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A trip to Hellens

My sister and brother-in-law have rented a cottage in the Forest of Dean for a short holiday. Since they were actually on the same side of the country as me, for once, it made sense to meet up. They asked me to recommend somewhere to visit on the Herefordshire/Gloucestershire side of Malvern, as that would be closer to where they’ve been staying, and isn’t part of the country they particularly know. We agreed to meet for Sunday lunch at the Feathers in Ledbury, a rather picturesque black-and-white timber building in the centre of the town that does rather good (if slightly over-priced) food. It was one of those places where you need to see the dessert menu before ordering, so that you know how much space to leave! In fact, the desserts looked so good that I changed my mind about having the full roast dinner for the main course, and just had a starter, to leave more space for the pudding……

Hellens

After a leisurely lunch, we drove in convoy to Hellens in Much Marcle. This is a rather lovely mediaeval manor house with many Tudor additions, that has then been largely untouched by history. Inside it is all in a state of barely-arrested decay, with fraying counterpanes, faded chair covers, and loads and loads of dusty portraits going back centuries, by all the most famous portrait painters of the day – Reynolds,Van Dyke, Raphael, etc etc. It’s owned by a family trust, still under the control of the descendents of the long-term family owners.

It’s been a good few years since I last went there – I think when Christopher was still alive, so at least five years ago. In that time they’ve got a new gardener who has made good progress with the grounds. There is a new “physick garden” with lots of herbs and medicinal plants, and the rose garden was in full bloom. Inside, they’ve had a fair amount of conservation done by needlework experts on the curtains, bedspreads and soft furnishings, though there is still clearly a great deal to be done. It was a very interesting and enjoyable trip out.

27 06 2014 Gillian Day out Comments Off on A trip to Hellens Permalink

Painting the Forth Bridge

I’ve had Rob the painter here yet again, mostly working on painting the outside of the house this time. It really is a Forth Bridge style job – something seems to need doing every year, and it never seems to get finished. In fact, in the one week that I had him here, he was only able to the worst bits, and I shall have to have him back over the summer holidays to spend another week doing the slightly less urgent bits.

My priority this time was to get my bedroom window painted inside and out. It’s muggy enough now that I like to have the window open at night, but it seemed to have swollen over the winter and I couldn’t close it easily. After several mornings in a row of going outside in my dressing gown and wellie-boots to give the window a good thump from the outside to close it, it was clear that it needed to be fixed!

He’s done that, and it looks so much better. But most importantly I can close it once more without applying excessive force! He also spent the one rainy day working indoors, covering up the stains from the most recent time the roof leaked (into the extension; I’ve had extra leading put down the offending valley) and the time before the one before that (kitchen ceiling; I’ve had the chimney repointed). Fortunately, in both cases I had some spare paint of the right colour lurking in the garage, which made the job easier.

Unfortunately Rob wasn’t happy with the state of the woodwork on the extension, which he said was absolutely sodden underneath the paint. It wasn’t that the paintwork itself was defective, but rather that water was somehow getting behind it. I’ve had a roofer round to inspect it, and he concurs. Apparently the roof has been built without an adequate overhang, and the mortar holding the tiles in place is getting excessively wet, and the water is then soaking into the barge boards and soffits. Ouch! That’s going to be expensive to repair, but unfortunately it will have to be done sooner rather than later……

26 06 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Painting the Forth Bridge Permalink

Trying out a MOOC

For the last few weeks, I’ve been spending my evenings studying Roman history online via a MOOC, that is a Massive Online Open Course. It’s not something I’ve done before, but my brother-in-law thought I would be interested, so sent me a link to Futurelearn, which offers access to a range of free, university-level courses in an ever-growing range of subjects.

I’m not entirely sure what the business model is – it’s run by a company that seems to be a subsidiary of the Open University, and provides a platform which multiple universities, both in the UK and abroad are using to offer courses. The courses clearly cost money to set up and run, yet we the punters – typically several thousand participants per course – aren’t charged anything. Presumably the academics participating are paid to do so, either by their institutions (as marketing?) or by the funding councils (dissemination to the wider public?). Its all very odd, and I don’t see how it’s sustainable in the days of tuition fees, but I’m certainly not going to knock it.

At the moment the Futurelearn platform still in beta release, and the courses undertaken don’t lead to any formal qualifications, so you don’t sit exams or earn credits towards a degree. That suits me just fine – I’ve got quite enough degrees, have no use for any more, and am not prepared to put the time or effort in that would be required to study at the requisite level. But as a interesting, entertaining and educational way to fill in a few evenings a week, it’s ideal.

