Miscellaneous burblings

Wolverton Park

Moved into flat at Wolverton Park on 6 February, re-using the efficient services of Bruce Wilkinson Despatch, who tactfully didn’t allude to having transported my possessions from Milton Keynes just over a year ago. Ruth hitched a lift up with the chaps and stayed over until the Sunday to help me get the place in order. It seems a nice spot so far, though there would appear to be a few snagging issues with the maintenance of the blocks along with an issue with lurking local youngsters making a nuisance of themselves. The Wolverton Park Noticeboard on Facebook appears a useful source of knowledge re what’s going on on the site.

Spent my final week in Travelodges at the MK Central hotel, where there was a brief flurry of snow on the Monday evening.

Xscape, Milton Keynes

Had a fun evening on 11 Feb joining several colleagues from both my office and the Strategy Office, with whom we are to be as one, for bowling at the Hollywood Bowl at Xscape. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to bowling as the last time I did it, some while ago, I was resoundingly crap. Went along essentially to be sociable and also because I hadn’t been to Xscape before. It’s an absurd structure that looks a bit like a giant top-heavy woodlouse and apparently houses a ski slope with actual snow. In fact according to their blurb, it houses the country’s biggest indoor REAL snow slopes. Photo from http://myhotelbookings.co.uk/listings/xscape-milton-keynes/.

Surprisingly, didn’t perform badly at all, perhaps because I was so keen to get the actual bowling over with, I just quickly chucked the ball down the lane as hard as I could. John from the Strategy Office won our lane, but Sara and I were a close-fought second and third, I think both surprising ourselves. John took this photo of the scoreboard, showing – if you squint a bit – my not-too-embarrassing-at-all score of 102.

After the bowling, several of the Strategy lot decided to go for food at Wagamama, and Matt, Guy and I went along with them, though Matt, a vegetarian, had a clash with the menu and accidentally ended up with a huge slab of fish. I had the yaki udon, which I think may be all I’ve ever had at Wagamama, but then it is delicious.

Ruth and I marked Friday 13th by going into town for a bite to eat at Tampopo – crowded, as was everywhere along the riverside; I suppose it’s good that it’s doing well. Image nicked from TripAdvisor. After that we made our way to the Global Café to join Claire and assorted friends to mark her birthday. The idea was to hear the Oubliettes, who were performing – unfortunately, there were two support acts on before them, the first of which (Decoda) was so loud that several of our party left claiming they couldn’t hear themselves think; the second was better but by the time they finished and the Oubliettes were warming up, it was 11.30pm and I was only half an hour off turning into a pumpkin. Ruth and I made our farewells and took a cab home. Perhaps I can catch a clip of the Oubliettes on YouTube.

We then spent a quiet weekend to recover from the trauma of going out. We did get around to watching August: Osage County, which Ruth had had from LoveFilm for the past month but hadn’t thus far been in the mood to watch. Pretty dark stuff – well acted though we did feel Meryl Streep chews the scenery a bit. Julia Roberts is excellent. Both were apparently Oscar-nominated, for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively.

Other movies watched recently have included the Disney movie Brave, which I had recently shoved on to my LoveFilm list along with Frozen (the latter just because I’m curious to find out what all the fuss is about). I’d not heard of Brave but Victoria mentioned recently that it’s one of her and her daughter Orla’s favourite films. Orla is six, so not sure why I thought I’d necessarily enjoy it, but I thought I’d give it a go. It’s pretty good. Story thus: Merida, princess of some Highland clan or other, gets narked at her mother’s attempts to find her a husband. An attempt to get her mother off her back goes badly wrong when she foolishly consults a witch for something that will make her mother ‘different’, resulting in Mum being turned into a bear. (Ruth and I digressed at this point to muse on whether there have actually ever been bears in Scotland. Must check that out.) The remainder of the movie features Merida frantically trying to find a way to get the spell reversed before her mother is faced to stay that way forever. It’s quite sweet and Merida has splendid red hair and is a whiz with a bow and arrow.

