I went to a dinner recently at the Imperial War Museum. I don’t think I’ve been there before, but it looked to be very interesting and I think I’ll have to go back there when the galleries are open to the public and have a proper look around. One exhibit though I couldn’t miss, even […]
I was invited to give a talk last Friday at a conference held at Glasgow University. I’ve been working quite closely with the university for a few years now, and have previously tried to go there-and-back in a day. It’s doable, flying from Birmingham, but it makes for a very long day and I find […]
I was so glad that HMS managed to fix my boiler last week, as it’s turned cold. Really cold. It would have been utterly miserable without central heating! It even snowed heavily on Saturday for several hours. Big, fat, “proper” snowflakes. Fortunately it didn’t stick, but it was still heavy enough for me to cancel […]
It’s that time of year again when I get a series of emails from Christopher’s gmail calendar, reminding me to do a load of admin chores. “Get septic tank emptied” (done), “renew house insurance” (done), and most recently “Get boiler serviced”. I had to wait a few weeks for the boiler servicing company I use, […]
I had some very elderly bananas left from my packed lunches, that were far too brown to eat but not yet so far gone to be binned. So I thought I’d be brave and try cooking a banana cake to use them up. It’s not a recipe I’ve done before, as baking is really not […]
I had a very interesting and different evening last Saturday. There was a Pink Floyd tribute band in town, for one night only, visiting the Malvern Theatres as part of a UK tour. They got some very good reviews online, the tickets were very reasonably priced, and there were still a few seats left, so […]
The Malvern Festival of Innovation has been running all week, with events ranging from outreach to families and schools, to themed symposiums and networking for professionals. I went to one of those latter sessions yesterday, as it was on a technical topic I’m interested in. I was surprised by the number of people there whom […]
Last week, there was a “technical away-day” where 50 or so of us were summoned to our Hampshire headquarters for a day of briefings and workshops, followed by dinner with yet more networking. It was a long day, but as a bonus our bosses had organised a private, evening tour of Brooklands, the motorcar and airplane […]
My first impressions of Montréal were of a modern, high-rise, somewhat identikit Northern American city. And of roadworks. Lots of roadworks. The city authorities seemed intent on replacing the sewers all over the downtown, there was a lot of redevelopment going on with new skyscrapers and new bridges being built, several major road junctions were […]
I didn’t get much time to explore Montréal; I was there to work, not go sightseeing. And whilst some of the younger lads in my team had the energy to go out sampling the nightlife after a full day’s work, I simply didn’t. But there’s little point in travelling all that way and not making […]
