A colleague in my office came up with a really good new word this week.
Flatronisation (noun) from flatronise (verb) meaning “to flatter in a patronising manner”.
It covers such a wide range of situations, both domestic and professional. I think we should start a campaign to get it adopted as a recognised word……
“Don’t you flatronise me!”
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 on an earlier phase of this project, I had an unexpected free morning and was able to do some high-speed sightseeing. This year, there was much more limited opportunity to do anything touristy. Nevertheless, I was determined to make the most of being in Durham, and managed to negotiate to with the team that I could have a free hour first thing on Wednesday morning – they needed to set up and calibrate some equipment before I was able to run any tests on the system.
I made the most of the window of opportunity, and dashed up to the Cathedral in the centre of the city. I got to the Cathedral just as the morning service was finishing, and was able then to do an ultra-high speed look around it. I was hoping that the “Open Treasure” redevelopment of the cloisters would be finished. Last year, there were posters up inviting people to come back in 2016 to see the completed major refurbishment, new display space, and exhibits. Unfortunately, it’s not actually finished yet – the cloisters are still a building yard and the exhibition won’t open until July.
Nevertheless, I was very interested to see the progress on the scale model of the Cathdral, built entirely from Lego. It’s a fund-raising project whereby bricks are sold for £1 each to raise money for the Open Treasure project. So far they’ve raised over £250k, and the model is rapidly approaching completion. Indeed, it’s currently on track to be finished in July too.
Overall view of Durham Cathedral model in Lego
The picture above shows an overall view of the model so far. The roof isn’t yet finished, so you can look inside and see the details of the transept and pulpit, which make it clearer that it is in fact all made of Lego.
Inside the model
Naturally, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to buy a brick and place it on the model myself. This will form part of the roof – I took a snap of the instructions and the work-in-progress block that will be added to the overall model.
My block of Lego!
My piece is the 6×2 block – much better value I thought than just a little round one-stud block!
I’m gradually getting used to my new glasses. My distance and middle-distance vision is noticeably improved, and I’m certainly finding it easier to drive in the evenings – much less flare from oncoming headlights. It feels like my close vision is slightly worse than before – I can still read ok, but small print is harder than it was. I suspect that is an indication that I’m getting close to the limit of what can be expected from a single-prescription lens, and that when I next change my glasses I may have to consider varifocals. Shudder! A sign that I’m getting older……
What’s really odd, and most disconcerting, is that my perception of verticals is all over the place. Every single picture frame in the house (and there’s a lot of them) seems to be hanging crooked. I am telling myself that’s just an optical illusion caused by the new lenses, and am refraining (with difficulty) from going around “straightening” them all. I’ll give it at least a week before I do that, to give my eyes a chance to get accustomed to what “vertical” looks like.
I’m very short-sighted and have worn glasses since I was about seven years old. For many years now, my eyesight has been dreadful, but remarkably stable. I get my eyes tested regularly, and each year I’ve been told that the change in prescription was too small to justify getting a new set of spectacles. So in fact I’ve been wearing the same set of lenses and frames since 2004, and have had no problems with them until very recently.
I did notice, however, last winter that driving at night was becoming more difficult, partly because things were a bit fuzzy, and partly because after 12 years the lenses were so scratched that oncoming headlights were really dazzling me. I went to the opticians and asked for an eye test, because I was convinced that my prescription had changed a fair bit. I was right. But whereas most people my age would start getting more long-sighted, my eyes have defied convention and got even more short-sighted. Enough, this time, to warrant getting a new pair of glasses.
It’s really difficult choosing new spectacle frames when one’s as short-sighted as I am. I simply can’t see my whole face in the mirror with the new (lensless) frames. Last time of course, Christopher was around to help, and he knew what I liked. This time, I made heavy use of the camera on my phone, taking selfies (not something I would normally ever do!) of myself in a selection of new frames, so that I could see what they looked like. Unfortunately, I didn’t like any of the ones in the opticians! I’m very fussy about my glasses – I have to be, given that I wear them all day, every day. And I really don’t like being able to see heavy frames at the edge of my field of view. I find it very distracting. But fashions have changed since last time I bought a set of glasses, and the fashion at the moment seems to be for narrow, heavy frames.
