If you’re like me, then this may be the first time you’ve heard of a musical theatre adaptation of Herman Melville’s famous book. The musical version dates from the early 1990s – it had a brief run in London’s West End at the Piccadilly Theatre, but closed after a four month run due to poor reviews. Don’t let that put you off though.
Moby Dick! The Musical is essentially a meta-play – a play within a play. It follows the girls of St Godley’s School – faced with closure, they put on a performance of Moby Dick to raise money to save the school. Whilst the cast is predominantly female, the role of the headmistress/Captain Ahab is usually played by a male actor in drag.
Christine has been working on the show for months now and it’s been great to see it come together. There’s just a few more rehearsals before it opens on Thursday night, with further showings on Friday and Saturday.
You can buy tickets online – they’re £10 each, or £8 for concessions. If you’re local to Bradford, it would be great if you can come along and support the students who have worked so hard to put on this show. I hope I’ll see you there!
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.
When we went to Dublin, Christine and I flew with Ryanair, the airline everybody loves to hate. This is mainly because Ryanair has unbundled just about anything that can be considered optional from its fares. Which means that the basic fare is cheap, but you may end up having to pay more for things that other airlines include. For example, the ability to check in luggage to be carried in the plane’s cargo hold.
Ryanair’s carry-on baggage allowance isn’t as bad as it once was, thankfully. For each passenger, two bags – a large one and a small one – are permitted, with the largest bag limited to 10 kilograms. That’s enough for a rucksack and a camera bag, for example. If you want to check in a bag, then there’s a £20 charge per person per flight for up to 15 kilograms, so that would be £40 if we wanted to take a larger case to Dublin and back. We decided, therefore, not to check in a bag.
We found that there are several advantages and disadvantages to not checking in luggage, some of which are listed below.
It may be cheaper
I’m sure Ryanair isn’t the only airline that offers cheaper fares for those that don’t need to check in their luggage. It saves the airlines quite a bit of time and money, so whilst it’s nice to find it included in your fare, you may find that if you can cope without it, savings can be made.
You may not need to check-in in person
Most airlines allow you to check-in online, and some, like Ryanair, pretty much mandate this. Not printing your own boarding passes on such airlines can cost quite a bit of money. Consequently, the ‘check-in’ desks for low-cost airlines essentially just become ‘baggage drop’ desks, where you can check-in your luggage to go into the hold. If you’ve no luggage to check-in, then you can just head straight for the security screening area. Unless you need a visa to travel and are required to have this checked by someone from the airline, in which case you will need to go to the check-in desk first.
You can’t carry liquids in containers larger than 100ml
Liquids in carry-on bags must be in containers of 100 millilitres or less, including any shampoo for example. So for our Dublin trip we bought travel size bottles of shampoo, deodorant and the like. These cost more per millilitre than regular-sized bottles so it’s another expense to consider. Alternatively, you could buy such things after passing through security (even a small airport like Leeds-Bradford had a Superdrug airside), or once you’ve arrived at your destination. And most hotels offer complementary shampoo and soap.
There’s no need to wait for baggage reclaim
If you carry your bags with you, then once you’re off the plane you already have all of your luggage. So there’s no need to wait at baggage reclaim – you can head straight out of the airport and onwards to your destination. Considering it can take some time for your luggage to make it off the aircraft and onto the carousels, especially at larger airports, this may save you quite a bit of time.
That being said, on the return flight from Dublin to Leeds-Bradford, practically no-one had checked in any luggage. Ours was the only flight landing at that time, so reclaim was a relatively quick and easy process for those that had checked in bags. I guess it’s a sign that Ryanair’s policy is working.
No risk of your luggage getting lost
You know where your bags are at all times. After all, you’re the one who brought them on the plane, put them in the lockers, retrieved them again and took them off the plane. So they can’t be left behind, put on the wrong plane, or picked off the carousel accidentally by somebody else. Plus, any fragile items are less likely to get broken if you’re careful with your bags, since you’re not at the mercy of the baggage handlers.
