Scrapbook of some bits from 2019

Ruth’s birthday. We stayed at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, which was very nice except for the indifferent coffee offering at breakfast. Not actually sure why we were even having the hotel breakfast in a London hotel – my usual preference is to go out to a café – but Ruth was in a hurry to get home for work, so that may have been it. The previous evening, we’d been to see Circus 1903 at the Royal Festival Hall. The elephants in it – created by the War Horse puppeteers – were indeed fantastic, but much of the show was more child-oriented than we’d expected. We had a pre-theatre meal at Cucina on Belvedere Road.

Origami. After the workshop mentioned here, I had a go at home and made these cranes.

Expedit. After some nagging from Ruth, unconvincingly disguised as assuring me how lovely it would look in my flat, we dismantled my IKEA Expedit shelving unit (now a collector's item, obviously) and I transported it to MK. Amazingly, managed to assemble it myself, though was a bit worn out afterwards. It does indeed look very nice in its new position.

Smart new little sofa. I treated myself to a sofa from John Lewis’ G Plan Vintage range. The sofa is part of the Sixty Seven range. John Lewis say about it:

Inspired by the G Plan Vintage archive, the low slung appearance of The Sixty Seven is the perfect blend of past and present. Its contoured arms and turned wooden feet complement each other to make it as distinctive as it is comfortable.

It does indeed have darling little wooden feet.

My new sofa

 

Nia in ‘Seussical’. We went to see the lovely Nia’s CAST performance in ‘Seussical’, back in April, at the Riverfront Theatre in Newport. Children of a range of ages including teenagers – Nia looked to be one of the youngest children on the stage. She had a small (non-speaking, but credited in the programme) part towards the end, playing the Elephant Bird.

Here I am wearing the special excited face I wear before any form of musical theatre.

OU stuff. The OU's HR department has renamed itself 'People Services'. OK. Though it's a short step from that to being back at 'Personnel'. On a slightly different note, HR/People Services' A-Z on the intranet has some odd juxtapositions these days.

We were restructured and moved offices, from the Wilson to the Pentz buildings. I did take Matt's nun with me, though I've regretted adopting her given the attention she attracts.

Packing crate with nun

Judith’s leaving. My line manager from when I joined the OU in 2011 until April this year, Judith left the OU last July, after what was suspected to be around 30 years’ service (Judith was always close-lipped about her exact length of time in the OU’s employ). Although we had had our differences of opinion, her departure has left a significant hole, both for me personally and for the statutory returns function in general. This picture of me, Claire and Judith was taken in 2011, in what was then Claire’s and my office on the OU’s campus.

The Department for Work and Pensions. Ruth made me log in – first time ever I think – to check my state pension eligibility. Probably a good idea.

Robot deliveries. The ‘Starship’ delivery robots are still to be seen in Milton Keynes, at least in the southern part of the town near the OU. They are SO CUTE.

Windchimes. Managed to offload a set of windchimes that I bought at some expense some years ago before realizing that they were too large, and therefore loud, for any space I’m ever likely to live in. After two goes at advertising them on the OU Noticeboard, I sold them to a Lecturer in Criminology for a tenner. Hope she’s finding them relaxing after a day spent pondering the recesses of the criminal mind.

My ad appeared above someone apparently selling a kilo of raw organic coconut chips. That was an impulse bulk purchase then.

This product description on Amazon. Auto-translate? I have no memory now of what the product was.

Spam. I received a number of extremely unconvincing emails purporting to be from HMRC. Does anyone actually fall for this stuff?

Partings. I said adieu to my homemade wine bottle candle holders, but took a commemorative picture of them first.

Google Maps’ limitations. In a clearly under-occupied moment, I asked Google Maps for directions to the Marshall Islands. It didn’t manage it.

Bunnies. We still have both Harley and Catherine Howard, though H's health is declining as of late 2019. Here he is snuggled under CH.

GEM award. Pleased to close 2019 by being awarded a ‘Going the Extra Mile’ award, part of the portfolio of goodies that forms the OU’s Rewards Scheme. Chris, my line manager since last April, had nominated me, which was jolly good of him.

