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Too many trips to Town

Sorry for the lack of posts – I’ve just been far too busy to find time to blog. Every week recently I’ve had an all-day meeting in London, and it’s leaving me exhausted. One upside though is that, rather than getting a hideously early train from Malvern, I’ve gone down to London the night before and stayed with family – either my sister or my parents. It had been ages since I’d seen any of them, so it has been good to have an excuse to catch up.

One of the trips turned out to be extended longer than I’d anticipated. I’d stayed the night before with my sister in the suburbs, caught a commuter train into central London, and attended my meeting. In the afternoon, I got to Paddington in good time to get an overcrowded, peak-hours train home, only to find that there were no trains from the station at all. There was an “incident on the line” near Slough, blocking all four tracks, and there were no trains in either direction! The train I’d planned on catching was first delayed, then cancelled. Even if the next one did manage to run, it was going to be horribly delayed and totally over-crowded, and I’d be lucky to get home before 10pm. I decided to cut my losses and stay over an extra night. But I knew that my sister was out that evening, so I couldn’t really go back uninvited to her house and wait for her to get home. Instead, I phoned my parents out of the blue, and invited myself there for the night. After all, surely that’s what parents are for, even if one’s nearly fifty?! I had a very pleasant evening with them,  and then caught a train back to Malvern the next day. I then spent the rest of the week frantically catching up on the work I’d missed – bid deadlines don’t slip just because the trains have stopped running……

07 11 2016 Gillian Uncategorized Comments Off on Too many trips to Town Permalink

The mice are back….

The weather has got colder and wetter, and so the mice have moved back into my attic – as they do every year. I’ve had to call out Martin, my friendly neighbourhood pest controller, to put more bait down in the loft. But it’s not an instantaneous solution, and things tend to get worse before they get better. Last night was particularly bad, with mice scrabbling around directly above my head from 11pm until 4:30am. At least, I’m assuming it was a mouse – it was so loud that it sounded at least as big as a cat! However, I’m sure that I’d have noticed a cat-sized hole in the roof so I’m hoping that it was just the lateness of the hour making things sound louder and larger…….

29 10 2016 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

Slow Shower Progress

I’m inching forward with getting the shower fixed, though it’s still far from usable. Today, the plumber came back and re-tiled the area around the new shower (which was installed a few weeks ago; I’ve been waiting for the plaster to dry out as it got rather damp due to the old shower leaking behind the tiles). I didn’t have enough of the old tiles spare, and they are obsolete now, so it’s a bit of a patchwork job using as many of the old tiles as he could reclaim, plus some new ones that are similar but clearly not identical. It looks a bit odd, but I think it will be ok overall. The alternative would have been to completely strip and re-tile the entire bathroom, and that would be unnecessarily expensive. 

Unfortunately, the shower is still not usable, as the tiles need to be grouted and then sealed with silicon sealant – two separate jobs. The tile cement has to cure for at least 24 hours before the grout is applied, so that will mean a separate visit fitting in around the plumber’s other work. However, I’ve not paid him for the work he’s done today, so he has a significant incentive to finish the job! In the mean time, I’m getting used to using the weedy electric shower in my en-suite, so it will hopefully be a big improvement when I can finally use the new power shower.

22 10 2016 Gillian house Comments Off on Slow Shower Progress Permalink

Woman in Mind

I had something of a dilemma at the weekend. On the one hand, I’ve got a heavy cold that I just can’t shake, and was feeling really grotty, so I wanted to have a really quiet weekend and snuffle my way through it with strepsils, mugs of honey&lemon, and boxes of extra-soft tissues. On the other hand, the local theatre was doing an Alan Ayckbourn double bill of plays I didn’t know – Invisible Friends and Woman in Mind. In the end, I decided to compromise, and went to just the afternoon matinée performance of Woman in Mind. 

Although it was advertised and the tickets sold through the main box office of Malvern Theatres, the play turned out to be at the Coach House Theatre next door. I’d never been there before, and although I’d read about it in the local paper, didn’t know exactly where it was. For the record, you go through the pay’n’display car park right next to the main theatre, past the public toilets, and the Coach House Theatre is tucked away at the bottom of the car park. It’s a small performing space, with space for about 70 people in the audience in a very intimate little theatre. Tea, coffee and biscuits are served at the interval in a little tea room to one side of the main stage. It’s the main home of Malvern Theatre Players, the amateur company associated with the theatre, and they also let it out to third party hirers. That seemed to be the case in this instance – the double bill was being put on by the Dick and Lottie Theatre Company, who are an amateur company based in Huddersfield, specialising in Ayckbourn plays. 

