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08:15
An abnormal day starts out more abnormal than expected when
the builders turn up on the doorstep to start some renovation work on the new house.
Some communication had obviously gone AWOL somewhere, so we had no idea
they were coming. It's lucky for them
that anyone is home - I'm travelling today so I was still pottering round
getting everything ready to leave just before 9am. Their arrival puts me in a bit of a spin as I
hastily sort them out with keys and coffee and generally make sure they know
what they’re doing. Then I have only a
few minutes to get myself sorted out and make sure I have everything. Finding a European travel plug adapter proves
a bit of a challenge. They used to live in the drawer under the bed, but we
just had a new bed, sans drawers, so now it's anyone’s guess where they
are. I eventually track them down in the
bottom of a bag in a wardrobe in Ella's bedroom.
09:15
By 9.15am I'm waiting at Pokesdown (For Boscombe) train
station. I'm heading for Grenoble with
work, to catch up with the researchers in our Innovation group. As the head of
our software development teams, I'm there to talk about the technical bits, but
also to work out the plan for getting some of our developers living and working
alongside them in Grenoble for a period of time. The journey down to Grenoble is a little
arduous - Pokesdown to Brockenhurst on the stopping train, then hopping to the
fast train to Waterloo, where I'll join up with my colleagues Greg and
Tim. From Waterloo it's a tube across
London to St Pancras, on to the Eurostar to Paris, the metro across Paris to catch
the TGV that will carry us down to Grenoble.
All in all it'll take about 10 hours.
On the plus side, Grenoble is a thoroughly nice place to spend some
time, a bustling city against a beautiful backdrop of the French Alps.
13:30
An uneventful journey to Waterloo, mostly spent talking shop
about the trip. As we get off the train,
Tim insists that taking the bus to St Pancras is far better than taking the
tube, which requires a change of line mid-journey. A debate ensues as Greg asserts that we'll
need Oyster cards and won't be able to pay cash for the bus journey, but Tim
thinks we can, and won't take no for an answer.
We wait in Spring sunshine for the bus.
When the 59 to Kings Cross arrives, cash is acceptable, but Tim offers
the bus driver a £20 note.
Unsurprisingly, the bus driver won't take it. He says the trip is £7 for the 3 of us. I
offer £6 in change, but the bus driver clearly doesn't have time for this and
just waves us on anyway without paying.
I'm not sure how Tim does it. As
we take our seats, Greg points out that £7 isn't evenly divisible by 3.
St Pancras is busy, but the Eurostar terminal is actually a
reasonable place to be, clean and well lit.
It even has a long bank of plug sockets, which is heartening to see - I
seem to spend most of my time at airports and train stations hunting round for
power for laptops and phones. We sit at
Caffe Nero; Greg asks Tim to get him a “skinny wet latte”. The barista has no idea what this means. Nor do we.
I suspect Greg is pulling Tim's leg, but it turns out it's a latte with
no foam. First world problems. Everyone agrees that the brie & bacon
ciabatta is remarkably delicious.
17:35 (CET)
The Eurostar is efficient, and we arrive at Gare du Nord
bang on time. It’s just as busy as St
Pancras, and we weave through crowds to get to the metro. We are a slightly shambolic crew, no-one
really knowing where we need to go, but somehow we make it without trouble to
Gare du Paris Lyon, where the TGV is waiting to take us to Grenoble. Within minutes we're at full speed trundling
through the French countryside.
18:30 (CET)
I have to admit, France is a lovely place. A lot like England, but unmistakably not
so. We career down towards Grenoble, the
rolling hills slowly becoming more dramatic, glimpses of proper mountains on
the horizon as we skirt the Massif Central.
At Lyon the train takes on a somewhat more sedate pace. We console ourselves with a couple of cans of
Kronenbourg. My French is terrible; the
lady in the buffet car is a little put out at having to repeat her questions in
English (bottle or can? Small or large?).
I suspect she's used to it. On
the way down, we talk about the perils of agile software development, how what
was once cutting edge has become the norm, and so almost becoming the very
thing it set out to replace. In good news, a national newspaper has published a
story about how our company is using machine learning algorithms - some of the
software that my teams produce - to look through Twitter and predict who should
be included in the World Cup squad on the basis of sentiment. On the down side, that newspaper is the Daily
Mail, and they get our company name wrong at least once.
23:00 (CET)
We arrive in Grenoble.
Cash, once again, is an issue - we only have 12 Euros between us. Tim asks the taxi driver, in what sounds to
Greg and I like surprisingly fluent French, whether he can pay by card. The driver actually speaks pretty good
English, he says no, but we agree that 12 euros is enough to get us to our
destination. Ten euros later, we're at
the Park Hotel, a strange anachronism, where room keys are still actually real
keys, and every surface that stays still long enough is mirrored. It's either outdated or a carefully
cultivated image - either way it's comfortable enough anyway. We find the closest place to eat, a roomy
burger joint above the multiplex cinema just over the road. It's decent food, although I'm quickly
reminded of just how rare the French like their meat.
End of a long day, settling down with the laptop. I answer some work emails - between holiday,
meetings and travel, I've only spent one day in the last 2 weeks at work, so I
have a backlog that I feel obliged to battle - and peruse Facebook. Most of the
Facebook posts are just reposts of memes.
Wherefore art thou original thought?
I decide that Facebook has jumped the shark.
Want to get an early start in the morning, I need to run off
the beer and burgers. Alarm set for
6.30am. Lights out.
I donate my 12th May diary to the Mass Observation Archive. I
consent to it being made publicly available as part of the Archive and assign
my copyright in the diary to the Mass Observation Archive Trustees so that it
can be reproduced in full or in part on websites, in publications and in
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