I made my requirements very clear to the optician, and left it as an exercise for him to obtain a selection of frames that would be more acceptable. It took about four weeks, but to give him credit he did come up with three options, all of which met my criteria. They were probably all horribly unfashionable, but that’s hardly something I’m going to care about. I chose a pair that are very similar in shape to the previous pair, so at least I know that the shape suits my face. Then it was a case of choosing some lenses. Because my prescription is so strong, and the frames I chose are quite large, the overall weight of the completed pair of glasses is a key factor. I need the lenses to be as thin and light as possible. So that means high refractive index, plastic not glass, aspheric in shape, and photochromic so that I don’t need a separate pair of sunglasses. That’s an awful lot to ask of a lens, and there was a very limited range of options available in the strength I need. However, lens technology has clearly moved on in the last 12 years, as the resulting lenses actually seem lighter than my old pair, despite the prescription being stronger.
I picked the new set of glasses up this afternoon. I had forgotten how horrible it is, getting used to a new pair of lenses. I’m struggling to focus on anything, the floor isn’t where it ought to be, and I’ve got a headache and constant vertigo. It could take a few days to “settle in” to the new lenses, and to see whether overall they’re better for me than the old ones. I’ve been warned not to drive wearing the new glasses until I’m fully habituated to them, as my depth perception is completely out. So I’m going to have to carry the old ones around with me for driving, whilst trying to spend as much time as possible wearing the new ones, to try to re-train my eyes and brain to the new prescription. But I’m hopeful that, when I do get used to them, I might get fewer headaches, as I shouldn’t have to strain my eyes quite so much to try to focus on things. We’ll see. For now, it’s challenging enough drinking a cup of tea without missing the table when I put it down!
I was rushing to work one morning last week, and pulled the porch door shut behind me on the way, as I’ve done literally thousands of times over the last two decades. Except this time, the door slammed shut and the handle came right off in my hand! The base plate was still firmly screwed to the door, but the knob was no longer attached….. On investigating further, it appeared that the insides had completely rusted away over the years, and it wasn’t a simple matter to reattach the knob. I’d need a whole new handle.
So I went to an ironmongers at the weekend and bought a new Victorian-style round brass door knob, as close as possible in style to the broken one. If only it was as easy as that! The original fitting was probably genuinely Victorian, and was clearly made to imperial measurements. The new one, though it looked the same size in the shop, was clearly manufactured to the metric “equivalent”, and was about a millimetre and a half smaller in diameter than the old one. Which meant that there would be a ring of bare, unpainted wood right around the edge of the baseplate, clearly a recipe for rot to set in. And when I unscrewed the old base plate to make a start on fixing it, it was clear that it had been replaced a couple of times already – there were so many screw holes in the wood that it looked like it had woodworm!
Fortunately, I found some wood filler at the bottom of my toolbox, so was able to roughly fill in the holes. Rob the decorator had left a small amount of left-over paint of the right colour in the garage precisely for occasions like this, and though the paint had dried out, I was able to break through the thick rubbery skin to some liquid beneath. I touched up the paintwork around the edge of the baseplate, managing to get paint pretty much everywhere as I did so – it’s clearly the right choice to get a professional in to do the decorating rather than doing it myself! And I’ve managed to screw the new fitting on to the door, though I wasn’t able to get the screws as straight or as flush as I would like.
All in all it’s something of a botch job! But it will do until Rob is back for his regular slot over the summer, when he can do it properly. And in the meantime I can at least now close the porch door behind myself!
The major landowner in these parts is the Eastnor Estate. Eastnor village (where I regularly go to the Pottery) and the castle are a few miles down the hill, but the deerpark is so huge that the back entrance to the estate is only a few hundred metres from my house. This has caused some problems in the past. The massive fireworks competitions that are held annually in the castle grounds are frustrating in that I can hear every single rocket but can’t actually see anything, as there’s a massive hill in the way. The occasional loud rock concert is just something I have to put up with. The real problems in the past have been with the music festivals – particularly the Big Chill. The traffic for that festival used to be horrendous, and was extremely inconvenient when Christopher was dying, so I was very pleased when it stopped coming to Eastnor.
