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Daffodil Envy

On my way into work, I pass several banks and grass verges which are covered in daffodils. They look really lovely at this time of year. Try as I might, I simply can’t get daffodils to do well in my garden. Or crocuses either, for that matter. Christopher and I must have planted well over two hundred bulbs over the years, but they simply refuse to naturalise. Each year, fewer and fewer shoots come up, and of those that do emerge, even fewer manage to bud and flower. 

I don’t know whether I’ve got the wrong type of soil, or if my garden just isn’t sunny enough, though even the bulbs I planted on the sunny south-facing wall can hardly be bothered to flower. I did wonder whether the bulbs get disturbed by the mice / squirrels / moles that frequent the garden, but if so they must be very selective, as the snowdrops and bluebell bulbs seem completely unaffected. I think I’m just going to have to accept that, if I want daffodils in my garden, I’m going to have to treat them as an annual and plant them afresh each year. Which really isn’t my idea of low-maintenance gardening!

20 03 2016 Gillian garden Comments Off on Daffodil Envy Permalink

Enlivening the long journey home

I had a meeting in Greater London last week that involved a long and tedious (taxi and three trains, five hour) journey home. The train line through the Cotswolds to Malvern is notorious for being little more than a branch line, with slow trains that stop at pretty much every village, and very short platforms at many of the stations. Before every stop, the guard announces which subset of the train will actually be “platformed” (a hideous word much loved by Great Western Railways) and therefore which doors he will be unlocking. This time however, the guard seemed determined to elevate the routine announcements by adding in little factoids. For example:

  • The next station stop is Moreton-in-Marsh. There has been a station here since 1853, but it never grew up into a full length platform. So please alight from only the front five carriages, carriages A-E in Standard Class.
  • We are now approaching Evesham. The Battle of Evesham was in 1265, but they’re all friends again now. So it’s safe to get off here – provided that you alight from only the front five coaches!

He certainly seemed to be enjoying his job, and his cheery announcements certainly enlivened what would otherwise have been a very tedious trip home.

13 03 2016 Gillian Uncategorized Comments Off on Enlivening the long journey home Permalink

Alan Ayckbourn’s Confusions

Malvern Theatres seems to be having a bit of a binge on Alan Ayckbourn comedies at the moment. I saw Round and Round the Garden just a few weeks ago, and last week they had not one but two productions alternating throughout the week, Hero’s Welcome and Confusions, both directed by the man himself.  I couldn’t get to Hero’s Welcome, which was a shame as it is a new play, written only last year. However, work is frantically busy at the moment (usual end-of-year madness) and I was far too busy and tired to fit in a mid-week theatre trip.

The Saturday matinee however was much more manageable. Confusions is a revival of one of Ayckbourn’s earlier plays, first produced in 1974. It’s a series of five interlinked one-act playlets. As usual with Ayckbourn, they were comedies but very black ones in places. Some scenes were laugh-out-loud funny, but you also groaned in recognition at how badly some people treat each other.

The first play centred around a totally harassed stay-at-home mother, who was so overwhelmed by the task of dealing with her three small children with no help from her absent husband, that she had totally forgotten how to interact with adults. So when her next door neighbours popped round to check she was ok, she spoke to them as if they were five year olds, and in doing so laid bare the flaws in their relationship.

The second play was less amusing, and much more cringeworthy. The absent husband from play 1 was revealed to be a lecherous, drunken, travelling salesman, trying increasingly desperately to pick up two attractive women in the bar of a northern hotel. I was willing the women to slap him in the face or throw a drink over him, but unfortunately they didn’t.

The third play was extremely cleverly staged. It was set in the restaurant of the same hotel, where two couples were each having a major marital argument. However, it was all seen from the point of view of the waiter. When he went over to serve one of the tables, you heard snippets of the conversation that couple was having. When he moved away, the conversation clearly continued, but only in mime. As the waiter (and hence the audience) overheard interwoven snippets of the two conversations, it became clear that the husband on table 1 had just got back from three adulterous weeks in Rome with the wife from table 2 – but we realised that well in advance of the respective spouses.

The fourth playlet was effectively a classic farce. The wife from table 1 reappeared as the guest of honour opening a village fete. Everything that could possibly go wrong did so – unfortunate personal announcements being broadcast to the entire fete, downpours leading to a mud bath,  the scoutmaster getting so drunk and incapable that his Cubs went feral, the PA system electrocuting both the guest of honour and the vicar, etc etc. It was very funny, in a slightly predictable way.

