Christmas preamble; mysterious cards; eating out

Hit the shops on Saturday morning expecting it to be hideous, but actually surprisingly non-busy. We stopped for a cup of something at the cafe in John Lewis and, instead of being queues out of the door as one would expect, there were actually plenty of free tables. Sign of the recession, or just of everyone cosied up at home ordering things off Amazon?

Went round to Ruth’s friend Katia’s on Sunday afternoon for drinks and nibbles. Katia’s boyfriend Nathan was apparently responsible for the nibbles and had gone all out to impress, even baking his own bread. Chatted politely for a few hours before making my excuses and heading home to wrap some gifts, leaving Ruth to stagger home some hours later.

Surprised to return home from work on Monday to a hand-delivered Christmas card signed from Susannah, Tony, Sparkle, Zula and Pippa. Not the faintest idea who they are, but I assume Susannah must be one of two women living at houses further along the same terrace who have both introduced themselves to me, while I have obviously then promptly forgotten their names. Must pay more attention to neighbours.

Progress South Central lunch at Blandford's

Very fine day off today, starting with meeting Ray for a pre-Christmas breakfast at Julia’s Meadow. The picture is of him trying to peel the ‘3 for 2’ label off the gift bag I had put his presents in. Class – really should notice these things. Spent the morning doing the remainder of my Christmas shopping, including a few essential purchases for myself such as a new hair straightener - an entirely reasonable purchase, as my sturdy BaByliss Convertible is about 20 years old and probably in danger of setting fire to my head. Then headed up to campus to meet a number of former Progress South Central colleagues for Christmas lunch at Blandford’s. In the evening, met Helen, Sarah and Lesley for a cosy pre-Christmas dinner out – as everywhere in the Oracle was packed, we ended up at the Royal Tandoori on Duke Street – never been there before but pretty nice.

Have discovered that having bedroom walls re-plastered during winter is perhaps not the best idea, as the plaster takes a while to dry during which time cold dampness seeps into every corner of the bedroom and, more particularly, bed. As Ruth's new friend, Handyman Paul¹, removed the radiators from the bedroom walls prior to the plastering work, we have no heating in the bedrooms which, obviously, enhances the whole effect. Have been using the time to reflect positively on the luxurious home comforts to which we become all too readily accustomed.<sup>2

1</sup>   'Handyman' is a courtesy title.  
²   A lie.

Canal walk; lovely plaster; EMA

Ray and I went for a canal-focused day out on Saturday 3rd, starting at the Oxford end of the Oxford Canal by Hythe Bridge Street and walking quite a way up, past a number of lift bridges, disused and otherwise (evidently these are a bit of a feature of the canal and were built to save money on brick bridges) and past a larger number of extremely scruffy boats surrounded by assorted junk. Seemingly a lot of these boats must be part of the Agenda 21 residential mooring scheme, which was evidently intended as encouraging sustainable development and encouraging those who wished to live low impact lifestyles, etc. According to this, the Agenda 21 mooring community was created in 2000 under a European Union initiative providing for official sanction of traditional communities (whatever the latter means). It looked to us as though the moorings need to come with a certain obligation on the boat owners not to then proceed to live like a tramp and to keep one’s boat in reasonable condition. We saw one elderly man with an incredible long white beard emerge from his wreck of a boat followed by three or four tough-looking cats, and cross the towpath to do whatever with a pile of stuff he’d stacked the other side of it. The fifth post here probably says it all. We walked up as far as Duke’s Cut, a route through to the Thames, and then turned back and stopped at The Plough at Wolvercote Green for a drink, before making our way back into Oxford. A round trip back along the Thames is scheduled for another time when there are a few more hours of daylight available.

Green walls with radiator

Before

Went to a free lunchtime concert on the 7th, apparently part of a long-running series of free lunchtime concerts held in the former St Michael's Church, a deconsecrated church on the OU's campus used for a variety of activities including belly-dancing. This one was a performance of seasonal Scandinavian music by Sirinu and the Swedish ensemble Laude Novella. Quite good, though they talked too much in between numbers. They played an interesting range of instruments, including the hurdy-gurdy - couldn't quite pick out which sound this was, but there was an ongoing buzzing noise throughout most of the performance which I initially assigned to a malfunctioning fluorescent strip light somewhere, but could actually have been the instrument itself, perhaps courtesy of one of the 'drone strings' referred to in the Wikipedia article.

We have, over the last two weeks (I say ‘we’, but actually Ruth has done most of the work) managed to actually get two bedrooms and the upstairs landing skimmed with a nice new coat of plaster. Ruth beavered away stripping all the wallpaper, getting a handyman in to fit the fire surround properly into bedroom 1’s chimney breast, fitting some missing skirting and removing two radiators from the bedroom walls (small flood ensued in bedroom 1, but we won’t talk about that). Bedroom 1 was looking pretty tatty after I removed the coving last year (which, I have it on good authority, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do without also removing some plaster) and given the water damage to one corner of the ceiling; stripping the wallpaper revealed the walls to have an unpleasant greenish tinge which lent the room an oppressive atmosphere for a few days. However, thanks to Mark the plasterer, the walls and ceilings are now beautifully smooth. So pleased with them I have been rubbing up against them at intervals.

After

Managed, with a bit of a rush job, to complete my EMA (end-of-module assessment) for T183, by putting together a simple six-page website loosely based on a site I have had vague intentions of doing for Ray and Darren’s business, but have never actually done. Here it is. Ended up getting a bit behind with the course and skipping the last two lessons, so my carefully-laid plans of methodically working through one lesson a week didn’t quite come off. Better get myself in gear a bit more for M255, my next course which starts in February, as it has four assignments and an EXAM.

Went for our Information Office Christmas lunch today to The Carrington Arms, in the village of Moulsoe, just outside Milton Keynes. Nice place and food – quite nouvelle but then one doesn’t need to overstuff oneself. We were joined by two colleagues currently on maternity leave, Emily, who brought her week-old baby, Baby Benson (negotiations were evidently still going on over its name), and Victoria, who had handed her two young children over to her parents for a few hours, evidently with a certain amount of gusto. Young Claire and I got a lift over in Galina’s electric car, which was interesting – not, as I’d been expecting, completely silent, but apparently some noise is added to avoid making people jump when the car approaches them. Currently there are evidently various perks for drivers of electric cars, including free road tax, free town centre parking and the like. You’d be a bit worried about it running out of charge on a long journey, but presumably there’s a mechanism to tell you when the charge is running down.

Have made various lists for Christmas, but the weekend will involve a frenzy of Getting It All Done.