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More holidays in Bickenhill

I’ve been travelling a lot for work over the past two weeks. Nowhere glamorous though – an overnight in Salisbury, followed by a week in Portsmouth, then a trip to the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

It is technically possible to do the Glasgow trip in one day, flying from Birmingham, but it’s a very long day indeed and absolutely exhausting. And I was already tired from all the other travelling. So I was very pleased that the university arranged to put me up in a hotel opposite the physics department, meaning I could fly up to Glasgow the previous evening rather than getting the 07:00 morning flight.

But then there was the issue of getting home again. It was an all-day meeting, meaning I had to get the evening flight home. Which got into Birmingham airport so late that I would have to catch the very last train to Malvern and wouldn’t get home until around 23:30. I couldn’t face that, even if the trains were guaranteed to run. And going by my experience before Christmas, I wasn’t prepared to run the risk of getting stranded again. I couldn’t really charge a second overnight stay to the project, so I booked a cheap room at the Ibis Budget hotel at Birmingham airport on booking.com and paid for it myself.

I probably shouldn’t have been quite so stingy. I’d stayed the previous week at the Ibis Hotel in Portsmouth, and had found that cramped and pretty basic – though well located for the Historic Dockyard and the restaurants of the Gunwharf Quays quarter. But the Ibis Budget range really was basic. The shower and sink were in the corner of the bedroom, there was a bunk bed above the main bed, and there wasn’t even a kettle provided to make a cup of tea. But it was only £31 and for the price it was totally adequate.

However, the algorithms at booking.com have clearly noticed that I have stayed several times now at Birmingham Airport. Except they’re not clever enough to realise that it’s the airport itself that is the only reason for me being there. Instead, they think I have a strong wish to holiday in Bickenhill, the postcode district for the airport. They keep sending me suggestions for more things to add on to my holiday – trips to Stratford, the Cotswolds, and the delights of the City of Birmingham. No thank you!

30 01 2020 Gillian Day out Comments Off on More holidays in Bickenhill Permalink

Still Slightly Deafened

About a year ago, I went to a performance at Malvern Theatres of The Classic Rock Show – a group of musicians who performed a set covering literally an A to Z of rock from AC/DC to ZZ Top. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, so when I saw that they were back at Malvern this week I thought I’d go to see them again.

I was a bit concerned that it would be a direct repeat of last year’s show, but it was in fact virtually a whole new set. Out of the nearly two and a half hours, I only remember hearing three or four repetitions from last year – including an absolutely stupendous and note-for-note rendition of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic, Free Bird. Everything else was new, including one of the lead guitarists. It turned out that the Malvern gig was the very first outing for this year’s brand new show, and they are going to spend the next two months touring all round the UK.

I lost count of how many different guitars the two leads used, in order to sound just like everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton via Brian May and a load of others I couldn’t even name. The vocalists weren’t quite as flexible – it took three of the musicians between them to cover the likes of Freddie Mercury, Stevie Nicks, Meat Loaf, Roger Daltrey and all the rest. But they did it very well indeed. If you shut your eyes, it was very hard indeed to spot any differences from the originals. It was like having my iPod on shuffle, except that it was louder. Much louder. So loud that you could feel the vibrations in your chest, and I had ringing in my ears at the interval!

Seventies rock god long hair was the order of the day, and not just for the band. Several members of the audience who were old enough to know better were guilty of what can only be described as hair crimes! They tended to be the ones wearing original 1970s and 1980s rock tour T-shirts that only just fitted them these days!

All in all, it was a very loud but enjoyable evening. The musicians really were excellent. I will keep a look out for them visiting Malvern again next year – but I’ll make sure I continue to get the cheap seats right towards the back of the auditorium. I’m really not sure my ears would cope if I sat in the front rows of seats!

17 01 2020 Gillian Day out
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Little Women

About forty years ago, I went to stay with my grandparents on my own for a week. There wasn’t a great deal to do there in the evenings, but I found a shelf of children’s books in the dining room which I think must originally have belonged to my aunt. I was a voracious reader, so that was enough to keep my busy. I started with The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley and absolutely hated it. Even at the age of eleven or so, I thought it was a pile of sanctimonious tripe.

Fortunately, also on that shelf was a hardback copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It was written only a few years later than The Water Babies, but I found it much more engaging and enjoyable. I remember being captivated enough by the story to get the sequels out of the local library when I got back home, but then I don’t think I’ve given it a thought in the next four decades.

There is however a major new film adaptation of the book which has just been released and is getting some pretty good reviews. It’s been on at Malvern Theatres this week, and I’m still off work for my Christmas/New Year break, so I took myself off to the matinée showing this afternoon. My recollection of the book is a bit hazy, to say the least, after all this time, though I did recall that it’s about four sisters growing up in genteel poverty in New England. I remembered that one married the stinking rich boy next door, one married a penniless professor, and one died tragically young, but that was about the sum of it.