I didn’t buy a programme, so I’m not sure how the final play was meant to be linked to the others. As far as I could tell, it didn’t share a location or character with any of the preceding four. It was basically a series of monologues from five lonely misfits competing for a seat on four park benches. Each of them wanted solitude, but kept inflicting themselves on the people around them. It was very black and not particularly funny. 

Oddly, I clearly remembered having seen the third and fourth playlets previously, but the other three were completly new to me. Which is strange, since apparently they’re generally always performed together. Overall, I very much enjoyed those two and the first one, and was decidedly less taken with the other two. But a hit-rate of 60% isn’t bad, especially as I’d only paid a tenner for a standby ticket. 

08 03 2016 Gillian Day out
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Another crash!

There was another crash today on the same bend that the fire engine came to grief on. That’s two in only five days at exactly the same place. Just after lunchtime today, a Saab convertible (clearly someone’s pride and joy) was coming down the hill, presumably too fast for the conditions. It appears to have hit a patch of mud at the side of the bend, lost control, and ended up pointing up the bank with the front end wrapped round a tree! Fortunately the driver only appeared shaken, not badly hurt. The car was a total write-off though.

My next door neighbours live in a house that’s right on the road, with no front garden to act as a buffer. They only moved in a few months ago, and getting concerned that the next crash might be through their wall into their living room! I remember that the previous owner and his girlfriend painted the house bright yellow one year, due to exactly the same worry. Christopher and I even wrote to the council after we picked up the pieces from a particularly unpleasant motorcycle crash. We wanted the speed limit lowered, but the council were completely indifferent. I think the neighbours will be trying again to get the Council to take action, as this is really getting a bit much. Fortunately no one has been hurt this week – but come the summer there will be lots of walkers out on this stretch of the road, and they wouldn’t stand a chance if an out-of-control car careered into them.

06 03 2016 Gillian status Comments Off on Another crash! Permalink

Surely that fire engine shouldn’t be parked there?!

There was some unaccustomed excitement on my way home from work yesterday. I was driving home as normal in the afternoon, but when I got to the top of the hill, at British Camp, there was a police car parked across the road, blue lights flashing, barring my way. There was a very cold and bored-looking policeman standing outside his car, directing traffic away from the main road, along the back of the hills. I didn’t want to follow the diversion, as I was just minutes away from home at that point, so I pulled into the big car park and went over to find out what had happened. Fortunately, at the same time, one of the staff from the hotel opposite came out with a cup of coffee for the policeman, who relaxed somewhat and was clearly happy to have a bit of a chat.

It appeared that there had been an “incident” just a hundred metres uphill from my house! A fire engine, on a blue light call, had been dashing down the hill and must have been going too fast for the conditions. There’s a bend that’s rather dangerous at the best of times, and the fire engine appeared to have clipped the curb, the driver over-compensated, swung across the road, hit a tree, and clipped a car coming in the other direction! The fire engine then ended up perpendicularly across the road, blocking both lanes, and closing the road for several hours while they worked out how to recover it.

Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured, though the couple in the car were horribly shocked – unsurprisingly. The policeman did say though that the driver of the fire engine would have to buy a very large amount of doughnuts, and would undoubtedly never be allowed to forget it!

With the permission of the friendly copper, I left my car at the car-park, and walked past the cordon down the hill towards the house. It was actually a much pleasanter walk than usual – it often feels quite dangerous walking there, particularly at dusk, as cars speed round the corner and aren’t alert for walkers. But with the road closed to traffic, it was quite a nice walk home! By the time I’d made myself a cup of tea, the fire engine had been towed away and the road was reopened to traffic. So I walked back up the hill, picked up my car from the car park and drove it home.

I noticed this morning on the way in to work that there’s still some deep gouges in the bank at the side of the road, the tree that was hit is looking very sorry for itself, and there’s lots of paint marks on the road that are no doubt part of the forensic investigation into what happened. I do wonder what happened to the call that the fire engine was originally on its way to in such a hurry – I do hope that another vehicle was dispatched promptly!