I’ve chosen an undergraduate level course on the archaeology of Portus, the maritime port of Rome. The site is currently under excavation, and is not open to the general public, but when I went to Rome two years ago I flew directly over it, as it’s underneath the flight path to Fiumicino airport. The most obvious feature visible from the air is a vast hexagonal lake, 715m in diameter, that was excavated on the orders of Emperor Trajan to form an artificial harbour, lined with wharfs and warehouses. I was intrigued and wanted to know more about it. The course is run by the University of Southampton, who have been digging there for several years, so whom better to learn from?

The format of the course is pretty straightforward. You put aside a few hours per week to watch a series of specially-filmed mini-lectures on your computer /tablet /smartphone, each video being only a few minutes long. Some are by the Professor, who is the leading expert in the field; some by his sidekicks, also leading academics; some by support staff and research assistants, giving an indication of the work that goes on behind the scenes in an excavation; and some are led by “student guides” – undergraduate students who act as an “Everyman” and ask some fairly basic questions to get the Prof going. Then there are links to articles on the web, and you’re encouraged to do your own surfing to see what else you can find online. A Flickr page has been set up with lots of photos of the excavation, maps, relevant artefacts, etc, and people are encouraged to contribute images to it. Plus, there is a very active social media component, which you are encouraged to participate in. The academics lurk on there and occasionally throw in the odd remark, but mostly students are learning from each other by joining in the discussion, which I suppose is one way of keeping the costs down!

I have to say that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it. One aspect I find particularly interesting is that the Portus Project is resolutely multi-disciplinary. It’s not just excavating, not by any means. There has been lots of content on geophysics, remote sensing, photogrammetry, advanced imaging techniques, and 3D digital modelling, all of which, as an engineer I find absolutely fascinating. I even managed to find the article on the management of the finds database interesting! In fact, I’ve found the whole experience so positive, that I’ve already signed up for my next course, on Hadrian’s Wall with Newcastle University in the autumn.

17 06 2014 icyjumbo Uncategorized Comments Off on Trying out a MOOC Permalink

Atrocious Timing

My passport is due to expire in early January next year. So, since many of the counties I visit insist that passports should have several months validity on arrival, I really need to get it renewed this summer. I decided that I’d put it on my to-do list for when I got back from France.

Filling in the form was straightforward enough, but taking the passport photos was anything but. My old passport didn’t have any biometrics in it, but the new ones do, which puts massive constraints on the type of photo that is acceptable. The staff at the post office told me I’d have to take my glasses off – but I’m so extremely short sighted that I can’t see the reflection and instructions in the photo booth, so can’t line my head up accurately. I tried keeping my glasses on to line up the image, the whipping them off to take the picture, but that was spectacularly unsuccessful. I couldn’t keep my head still when taking my specs off, and couldn’t see to realign myself with the required positioning.

Having wasted five pounds on photos that looked nothing like me, I read the guidance myself more thoroughly, and discovered that I’d been given bad advice by the post office staff – glasses are in fact acceptable (though admittedly heavily discouraged) provided that they don’t obscure the eyes or have strong reflections or heavy tints. So I took another set of photos with my specs on, which looked a lot more like me, and sufficiently like the image in my previous passport (just a bit greyer) that I didn’t need to get it countersigned by someone prepared to swear as to my true identity.

I sent everything off to the passport office earlier this week. Atrocious timing – that very evening the news broke about chaos in the passport office, huge backlogs of passport applications, people missing their holidays, many weeks delay, melt-down in the Home Office, etc etc. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. I don’t like being without a passport, but fortunately I haven’t got any foreign holidays booked, so there’s no major urgency.

14 06 2014 icyjumbo invective Comments (4) Permalink

Ramekins

My mother gave me another pottery commission recently, possibly the most challenging one yet. She has a small glass bottle of olive oil which she and my father use to dress salads, but of course it drips a bit. Its not very practical putting it on a saucer, as the centre of gravity is in the wrong place, and it would tip over easily (and very messily!). Instead, she’s been putting the bottle into a little ramekin, where it fits snugly. So the chance of tipping it over accidentally is small, and all the drips get satisfactorily dealt with. Except that the bone china ramekin she was using didn’t match any of her other serving dishes, plates etc etc. So would I please throw her a ramekin, sized to exactly fit the olive oil jug, and coloured to match some of her other bowls and plates.

Blue and green ramekins

My father sent me some photos, together with the dimensions of both the ramekin and the little bottle, and I spent my last two sessions at Eastnor Pottery first throwing then turning and decorating the pots. The trouble was, I’m still not very good at judging how much the clay is going to shrink between throwing and firing. It’s generally somewhere around 10%, but can vary from that quite considerably. And that makes it very difficult to throw something to an exact finished size.  In the end I threw lots of “variations on a theme”, all the same basic shape but deliberately slightly different diameters and heights. Surprisingly, it’s actually more difficult to throw small pots accurately than it is ones twice the size – they’re fiddly and you have to use your finger-tips more.

