Dave Williams

Heh I recorded this in the "rest room". :)

I'm starting to write this at 13:21 UTC on Wednesday 29 June which is 2:31 PM in London and 6:31AM in Vegas.

Well today has been a bit of a mixed bag thus far. With: sleep deprivation which I guess is partially self-inflicted, broken down trains which won't open their doors to let one out, unhelpful or non-existent assistance, all conspiring against me. I've already declined two wheelchairs today, one because on a day when I have a 10 or 11 hour flight I want to take every opportunity to stretch the legs, and more importantly presumably wheelchairs are a finite resource and really should be allocated to the people who genuinely need them. While I'm having a rant, the airline food, chicken and pasta, was rancid, and economy seems to get smaller every time I fly.

There are some positives to take from today though. I was invited to the Virgin club house and treated to a full English breakfast: sausage, bacon, mushroom, tomato, toast, coffee and grapefruit juice. A gentleman was walking round even polishing shoes, heh and they even gave me new laces! And lovely fast wireless internet. Save for the plastic cutlery and the 5 quid per hour for the WiFi, I could have been in heaven!

I also had the company of a lovely young lady Estelle who originates from near Manchester in the UK, her mother still lives here, but Estelle lives in the Virgin Islands. Estelle has just returned from a cruise around western Europe with her mother and was waiting to board a flight to Antigua. She regaled me with tales of visiting places as random as Moscow and Fiji, and could well also be someone else who has-been around the world more times than the International Space Station! I must be the last person on the planet not to have done it yet? 27 days and counting though.

I took my seat aboard flight VS43 to Las Vegas at around 10:30AM although the flight didn't get away until around 11:30, 45 minutes later than scheduled. The pilot reckons the flight should last just shy of 10 hours which sounds pretty optimistic when the flight is scheduled to take almost 11 hours to make the 5200 mile journey from London to Las Vegas. I guess time will tell, and the pilot has probably got a better idea about these things than yours truly.

The passengers to my right are pretty sociable and are off to the US for a year on some inaugural student work placement project set up by Sheffield Hallam University. One guy has never been to the US before and has signed up for a whole year without much idea about what he's getting into. So really my little jaunt for a few weeks should be a comparative piece of piss.

Right, must think about battery life as I still have no clue where I'll be able to buy a power cable for the Thinkpad. And I've get to get through American immigration unshaved. Ooopse, Freudian slip.

From seat 22D aboard a 747 heading west at 32000ft, bye for now.

And it's very nice thank you very much. What lovely people my airline are.

The train I was on sat at the platform with the doors refusing to open and the lights blinking off and on.

Oh pants just realised I may have left part of my Thinkpad charger at Martin's. agrgrgrgrgr. I wonder if I can get him to ship it to me.

anyway, where was I, they eventually fixed the train, I checked in and found myself in posession of an invitation to the club house where I have just had my shoes polished and enjoyed a full English breakfast and am trying to make the most of the £5 per hour wireless internet access.

Anyway, will have to conserve power until I can figure out where I'm going to get a replacement Thinkpad power cable. Agrgrgr.

It's early, or is that late? After a pizza and a look at the new mPower from Humanware , i tried to get some sleep. It wasn't happening. All things which i hadn't had time to do kept running through my mind. So at stupid o'clock this morning i decided to cut my losses and jump on the train to london. Now headed to the airport for an early check-in and hopefully some breakfast.

This was recorded just before I got on the train at Preston railway station. I'm now in Epsom and plan to catch some sleep before heading to the airport in the morning.

Ok, after months of planning, and lots of money spent and hair lost, heh I'm not kidding about the hair, it's finally time to get this round the world show on the road.

I am certainly not the first blind person to have gone all the way around the world. I think Jonathan Mosen has been round more times than a satellite. And to claim to be going round the world, while true, is slightly pretentious, as I'll only be visiting 4 countries other than my own. Every journey is unique and I will be passing through 7 cities over the next 28 days. So stay tuned.

