What a nutter

I just saw these photos in the Guardian newspaper. Lordy Lordy, it takes all sorts.
Check this out!

Doggy old age

Gromit our beloved Cavvy will be 12 in a few weeks time and he is very creaky now. He is not tremendously old for a dog but he is a thoroughbread and if you look at his family tree the same individuals do appear more than once. I've worked in a genetic research institute for long enough to know that this probably isn't good. One of his symptons cause his back legs to collapse sometimes making him land in his jobbie while on the job - most undignified. However he is not in pain and he is very keen on the cod liver oil on a little piece of bread that the vet recommended (served with a little balsamic vinegar, perhaps?)
As a result of this he seems to be able to get himself into trouble but hasn't got the flexibilty to get himself out. Last week I came into the kitchen and found that he had managed to get his neck through the neck piece of an pinafore apron that was flung over the chair. He was just sitting there waiting to be rescued. Then yesterday, Trev gave him the large bag that his biscuits come in which still had a few crumbs in it. Trev left the room for a couple of minutes and when he came back the dog was sitting there with the bag entirely covering his head! It is worth noting that Trev is a much better person than me, as I would have immediately rushed for a camera. However Trev thought he might be suffocating and rescued him.
Anyway, I wouldn't feel too sorry for the dog. He managed to eat an entire packet of cheddar and black pepper flatbreads that I had left on a side table in the length of time it took me to have a shower last Sunday so he can be pretty nifty if he wants.

Newport Pagnell

So this evening I find myself in Newport Pagnell. This is a situation entirely of my own making as I selected the Harben House Hotel in Newport Pagnell as a venue for a work event tomorrow....chosen principally for its transport links I'd not had the pleasure of visiting here before today, and some how I don't think I'll be back after tomorrow. Hotel is firstly (and weirdly) located in the middle of a housing estate and is also a very odd mixture of the new (reception and bar) and retro 60s/70s (bedroom) interior design which reminds me very strongly of my halls of residence at university.

Upon arrival I asked if I could take some delegate packs up to the conference room as I'd lugged them in from my car with me. The nice receptionist said 'Of course, Chris will help you with those, he's our night security.' Is it wrong I expected a big burly dude to come out and lift my heavy load with one hand? Instead a little Indian chap came out and proceeded to wheeze all the way around the building and up the stairs struggling under the weight of all my event stuff! Felt v.guilty!

So now having had a serioius guilt trip and a tasteless tuna sandwich but a nice glass of red, I'm off to bed to worry about my presentation tomorrow. Good night from Newport Pagnell :)
Love Kate xxxx

Our bluebells are better than yours

Alice and I went for a walk in the new forest on bank holiday monday, and saw far superior blue bells to those paltry essex examples that have been shown here- see below

It was a somewhat muddy journey, as our shoes bore testament to.

Along the way we saw a thousand year old church, with a thousand year old tree....

All in all, a rather beautiful place...

Mid-afternoon post

Ah, much better when sober.
Here is a picture of sarah and her 30th birthday cake:

Sarah and Boo sharing a joke
Andy's speech
And here is Alice (Kierans Fiance - and maybe that isn't the right spelling and punctuation)
and Brian at the Bristish Museum Courtyard restaurant

And Boo and Linda at the same venue
Now for the more exciting stuff - the Doctor Who exhibition that we went to after lunch. We being Martins plus Alice.

Look, K9 and Boo

Alice meets the Doctor by a phone box (shame about his face - the projection got washed oout by the flash I guess)
Don't blink!
The face of Bo (yes Bo, not Boo.............)
Daleks!
And now Cybermen - but the best picture is next

Yes, it is Kieran and he is inside the Tardis - woo!!
That's it for now. We've been to the Botanics today, had lunch in Cambridge, bought Asparagus, strawberries and Cherries, so slumming it again eh?

Paintballing and partying

As Boo has (rightly) commented we've all been a bit slack on the posting front recently, I thought I'd just pop up some photos from my friends' 30th birthday celebrations on Saturday. For some reason best known to themselves, my friends Lyndsey and Amy decided to go paintballing to celebrate their 30th birthdays. This is an activity I'd already participated in back in January and frankly was not an experience I was particularly eager to repeat. However, there was no way I was going to wriggle my way out of it, so here are a couple of photos of me and my friends getting ready to go and shoot each other with little purple pellets that actually really, really hurt when they hit you - wound here being illustrated by my friend Giles' hand after taking a shot at close range :(

Here's also one of me and my friend Jo at the party in the evening looking marginally more glam than we did earlier in the day. You can also see my new hair colour too which mum thinks is too dark but I actually quite like :)

Love Kate xxxx

Late night post

Hi,

Probably shouldn't post after 4.5 glasses of wine, but hey, let's live a little. Last night, we went to Sarah's 30th. Great time, thank you Andy, Phyll and Sarah, and Greg, who did a great job handing out drinks vouchers. It was a casino night, but as we had to drive back, we couldn't stay and win, so I lost all the fun money at black jack. Boo was brilliantly winning on roulette but foolishly gave me her chips and went socialising.....

