Christmas 2016

Bit of a round up of unblogged stuff.

As per last year, decorated one of my little artificial trees a couple of weeks before Christmas. Charmed at how pretty it looked with its red and gold theme. Ruth decorated the other one with her eclectic mix of decorations. The display was enhanced by my newly-purchased Waitrose robin and by Lester, a small game bird ornament with real feathers by Gisela Graham Ltd, purchased at Stubbings Nursery a few years ago. Ruth dislikes Lester and claims that he looks at her funny, but this is of course nonsense.

Lester

Spent Christmas Eve with Ruth as she had elected to remain at the house over the Christmas period. Baked a batch of mince pies.

Set off for Wales early on Christmas morning and spent the day and evening with Mum, Dad, Hannah and Henry. Mum cooked a roast beef lunch; in the evening Mum, Hannah and I had a game of charades followed by a group viewing of the Hammer film The Reptile.

A batch of mince pies

On Boxing Day, Hannah and Henry left early to spend the day with Henry’s parents in Devizes, while Mum, Dad and I had a nice walk from the house across the railway and up Little Skirrid. Mum and Dad had planned a turkey crown for a Boxing Day meal; it wasn’t bad actually considering turkey’s tendency to dryness, though trying to arrange it the right way up in the pan proved tricky given its absence of legs.

The following day began with the following text exchange with Ruth – I suspect that boredom had kicked in.

Later that day, we went down to Newport and had lunch with Dave and family and Hazel’s parents Peter and Helen. Nia involved me in putting on a puppet show for Mum and Alys using Alys’ bedroom doorway as a makeshift stage. The show was supposed to tell the story of Rapunzel, though as I am hazy on the specifics of the story, my narration involved a good bit of her whispering in my ear about what was supposed to happen next. Alys and Mum obligingly sat on the landing to watch, though Alys kept coming up to the 'stage' and trying to grab the dolls Nia was using as puppets, which didn’t go down well.

Later on I went with Dave to the Royal Gwent's neonatal unit for a first viewing of Huw. Dave fed him with some of Hazel’s milk via a pipette – at the time this seemed to be going in via a feeding tube down his throat, though I gather he has since begun to learn how to suck.

Dave feeding Huw

Further autumn miscellany: part 1

Back in October my Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop, after a few months of slow running, miscellaneous glitches and the odd rattling noise, refused to boot altogether. I ran various diagnostics and got a variety of output messages, whose meaning I am not sure of but they didn’t look entirely positive.

I am assuming the hard disk has failed, though a Google search reveals some people suggesting it could indicate a RAM problem instead. Luckily the hard disk doesn’t (or perhaps, didn’t) contain much data that’s not also in my Dropbox. As I was half-looking for an excuse to buy a new laptop anyway, I’ve just retired the Dell for the moment, though will have to sort it out at some stage. In the meantime, loving my new 17” HP Pavilion with its Bang & Olufsen keyboard.

I bought the Dell new in 2009 - am assuming that 7 years is a reasonable lifespan for a laptop. Have to note though that the Mesh desktop PC I bought with Ray in 2005 does still boot up, though admittedly it doesn't then do much else with any speed.

(Probably) RIP Dell

Since the demise of Sunrise, have been enjoying the Google Calendar app for organising my life. Particularly taken with the way it adds cute little pictures of the location of an appointment, provided you've entered some location information. It added this picture of the actual reception area at Prospect Street Dental Practice, with one of the actual receptionists.

I was a bit less impressed with this supposed image of Maidenhead it added to an appointment to meet Ray's mum - even photographed in a favourable light Maidenhead doesn't look anything like that.

On 11 November a group of us went to see Jenny Éclair at South Street, part of her How To Be A Middle-Aged Woman (Without Going Insane) tour. Apart from Ruth and me, there was Helen, Ali, Alison and Linda, a colleague of Helen’s from the Prudential. Ruth and I saw Éclair previously at the Hexagon a few years ago, but I think it was the first time for the others. The show was pretty funny and fair play to Éclair for coming on in her underwear, though she puts some clothes on reasonably soon. Glancing over Eclair's Wikipedia entry, she’s now 56, has a long-term partner and a daughter who writes plays.