Today was pretty manic. I spent the morning finishing my washing and trying as much as possible to get a couple of work related projects boxed off. I had an appointment at the House of Hair for 2PM, heh I wasn't kidding about loosing hair. The young lady who cut it was apparently with child and has her final pre-motherhood holiday in Portugal planned for a couple of weeks from now. I went and did a couple of fascinating errands in town like buying a couple of cables and a new jacket, and dropped by the Stanley for one last farewell drink before heading home to complete my packing.

I finally crammed the last of my possessions into my suit case around 5:30 and called a cab to get me and my baggage to the train station. I think I've thrown out all perishable food stuffs and locked everything which is lockable in my flat, so hopefully it'll be safe for the next month. If not, well it's too late to start worrying about it now.

I got to the station at around 6:30 to discover the next service to London wasn't until 7:20, so I grabbed a coffee and a bacon letice and tomato sandwich (£4.85) and bought my train ticket (£41).

I rather self-consciously attempted to record a podcast from the station café, before hanging around on platform 4 feeling like I'd forgotten just about everything including my marbles.

The 19:20 London service arrived, all be it 5 minutes late and so here I am sitting on the train contemplating 30,000 miles over the next 4 weeks. Tonight I plan to stay with Martin in Epsom before leaving early on Wednesday to catch a direct flight from London to Las Vegas.

Thank you to everyone who has wished me well for the trip, and a big thanks in advance to everyone who is either putting me up or who's assistance I hope not to have to rely on too much in the next little while.

I don't think the photoblogging is working properly, I think you need to click the picture links in order to view the images on the FlickR site. Never mind, I'll still try and post the odd pick from time to time. The audio posts should work just fine, and you should be able to copy the XML link in to your Podcatching client and have the audio updates delivered to you automagically.

This is Digital Dave the World Wide Wave Williams saying if you never hear from me again, it's been nice knowing you all and I'm gonna miss you!

It's a sad world when the host of Countdown finally faces his final canumdrum.

Labels: TV

Don't ask me why my photos aren't posting correctly. You'll just have to click the respective links.

Anyway the reason for this post. I was looking for news and some kind of guide to entertainment in Singapore which wasn't Lonely Planet. And apparently I found the Sarong Party Girl!

You wouldn't believe the time it took to get my sister's dog to sit still. But imho it was well worth it.

A quick snap of my sister.

I'm writing this from an air bed on my sister's living room floor. She celebrate's her birthday on tuesday, but as i'll be away i've been visiting with her this evening. This afternoon I bought her some treatment from her favourite salon for a gift.

Tonight we enjoyed a quiet evening at her house near Stockport. We had a couple of beers and some wine as well as pizzza. Tomorrow we visit our mother and relatives in Blackburn.

Counting down the hours until i set off on my adventure. Will keep you posted, even if it does mean blogging like this from my phone. Ttfn

This is the same company who discontinued: the EveryPhone call forwarding service, Orange Equity loyalty scheme, Wildfire voice activated answer phone service, Orange Answer personal assistant service, to name just a few. Swines. But the offer of a free Nokia 6630 and Talks, and 500 cross network minutes per month, well ... what can you do?

The last couple of days have been pretty busy, and things are likely to get even busier from here on in. My to-do list now stretches on to 3 pages and there is absolutely no way that everything on that list is going to get completed before I go away. So I'm starting to prioritise and hope that I get through pretty much most of the important stuff.

Martin got away pretty early on Thursday, which was good, as it meant I was up and about and could get stuck into some work. Thursday evening I had a lovely home cooked meal with a couple of friends which ended up turning into a very late one indeed. And it was pretty much Friday Morning before I got home. I signed in to MSN, and immediately got bombarded with messages. This was nice, although, difficult to reply to absolutely everyone. I attempted to make some in-roads into the email backlog before spending a little time recuperating.

This weekend was my last chance to get away before I go away proper on the World Wide Williams Wonderings which start at the end of the month. On Saturday afternoon I found myself on a boat out in the sunshine and fresh air in the middle of Cardiff Bay heading out to the Barrage which is a dam which creates an artificial harbour around which Cardiff is undergoing significant redevelopment. Around 7PM We grabbed a burger at an American-style diner before showing up at the Cardiff Glee Club for a night of comedy which kicked off about 9PM. A couple of audio posts will follow which should fill-in the rest of Saturday.

