InvictaMoto's On The Road Again!

You do get to travel far and wide when you drop down the table and end up in the Europa League. The first stage group has come out with this little lot. Group E:  Arsenal , Sporting CP , Qarabag , FC Vorskla .    I guess Sporting CP are the club we know as Sporting Lisbon but the others? In order are the 5th best team in the Azerbaijan league and the 3rd best in the Ukraine! Two nice long trips to the east between Premier League games at home in England and the Carabao Cup where we have Brentford from the Championship at the Emirates. The joys of finishing 6th.

Tomino grilling cheese. Pan fried with Fry Light. Very nice on a bed of lettuce and a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar. posted from Bloggeroid

Amazebobs! A visit to one of the schools we support at the Islington ICT team. It's nice to get out and meet people face to face. Always like this one. Morvia and Fiona the Head always nice to chat with. On way back now using London Overground. posted from Bloggeroid

This is a right bloody palaver. A troll through the internet and National has resulted in a reservation for a full size at MIA. It's damned expensive.  I had a look on TripAdvisor to look for recommendations and have a few other ideas to follow up on. I have had a look at a few of the comparison sites and there are cheaper offers. With National, they include most of the the insurances and I have never paid for anything on top so need to check the cheaper companies to see what level of cover there is. On one of the TA pages someone was saying they have third-party insurance that covers any excess that they would have to pay on the rental in the event of an accident.  I will look at that as well.   As for the Timeshare. Looking at Orlando area for week 1 and week 2 nearer Miami. It's still seven months away so hopefully a few more resorts will pop up. posted from Bloggeroid

A yellow ball bought by my Aunt Yvonne. He plays with it and luckily before he can chew lumps out of it, it pops out of his mouth. posted from Bloggeroid

Today is the " Day of Syn " in Dymchurch. I dropped Claire off at 0930 for her shift as volunteer for Guide Dogs UK .  Her spell on the stand is finishing at 1200 and before the parade from the slipway gets to the recreation ground and so traffic might get a bit heavy later. So I thought of the train as an alternative. The Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway runs at the end of our garden and Hythe station is a longish walk from home. As an over-60 I get a concession fare and Reggie will travel free. It will be £9 return. However, Reggie doesn't like the train when it passes our back fence. So I decided that it wasn't worth the gamble that he would get angry and bark all the way! It's twenty minutes each way, So. We drove. The car park at Dymchurch by the Martello was almost empty. The walk to the recreation ground wasn't that far and we were soon on the Guide Dogs stand. When Claire's shift was over we set off for a look at other stands an...

Phew. Things looked so much better today in the first half except the defence are still too slow and the centre backs left exposed. The full backs, Spaniards Bellerin and Monreal, push forward and between them scored one and assisted in the 3-1 win. But it wouldn't be Arsenal if they didn't frustrate and excite with almost equal measure. Frustration has had the upper hand for quite a while though. In the end we came home happy enough with a first win of the season. There are some more tough ones to come for a team lacking some confidence. posted from Bloggeroid

Odd that as Arsenal fans we'd use a phrase like that. But it is true. Today we have the rare occurrence of a 3pm Saturday kick off. Once the Europa League starts later in the autumn we'll be back to Sunday and Monday kick offs. Today the visitors are West Ham United. One of our London rivals.  Their start to the season is worse than ours despite only playing one top 5 team in the first two games, unlike us who played two of the top 5. Their previously stingy owners have spent over £100m on players and their traditionally whinging tosser supporters are still not happy... Sounds like a great atmosphere to play today!!!

Now that flights have been booked and we are committed it's time to look for somewhere to stay on the first night. As usual I went to booking.com for answers and found a Motel 6 with free cancellation and no advanced payment. The reviews give it 7.4/10. It looks from blurb that many hotels like to take a deposit or even the full amount immediately on reserving a room, even if there's free cancellation. We had this before at the Blue Marlin in Key West where we stayed two nights and were about $300 out of pocket five months before going. It wasn't so bad as we still went. I know a lot of hoteliers don't like the free cancellations part of the system but to me it gives flexibility to the customer. If you're honest and give good service, then people will still stay with you. Car hire seems to have hiked a bit since October 2017 when we last busied ourselves over. Currently checking the booking sites to see what deal there are. With the chances of the timeshare being...

The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) Foundation has recently signed up to AmazonSmile, so by making one super-simple change, you continue to get your goods from Amazon and MAG Foundation makes money to help carry on their work every time you buy something – at zero additional cost to you. MAG Foundation is now listed with AmazonSmile so, if you use Amazon, you can now go to its online store via http://smile.amazon.co.uk and nominate MAG Foundation as your selected charity. The price you pay for goods is exactly the same - it doesn't cost you a single penny more – but with the added benefit that MAG Foundation gains from every purchase you make.  Then, all you have to do is go through smile.amazon.co.uk for all future purchases so that MAG Foundation continues to receive valuable funding to help continue its important activities, including the 'Lock2Lock' anti-theft campaign, 'Think Bike' (with the famous car window stickers available to buy), ...

