Boiler; bunnies; Big Lunch

The main event of the last week is the sheer fabulousness of our new Worcester Bosch boiler (pictured) and its willing dispensing of hot water on request. The workmen from Aqua-King Ltd completed the work very efficiently and tidily in two days. In addition to the boiler we have four lovely new radiators, three of them repositioned more efficiently under the windows to free up wall space. A larger than necessary number of showers have been taken, simply because we can ... The new boiler’s silence when at rest is also disconcerting us. When a hot tap is turned on, it emits a restrained hum, nothing like the ‘Dear-God-what-are-you-making-me-do’ noises that the old one used to make.

I continue to be surprised by Harley the Bunny’s spiritedness and agility, especially in comparison with Ruth’s previous rabbit Jake, a more nervous creature who disliked the outdoors and never to my knowledge even attempted climbing stairs. Harley has now completely mastered the staircase, which is steep even by Victorian terrace standards and is treated with some respect by visitors to the house. He also eagerly escapes into the garden at every opportunity and we are discovering by trial and error which part of the perimeter isn’t actually rabbit-proof. On Saturday he disappeared into a clump of bamboo and vanished from sight – Ruth’s calling of him resulted in the reply of “Are you looking for a rabbit?” from over the fence; she looked up to discover our neighbour Terry standing on his lawn looking down at a tiny adventurous rabbit. She went next door to fetch him and carried him back with some stern words, but he appeared not noticeably chastened.

Harley has also displayed some impressive jumping ability to get a better purchase on the leaves of a houseplant both bunnies seem to have taken a particular fancy to. Ray and I were given the plant some years ago but never succeeded in actually identifying it - am mildly concerned at the rabbits’ consumption of it given that I don’t actually know whether or not it’s poisonous. Let's hope not. Anyhoo ... Lola, who favours the brute force approach to things, is big enough to stand on her hind legs and forcibly yank bits off it, but Harley, being smaller, more agile and favouring the more strategic approach, jumped up onto the shelf (a good foot or so off the ground) giving him a better vantage point to munch without expending too much energy.

Spent Sunday afternoon at the park at the end of the road taking part in our street’s Big Lunch. Despite the valiant efforts of Sarah at Number 124 and her organising committee, it unfortunately wasn’t very well attended, which may represent general apathy or might just be the fact that the weather was a bit iffy – the rain held off for most of it but it was overcast and very windy (causing some initial problems in securing the gazebo). Despite this it was a nice opportunity to meet a few new people and there was some nice food to be had from the communal offerings – in rather true-British fashion I had produced sausage rolls and (dry) fairy cakes, but some of my neighbours had been rather more creative. We were entertained by a display of fire-eating from one resident, accompanied by prudent warnings to the children present not to try this at home.

Having a bit of an anniversary to celebrate on Monday, Ruth and I went for dinner at Myalacarte, the local restaurant owned by recent Apprentice-winner Yasmina. For a number of months after it opened I hardly saw anyone in there, but The Apprentice certainly seems to have improved its custom as it was almost full even on a Monday. The food was very good although I’m tempted to say I’ve had equally good food elsewhere for rather less money.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

After an afternoon and evening spent at our Lifelong Learning Network’s conference at Dorney Lake last Thursday, I had to travel to Chatham on the Friday to represent us at Kent and Medway LLN’s annual conference. The Chatham Maritime project seems an impressive venture and probably much needed, as from a quick walk through both Gillingham and Chatham town centres, the area could do with a bit of perking up. The University of Greenwich’s Medway campus is certainly elegant and the conference itself was good, but the convoluted journey took me three hours each way. Have reached the decision that when the amount of time spent travelling equals the amount of time actually spent at the conference, it probably isn’t worth it. NB although Greenwich’s ‘Getting to Medway by public transport’ page claims that the campus is a 20-minute walk from Gillingham station, it’s more like 40 – unless there was a cunning shortcut I missed.

As part of a flying visit to my parents at the weekend, Mum and I visited the Linda Vista Gardens in Abergavenny. The gardens have apparently been open to the public since the mid-nineteenth century, although Mum claimed never to have noticed them before. Very pretty although we were puzzled to find grated cheese scattered around in several places.