I’m always a bit suspicious amount amateur theatricals – they can be very patchy in quality. But I have to say that this one was absolutely excellent, and only the ticket price and small audience gave it away as a non-professional production. The actors were uniformly excellent. The plot centre around Susan, a middle-aged woman who was deeply unhappy in her marriage to a priggish and unloving vicar, was estranged from her son who had joined a cult, and had her deeply unpleasant sister-in-law freeloading off them. So when she stood on a garden rake, knocked herself out, and came round with massive concussion, it wasn’t surprising that she fantasised about an ideal substitute family – a wealthy and adoring husband, a dutiful and loving daughter, and a helpful, jolly younger brother. However, as Susan started losing her grip on reality, the fantasies became more and more real, until they were taking over in real life. 

In many respects it was a typical Ayckbourn, with darkness underlying the humour – in this case the darkness came from Susan’s dysfunctional family and her descent into madness. But there was humour on top of that – a bumbling doctor, and some very witty dialogue that had the audience laughing out loud. Despite my heavy cold, I enjoyed myself very much. Now that I know where the Coach House Theatre actually is, I must make a point of keeping an eye out for what they have on.

18 10 2016 Gillian Day out
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Goodbye Colin

Our friend from work, Colin, was a regular commenter on this blog back when Christopher was still alive. He and Christopher used to meet in town for coffee, and their shared sense of humour lifted an otherwise rather bleak situation. For the last few years, however, Colin has been battling cancer himself – an inoperable brain tumour. He and his wife Jane have very bravely been blogging about what was happening – I’ve linked to “Colin’s blog” from mine and have followed it regularly since the beginning.

Recently, however, the inevitable happened. Colin died at St Richard’s Hospice, and his funeral was held this week. I really wanted to go, both out of respect for  Colin and to support Jane. But it was the first funeral I’ve been to since Christopher’s, and I was worried that I would find it too much – some of the parallels were really a bit too close. Fortunately, our good friends R and F also wanted to attend, so I arranged to go along with them for some moral support. 

The funeral was actually very good in its own way. It was held in Great Malvern Priory, which for those who don’t know it, is a beautiful medieval church in the centre of town. The church was pretty much full, and there were lots of familiar faces there – both current and ex-colleagues. The eulogy was very well done, and even made the congregation chuckle with some reminiscences about Colin’s particular brand of humour. I was pleased that I’d forced myself to go – it was very much the right thing to do.

14 10 2016 Gillian cancer Comments Off on Goodbye Colin Permalink

Brading Roman Villa

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.

Too good to be true?

Too good to be true?

I got a bus from the end of the road into Ryde, and then caught a train to Brading. That in itself was quite an experience – the Island Line is a short length of mostly single-track electrified railway line between Ryde and Shanklin. The tunnel outside Ryde has too low a roof to allow standard trains to fit through, so the rolling stock is made up of super-annuated tube trains from the London Underground which should really have been retired decades ago!

From the station it was a short walk along the side of the track and through a housing estate to reach the villa, which was protected from the weather by a modern building housing a giftshop and a cafe. The mosaics were good, but in my opinion nowhere near as good as promised in the advert – they certainly weren’t amongst the best in Europe. I’ve seen far better in Sicily and mainland Italy, for a start. I think it would be fairer to say that they were “among the best-preserved mosaics displayed in-situ north of the Alps”, but that probably wouldn’t bring in as many punters.

The cock-headed man

The cock-headed man

Nevertheless, the villa and mosaics were well worth the visit. The meaning of this one of a “cock-headed man” has got lost in the mists of time, but clearly was relevant to the owner in the late third century AD.

The Medusa mosaic at Brading

The Medusa mosaic at Brading

This room-sized mosaic of Medusa gives a feeling for how luxuriously-decorated the villa was. Unfortunately, the colours of the tesserae are heavily faded, partly due to salt-encrustation from flooding off the nearby fields. The ground-surface has raised by several feet over the last 2000 years, so the surrounding fields are now well above the Roman floor level, and contaminated run-off from the fields has badly damaged the mosaics, leading to fading and subsidence. Hopefully, some recent flood-prevention work should stop the situation from getting worse.

All together, it was a very interesting and enjoyable visit, even if I thought the original advert overplayed its hand!

12 10 2016 Gillian Day out
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A few days by the sea

Palm-fringed beach

Palm-fringed beach

The conference was very interesting, but extremely hard work. So I was very pleased that I’d had the foresight to book the following week off work on leave. The parents of a good friend of mine from university own a seaside holiday home which they let out commercially during the school holidays. But in low season, they very kindly make it available to friends and family at “mates rates”. I arranged to borrow it from Monday to Friday, for some seaside relaxation.

As you can see from the photo above, it was all very idyllic with virtually no other tourists around out of season. But, despite appearances, I wasn’t on a tropical island, although getting there did involve a ferry-crossing. It was in fact on the Isle of Wight, twenty-two minutes away from Portsmouth by SeaCat, and approximately 30 years behind the mainland in terms of pace of life. It was an ideal place to go to relax.

