser – Safari
In April last year, when iOS 6 was the latest and greatest, Google Chrome was significantly better than Safari, in my opinion. However the improvements to Safari in iOS 7 and 8 have made them broadly equal in my view and so I’ve removed Google Chrome from my iPhone and iPad. Having just one web browser makes things a little easier to work with and third-party web browsers have always been second-class citizens on iOS. Plus, 1Password integrates with Safari through an app extension, which saves me having to open, close, copy and paste to retrieve passwords.
Two-factor authentication – Authy
Google Authenticator is probably the most well-known app for managing two-factor authentication codes, and indeed it was about the only one available for a long time. Now, there’s Authy, which has a few key advantages. Firstly it’s a universal app that can be installed on both iPhones and iPads, and secondly these can be kept in sync. So if I have my iPad to hand, I can use Authy on that to enter codes on my phone, rather than having to switch between apps. There are also a couple of web sites – namely Humble Bundle and Coinbase – which require Authy rather than Google Authenticator, and Authy can do everything that Google’s app can do anyway. So rather than have both, I’ve moved everything into Authy.
As for everything else, I’m still mostly using Google services. I don’t yet trust Apple Maps enough to use instead of Google Maps, even though it has improved since launch. My calendar is still in Google Calendar despite its woeful support in Outlook, because it allows Christine and I to view each others’ events. The results I get from searching with Google are better than Bing or Yahoo!. So whilst I don’t think I could ever completely give up Google, I’m pleased that I’ve been able to find better solutions elsewhere.
The photo was one of several taken of me, by friends but on my camera, in March 2005 whilst at university. I must stress that, even at the time, this was not how I used to dress normally – this was a fancy dress party where the theme was ‘chavs’. It was in honour of a friend who had recently started teaching in a school in a Yorkshire town, which, at the time, was known for having a population of people you could describe as ‘chavs’ – ‘a young lower-class person who displays brash and loutish behaviour and wears real or imitation designer clothes’, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.
The clothes were mostly bought cheaply from a charity shop especially for the occasion, and haven’t been worn since – I may have actually thrown them away in a previous house move. I’ve been informed that a real chav would not wear a Puma jacket.
After the event I uploaded the photo (and the one on the right) to Flickr.
So how did it end up on Wikipedia?
I had no part in this, but a Wikipedia user must have found the image, uploaded it to Wikimedia Commons and then added it to the page. Which they would be within their rights to do – the image is licensed under Creative Commons with a license that is compatible with Wikipedia. So I’ve implicitly allowed this to happen.
Whilst the photo is not on that page anymore, and not linked from any other Wikipedia pages, at time of writing that photo is the second result for a Google Image Search for ‘chav’, so it has made it into several derivative works. A friend posted an image that was supposed to be ‘people from Castleford’ containing the photo – I’ve never been there apart from passing through on the train once or twice.
How do you feel about this?
Honestly? I’m generally non-plussed about it. It’s just something that happens on the internet, I suppose. As far as I’m aware nobody has turned it into a meme yet, at least.
I was on annual leave all of last week, and so on Wednesday I and a couple of friends went to Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales for a day out. Hawes, pronounced like ‘hoares’ (and yes, there are plenty of jokes based on its name) is a small market town in the famous valley of Wensleydale.
Of the three of us, none of us can drive or has access to a car, so this was a trip done by public transport.
Hawes does have a railway station, but no trains have called there since 1959, and it’ll be quite a while before the Wensleydale Railway reaches it. The next nearest station is at Garsdale, on the wonderful Settle-Carlisle Railway, which this year celebrated 25 years since it was saved from closure by British Rail. It’s still a few miles away, is only served by six trains a day in each direction, and like many stations on the line is in the middle of nowhere.
Thankfully it’s connected to Hawes by the Little White Bus, which charges a £3.50 per person flat fare each way. It’s timed to meet some of the trains at Garsdale, although be aware that some journeys don’t normally run on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays – we made this mistake and nearly got stranded in Hawes coming back. Outside of these times it operates on a request basis, so if you do need to travel you can phone them in advance.