You may be limited to what you can take
Whilst we managed to fit in everything that we needed for our four night stay into two rucksacks and two shoulder bags, with room to spare, we may not have been able to manage this for longer trips. Indeed, we were somewhat conservative in what we took – I only had one pair of shoes, which I wore, and had a coat and jumper wrapped around my waist. We also had the benefit of travelling in summer – had we gone in January, for example, or to a cold country, we’d have needed more warm clothes which would have taken up more space.
You may need an iron
If you’re bringing smart clothes then you may have to crumple them up in your bags to make them fit. So it may be worth checking that your accommodation at your destination offers access to an iron or trouser press. Or, if you have space, take a travel iron, but make sure it’s drained of water and doesn’t push you over any weight allowances.
Buy yourself a luggage scale
We bought a luggage scale for less than £2, from which we could weigh our bags to ensure they were under the 10 kilogram limit. The scale itself was quite small and light, so we could also take it with us to make sure that our luggage was compliant on the way back as well. As it happens, at no point were we asked to weigh our bags but it was best to be on the safe side in case it happened.
Christine’s handbag was too large to be her ‘small bag’ under Ryanair’s rules, so she used this as an excuse to buy a new, smaller handbag. Thankfully, not an expensive one, so it was still cheaper than it would have been to check in her larger bag. Similarly if you only have small bags, you may need to buy a slightly larger one. Ryanair has a range of bags it recommends, that fit within its dimensions, but at quite a high price.
I wasn’t able to use my normal rucksack, which is designed to be comfortable when hiking. It fit the dimensions, but is curved to keep my back cool, at the expense of internal space. Instead, I used a less ergonomic bag which had a larger capacity, but at least it was one that I already owned. If you don’t own a suitable bag, then you need to consider the cost of buying one versus checking in a bag that you already have.
If you want to take this to an extreme, buy a wearable luggage jacket that lets you keep many items on your person, to maximise the space in your luggage. The cheapest ones are about £30 and have plenty of pockets.
Following advice from the guidebook, we took the 747 Airlink bus from Dublin airport into the city centre. It’s a bit pricey, at €6 one way, but the €10 return ticket is valid for over 12 months. It’s probably the best compromise between price, speed and comfort, as it uses the Dublin Tunnel to get into the city centre quickly. There are more expensive, but probably more comfortable coaches operated by First, as well as some slower but cheaper buses. A taxi will set you back at least €20 each way for up to four people, although if there are four of you that means it’s the same return price as the Airlink so may be worth bearing in mind. The airport isn’t connected to the local rail or tram networks, sadly.
Open top tour buses
There are two open top tour bus companies operating in Dublin – one operated by Dublin Bus (the municipal operator) and another is a CitySightseeing franchise. The latter is cheaper overall, as its €22 ticket is valid for two days, whereas the €19 ticket offered by Dublin Bus is for a single day. Both offer small discounts for some of the attractions.
Whilst they are a good way to see lots of attractions from the outside, be aware that most of the buses have an open top deck and it rains a lot in Ireland. And there are cheaper ways to get around the city, using regular buses or the trams. We therefore didn’t bother with the tour buses.
Dublin Pass
If you’re going to do a lot of attractions whilst visiting Dublin, then the Dublin Pass may be worth considering. Once you’ve bought the pass, you get free entry to all of the participating attractions for the duration of the card. However, personally I feel it’s a bit of a rip-off as you’ll need to visit at least three attractions in a day for it to worth the €39 cost. For some places, this may mean cutting visits short. We didn’t bother with the pass.
The Luas tram system
The aforementioned tram service is a quick and relatively cheap way of getting around the city – particularly to places like Dublin Zoo and Kilmainham Gaol which are some way out of the city (although you will still have quite a walk once you get off the tram in both cases). The trams are very frequent – as often as every three minutes – and the system only opened in 2004 so it’s modern and comfortable. There are two lines – the Red Line goes east-west to the north of the river, and the Green Line goes north-south to the south of the river. However, presently the two lines do not meet and so the north of the city isn’t served yet – a cross-city line is presently under construction.
