Donnington; OU stuff; life and death

Have been extending my walk to work a few mornings a week recently in an attempt to pack in more exercise, now that darkness and cold in the mornings have forced me to abandon the early cycling plan – could cycle to work, but that would involve changes of clothes, showers etc, which is all too complicated (though a number of my colleagues do actually do this). Have, believe it or not, found quite a pleasant walk, north of here up through Woughton Park and Woughton on the Green – quite an attractive village which doesn’t appear to have any shops but does have quite a decent-looking pub – and then into Ouzel Valley Park and thence down to Walton Hall.

Met up with some of the Book Group on Friday 4^th for an early supper at Tampopo before they went to see We Need to Talk About Kevin – I declined to go as I’d rather read the book and suspect the film might give away crucial plot twists. I’m already slightly prejudiced against the book simply because of the number of people who’ve told me it’s the most amazing book they’ve ever read, but in fairness I suppose I shouldn’t let that put me off. After they’d departed I went to meet Ruth who had spent the day and previous night in Jersey as part of a bid presentation team. It seemed to have gone well and I was amused to learn that an analogy with Reservoir Dogs had apparently been used towards her and a male colleague, who were evidently the most sharply-dressed members of the team.

On the Saturday, Ruth rashly offered to do something that I fancied doing, so I made her take a meandering bus journey over to Newbury (she cracked towards the end, saying it was the most boring bus journey she’d ever been on, but prior to that had fun critiquing the bus’ design, seat covers etc as part of recently-developed interest in public transportation services thanks to new job). Once arrived, we had lunch at a crowded café near the clock tower before taking a walk up to Donnington Castle, a local historic site that we used to visit as kids – the photo on the left of me taken there in 1993 was the last occasion I’d been there, partly because the Newbury Bypass was constructed in the interim and I hadn’t fancied discovering that the castle was now in the middle of a traffic island. Of course, it isn’t – in fact the bypass isn’t visually intrusive and can barely be seen from the castle, although it can be heard, and the traffic can be seen in the distance if you know which direction to look in. We had a quick mooch around and a young couple took this photo of us, in return for me taking a couple of them.

Went for my first Information Office team lunch on Friday 11^th to mark Emily’s departure on maternity leave. Emily is a fit and healthy type who looks as though she’ll just have the baby and then pop out for a game of tennis, so hopefully all will go well. During the journey over in Bart’s people-carrier, the topic of conversation turned to Radio 4 and Emily expressed surprise when I remarked that I rarely listened to it (though I know people who do) and commented that I was just the sort of person whom she would have thought would be an avid listener. Was unsure whether to be flattered at seeming an intelligent, erudite sort of person, or insulted at seeming bookish spinstery type. For the sake of mental calm I opted for the former thought.

Have been falling a bit behind with T183 due to pressure of sheer idleness, but have more or less caught up and have just submitted my interactive computer-marked assignment (‘iCMA’), the first of the two pieces of assessment for the course, though it only counts for 10% of the marks. Have also, in a fit of enthusiasm, signed up for course M255 – ‘Object-oriented programming with Java’ – which starts in February, partly at the suggestion of my line manager Judith who is keen for all of the returns team, except for Hoa who’s already an expert, to have a chance to upgrade their programming skills. Thought I might as well take the opportunity. Also it sounds, to me at least, more interesting than becoming an Accredited PRINCE2 Practitioner, which more or less everybody I worked with at CfBT now seems to be – can hardly open up someone’s LinkedIn page without being greeted by this as the front line. Have to remind myself it is actually a genuine qualification and not at all to do with NLP, eye-tracking etc, but still fight urge to scoff derisively.

We had Ray and Claire over to dinner last Saturday, as we were conscious that we hadn’t had people over for a while – if nothing else, it prompts one to clean the bathroom, tidy up, put rabbits in fresh clothes etc. I did most of the cleaning and tidying as Ruth spent the earlier part of the day lying down, in deference to having run up an £80 bar bill in Islington with Denise the previous evening. Luckily she recovered in time to cook the dinner, so the rest of us got to sit and drink wine and eat the pieces of breadstick that I had gathered together – don’t actually remember dropping a tin on top of them, but there you go. I can’t remember what we talked about, but it was midnight when they left so it must have gone well.

Gail and Rob appeared on Saturday afternoon and borrowed about 20 back issues of LivingEtc, apparently to get some inspiration for their dining room. Bit surprised as I had thought Gail’s tastes tended towards the classic, but will be interested to see what comes out of it.

Made a few attempts at the weekend to progress our attic workroom plan. Having worked out the lengths of MDF that (we think) we need, went to Homebase on Saturday morning to investigate their board-cutting service and had a brief and not particularly satisfactory conversation with a spectacularly uninterested member of their staff. As it happened, their cutting machine was broken anyway so we couldn’t have done anything. On Sunday morning we briefly toyed with the idea of driving across town to B&Q to check out the service there, but became dispirited even thinking about it so didn’t bother. Instead, had a bit of an online search and located a few online cutting and delivery services, so am now awaiting a quote from one of them. Ruth said some sensible things about it all being a learning process, which is of course quite correct.

Took a day’s leave on Monday to go to my former colleague (and indeed, line managee – is that a word?) Katrina’s funeral at Reading Crematorium, in company with a number of other current and former CfBT colleagues. Katrina and I formed the Data Management and Research Strand for the year or so before I left CfBT, and following my departure she comprised it herself (hopefully, in a reduced capacity – I like to think I contributed something to the arrangement) for the further year or so until the Fast Track contract closed. She continued working at CfBT on a smaller project before being made redundant earlier this year, evidently shortly before she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Something of a bummer.

By way of celebrating death and new life on the same day, I met up with Kate at the Alto Lounge in the afternoon, the first time we’d met up since she gave birth to her baby Oliver in July. I was duly introduced to Oliver, who seemed a fairly placid baby though Kate muttered darkly about him putting that on in company. Kate’s quest to rid their house of husband Steve’s apparently vast collection of computers through the ages appears to be ongoing – despite having actually donated some to a computing museum, there are evidently a number still in the house, including the attic and a good portion of the garage. Blimey. Taking any number of them to the tip is apparently difficult as the tip men assume that you’re a commercial concern offloading stock. Prior to their marriage Kate was apparently training Steve to say, by way of explanation “I was a computer geek, but now I have a girlfriend”.