Hawes’ main attraction is the Wensleydale Creamery, which produces Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese (now an EU Protected Origin product). After closing in 1992, it was rescued in a management buyout, and now employs almost 200 people and supports 36 local farms. The creamery includes a small museum, charting its history and how the cheese is made – on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays you can actually see cheese being made, but we went on Wednesday so we didn’t. There’s also a huge shop, selling all of the varieties of cheese produced there with ample free samples, a café and a restaurant. You can probably spend up to a couple of hours here, and then it’s just a short walk back into the town.
The town itself is lovely, with narrow cobbled streets and plenty of small, independent shops. And, like most Yorkshire towns, several pubs serving local ales. Elijah’s is a good food emporium, and there was an excellent quirky second-hand bookshop.
Other attractions include the Ropemakers – a rope manufacturer that allows you to walk through its workshops and see how their ropes are made (and buy some yourself), and the Dales Countryside Museum, which we didn’t visit.
Earlier this year the first stage of Tour de France passed through Hawes. Having descended from Buttertubs pass, the peleton rode south into Hawes and then took a sharp right heading off east. There are still plenty of cycling and tour-themed things in the town, even though it’s been several months since the race.
All in all we had a really nice visit, even though it took me three trains and a bus each way to get there, and cost me over £20 in bus and rail fares. It was worth it though and I’d happily go again – but probably by car next time. All the photos from my visit are on Flickr.
We’re a few months into our Netflix subscription and on the whole we haven’t been getting as much value out of it as I expected us to, which is a shame. I had considered cancelling it, as it’s not worth paying for something that I don’t use. And whilst I’m still open to that idea if we’re still not using it much in a few months’ time, I decided to rethink how we’re using Netflix rather than going for the nuclear option straight-away.
So, here are my tips for making the most of your Netflix subscription.
1. Add lots of titles to your list
Netflix has a ‘queue’ of sorts, called My List, where you can add films and shows that you want to watch. These could be films that you haven’t seen before, or TV shows that you want to watch again, or children’s’ shows that your kids want to watch over and over again. Keeping lots of titles here will mean that you avoid the situation where you open Netflix to watch something but then can’t immediately think what you want to watch.
2. Add TV shows to your list
Netflix, despite its name, isn’t just about ‘flicks’, i.e. movies/films. There are plenty of TV shows on there, and in some cases you can watch every season. So add a few TV shows to your list as well as films – that way, if you don’t have enough spare time for a whole film, then you can watch a quick half hour TV show.
3. Install Netflix’s mobile apps to add to your list on the go…
Let’s say you’re out with your friends, and someone recommends a film or TV show to you. If you have the Netflix app on your phone, you can simply add it to your list there and then. No need to write it down or try to remember it and then forget it. And then you can watch it when you have the time to do so.
4. …or to watch things on the go
Admittedly, watching films and TV shows on a smartphone screen doesn’t make for a good experience. But if you have a generous data allowance on your mobile contract and nothing better to do, then why not pass the time with a quick TV show? Even better if you have a tablet with a larger screen. And it’s great for sick days when you can’t face getting out of bed to watch TV.
5. Watch films in bits
Netflix remembers your position when watching content, even if you break off and have to do something else. So if you don’t have time to watch a full feature-length film, just watch a bit of it. Then, pick it up again when you have some more time. The position will synchronise between the web site and apps, so you could start watching a film on your Roku or Apple TV, then watch a bit on your iPhone before finishing it off on the web site.
6. Build up your taste profile for better recommendations
One of Netflix’s big selling points is its ability to recommend films and TV shows to you that you may not have come across. As you watch content on Netflix, it learns what you like and, over time, its recommendations should improve. However, when you first get started Netflix may struggle to suggest anything sensible, so spend some time on the ‘taste profile’ tab on the web site to refine its suggestions. Or just browse around and rate any films and TV shows that you have already seen.
As Netflix’s recommendations improve, you’ll hopefully find some interesting new content to add to your list.
7. Find out when new releases are available using Netflix Notifier
Netflix Notifier is a third-party site which lets you create a watchlist of films that you want to see, but that aren’t on Netflix yet – and then emails you when they become available. I reviewed it in July when I added four films – of those, so far only Hunger Games: Catching Fire has become available to watch in the UK.
