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Trier in a day

I’ve always been interested in ancient history, and for several years now I’ve wanted to see some of the Roman ruins in Germany. However, it never managed to get to the top of Christopher’s and my “to visit” list. So, since I had a few days off over Easter, I decided to do a city-break to the German city of Trier, near the Luxembourg border. It’s a bit of a back-water now, but nearly two thousand years ago it was Augusta Treverorum, the capital of the northern region of the Roman Empire, and second only to Rome in importance for a while. It is said to have the “most complete Roman ruins north of the Alps”, and when I heard that it made me even more determined to pay a visit.

I booked a short city break (work is so manic at the moment, I can’t take too much time off) which gave me one full day in Trier.  I wondered if I was being over-ambitious trying to do it all in one day – after all, there are seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites scattered throughout the modern town, all of which I wanted to see. My first action on Wednesday morning was to go to the Tourist Information Office to pick up a  map and guidebook. The guidebooks in German and French were entitled “Trier in a day” which gave me confidence that I hadn’t bitten off more than I could chew. Then I found the English-language version of the same guidebook. Its title was “Walking tours through Trier, from 30 minutes to 3 hours“. Clearly they don’t expect the British (or Americans?) to devote a whole day to ancient ruins!

The Imperial Baths in Trier

I thought that trying to do it all in 30 minutes would be  bit much, even for me! However, I managed to see it all in easily within the day, including three sets of Roman Baths (the one above was the fifth largest in the entire Roman Empire and is still very impressive today), an amphitheatre, the cathedral (which has a Roman core structure), the archaeological museum (with the biggest collection of Roman artefacts in Germany) and my two favourite buildings, the basilica and the main gate.

Constantine's Basilica

This is Constantine’s Basilica, also known as the Imperial Throne Room. It was built around AD 310, and is now the largest surviving single room from antiquity, at around 67m long. You can get a sense of scale from the people in the photo  – it’s huge, and very very impressive. It’s now a Protestant church, and although it must have been quite badly damaged during the War, about half of it is completely original.

The Porta Nigra in Trier

Finally, this is the North Gate to the city of Augusta Treverorum. It’s called the Porta Nigra or Black Gate for obvious reasons.  It’s the largest surviving Roman city gate in the world, and the sandstone blocks aren’t actually mortared together – they’re held in place with iron clamps embedded in lead. Of course, over time the iron rusts, so the need for ongoing conservation explains the ugly scaffolding. My hotel directly overlooked it – that’s the hotel in the background on the other side of the main road. The dining room was on the first floor, with picture windows overlooking the gatehouse, so it was a great place to sit over dinner with a glass of wine gazing out at the flood-lit monument.

06 04 2013 Gillian Day out
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Timberkits

Timberkit Pianist

For each of the past few Christmases, I have been given a Timberkit to construct. They are rather fun moving models, all made from wood, which you assemble yourself. Last year I made a model of Stephenson’s “Rocket” and the previous year was a drummer with a full drum-kit. All the parts are pre-cut and drilled, and the kit comes with a very comprehensive set of instructions. This year’s kit is “The Pianist” – when you turn the handle, the piano keys move up and down, as do the pianist’s fingers, his foot moves and he sways backwards and forwards in time with the music. At least, that’s the idea!

The kit allegedly comes complete with everything needed to build it, i.e. a square inch (literally) of fine sandpaper for smoothing the surfaces, a small tube of PVA glue and a small wax candle for lubricating the moving surfaces. I’ve found found from previous years that is a hopeless under-estimate of what is actually needed, and this one is no different in that respect. I’ve raided the kitchen drawers for clothes pegs to use as vices to hold pieces together while the glue dries, and have rummaged through Christopher’s tool box for more sandpaper in different grades, a pen-knife, drill and bits, and needle-nosed plyers.

The kit also takes a surprisingly long time to build, and really needs a long weekend put aside to do it. Not because the actual time spent assembling the kit is that long, but because you have to do it in a set order, and leave time for the glue to dry on one stage before you move onto the next. I got that wrong last year – I was too impatient when building The Rocket that I didn’t wait for the glue to set firmly enough before I carried on with the assembly, some of the parts got knocked slightly out of alignment, and then I exceeded the tolerances of the mechanical movement and couldn’t get the wheels to turn smoothly. So this year I’m taking things much more slowly and incrementally. Basically that means that my dining room table has been out of commission for the entire Bank Holiday weekend. It keeps me busy though, which has to be a good thing – especially as the weather is still far too cold and snowy to do anything much out doors.

02 04 2013 Gillian art Comments Off on Timberkits Permalink

A rough week

Today was the last day of the Financial Year, both for my company and our main customers. So it has been absolutely manic recently. I have either been responsible for, or contributing to, a total of seven payment milestones across two projects, all of which were due to be delivered today. One of the project managers thinks I’m working 3-4 days/week on his project; the other thinks I’m doing 1-2 days/week on hers. And much of that is at customer sites two hours away down the motorway. My boss has had to take me to one side and remind me that there’s a very good reason that I’m actually contracted to do just three days/week…….

