Friday in London and Bath

It had been my intention to have a very quiet start to today. First of all I wasn't feeling great, so I decided to let myself off the morning walk. The symptoms consisted principally of a headache, a sore chest when breathing and a croaky voice. I was hopeful that I just had a mild virus infection and nothing more serious. Also, I was going to have to pick up the hire-car later and negotiate my way out of London. I had a few concerns about this. The first is that I am not too confident about manoeuvring my way to the M4 from Central London and the second is that I didn't want to get caught with the Congestion Tax. The limits for the latter are not immediately obvious. I know that the traditional route to the M4 from here is down Park Lane, but I am sure that that will be included in the Congestion tax area. However, I found out that the place I was picking up the car was actually in the Congestion Zone, so I couldn't avoid the 8 pound fee. The upside of this though was that they would add the fee to my rental so I didn't have to fiddle around with paying it.

Yesterday had been quite exhausting with many miles travelled on foot, so I figured that today I deserved to be let off a morning walk. I planned to check out of the room, put my case into storage and walk to see the Princess Diana Fountain once it opened at 10.00am.

However, the best laid plans of mice and men…I was part way through writing to Lloyd this morning before leaving for Bath, when suddenly 'the blue screen of death' appeared. Attempts to restart my computer failed and the same message kept coming back. I tried various things including an option (when pressing F8 at start-up) to restore the last working version of Windows. Eventually, I managed to start it in 'safe mode'. Usually if one closes properly from 'safe mode', the problem gets sorted out, but this time it didn't.

I rang reception to see if there was an IT person who could help, but they said that all their chaps were out. However, they did say that there was a computer shop near Queen's Park tube station. So I checked out of the hotel, stored my case and set off. On the way, I was running through various options including buying a new laptop. Luckily all my work is on my USB keys, but I do not have the disks for the programs such as Office and SPSS, not to mention my printer. I arrived at the computer shop and found the repair part (the front sold suitcases and a side section sold hookahs!). I described the problem and an enormous man (West Indian, I think) said he would see what he could do to help. I turned on the computer and, of course it started completely normally!!! The man joked that it knew to be frightened of him. Anyway, he went into it to see of he could see what the problem had been, and Windows was at least courteous enough to announce that it had 'recently recovered from a serious error'. He removed some odd looking files including a 'memory dump' which I had seen being formed during the blue screen. He then suggested that we run a complete check of the disk which would take a while, so I decided to go to the Princess Diana Fountain as originally planned.

It was open and is very lovely. I took a picture of an American couple together on their camera in exchange for them taking one of me, that is included here along with a couple of other photos of the fountain and the Peter Pan Statue. I then had a cup of coffee on the edge of the Serpentine (eating bananas removed at breakfast as well) in the sunshine before returning to the computer place.

My computer was just completing its 'check-up' and seemed now to be fine. We checked it by opening some documents etc. I paid 30 pounds (which I was more than happy to pay) and returned to the hotel to finish email. I then found that BT OpenZone was playing up as it has been intermittently for my whole visit. The concierge rang them while I continued to write the email I had started a couple of hours earlier in Word, and finally the connection came up. At about the same time the concierge came over to give me a phone number to ring to get a refund from BT. I have since received an email from BT announcing that they would refund me all the vouchers for my stay, but the amount hasn't yet hit the bank account.

Leaving London was, in the end, uneventful and I arrived at exactly 6.30pm, much to the amusement of Judy. I was reminded about how Rohan and Bryn used to laugh about the fact that no matter where I was coming from, how long the journey or how unpredictable the journey time, I always arrived on the dot of my estimated arrival time. At the car-hire place they provided me with a map and directions for getting out of the city. I was actually directed through Hyde Park and managed to get out pretty much without delay. The radio kept providing traffic updates/delay information, so I was aware of potential problems. In fact, there were brief periods of heavy traffic and then it cleared - no major hold-ups.

I must confess though that on my travels into Bath, I made the same mistake as when I was with Bryn and Rose in January, heading off up a hill which finally landed me at the University of Bath again. As before, I turned round and went back down the hill, eventually finding the correct road. There must be something odd about the road signs at that point for me to have done it again.

This week is the 40^th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the radio stations are all going down memory lane. While on route to bath I heard interviews with Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney as well as with Disc Jockeys from the pirate radio stations – Radio London and Radio Caroline.

Judy put all my clothes into the wash after I had showered and changed and then we went out to eat. We had a lovely meal at the same place we went with Bryn and Rose in January - I had a salmon steak with a prawn and lobster sauce served with new potatoes and vegetables. For dessert I had ice cream with toffee sauce served with crushed Maltesers.

Judy and Ian have a wireless network, but it is password protected, so it took quite a time when we got home from dinner trying to remember the password as Ian never uses it himself (his desk-top and laptop are cabled into the router). The process wasn’t really helped by their large fluffy ginger cat called Oscar who kept marching across the keyboard each time I attempted a 15-letter string. We finally cracked it, but we then just sat around talking until well after midnight.

The pictures in order are: the Peter Pan Statue, a squirrel in Kensington Gardens, and the Princess Diana Fountain.