The estate has in the past taken a somewhat blasé approach to its relations with its neighbours, and generally just ignored us. We were apparently the Great Unwashed, compared with the gentry in the castle, and our feelings really didn’t matter. In the last year of the Big Chill I suspect the criticism had got to them a bit, as the closest locals, including myself, were offered the option to buy a discounted day ticket to the festival – fat lot of use to me, as I had no interest in it whatsoever. It was bad enough hearing the music all evening when the wind was in the right direction!
It’s been years since I last visited the castle – I think the last time was with Christopher and his step-father, Peter, so that was probably about ten years ago. Christopher really didn’t like the castle and what it stood for; the in-your-face inherited wealth and privilege really offended his principles! I remember that he reluctantly accompanied Peter and me around the staterooms, muttering under his breath! He was also offended that it’s not a “real” castle, but what he called a “Victorian fake”, as it was built only 200 years ago, and was deliberately designed in the style of a Norman castle to show off the owner’s wealth and prestige.
This year, the castle seems to have got a new marketing manager, because I received a very polite letter a few weeks ago, giving a list of all the public events at the castle over the summer, and enclosing a voucher for a complimentary family ticket to the house and grounds, valid on any day that the castle was open this year. That’s a much better way to get your neighbours on side! I decided to take them up on their free ticket, and went to Eastnor this morning. They were holding their annual Chilli Festival, with lots of stalls in the grounds selling all sorts of chilli-related products. I don’t actually like chilli, but there were also stalls selling locally produced cheeses and meats, cookery demonstrations, a mariachi band and lots of food stalls, not all of them based around chilli. The house was also open to the public, and that was my favourite part of the trip. I found it very interesting to walk around the mock-baronial hall, with the bought-in suits of armour, and oil paintings with a very tenuous link to the family. I could still hear Christopher’s voice chunnering away about how fake and over-the-top it all was!
Last week, I was organising and hosting a joint industry / academia / government two-day workshop at our Malvern site, for about 35 people from all over the UK. They all needed somewhere to stay overnight, and I needed somewhere suitable to host an evening dinner / networking session. There’s a couple of hotels around here that could potentially meet that requirement, but ideally I wanted somewhere with a bit of a “wow factor”, yet not too expensive for those delegates who were on tight expense budgets. I asked my director’s PA what she suggested, as she often has to organise groups of visitors, and she recommended Stanbrook Abbey, about a fifteen minute drive from Malvern.
Until a few years ago, this was a convent, with a small but active community of Benedictine nuns. However, the heating bills and overall maintenance costs got too much for them, and they have relocated to a purpose-built eco-friendly nunnery in North Yorkshire, also called Stanbrook Abbey. The nuns sold the original building to an events company, who have clearly invested millions of pounds in turning it into a hotel and wedding venue. The new owners are still trying to drum up business and compete with longer-established hotels in the Malvern area, so they were willing to come to a very good deal for bed, breakfast and a Workshop Dinner to fill up their rooms in an otherwise quiet week.
The hotel is a very odd contrast between old and new. The original building is Puginesque, Victorian High Gothic, all pointed arches, mullioned windows and dark wood panelling. There are still the original cloisters, which are atmospherically candle-lit in the evenings. The chapel is available for use as a meeting room, and I’m pretty sure that my group dined in the nuns’ old refectory. Wherever you look, there are reminders of the building’s original function – a huge crucifix and Stations of the Cross in the cloisters, devotional statues on the staircase, paintings of saints and martyrs on the walls. My co-organiser of the conference, a practising Catholic, said he found it really disorientating, and kept having to stop himself from automatically genuflecting as he rounded a corner! Then there are the new additions which in my opinion jarred massively (and almost certainly deliberately) with the original architecture. There is a very modern, almost brutalist, extension on the front forming an atrium and bar, leading to the Reception. There was pink and purple neon lighting up the main staircase, and our otherwise Victorian function room had a disco ball suspended from the ceiling!
Overall, it was a very interesting and somewhat disconcerting experience! The bedrooms were quite large and very comfortably furnished, with very luxurious bathrooms. The dinner was entirely acceptable (smoked salmon starter, then chicken, followed by sticky toffee pudding) and was served efficiently by waitresses who were clearly used to feeding large groups of people. Breakfast the next morning was pretty much what you would expect from a hotel buffet, but was served in another huge and historic room. I wish I’d had more time free to wander round and explore the hotel building further, as it was absolutely fascinating. It’s certainly one of the more interesting hotels that I’ve stayed in.