RIP Expedit; theatre; glazing

Again backtracking a bit … spent Ruth’s birthday on 3 January firstly driving over to Aldbourne to visit Ruth’s Granny Box and to take her a gift of a battery-powered Mini Aquarium, which Ruth was forced to snatch away from Granny’s eager hands as it turned out to have the wrong sort of batteries. We had lunch in the Bear at Hungerford, recently taken over by Old English Inns – the bar area is pretty much the same, though it has been enlarged at the expense of the dead posh ladies’ toilets; there are, obviously, new ladies’ toilets sited elsewhere, but we agreed they’re not quite as posh as they were before. After this we attempted to go for a walk I’d identified around the Savernake Forest, but couldn’t find the recommended starting point, so after several false starts parked just inside the main gates off the A4 and walked a way down the Grand Avenue. We didn’t have a map with us – strange move on my part, as I am usually well equipped with maps – so were forced to retrace steps. In the evening we went for a birthday dinner at Myalacarte – I can’t now remember what we ate, but it was very nice.

Heavy winds brought down the last of the big Cedar of Lebanon trees on the OU’s campus in February, which was a bit sad. Estates published this bulletin on the intranet, a bit late so I suspect they’d been contacted by a few distraught members of staff. It was one of a pair, the other of which blew over some time last year. Not sure whether they’d just reached the end of their lives, though a colleague did speculate that they’d been victims of replacing buildings which had created a gap/wind tunnel in a critical place.

Met Helen at Tate Modern on 22 February for a long overdue catch-up. In addition to changing jobs since we last met, Helen has become engaged to a chap she met eight months ago at a speed-dating event. The exhibits on offer in the galleries we looked in included this Richard Serra piece ‘Trip Hammer’ in a gallery themed ‘Energy and Process’. My introduction to Richard Serra was on a visit to Tate (Britain, as it is now) with Mum many years ago when we encountered two vast blocks in the main entrance hall which we assumed were plinths waiting to have new artworks displayed on them. In fact they themselves turned out to be the display, another Serra artwork. We later saw another exhibition of his work at the Serpentine Gallery, consisting of rooms with some walls painted black and some white.

Ah, Expedit. Felt a pang of sadness at IKEA discontinuing its iconic Expedit range. Apparently I was in good company: this piece, titled ‘Ikea has killed off Expedit, leaving me sad, angry and confused’ was swiftly followed by this piece, titled ‘The people who mourn for discontinued Ikea lines’. Feeling the need to stock up, I sneaked a visit to IKEA on 26 February and purchased two white 2x2 Expedit units, along with a few of the storage boxes to go in them. Behind me in the queue was a man also purchasing two of the 2x2 units – I thought I might have seen him brush a tear from the corner of his eye, but can’t be sure. My 4x4 Expedit unit is now residing in the dining room of the house, although Ruth doesn’t think it goes – but she is, of course, wrong.

Went for tea with Claire on 2 March and what was intended to be a walk along the Thames – the original plan of a walk to Sonning had had to be abandoned due to continuing extreme sogginess of terrain, but we managed a brief walk once she had lent me Chris’ wellingtons. The walk was curtailed by the unfortunate discovery that Claire’s sister’s boyfriend Martin’s boat, a ramshackle Dutch barge named Mad Meg which is moored by the Horseshoe Bridge at Kennet Mouth, appeared to have been boarded and robbed. Claire had evidently been keeping an informal eye on it while Martin was on a six-week work trip to New Zealand, but it had evidently been tampered with shortly before as apparently Claire had already reported it to the police. We had to spend quite a while standing by the boat while Claire first called Martin’s friend Dave, who turned up to look it over, and then phoned the police to update the crime report. Dave’s theory was that others were attempting to take possession of it, and pointed the finger at the resident of a boat moored on the opposite bank, who is evidently known to the local boating community. While sympathetic, I thought it unfortunate that the boat was moored in such a vulnerable position and is sufficiently dilapidated as to look abandoned. Hopefully it can be done up a bit at some point in the future.