Note: since this blog was written, Netflix Notifier has closed down.
8. Use a VPN to access another country’s library
Because of the weird and wonderful world of international copyright licensing agreements, the selection of films and TV shows differs between each country that Netflix operates in. A way around this is using a VPN – a Virtual Private Network – to fool Netflix into thinking you’re based somewhere else. So a British user could use a VPN located in the US to watch shows that would be otherwise unavailable. Be aware that you’ll probably have to pay extra for a decent VPN connection. And bear in mind that film studios are pressuring Netflix to block access from VPNs – whilst it would be impossible to block every VPN, some of the more popular ones may get locked out.
How to work out whether Netflix is worth it for you
Netflix is basically an all-you-can-eat buffet, when compared to ‘a la carte’ services like Google Play and Blinkbox where you pay for each individual episode or season. To take the example of Channel 4 show Misfits, Blinkbox charges £1.89 per episode or £8.99 per series; if you watch four episodes in a month, then Netflix is cheaper as it costs £5.99 per month. Films on Blinkbox are typically around £2.50, or more for new releases.
So if you’re watching, say, two films, or four TV shows, or a film and two TV shows each month, then you’re probably getting your money’s worth. If not, and you’ve tried all of my suggestions above, then you may wish to reconsider whether a subscription service like Netflix is best for you. You may get better value from other sites where you pay for each show individually.
After alighting from the ferry we got onto one of several coaches for the half hour journey from Zeebrugge to Bruges. It’s actually not that far as the crow flies but we were slowed down by roadworks and the coach drop-off point being to the south of Bruges city centre – Zeebrugge is on the coast to the north, so we had to go around the Bruges western bypass.
We were duly dropped off at a small island off the southern tip of the city centre – this is presumably the main coach drop off point for all visiting coaches as there were plenty of ‘Welcome to Bruges’ signs in four languages and a rather grand modern red bridge taking you over one of Bruges’ many canals. This leads into the Minnewaterpark, a nice public park that we should have walked through, it being the quickest route into the centre. Instead we got confused by a sign aimed at cyclists and took a longer and less interesting route.
We aimed for The Markt first of all, which is one of Bruges’ two large public squares. It sits in the shadow of the Belfort, a belltower with over 40 bells that you can climb up for views of the city (we didn’t). From here you can pay €39 for a tour of the city by horse and cart (the price is set by the city council) or visit one of the many overpriced brasseries around the edge. Seriously, these places are expensive; we ended up having lunch here as we struggled to find anywhere cheaper in the limited time that we had, and I paid €22.50 for Moules Frites (mussels and chips). At almost £18 that would buy me a decent three course meal back home. Fortunately we did find some cheaper places away from the main tourist areas later on and so our afternoon tea wasn’t quite so eye-wateringly expensive.
Bruges has a number of museums and had we stayed overnight we would have had the opportunity to visit more than one. As it was, we settled on Sint-Janshospitaal, an 11th-century hospital that treated patients well into the 20th century. It’s a big building, but there’s not a lot inside – some paintings and a few old fashioned medical tools for outdated practices like trepanning. Next to Sint-Janshospitaal is the Apothek, which is the pharmacy dispensary that served the hospital. Its opening hours are more restricted than the main hospital museum but you get entry for both in the ticket price.
Afterwards we had a general wander around the city. Belgium is well-known for its chocolate and its beer, and, as you might expect, Bruges has a chocolate museum and a beer museum. We didn’t visit either – the chocolate museum had some very mixed reviews on Foursquare and Christine doesn’t like beer, and I still feel guilty for dragging her around the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. We did, however, visit a number of chocolate and beer shops. We bought quite a bit of the former but ended up not buying any of the latter. Many of the chocolatiers produce their chocolate on the premises and you can sometimes see it being made.
