Work is very intense at the moment, with two big projects both building towards major equipment trials. If I’m not careful, my life at the moment would consist of little more than work, work, more work, with overtime on top. So I think it’s important to deliberately build in some fun, non-work things to look […]
I went back to Eastnor Pottery last weekend to do some more work on the tagines I threw last time. As I suspected, the lids needed a lot of clay shaving off the tip of the cone to make them a reasonable thickness all the way up. But then they looked a bit stumpy, so […]
I was staying at Fawlty Towers overnight again last week. It’s about six months since I was last there, and it’s got a new General Manager in the meantime who seems to be something of a new broom sweeping clean. Several of the members of staff who were there last time have left, some in […]
…..but this time it was entirely my own fault. I’ve had a really busy week at work. I had an all-day project progress meeting at our Hampshire HQ on Wednesday, then on Thursday I had an “away day” and customer workshop at a conference centre near Windsor, which involved staying overnight, with more plenary sessions […]
I’ve been on another “Behind the scenes study day”, again organised by my favourite archaeological travel company, Andante Travels. This time it wasn’t a museum I visited, but rather the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, otherwise known as the Oxford University carbon dating laboratory. The […]
Today was the last day of the Financial Year, both for my company and our main customers. So it has been absolutely manic recently. I have either been responsible for, or contributing to, a total of seven payment milestones across two projects, all of which were due to be delivered today. One of the project […]
Well, that rerouting of the boiler condensate pipe really was done in the nick of time! There was in excess of 15cm of snow overnight and it kept snowing all morning today. It’s stopped for now, but there is more forecast for this evening and tomorrow. You wouldn’t think that it’s very nearly April given […]
Having spent what feels like most of last year trying to stop my porch from leaking in the rain, my builder and I have come to the conclusion that he’s done too good a job at making it watertight, and I now have a problem with condensation. So he’s been back this week to drill […]
One of Christopher’s favourite authors was Neil Gaiman, who writes what I suppose could loosely be described as fantasy novels, frequently much beloved by the geekily-inclined. I am a bit more ambivalent than Chris was, finding some of Gaiman’s stuff a bit hit-and-miss. However, I did discover his work a good few years before Chris […]
I had three days of off-site customer meetings last week, so was staying at a hotel two hours away from home, a few miles from the customer’s site. Not at Fawlty Towers, for once, as this was a different customer in a different county, but the hotel was only marginally better. The service at dinner […]