03 03 2016 Gillian status Comments Off on Surely that fire engine shouldn’t be parked there?! Permalink

Puncture Aftermath

Paul mentioned in a comment below that my sorry story of the hire car puncture is a very good reason to insist on having a proper spare tyre when buying a new car. My parents would totally agree with him. They bought a new car towards the end of last year, and the subject of a spare tyre wasn’t even mentioned during the sales process. They naturally assumed that the car would come with a spare, as had all the previous cars they’d owned over the last fifty years or so. But my post made them wonder whether that was indeed the case, and a quick check confirmed that no, all that was provided was “puncture repair kit”, i.e. a bottle of glue and a pump.

To say they were not happy is an understatement. It would be one thing if they’d made an informed choice, based on improved mileage, and were knowingly taking the risk of getting an unrepairable puncture. But that wasn’t the case – they had been completely in the dark. And worse still, their car had a space in the boot for a full sized spare, so it was clearly an optional extra, but it hadn’t even been raised as a possibility by the salesman.

My mother decided that Something Needed to be Done. She strode into the car showroom on Saturday morning, when the place was full of potential customers all looking for a new ’16 plate’ vehicle. Then she loudly announced to the showroom in general that she’d “been diddled” and that her car “was missing a wheel!”. She says it was impressive how quickly she was ushered into a back room, and plied with coffee, biscuits and even sherry – anything to stop her making a loud fuss in front of the other punters! The car salesman really didn’t have a leg to stand on, as it was entirely clear that he hadn’t done his job properly when she originally bought the car, so she was able to negotiate a very good price for upgrading to a proper, full-sized, spare tyre along with all the necessary tools, jack etc. 

I’m not sure that my mother would actually want to change a wheel herself these days. Now, however, she’s got a proper spare wheel, so even if she had to call the AA out to change it for her, at least she would be on her way again relatively quickly. And I suspect that the car salesman will be rather more diligent in future about spelling out the options available!

28 02 2016 Gillian status Comments Off on Puncture Aftermath Permalink

Round and Round the Garden

I’ve been working flat out on equipment trials for the past two weeks, and I’ve got another one starting next week, so I’m pretty much run off my feet at work at the moment. I decided that I could really do with a complete change of pace over the weekend, so yesterday I looked up what was on at the theatre, with a view to getting a standby ticket to the matinee. I was pleased to find that this week’s play was a classic Alan Ayckbourn comedy, Round and Round the Garden, and even more pleased than a standby ticket for a top-priced seat in the stalls was only a tenner.

I’ve seen the play several times before, and know that it’s a good one. It’s part of a trilogy of interlinked plays, collectively called The Norman Conquests. Each one is set in a different part of a country house (living room, dining room and garden) and follows the events of a disastrous weekend when the eponymous Norman, a would-be lothario, tries to seduce his two sisters-in-law under the nose of his long-suffering wife. That plot summary doesn’t sound particularly hilarious, but it’s laugh-out-loud funny in places – just what I needed after a busy and tiring week.

Each of the plays works well stand-alone, though if you watch all three of them you get a more rounded view of the events of the weekend, and of the interactions between the characters. When Christopher and I saw the plays years ago, (once in Worcester, and once at the Old Vic) all three were being shown, and it was a bit of a logistics challenge to get to them all. I remember that the London show involved staying two nights at my parents, and spending a whole Saturday at the theatre, with plays at 11:00, 15:00 and 19:30, with carefully scheduled slots for a quick meal (for both the audience, and presumably the cast) between performances. 

I haven’t got the time or energy at the moment to give up three evenings, or indeed an entire Saturday, to see all three plays, so perhaps it was just as well that the theatre was only staging one of them. As I expected, it was very funny – a bit more of a farce than I remembered, with some major “misunderstandings” leading to physical comedy, almost slapstick in places. Though fortunately no one lost their trousers, the sign of a really hackneyed old farce! It was very enjoyable, and really lightened my mood, which was just what I needed. 

21 02 2016 Gillian Day out
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Puncture!

It’s coming up to the end of the Financial Year, which means I’m working flat out undertaking equipment trials and writing up final reports on my various projects. For the past two weeks, I’ve largely been based at a customer site near Cambridge, staying in a Premier Inn at a rather grotty service station, and spending long days working on the equipment trial. That was hard enough, but Monday was a pretty trying day even by current standards.

It all started when the four of us working on the equipment trial met up in the office at 08:30 on Monday morning. That in itself was significantly earlier than I usually get in, and I felt sorry for my colleague who had picked up the hire car in Bristol earlier that morning, and driven up to Malvern to pick up the rest of the team to take us onward to Cambridge. After the usual last-minute faff making sure we had everything we needed for trial, we loaded up the hire car with our bags and set off. We’d gone no more than four miles on a back road between Malvern and Worcester, when we had to pull over at the side of the road as the car was making a strange noise and handling very badly. Somehow, we’d got a puncture and the rear near side tyre was completely flat.

