On Monday Gillian and I went to visit Gloucester cathedral. I remember it as being full of light, and rather airy, which indeed it was. I took a series of photographs of the nave, all at different exposures, with the aim of combining them into a single high dynamic range (HDR) photo. I’m still working on that as it has proved trickier than I expected. But the surprise of the visit was the wonderful enclosed cloisters, and their stained glass windows. When I’ve finished processing the HDR I’ll post some pictures.

On Thursday Hugh took me to Croft Castle, which was a lot of fun. And today Gillian and I went to visit Little Malvern Court which was opened in aid of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association, with the Malvern Sea Scouts helping out. It baffles me why Sea Scouts would be set up in Malvern, which is almost as far from the sea as it is possible to get in the UK, but there we are. The grounds are quite pretty, and the house and church do provide a great backdrop for the garden. Spring is still a little late, so the daffodils and tulips weren’t out yet, but it was still very pleasant wandering around the gardens.

On Wednesday we finally got the results of the HER2 test, which were negative, meaning that it is pointless to try treating my tumour with Herceptin. Oh well, we always knew it was only a slim chance. We also got the results of my mid-treatment CT scan, which were very good. Both my tumour and the secondaries have shrunk, and we also found the reason for my back pain, which was the healing bone where a tumour had shrunk. Funnily enough, knowing why my back hurts has made it much less troublesome to me, and I even feel as though there is less pain. Weird.

There was a little incident yesterday when I threw up my lunch and then my temperature spiked, leading us to visit the hospital in Cheltenham. The senior house officer couldn’t really find anything wrong. He was expecting to find clear signs of an infection, but my blood counts were good, and my temperature went back down again fairly fast, so in the end he sent me home with some horse pills that he claimed were antibiotics. And indeed, judging  by today he was right to have done so.

I’ve developed a bit of an eBay habit. I bought an upgrade to my camera a few weeks ago, and decided that I shouldn’t keep the old one too. I had some lenses that couldn’t be used on the new camera, and some old compact cameras that I no longer used, so I auctioned off the cameras and the lenses. So far, even with the eBay and PayPal fees I’ve managed to recoup the price of the camera I bought. I still haven’t covered the cost of the two lenses, but I now have a complete replacement system with which I’m extremely pleased. You can tell that I’m happy because I’ve been posting quite a few pictures.

My weight has been stable, I’m still eating well, and have vomited only once this week. It has been another good week. In fact, this has been one of the best cycles so far. Let’s hope things continue in this vein.

]]> http://www.icyjumbo.com/blog/2010/cycle-3-week-3-status/feed/ 12 http://www.icyjumbo.com/blog/2010/a-day-out-at-croft-castle/ http://www.icyjumbo.com/blog/2010/a-day-out-at-croft-castle/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:49:26 +0000 icyjumbo http://www.icyjumbo.com/blog/?p=435

Yesterday Hugh, a friend and former colleague, picked me up at home and took me to visit Croft Castle, which is about an hour’s drive away. It is a grand old building, but not the first built on the site. There have been Crofts living at Croft Castle since 1086, although not without interruption. The house is now owned by the National Trust, although there are two apartments in which various members of the family still live. A profligate son in the Eighteenth Century spent all the family money on an estate in Wales called Hafod, which was at the centre of the Picturesque movement, which meant that the house passed out of the family for a few generations to pay the debts he incurred.

The house wasn’t yet open when we arrived, so we wandered around the grounds for a while, then had a short introduction to the family while we saw a few rooms in the house. Then it was time for lunch.

After lunch we went back to the house to explore it properly. Just outside the front door was this remarkably camp looking lion, who accompanied a Wyvern on the other side of the door. The Wyvern looked much more macho, but was less photogenic for it, so you get to see just the lion.

