The view from my Oslo hotel window...

Proof, if any was needed, that international travel isn't what it's cracked up to be.

In Oslo...

Lone figure in the snow. Shot taken from my hotel.

In many ways, December is probably the best month to visit Oslo because it's cold and there's plenty of snow on the ground. In fact, it's minus 12 degrees here and there's a light dusting of snow everywhere.

I flew in here yesterday on a Norwegian Air flight from Gatwick, which was very, very smooth and took just under 90 minutes. I'm staying at the Anker Hotel in the centre of town and it's very good. There's no restaurant, which is a bit of a bind, although it means I have to go out (in the cold) to find something to eat.

I wandered around for a bit, being careful of my footing. The worst thing about Dr. Martens shoes is that they have slippery soles. I managed not to fall over and eventually found a nice Italian trattoria just across from the hotel where I enjoyed a glass of Cabernet Sauvigon with some Italian ham and a very pleasant and colourful risotto.

The restaurant was crowded and, as always when I travel on business, I was the only one dining alone with just a copy of Chavs by Owen Jones to keep me company. Although, having said that, the light was poor so I resorted to simply enjoying the ambience of the place.

I'm really sad, but I love this photograph.

I write this from the ground floor of the hotel where the WiFi (which is free) seems to get a better reception than when I'm in the room. Outside now it's cold and white and there's not many people around.

Somebody told me that the temperature was up on yesterday's minus 12. Today I think it's hovering around minus 3 or 4 and believe me, you can tell the difference. It was snowing this morning when I went out to buy razors and toothpaste.

Two paragraphs back, the one starting 'I write this from the ground floor...' it was the morning of the 13th December. Now, two paragraphs later on, it's 1750hrs in the evening and I'm back in the same place I was sitting earlier, listening to Amy Winehouse, which is on the sound system, and drinking a glass of Frydenlund, a Norwegian beer. Alright, lager. My work is now done and I'm taking it easy, checking emails, writing emails, that sort of thing.

You might be wondering about the shot of the toothpaste. It's like this: when I was in Qatar the other week I didn't have any toothpaste so the hotel gave me the small tube of Colgate. I've never seen a tube of toothpaste so small. I mean, I've heard of Tinie Tempah, but never Tiny Toothpaste, but there it is in all it's glory. Zendium is a Norwegian toothpaste brand, by the way. I know, I'm sad. Very sad.

The hotel's not bad at all, although, as I mentioned earlier, no restaurant. I am beginning to wonder whether the Anker Hotel has a letter missing somewhere.

Room 520 in all its glory. Nice hotel, despite no restaurant, but it does have a bar.

I like Norway. I like all the Scandinavian countries. The people are laid back. I was going to say 'cool' but that would be an understatement with snow on the ground and temperatures below zero. What is refreshing is the way the Norwegians deal with the poor weather. They get on with it. The trains and the buses continue to run, the workmen in the streets continue drilling. Life goes on and doesn't come to a standstill.

Happy Birthday to me!

Here's a very young me with all those exciting birthdays
ahead of me.

I always keep quiet about my birthday these days, mainly because, once beyond the age of 15 they have become progressively less exciting. In fact, the moment somebody suggested that I should be asking for clothes for my birthday – instead of train sets and toy soldiers – it was time to crawl under a stone and die. Well, perhaps that's a bit dramatic, but when socks and underpants become a key focus it's time for something. Time, perhaps, to admit that I should grow up?

For me, however, socks and underpants are things I should buy as a matter of course and should never be considered as birthday present territory. It's like waking up to a wrapped present, opening it and discovering a box of 80 English Breakfast teabags or a tube of toothpaste, shaving foam or toilet paper. Imagine gift-wrapping your weekly shop for somebody: a tin of baked beans, an orange, a loaf of bread...whatever next?

So, these days, birthdays go and come (but Earth abides) and they are nothing more than another day in the calender. There was a time when my adult birthday meant quite a lot. I had a pal who shared the same birthday – rather annoyingly he was one year younger than me and if he's reading this, Happy Birthday – and we used to make a weekend of it: a few days in Suffolk with our respective other halves, a curry, a few beers, some invigorating walks in the countryside; but those days are long gone and now, as I sit here looking out on what is a fairly pleasant day (I'm off work today) I'm looking forward to doing 'practical' things, like a bit of Christmas shopping.