Not to worry, there were two strong blokes in the car and changing a wheel should only take them ten minutes or so. We unloaded all of the bags from the boot – but there was no spare tyre. Not even one of those space-saving spares that you can’t drive too fast on. Instead, all that was provided was a “puncture repair kit” – essentially a bottle of glue/sealant and a pump. We gave it a go, with absolutely no effect whatsoever. The tyre stayed stubbornly flat. 

So then we tried phoning the emergency rescue number as documented on the hire car paperwork. It turned out to be the AA, who said they would be with us “within the hour” to recover us to a garage. They weren’t. After an hour, we phoned again, to be told that we were now right at the top of their priority list, but they had just realised that with four of us in the car they couldn’t use their normal tow-truck, but would need to get hold of a bigger recovery vehicle. However, they would be with us “within the hour”. 

We had no confidence that would be the case (and indeed it wasn’t) so we tried to get the hire car company to take some responsibility for solving the problem and helping us get to Cambridge. After all, they had been the ones who supplied us with a car with no spare tyre. They wouldn’t let us abandon the car, which was our first thought. We could have walked (or got a taxi) back to work and started afresh in one of our own cars. Or, we suggested, the car hire company could bring out a substitute car to us, we could take that, and they could wait with the broken down one for the recovery vehicle. That way, we could be on our way with minimal extra delay. But no, we had to stay with the vehicle.  Anyway, the Malvern office of the car hire company claimed they had no other vehicles available at all, though the Worcester office thought they might be able to find one that would do. 

We finally agreed that when the AA did eventually turn up, we would get them to take us to a garage in Worcester, where we would be met by a representative of the car hire company. We would finally be able to abandon the car there, and he would take us to the company’s depot in the centre of Worcester, where we could pick up another hire car and continue on our way. That was better than nothing, but still far from ideal, especially as there was still no sign of the recovery vehicle. We called the AA back again, to say that it had been two hours since our first call; we’d been given several estimated pick-up times, all of which had passed; and when would they get to us? Once again, we were told it would be “within an hour”, and that they would call us back twenty minutes in advance to let us know that help was (finally) on its way. They didn’t call us back at all, but after another half an hour we did finally see flashing orange lights approaching, which was indeed our rescuer. It wasn’t even an AA van, but a local recovery firm from Ledbury who had been subcontracted just half an hour beforehand to come and pick us up – probably after we phoned and hassled the AA again!

After that, things did run rather more smoothly. We were indeed met at the garage by the car hire man, and although our replacement car wasn’t quite ready for us, we were able to grab some lunch at a little cafe nearby while they sorted it out. We finally set off from Worcester four and a half hours after we’d originally planned to leave!  We got to the customer’s site with time to do just an hour’s worth of work before we were chucked out as they all wanted to go home, but at least we’d managed to show our faces there.

According to the recovery truck driver, he wasn’t at all surprised that the puncture repair kit hadn’t worked. Apparently, they’re only good for very small punctures. If the hole is the size of a nail or bigger, the sealant simply doesn’t work. And in the absence of a spare tyre, you’re completely stuck. It’s shocking that the kit is considered to be adequate, as it quite clearly isn’t. I remember making a huge fuss when we bought our Mini, insisting that it had a spare tyre rather than the run-flats that it came with as standard. I shall most definitely make a similar fuss when it comes time to replace it – I’m simply not prepared to be completly stranded for the want of a spare wheel!

18 02 2016 Gillian car
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Another Girls’ Gluttonous Weekend Away

It seems as if this past year has gone very quickly. Last weekend was my now-annual visit to the Pudding Club with a group of colleagues and ex-colleagues. This was my fourth visit, though I’m still a newbie compared to many of the gang – the stalwart who organises our annual trip is on her seventeenth visit!

As you might expect after so many years of practice, the routine works very well. I was picked up at 09:15 and we drove in two cars from Malvern to Stratford in time for a mid-morning coffee and rounds of toast and jam. Then it was time for some serious Retail Therapy before lunch. I don’t generally see shopping as a recreational activity, but more as a necessity that has to be endured. But I have to admit that there’s a good range of interesting shops in Stratford, where it’s possible to spend a few hours quite happily. Especially if it’s cold and raining hard outside!