Once I had booked the Shuttle and gave myself plenty of time to get there and back I then started work on a bit of research of where to go. As long as there aren't too many delays getting across then I expect to arrive in the Ypres area about 1200 to 1230. Lunch. Might see if the chip shop in Vlamertinge is open. Being Belgian there will be a large selection of meaty products that can be deep fried... Sounds like a diet buster. If you have ever had fresh chips (frites/fries) in Belgium you will know how they are simply marvellous. From there. To Palingbeek. Then I have added the two mine craters at St Eloi then down to the Pool of Peace,  and finally the Island of Ireland Peace Park near Messines. That should bring me to time to head back. More to follow. St Eloi Crater -   http://www.toerisme-ieper.be/en/page/334-349-364/minecrater-saint-eloi.html Pool of Peace -  https://www.flandersfields.be/en/do/pool-peace Island of Ireland Peace Park  -  https://www.v...

To commemorate the numbers of troops killed in the battles around Ypres and at Passchendaele  an amazing memorial has been created in the domain of Palingbeek to the south east of Ypres/Ieper. The memorial consists of 600000 sculptures that each represent a soldier killed on that front during WW1. Pepe and I will be going over there in a few weeks to have a look. The official website (linked below) suggests at least an hour to view the installation. It's only there until 11th November - Armistice Day, so there is limited time to get across and see it. Hopefully I won't be Johnny No-Mates on the day but if I am I can enjoy it all the better myself. There are a couple of other places I'd like to call in where I have not been before or not for a long time. A report to follow in a couple of weeks when I have been over to Belgium. More information: http://www.comingworldrememberme.be/nl/praktisch

Booked today.  Cost £64 for the car on top of the Assen MotoGP trip fare that I had parked with them after we couldn't go. To accommodate taking Reggie to the kennels for the weekend on Friday morning I have booked 28/9 1120 out and 1/10 1750 back. As we will be back too late to go and get him on the Monday I have Tuesday leave as well and so I can go and get him in the morning.

MAG members get 20% discount at Blackpool's premier indoor motorcycle show. The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG), the UK's leading voice for riders, is pleased to be supporting a family festival in Blackpool celebrating the best of biking. The Great North West Motorbike Festival will be held on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th August 2018. Following the successful launch in 2017 of this event, this year sees an expansion in the number of stands andexperiences, including big-brand exhibitors and traders, a celebration of our hard working emergency services and a custom bike village with live music, tattooists, beer & burgers. The event will be hosted at Blackpool Winter Gardens and full details regarding the event, including ticket prices, can be found at www.gnwmf17.co.uk MAG's North West Regional Rep, Tony Cox, said "MAG is pleased to beup supporting this event again.  This year we will have 'The MAG Lounge', ad edicated seating area whe...

And they do indeed. I had a small one on the cruise a fortnight ago and a coupleof pink "migraleve" sorted that out but after Migraine Awareness Month ( http://invictamoto.blogspot.com/2018/06/migraine-awareness-month.html) wI am still no further forward in understanding why I am getting them.   It's not as though they are coming on a regular basis.  There's no pattern at all, or so it seems. I woke up yesterday to another strong one that actually woke me before the alarm went off (set for 6.45am). I had a couple of pinks and that was it for a while.  The tablets do say that they can make you drowsy, and I find that whatever the effect they have and whatever my brain is going though makes it much worse. I slept like a log until 11am and then felt tired and hungry all day!  A bowl of Frosties seemed to quell that for a while. Today I tried to get a doctor's appointment.  The plan is to phone dead on 8.30am and then keep redialling until ...

Over and done with now but it had its own blogspot. http://pandc-cruising.blogspot.com

So. We have ordered three tickets for the race weekend.  Claire and I will go in the car and Neill on his BMW, I expect. Before then he had a trip to Canada to fly in the Lancaster bonber. Before we make any firm travel plans I have booked the leave from work and Reggie is booked into Wyncot. We need to sit down with Neill and see what his plan is for the journey up. He won't want to be contrained by the progress a car can make especially when the roads get a bit busy. We have to take Reggie to Wyncot. That is easily an hour round trip from home on nasty narrow country lanes. I don't want to be thrashing it all the way there to wherever the hotel at the Assen end is located. I think we'll be looking at around an 11am Shuttle. Anything not to be around Antwerp at lunchtime or evening rush hour. That place is a bloody nightmare through the tunnels and merging highways. The Insignia has a range of about 650 miles to a tank of diesel and so there should be no problems in that a...