A note on language in Bruges. Belgium’s official languages are French, Flemish (a dialect of Dutch), and German. Bruges is in Flanders, the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, and so most signs are just in Flemish – unlike in Brussels, the capital, where signs are generally in both Flemish and French. So whilst Flemish is the primary language used, English is a close second. The guidebook we bought even suggested that you are better speaking English than attempting French, and we encountered a couple of situations where Flemish bar staff didn’t speak French (but their English was almost perfect). Whilst it feels odd using English in a country where it isn’t a first language, it was a bit of a relief that I didn’t need to use my rather rusty French vocabulary.
Another thing that we didn’t expect in Bruges was the lack of pigeons. They’re the scourge of most cities, but we didn’t see any in Bruges. There were crows, ducks, swans and a few collared doves, but no pigeons. Whether this is deliberate or not, I don’t know.
All in all we had a lovely time. Bruges is a really nice place – it is to Brussels what York or Chester is to London, in that it’s much smaller and more manageable, but still full of history and interesting attractions. It was Christine’s first visit and my second, but my first time was over 20 years’ ago when I was only eight years old and so I don’t remember much about it. If I were to go back I’d like to stay there a bit longer and do the bits that we didn’t have time to see this time, possibly as a wider visit to other parts of Belgium as well. Despite what Nigel Farage says, Belgium is far from being a ‘non-country’.
Last weekend Christine and I went on a ‘mini-cruise’ to Bruges with P&O Ferries. The ‘mini-cruise’ is a package that includes return overnight ferry journeys for two people from Hull to Zeebrugge or Rotterdam, and return coach transfer to Bruges or Amsterdam respectively. This can be taken over two consecutive nights there and back, or over three nights with an overnight stop at your destination.
We did the two night option, which gave us around 8 hours to spend in Bruges. I’ll write more about what we got up to in Bruges later this week but today I’ll focus on the ‘mini-cruise’ experience.
‘Mini-cruise’
I keep using ‘mini-cruise’ in quote marks because this is most definitely not a cruise. You travel on a standard cross-channel ferry – for the Hull-Zeebrugge crossing this is either the Pride of Bruges or Pride of York which are comparatively small ships (around eight decks) but the Hull-Rotterdam ferries are somewhat bigger. The on-board facilities are therefore not like you would expect on a large cruise ship, and are limited to a couple of restaurants and bars, a shop, café and small cinema.
We were on the Pride of Bruges which was introduced into service in 1987 – and it shows. There hasn’t been much done to the ship since then and it retains its 1980s feel in many parts despite some effort in refurbishing it. This includes the cabins.
The cabins sit somewhere between ‘sleeper train’ and ‘budget hotel’. They are en-suite so a shower, basin and toilet are squeezed into a tiny wetroom with each cabin. The beds are bunkbeds, and are rather narrow too – I can’t imagine many children will be conceived out at sea. And you get one unearthed plug socket, about 7 foot off the ground above the mirror, which uses the European standard connector. The walls were also not particularly thick and so the rowdy hen party (bachelorette party for the Americans amongst you) in the next cabin kept Christine awake for most of the night; I slept through it. You have to pay around £10 extra if you want a window in your cabin – we didn’t, so our cabin was in the middle of the boat rather than at the edge. In any case, it’s late October and it gets dark early, so there wouldn’t have been much to see.
Staying connected
There were some signs of modernisation elsewhere on board. Wifi is available, charged at £3 for 90 minutes, which is actually quite reasonable considering you’re out at sea. I didn’t test it so I can’t say how fast or reliable it was, although it seemed to be only available in the public areas and not the cabins. Mobile phone reception seems to also be available at sea, but only for calls and texts, not for data – again, I didn’t test this nor find out how much extra it costs to use. In any case, when leaving Hull I still had phone reception on my own network, 3, for quite some time after departing.
Eating and drinking
Of the two bars, the Sunset Show Bar is the biggest with live entertainment and a casino table, with another smaller and quieter bar next door. The drinks selection is reasonable and not whilst not cheap it wasn’t ridiculously expensive either. The café serves Starbucks coffee, but not the full range – no pumpkin spiced lattes here – and no soya milk. Then there are the two restaurants – The Kitchen and The Brasserie.
The Kitchen is a buffet. We didn’t go there at any point because of the queues – instead we booked into The Brasserie each time, for both evening meals and breakfasts. You do have to book but it’s worth it – it’s a full waiter service restaurant and the food is reasonably good. Not outstanding but I’ve paid far more for worse. The best thing is that it’s also reasonably quiet in there, whereas we could hear the noise from The Kitchen out in the foyer.