The film didn’t tell the story chronologically, but kept leaping backwards and forwards between the girls as teenagers and as young women. So I found it a bit confusing at first, especially as the same actresses played both the younger and older versions of the characters, which sometimes made it hard to tell which time period each scene was set in. However, it was a very clever way of showing how the characters developed, with their past foreshadowing their future. I also found it interesting that the director, Greta Gerwig, has put a strong feminist spin on the story, which is just fine by me.

Overall, I thought it worked well, and was an interesting and enjoyable way of spending the afternoon. I’ve just looked online, and it appears that there is actually a film adaptation of The Water Babies, starring Bernard Cribbins. Based on my memory of the two books I certainly wouldn’t give up an afternoon to watch that one!

02 01 2020 Gillian Day out
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Stranded

I’ve been doing quite a lot of work with Birmingham University over the last few years, and yesterday I was invited to a conference & workshop held at a hotel that’s part of the university, to launch the next phase of the big project they’re working on. The meeting was very interesting, with several excellent presentations and some good opportunities to network. Even the lunch was very tasty, though I turned down the opportunity to stay on for the conference dinner as I wanted to get home at a reasonable time.

The first time I visited the university, I went by car but found the drive and the car parking so stressful, that subsequently I’ve always gone by train. It’s normally quite a straightforward trip – just one hour from Malvern, with no change of train. But yesterday was not a good day.

I left the conference just before the final talk to make sure I got to the station in time for the 17:26 to Malvern, only to find that it was first showing as delayed and then cancelled. The same thing happened to the 17:56. The excuse they gave was that there were signalling problems between Longbridge and Bromsgrove. They did manage to run the 18:26, but it was only three carriages long. As it was already carrying three full train loads of commuters from Birmingham New Street, it was packed worse than a can of sardines, and there was literally no space to get on. I was left standing on the station platform, seething along with a number of other would-be passengers.

I checked the online timetable on my phone, and saw that the next two trains were also marked as cancelled. In fact, the only one that was scheduled to run for the rest of the evening was the 21:06, and you could bet that too would be only three carriages long and totally overcrowded, and there would be no guarantee I’d be able to physically get on board it.

I was concerned that if I waited to try to catch that last remaining train I would be running out of options if it was cancelled or I couldn’t get on board. So I decided to cut my losses, and try the hotel which had been hosting the conference. Reservations were closed as it was after-hours, but the chap I got put through to was very helpful and assured me they’d be able to find me a room. He couldn’t put me through to Reception for some reason, but took my number and promised faithfully that he would get them to phone me back to sort me out a room. Which they did within just a few minutes, albeit at a price that is probably above what work is happy to accept. Nevertheless, I decided that was my best remaining option – at least I would be safe, warm and dry, and I’ll argue with the expenses system in the New Year.

So I had an unexpected and unwanted overnight stay in Birmingham, though I must say that the Edgbaston Park Hotel made me very comfortable in the circumstances. I ordered a sandwich and badly-needed glass of wine in my room, and the room service waitress was so horrified at my tale of woe that she spoke to Housekeeping and got them to provide me with a complementary toothbrush and toothpaste. That was very helpful. Thankfully, I had a comb and an emergency clean pair of underpants in my work bag, along with my usual medication, so I was adequately sorted for the night. I’m going to think seriously about putting a folding toothbrush in my work bag too. It’s not often I get stranded unexpectedly overnight – I think this is only the third time in the last fifteen years. But I’m doing a lot of train travel at the moment, and it is getting more and more unreliable., so I think I’d rather be better prepared should it happen again!

17 12 2019 Gillian Day out
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GWR STEAM

About fifty of us from work attended an annual technical away-day last week, with a day of presentations, strategy updates and workshops, all based at a hotel near Cirencester. For the last few years, the organisers have tried to lighten the event by including a trip to an engineering-related attraction in the locality. Last year we went to Brooklands, which was slightly more interesting than I had expected. This year was a guided tour around the GWR STEAM train museum in Swindon, which was exactly as interesting as I had feared.

I have spent far too much time on GWR “services” over the past few years, most notably on interminable rail-replacement coach journeys across the Cotswolds, or being turfed out of a train that got cancelled while I was on it, or just failed to turn up at all. The Bristol Service is particularly bad for that; it feels like it gets cancelled more often than it actually runs! So I am not well disposed to GWR as a company, though I recognise that the current incarnation has very little in common with that of the days of steam.

The STEAM museum is housed in a huge railway shed at what was the Swindon railway works, before it was closed down with the death of the UK’s heavy rail industry. It houses several original steam locomotives, and is moderately interesting for about 3/4 hour. Unfortunately, although that was indeed the length of the enthusiastic but somewhat less then fascinating guided tour we were given, we also had the same amount of time again free to wander round and “enjoy” the exhibits, and that was taking it a bit too seriously for me.

