I finally got round to adding a news RSS feed for my gallery.

The address for the feed is www.sterry.me.uk/gfx/rss.php (and also accessible via the main gallery page as well).

Now to figure out how to integrate it with the blog better would be nice…

According to the Belief-O-Matic, it thinks I am… (no prizes for trying to figure out what the hell all these things mean)…

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (91%)
3. Theravada Buddhism (85%)
4. Neo-Pagan (83%)
5. Liberal Quakers (80%)
6. Nontheist (80%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (77%)
8. Reform Judaism (69%)
9. New Age (68%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (59%)
11. New Thought (58%)
12. Scientology (58%)
13. Taoism (58%)
14. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (45%)
15. Sikhism (43%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (39%)
17. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (34%)
18. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (30%)
19. Bahá’í Faith (26%)
20. Eastern Orthodox (26%)
21. Hinduism (26%)
22. Islam (26%)
23. Orthodox Judaism (26%)
24. Roman Catholic (26%)
25. Jainism (21%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (17%)
27. Jehovah’s Witness (13%)

Those who know me will know I love food… a little too much perhaps… and rarely leave anything on the plate.

Today, I went for lunch with me ol granny and me mam to a wee pub by the main coast road in Ellington, Northumberland. Last time I went, they did an absolutely superb lasange – Garfield would have been damned impressed. The pub is well sign-posted from the coast road.

Naturally I got lasange and I could just tell by looking at it that it wasn’t good. In fact, it was the worst piece of food in about a decade. I’m used to crappy food on camp in Libya, but at least it was edible. This *thing* – you could taste the gritty burnt mince separately from the “sauce” which was totally devoid of any cheesy taste, and the pasta was semi raw, and the top cheese layer had a wobbly omelette look to it. I complained, and hesistantly went for another meal – chicken breast in white wine sauce and three vegs

It came as a leg of chicken, in what was effectively white milk and unmixed white wine. The chicken itself was edible and plain. The carrots – totally tasteless, turnip hada transculent look to it. I ate half the chicken and left the rest and complain
ed again. Waitress apologised profusedly and loooking embarassed.

Finally, as we came to settle the bill with the bar lady, she was about to charge us the full bill when we pointed out the *crap* food. So she called her supervisor who insists we pay the full price. I bawked and said there is simply no way I am paying full price. She argued that I ate all the chicken, that I should pay in full. I corrected the silly woman that I ate half of it, and admitted the boiled potatoes were lovely, but left the rest of the crap. She said, I had a look at your plate and you had all of the chicken.

Bloody hell! I don’t buy a whole meal just to eat the chicken. I also pointed out that my companions had to wait for me and finished theirs before I had mine, and that we complained from the outset. I said I will pay for the drinks, they were really good, and my companion’s food, but no way I am paying for full price for the piece of crap I was served. I remained calm, but her implication of calling me a liar was starting to tempt me to just simply walk out, just leaving a bit of money on the bar.

She conceded in a huffy puffy sort of way – I suspect because we were talking up staff’s time, and holding other customers up who were listening with interest. Another couple remarked that they wished they had complained as their food was poor and waited well over an hour because the “cook left the oven off”.

Really shocking food, a service from the supervisor that would make arguing a bill in France with a rude Parisian waitress a pleasure. Sadly, I will not be going back there in a hurry.

Am planning a mini roadtrip – around coastal north-western Scotland – a place that is close to my heart. Harsh yet comforting landscape, warm yet tough people.

Here’s a working plan in progress – a snapshot from Google Maps – it now allows you to plot more than one destinations on the route (previously it would only allow A to B).

I’ve been on all sorts of roads in various countries, so I’m a seasoned specator to appalling driving. However, over 8 hours on busy public roads in north-eastern Libya was scary. Numerous times we’ve had to come to a screeshing halt, or pull off the road because some idiot is playing chicken with us.

They overtake on blind bends like this – you just don’t know what is coming on your side of the road, they cut in on you after overtaking you, and they stop without warning. Parts of the 8-hour journey was hugging cliff faces with broken barriers – doubtlessly from people being driven off the road and the cliff to meet a rocky end.

In the end, we missed our domestic plane but our Libyan colleague sorted that out -no questions asked- and then my other (British) colleague forgot his passport. In the confusion with the check-in clerk, he got checked in on my name. I returned and checked myself in aswell, so I was on the plane “twice”.

I’m not usually a fan of these social sites, along the ilk of myspace, bebo, etc. Facebook I seem to like a little bit which is saying a lot. Anyhow, I use a slightly different contact address for it rather than my usual one.

Here is a beautiful graphic which should, somewhat, depict my address. If I typed it normally, automated “spambots” crawl the web and harvet email addresses to pass onto spammers and I don’t have to spell that out what that means.

It rained heavily non-stop for the last 18hours, no sign of any let up yet. Out here on the flat hard desert terrain, the water just lies there. Where it was sandy has turned into horrible mud.

This camp is just a short drive from a nearby military airport which is also use for civilian purposes. This is quite handy as my company can fly me for 3hours on a commercial airliner to this airport from the capital of Tripoli. It is served by a rather old, Soviet-era passenger airliner, run by a Libyan company.

A week before I’m due to go on leave to the UK, the plane broke down. Now, normally you’d think, so what, they will fly a replacement plane. Nope, if it breaks down, that’s it until someone superglue the wings back on or something.

This mean I will be bussed to Benghazi, 7.5hours away via the coastal route rather than the straight desert road (it would take 3 hours if you survive it). This straight desert road is too dangerous for long distance travel and the desert road is known as “Death Road” because it is so unbelievably straight, and flat for the most part, with undulating terrain.

The glaring desert sun is hard on your eyes as you squint, and the shade temperature reaches 40c forming mirages. These play a trick for your eyes and your mind is working to remind itself that what you see is not what it is. The camber of the road is quite pronounced so you are straining to keep the car straight and not veer off, holding the steering at a very odd angle to keep it straight and putting a lot of strain on the overheated tyres.

Absolutely bugger all to see too.

It makes me tired after about 10minutes of driving on it.

People who drives on it are paranoid that the oncoming vehicle is not paying attention, so they flash their lights and if no response, they slow right down. A good technique.

Below image: close up of the desert by the roadside, not much to see…