Before the show, we went for dinner at the Oracle branch of Bella Italia, which was nice though Ruth and I are still mourning the loss of our favoured Queen Victoria Street branch. It is, thankfully, immortalized in the Liam Smalley painting Ruth bought on the Caversham Arts Trail a few years ago and which is currently languishing in bedroom 3, though usually it’s on the living room wall.

Random day in London the following day. I took the train up early-ish and did my daily 3-mile walk as part of my ongoing ‘Give It 100’ challenge. This included a pleasant walk through Regent’s Park, taking in some of the sculptures in the Frieze Sculpture Park, apparently open until early January.

'Women', by Huang Rui

Regent's Park view

Also included a visit to The Conran Shop, where I spotted lots of lovely potential stocking-fillers, if only I didn’t mind a stocking costing over £100. Couldn’t resist texting Ruth that I was in there.

Ruth took a later train up and we met for lunch in Heal’s lovely Ambrose Café, before mooching around Heal’s, Habitat and various other shops looking at the Christmas displays, before taking the train back to Reading. I bought a fun non-traditional bauble wreath in Paperchase, which is now adorning the front door.

Early the following morning Ray picked me up in his camper van for an early outing. We drove over to Winter Hill, discovering with some disappointment that the National Trust has blocked off its car parks at the top of the hill, thereby depriving ordinary proles of the view. We parked lower down by Cookham Dean Common and cooked breakfast, Ray showing off his new tiny hob, miniature kitchen gadgets etc.

After this we drove over to Pinkneys Green and parked at the Cricket Club, and went for a walk of a few miles or so across the green and down into Maidenhead, via a snoop at the exclusive and nice Camley Park Drive. The walk took us via Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, where we stopped for a welcome hot drink.

Norden Farm

We walked back into Maidenhead and via Boyn Grove park - where we visited this splendid tree Ray remembered - to Ray's parents' house, where we had a cup of tea with Ray's parents, his brother Lee and Lee's circa 10-year-old son Joseph, before making our way back to Reading.

More amusing labelling from Waitrose. I'm not quite seeing the necessity for the red sticker, but perhaps I'm missing something.

Finally: my tastes in TV become ever classier, as evidenced by this further text exchange:

RIP Beau

Beau. Beau Geste. Beau Diddley. Beau Regarde. Beau Dacious. A series of potential longer show-type names for the female bunny we only adopted in July and who sadly died during a routine – we thought – tooth-rasping operation last Monday. As Harley has had several of these surgeries and come through fine, Ruth wasn’t too perturbed when the vets suggested that Beau also had a few dental problems and would benefit from this. However, Ruth was phoned by the vet last Monday morning, apparently sounding somewhat shocked, to say that Beau had stopped breathing as they were finishing up the procedure. Who knows why? Apparently it does happen that rabbits die under anaesthetic and it isn't always possible to pinpoint a reason.

A shame as although she was a bit of a nervous bunny, she was proving a good companion for Harley. Now the poor chap is alone again for the moment – Ruth is keen to bond him with a new female as soon as possible, but Steve and Sandra at RRR seem temporarily incommunicado.

We don't have a huge number of pictures of her as we didn't have her for that long, but here are a few.

During bonding at Reading Rabbit Rescue	Eating Fiba Sticks
Beau (right) with Harley

Two autumn breaks

Couple of short trips away back in October, neither of which I have yet recorded for interested future generations who may stumble across and dust off this blog.

Love owls

Ruth and I had a 3-night mini break at Forest Holidays' Forest of Dean site – can’t remember how I came across them but I am a bit of a sucker for a) undemanding holidays; b) log cabins, however faux; c) woods. We didn’t manage to find one of their breaks that wasn’t pretty stonkingly expensive, but in fairness I did choose to book one of their Golden Oak Hideaway cabins, delightful little for-two love nests that have a hot tub, an oversized sunken bath and various twee touches including this heart-shaped trivet (left, with espresso cups) and this owl couple in the dining area. Our decked patio area did have a rather damp autumnal quality, so we didn’t spend a lot of time on it though we did use the hot tub once so as to get the most out of the facilities. The cabin itself was, in fairness, absolutely lovely, and even hard-to-please Ruth said she’d happily go again. Except we’d need to take an HDMI cable next time – it’s so high-tech that there are no DVD players as you’re expected to connect to your own technology and stream things. Luckily there’s also Sky, so we weren’t too disadvantaged by not being able to watch the DVDs we’d taken.