I hate the word 'practical' as it shares the stage with 'sensible' and the phrase 'grown-up'. And, of course, they're all things I should be by now: practical, sensible and grown-up. In many ways I am all three: I'm married, I have kids, a mortgage and so on, but I yearn for the old days of childhood when there was little to worry about and plenty to look forward to. Now I'm sounding miserable, which I'm not and to be honest with you, what the hell would I do with a train set today? Where would I put it for a start? If I did have one, I'd be taken right back to my childhood and my mum telling me to take it upstairs 'out of harm's way' – except it would be my wife telling me to grow up and why did I waste the money on a train set when I could have bought (ahem) a washable suit from Marks & Spencer?

In the old days, once a toy went upstairs it found itself sharing the same status with the older toys from Birthdays and Christmases past; it was no longer the new kid on the block as it was on Christmas morning.

When I lived at home with mum and dad and my sister and brother, Christmas was a big, big thing. Dad would arrange our new toys in the living room and when we tip-toed our way downstairs around 4am to see what 'Father Christmas' had brought us we would be presented with what amounted to the window display of Hamley's in Regent Street. However, the person whose toys were on the dining table had to find space somewhere else in the room as lunch time approached and that would mean finding an unoccupied corner and attempting a reconstruction of dad's inspired display (it was never as good). Far better if your toys were already on the floor, somewhere away from the television and out of harm's way (as mum might say).

Christmas, of course, was far more egalatarian than a birthday. With the latter, one person was in the spotlight: the birthday boy or girl. One could say, of course, that on Christmas Day Jesus was the birthday boy, but most people have lost the true meaning of the festive season, which these days is more about greed, getting drunk at the Christmas party and then going on a diet during the month of January.

My dad tried to make birthdays more egalitarian than they would otherwise have been by giving smaller presents to whoever wasn't celebrating a birthday. This made other people's birthdays quite exciting as, on 10 December, my brother and sister knew they would be getting a present too, which made things a little more bearable for them when the 'birthday boy or girl' was parading around like Lord Snooty, getting out of doing virtually anything because it was their birthday.

There came a time, however, when the birthday cards would have to come down and make way for the Christmas cards and this was always a sad moment as it meant that my ever-diminishing 'birthday boy' status had finally ran out of juice and wouldn't be getting new batteries for another 52 weeks.

Being born on 10 December is better than you might think, mainly because it's just far enough away from Jesus' birthday to warrant separate presents. In the old days it meant that the month of December was a rollercoaster of fun as nobody would dare to suggest a 'joint birthday and Christmas present', the scouge of all December-born people. If you were born any later than the 10th, the risk of a joint present was very real.

But now, as I look out on the world from my conservatory window – it's a bright day with a mix of blue sky and cotton wool clouds against which the branches bare trees are silhouetted – all of these concerns of yesteryear are irrelevant and mere memories that bring a smile to my face. I've been fortunate enough never to have received a joint birthday and Christmas present and, over the years, I've had some great toys. My toy fort (known as Black Cross Fort) still lives round at mum's; my remote-controlled Tiger Tank – which once entered a disused war-time mortuary in our local Grove Park in Carshalton – is a pleasant (and mildly harrowing) memory and there are many other great gifts that made 10 December a special day. In other words, I'm not bitter and I'm not miserable (well, not about my birthday).

In short, I'm a grown-up with my own children to think about. My only child-like fun these days revolves around cycling at the weekends on my Kona Scrap, which is far from a sensible choice of bike and for this reason, I love it. I'm rambling now, so I'm going to stop and enjoy the rest of my day.

For a related article, click here.

Snow falls over London...and then disappears!

December 5th 2012, snow started falling around 0730hrs.

It's snowing in London and here's photographic evidence from my back garden to prove it.

With the snow falling outside I figured it best to find the warmest coat in the cupboard and put on the old walking boots. It was a good move, but only for the walk to the station. Snow was everywhere, cars were driving slowly to avoid skidding and I trod carefully as I made my way to the station, thinking: there won't be any cycling this weekend.

However, once on the train, which was running on time, and then, later, when I reached Redhill, the snow had disappeared. By lunch time there was nothing – although I heard that very little snow fell on Redhill – and when I reached home, it was as if there hadn't been any snow.

Still, my golden rule will always apply: once it snows, you can bet your life there will be more.

Frosty and cold...

A cold-looking moon matched the weather.

Saturday was so cold that Andy and I had trouble speaking as we rode along. There was a thick frost on the grass when I left the house, later than usual due to faffing about, and the cold air assaulted my face all the way to the Green.