I found that the Edinburgh Woollen Mill shop was closing down that very day for a refit, so their stock was very heavily reduced. I managed to buy a lovely and warm cashmere jumper at 60% off in the sale. I went through the elbows of my favourite jumper just before Christmas, and this one was practically the same colour, so that was very pleasing. I also managed to spend an eye-watering amount of money on some very good hand cream and face cream – I’m finding at my age there’s no point buying the cheap stuff any more! And of course I stocked up at Lakeland on a whole load of kitchen stuff.

We then all met up for lunch at The Swan Hotel with another two friends who live further away. It is of the utmost necessity that lunch is a very light meal, given what’s lined up for the evening, so we stuck religiously to the “Lite Bites” section of the menu – plus several portions of chips to share between us, of course! The rain was getting worse by now, and if anything it was even colder, so we spent a long leisurely lunch by a big open fire, catching up on the gossip. 

After lunch, there was time for some more light shopping (or in my case, hiding from the rain in a bookshop) before we drove in convoy to the home of the Pudding Club, the Threeways House Hotel in the picturesque Cotswold village of Mickleton. We had drinks in the bar (time for more gossip) then got changed and met up in one of our rooms for a pre-dinner glass of wine (bring your own tooth mug!). Then it was time for the Main Event. After a very light main course – I had fish cakes and a salad, steering clear of the potatoes and anything else too filling – the puddings were paraded into the room. This year the selection was: Passionfruit Charlotte, Sussex Pond, Butterscotch Pudding, Pear & Ginger Crumble, Syrup Sponge, Chocolate Bread & Butter Pudding, and Jam & Coconut Pudding. And of course there were lashings of custard.

I loved the Passionfruit Charlotte and the Butterscotch Pudding, both of which were delicious. The Pear & Ginger Crumble tasted very good, but unfortunately was let down because the pears still had their peel on. I’d never had Sussex Pond pudding before, and won’t be in a hurry to try it again. It’s essentially a suet pudding, inside which is buried a whole lemon. It’s cooked slowly for so long that the lemon gets pretty much candied. The overall effect is somewhat sweet-and-sour, as you bite into a big mouthful of lemon peel and syrup. Though you have to watch your teeth and spit out the lemon pips! After helpings of those four, I was completely stuffed and couldn’t manage the other three. In fact, none of our group managed all of the puddings this year, though most of them managed a respectable five portions.

The next morning, we all found that somehow we had room for a huge cooked breakfast, before hitting the somewhat tourist-trap village of Broadway for yet more shopping. Only window-shopping in my case, as I was all shopped out by that stage. We then had a final coffee and shared some toasted tea cakes in lieu of lunch, which none of us could face, before driving back home, with the cars laden down with shopping!

It was a huge amount of fun, as it has been every year. I’m already looking forward to next year’s trip!

11 02 2016 Gillian Day out
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A very tasteless game

Over the Christmas holidays I came across a very addictive game for my iPad (versions available on other platforms) called Plague Inc. It’s a strategy game, whereby you initially infect Patient Zero somewhere in the world with a weak strain of a disease, and then evolve the disease’s abilities with the aim of wiping out all human life on Earth, whilst humanity works hard to develop a cure and annihilate the plague. At its heart is a very realistic simulation engine of how diseases spread, by land, air, rat, mosquito, birds, etc etc. There’s a running news commentary with a combination of sensationalist tabloid headlines and bulletins from the WHO etc as your disease gains in severity and lethality.

I played it a good few times last month, and it was an interesting, if slightly macabre, way of spending a wet Sunday afternoon. But the recent headlines about the Zika virus have paralleled the game to an uncanny degree. It’s clear from the simulations in the game just how dangerous a mosquito-borne virus is in Africa and South America, and how international air and sea travel make diseases spread globally very quickly. Even the headlines in the press have paralleled similar headlines in the game – should the Olympics be postponed?, the WHO putting it on a watch-list, countries pooling their research efforts to stop it. The game developers were certainly very prescient and have produced a remarkably realistic simulation. Or at least aspects of it are realistic – I’ve just reached the higher levels of the game which concerns a virus that turns people into zombies. I’m sure that Zika isn’t quite that serious…..

04 02 2016 Gillian review Comments Off on A very tasteless game Permalink