Snippets from the before times

Constructive CPD stuff

Our head of unit, Begoña, is – to her credit – very supportive of staff CPD, so with this in mind I put in a request last year to take the SAS certification exam, as I’ve been learning SAS ‘on the job’ since starting at the OU nine years ago. SAS, as hard-core codey types will tell you, is a scripting language used for data analysis, rather than a proper programming language used for actually building things, but still. I did eventually manage to cover all the material in the training manual and (after postponing it two or three times) finally took the exam in February of this year, at a Pearson VUE test centre inside The Point in central Milton Keynes. The exam was quite challenging and I can’t say I got distinction-level marks, but I did pass, and was duly issued with my certificate and with this ‘badge’ from Acclaim, which I’ve added to my LinkedIn profile. Go me.

The SAS UK headquarters are on the Wittington Estate just outside Marlow. I went there for a two-day SAS Enterprise Guide course in 2017. Very nice it all was too.

Wittington House, UK home of the SAS Institute

National Trust membership

Although Ruth questions this every year, I did renew our National Trust membership again for 2020. Perhaps I just feel we’re the kind of people who should be NT members. To kick off this year’s use of it, we went over to The Vyne, near Basingstoke, on a Saturday in January for a low-key wander. We had a walk along one of the trails although, as per the extremely wet winter we had, portions of the path were pretty waterlogged.

The Vyne

 

Driving back, Google Maps decided it didn’t like the A33 and took us on a winding route through Stratfield Saye and other villages south of Reading. Some quite flooded roads, including one quite large stretch that I did stop at, unsure whether I should drive through it. There was a 4x4 coming through it from the opposite direction and the driver kindly said she’d wait while my Fiesta drove through it in case I ran into any problems. She also added some stuff about how it was all due to the poor infrastructure locally, claiming that her village had only recently got broadband. Seemed a bit unlikely but there you go.

That was actually the only NT place we managed to visit prior to the lockdown; although they’ve opened again now, we haven’t yet mustered the energy to book a timed slot at one. With hindsight, I probably should have cancelled our membership for this year, but haven’t as yet done this.

The Vyne had a Mindfulness Trail going on when we visited, which we scoffed at briefly.

Dinner with colleagues

Back when we were allowed to do such things. A group of us from the former Information Office went to dinner at Murati's pizzeria in Newport Pagnell, the sister restaurant to the Wolverton branch we went to a couple of years ago. On the left, from the front: Rebecca, Claire, Jill. On the right, from the back: Harvey, Chris, me, Sara, Matt. Hai was there too, but must have been taking the picture I think.

Dinner at Murati's

Visits to Wales

With the vague aim of trying to visit Mum and Dad every month to six weeks (an intention subsequently scuppered by the lockdown and the closing of Wales), I went down to Abergavenny for a couple of nights on the last weekend in January. Mum, Hannah and I had lunch at the Art Chapel café on the Saturday and then Dad joined Mum and me for a walk along the River Usk back to their house, from a starting point near Nevill Hall Hospital. Dad pointed out where the recent lively water levels had taken a big chunk out of the bank.

River Usk near Abergavenny

I went down one subsequent time before the lockdown, with Ruth where we did the walk up Skirrid already blogged about here.

Two cultural bits

Ruth and I went up to the V&A on 8 February, just for a London trip out really but Ruth ended up going to the Mary Quant exhibition that Mum and I went to back in October last year. While she was there I had a wander around the cast courts and took this shot of the cast of the Donatello ‘David’:

which is dwarfed by the enormous buttocks of the Michelangelo ‘David’ next to it:

Hannah reminded that me that she's seen the original of the Donatello 'David', in Florence.

On 8 March we went to an exhibition of maps at the Bodleian in Oxford. Discovered there’s a nice café there I hadn’t been to before.

Café at the Bodleian

Ruth and I were aware of thinking Oxford was a bit quieter (and therefore pleasanter) than usual. Start of a COVID-induced staying in, I guess, prior to it being enforced a few weeks later.