Mobile phones
Ireland has three of the same mobile networks as the United Kingdom – O2, Three and Vodafone. There’s no EE but their fourth network is called Meteor, owned by the Irish national phone company Eircom. If, like me, you use Three then you’ll be pleased to know that Ireland is a ‘Feel at Home’ country, so you can use your inclusive minutes, texts and data allowance as you would in Britain at no extra cost. Vodafone charged £2 a day for internet roaming, by comparison.
I had a 3G signal everywhere in Dublin – in fact, it was better than some parts of Leeds or London – but no 4G on Three as yet, it seems.
Free Wi-fi
It seemed like just about everywhere offered free wifi (or at least a wifi service that was free for a short time). This included our hotel, most cafés and restaurants, and most of the tourist attractions too. It was certainly more prevalent than what I’m used to in Britain.
My theory is to do with Ireland’s mobile phone networks. They all use GSM and UMTS, like in Britain and most of Europe. But Verizon and Sprint in the USA don’t use GSM or UMTS and so phones on these networks won’t work in Ireland. Ireland receives a lot of tourism from America, hence the need to provide Wifi (AT&T phones should work fine, and T-Mobile phones may work).
In any case, Christine, who is on Vodafone in the UK, decided not to pay the £2 a day for internet, and just use the free wifi hotspots. And rely on me.
The weather
It rains a lot in Ireland. We Brits may think we get a lot of rain, but Ireland gets even more. Make sure that you pack a waterproof jacket, and/or an umbrella to take with you. Many shops in Dublin also sold plastic ponchos for days when it gets really bad.
Security and crime
Crime levels in Dublin are, apparently, similar to any other large city. Sadly, Christine almost got pickpocketed by someone on O’Connoll Street, not far from our hotel. A young bloke sneaked up behind her and tried to open her handbag; thankfully, she felt the tug and very quickly had the miscreant pinned up against some railings and on the receiving end of a large amount of angry shouting. He didn’t manage to take anything but he did run off very quickly afterwards. After that, we put our passports, which had been in her handbag, into the hotel safe, just in case.
We also noticed that there were a lot of rough sleepers and beggars in the city, especially in the area around Trinity College.
Language and signage
The official language of Ireland is Irish Gaelic, with English as the second language. This means that on most signs, you’ll see both languages, with the Gaelic text in italics and the English text in capitals. That being said, in our experience I don’t think anyone used Gaelic conversationally and so you’re highly unlikely to find anyone who doesn’t speak English.
Road signs are somewhat different to British and Europeans ones, and they more closely resemble American designs. However, the font is the same.
Prices
Dublin has a reputation of being an expensive city and this was partly true in our experience. In other words, there are many ways that you can spend lots of money unnecessarily, as I’ve mentioned above. Drinks in particular were often on the pricey side, with a pint of beer coming in at around €5 – £4, or almost double what I’d expect to pay in my local pubs here in Yorkshire. But there were cheaper places – for lunch, I can recommend KC Peaches on Nassau Street, opposite Trinity College, where you can fill a plate from a buffet and get a drink for less than €10.
Familiar brands like Subway are everywhere in Dublin, with many Londis franchises having a Subway concession inside, but they are slightly more expensive than Britain. The £3 Subway and drink deal is €4 for example. Also remember that shops in Ireland have to charge you extra for plastic carrier bags – 22¢ I think.
One potential way to save money is to book tickets for attractions in advance online. We didn’t do this because our British debit and credit cards charge extra for non-Sterling transactions, so any potential savings would be wiped out. But if you have an overseas spending credit card then you may be able to save 10-15% off entry for attractions this way.