Walking through Trafalgar Square early on 19 February en route to another HESA seminar – this time on the KIS return – I was saddened to see that the blue cock has gone from the Fourth Plinth. It was undoubtedly the jolliest thing I’ve seen there and a wonderful shade of blue. Took the train from and back to Wolverton. Living right next to a station is a fine thing. As is not having to stock up on M&S sandwiches and/or fast food before returning ‘home’ to a hotel room. Luxury hotels where someone else is paying and there’s room service would be a different thing, obviously.

Had a day and night in London with Mum on 21 February, staying over in the Premier Inn London Southwark Tate Modern (where Ruth and I stayed for my birthday last year) as a belated 70th birthday present to her. We met at Paddington and took two buses over to Stamford Street and walked the short distance to the PI, where we left bags and set out to follow part of a ‘Cultural Walk’ I had found on the internet, heading east from the PI past Tate Modern. Digressing briefly, I hadn’t realized that Bankside Power Station as was was so comparatively recently built; according to this it was commissioned in 1947 and started generating electricity in 1952. There's a picture here of it under construction. Apparently it replaced a Victorian power station on the same site; this article has a picture. I remember walking past Bankside with Ray sometime in the 1990s and being quite intimidated by its then semi-derelict looming presence. Bankside Power Station closed in 1981, so stood empty for nearly 20 years before being reborn in 2000. To my mind, the gallery alone would stand as a fine Millennium project for the country – and the Millennium Bridge is quite fun now it’s actually open. The Dome project should, of course, have been abandoned in its infancy.

We walked eastwards along Bankside and passed the remains of Winchester Palace, apparently the London home of the Bishops of Winchester until the 17th century. The blurb I downloaded off the internet noted that the Bish licensed the area’s brothels in the 12th century. How public-spirited.

We passed Southwark Cathedral, though didn’t go in because we were looking for lunch by that time. Amazing to think that the incarnation of London Bridge that stood from the 12th to the 19th centuries had houses, shops and a church on it.

We had lunch at Jamie’s on London Bridge Street, at the foot of the Shard, then continued down Borough High Street where we had a quick look at The George Inn, apparently London’s only surviving galleried coaching inn, and then crossed the road to look at Cross Bones Graveyard – or what you can see of it through the fencing. Apparently it’s now become a shrine to the poor of London. The gates along one side are crammed with ribbons, photos, notes and other mementoes. There seems to be a campaign afoot to protect the gates and to establish a memorial garden.We walked past St George the Martyr Southwark, aka Little Dorrit’s Church, apparently, bringing to mind the Dickens novel on my A-level English syllabus that I completely failed to read, and then after a bit of faffing about in side streets arrived at Guy’s Hospital. We visited the Old Operating Theatre Museum, located opposite Guy's in the roof space of the former St Thomas Church. Very interesting; the museum displays included some scary gynaecological instruments and a little 'bedside font', presumably for administering the last rites.

We had a nice dinner at The Real Greek on the Saturday evening, and Sunday breakfast at the Albion, before taking a walk along the South Bank in the other direction, crossing the river and returning via a circuit of St Paul's churchyard and across the footbridge. Paid an extremely brief visit to Tate Modern, pretty much just to use the toilet, then collected our bags and I dragged us on an unrewarding walk to find a bus stop that would take us back to Paddington. Did eventually make it back, after I'd been forced to test whether contactless payment with a bank card really does work on London buses (it does).

St Mary's, Haversham, with snowdrops

Spent the weekend of 28 and 29 Feb in MK, as Ruth had to work through the weekend and I had to finish an assignment for the OU maths module I started last year and have recently picked up again. I had planned to sand my bike’s brake blocks (advised by Ray in order to get rid of current screeching noise) and take it out for a ride; in the end I did do the sanding, but failed to actually ride it anywhere. I did, however, take myself out for a walk on the Saturday to explore some of the surrounding countryside. Started by heading north out of Wolverton through the village of Haversham, which seems to be in two bits, with an older bit surrounding the church and the Greyhound pub. After a brief detour down to the church, trekked on out of the old village and turned right down Mill Road, hoping I could get down to the canal and back into New Bradwell. Mill Road is a very small road and in a moment of doubting that it was open to the public, I turned left onto a footpath heading across fields. As I crossed what seemed like a third field and the footpath signs ran out, my phone decided to pack in (seemingly the known Black Screen phenomenon) and I was left standing in the field ineffectually tapping at it. Was forced to retrace my steps to Mill Road and carry on down it the way I’d intended to go originally. Luckily, being over 40, I hadn’t relied totally on the GPS and had also brought two maps with me, so was able (eventually) to work out where I was. Returned south(ish) past the lakes, stopping to look at the ruins of St Peter’s Church. It had protective fencing round it on the day I visited, but there are photos here and here. Poor little place. There does appear to be a campaign to preserve it. Seemingly, there is also a local werewolf legend associated with it.