Mildly shocked earlier this week while blearily making coffee to hear noise and scuffles from the next room and go in to find the rabbits viciously tearing clumps of fur out of each other. Seemingly, if caged at night, the combined scents of freedom and breakfast send them into a frenzy. Have been instructed that I need to feed and release them IMMEDIATELY on going downstairs in the morning – yes, before making coffee. I know. It’s outrageous.

RIP boiler. We have hopefully now spent our last night with the old Glow-Worm combi boiler referred to in my 29 April post. As of this morning, a new Worcester Bosch condensing combi is being installed, along with four new radiators. Hopefully this will mark an end to the recent exciting unpredictability of the hot water supply. Attaching a pic of the old boiler, before it is ripped off the wall and consigned to wherever it is that condemned boilers go. I will miss its banging noises and endless unsuccessful attempts to fire.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

Not much to report as the main event of the last week has been having the surgery I referred to in my post of 6 May. The aforementioned polyp turned out to be multiple polyps, so apparently an entire harvesting operation went on. As I ended up being signed off work for a week, I was able to spend some time Googling the various acronyms (e.g. FF, UCL, FUP) in my discharge letter in an attempt to understand it.

General anaesthesia is an interesting experience - no major after-effects, though spent some time afterwards sitting somewhat vacantly in front of the TV (usual for some, but not for me) and speaking in an apparently slow and deliberate fashion.

Took advantage of the time off to read my first ever Danielle Steel novel, as I fancied a frothy interlude between Book Group books. The book I read, Wanderlust, certainly has it all: Nazis, Mongol warriors, murdered nuns, besieged Chinese orphans, calculating lesbian ex-wives (she gets killed in an air-raid, luckily), miscarriages and noble fighter pilots escaping from enemy territory despite losing an arm. Luckily, by the end of it all, the beautiful (and, luckily, rich and privileged) Audrey and Charles have got it together.

This week's pictures showcase the current forest of lush greenery in the garden, and the attractive top of the eucalyptus tree - Ruth is threatening to get this lopped so I wished to include a photo as a record.

Visit to Essex; land-based Open Day

Spent a lovely weekend in Brightlingsea visiting my friend Shiho, who was a fellow postgraduate student at the University of Essex in the late nineties/early noughties. In addition to having two children in the last three years, Shiho has also written a book so has been having an impressively constructive time of it. Shiho’s husband Roderick is currently Director of Essex’ Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies. We had a wander around the university campus on Friday afternoon; it looked much as I remembered it with the addition of a couple of extra buildings. Essex’ brutalist campus is interesting although of my two alma maters’ campuses, I have more of an affection for Whiteknights. To quote feminist writer Sheila Rowbotham on the subject of Wivenhoe Park:

“the isolated campus of Essex University had the air of a besieged space station in some bizarre science fiction other-world”

Rowbotham, Sheila. (2000) Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties.

To return to the weekend: on Saturday we had a lovely time nosing around other people’s gardens courtesy of Brightlingsea Open Gardens 2009. On Sunday, we all went for a walk down to the beach, with stop-offs at the boating lake to look at some ducklings and at the Bateman’s Tower Café for ice creams. The tower itself is a late-nineteenth century folly – there’s an article here about the folly and the reinstatement of the roof which was apparently removed during the war. The café is a charmingly/alarmingly (depending on your viewpoint) traditional establishment that certainly seems to do good business. In addition to ice creams, it offers a variety of traditional breakfast foods including something called a ‘Fried Slice’- there were quite a number of people sitting eating full fried breakfasts in the blazing heat. According to Roderick, there was an attempt a few years ago to replace the café with something more up-to-date and sophisticated, but the notion was cried down on the grounds that it wouldn’t be in keeping with the area (unlike, presumably, the current shack-type affair complete with corrugated iron roof). My countrymen are completely bizarre sometimes.


On Tuesday I represented our Lifelong Learning Network at an Open Day for FE staff teaching land-based subjects. These are a major speciality of the University of Reading and we were sponsoring the day, although the actual work was done by staff in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development. The day proved a great chance to get a tour of parts of the University I wouldn't normally see, including the spanking new Hopkins Building with its stunning lab space (made me wish I'd studied something scientific and ergo well-funded), the Harris Garden and the Centre for Dairy Research at the Shinfield farm (interesting but smelly). We finished up with tea and cakes at MERL which was very civilised.