Pictures tomorrow when I'm sober and have resized them - just started and realised 2MB+ files should not be uploaded!

Had lunch with Heleen, Brian, Linda, Kieran and Alice in the British Museum today. Then went to the Dr Who exhibition. Pictures tomorrow - including Kieran in the Tardis! And Cybermen and Daleks!

How can you wait? It is so exciting. Gotta go now.

Trevor

Bluebells 2008

It is that time of year again, so we went for our annual bluebell walk near Rickling Green. Fabulous as usual. Just one picture this time.

Posting for Mike

While in Ottawa yesterday I had half an hour loose so went for a walk on Capital Hill. Next to the house of parliament I spotted this. Focus on the Little Furry Object(LFO), not the blue anorak. LFO claimed to be the member of parliament for kicking horse pass, but I think he (or she, the voice was kind of neutral) was actually a Mountie in disguise to protect Ottawa against terrorist attacks. This suspicion was further supported by the local police nearby who claimed that the LFO who clearly was disguised as a groundhog, was in fact a gopher, very suspicious, unless, of course they were actually CIA agents from the US disguised as Ottawa Police, the CIA would undoubtedly think that Gophers and Grounhogs are both weapons of mass destruction and be unable to tell the difference between the two.

Anyway at last report, Parliament is still safe.

Mike

Names

Nobody is posting any more and I am really getting a bit perturbed by seeing Tom’s nether regions every time I check the blog.
So, just to prove that everyone’s lives our probably more interesting than mine. Here is my thoughts on names.
Cataloguing and ordering papers at work is often brightened up by laughing at people’s names. One of my favourites is Fartmann!
However recently I have been ordering papers on a specific somatic mutation. One prolific author is Mr Barstard another prolific author is Mr Randi.
Surely one day they must do a paper together. What joy that would bring to my life!

Deck chairs

Just to let you know that the family love of deck chairs is not over. While London was experiencing snow last weekend we were sitting on Deck chairs in the French Alps with Matt and Sue. Very nice time we had too.
Here is a picture of Tom, their airdale displaying dogly dignity. Really, Tom, put it away, you're not David Beckham!

Following on...

....from the conference-related story below, I was wondering if anyone has ever been to a conference or dinner where they had really excellent pre/during/after dinner entertainment, and if so, what was it? I find sorting this out even harder than keeping people awake after lunch (although that can be a challenge all day when talking about training software).

At the first conference I did two years ago we had a wine tasting challenge which was fantastic (www.tasteofthevine.co.uk) but last year we had a speaker who was just dreadful (so I won't include his website link). This year the favoured suggestion amongst the guys here is a casino night but I'm not that sold. Our audience are training/HR bods and range from graduates right through to those knocking on the door of retirement and is almost a 50/50 split male to female.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received :)
Love Kate xxxx

Graveyard spot

On Monday I went to a seminar at the British Library. Once again it proved to me that they keep the most boring speakers for after lunch when everybody is sleepy. Is there some kind of sweepstake among conference organisers to see how many people they can send to the land of nod?
Anyway, this time they excelled themselves. The bloke giving the talk was a substitute and he was clearly terrified! He was quietly spoken and had a strong Lancashire accent and he gabbled. He was incomprehensible. I tried to listen to him but after 5 minutes and I could feel me eyelids growing heavy so I decided to write a letter on the complimentary pad of A4 British Library paper they had given me.
When I looked round after 10 minutes or so there must have been at least 5 people asleep. There were others reading the brochures that had come with their welcome pack. Others were tapping away on their laptops - I bet they were playing spider solitaire. At least the speaker didn't notice as he never took his eyes from his notes or the screen. But it was toe curlingly awful. At the end of his talk the chairman who could obviously see everyone's inattention said: "Well, thank you, it's always difficult to deliver somebody else's talk"
The two guys in front of me were American and this speech (incomprehensible to everyone) had been proceeded by a talk by a Glaswegian! The last speaker before tea was an American and you could see them almost crying with relief!
Still, a trip to London is better than proper work. I got a lovely lunch and when I should have been networking at the lunch break I went for a little walk around the British Library and visited their lovely shop.

Coastal command memorial

Hello there,

The girls were with my folks in London over Easter week, and I came up for a day and then flew home with them at the end.

While we were there, we went to Westminster Abbey and had a look at the memorial they have just put up for all the members of coastal command.

Here are the photos I took. I fiddled them a bit to bring up the contrast a bit so you can read them better.