Inside the house the rooms were furnished in a late Eighteenth century style, I think. (I’m no expert on these things, and I didn’t take notes.) One of the most interesting ideas the Trust had had was to close the shutters in a couple of the rooms, and light them only with (fake) candles, so that we could get an idea of just how dark a Victorian or Georgian evening in the Drawing room would have been. It was surprisingly dim, with just a few pools of light around the candle-lit areas. It must have been extremely difficult to see the cards, or read music or a book, but we’re told that that is exactly what people did. I got the distinct impression that the pools of light would have made a number of isolated islands of people, who could have conversed in some privacy, certainly much more privacy than you might have imagined in a single large room. I now understand how some of the conversations reported in Jane Austen, for example, could realistically have taken place.

A number of the rooms have beautifully decorated plasterwork ceilings, a product of  a reforming wife in the early Nineteenth century, I think. There were also lots of paintings of family members, which were used as props for the custodians to tell stories of the family. They were quite interesting at the time, but I’ve forgotten them all now, I’m afraid.

Outside the house there is a large walled garden, with fruit trees planted in a pair of crossing avenues. There were huge numbers of snowdrops planted under the trees, and the crocuses and daffodils were just beginning to come up. In one corner of the garden was a vineyard, looking very bare and heavily pruned at this time of year. There were also quite a few formal gardens. It was quite pretty, even at this early stage in the year, but later in the Spring, and in the Summer too, it will be absolutely wonderful. I may even go back again, just to see the garden.

I don’t have a picture, I’m afraid, but outside the main garden was a large blasted tree that had been painted pink. Not a subtle pink  either, a really vibrant bubblegum pink. A strange idea, but quite eye-catching. I wonder why they did it.

Hugh and I spent about four hours at the house and garden, so it was obviously quite absorbing. It was extremely kind of him to take me out for this excursion. I certainly enjoyed myself hugely. What a great friend! Thank you, Hugh.

The consultant gave me a clean bill of health on Monday, so we were able to get home in the morning, having stayed overnight in Cheltenham, thanks to Richard’s parents’ generosity and kindness. Sunday was a nauseous day, but Monday and Tuesday were less bad, and on Wednesday we tweaked my anti-nausea prescription, going back to the old drug at double the dose. That seems to be working. I can’t say that my stomach feels completely normal, but the abnormal feelings it generates are easily tolerated and so I am content.

The consultant, on the other hand, is still worried about last Sunday’s events. His take is that it means there is something going on in my body that he doesn’t understand, and sooner or later it may interfere with my treatment. So this week’s CT scans of my chest were extended to include shots of my head. Whoopee! I get to see proof that I have a brain! I think the consultant is looking for evidence of things pressing on my brain. I hope he doesn’t find any…

I upgraded my camera last week, and this week I’ve been preparing to sell the old one and four lenses on ebay. That involved a heap of “product” photography, which was fun, and learning how to do my first ebay auction from the seller’s side. It seems to have gone reasonably well, as three of the five items have sold so far for the price I hoped to get. The other two items still have more than five days to run, and are people are showing considerable interest in them. Fingers crossed for the rest of this week.

And speaking of the new camera, I took it out to Madresfield Court today, for their annual Daffodil Sunday event. It could be considered a bit of a damp squib, because there were no daffodils at all this year; they’ve been horribly delayed by the unseasonably cold Winter we’ve all endured. But there were hosts of crocuses, and I had great fun trying to take impressionistic photos of them. Here’s my favourite from the day:

You can find others in the Photo Impressions set in my Flickr stream.

My weight seems stable at 11st 8lb (162 lb); my appetite is good, and I’m enjoying cooking. I have a little back pain which inhibits my sleep a little, but it doesn’t seem to have dampened my enthusiasm for life too much. I’m looking forward to a massage tomorrow, which may help. It has been a really good week altogether, contrary to that presaged by last weekend’s events. This coming week looks exciting too. More news as it develops.

Once inside, however, the queue’s movement slowed down quite considerably, so we were quite pleased when some of the museum volunteers showed up dressed in costume to keep us occupied. King Raedwald was the most gorgeous of all of them, dressed as he was in a full replica of the Sutton Hoo burial armour, including helmet, sword and belt decorations, purse, and various other fittings.