Fortunately, the adjacent railway shed has been turned into the Swindon Designer Outlet, with lots of retail outlets all holding their Black Friday sales. I sneaked off there for the other 3/4 hour and managed to get some of my Christmas shopping done! I noticed, when I got on the coach back to the hotel, that I was far from the only person carrying shopping bags!

02 12 2019 Gillian Day out Comments Off on GWR STEAM Permalink

Nearly a Disaster

I was in the kitchen yesterday, playing on my iPad, as you do, when I got called away by something needing my attention. So I put my iPad down on the nearest flat surface, which happened to be the ceramic hob. Which was off, and had been for several hours since breakfast.

When I came back into the kitchen, just moments later, I was greeted by a cloud of acrid smoke and a horrible burning smell. I must have knocked the control knob of the hob on my way past, because it was on full blast.

The melted remains of my iPad case

Fortunately, I had a rugged case on my iPad. It might have been drop-proof, but it clearly wasn’t heat-proof, as you can see from the photo above. Luckily though the iPad itself wasn’t damaged at all. So I only needed to replace the case (which I did the same day – it’s clearly worth having one!) and not the tablet itself. Phew! The hob is a bit of a mess though, and it’s going to take a bit of elbow grease to shift the melted plastic……

24 11 2019 Gillian house Comments (1) Permalink

Ten Times Table

After all the fuss and stress of travelling to London and back through the floods, I decided I would treat myself with a trip out to the theatre. Malvern Theatres had another Alan Ayckbourn play on this week, which again was one I didn’t know – Ten Times Table. I made use of my Standby membership to buy a ticket for the Saturday matinee. It was clearly popular, as the best seat I could get was way back on row N in the stalls.

I was therefore surprised to see that, a little way in front of me there were three completely empty rows that were still vacant as the curtain went up. If those seats really were vacant, I would have been offered one of them when I phoned. It looked like a block booking had failed to turn up. Sure enough, five minutes into the play, there was a huge disturbance as two coach loads of people filed in, and tried to work out where they should be sitting. They kept crashing into the bin in the aisle, sitting in the wrong seats, and telling each other to be quiet in a loud whisper. The actors did a stalwart job of ignoring the commotion and carrying on with their lines, but it was really distracting.

I spoke to one of the incomers in the interval, and it turned out that there were 94 of them, in two coaches from near Cirencester, who were diverted by the floods and then stuck in gridlocked traffic for 45 minutes. They had rung through to the theatre to say that they would be a bit late, and were told that the performance would not be held for them. Probably the right call, but it was disruptive for everyone else when they did arrive.

Also at the interval, the five people sitting directly behind me were moaning loudly to each other that they couldn’t hear the dialogue. So they complained to the box office, who supplied them with amplifying headsets for the second half. Except that they couldn’t work out how to use them, and all I could hear was a loud hiss of static, turned up to maximum volume, for the first part of the second half until they gave up and worked out how to turn them off.

After all that, it was probably just as well that the play wasn’t all that good. Certainly not vintage Ayckbourn. It was more of a farce than a black comedy, poking fun at how committees worked. You got the feeling that Ayckbourn must have sat in one too many committee meetings and wanted to get his own back. But it lacked much of the subtlety and black humour of his best pieces, and although it was laugh-out-loud funny in places, it didn’t really make you think. There was a stereotypical Tory wife, and a young Marxist historian on a committee, trying to organise a local pageant, and you could anticipate the inevitable clashes. So I was very pleased that I’d only splashed out on a standby ticket – I would have been annoyed if I’d paid top whack.

17 11 2019 Gillian Day out
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More flooding

Worcestershire was really hit badly by flooding on Thursday. Not as badly as Yorkshire, as far as I can tell from the news, but it still caused chaos. Not only were the train lines to Oxford and Cheltenham flooded, as I found out through personal experience, but also the route to Hereford was flooded at Ledbury, and the Birmingham New Street Line was under water at Bromsgrove. So Malvern and Worcester were virtually cut off. And there was flash flooding on many main roads throughout the county as well, to the extent that the rail replacement coach was up to its axles in water on several occasions, and we passed though several villages where the inhabitants were trying to protect their homes with sandbags. So it’s just as well that I decided to press on with my journey on Thursday afternoon, as I’m not sure that it would have been easy to get back to Malvern anyway.

My conference in London was very interesting and well worth making the effort to get to. But then I had to get home again. The train line was still flooded at Moreton in Marsh (the clue is in the name!) and it was a choice of another rail replacement coach over the Cotswolds or going home via Birmingham and hoping that the line through Bromsgrove was open again. I decided the latter was the lesser of two evils. It wasn’t a particularly smooth journey – my train from London to Birmingham was heavily delayed around Rugby and I ended up sprinting the length of the concourse at Birmingham New Street to catch the Malvern train by less than ten seconds. I must have looked dreadful as, even though the train was heaving, and it was standing room only, a woman immediately offered me her seat!