On top of all the stress at work, home’s not been plain sailing either. My tumble dryer broke on Friday afternoon. I know that in the grand scheme of things that’s nothing, but it was intensely annoying that it happened when I had a washing machine full of soggy flannel sheets and there was snow on the ground. There was no way I could have hung the bedclothes up outside – they wouldn’t have dried, they’d have frozen solid! So I’ve had sodden laundry festooned over the radiators. Fortunately, DAR were very responsive. I phoned them on Friday afternoon, and they were with me for first call on Monday morning. They diagnosed the fault, bodged a quick repair so that I could at least use the dryer, and returned this morning with a new spare part which they fitted.

So things are looking up. All of the milestones were delivered on time – some only just squeaked in under the wire today, but none was late! My re-routed boiler outflow is working fine and is a load off my mind in this weather (I still have a good 10cm of snow on the lawn and on my roof. It’s just refusing to melt). And I have a working tumble dryer once more. I’ve made it to the end of another Financial Year with my sanity more or less intact, and am looking forward to a badly-needed Easter break.

28 03 2013 icyjumbo status Comments (2) Permalink

In the nick of time

Well, that rerouting of the boiler condensate pipe really was done in the nick of time! There was in excess of 15cm of snow overnight and it kept snowing all morning today. It’s stopped for now, but there is more forecast for this evening and tomorrow. You wouldn’t think that it’s very nearly April given the appalling weather. But at least it’s been a big relief not to worry about the central heating seizing up.

I had planned to go to the theatre this afternoon. I have a ticket to see People by Alan Bennett. It’s on at the National Theatre in London, and a live performance is being screened at Malvern cinema. It’s had fairly mixed reviews, but I haven’t had a trip to the theatre for months, and I’ve been looking forward to it. But it’s taken me three solid hours to shovel many many cubic metres of snow off my drive, and at the time I should have been setting off for the theatre I still hadn’t reached as far as the car. The main road is passable with care, so I did think about getting a taxi there and back instead of digging out the car, but the taxi fare would have been double the price of the theatre ticket. And I’m absolutely shattered from three hours of unaccustomed physical labour. So all in all I think it’s best if I just stay at home and hibernate.

I really, really hope this is the last snow of the winter.

23 03 2013 icyjumbo house Comments Off on In the nick of time Permalink

Yet more work on the porch

Having spent what feels like most of last year trying to stop my porch from leaking in the rain, my builder and I have come to the conclusion that he’s done too good a job at making it watertight, and I now have a problem with condensation. So he’s been back this week to drill holes in the porch to install trickle-vents to provide ventilation and circulation of air. The irony has not escaped me……

He’s also re-routed the pipe that carries the condensate from my boiler. Rather than disgorging into a gutter well above head height, it now runs directly down the outside of the kitchen wall and empties into a ground-level drain. That’s a much more sensible arrangement, and should mean that I don’t have to go up a stepladder in the snow to try to keep the gutter clear. And just in time too, as it appears from the weather forecast that there is yet more snow due over the weekend……

21 03 2013 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Yet more work on the porch Permalink

Neverwhere

One of Christopher’s favourite authors was Neil Gaiman, who writes what I suppose could loosely be described as fantasy novels, frequently much beloved by the geekily-inclined. I am a bit more ambivalent than Chris was, finding some of Gaiman’s stuff a bit hit-and-miss. However, I did discover his work a good few years before Chris did – a friend gave me a copy of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, signed by Pratchett, for my birthday way back in 1990 (thanks Katie! I still enjoy reading it!).

One work by Gaiman that we both enjoyed was Neverwhere. Chris took the book away with us on holiday about five years ago I think, and we both devoured it. We then found out that it had started life as a TV series back in 1996, which we had completely missed seeing. I think it was originally pitched as a children’s programme, which would explain why we missed it. Once we got home from the holiday, we hired DVDs of the series through LoveFilm and watched the episodes pretty much back-to-back. It had some good people in it – including Peter Capaldi, Tamsin Greig, and Paterson Joseph (the dishy IT person from Green Wing). But, compared to the novel, we felt that the TV series fell a bit flat. Mostly that was because of the genre – Neverwhere is fantasy, set in an alternative world of London Below, populated by the homeless and those who “fall through the cracks” from the London Above that we know. Some of the concepts in the book were pretty much unfilmable without an unlimited budget and masses of CGI. But the TV series clearly had a very limited budget for special effects, so the Underworld was not as scary or fantastical as it should have been.