Walked on past St Peter’s and followed the canal back down to New Bradwell, and then trudged along Newport Road back to Wolverton. This snippet from the MapMyWalk route tracker shows the point at which the GPS cut out. Plotted the rest of the walk manually when I got in. 5.7 miles according to MMW.

Prior to the weekend, had posted a plea on the OU noticeboard for a sheet of sandpaper to tackle the bike with, as I didn't want to buy a full pack. The OU being full of lovely people, I received loads of offers of sandpaper, including several sheets in the internal mail. Now have more than I'll ever need.

Continuing with increased walking, motivated by MapMyWalk. Very pleasant walking in the early morning now that it's becoming more spring-like. According to this notice in Campbell Park, the sheep have been re-released into the grazing area, which I assume means spring. Also in the park, took this dead artistic photo the other day of some snowdrops.

Dead artistic photo

Attended a lunchtime seminar the week before last entitled ‘Beyond Gay: Sexuality Research and Being ‘Out’ at The Open University. Was mildly curious about the content as I wouldn’t have thought that the OU was a particularly difficult place to be ‘out’. The content turned out to be substantially focused on bisexuality, as the OU turns out to be something of a hotspot for research on this topic – the three academics on the panel had evidently all been involved in authoring The Bisexuality Report. One of them, one Meg John Barker, has written an interesting-sounding book on relationships called Rewriting the Rules and has an associated blog of the same name, though this does include an alarming list of instructions on how she likes to be addressed and referred to. The panel also included Rebecca Jones of the OU’s Faculty of Health and Social Care – also a blogger - who seems to have done some interesting work on various aspects of ageing and later life.

Day in London with Ruth last Saturday as she had been wanting for a while to see Di and Viv and Rose, which I think started out at Hampstead Theatre but has now moved to the Vaudeville on the Strand. The play was enjoyable viewing on the whole, though there was a sense of the loud aggro in the last part of the play not really having had sufficient buildup not to seem all a bit randomly histrionic. Also - understandably, given that they're all in their 40s - none of the three actresses - Tamzin Outhwaite, Samantha Spiro and Jenna Russell - made a very convincing teenage university student, particularly not Spiro, though her character's 1940s outfits didn't help. It also probably didn't help that Ruth and I were sitting in the front row almost on top of them and their every minor wrinkle, though that did at least mean a decent amount of leg room. There's a Guardian review of the play here.

Before the play, we had arrived in London around midday and gone to visit the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, which Dave visited recently and which I had been wanting to visit for a while. The museum is a fantastic little place and doesn't charge for entry. It houses an amazing collection of exhibits of body parts from a variety of birds, fish, humans and assorted other animals. As Ruth noted, the specimens are so old that they've all taken on rather a uniform colour which doesn't help with identifying them, but luckily they're labelled in meticulous detail, e.g. "A sexually immature female house sparrow dissected to expore the genito-urinary system".

Popped into the Kimchee Restaurant afterwards where I had a light lunch of the Tofu Kimchee off the starter menu (delicious). Then had a go at getting over to the King's Road by bus, as Ruth fancied the idea, but were stymied by seeming bus chaos due to a) a large demonstration taking place in central London - they'd been mustering in Lincoln's Inn Fields as we came out of the museum; b) lots of roadworks. Ended up filling a couple of hours wandering around the Covent Garden area before having an early pre-theatre dinner at Bella Italia.

As of 1 March, am now relieved of my acting role as Senior Manager (Returns), due in no small part to my having declined to continue with it - I was asked if I'd extend the acting contract until the end of April but was concerned re vaguely open-ended feeling to the whole thing. Am quite relieved in both senses, and am now trying to remember what it is I do when I'm not responsible for four other people's work as well.