Leeds

Leeds was pretty eventless.... I'm here myself, busy with boring work. I never get a chance to see the place, and I've never really been sure what there is to see anyway..... This always happens when I travel to Britain. It's not exotic enough for me. Maybe I need to buy a lonely planet of Britain and tackle it as a foreigner/tourist.

The good point about Britain is having free phone minutes on my mobile. This lets me phone mates to ask stupid questions etc and have big long meandering blethers which I can't do when I'm bored in hotels in other countries.

Later this year there's a conference I have to go to which will be of interest to The Cadet, so maybe she'll come down on the train and we can do Leeds... but this time it's just an endless search for a decent chippie and boring meetings. At least I have wifi, so I can skype and sort out all my photos from Last week's Scottish adventures.

The Meeting is in the Parkinson building of Leeds University....



.......so I am surrounded by students once more, which is quite a strange experience. Especially when I'm dressed up all fancy like. It's exam season, so every time I go down to the toilet, I see all the signs "NO CALCULATOR" "QUIET EXAMS". It takes me back, when you had spent the previous 36 hours overdosing on coffee and crisps and trying to digest a whole years teaching into a list of 20 thigns to remember, past papers, redoing tutorials, the adrehnalin pumping cos it's an exam, then getting out, know ing you've done okay and going off and having that Gezellig beer. Getting the exam results through and getting that tangible reward for the hard work. I actually miss it. You don't get those tangible rewards for hard work anymore, and the mountain of work you've got to tackle doesn't have a structure which can be recognised like a year of lectures can....

The three days passes in a blur, and when it comes to sending postcards I don't seem to be able to find any.... So sorry folks, Leeds isn't interesting enough.

I stagger back home tired on the Friday night.... Too tired to be bothered going out.......

Bondage

I am at one of those get to know your colleagues bonding sessions. It is in the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands; otherwise known as near Den Bosch:





Now this would be horrible no metter where it was, but I have the added complication that it's all in Dutch, a language whose comprehension hurts my head. I suppose I should be glad of the practice and immersion in the language, but given that I have work to do, and don't really beleive that any of the hippy shit about communicating was heard by any of the people in the room(Ironic huh??), I'm not in th best of moods.

After saying Assertiveness, Facilitate and constructive at key moments during the two days. I'm heading off in a Taxi towards Den Bosch and then onto Schiphol Airport for a meeting in Leeds. The girl in the taxi seems quite excited to have a genuine Scotsman in her car and asks if I am impressed by the Dutch countryside:



I'm not in the mood to be tactful and tell her that I've been in Scotland for the past two weeks and the flat countries aren't really doing it for me.

I'm like a zombie all the way to leeds, with the only escapism being Muriel Gray's book on climbing:


It's a good means of fantisising about road trips in Scotland and it's a funny and easy to read book.

I'm very glad when I manage to finally get my head down on the pillow of a comfort inn and settle into some good british telly.......

Leeds

I am in Leeds for a few days for work. I’ve been before. It’s a nice enough city, and it’s a little weird being back in the UK for work rather than for family. I’m looking forward to some good unhealthy English food and drinking pints again.(Like I can’t find a bar that sends pints in Amsterdam.



Leeds is quite strange it’s up north enough to have a good bit of yorkshire character, and it’s working class roots give it a quite a Glaswegain feel. There’s a kind of mix of buildings, which don’t fit together, all different styles which sprawl around the centre.

The meetings I’m in take up almost the whole day, so we find ourselves too tired to enjoy Leeds. This seemed to happen last time as well. We have to make do with a bag of chips:



This is even a stretch. We seem to be unable to find a good chip shop! What has happened to British food!!! There is one good restaurant which we found in Leeds last tiem called “Room”:



We don’t have the energy to go here though. We feel that we are too tired to enjoy it’s good food, stylish atmosphere and well chosen chilled music. Instead we make do with further pints of Carling.

Eventually after doing nothing more than sitting in boring meetings, drinking beer, eating chips and sleeping – it’s time for the off. We have a quick trip round Waterstones and some good British shopping, but unfortunately we are even too tired to enjoy that. My one lasting memory, is that before we got in a Taxi for the airport, I went for a paper, and returned with Irn Bru and a daily record:





Quality!!!