After a recent incident involving a colleague’s hand, a door, and their subsequent trip to the local accident and emergency department, I realised that the answer to that question was the latter in my case. I’m pretty sure that I’d not had a booster vaccination for tetanus since before leaving York to go to university in 2002, so I was overdue.
Thankfully, the vaccine is free to everyone in the UK (thank you, NHS). As I already had an appointment with the practice nurse for an asthma checkup yesterday, I just asked in advance if I could be given the vaccination at the same time. It’s mostly like any other vaccine but can make your arm hurt for up to 48 hours afterwards apparently.
Tetanus is actually pretty rare in the UK, with only three people contracting the disease in England and Wales in the whole of 2011. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the vaccine, as though it is rare, it can be fatal. The symptoms can include lockjaw, followed by muscle spasms and stiffness, a fever, high blood pressure and an increased heartbeat. If left untreated, it can result in heart failure, and indeed 11% of those who contract the disease die. The disease is usually contracted through wounds on the skin, which is why you may be asked if you have had the vaccine recently if you present at casualty with an injury.
Some younger people may have lifelong immunity to tetanus, thanks to changes in the vaccination programme, but if you’re approaching middle age like me then you will probably need a booster vaccine every ten years. Either way, speak to your GP or practice nurse, as he/she will be able to advise you whether you need the vaccine.
As more and more people use their mobile phones as their main phone, instead of landlines, it’s becoming more of a scandal that ‘freephone’ 0800 and 0808 numbers are usually not free on mobiles. Not only that, but users with contracts that have inclusive minutes (which is most people), will find that calls to freephone numbers aren’t included. My network, Three, charges me 15.3 pence per minute to call freephone numbers, and my allowance of 300 minutes per month won’t cover it. EE charges its customers 40p per minute.
If you have a smartphone with Skype installed, and have enabled SkypeOut which lets you call regular phone numbers, then you’ll be pleased to know that freephone numbers are completely free. You’ll also probably find that calls made through Skype to 0845 and 0870 numbers are also cheaper than on your mobile.
The downside is that you need to have access to a reasonable internet connection for this to work – 3G or Wifi is usually okay but you will struggle on anything slower. And this might not be a good option if you don’t have a very high data usage allowance.
2. Find the geographical equivalent
Freephone numbers like 0800 numbers, and the chargeable 0870 and 0845 numbers, all point to regular geographical numbers – ones starting with 01 or o2. So if you can find out that geographical number behind the 0800 number, you can call that instead, and make use of your inclusive minutes. SayNoTo0870.com is a rather dated web site that lists many of these numbers, and you can search both by company and by phone number.
3. Use a geographical call forwarding number
Instead of calling the freephone number directly, you can call a third party service using a geographical number, and then have your call forwarded. The call is billed as a geographical number and so will therefore be included in your call allowance. There’s a couple of services to try – 0800 Buster and 0800 Wizard. With 0800 Buster you can actually dial both numbers at once, by inserting a pause character between them, so you can save them to your contacts.
4. Use an app
The aforementioned 0800 Wizard service also has a series of smartphone apps – here’s a link to the iOS app, and it’s also on Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone. You open the app, dial the 0800 number as normal, and the app will automatically route it through a forwarding number as above.
I’m not aware of any privacy issues with using these services – although they forward your calls, I don’t think they’re able to somehow eavesdrop on your conversations.
Next year, none of this will be necessary, and freephone calls will actually be free for everyone. But in the meantime you can stop wasting money on calls that should be free.
Yesterday, I reluctantly opted out of having my medical records shared with third parties. I’ll explain why, and how to do this yourself.
NHS England are compiling a new database called ‘care.data’, which will be available for health professionals, universities, drug companies and insurers to use. The main aim is for medical research, which could be ethnographic, or to look at individual cases for the advancement of healthcare and treatments. The NHS, being a mostly-integrated system which is used by a vast majority of the population, means that it is almost unique amongst healthcare systems in the world in providing cradle-to-grave care. The data produced by the NHS could be really valuable and lead to better health and wellbeing for everyone. Further information is on the NHS Choices web site, and this article in Nature explains why it is a good idea.
