Neil Turner

MET#3: Bahrain (or at least its airport)

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Bahrain Airport overview
Bahrain Airport overview by Franz Zwart, CC-licensed.

After spending less than 48 hours in Amman, I was back to at Queen Alia International Airport to make my way to Oman. To fit my schedule, I had to fly overnight, and the only airline with flights that suited was Gulf Air, the Bahrain flag carrier. And this meant a stop at Bahrain airport.

Gulf Air’s history is actually quite interesting, as various Arabian Gulf countries owned parts of it in the past. Nowadays, it is wholly owned by the government on Bahrain, and based out of Bahrain international airport. The flights I took were on its smaller Airbus A320 aircraft, and neither flight was particularly well-loaded. I think I was one of of only 20 passengers on the second leg from Bahrain to Muscat.

Despite being a hub airport, Bahrain International isn’t all that big. It sits on an island off the cost of mainland Bahrain (itself an island), and has just one terminal. Naturally, Gulf Air operate the vast majority of flights. But, there are a number of other operators, including British Airways who fly from Heathrow.

As I was travelling overnight after two long days, I didn’t really take much time to explore the terminal. Instead, I went straight to the gate for my flight and made use of the free Wi-Fi for an hour or so. The time difference meant that Christine was still awake at home, despite it being the small hours of the morning where I was. The previous flight from my gate was a busy flight to Mumbai in India, which departed late as a large group of elderly passengers turned up to the gate well after the scheduled departure time. Even though I fly rarely, I’d like to think that I’m a considerate traveller, and so I aim to be at the gate well in advance of the departure.

The flight departed from a small extension to the terminal, right at the far end. It was barely more than a shed, with a small coffee shop and duty-free stand. Naturally, the coffee shop was a Costa Coffee – it and Starbucks were available throughout the Middle East. Both offered pretty much exactly the same experience as at home. Whereas the gates in the main terminal had air-bridges, we were loaded onto those super wide buses with minimal seats that you only see at airports, for the short drive to the plane.

It was while I was waiting for my flight that Christine started checking the Foreign & Commonwealth Office travel advice for the countries I was visiting. I’d already checked it, as a requirement for work, but I think this rather upset her. Whilst I stayed entirely airside in Bahrain, there was a major uprising in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring and there is still an undercurrent of unrest.

I left Bahrain at 1:35am local time, and arrived in Muscat 90 minutes later. More on Muscat in the next instalment.

Making a house a home (part II)

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Man at work

It’s been a couple of weeks since we got the keys for our new house, and we’ve been rather busy with it. Things haven’t quite gone to plan, however…

Plaster

I mentioned last time that, as we started removing the wallpaper from the walls, that the plaster appeared to be in a poor state. This turned out to be something of an understatement, as we were able to pull off huge chunks of plaster from the walls with little more than our bare hands. Consequently, the dining room is now being completely re-plastered from floor to ceiling, using damp-resistant plaster.

Elsewhere, in the living room, we’re just having the first metre from the floor re-plastered, as part of the damp-proofing works that we’re required to do as a condition of the mortgage. We’re also having the skirting boards replaced as part of this, mainly because the original ones came off in pieces.

Plumbing

It was Neil, in the dining room, with the lead pipe. I suppose it was inevitable that there would be lead water pipes in a house that is over 100 years old, but we didn’t expect them to be still in use. Whilst most of the lead piping was redundant and disconnected, there were several metres that fed our main drinking water supply. As the EPA explains, this is not a good thing and so we’ve had these replaced with copper pipes. In doing so, we’ve also ended up with better water pressure, which is nice.

Electrics

I mentioned that the plug sockets were old and in weird places. But rather than simply have the existing sockets moved to sensible places, we’ve had a whole new ring main fitted downstairs. This is partly because the wiring for the old sockets was poor, but also because we wanted more sockets in different places. So now the dining room has 5 sockets rather than 4, and the living room has 7 rather than 3. Plus, we’ve been able to add a socket in the hallway which previously didn’t have one at all, an additional socket in the basement which will be useful if we decide to buy a tumble dryer, and several extra sockets in the kitchen, which only had 3 in nonsensical places.

However, as the remaining wiring isn’t great, we’re strongly considering having the rest of the house re-wired too, especially as one of the bedrooms only has one working plug socket.

Gas

When the house was built in the 19th Century, it would have been heated using open fireplaces. Whilst most of the chimney breasts remain, the fireplaces have been bricked up, and a series of gas fires installed. Later, probably in the 1980s, central heating was then fitted with radiators, but three of the gas fires remain.