I picked up the resulting fired pots from Eastnor last week, and I think they’ve come out pretty well. My mother reports that the smallest one is a very good fit for her olive-oil jug. Mission accomplished – phew!

10 06 2014 Gillian photograph Comments Off on Ramekins Permalink

Tonight at 8.30

There’s an interesting cycle of plays on at Malvern Theatres this week – Tonight at 8.30 by Noel Coward. It’s a set of nine, one-act plays, grouped into three sets of three, “Cocktails”, “Dinner” and “Dancing”, and organised so that there’s a separate set on each night. On Saturday, if you want, you can have a total Noel Coward blow-out, with the full cycle shown over three performances starting at 12 noon, a mid-afternoon matinėe, and the evening.

I rather enjoy a good Coward play, though I didn’t know these ones at all – probably because the current tour is the first UK revival since Coward originally wrote and starred in them. I did toy briefly with the idea of having a marathon session and spending all day today watching all nine plays. But I decided, on reflection, that one can have too much of a good thing, and I would find a whole day of catty comments, witty repartee, and brilliant banter rather exhausting. So, since I didn’t know any of the plays, I thought it wouldn’t matter which one of the groups of three I went to, and just picked “Dinner” because it best fitted in with my plans for the day. Hence, instead of Tonight at 8.30 it should really have been called This Afternoon at 3.30!

The three playlets shared a cast, but otherwise were completely different in tone and content. The first was a fairly light piece, full of Coward’s trademark bitchiness, about an upper-class couple before the war who were stony broke and living off their wits, and sponging off their increasingly pissed-off friends, in the south of France. It was laugh-out-loud funny in places. The second was much darker, about a put-upon husband who suddenly snapped, telling his wife, daughter and mother-in-law exactly what he thought of them before he walked out on them all. The third, and final, play of the day was the best in my view. It was called Still Life, but was later filmed under the title Brief Encounter. Unlike the film, it was set entirely in a station refreshment room, and of course documented the doomed affair between two respectable married people.

Altogether, it was a pleasant and interesting way of passing the afternoon. Having enjoyed the three playlets that comprised “Dinner”, I suspect that I would also have enjoyed the other two sets as well – but not enough to make me wish I had sacrificed the whole day for them.

07 06 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Tonight at 8.30 Permalink

And another visit from the plumber

I am making the most of being in between projects at work, by taking a few days off this week to improve the house. Today, my cost-effective and friendly plumber is back, replacing the old, rusty radiator in the bathroom with a new heated towel rail. It’s a very nifty unit – it’s plumbed into the radiator system, so that when the central heating is on, it acts like a radiator. But when the central heating is off, there is an electric element to heat it up, with a switch that he’ll put in the hall cupboard. So it’s really the best of both worlds, and I’m hoping it will see an end to soggy towels!

Inevitably, it’s not been as simple a job as the plumber (who is also qualified as an electrician) had expected when he quoted for the job. The wall behind the old radiator needed to be retiled, and of course the tiles he brought with him were the wrong size, necessitating a quick trip to B&Q. He had trouble getting the electric cable up through the hall cupboard into the roof space, but has promised to seal up all the holes from the attempts, so that I don’t get inquisitive mice breaking through into the house from the loft! And I had also asked him to fix the dripping cistern in the loo while he was here, but on closer inspection he tells me that all the fixings are completely corroded and seized, and he runs the risk of breaking the cistern if he tries to force it, so it will be easier just to get a whole new loo!

The job is taking so much longer than he had expected that he was still here when I wanted my lunch. I ended up making sandwiches for him too! But if that means he’s more likely to come out for an emergency call in the future, then it’s an investment of cold chicken and cheese worth making…..

Stop press: He’s just set off the smoke alarm – but assures me the house is not about to burn down!

04 06 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on And another visit from the plumber Permalink

Less dodgy electrics

I’m between projects at work at the moment, so it’s a good time to take some time off to get things sorted out around the house. Today I had the electrician here pretty much all day, getting the wiring on my electric shower up to the latest safety standards. He’s installed a combined RCB device and fuse in my meter box, replacing the plain fuse that was there before, so that it should now simply trip if there is a fault in the circuit. In addition, he’s moved the main “on/off” switch for the shower so that it is now above, rather than immediately below a joint in the water-pipe feeding the shower. He’s also checked all the earth bonding on my water pipes and oil supply, which was in fact all ok.

