Last September at Lib Dem Autumn conference, we were advised to book ahead for Spring conference in Liverpool. The conference, the first weekend in March, clashes with a home game, so most of the hotel rooms were booked up long in advance. There was a handy booking service at Brighton to get us into rooms in Liverpool, and they really bigged up a hotel called the Britannia Adelphi. They showed us lovely looking pictures of a luxury hotel with swanky rooms, a health club, nice restaurants, right next to the railway station. “Recently refurbished” they say.

On-the-ball friends have in the last few days noticed there are some truly disastrous reviews on the internet. Tripadvisor is particular damning, over hundreds of reviews: filthy rooms, dirty curtains, “animals in the toilets”, stains, grease, stag-nights, terrible customer service and indifferent staff. Other websites sort of confirm the pattern. Asking around on Facebook and Thingbox has not found a positive view of the place.

Checking my email from the booking service, if I don’t cancel my reservation before Thursday I’m liable for the cost of the first of two nights – over a 100 quid.

So, do I believe the internet or do I believe the travel advisor? Do I take the risk of an unsanitory room or risk not being able to find another hotel?

*Edit* – thanks for the comments, here and on Facebook.  We bottled it today and booked the Radisson instead.

The human genome contains less than a gigabyte of data, according to the discouraged trivia section on Wikipedia’s page for “gigabyte”

Thanks to the experts at idiottoys.com I now know I need a new shopping trolley. Especially if it comes with all the accessories.

Suddenly, I seem to be making a huge number of holiday plans.

Friends want to spend Whit week camping in Yorkshire.

More friends on Thingbox are suggesting we head to Glencoe for a week’s camping in midge country. And/Or Shell Island with Out. And/Or maybe Pembrokeshire.

Then some of P’s friends work as holiday reps on Crete, and we wanted to visit them at work.

A really interesting offer has also arisen to go and see Munich again – I’ve not been there since I was 14 or so. Munich is quite tricky to get to by budget airlines, but someone came up with a wheeze to fly Ryanair from EMA to Salzburg and take the ICE to Munich. It’s less than two hours and less than €30. Or… if we end up flying to Crete, and flying is bad, mm’kay… Munich would be about 12 hours by rail from Nottingham. 12 hours on a train! It’s an incredible three changes – Nottingham -> London -> Paris Nord -> Paris Est -> Muenchen. I’m guessing that would be quite a lot more expensive as well as time consuming. But it could be the test trip using Eurostar from St Pancras, which I am very keen to do.

I still have friends in Sweden and Spain I’m itching to visit. We didn’t go to see our friends in Normandy last year either. Normandy could be another chance to use the Eurostar, but it is a bit of a pain to go all the way to Paris then all the way back out to Caen.

Oh – and all that’s not counting Lib Dem conference – in Liverpool in a few weeks and Bournemouth in the Autumn. I do know people who take tents to conference to save money, but I tend to take a lot of expensive kit like laptops and cameras that I would be nervous about leaving under canvass.

The planet is too big, and time and money are too short.

France’s employment policy is so wrong-headed that it forces tens of thousands of young French people to the UK. So many in fact that in terms of population of French people, apparently London is the 8th largest French city.

By contrast, France has a much better climate than the UK, so Britons buy houses over there in droves – for holidays and for retirement. 600,000 of them, apparently.

Today’s factoid – “factoid” is a real word, accepted by Facebook scrabble, that has just earned me 96 points.

Woo me!

Happy new year to all of you!

We got you a cat.

This week, I’m a guest judge on Post of the Week, a worthy project that appears to be uncertain about its future.

The shortlist is a rum bunch – famous bloggers, funny bloggers, drunk bloggers, downright weird bloggers and one or two where I have no idea whatsoever is going on. Several posts take me well outside my comfort zone.

The real stellar find, in my humble view, is local blog May Contain Notts which is a devastating combination of acerbic humour and the local Notts accent. I have seen his blog before, but forgot to take a note of it, so it’s nice to be given a pointer back to him.

I’ve not quite finished my cards – this is later still than last year!

Today the biggest crop of cards yet arrived, and mine still haven’t gone out. They have no chance of being there in time, not least because I’m too frugal for first class stamps. There’s something embarrassingly passive aggressive about sending them out so late when you’re certain that the people you’re sending them to will have no possible chance of returning the favour.

I’m sending mine to a wider than normal crowd of people because I want to warn rellies and friends of my impending middle age, which I intend to celebrate on 2nd August next year. Mark your diaries now, my friends.

PS: Here’s a link to this year’s naff “round robin” that I’m including to my nearest and dearest.

Another trip to London tomorrow on a minibus for a tour around the Houses of Parliament. Hopefully we will have secured tickets to sit in Parliament and hear the debate. It is a Lib Dem Opposition Day debate, so will be of particular interest. Our itinerary looks good. In addition to the tour, we also have three meetings scheduled along with photo-ops with both leadership candidates and Paul Holmes MP.

Last Tuesday I went down by rail to a conference about housing and building new houses in the future, which was an excellent event… but the real highlight of the day for me was a chance to wander around the new St Pancras station, now fully open. I snapped happily with my phone camera, but I really must go back and take some piccies with a real camera. I was excited enough last year when they opened the new ticket hall, so you can imagine the thrill of seeing the completed station.
Champagne bar along the side of the Eurostar trains

And the full majesty of the restored canopy above the platforms.

Space age thingies holding up the Eurostar wires

World’s largest advent calendar

Heyoooooge statue

I am itching for an excuse to hop on the Eurostar to either Brussels or Paris – particularly since I probably have enough Nectar points to get a ticket for free. It was highly tempting to try and cash in my Nottingham return ticket. Cost of Nottingham peak ticket: £117.50. Cost of return to Paris (if booked in advance, admittedly): from £21.