One is upstairs and therefore not a priority for us. One is in the dining room and attached directly to the boiler, so we need to keep that for now, but there was a free-standing gas fire in the living room. We’ve got rid of it, and had the gas pipe connecting it capped off.

Bathroom

We started re-painting the bathroom, but haven’t progressed beyond a coat of white primer on the ceiling (which was varnished wood panels). We’ll get on and finish it eventually.

All in all, the house is, unfortunately, turning out to be more work than we’d originally anticipated. It wasn’t our intention to buy a house to do up – we’d hoped that it would just require a few jobs doing and then we could move in. We’re fortunate that we’re able to carry on renting our current flat for the time being, although we do need to move sooner rather than later. We’re paying rent, a mortgage and two lots of utility bills, which will cost a lot of money. But we have also been very lucky that a couple of friends have been able to do the electrical and plumbing work for us, rather than requiring us to pay an electrician, which has been very much appreciated.

I imagine that we’ll be able to move over in August, provided the house doesn’t throw up any more surprises.

MET#2: Amman

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Amman

This is post number two in my series about my recent trip to the Middle East. Here’s yesterday’s introductory post.

The first stop on my trip was to Amman, the capital city of Jordan. My time there was brief – less than 48 hours in total, as I arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning local time and departed on Sunday evening.

Rather than obtain a visa ahead of time, I acquired a visa on arrival. As well as an ink stamp in my passport, I also got two 20 dinar Jordanian postage stamps, which reflected the cost of the visa. A nice addition to my previously blank passport.

The security situation in Jordan is worth mentioning. Jordan has a land border with Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war between the government, Islamic State and other rebel groups. Amman is around 80 kilometres, or an hour’s drive from the Syrian border.

Al Jordanian plane

Consequently, on leaving the airport (which is around 25 minutes’ drive south of Amman) we had to pass through a military checkpoint, and to enter the hotel we had to go through a metal detector and have all of our bags x-rayed. Part of my visit involved going to schools, to recruit students, and these were all within secure compounds with gates and security guards. I was also advised to keep my passport on me at all times for identification.

Whilst we did travel around Amman and its environs, visiting 5 schools, unfortunately I didn’t have much spare time to actually explore the city. The hotel I stayed in, the Crowne Plaza, was some way out of the centre of the city – and it’s a big city. Around 4 million people call it home, making it not much smaller than London.

What I did see of Amman seemed rather run-down – a bit like Burnley, I suppose, but much bigger and with better weather. I gather that Amman has some really nice parts though, and if I’d had the opportunity to fly out earlier and spend a day exploring then I’d have been able to see more. Sadly work commitments made this impossible.

I did notice a lack of traffic lights. Most road junctions are roundabouts, or grade-separated junctions with slip-roads (on-ramps to Americans). I don’t think I saw a single set of traffic lights, which means that drivers tend to use up any bit of available road space when waiting in stationary traffic. And seemingly everyone drives – there were very few pedestrian crossings and I wouldn’t like to try my luck with them.

Immigration in Jordan is something of an issue. Recent years have seen a lot of conflict in the Middle East region and Jordan’s open border policy has seen around 5 million people seek refuge from countries like Iraq and Syria. As Jordan’s population wasn’t that large to start with, it’s resulted in a massive, fast growth in the number of people living there, and, from what I saw on my brief visit, is struggling to adapt somewhat.

The internet connection in the hotel was very good though – they advertised that they had a 150 Mbps line which suggests that the telephony infrastructure in Amman is generally good. This came in useful when needing to do a Skype call with someone.

I’d maybe like to go back to Jordan in future to actually see the nice bits of Amman, and visit the Dead Sea which isn’t far away. But I’d prefer to wait until the situation in Syria dies down first.

MET#1: Getting around to writing about it

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It’s been three months since I returned from my trip to the Middle East for work, and despite promising to write something about it upon my return, I never got around to it.

So, rather belatedly, this is the first of a series of blog posts about my trip. For security reasons, I didn’t write publicly about my destinations ahead of time, but here are the places that I visited:

  • Amman, the capital of Jordan
  • Muscat, the capital of Oman
  • Salalah, another city in the south of Oman

I also passed through airports in Dubai and Bahrain on the way. My flights to and from Manchester were with Emirates, and the flights between Amman and Muscat were with Gulf Air who is Bahrain’s flag carrier.

Tomorrow, I’ll be writing about Amman and Jordan.