I went there by train to Portsmouth, followed by the passenger ferry to Ryde. I had thought about hiring a car once on the island, but as it turned out, I didn’t need to. There was a bus stop at the end of the road, from where I could get to Ryde or Newport, and thence practically anywhere on the island. Even better, I was able to order on-line for a Tesco delivery to arrive a few hours after I reached the house, so I didn’t even need to spend any of my precious holiday doing a food-shop. I pottered around, seeing a few of the local sights, but equally importantly spent a lot of time simply sitting on my backside reading and unwinding.

10 10 2016 Gillian Day out
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Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle

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 menu for a two-course lunch was remarkably affordable, and the food sounded very good. Unfortunately, despite the waitress assuring us that it would be fine, the French chef was completely unable to cope with the concept of a lunch break of a duration any less than 90 minutes. Half of the people on my table had a firm deadline to be back at the conference, as they were either chairing a session or presenting a paper, so ended up putting money on the table and taking their food as a doggy-bag to eat later, cold! I had prudently stuck to just one course, and managed to wolf it down and get back to my conference session without missing anything important.

The main sub-conference I was attending was all day Monday and Tuesday, and I found myself with a couple of hours spare on the Wednesday, from lunchtime until the late-afternoon poster session/reception. I went back to the little bistro, on my own this time, and had a very pleasant and much less rushed lunch. I confirmed my suspicion that, provided one didn’t try to rush the chef, the food was delicious. I then decided that I’d refresh my conference-frazzled brain, and take some time out in the afternoon to visit Edinburgh Castle, which was only a 15 minute walk away. I really didn’t want to go all the way to Edinburgh and come home without having seen any of it!  As you can see, there were quite a lot of tourists there on a cold and rainy day at the end of September – it must get really heaving in high summer!

I did a top-speed dash around the castle. The entrance ticket was eye-wateringly expensive (£16.50) and I was determined to get the full value out of it! I saw Scotland’s Crown Jewels, the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James VI, a very early chapel, and several military museums. Then I headed back to the conference centre, and rejoined the rest of the delegates for the poster session. I bumped into one of the people I’d had the hurried lunch with on the Monday, and he confessed that he’d slipped away that morning to go around the castle – so I wasn’t the only one with that idea!

08 10 2016 Gillian Day out
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Ongoing shower issues

I’ve had the plumber round to replace the built-in shower in the ensuite. As I feared, it’s not proved to be straightforward. I knew the old shower had been leaking down in front of the tiles. What’s clearly apparent now is that it’s also been leaking behind the tiles, and probably has been doing so for some time. The plasterwork behind the tiles is soaked, and will have to dry out for a couple of weeks at least before it can be re-tiled. So, even though I now have a new shower installed, I still can’t use it until the tiling’s been done.

And of course, several of the old tiles got broken when the plumber removed them, and I don’t have any spares. I do have plenty of spare tiles from the ensuite, but although they are a similar colour, they’re a different size. So there is going to be something of a patchwork effect I think! I took some of the old tiles along to the shop I bought them from, and see if they can source a replacement, but I after 8 years the tiles, as well as the shower, were obsolete and unobtainable. The throw-away culture is all-pervasive, and extremely annoying!

04 10 2016 Gillian house Comments (1) Permalink

Edinburgh trams

I’ve spent most of the week up in Edinburgh, at the main international conference in my particular technical field. It was held in a huge conference centre near Haymarket station, and even the thousand or so delegates didn’t completely fill it. What was nice is that it’s clearly the “right” conference for me – not only do I personally know a good percentage of the Organising Committee and Programme Committee, but I kept having people coming up to me saying “Hi Gillian!” Or, more tentatively, “It’s Gillian, isn’t it?”. I managed to catch up with a load of contacts, and did some useful work in the coffee breaks, talking to some key people face to face. As usual with conferences, there was quite a mix of papers – some fascinating, some less so, and some that were completely incomprehensible. But overall, it has been a very worthwhile few days.

What I didn’t get so right was the location of my hotel in relation to the conference centre. By the time I booked, and given the tight budget that the company insists on, I ended up staying in a hotel the other side of the city centre. But fortunately, I found that there was a tram from directly outside the hotel to the Haymarket station, and then all the way on to the airport. It was a quick, frequent and extremely convenient service, and even had free wifi on board. From the city centre terminus to Haymarket, the trams shared the road with the general city traffic, sometimes in dedicated lanes and sometimes fighting for space with buses and cars. But from Haymarket all the way out to the airport, it ran on a dedicated light rail track, and the driver was therefore able to make remarkably good progress. I used it every day to get to and from the conference, and it seemed to be very well used, by a mixture of tourists heading to/from the airport and locals doing their daily commute.

I was last in Edinburgh at least 15 years ago, maybe longer, and there were certainly no trams then. It seems very odd that so many British cities which used to have trams ripped up the rails in the name of progress, and are now replacing them (at eyewatering cost) also in the name of progress. Meanwhile, on the continent they seem to have kept them going all the way thorough, just modernising the vehicles as required. It appears that our city planners have perhaps been somewhat short-sighted……

29 09 2016 Gillian Day out Comments (2) Permalink