This first photo is the main memorial stone.



This was carved into the wall at the bottom and slightly to the right of the main sculpture.



You may have to click on this to read it properly, but this is the inscription below the sculpture.



I might add that it SNOWED that day...it was FREEZING! I am turning into a wimp.

Poland and back

Here are some pics of Poland - not many of Krakow because my camera got stuck open and despite my attempts stayed that way until I took it into the camera shop in Cardiff when it went back in the first time the guy tried. Don't you hate it when inanimate objects make you look a complete fool?


The top one is the square in the old town of Warsaw. What is extraordinary is that all the buildings in the old town have been built since the war as the Germans flattened Warsaw before they left. after the war the Poles rebuilt it from pictures done in the 18th century. Unfortunately for Warsaw the Russians also did a lot of building so a lot of Warsaw is hideous concrete communist blocks. However I didn't take pictures of those.



This is the church in the centre square in Krakow which is unremarkable outside but is seriously gilded and painted inside. we did our last concert in here. There is atrumpeter who plays a warning fanfare every hour on the hour which cuts off before the end because someone did so in the 12th century and was shot by an arrow before he finished but it warned the people and the fended off the enemy. Now that is really keeping a tradition going. Must be the most frustrating music job going as you get to play the same piece every hour of every day and never get to finish it.

This lopsided picture Brian took when we were having lunch in Warsaw with some students. That huge loaf of bread in the spare place is full of saurkraut and sausage and was a starter!!

We had a good time there and the choir sang really well, and the weather was mostly kind as we only had one wet day and it wasn't too cold. Thankfully the rain is following the Martins around instead of me. The Oki Doki youth hostel was actually very good and I can recommend it to you.

It's official! We are the new Peggy!

We have just returned from a lovely long weekend in Rome to celebrate my half century and three of the five days we were there it poured! OK, that is not enough evidence that we have inherited Peggy’s strange talent for attracting precipitation. However it rained on our holiday in Brittany last year, on our holiday in the Cevenne the year before. We have had two weekends away with friends and it has poured for the entire weekend. Honestly, a few years ago we stayed about 40 miles from Madrid in August and it rained. I fear that we are indeed the new Peggy. I think if we were to go to Alice Springs it would rain for the first time since Peggy’s visit when it rained for the first time in years.
Actually, people should pay us either to visit very arid places or to stay away from places.
That said, it didn’t spoil our enthusiasm for the eternal city. Goodness, but it’s chock full of art and history. We came to the conclusion that we are now of an age to appreciate Bernini. I think he is like anchovies and you just won’t like him when you’re too young. We did have a mostly sunny day for my birthday when we did the Ancient Roman stuff. I shall have to rewatch I Claudius and Gladiator now that I can picture it all. To be honest nearly all I know about ancient Rome is from I Claudius and Shakespeare.
If you want to see pictures of Rome you can look at Helen’s from December.

Beyond my ken.

I sometimes realise how very little I understand of the work that goes on in the Scientific institution where I am employed. The other day everyone in the institute received this email:
"Sorry for the hinx mail.We urgently need some anti-goat antibody conjugated with HRP for acouple ofWestern blots. Does anyone have some to spare? Thanks a lot"
Now the words are english. The sentences are properly constructed and yet it makes no sense to me. Ah well it keeps life full of mysteries.
There was a visitor at work last week - none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury - rather random really

Here is Brian with the orchestra on Tuesday - taking his bow at the end of the piece!!!!!!

Answers

I will put the answers as a comment. So that you can't see them by accident.

Quiz

Well done, Brian, I look forward to hearing the concert on the radio.
So from the sublime to the ridiculous. I have to set a round for a quiz next week. It is going to be lyrics from musicals and films. I thought I might test it out on my extended family and see if I've pitched it right. Could you let me know how many you get without googling it - I will tell you the answers if you like.

1.A lady doesn't leave her escort
It isn't fair, it isn't nice
A lady doesn't wander all over the room
And blow on some other guy's dice.

2. Is he tough? Listen, Bud! He’s got radioactive blood.

3. Now when you pick a pawpaw
Or a prickly pear
And you prick a raw paw
Next time beware

4. Lots of chocolates for me to eat,
Lots of coal making lots of 'eat.
Warm face, warm hands, warm feet,

5. If it should chance to be
We should see
Some harder days
Empty larder days
Why grouse?

6. Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I'm a woman's man: no time to talk.

7. We're drawin' the line,
So keep your noses hidden!
We're hangin' a sign,
Says "Visitors forbidden"
And we ain't kiddin'!

8. But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured
Now I find I’ve changed my mind I’ve opened up the doors

9. Don't see lights a flashin'
Plays by sense of smell
Always gets a replay
Never tilts at all

10. There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too