Combining travel discounts

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57309 and 56312

Tomorrow we’re off to the Trafford Centre to buy a washing machine. You may wonder why we’re travelling all the way to the far side of Manchester for something that we could buy more easily locally. As it happens, we have loads of John Lewis gift vouchers left over from our wedding, plus some more from completing online surveys from Valued Opinions and Ipsos i-Say, so in all it’ll work out cheaper. And we’ll be making a day of it.

Because we don’t drive, we’ll be taking public transport – a train to Manchester, and then a bus, as the trams haven’t made it that far yet. In all, this would normally cost around £30 – £21 for return train tickets and around £8-10 for the bus tickets. But, by combining discounts, we got the lot for £12. Here’s how:

Two Together Railcard

Because Christine and I travel together by train a lot, we have a Two Together railcard, which means we get a third off almost all train fares provided we buy the tickets at the same time and travel together. It costs £30 a year, although there are plenty of discount codes bringing it down to £27, and you can exchange Tesco Clubcard vouchers for one as well.

It’s one of the newer railcards, having been launched last year, and we’re on our second card. We got our money’s worth on one journey alone, when we went to Nottingham, and use it regularly.

Advance purchase tickets

Northern Rail, who operate the trains between us and Manchester, have only recently introduced discounted advanced purchase tickets on some routes. If bought before 6pm the previous day, you can get a significant discount on the cost of tickets versus buying them on the day. By buying advanced purchase tickets with our railcard, we got the price of our train travel down from £21 to £8 – not bad.

Plusbus

Plusbus is a not particularly well-known add-on for train tickets, that allows you to purchase discounted bus travel at your destination. You buy it as part as of the same transaction as your train tickets, and it essentially gives you unlimited bus travel at your destination for one day, on participating routes and operators.

I’ll be honest – this weekend will be the first time we’ll be using it, and I’m still not 100% convinced that it will be accepted on the buses that run between Manchester city centre and the Trafford Centre. But, it only cost an additional £2 per ticket, thanks to a special offer that is only running this month, so if it doesn’t then we’re only out of pocket by £4.

Additional discounts

We bought the tickets online at First Transpennine Express, even though we won’t actually be travelling with them at all. I chose them for three reasons:

  1. They offer Nectar points at a rate of 2 points for every pound spent on train travel, so I earned 16 points for the £8 spent on the train tickets. I can then use these points for money off cinema tickets or shopping, for example.
  2. They offer cashback via Quidco (referral link) – it’s only 1%, but that effectively saves a further 12p off the cost.
  3. There are no additional booking, card or postage fees – you just pay for travel.

Disadvantages

The only downside to choosing an advanced purchase ticket is that it restricts us to travelling on certain trains. If we miss these trains, or want to vary our travel plans, then the tickets will no longer be valid and we’d need to buy new ones, probably at full price. Buying on the day costs more, but at least the tickets are fully flexible.

Normally one advantage of buying an advanced purchase ticket is that you also get a confirmed seat reservation as well. Northern Rail don’t offer seat reservations (despite running some long distance services) so the only real advantage of buying tickets in advance is the lower cost. Other operators do include seat reservations, so you could have two passengers: one who paid, say, £12 and got a guaranteed seat, and another who paid £80 on the day and who may have to stand.

And finally, before you ask – we’ll be having the washing machine delivered. I don’t think we’d get it home on public transport.

Making a house a home (part I)

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Stripping wallpaper

We did it – we bought a house!

We got the keys on Friday, and have already started the job of decorating the house by stripping the wallpaper in the dining room and living room. These rooms need partially re-plastering as part of the damp-proofing works, although having taken some of the wallpaper off we’re looking at getting them completely re-plastered.

All of the paper shown above was simply peeled off the walls – perhaps an indication of how necessary the damp-proofing works are, but also the age of the wallpaper. We’ve attached the rest with a steamer. Christine is there for scale :) .

Old plug sockets

The plug sockets downstairs are all very old, and in weird places – mostly about a metre off the floor. Since we’re getting these rooms re-plastered, we’ll look into having them re-sited in more useful places with more modern fixtures.

We’re also working on the bathroom, which thankfully just needs re-painting.

My parents came over to help us shift some of our possessions over, but we still have a lot of packing to do. In any case, because of the amount of work that needs doing, it’s likely to be around six weeks before we’re able to move in there properly. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Our House – The Madness Musical

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The logo for Our House - The Madness Musical

Tonight is the opening night of Our House at the Bradford Playhouse – and I’ll be backstage helping out.

It’s a musical show based around the music of Madness, and follows the story of Joe Casey, a 16 year old who lives on Casey Street in Camden. He’s faced with a choice that will change his life – and the musical follows ‘Good Joe’ and ‘Bad Joe’ as it explores each implication of his decision.

