The local stately home, Madresfield Court, has once again opened its gardens to the Great Unwashed on Daffodil Sunday. They didn’t hold it for a few years, which must have put quite a hole in the budgets of the local school and church, who together benefit from the admission fees. But tradition has been restored, […]
When I met up with Christopher’s stepfather, Peter, for lunch a few months ago, he promised to send me some up to date pictures of Christopher’s Tree. It’s getting to be an adolescent now, not a sapling any more, and is doing well on a patch of ground owned by the Woodland Trust near to […]
Before I left for the Isle of Wight, my father sent me a cutting from his history magazine which he knew I’d find interesting. I hadn’t even heard of Brading Roman Villa before, but I looked it up and it was an easily-manageable day trip from where I was staying. I got a bus from […]
The conference had some very long days – on the Monday, I was in conference sessions from 08:30 right through to 19:00, with only a short break for lunch. I joined some other delegates and we took a table for lunch at a very nice little French bistro directly opposite the conference centre. The fixed-price […]
I recently spent a weekend in the depths of rural Dorset at the wedding of a friend and ex-colleague. I well remember that I was writing a bid with L, the bridegroom, whilst Christopher was extremely ill. So I was going into work each the morning, working on the bid, and then dashing off to […]
Cuthbert the Cucmelon really has come good. After several weeks of not producing anything, he’s now heavy with fruit. This is the first harvest of mini-fruits, and there’s at least as many again that should be ready by the weekend. Mind you, it was necessary to stand on a chair to pick them – he’s […]
Cuthbert the cucumelon has been growing like mad, and producing hundreds of little proto-fruit about 1cm long with small yellow flowers on the end, like the one at the top left of the photo above. These then develop into small grape-sized fruits that look very like a small watermelon, as you can see. The trick […]
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 […]
I spent most of last week in Durham, working on an equipment trial at the Unversity with one of the professors in the Engineering Department. We had a lot to achieve, and not much time to do it in, so we were all working pretty long and tiring days. Last year, when I was working […]
Work has been even more manic than usual in the run-up to the end of the financial year. I had four weeks of equipment trials, on two separate projects, from mid-February up until Easter, by the end of which I was totally exhausted. So I decided that it would be a good idea to recharge […]