So I was really interested to hear that the book has recently been produced as a radio drama. That really gets around the special effects problem – it’s up to the listener’s imagination. The BBC has attracted some pretty big names to play characters – Benedict Cumberbatch is the Angel Islington (who really is an Angel), Bernard Cribbins plays Old Bailey, Christopher Lee is the Earl of Earls Court, and David Harewood is the Marquis of Carabas.

It reminded me very much in concept of The Hicthiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I remember being gripped by that as a schoolgirl when it first came out, and the huge efforts we went to to record the episodes each week. The radio series was in many ways better than the TV series that followed, as Douglas Adams was totally unconstrained by ensuring that things were filmable. If he wanted Zaphod Beeblebrox to have three arms and two heads, that’s dead easy on radio – rather more expensive on TV or a film-set! From what I’ve read, it appears that Neil Gaiman is hoping that Neverwhere will have a similar captivating effect on a new generation – though I don’t know how many of them will habitually listen to Radio 4.

There was a 1 hour episode on Radio 4 on Saturday afternoon, to be followed by half-hour episodes every day this week on Radio 4 Extra. I caught the first episode on iPlayer yesterday and loved it. I shall listen avidly to the rest of the series, again probably on iPlayer.

18 03 2013 icyjumbo Audio Comments Off on Neverwhere Permalink

A chance meeting

I had three days of off-site customer meetings last week, so was staying at a hotel two hours away from home, a few miles from the customer’s site. Not at Fawlty Towers, for once, as this was a different customer in a different county, but the hotel was only marginally better. The service at dinner on Monday night was particularly poor. I’d only ordered a burger and chips and half a pint of cider, but it was taking forever to arrive. And it wasn’t as if the hotel restaurant was particularly busy. There were no large parties, just a few business people scattered around, mostly on tables for one, and all with their heads in their iPads, as indeed was I. I absolutely hate having dinner in restaurants on my own, but ordering room service really feels like wimping out, so surfing on an iPad over dinner is a reasonable compromise.

Anyway, after 25 minutes of surfing, with no sign of my dinner, and having watched several people who ordered after me be served first, I beckoned the waitress over. In perhaps an unnecessarily loud voice, I asked how much longer my meal would be, and politely but firmly requested that she brought me the glass of cider I’d ordered so that I at least had something to drink while I waited. At that point a diner at the far end of the restaurant suddenly sat up sharply, peered at me, then came over. “Gillian! I thought it was you! I recognised the voice!” He was an ex-colleague of mine from work who was made redundant shortly after Chris died, and whom I occasionally bump into in Waitrose. I invited him to join me at my table, and we both put our iPads to one side and had a long and enjoyable catch-up. He’s now working part-time as a consultant for exactly the same customers as he was before, but only taking on jobs he finds particularly interesting, and has a much better work-life balance than before. He certainly looked much happier than I remember him looking!

It’s a small world!

16 03 2013 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on A chance meeting Permalink

The Inn at Welland

Ever since my favourite pub, the Plough and Harrow, closed I’ve been looking for an alternative place to go to for an occasional lunch/dinner with friends. The pub at the top of my hill is well within walking distance and serves good food, but it would be good to have other options on my shortlist.

Christopher and I used to go occasionally to the Inn at Welland, which is a shortish drive away – a similar distance to the Plough and Harrow. It used to be a cosy, somewhat old fashioned pub, whose tagline was “We don’t serve fast food; we serve good food, as fast as we can”. But it changed hands a while back, and then was closed for a complete refurbishment. I drive past it quite often, on my way to and from the motorway when I’m off to customer meetings, and from the outside it looked as if it had reopened and gone significantly up-market. But I didn’t want to risk taking friends or family there without either trying it first or getting a report from someone I trusted.

Last month our Head of Sales finally got around to taking some of his team out for their Christmas lunch – an event which they had had to postpone a number of times over the preceding months due to clashes of diaries. They had a table booked at the Inn at Welland, so I was planning on quizzing them in some detail on their return to the office, about the food, service, ambience etc. But then, as luck would have it the day before the meal, we won a contract which I’d been largely responsible for bidding for. It had been a long and somewhat painful bidding process, and the Head of Sales was so pleased we’d finally sealed it that he extended his Christmas lunch invitation to include me. I’m definitely not a salesman, and don’t work as part of his team, so it was very generous of him to include me. I wasn’t going to quibble at the opportunity to try out the Inn at Welland in person though!

It turns out that my initial assessment was correct – it’s had a complete refurbishment, and has gone quite a long way up-market, being now something of a gastropub. The food was delicious, the service pretty sharp, and the seating was very smart and comfortable. We had a long and highly enjoyable lunch. My only criticism was that the coffee cups were too fancy, and were designed for a right-handed drinker, being very uncomfortable to hold in one’s left hand. But that was partially compensated for by the quantity and quality of the handmade fudge which accompanied the coffee!