I’ve checked this morning, and the main line to London is still flooded at Moreton in Marsh. There is also concern about a rail bridge over the River Avon at Evesham which may be unsafe due to the extremely high water levels. I am very relieved that I don’t have any meetings in London next week. And I do hope that the water starts subsiding soon so that the people in the lower lying villages can start getting back to normal.

16 11 2019 Gillian status Comments Off on More flooding Permalink

More GWR misery

I’ve got a meeting in London on Friday morning, and I really can’t cope with getting the stupid o’clock in the morning train, so I decided to come down the day before and stay overnight within easy striking distance of the meeting location. My aim was to get the 13:10 train from Malvern, change at Worcester, getting in to Paddington at 16:24, then a short tube ride to my hotel and relax there until dinner time.

I had reckoned without the downpour leading to massive localised flooding. The route between Hereford and Oxford was flooded in multiple locations, but I managed to get the 12:51 train from Malvern heading to Weymouth, and was told by the guard to change at Bristol for the fast train to Paddington.

That’s actually an entirely reasonable route and on a good day can be faster than going via Oxford. But today wasn’t a good day. The train got just beyond Worcester, then ground to a halt. After an agonising wait, I saw the driver walk past me to the cab at the rear end of the train, and we then reversed back to Worcester. Apparently, the line was flooded and impassable.

At that point I did consider abandoning my journey and trying to make my way back to Malvern. Except there were no trains running in that direction either. Instead, we all piled onto a rail-replacement coach for a very sodden journey over the Cotswolds. There was a huge amount of flooding, and we went through several “road closed” signs and through some really deep flood water. I don’t think a car would have made it; it felt as if the coach only just did!

We were told there would be a train to Oxford from Moreton in Marsh, so we all got off the coach there and waited. And waited. The train was apparently just out of sight round a bend, but was stuck at a signal where the points had got seized. We saw two men in overalls stroll down the track to try to free the points, but the train never appeared. So after nearly an hour standing on the station in the cold, we got back on the coach which then took us to Oxford.

I caught a London train there by about 10 seconds – I sprinted through the barriers and the train doors closed behind me as I got on. If I’d been at the back of the coach or slow getting off it, I would not have got there in time. I finally arrived into Paddington at 19:40, over three hours late and absolutely exhausted. I grabbed a bite to eat at Paddington station, and finally made it to my hotel at 20:50. I do hope tomorrow’s meeting is worth all the effort of getting to it!

14 11 2019 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

Arrivals and Departures

It’s been ages since I’ve been to the theatre. Partly that’s been because I’ve been too busy, and partly because there hasn’t been much on lately that really interests me. The theatre has put up its prices quite a bit recently, and that’s also put me off. But I was idly looking at the theatre website earlier this week, and noticed to my surprise that there was an Alan Ayckbourn on, one that I hadn’t seen before. I wondered how I’d missed the fact it was being performed – I am on the mailing list and always check out what plays are coming up. Anyway, I hurriedly phoned up the box office to get a ticket to the Saturday matinee.

It turned out that the lack of publicity was because it wasn’t being shown on the main stage, but at the Coach House Theatre, a much smaller (and less expensive) associated venue that is run by the resident amateur company, but also hosts productions from smaller professional outfits. The main theatre acts as a booking office for the Coach House, and publicises its productions on their website, but they don’t make it into the printed brochure.

Arrivals and Departures is set on a railway platform, during chaotic, and indeed somewhat farcical, anti-terrorist operation run by a mad, pompous major. The two main characters are Barry, a garrulous Yorkshire traffic warden who may be able to identify the suspect, and Ez a taciturn female soldier who is there to babysit him during the operation.

As these two strangers sit and make small talk whilst waiting for the operation to commence, we see flashbacks of their past which round out their characters. In the first half, we see Ez’s memories and realise why she is so taciturn and doesn’t want to be touched. The second half is then an almost exact mirror-image of the first – to the extent that all the entrances and exits are on the opposite side of the stage, and people shake hands with their left hand, not their right. This time we see Barry’s backstory, and realise there’s a lot more to him than we first thought.

I thought it was very cleverly done. Of course, being an Ayckbourn, it was very funny in places, but with a lot of tragedy mixed into it alongside his trademark observations on unhappy marriages and some pointed observations about “entitlement”.

It was a very enjoyable way of spending a Saturday afternoon, and I shall have to make a point of monitoring the theatre website in future, rather than relying on the printed publicity, as otherwise I might miss out.

20 10 2019 Gillian Day out
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