On this basis, it seems like a good idea. But whilst the idea is good, the execution isn’t.
The major issue is privacy. To compile this database, the full medical records of everybody who is registered with a GP in England will be imported into this database. You would expect, therefore, for this data to be anonymised; it is, but only slightly. Your name will be removed, but your date of birth, full postcode, NHS number and gender will still be included. That will still make just about everyone in the database uniquely identifiable.
For example, I work at a university – indeed, one where the data from such a database could be really useful, as we do medical research. In fact, I’ll make a shameless plug for our Crocus Cancer Appeal whilst I’m here. Anyway, we have a student database, and, given someone’s’ postcode and date of birth from their pseudo-anonymised medical record, I reckon we could match 99% of those records with our student records. So it’s not at all anonymous. And there’s a particular worry that insurance companies will be able to access records, which could make it very difficult for some people to obtain life insurance.
To make matters worse, this is an ‘opt-out’ scheme rather than opt-in. If you do nothing, then in just a few weeks your data will be irrevocably added to this database, at which point, you will not be able to opt out if you change your mind.
So, although I’m in favour of the general idea, and agree with the spirit behind the database, I have contacted my GP surgery asking for my medical records to not be included in the care.data database. Because I’m worried that my medical records could be abused or used in a way that would not be in my best interests, and because this is my only chance to opt out. I can’t just wait and see what happens, and try to opt out later, as it’ll be too late.
I hope that changes will be made, which will maintain the usefulness of the data whilst respecting the privacy of the people whose data is being used. In particular, a greater level of anonymity, perhaps with more vague dates of birth (month and year only) and less accurate postcodes (sub-districts rather than exact areas). And people should be able to opt out at any time, not just at the start of the project. If these changes are made, then I may consider opting back in.
So, if having read this, you also want to opt out, then the easiest way is using FaxYourGP, which will send a template fax to your GP. Alternatively, medConfidential has a form and covering letter which you can use. Whilst you can write your own letter, there are certain codes that you will need to include in your letter which is why I’d suggest using one of the two methods.
It’s sad that I feel like I need to opt out from what could be a great resource, and I’m angry that it has been managed so poorly.
Christine, my dear wife of nine months, has recently discovered that she likes gin. I’m sure most of you have heard of gin, but essentially it’s an alcoholic spirit, usually made with juniper berries, that is commonly consumed with tonic water. It can also be served with lime, bergamots or cucumber.
Gin used to be incredibly popular in England, in a period during the early 18th century called the ‘Gin Craze‘. Back then, even the average person would consume 10 litres of gin each year – roughly equivalent to six single gin and tonics a week. This was partly due to the fact that gin was safer than water, which was frequently contaminated. It had a renaissance in the 19th century, when ‘Gin palaces‘ started appearing, but nowadays it isn’t so popular.
Certainly if you were to go to a typical pub today, your choice of gin would be rather limited. In Britain, Gordon’s is the biggest selling brand, and frequently is the only one available. Though I don’t really like gin myself, Christine informs me that Gordon’s isn’t particularly good – i.e. Gordon’s is to gin like Foster’s is to beer.
A number of places will also sell Bombay Sapphire, which is distilled in England despite its name. Better pubs may have Hendricks or Beefeater. But if you’re lucky enough to happen across a bar with a bigger range of gin brands, then there are a large number to choose from. In fact, if you have around £100 to spare, then you can buy the Ginvent Calendar – an advent calendar with 24 drams of gin, each one a different variety. My cousin has bought this for two years’ running.
For those with a passion for gin, then there are gin festivals where you can try different varieties – like at a beer festival. Leeds played host to one last year, and the Manchester Gin Festival is on the 5th April.
I’m afraid I find gin a bit too bitter, although I recently tried Hendricks and tonic and it was quite nice. And I quite like damson gin. But unlike my wife, I can’t see myself drinking it regularly.