Today felt very hot and sticky, and included the four and half hour trek north back to Preston. Thankfully no replacement bus services this weekend from crew. Although the Cardiff to New Port service was cancelled only to be reinstated a few minutes later.

So don't expect much from me on here over the next couple of days as I try to do all those things which one needs to do just before going away. While at the same time try to keep up with work, juggle my personal life, get my flat into something approximating tidy, etc etc. The good news is it looks like the podcasting during my trip will happen. I have borrowed an iRiver H140 and a decent stereo microphone. I eventually got it all configured to a point where the audio is passable. So you can be the judge when I upload the audio of JW and I at Cardiff bay.

Runs for about 13 minutes. Contains drunken ramblings.

Now this is my kind of website! Reminds me of Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down which I also love.

Finally, Rob has got his own .co.uk. Currently showing his pics from his trip to Japan and Thailand.

On Wednesday evening Galloways Society for the Blind held their anual driving evening at Samlesbury
which is where BAE Systems construct the Eurofighter. I go mainly for the motorbikes, and the biker lads are spot on. I tried about half a dozen bikes with the Fireblade remaining my favourite. It's good to get the adrenaline pumping, and purched pretty high up on this nippy little machine, blasting down the run way at speeds approaching 100mph with very little to cling on to, and the wind clawing at my jacket, definitely lets you know you're alive!

Martin just returned from Ireland and we met for a couple in the Stanley before heading back to mine for something to eat and a couple of cans. A good night was had by all.

I'm not a huge fan of the honours system, however I am a big fan of many of those who have been recognised this time around.

Labels: TV

This is extraordinary in almost every respect.

Hmm, this is a bit of a worry.

It's been a busy few days, hence the lack of bloggering. As you can see I have finally managed to get the old photo blogging by phone working which is a step forward.

Martin had some work in the North of England last week so he stayed at my gaff from Tuesday to Friday. One of the nights we went out for a curry with Phil. I think Martin has blogged about that on his site at mproberts.co.uk so no need to retell that story here. Oh actually I just checked Martin's blog and he neglected to mention Philip's drunken Paul O'Grady impersonations in the taxi!

Wednesday night ended up with Martin and I Skyping with RK. She thought I was mad with her for some inexplicable reason. But then she can be intriguing like that sometimes. I think everything is ok now. Guess we'll find out next month in Nevada.

Thursday I actually managed to do some house work for once in preparation for JW who was coming up from South Wales for the weekend. After a quick Guinness in the Railway we went to the Fox where apparently we mistakenly walked into a wake. Doh. I had no idea that Andy the landlord of the Fox had in fact recently passed away and Thursday was the day of his funeral. Rather poignantly the Fox was serving an excellent beer called Black Gold. We then moved to Yates' where somehow cigarette ash got in my drink which rather embarrassingly made me throw up. Yuck.

Walking into a wake and vomiting was not the welcome to Preston I had planned for JW. We then moved to my local where the land lord and his gf were having a dingdong. Could things get much worse? Apparently they could. My xgf walked in and stood at the bar not really talking to anyone. I bought her a drink, tried to make sure she was ok and invited her out for a meal with Martin and JW. Needless to say my offering to pay for her drink was welcome but the dinner invitation and my concern for her well-being was not. This was only the second or third time I'd seen her since the break-up, the other time was a week ago at the wedding reception of a mutual friend where quite frankly I was pretty embarrassed by her behaviour. Enough said.

Martin, JW and I moved on for something to eat. The Ocean Bar and Grill in Preston is truly excellent. The portions could be slightly more generous, and the prices could be a little lower, but then I guess one gets what one pays for. The quality is about as good as it gets in Preston and I don't hesitate in recommending the Ocean Bar and Grill on Cannon Street.