We didn't bother taking the cover off the hammock, mainly as it wasn't warm enough for lying around outside but also because I doubt my ability to get into a hammock successfully while holding a glass of bubbly, as per the lovely couple in the publicity photos.

Forest Holidays aren't quite such a family fun centre as Center Parcs, but they do offer various extras, for a charge. We sniggered over the 'Romantic Evening In' package, which includes rose petals. Considered requesting a bottle of wine in place of these, but it does say no substitutions.

On the Saturday we walked from the Forest Holidays site to Symonds Yat Rock, a couple of miles away, where we admired the views, which were pretty good even in the intermittent lashing rain. Didn’t see any of the advertised peregrine falcons, but in fairness they were probably huddled indoors. We walked down the side of a steepish gorge to Symonds Yat East, where we had lunch in the packed-out Saracens Head, before slogging back up the slope. We did see the hand-pulled ferry in operation, though didn’t try it.

The Wye from Symonds Yat Rock

On the Sunday we drove further into the Forest of Dean, though not having made a proper plan of where to go (nor downloaded the Forest Xplorer app, which I’ve just noticed) we ended up at the large car park at Beechenhurst which was pretty thronged with visitors. We had quite a pleasant walk on marked trails for a couple of miles, looking at the sculptures dotted around, though spent much of the time dodging families on bicycles. Ruth then pleaded to visit a town, and as Monmouth looked to be the nearest town likely to be halfway decent, we drove there, parked up and had lunch. Did the obligatory walk over the old bridge. The town itself was a bit short on shops that weren’t closed on a Sunday.

On the Monnow Bridge

Monmouth was the location of my inspiration for the red walls at the dining room at the house – Mum and I had lunch there once in a café with gorgeous chilli-red walls and I was very taken with the idea. The actual colour we ended up with is less chilli and more brick than I hoped for, but here’s hoping for next time. Ruth and I walked past what I’m pretty sure was the same café, but the walls had been painted a much less interesting creamy colour.

Forest Holidays has a site at Keldy in North Yorkshire, but I can’t tell whether this is the same site that Mum and I, Hannah and Hannah’s friend Lyn stayed at in 1989, as there’s also a Hoseasons holiday lodge site at Keldy apparently.

Had another few days away a week or so later, this time in Dorset to join Mum and Dad at a self-catering cottage they’d booked for a few days’ short break. To lengthen the trip slightly as I could only take the Monday to Wednesday off work, I booked Ruth and me into a Premier Inn just outside Bournemouth for the Sunday night. On the Monday morning we drove into Poole and parked up, and walked down to the harbour, where we spontaneously booked onto a harbour cruise via City Cruises Poole. As it was an amazingly nice day for the beginning of October, the cruise was lovely - the trip of an hour or so took us quite close to Brownsea Island, then over to the Sandbanks peninsula to ogle the luxury residences, then back around the other smaller islands in the harbour, including Furzey Island, owned by BP and apparently the site of a number of oil wells, though that’s not apparent from the views of the shoreline. Fascinating article here by a chap who lived on Furzey Island with his wife in the 1960s. We also passed Green Island and got a view of Edward Iliffe’s new luxury residence. According to this, the first eco-house Iliffe built on the island burned down in 2012, but there was certainly a house there when we went past so I guess it’s risen from the ashes.

Looking towards Sandbanks

Boats in the harbour

After the boat trip we had lunch at Banana Wharf, where it was actually warm enough to sit outside.

After lunch we drove, with only a couple of hitches, westwards via Bridport to Chapel Barn at Salwayash, the holiday let that Mum had booked. Small place but cosy and well-equipped. That evening, Dad drove us to the neighbouring village of Waytown for dinner in The Hare & Hounds, via some extremely narrow country lanes. Here's a screenshot of Google Maps tracking our route.

The next day - which was a beautiful day for October - we parked at West Bay and walked along the beach past the peculiar cliffs as far as the village of Burton Bradstock. Walked down to the beach and stopped for tea and cake at the Hive Beach Café which was absolutely rammed - the only table free was a large one outside, which we nabbed and Mum and I braved the long queue to place our order. After tea, we made our way back westwards towards West Bay - Dad and I hived off to walk up onto the coastal path for the final stretch while Mum and Ruth continued along the beach.

