Back again!

Akela has been away on his holidays (or a short break really) in sunny Cornwall and would like to point out that much repeated offering that London sucks. I passed through both on my way and on my way back and simply could not believe the utter madness of the place. Coming back it was only emphasised having spent 5 days in the most chilled out possible area of the country. The pushing, the shoving, the noise, the smells, the underground and the just full on rudeness of the place all make me wonder why people live there, it’s a truly horrible experience.

Cornwall though was relaxed and friendly. The small hotel we stayed in tried to bend over backwards for us. Nothing was too much trouble, the owners were polite, friendly and genuinely wanted to welcome everyone into what was effectively their home. Truly wonderful!

Pity about the journey back with train diversions, air con that backed up, not enough luggage space, buffet car running out of food, rowdy passengers getting the hump when they got a penalty fair (look, you got caught, deal with it ok?), over crowding. What fun!

Anyway, Akela is back, mostly refreshed and ready to start fighting the good fight again! There will hopefully be plenty from me over the next day or two so watch this space.

I had the dubious of pleasure of being in London the last couple of days with work and randomly ended up on Oxford Street. It's not my favourite place on earth by a long shot, its too noisy, to busy and too many people but I had something to buy while I was there so along I went.

Now for once I just happened to look up a bit from where I was going and what struck me was that while there are an awful lot of modern and pretty faceless buildings along there, there are also an awful ot very old and in some places quite grand buildings as well. Some of the architechture is beautiful and the decoration ornate and just very pleasent to look at. Yet in the vast majority, in fact I think every case, the front of the ground floor has had some dreadful shop front put in that quite simply ruins it. I know that they are trying to bring in the punters and wantto show off what they are selling, that's quite obvious, but surely there is more to our environment, and I include our urban environment, than the ability to sell stuff more effectively?

Maybe something to debate another day.

While in London I had the horror of staying at the Ibis Hotel in Euston. Thankfully I wasn't paying, HM Government was footing the bill, £135 a night for 47 people. And HM Government has been soundly ripped off.

Lets start with the room. It was meant to be a double bed, actually it was two single beds pushed together. The window over looked the railway line into Euston. It was meant to have a bath, actually it did have a bath but it was 4 feet long. I am 6 foot 2. Need I say more? The towels were the size of postage stamps and the sink took at least 15 minutes to empty. There was perhaps 9 inches space between the bed and the wall it was that small. The loo roll was like sand paper.

Then there were the staff. Most of them couldn't speak English to an acceptable standard for a customer service position and the bar staff were rude and distinterested and didn't know how to pour beer.

And then the food, are yes the food. The starter that we all got was apparently salad. What it consisted of was one limp lettuce leaf, 2 slices of cucumber, 2 small gerkins and a pile of tinned sweet corn. It was revolting.

The main course was a choice, not that we had any kind of waiter service, this £135 a night hotel, yes remember that, £135 a night, could not even serve us at our tables. I ended up with veggie lasagna. It was luke warm, greasy, tasteless and the vegetables were watery. It was pretty grim.

Pudding was fuit salad, that I strongly suspect was tinned, and it took the skin off the inside of my mouth.

All in all the Ibis Euston is an absolute disgrace.