The clocks have gone forward, and that means that the quotations start coming in from tradesmen, all of whom are determined to help me renovate the cottage. One thing seems to be leading to another, and what I had thought would be a fairly simple and self-contained job looks like it’s turning into something much bigger…..
My bedroom is very cold and draughty. It’s at the far end of the house, and the wind whistles around it in winter. The secondary double glazing is very leaky, and there’s always a lot of condensation on the windows in the morning. Last year I got a quote to have the windows replaced with proper hardwood double-glazed units, which should be warmer, less draughty, and far less prone to condensation. It didn’t get to the top of my priority list back then – replacing the bathroom window was more urgent – but I did promise myself that I’d get around to it soon.
Today the builder came round with his re-validated quote from last year (he’s held the price the same, which is good). He brought his joiner with him, who is the person who will actually make the windows. The frames are a very odd shape, and the two windows in the bedroom are both subtly different sizes, so everything will need to be hand made. Nothing in this house seems to be off-the-peg! But the joiner was concerned at actually fitting the new window units, and broke the news that he would probably need to chip away at the plaster around the edge of the frame – so I’d have to get the bedroom redecorated afterwards.
That’s not such a huge problem. The last time the bedroom was decorated was the year we moved in to the house. That must be close on 18 years ago, and it does badly need re-papering. Last year, I did get Rob, my trusty decorator, to stick down all the peeling bits of wallpaper, and to replace the worst-faded bits. But I knew that was only a temporary bodge, and that I’d have to bite the bullet and redecorate soon. So having my hand forced isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
So I phoned Rob, and asked him to quote for painting the new window frames (he’s cheaper than getting the joinery company to do it) and for re-papering my bedroom. He mentioned that when he was working in there last year, he noticed that my radiator valves looked to be corroded, and had clearly leaked significantly in the past. He said that he didn’t think he’d be able to guarantee to be able to drain, remove and replace the radiators when he was decorating the room, and that I should really get a plumber in first to replace all the valves. There’s three (largely ineffective) radiators in my bedroom, and if I’m getting them done I may as well get the plumber to replace all the valves in the old part of the house, since I strongly suspect that my bedroom isn’t the only room with a problem.
So what I thought was a fairly manageable job of replacing two windows in my bedroom, now looks as if it will involve a decorator and a plumber in addition to a joiner and a glazer. Somehow, nothing to do with this house is as straightforward as I would hope!
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 my batteries with a mini-break by the seaside. I booked into a rather pleasant B&B on the sea-front at Weymouth for a couple of days in the middle of last week. Rather conveniently, the dates tied in nicely with my University friends, Tom and Katie, passing through Weymouth on their Easter break, so we arranged to meet up for dinner on Wednesday in a very pleasant little Italian restaurant on the Esplanade.
The beach at Seatown – lots of fossils in the cliffs
Portland Castle – a Tudor fortress with mid-Victorian living quarters tacked on the side.
The cannon emplacements at Portland Castle
When I was a child, I absolutely loved the Ladybird Books series. I pretty much learned to read from the Ladybird Book of Ancient Egypt, and it certainly fired me up with an early and enduring interest in ancient history. I also clearly remember reading the “Peter and Jane and Pat the dog” books with my little sister in the early seventies (at least, she was my “little sister” back then. She’s been taller than me for decades…..).
Now, there is a whole new series that has just been published of Ladybird Books for Grown-ups. They are described as “a series of Ladybird books that have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. As in the other books in the series, the large, clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the book will greatly appeal to grown-ups.”
The books make use of a selection of original illustrations from the sixties and seventies, coupled with modern, witty, and distinctly subversive text. Together, the effect is absolutely hilarious. Titles in the series so far are:
When I was at a meeting in Oxford a few months ago, I had a bit of time to kill before the meeting started so I went into Waterstones Bookshop, with the intention of doing some browsing along the shelves of “serious books”. Instead I emerged clutching the first of these Ladybird books. I enjoyed it so much, that I now have the whole collection, and have the next one (How it works: The Dad) on pre-order from Amazon. There are a lot of home truths about the disappointments of adult life, covered in a way that makes you laugh out loud and then go “Ouch!”.
Highly recommended for anyone who grew up in the sixties and seventies, and remembers the originals with nostalgia.