We returned to the cottage via Bridport's branch of Morrisons, where Dad and I raced around the shop grabbing foody bits while Mum and Ruth reclined in the car. Back at the cottage I cooked a coq au vin, having taken care to take some leftover vin with me. Ruth and I had to leave at crack of dawn the next morning as she had an afternoon meeting in London and I needed to get back to Milton Keynes for work the following day.

Chapel Barn, Salwayash

Cliffs at West Bay

Autumn burblechore

Studying another OU module as of 1 October, this time Essential mathematics 1. Have finally, after some dithering, have decided on a qualification I want to aim for: am going for the DipHE in Computing & IT and Statistics. Can count My digital life, the module I did last year, towards it, but sadly am obliged to do a maths module as the next compulsory module at Level 1. Very glad I studied the slightly easier Discovering mathematics a couple of years ago, as otherwise I’d be pretty at sea – prior to that, hadn’t formally studied any maths since doing my O-level in 1985. Have submitted my first assignment and done quite well, but now struggling rather with Unit 3 which is about functions - not something I ever remember doing before, but with a whole slew of baffling notation.

‘Give It 100’ walking challenge going well, with 40 consecutive days now done. Pics being posted on Instagram. And they may be appearing in a feed to the right of this text, if I’ve done the widget thing right.

Also started trying to use the Headspace meditation app, at the same time as I started the walking exercise. Finding it quite useful, and Andy Puddicombe's voice is quite soothing, though I don't agree with meditating with the eyes closed (too much like sleep) so am ignoring that instruction. More often than not find myself drifting onto thoughts about the day ahead, rather than managing to follow Andy's guidance, so effectively it's usually just sitting still in a chair for 10 minutes. Still, maybe that's useful.

Continuing with T’ai Chi. We have just done embracing the tiger and returning to the mountain, and are now fending off the monkey.

Went with Ruth on 20th October to see the Apollo Theatre Company’s touring production of Round the Horne, at Stantonbury Arts & Leisure. I’m not particularly familiar with the original radio show, though Ruth has some episodes on CD that I did listen to once. The bulk of the audience were considerably more familiar with it, given the enthusiastic welcome they gave to the various different characters. It seemed very well done – the young chap playing Kenneth Williams seemed very good; not being familiar with any of the other actors in the original, I couldn’t say whether they were well portrayed or not.

This was only the second time I’d been to the theatre at Stantonbury Campus, the first being to see an amateur production of Footloose during my first week working at the OU in 2011. The school opened in 1974 and apparently initially adopted a policy of no uniform and allowing pupils to call staff by their first names. Ah, the liberal 1970s. This Daily Mail article from 2012 reported that Stantonbury was introducing a dress code, apparently in response to parents' concerns.

Attended baby Emily's christening at the end of October, at the church of St Catherine Bearwood, where Gail and Rob were married. Emily charmed everyone by applauding herself after the ceremony was over. She coped very well with being lumped into the vicar's arms and having water poured on her head - I'm not sure I would have done. Here's a picture of Emily with the parents and godparents - not sure what happened with the light but Emily looks cute. We went back to Gail and Rob's house afterwards for sandwiches and cake.

Having made the decision to have Emily christened, Gail and Rob seem to have had a certain amount of trouble finding people to be godparents, as evidently the majority of the people they approached had not actually been christened themselves. Gail managed to prevail on her cousin Norman to be godfather – Norman had also never been christened but was evidently willing to undergo christening for the occasion. They did seem to have located a suitable friend to be godmother, as there was a godmother present at the ceremony, although only one and I gather that in the CofE you’re meant to have three godparents, two of the same sex as you and one of the opposite. Gail did invite Ruth to be a godmother as she at least met the initial entry requirement of having been christened herself, but Ruth refused on principle, on the grounds of not being willing to agree that she’d assist with bringing the child up in the Christian faith. As neither of the child’s parents are regular churchgoers as far as I know – and quite likely neither of the godparents either – the whole ritual seems bizarre to me, but there you go. If Ruth had been in any doubt about her decision, the order of baptism contains a number of things the godparents have to say, along the lines of renouncing evil and submitting to Christ as Saviour. Jesus. As it were.

Here's a picture of me at what I believe was my christening in 1968, though I don't remember it myself, with Mum, Auntie Anne and Gran. I'm not sure what Mum's hat was about.