This was a good indication of the sorts of things we were to see when we finally got to see the treasure, for it consists mostly of jewel-inlaid gold armour and decorative pieces, some for weapons, and others for garments. Interspersed with these war-like objects were a few with more religious overtones, although they had been treated less than respectfully, and were freuquently badly damaged.

We finally saw the treasure after a little less than two hours of queueing. The pieces were not very clean. It seems that it is forbidden to attempt their proper conservation until after the ownership has been finally decided. You can still see the mud in the detailed view linked to this image of one of our favourite pieces. This image, like all the others in this post, is linked to a larger version, although this is the only one from a set on Flickr. I encourage you to visit the set and see them for yourself. For an extra treat, make the browser window full-size (use the F11 key), and then view the slideshow.

After we saw them, we went back downstairs to make our donations, so that the Hoard could be kept in the region. You can donate, too, if you think keeping this treasure locally is a worthwhile goal. While we were queueing, more volunteers had arrived to entertain the visitors. I particularly enjoyed the off-duty atmosphere down here. These foot-soldiers were enjoying a comfortable chat, while a man was clearly not sure about being groomed in public.

Not only were there soldiers, but also people demonstrating traditional crafts. This man was making brass or copper plaques, hammering a mould into the plaque through a protective piece of lead. Next to him another man was making small pewter coins. I find this sort of revealing of the life of the more common man at least as interesting as the history of the great people that we normally get, which is why I have concentrated on it here.

And here is the final proof, if needed, that we went. Gillian’s hand has the three stamps that she collected while in the queue. The first was given as soon as we joined the indoor queue. The second as we arrived upstairs, with about an hour-and-a-quarter to go, and the final one as we entered the room where the treasure was laid out in cases. I was pleased that we were allowed to go around the room at our own pace, with just peer pressure to govern how long each person spent at every case. There was usually enough room for about six people at a time to see into the case, looking intently at each piece as they worked their way around the case. I was shocked at how tiny some of the items were, but there were large blow-ups of the more interesting pieces around the walls, which allowed us to get a better view of them, and made it easier to make out their designs.

It was a very good visit. The treasure was fascinating, but so was the effort made to keep an unexpectedly vast number of people from becoming too bored while they waited. We were told that the staff expected to get their 50,000th visitor late that day, or early the next, which doesn’t surprise me, but did surprise them, I think. In fact, over 52,000 visitors saw the Hoard before the exhibition closed, which is wonderful. That’s why, although this weekend ended in a way that I didn’t like, I still think of it as a great success.

Composite of two exposures. The snowy view outside is reflected in a tapestry that sits in the fireplace.

Lying on the sofa this morning, I noticed that I could see a reflection of the snowy landscape in the glass of the framed tapestry that stands in our fireplace. I liked the way the window frame made abstract patterns, and the snowy scene outside seemed to be rendered extremely clearly. If you look closely at the reflection of the window frame, for example, you can see the tapestry in the backround.

When I came to shoot it, however, I had two problems. First, the difference in distances to the fireplace and to the original of the reflection meant that it would be extremely difficult to get it all in focus. I chose not to try, but to focus on the snow. Second, there was too much dynamic range to capture in a single frame, so I made a composite of two images, one exposed for the fireplace and the other exposed for the snow.

Porta-booth

As requested, here is a picture of my porta-booth.

I have been using it for most of my recordings recently, which I do in the larder. It’s not a great room for recording, as it has far too many hard, reflective surfaces in it, but the porta-booth does a good job of damping down the echoes and liveliness of the room.

Why do I use the larder? It’s the only room in the house where the (loud) sounds of the passing traffic don’t penetrate (very much). I still have to contend with the fridge and the boiler, but Noise Removal in Audacity does a fair job of dealing with those. And it’ll only be the fridge in summer.

A compromise, but one I can live with for the moment.