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{ Monthly Archives } May 2011

A roof back over my head

It took three workmen two and a half days to mend my roof, finishing yesterday (Saturday). Apparently, times are so bad out there that they have to work a six-day week and Bank Holidays to keep the business going. They replaced about a metre’s worth of rotten  rafters all the way up the pitch of […]

A rough week

It was my birthday this week, and I found it very difficult indeed. I missed Christopher so much. It was a huge struggle to get out of bed that morning – I really wanted to just turn over and pull the duvet over my head. Perhaps fortunately I had some meetings arranged at work that […]

Rejected options for the garden

I mentioned the other day that I want to sort out my garden. I thought I’d blog here about the ideas that Chris and I thought about and rejected. I’ll leave the current candidate solution for another time. As David A. pointed out in the comments to the previous post, the slope is intrinsically unstable […]

Sysadmin help

My college friends Tom and Katie, and their daughter (my un-god-daughter) Tia came to visit on Sunday, on their way home from seeing family in Wales. We all went out to lunch at the Plough and Harrow (again! I seem to be going there quite a bit recently, which is definitely a good thing).  Then […]

A college dinner

Last Friday I was invited to a dinner in Oxford, the annual engineering scholars’ reunion at my college. I wasn’t able to go last year, as it was in the middle of Christopher’s final round of chemotherapy – the one which ended up with him hospitalised in an isolation ward with neutropenia. But in previous […]

Sorting out the garden

I think this is likely to be a long-running saga, which I shall spread over several posts and probably several months. You have been warned! This is what my garden looks like currently. It is heavily landscaped, with the first terrace (where this picture was taken) being as high as the house, and two further […]

Back to work….

I went back to work on Tuesday after taking over two weeks off over the run of Bank Holidays. On the one hand, it felt odd being back after an extended break, but on the other I was quite pleased to get back to a routine as I’d pretty much had enough of myself after […]

A trip to Bath Thermae Spa

I’m not over-keen on spas, and was rather underwhelmed with the one in Malvern. But since I was in Bath last week, staying just a few minutes walk away from the new Thermae Spa complex, I took the opportunity to pay a visit. Partly, I was curious to see the new spa, having spent a […]