Ray came up for the evening of 31 October to celebrate Samhain, bringing some gin purchased at the Dyfi Distillery during a recent white-water rafting trip in North Wales with friends. Also some remarkably nice non-sweet tonic water. Gin and tonic isn't something I drink regularly, but we had one for a bit of a novelty and it was really quite nice. We lit candles for various deceased friends and family, including Uncle Dan and Ray's cousin June's daughter Janine, who have both died this year.

Sharing two ridiculous news snippets that I've had in storage for a while but I don't think shared yet. The first is from the BBC News website's 'Most Popular', which frequently comes up with some gems. Re the second: it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in which this wouldn't be regarded as suspicious.

False memory; Nutrimashers; Fitbit

Recently identified an episode of not exactly false memory but of memory possibly playing tricks. I have a childhood memory of watching a sci fi series called The Fantastic Journey – definitely this one as I remember the boy who played the child Scott, and had vague memories of it involving a collection of people stranded on an island. Indeed it does, having watched an episode recently – their boat sails into a glowing green cloud somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle, and they come round on an island where all sorts of space-time continuum shit is going on.

I had been convinced that I’d watched the programme when we lived in South Korea in the 1970s, and that it was one of the only English language programmes other than Sesame Street that I remembered. However, everything I can find about this series online indicates that it was first broadcast in 1977, and we returned from Korea in 1976. So presumably I can’t have watched it there. So where did I watch it? It seems unlikely that a US TV show that was cancelled after only 10 episodes would ever have been aired in the UK, but I suppose it’s possible.

What the devil is that?

There are a few clips from the show on YouTube, including the pilot episode. And I obtained for about a tenner a ‘DVD’ version from Vintage Television, though the picture quality is pretty poor – I assume someone must have videotaped it from the television.

This New Yorker article on memory is interesting, although I can’t categorise my questionably accurate memory of The Fantastic Journey as a particularly emotionally significant event.  Another article here.

This time's offering from the OU Noticeboard below. During even a cursory view of early morning TV currently one is besieged by ads for gadgets that juice whole fruits (and vegetables and seeds), mainly the NutriBullet, but also I’m sure I’ve seen a NutriNinja. One produces ‘nutriblasts’ and the other ‘nutrishots’, but I forget which way round. They emphatically DON’T produce juice, apparently.

Mildly irritated at Google’s first acquiring, then mothballing the excellent Picasa Web Albums in favour of their Google Photos service.  Have looked briefly at Google Photos – whither all my albums from PWA got migrated – but it lacks provision to add captions or to arrange albums in the order you want – when I last looked my albums were appearing in a seemingly random order. Haven't yet made up my mind whether to persevere with it or go to the faff of transferring my pictures somewhere else.

Still wearing and enjoying the Fitbit Charge HR I purchased a few months ago, though some of Fitbit’s updates are a tad bizarre, e.g. this one. Bought mine after Steve at work showed me his plus his 'dashboard' of various stats - Steve has the larger 'Surge', which looks like a proper watch and also has GPS, but that was a bit chunky (as well as expensive) for my taste. I did, in a fit of extravagance though, also buy the 'Aria' scales, that upload your weight and body fat percentage to your Fitbit dashboard via Bluetooth¹. I blame the OU module 'My digital life' I did last year, which got me interested in all this wearable computing stuff.

Stayed up in Milton Keynes this weekend, partly because it’s getting near the sharp end of the HESA return and I’m conscious of not being as far on as I ought to be. Ended up going into the office for four hours this morning as couldn’t manage to access my remote desktop. Discovered Matt there, also working on HESA tasks, and also Harvey and Steve at various points during the morning. Do some people regularly go to the office on a Sunday? This afternoon, went for a pleasant walk along Haversham Road and then into Ouse Valley Park and along the path under the viaduct. Discovered a bit further along that a new network of paths seems to have been created over what I think was previously a quarry site, as well as some brand new-looking bird hides. Strolled through part of this and then up to come out by Manor Farm - bravely, walked through a field where cows were milling around over the footpath. Ruth enjoys mingling with cows but I prefer to give them a wider berth, but they appeared placid and I wasn't up for the substantial detour that would have been involved otherwise.

Have set myself a walking challenge on the back of a magazine article I read recently on the ‘Give It 100’ challenge. Don't intend uploading video but intend to use Instagram to publish daily photos, but we'll see how this goes.


¹  This does mean you can avoid looking at your weight at the moment you actually weigh yourself and look at it later when you can face it, perhaps over tea and a biscuit.