I had friends staying last weekend, and so I booked us a table there for Saturday lunch. We all thoroughly enjoyed our meals – the apple tarte tatin with butterscotch ice-cream being particularly memorable. All three of us agreed that the food and ambience was of a similar standard to the late lamented Plough and Harrow, and that we would put it firmly on the shortlist for next time they visit.

14 03 2013 icyjumbo Day out
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Searching for a Roman Villa

There is a Roman villa somewhere at the foot of the Cotswolds outside Cheltenham that I remember Chris and I searching for years ago. The trouble was, although it was just off Ermin Street, so clearly a place of some importance 1700 years ago, times have moved on and now it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It was roughly marked on our map, but without any indication as to which nearby road the access route was off, and I remember that the two of us drove round and round Great Witcombe in circles, getting increasingly frustrated, before we finally found it.

Recently, I’ve been spending a great deal of time being driven up and down the A417 on my way to and from customer meetings. On occasions, the traffic on the top of Birdlip Hill has been so heavy (i.e. stationary with queues of at least a mile) that my driver has plunged down the old road, directly down Birdlip, to avoid the traffic on the trunk road. And there at the bottom of the hill I noticed a signpost to a Roman Villa – clearly the same one that we had visited all those years ago, but slightly better signposted these days.

I had friends visiting this weekend, and we wanted to go out somewhere one afternoon, rather than spending the entire weekend watching the rugby on the tv. So I thought of the Great Witcombe Roman Villa, and suggested that we went looking for it. So far, so good. Armed with my new knowledge of its likely location, we found the turn-off from the main road easily enough. Then our problems started.

The way to the villa turned out to be an extremely narrow single-track road, through a farmyard and over several cattlegrids. Which was fine until we met a car coming in the other direction. There were no passing places that we’d seen on the track, and the other car clearly had no intention of reversing. So P. reversed his car a little way and pulled over, off the track and onto the verge. The other car passed without even a wave to say thank-you, which rather annoyed us. Then P. tried to set off again, at which point we realised that the verges were extremely soft mud (presumably because of the recent floods) and we were stuck! Well and truly stuck!

The other car had in fact stopped to watch the fun and games, so I tapped on the window to ask the driver to help push us. I similarly stopped two other passing cars and asked them to help push too – it wasn’t as if they could get past the other car anyway! Even with five adults pushing like mad, the wheels just span and dug the car further into the mud.

At that point I decided to walk down the track to the farmhouse and see if I could find a farmer with a tractor to pull us out. The first car, which had caused all the trouble in the first place, passed me, and I think by then he was feeling guilty at having run us off the road. He said that he was local, and would come back in 15 minutes with a rope. I also carried on with Plan B and after several attempts managed to find the local farmer who said he’d come and help.

Twenty minutes later we were converged upon first by the original car, now with a tow-rope in the boot, shortly followed by the farmer in his 4×4 with a chain. We got a tow all of two feet back onto the track. Phew! In the end, everything was fine. It was daylight, the weather was cold but dry, we had our mobiles on us (and there was a mobile signal – not a given in the middle of the Cotswolds!), and if the worst had come to the worst, J. and I are both members of the RAC so could have got a tow from them as a last resort. But it was very annoying! And by the time we were rescued, we’d all had enough of even the thought of a Roman Villa, so we turned around in the site car park at the end of the track, and drove straight back. So we didn’t even get to see it! We’ll have to leave that for another time – preferably in the middle of a drought, when the verges will be as dry as bone!

11 03 2013 icyjumbo Day out Comments (2) Permalink

The Great British Menu

Over the last few weeks I’ve become absolutely gripped by The Great British Menu, weekdays at 19:30 on BBC2. Apparently, it’s been an annual event for quite a few years now, but I’ve never seen it before. It’s got some of the best chefs in the UK, most of whom have at least one Michelin star, competing in groups of three over the course of the week to prepare a four course gourmet meal and get it past first a peer (a similarly qualified and experienced chef) and then a panel of food critic judges. The ultimate aim is to cook one of their courses at a highly prestigious banquet.

I’m finding it great fun to watch, to the extent that if I’m late back home due to yet another off-site customer meeting, I’ve been catching up on any missed episodes on the BBC iPlayer on my iPad. Part of the attraction is watching excellent chefs cooking and presenting very good food – though it does jar somewhat if I’m eating a pizza in front of the telly, and makes me think I could make a bit more of an effort! But most of the fun I find is watching the battle of the egos. The chefs are almost all alpha-male types (there have been only a very few women competing so far this year), and they all desperately want to win. So they are needling each other constantly in the kitchen, making back-stabbing remarks about each other to the camera, and shooting absolutely poisonous looks at each other over the raspberry coulis. They are taking everything so seriously that I find it makes for highly entertaining television!

07 03 2013 icyjumbo food Comments Off on The Great British Menu Permalink