So. The question of how to use the 36 RCI points I have banked was coming down to two periods of time. From UK to the US it is really not good value to spend 9 hours plus flying for one week away. So it needs to be when there are two weeks or more to fit into. Easter and Summer holidays. Surprisingly July/August was best for the timeshare exchanges in the more westerly states; Arizona etc. But from reading Roger Naylor's articles for Arizona magazines it's monsoon time. After last year in Florida following the hurricanes, no thanks!!!  But airfares to Phoenix or Last Vegas are for the rich only. So my attention was shifted to Easter. Schools break up on April 5th and return the day after Easter Monday. And since our management dictated our holidays could only be in school holidays I booked that fortnight off ages ago. Now the problem was looking for flights. We went into the Thomas Cook agency in Hythe. Got some ideas. Then used Skyscanner.  London Heathrow to Miami, on April...

Not quite midnight but breakfast at the Oasis cafe in Old Romney Some 600 years or more ago Old Romney was just Romney and one of the Cinque Ports. A bit like Hythe the area silted up and it is now quite a way from the sea The Meldrews like to vary our breakfast meets and this is a first. The table service was good. The food was good. For me the only downer was the White Hart Lane street sign over the door. Once over I led the pack around the marsh until Lympne and they headed off and I came home. It amazes me how the power rangers still ride too fast on these marsh roads and through villages. The roads are generally deformed; there's a marsh under them, and bumpy. Plus there are miles of unfenced "drains" as the drainage waterways are called. Not Rocket conditions!! So another good morning of chat and a few more miles achieved. posted from Bloggeroid

In Broadstairs with Claire and Reggie to meet with, Judy, a friend of Claire's from school many years ago. They hadn't met for about 50 years but are in contact on Facebook. The idea was to meet and then go and have lunch and they could chat.  Judy was appearing in the Folk Festival singing with a group and another ex-Clarendon girl, Linda, was dancing Appalachian Tap Dance.  Don't ask me! As I expected it to be an old girls meeting I decided to take Reggie and when they were chatting I would walk with him along the cliff tops around Viking and Louisa bays.  As Viking Bay is the main beach dogs aren't allowed between April and September, but at Louisa he is allowed on a lead. At the meeting place by the war memorial and the Morris turned up. As I was keeping Reggie close by and Claire took the pictures. After a walk down to the Pavillion we met  Kevin, Judy's partner, and Linda and went to to lunch.  At the time I learned that Kevin was a biker as ...

Not "oh" but Occupational Health. As a recovering cardiac patient who was "fixed" in 2015 with an angioplasty that inserted a stent into my heart, I do suffer from some bouts of fatigue. Sometimes these bouts of fatigue can last for a few hours to half a day and rarely, a little longer. As a result I have more days off sick than is contractually acceptable at work. Often my offer to work from home when I feel better but maybe not well enough to travel for my (morning) 1h 40m commute, is turned down by management. And so another sick day is added to the list when I could be productive for about 60% of the working day. So they refer me to Occupational Health. Occupational Health used to be a department within the Council. But for a number of years it has been outsourced. Outsourcing is still big news for many organisations. Last year they interviewed me at St Pancras Hospital. This year a new OH provider, at nice offices in the City of Lo...

This is one of the last beers from the July selection of beers from Beer52. After a brief membership I have dropped out. I didn't intend to but that's the way they took it. I emailed to cancel the August box as I was still working through the last of the June and most of the July batches. I have pretty much a catholic taste in beer. I like a full range from heavy bitters to Pilsner style beers right through the Trappist Tripels via Belgian fruit beers like Rodenbach. However, there were simply too many IPA's in the selection each month and I emailed to hold August and explained with the gist of the above paragraph. They took that as a quitting email. It's probably for the best! For the record I have enjoyed a lot of the beers they have sent. posted from Bloggeroid

Having had some complaints that the page text was hard to read from a number of comments received - all reviewed before publishing - I had a play.   The grey on black and confusing links had to go.  So what you see if what you get.  I tinkered with the html on the CSS to make the font a little larger and that seems much better than before, plus of course I have chosen a lighter theme in any case. Comments?

The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG), and specifically the MAG Foundation, has launched a new crime-stopping initiative to help tackle the curse of the theft of motorcycles and scooters.  Called 'Lock 2 Lock',  the idea is simple. You loop your lock through another person's lock. Each rider can then release their machine without the presence of the other rider or riders. 'Locking your bike to another object helps to make it much harder to  steal,' explains MAG Chair, Selina Lavender. 'That's what the MAG  Foundation's 'Lock 2 Lock' campaign is all about. The Lock 2 lock idea is very simple. MAG has promoted it in the past and is very keen to revive it. Here's how it works: 1) You'll find a 'Lock 2 Lock' tag in the new edition of The Road magazine. 2) Attach the tag to your lock to indicate you are happy for others to loop their lock through your lock. 3) Make sure you only loop the lock...