When you book your ‘mini-cruise’ tickets online you have the option of pre-paying for your meals – for two people this adds £88 to the cost but at £11 per person per meal it’s not bad overall. It’s enough to cover The Kitchen, and in The Brasserie it will get you £16.50 per person for dinner – anything over that just has to be paid by cash or credit card. We only went over by about £5 between the two of us for our meals – two courses and non-alcoholic drinks. I imagine we would have spent more overall had we paid for each meal individually rather than pre-paying, and because you have to check-in before 5:30pm it’s not really feasible to have a meal before you travel.
If you do the two night ‘mini-cruise’, then, where possible, P&O will try to ensure that you get the same cabin in each direction, so you can leave your luggage there. This isn’t always available, and won’t be an option for the three night option as you’ll go out and come back on two different ferries.
The clientele on board was a mix – some couples like us, presumably on the ‘mini-cruise’ deal, but also a few families, a couple of stag and hen parties, a few school groups and some lorry drivers. Because it’s a ferry you can bring your car, coach or lorry with you, although we went as foot passengers.
Getting there
Speaking of which, if you are travelling by train to Hull, I would strongly advise getting a taxi from the railway station to the ferry terminal. The Zeebrugge ferries leave from Terminal 2 at the ferry port, which is up the arse end of nowhere. According to Google Maps it’s a good 15 minute walk from Terminal 1, used by the Rotterdam ferries, where there is a regular bus service to the railway station. So if you’re going to Rotterdam then consider the bus but a taxi is a must for Zeebrugge. It’ll cost you less than a tenner each way, and on the return there will be a number of taxis waiting at the terminal when you arrive.
The foot passenger terminal at Hull mirrors the ferry in being very 1980s. It’s not like an airport with lounges and shops and so forth – the facilities are pretty basic. Think ‘small regional railway station’ rather than ‘international travel hub’. That being said all of the facilities you’d normally see in an airport are on the ferry anyway. The Zeebrugge terminal was a bit more modern and was full of adverts (in English) selling Hull and East Yorkshire as a tourist destination – I get the impression that Brits going abroad makes up a higher proportion of their customer base than Europeans visiting Britain.
The weather wasn’t too bad for our journey although the sea was rather choppy on the return. When you’re in bed you only notice it a bit though and neither of us got seasick. The ferries lumber across the seas at around 20 miles per hour so they’re reasonably steady, and tend only to be cancelled in the worst of conditions.
In a world where low cost airlines zip you from place to place and international trains carry you under the English Channel at high speeds, it’s perhaps a little odd that we still use these huge ferries to get around. But would you rather spend the whole day travelling, or have the travelling done for you whilst you’re asleep? Sometimes it’s nice to go to sleep in one place and wake up at your destination.
Last month a new garden was officially opened at Sowerby Bridge railway station. It’s called the Brontë Garden, and is maintained by volunteers from the Friends of Sowerby Bridge Railway Station. It sits on a small parcel of land next to the car park, opposite platform one.
The name comes from the station’s slightly tenuous link with the Brontë family. The Brontës hail from over the hills in Haworth, in the Worth Valley, but one of the Brontë siblings was employed at Sowerby Bridge station at its time of opening in the 1840s. He was Branwell Brontë, brother of the three famous sisters Emily, Anne and Charlotte. He was later appointed at another station further up the line at Luddendenfoot – this station succumbed to the rationalisation of the railways in the 1960s and no longer exists.
The garden isn’t particularly big but does house a bench and small gravelled area, along with some planters built using old railway sleepers. There’s also a restored luggage trolley, with opened suitcases serving as planters.
As well as the garden, the Friends of Sowerby Bridge Railway Station look after various other planters on the platforms, many of which are sponsored by local businesses. It’s a relatively young group, having only been formed in November 2010 (co-incidentally about the same time I moved to Sowerby Bridge). Whilst they are a voluntary group, they’ve done quite a bit to make the station look nicer – a hard ask, thanks to its brutal concrete architectural style.