Halfway along I called Andy to say I was only a couple of minutes away from the Green, but it seemed that he too had been faffing about as he was roughly the same distance from our meeting point. In fact, he'd already had a bit of a morning. The lock on his garage door had frozen so he rummaged about for a match to heat it and then, having retrieved his bike he closed and locked the garage door only to notice, out of the corner of his eye, that his bike was falling to the ground. In an attempt at rescuing it, he grabbed it by the rear mudguard, which promptly snapped off.

We headed out towards the Tatsfield Bus Stop, it was too cold to go anywhere else, and sat there warming ourselves with hot tea, cereal bars and this week a bag of Cheeselets supplied by Andy. Very nice. Along the way we briefly discussed possible destinations with cafés, but could think of none within seven miles from the Green. There was the farm shop at Godstone, but that meant a steep climb on the return journey and neither of us fancied it; then there was Westerham, a bridge too far in this cold; and we figured the caff at the reptile centre would be closed – when was it ever open, I wondered?

A cold sky and bare bushes. Winter has settled in.

"Imagine cycling home naked," I said later, looking out from the Tatsfield Bus Stop.
"You'd die of hypothermia," said Andy, matter of factly.
"You reckon?"
"Definitely."
"I wonder if you'd get to Botley?"
"Yes, but you wouldn't feel too good."
"Imagine if you'd been camping out all night. You wouldn't want to get out of your sleeping bag."
"But you'd have to get out to have a piss."
"Not good."
"Nope."

It was soon time to cycle home.

"It's going to be bad cycling back down to 269," I said.
"Yeah," replied Andy, and we mounted our Konas for the return trip.

Once Andy and I had said goodbye halfway along the 269, I took my mind off the cold by making up rhymes and quietly singing them to myself. Silly rhymes that meant nothing. I passed a couple of large groups of cyclists heading in the opposite direction and acknowledged them with a polite wave.

It was cold all day long, even later in London's Portobello Road, and I went to bed early, waking at 6am on Sunday morning to similar-looking weather. I put on seven layers of clothing before heading downstairs to make tea and buttered toast (alright, margarine). The mobile vibrated on the console table in the hall. A message from Andy. "Abort. Not feeling too good." Fine by me, I thought, as I typed back 'Ok' and returned to the halogen glow of the computer in my conservatory. There was no point going back to bed.

Images by Andy Smith.

Doha's in the news a lot at the moment...

Not only is Doha now famous for it's visit by NoVisibleLycra's co-founder, yours truly, but other luminaries are there too. Robert de Niro is one of them. He's in the Qatari capital with the Tribeca Film Festival, which he co-founded back in the early noughties. For more, click here.

De Niro was staying at Doha's Grand Hyatt, where I spent most of last week.

In fact, the Grand Hyatt is hosting this year's climate change conference. Click here for more details.

Gusty in places...

Trying to take original photography at the Tatsfield Bus Stop is getting harder

Those winds remained, but there was no rain, although it had clearly rained a lot during the night. I headed off around 7am and en route to the green nearly got knocked off the bike, the wind was that strong. I'm just glad I wasn't landing in the UK on an Emirates flight from Dubai as I'm sure it would have been bumpy.

At the green there was no sign of Andy, which was rare, but another bloke turned up on his Gary Fisher mountain bike and we chewed the fat as we both waited for our cycling pals to arrive. Andy arrived first, but prior to his arrival the other bloke and I chatted about cycling and various routes and I told him that we'd been doing this every weekend for the past six years and so on.

A field adjacent to the Tatsfield Bus Stop

Last night, or rather yesterday evening, Warlingham Green switched on it's Christmas lights and I really must get a shot of the tree because it's tiny! Still, unlike Tatsfield Village Green, at least the lights work! Last year, when Andy and I visited Tatsfield Village on Christmas Eve we were amazed to find a tree with the lights not working.

Andy turned up and we headed for the Tatsfield Bus Stop. It was a normal kind of ride. We had our tea and cereal bags, chewed the fat about this and that and headed home again.

The weather was good, if a little windy. The skies were clear blue, it wasn't too cold and a lot of the trees were bare – typical NVL weather, which we like.

Heavy winds...

Winds like those howling outside at the moment were expected on Friday, which was worrying for yours truly as I was flying into Gatwick from Qatar. Fortunately, it was a clear evening. As always, however, the weathermen often get it a day or two out and now, as I type this at 0618hrs, the wind chime is playing a vigorous tune and the trees are swaying to and fro. But is it raining? At the moment it's too dark to say, but having not riden out yesterday – through tiredness, not jet lag – there's a need to go out today, especially when you consider that all week I've been sitting down, either on a plane or in a conference hall.