Someone once said that if you start off with low expectations then you can't be disappointed. I have no idea who it was and can't be arsed to Google it But they are wrong. I am disappointed that we lost to Manchester City They may be backed by oil barons from wherever Etihad Airways emanate from and must have fielded a starting eleven today that would have cost them around half a billion pounds but I still hoped we could compete. We did for part of the game and they will claim their two goals were well taken but in reality they were as a result of our mistakes rather than their excellence. We were quite poor at times and they not much better. The Champions League elite won't be worried by either club on this display. posted from Bloggeroid

"We love you Oldham" is not something that slips off the tongue that easily. In fact most people would be hard pressed to know where Oldham actually can be found on a map. For many years I have been going to as many southern games in L1 as possible. That "south" really extends northwards up to Essex and Colchester and Southend and to Crawley in the west and of course London. With my taking on the full Arsenal ticket this year and relegation to L2, the number of games might be nil this season. There are so few southern clubs in L2. We'll have to see. Update 13/11/2018 Hopefully the chances to get to a game next season might be enhanced if AFC Wimbledon can get relegated to join us back in League 2.  They are currently 23rd out of 24 in League One. posted from Bloggeroid

Today is my first game as a solo Gold Member.... Since we moved to the Emirates from Highbury I have shared my ticket with my brother Neill's partner's son Alex. This year he dropped out and so I have the ticket all to myself. It does mean that I get to go to all 19 home league games and 7 cup games. In the past I have been able to fit in trips to see my first love Oldham Athletic play when they have been in the south. posted from Bloggeroid

The 2018/19 EPL season kicked off with Manchester United beating Leicester City on Friday evening. A win aided by another fortuitous penalty. After only three minutes this time. The brown envelope came out early!! Today it's Arsenal's turn to play. A new era. Wenger is gone and the new younger boss has taken over. We have made some signings and some players have left. Where some clubs have been spending in excess of £100m Arsenal have been around the £60m mark. Only. The sort of money in the game (if that's what it is now) is horrific. The fixture computer had sorted us out with one of the hardest two weeks imaginable. Today we host Champions Manchester City at the Emirates Stadium and next weekend! Away at London rivals and FA Cup winners Chelsea. What does the future hold? Post Wenger it's a case of starting again. New coach (not manager) and a new regime throughout the club. A new philosophy too? 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤 Only time will tell. p...

Flickr Album

Flickr Album

Home. After the entertainment on Friday night we went to bed, forgoing the midnight feast in the deck 15 buffet. It was around 11pm UK time when when we stood looking out of the cabin windows to see us slipping past Dover harbour.  We weren't that far out and a ferry out of Dover slid across behind us en route to Calais or Dunkerque, When we woke at around 5.10am and had a look out we were on the way probably past Portsmouth.  Later on we were alongside in Southampton.   Not a great view! We had to be checked out of the cabin at 8am and in the muster station for disembarkation at 8.45am. We were breakfasted well in time for the cabin clearance.  Our luggage had been collected the night before. We'd assembled and within minutes we were taken down to deck 6 and off to the terminal, All very quick. We located our luggage and were outside in good time.  Collecting the car was simple too.  The TomTom estimated we'd be home my 10.28am.  Some two and a b...

Managed to get to the first session at 8.30pm of Mike Walker. All round entertainment. Really good although glad not in the front row by the stage. Rule 1 of Comedy - never sit in the front row.

Once we had left Bergen, the poor 3G internet was gone. Until Southampton.

Once we had left Bergen, the poor 3G internet was gone. Until Southampton.

Just a few pix... posted from Bloggeroid

Just a few pix... posted from Bloggeroid

Join the queue When we were here way back in 2013 the ship moored a coach ride out from the city centre. Luckily this time we are right on the end of the Bryggen block.  Where we had hoped to land last time has Fred Olsen's Braemar on the berth this time. We set off a out 9.45am just before the lifts went off for testing and maintenance.  Our first stop was the Fløibanen. The queue was pretty long and one of the attendants put out a sign to split ticket holders (us) and those that didn't. Having two shorter queues seemed a good idea. We waited about 15 minutes and got loaded on.  I took a video of it coming into the lower station. I might update with that when we get a connection greater than 2G!! Once at the top we checked out the view. It was quite muggy at sea level but cold at the top. We had a mooch about and retired for a coffee and 🍰 when it began to pee down.  The wind was strong from the north east and blew it away and the run came out. By the time we joine...

Arrived about 7am. We had a short lie in to let the rushers get up to the breakfast buffet and bugger off and leave it easier to munch. Off out now. More later.

Arrived about 7am. We had a short lie in to let the rushers get up to the breakfast buffet and bugger off and leave it easier to munch. Off out now. More later.