blah blah blah christmas yadda yadda festivities yadda yadda blah blah new year blah blah blah 2008 etc.

ok? ;-)

Whatever you do, whatever you believe in (or don't believe in), wherever you are, whoever you're with and for however long:

HAVE A GOOD ONE!

Hope to see you all soon, over the festive period or in the new year

Yep, back from my first ever Whitby - I did say they'd have to book me to play for me to go there, and this year they did, so I kinda had no choice really ( Read more... )

Marcus Brigstocke is a fucking genius - fact!

I wish I could rant in such an eloquent way (and I agree on pretty much 100% of his rants too)!!

Here's a few pearls, go educate yourselves if you haven't seen them already:

( On anti-americanism )

As promised, here's the pix from my recent travels; click on the various sub-albums (Russia, Mongolia, China and the Russia sub-sub-albums).

WARNING - there's LOADS of them, over 300 (and that's down from the original 400 plus I took), don't say I didn't warn you!

Meantime, ( here is one of them, since someone specifically asked for it )

[continued from Part 3, Here...and here I was, the next morning, on the final bit of my almost 5000 mile long train journey (counting from Moscow), while the train ran through the fields of China. We arrived in Beijing in the early afternoon, having spent the morning looking out of the windows and taking pictures at the breathtaking views of the ( Read more... )

[continued from Part 2, hereSo, we were saying... just some 10 miles after leaving the Russian border town the train stopped again at the Mongolian border; this proved to be a much faster exercise however, in fact too fast an exercise probably, as after the passport control and formalities (which took just over 1h) we were told the train would stop ( Read more... )

[continued from Part 1, here]

So, I was in Irkutsk, and the first thing I noticed is that this was NOT Moscow:

( Irkutsk and Bajkal )

Since I'm staying in tonight, I might as well get some of the travel report out of the way

So, it all started VERY early in the morning of Sat 30th June, when I headed over to Heathrow and from them flew to Moscow.

( Moscow )

So, I got back last night, after travelling for a total of 21 hours (from the moment the taxi picked me up from the hostel in Beijing to that I opened the door of my flat), and today I'm back at work already and with a tonne of things to do ( Read more... )

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn I'll leave my flat and cross this big and magnificent capital of ours, East to West in almost its entire length, to get to Heathrow a couple of hours later;

From there I'll cross this big and magnificent continent of ours, West to East in almost its entire length, to land in Moscow a few hours later ( Read more... )