One of my lovely friends nominated me for the ice bucket challenge earlier this week. You probably know the score by now, but the idea is to raise awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS – more commonly known as Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in Britain. Throwing a bucket of ice water over yourself is supposed to simulate the effects of the condition, which is terminal and normally kills its sufferers within a few years of diagnosis. There is no cure. One of my colleagues died as a result of MND a couple of years ago.
Whilst the idea is that, after being nominated, you have 24 hours to donate or be drenched in ice cold water, thankfully most of my friends have been doing both. I’ve donated £5 to Motor Neurone Disease Association. I’ve also donated £5 to WaterAid; whilst us westerners can chuck water around as it’s in plentiful supply, there are many in the world who can’t because there isn’t enough to go around. And donations to WaterAid made in the next week or so will be matched by UKAid, so they’re worth double.
Originally I planned to do this outside – however, as we’re four floors up in our flat it would have been a long, cold walk back so I did it in the shower. My wife Christine, whose laughter you can hear in the video, filmed it on my iPhone 5 using the stock camera app. It really was very, very cold – hence why I got the name of the MND Association wrong.
This was the first time I’ve ever edited a video. I used iMovie ’09 as it was already on my Mac, and apart from one tutorial to do the silly bonus replay at the end, all the editing was done just by exploring the app. It’s reasonably intuitive. The music was from Free Music Archive. I edited out the bit about nominations, but those of you who are friends with me on Facebook can see the uncut footage on there.
Yesterday, we took advantage of the nice weather and went to Brimham Rocks, near Harrogate. The site is owned by the National Trust and features large millstone grit rock formations that visitors are free to climb on. It’s free to visit, but those who are not members of the National Trust have to pay £6 to use the car park.
I’ve been many times over the years. My parents have been National Trust members for as long as I can remember and have taken me there several times, but I also seem to remember going with my primary school class at one point in the 1990s, when marbles were the playground craze of the time. The last time was in 2007, with the university hiking club and as part of an unwieldy-sized group of 19 mixed-ability hikers. This time was with a smaller group of 10 – myself, Christine, and 8 other former members of the hiking club and plus-ones.
Christine isn’t so confident with walking so whilst most of the group did a nine mile walk around the wider Nidderdale area, we just did a stroll around the edge of the site and took photos. Some of the rocks are really impressive, rising up to 30 metres in height, and many have been given names. The Blacksmith looks like an anvil, and the Druid’s Writing Table looks like… well, a table. There’s also The Smartie Tube which has a tunnel that small people can fit through – I’m not sure if Nestlé has authorised the use of its trademark though.
Unfortunately I was an idiot and didn’t check the settings on my camera before taking the photos, so everything was taken at 1600 ISO. Thankfully I shoot in RAW so I was able to improve the photos somewhat, but they do look like they’ve been taken on a much older camera. An inadvertent retro filter, if you will. A small selection of these images are available to view on Flickr.
I doubt this will be the last time we go to Brimham Rocks. It’s a great place to bring kids – provided that you keep them under observation, they will love being able to climb the rocks. I’m sure we’ll be back when we have children of our own. And, if we pick a day like yesterday, we’ll be in plenty of company – by the time we left in the mid-afternoon, both carparks were full.
I can very much not recommend working 10 days straight without a break. Especially if one of those days involves 14 hours at work with almost no breaks.
I was doing fine until today when my brain turned to mush at about 3pm. I was asked to calculate some weighted averages and I just couldn’t handle it. Thankfully there were enough mindless things to keep me going until I finished at 5pm.
And it’s only Tuesday – I still have another three days at work until I get a break. Admittedly Friday will only be a half day. And this weekend is a bank holiday so I’ll be off for three days.
What may surprise you is that I haven’t been resorting to coffee and energy drinks to keep going – I’ve had precisely two coffees in the past ten days and no energy drinks – just the odd diet cola or Irn Bru here and there. And plenty of early nights.
On the plus side, I’ve got plenty of work done during a really critical time for us and have accrued plenty of time off in lieu of overtime – around five days’ worth. So I’ll be able to take a well-earned rest when everything calms down.