So now when the inevitable happens, and the pipe joint springs a leak, or the mice in the loft nibble through the insulation in the cable supplying the shower, it should all fail safe. I certainly feel a lot more comfortable that it’s a safer configuration.

02 06 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Less dodgy electrics Permalink

Reflecting on the holiday

I’ve been home over a week now, and have been looking back on the holiday. It’s the first time I’ve been on a “singles’ holiday”, and it definitely had a different atmosphere to my more usual trips.

After the flight out, my suitcase seemed to take ages to arrive at baggage reclaim at Toulouse airport, with the result that I was one of the last to join the group at arrivals. As I climbed onto the tour coach, I automatically looked for a free “double seat” – and saw that everyone was sitting on their own in a double seat. Durrr! Of course they were – everyone else was travelling on their own too, so nobody had a travelling companion to sit with! That immediately reminded me that this holiday would be a bit different.

The outings each day were organised so that you could do as much or as little with the group as you wanted. Nothing was compulsory, and indeed I think that at least one person sat out the trips each day, either due to lack of interest, ill health, or because they had family living nearby that they wanted to visit. On my particular trip, all the coach trips were included, so there were no annoying “optional excursions” at additional cost. However, entrance fees to sites, castles, museums etc were not included. That meant that if all you wanted to do was to take the coach to a place of interest, then find a café on the main square and soak up the atmosphere over a coffee, that was fine – and some people did just that. On the other hand, if you wanted to see the sites, the tour leader usually managed to procure us a group discount on the standard entrance fee. Most of the group went to the Toulouse-Lautrec museum in Albi, which houses about 1000 of his works. However, I think a little Toulouse-Lautrec goes a very long way, and decided to give that a miss, instead spending my free afternoon wandering around the old town.

I am used, when travelling with Andante, to almost everything being bundled into the holiday price, including all entrance fees and most meals. This way meant that I spent considerably more during the holiday, buying meals, drinks and tickets, but also offered more flexibility. If you didn’t want to eat with the group – and I generally didn’t – then you were encouraged to do your own thing, with the tour manager pointing out where the restaurants / bistros / cafés were. Or you could meet up with several of the group at a prearranged time and place, and eat together. Support was always there if you wanted it, and I know that some of the group, who were less confident travellers than I am, really appreciated that safety net.

I chose the holiday because it went to some places I particularly wanted to see, without me having to work out how to get there by public transport or do a fly-drive on my own. That worked well – I had the structure I wanted, and ticked some places off my bucket list. The fact that it was a “singles holiday” to me was pretty much incidental. In fact, I’m not really sure that, for a coach tour, there is all that much difference between a dedicated “singles holiday” like this one, and an ordinary tour. Except of course for the notorious “single person supplement”, but even that I suspect was rolled into the overall cost of the holiday – it just wasn’t explicitly visible.

Overall, it was a good holiday. I particularly liked Albi and some of the bastide towns; I’m pleased to have seen Carcassonne, even though I found it far too touristy; and I had some decent meals, particularly duck confit which was delicious. Above all, it was a very welcome break after a very busy period at work, and it did me a lot of good to get away. I will think carefully though before booking another “singles holiday” as I think there are likely to be a wider range of options available with a standard tour.

31 05 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Reflecting on the holiday Permalink

Bastide Towns

One day of the holiday was spent exploring some of the numerous “bastide towns”, or fortified villages of the area. They were fought over and changed hands regularly during the Hundred Years’ War, and are a remnant from the time in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the Plantagenet kings of England also ruled all of this region of France. Or, as my father put it when we were on holiday just north of here when I was a teenager “All this area used to be ours!”

Castelnau de Montmirail

I think my favourite bastide was the tiny village of Castelnau de Montmirail. It had a lovely central square surrounded by arcades, and was absolutely deserted. We were the only people there – even the inhabitants were nowhere to be seen!

Main street in Najac with the castle in distance

I also rather liked the slightly larger village of Najac, which was built on a (very) steep hill and crowned with a ruined castle. And yes, I did get all the way to the top of the tower!

A gate into Cordes sur Ciel

The most touristy of the bastides we visited was Cordes sur Ciel. The coach had to park in the lower town, and we took one of those rather tacky “tourist trains” up to the fortified village at the top of the hill – which at least saved us a climb. Some of the group also got the train back down again, but I preferred to walk down the cobbled streets, through the gates in the fortifications. I then had a delicious passion-fruit flavoured ice-cream at the bottom of the hill while I waited for the rest of the group.

27 05 2014 Gillian Day out
photograph Comments Off on Bastide Towns Permalink