OK, this is more of an informational post than particularly rivetting reading.

Tuesday afternoon, I drove to Bristol, and John and I had a very late breakfast. The late night beers of the previous night were finally silenced by another fine English Breakfast, and large quantities of coffee.

That night I saw and old school friend, Mark, who I've not seen for five years. That's typical of us though, we don't see each other for a few years, go out for a few pints, then leave it another few years. Of course my moving to the US 3.5 years ago didn't help matters.

We caught up on our lives, whilst each consuming a very mediocre curry. The chat made up for the lack of spice in the curry, however. A lot has happened to both of us. We talked until the small hours, whilst working our way through his beer fridge. Yes, a whole fridge dedicated to beer, now that's living!

Wednesday morning started late for us, but I eventually drove back to Bath, did email etc, and then hit the road, going east, to my current location; Maidenhead.

I went to see a college friend, Jon. We did the whole dinner thing, and then went back to his house where he not only has a beer fridge, but an entire room that is a bar! There's even optics and a mini jukebox!

This afternoon, I'm going to drive to Hertford, north of London, to see my longest-suffering... err serving friend Jo. I'm toying with driving into central London and snapping a few clichéd pics of the capitol, but I've heard rumours that they've started charging tolls on the roads in, during peak times.

It's all part of the British authorities' "You Are Evil If You Use Your Car" campaign. That used to piss me off when I lived in Britain. I wouldn't have minded if they'd invested in public transport and made it cheap and accessible, but they didn't, they just keep upping the tax on petrol, the Road Fund Licence, and anything else they can think of, with no sign of it being spent on improving the transportation infrastructure.

And as for my home town, the City Of Bath. Don't get me started. Every damn time I come back there, they've pedestrianised another key street, making it sodding impossible to get into, out of, or through the city centre. Yes, we need less traffic congestion, but fewer roads are not the solution, you planning morons! Better planning is the solution.

I'm sorry, I'll get off my soap-box now.

More news as we get it.