A few months ago, I read in the Sunday papers about a “new” plant that was being grown commercially in the UK for the first time, and would shortly be available from Waitrose. It sounded interesting – a member of the cucumber/courgette family, with small sour fruit the size of a grape that look a […]
Rob the decorator has been here for the last two weeks, finishing off the job started by the builders who replaced the bedroom windows. They had left the woodwork primed but unpainted, and had also made a right mess of the wallpaper around the window frames. Bedroom 1 was last decorated when Christopher and I […]
I had a meeting in Oxford on Tuesday, at a joint industry/academia forum that I’m a member of. As a city, it’s actively hostile to cars, and the university has very limited parking to offer visitors, so the most sensible option was to go by rail. The train was spot on time on the way […]
My trip to Brighton necessitated an overnight stay, which turned out to be more of an issue than I had expected. I have to book hotels via work’s online travel agent, and usually that’s no problem. However, it was Conference Season in Brighton, and all the main hotels had either no online availability, or were […]
My job seems to involve visiting a lot of universities at the moment – this week it was the University of Sussex at Brighton. The journey to Brighton from Malvern is an absolute pig – I’m not happy to drive that far at the moment, and there is no easy route by rail. The quickest […]
The carpenter finally left on Tuesday, having fitted all four windows and repaired the rotten wood on the porch. He’s left all the woodwork primed, ready for Rob to paint. Wednesday was thankfully tradesman-free, but then the next lot were round on Thursday to upgrade the radiator controls. I had decided to take advantage of […]
No, not that annoying message from Microsoft trying to force you to upgrade to Windows 10. Rather, an update on the ongoing saga of getting my bedroom windows replaced. In previous years, when I have had my kitchen, utility room and bathroom windows replaced by the same company, it’s always gone very smoothly with minimum […]
I’m gradually trying to drag my Victorian cottage at least into the 20th century, if not the 21st. The latest episode in the ongoing saga of renovation is getting new windows in the bedrooms. The current ones have very leaky secondary double glazing, and are draughty and have lots of condensation. As a result, the […]
It’s Referendum Day today. I did my civic duty this morning and voted on my way in to work. For the first time that I can remember, there was quite a long queue at the Polling Station at the village hall. I’ve always walked straight in before, but not this time. Which I suppose could […]
I seem to be doing a tour of Northern universities at the moment. Three weeks ago it was the Engineering Department at Durham; this week I’ve been visiting the Physics department at York University. I really wasn’t comfortable with going all the way there and back in a day, as it would have been a […]