Went with Liz on 5 March to hear the Ben Westlake Trio perform at one of the OU’s free lunchtime chamber music concerts in St Michael’s Church, the deconsecrated church on the Walton Hall campus. The three young chaps, two studying at the Royal Academy of Music and one at the Royal Northern College of Music, played a three-part programme beginning, to my delight, with Mozart’s ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio, which I’ve loved since studying it as part of my O-level Music course. They followed that with Schumann’s ‘Märchenerzählungen’ and then four of Max Bruch’s ‘Eight Pieces’. I had no familiarity with either of the latter; indeed this entry on Max Bruch notes that he is not primarily known for chamber music but that his "Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano" are occasionally heard as it’s a relatively rare combination of instruments. A pleasant one though. The young pianist, Tyler Hay, also gave stirring performances of a couple of short Chopin pieces.

Theatre trip on 7 March to see Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud – Ruth booked the tickets a while back as she is a big Angela Lansbury fan and wanted the chance to see the old girl return to the London stage. She was indeed entertaining, though I’m probably in agreement with this review. A large part of the audience were evidently there solely to see AL, and laughed and cheered loudly at practically her every utterance – including a request to pass the cucumber sandwiches, which I wasn’t sure was intended to be particularly funny – which became irritating after a while, given that there were other actors on stage. Couldn’t quite decide what I thought of the play – it was good, particularly Janie Dee as Ruth, though some of the humour was lost on me and I couldn’t decide what to make of the ending. It was my first exposure to Noel Coward, though, so possibly I just wasn't sure what it was all about. We had another lovely pre-theatre dinner at Browns on St Martin's Lane.

Made a mid-March visit to Mum and Dad and admired their new kitchen. We went for a walk along the Usk on the Saturday followed by a nice lunch at the Grofield Inn in Abergavenny. In the evening Dad lit the chimenea they inherited with the house and we sat outside for a while, though it did get a little chilly. Lovely sunset though.


Anglian have finally carried out the work we agreed with them a few months back, replacing the three single-glazed windows at the rear of the house with double-glazed units, and replacing the dining room window with a fully glazed French door. Here are 'before and after' pictures of the window in the toilet, with new extractor fan squeezed in top left, the only spot the electrician could find to put it.

The French door had been the subject of some dispute between Ruth and me for a while, with me quite liking the idea but not thinking that it constituted essential works, given strapped finances, and also wary of the impact it would have on the furnishing options for the dining room, which are already quite limited given the presence of doors in three corners (now four). Also was vaguely overcome by sentiment for the old dining room window, given that it was part of the Victorian house – though actually only the surround and the sill; the original sash window was long gone before I moved in.

The job was slightly plagued by misfortune - during the fitting of the windows, one of the fitters injured himself and later had to go to hospital, resulting in the door fitting being rescheduled for a few days later; on said day, Ruth had a call to say the van had broken down and they couldn’t come; Ruth then started a new contract in the interim and wasn’t able to be at home, so it had to be rearranged for a few weeks’ later to give me time to arrange to be at home. I duly arranged to be at home on Monday and Tuesday last week; had a call around 10:00am on Monday to say that one of the fitters had called in sick and they weren’t going to be able to come. Wasn’t best pleased as I’d taken a day’s leave, though in fairness the hapless woman on the phone was very apologetic. After a bit of arranging and some alternately threatening and emotional-sounding noises on my part, they agreed to send out a two-man team the following day who would definitely, we were assured, be able to complete the job in one day. Indeed they did, quite impressively.

Met up with Ray for supper at the Global Café on Tuesday last week (day of the French door fitting) as he had got a whim while in Reading with Emma recently to go there again. Don't often go these days as Ruth isn't a fan of the food, so a rare treat. Ray finished up with what was billed as an 'Ethiopian coffee', which certainly arrived in an attractive pot with two little cups, but smelled and tasted disappointingly like Nescafe.

Given recent lack of success at the job-getting game, was cheered a couple of Fridays ago to receive this (above right). Well, who wouldn't be. I did indeed have a paper published in RPCE in 2012, though the tone of the email suggested more that the author was about to either offer to be my wife or to deposit their life savings in my bank account.