This year’s Bidding Season has been particularly manic, and for the last two weeks I’ve been working simultaneously on two bids. Either of them could easily be a full-time job, so juggling delivering both of them in parallel, whilst maintaining a semblance of working part-time, has been somewhat challenging, and I’ve built up a fair […]
I spent today back at Eastnor Pottery, trying to bury the stresses of the ongoing Bidding Season in the clay. One of the things I particularly enjoy about throwing pots is that you have to focus very much on the here and now, and lose yourself in concentrating on hand-eye coordination. If you try to […]
I’ve still got a stinking cold, and I’m finding the current Bidding Season at work very tiring, so I could really do with a run of early nights. But there was a show on at Malvern Theatre last night that I was determined to get to see, totally regardless of how grotty I was feeling. […]
The conference was in Dresden, and as it happens I’ve been to a conference there before, way back in 1997. Last time, the conference delegates were taken on a walking tour of the Old Town by some of the graduate students from Dresden University, so we got a good introduction to the city. This time, […]
As a research scientist, technical conferences have been part of my work life for the last twenty-something years. To start with, as a very junior researcher, I was really keen and eager to attend conferences, and it was always something of a surprise when my supervisor encouraged me to attend to present the research papers […]
I didn’t quite finish the story of my trip to Bristol to go glassblowing. The course was just one day, from 10:30 to 16:00 with an hour for lunch. I could get home to Malvern on the train relatively easily afterwards, but if I’d tried to do a return trip on the day, it would […]
The Director of the business stream I work for wanted to thank his staff for the efforts we’ve put in over the past year, so invited his entire extended team, and their partners and children, to a “Mediaeval Family Fun Day” at Warwick Castle. All in all, several hundred of us took him up on […]
A number of people have commented to me that the glass blowing looks downright dangerous, with no Personal Protective Equipment, and the tutor wearing shorts! In fact, I think the danger lies more in the perception and the potential than in reality. Yes, of course, if things went horribly wrong then it could get very […]
I got home from work today to find a parcel waiting for me. It was the glasses I’d blown on Saturday, all very well wrapped up in bubble-wrap and packed in newspaper. They’d done a very good job of parcelling them up. And here they are! Proof that I’ve got years of training and apprenticeship […]
I mentioned a few months ago that I thought it might be interesting to have a go at making hand-made glasses. Glass blowing is something I’ve wanted to do, at the back of my mind, for several years now, but Chris wasn’t particularly interested so I didn’t take it any further. But for the last […]