This, if you like, is brief note. Hopefully, I'll be reporting back later having gone out, although I'm guessing today will be a short one to somewhere covered like the Tatsfield Bus Stop.

More images of Qatar

About to take off for Dubai from Doha with Emirates.

The Doha to Dubai flight was scheduled to leave around 0945hrs and it did. The flight was pleasant and took about an hour. Much, much better than the heavy turbulence experienced on the Dubai to Doha flight early on Monday morning.

Qatar allows drinking in hotels.

While my Best Western in Old Salata Street was dry and had no bar, the Grand Hyatt did. Here's my glass of wine to prove it.

Qatari sunrise on Friday 23 Nov 2012

Despite no early morning call, the sun woke me up in time to catch my flight from Doha to Dubai and then, of course, my connecting flight to London.

Images from Qatar

View from my 10th floor at Qatar's Best Western hotel

I spent most of my week in a conference

If I'm honest (which I am) I didn't have much time while in Qatar to do anything but work. Everyday, around 8am, I was out of my hotel, the Best Western on Old Salata Street, and in the hotel limo being ferried the 25-minute journey to the Grand Hyatt where, incidentally, Robert de Niro was staying, apparently.

My hotel was very pleasant, mainly because it was quiet and out of the way, although only ten minutes or so from the airport, which was handy on Friday as it meant that I didn't have to get up at an ungodly hour. Well, that depends on your point of view. I asked for an early morning call as my mobile phone had run out of power and I'd left my charger at home. The early morning call, however, did not materialise and it was fortunate that the early morning sun, rising over the buildings, sent a hot, white beam into my room as the curtains were drawn slightly apart.

I jumped out of bed, finished packing up my stuff and then headed downstairs to pay my bill and get a taxi to Doha International airport. I shared my taxi with an offshore engineer from Streatham (yes, it's a small world) and he too had been staying at the Best Western.

I was on the 10th floor, right at the top, in room 1001. There was a small swimming pool on the 11th floor but I had no time and no trunks, which was mildly annoying, although I knew that I wouldn't have the time or inclination. The pool was small and indoors and went I reached my room I would blog for a bit, do the news for the newsletter (and the website) and then hit the sack. I never once switched on my flatscreen television, the hotel was dry (meaning there was no bar, the nearest being at the Movenpick down the road, but a drink's not that important. Not anymore).

Outdoor pool at the Grand Hyatt.

I slept like a log although the air-con breathed cold air on my face, prompting me to turn down the fan and increase the temperature. Qatar is one of those places where it's colder inside than it is outside, although at this time of year, it's a perfect 29 to 31 deg C outside. The sun is hot, though. And people are warned not to go out walking in the morning. I had plans to stroll along the Corniche (a long promenade offering views of the sea and the huge and impressive skyscrapers across the water). I never had time.

Each morning after washing and showering I would head for the Mezzanine floor for breakfast, consisting of fresh fruit and Rice Krispies plus a cup of tea and then it was off to the Grand Hyatt to work, for the whole day. In the evening there was always something going on. Day one it was a reception (where only fruit juices were served) and on day two there was Qatari Night, an evening of Arab culture and food, which was very good fun. On Thursday night there was an Arab Culture evening: music and a tour of an amazing museum. I can't remember the details because I rarely listen to tour guides (never have, never will but why, I don't know). The museum contained the cars and various items of Arab memorabilia of a wealthy Qatari.

Matchless motorcycle in the museum

The engineer from Streatham took me by surprise. I jumped into the front seat of the cab and there he was in the back. He was a pleasant man, educated in Swansea but hailing originally from Yorkshire. His wife was a gynaecologist and he was considering applying for a job in Perth, Australia. Once we reached the airport we parted without even a goodbye, but it wasn't out of rudeness. I checked in and wandered off in search of my colleague, who I didn't see until I reached gate B33. I saw him again on the flight from Dubai to London, but only fleetingly and he didn't see me.

The Doha to Dubai flight was smooth and pleasant. The Dubai to London flight was alright, but I was getting tired of flying and sat there basically counting down the hours until we arrived at Gatwick.

Being only three hours ahead of the UK there was little, if any, jetlag, but the rain prevented a ride and I aborted anyway as I needed the lie-in.

The post contains some images taken by me using the Lumix. I couldn't post them earlier as I didn't have the magical USB lead that enables me to upload images.