Whilst Madness isn’t one of my favourite bands, like most people I know many of their songs and they fit well with the script. Even though this is not a professional production, I enjoyed it more than We Will Rock You.

I got called in to help at the last minute on Monday, just in time for the technical rehearsal, which was rather rough and ready. But last night’s dress rehearsal went really well, and the show looks fantastic. The cast are excellent and it promises to be a really great show.

Tickets are still available – I’d thoroughly recommend it, even if I wasn’t taking part. Performances are tonight, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and a Saturday matinée.

Tropical World

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Meerkat

Yesterday, as a birthday treat, Christine and I went to Tropical World. It’s effectively an indoor zoo, housed in a series of greenhouses in a corner of Roundhay Park, in the northeast corner of Leeds.

Whilst I’m not sure of the full history of the place, I get the impression that it was originally designed to house tropical plants (of which there are many – Tropical World has one of the largest collections outside Kew Gardens in London), and has later had butterflies and other animals added to it. These include a crocodile, various fish, frogs and snakes, bats, jerboas, a slow loris (allegedly – it was hiding when we went), a wide variety of birds and the ever popular meerkats. There’s a photo of one above; cute, but it didn’t offer me a great deal on my car insurance.

Tropical World is not a big place and we got around in a little under two hours, but it’s not expensive either: £5 each for adults, with discounts for children and local residents. It has also recently re-opened after a refurbishment, and now sports a much larger café and gift shop, along with a central American themed zone. With hindsight, yesterday wasn’t a great day to go, with it being a bank holiday and also the school half term holiday – consequently we had to queue for half an hour to get in. There were plenty of kids there – who were fine on the whole. Shame that couldn’t be said about some of the parents.

This was our second visit to Tropical World – the first time was three years ago, prior to the refurbishment. I’m sure we’ll be back again sometime – it’s a nice place to go, easily reached from Leeds city centre by the number 12 bus from outside the top entrance to Leeds market, and it’s not too expensive either. And it’s indoor, so great for even the most foul, cold winter days.

You can view the photos that I took this time on Flickr, and those that I took in 2012 as well.

May 25th

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Hornbill

One thing Wikipedia is good for is finding out what happens on a particular day in history. For example, on May 25th:

It’s also International Missing Children’s Day, Africa Day, Geek Pride Day, National Tap Dance Day and Towel Day.

And famous birthdays include Jonny Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Demetri Martin, Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, Mike Myers, Anthea Turner, Julian Clary, Paul Weller, Alastair Campbell, Eve Ensler, Catherine G. Wolf and Ian McKellen.

Plus, a not-so-famous birthday: mine.

Being a train driver at the Foxfield Railway

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W. G. Bagnall 0-6-0ST No. 2 "Florence"

My dad reached the grand old age of 70 a few months back, which begged the question: what do you get for the person who has everything? So we clubbed together as a family and bought my dad a train driving experience at the Foxfield Railway, near Stoke on Trent in Staffordshire.

Like me, my Dad has a keen interest in the railways, although unlike me he actually worked for the railways for many years, as a civil engineer. Whilst he’s designed many structures for trains to use, he’d never actually driven one before, so this was to be a new experience for him. And, fortunately, we have family in Stoke so getting to the railway for 9:30am was not a problem.

The experience lasts all day, and the railway can accommodate up to 4 people at a time. The training is provided by the volunteers who run the railway, many of whom are retired from the mainline. The train for the day was W. G. Bagnall 0-6-0ST No. 2 “Florence”, and initially the ‘students’ took it in turn to practice driving the engine out of the station and back again. Later on, each of the participants got to take it in turn to drive the train all the way along the line, with passenger carriages. They also took the role of fireman, which included learning how to couple and uncouple the engine from the carriages, and got to use the levers in the signalbox.

Pleasingly, friends and family were also allowed to be part of the day – I was able to follow my dad around with my camera for almost the whole time, and consequently took over 100 photos. And we brought part of the extended family along with us to ride in the carriages whilst my dad drove us up and down the line.

The volunteers that run the driving training experiences were great – friendly and accommodating, and ensured that participants and their families all had a good day out. At the end of the day, those that took part are presented with a certificate and there were more photo opportunities to be had.

I had a great time, but, more importantly, so did my dad. It’s something that I’d definitely recommend for those with a similar interest in the railways. Foxfield are now booked up for the rest of 2015 so you may need to wait until later in the year for their 2016 dates, if you want to try it for yourself.