Friday, JW and I continued the celebrations of Liverpool's fifth European Cup victory by making a pilgrimage to Liverpool. We visited and photographed the trophy it self as well as joining the stadium tour. The highlight of the tour is undoubtedly the moment one walks through the tunnel from the players' dressing room to the dugout. Following the official tour we took a few moments to remember the victims of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster where 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives.
Later on Friday We met with a couple of mates from college in Liverpool city centre. At one point during the evening after untold amounts of alcohol in one of Liverpool's finest public houses, I ended up deep in conversation, inadvertently on my knees, in front of JW, which was misconstrued by some of the locals as a proposal. lol. We got back to Preston at stupid o'clock after a pretty lengthy train journey and talking to a group of four women who all clamed to be called Debbie!

Saturday, JW and I went by train to Blackpool. We took a pretty bracing walk in the wind along the seafront before partaking in the obligatory fish and chips.

We got hopelessly lost in Blackpool tower which quite frankly is a bit of a disappointment unless you are under 7 and want to jump about in Jungle Jim's, or are over 70 and are into ballroom dancing and the Charlie Chaplin exhibition. We were both distinctly underwhelmed by all of this. I felt myself becoming ageist by the minute. We had really fancied the Walk of Faith which is a glass panel 500ft above the pavement, unfortunately this was closed due to the high winds. Blackpool Pleasure Beach was only a tram ride away, so we beat a hasty retreat from the tower muttering obscenities about Blackpool's tallest building into the wind as we went.

While Martin was at the Epsom Derby, the most famous flat race in the racing calendar, JW and I began our Blackpool Pleasure Beach insanity with the Grand National, a wooden twin-track racing coaster, which pretty much rattled my bones and was a good opener for a dash around a selection of the major rides at this world famous theme park. The Wild Mouse, a traditional wooden Wild Mouse ride, was next which really scared the crap out of me. The cars are tiny and you can genuinely feel the car coming away from the track on the endless array of tight bends. I think we concluded the animal theme with the Steeple chace which is a 3-lane steel coaster ride. Bling, one of the pleasure Beach's newer offerings was pretty awesome, basically this spins you around in every dimension about 100ft above the ground. This was closely followed by one of my old favourites, the Revolution, which according to the web site was "Europe's first 360 degree looping roller coaster" this is a bit old school but it does take you through the loop backwards which gets the ald stomach moving just a tad. I guess the Revolution is comparable to the Thunder loop at Alton Towers. Next just time for a quick pit stop at the hotdog stand before we joined the massive line of people waiting to go on the Pepsi Max Big One, "The tallest fastest roller coaster in Europe. 235ft high and over one mile of twisting and turning at speeds of up to 87mph". We certainly needed a pint after that one. We were starting to run out of time and were having trouble finding the end of the queues for the Spin Doctor and Valhalla, so we finished off with the Big Dipper which is another traditional wooden roller coaster. So plenty left for us to checkout if we ever make a return trip. But all told we gave a pretty good account of ourselves, and probably just about got our money's worth.

With the light fading and the park packing up for the night, after the thrills and spills of the pleasure beach it was time for something a bit more relaxing and dignified. We managed to stumble across a quiet little Chinese restaurant away from the front where JW had the special curry and I sampled sweet and sour pork. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but reckon I could find it again if my life depended on it.

We made it back to Preston for about half ten and met Donna in the Sun for a couple. There was much mirth made about the state of my neck. Eh hem. And we got talking to some random people who invited us to join their pub quiz team on Sunday.

For reasons which aren't entirely clear we watch the DVD of my skydive when we got back to the flat, oh and also watched Alan Partridge. I'm hoping there is no connection?

Sunday, we did help win the pub quiz in the Continental, although not before having lunch at the Baytree and dropping by the Market Tavern and the Stanley.

With JW's help Today I fixed Donna's phone, saw JW on to the train and got some work done. So it's back to work proper now. Tons of stuff to do. And not much time in which to do it. But that's my gallivanting over for a little while at least.

I'm slightly concerned that my flight tickets haven't turned up yet. I'm leaving on the 28th. I've borrowed Martin's iRiver, portable hard disk based mp3 player/recorder thingy, so I need to get comfortable with using that so I can do this Podcasting thing when I embark on my travels.

Right bedtime. I need some beauty sleep.