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.

Rundown of September

Started September by booking two cottages at the Low Briery park near Keswick for a family holiday next April. Hurrah. Lake District here we come. Don't think I've been since we had a family week there in 2005, which seems a long time really. On that holiday it rained quite a lot and Hannah and I spent quite a bit of time watching episodes of Dallas on DVD.

Booked the day off on Friday 1st for a day out with Mum and Hannah in London to see the Giacometti exhibition at Tate Modern. Mum and Dad had stayed overnight in London the night before and seemed to have enjoyed themselves, things only being marred by Dad wearing some ill-advised sharp shoes that had given him blisters. He was off to the Geological Society on the Friday; Mum, Hannah and I met near the Millennium Bridge where Mum lightened her own bag by offloading a jar of crab apple jelly onto each of us. Mum had also evidently been accosted by some people filming an ad for Galaxy chocolate, and been given several free bars.

The exhibition was crowded but interesting. After taking this selfie in the turbine hall we went for lunch at a nearby Carluccio’s, after which Hannah left us to go and see a friend elsewhere in London and Mum and I walked around for a bit, having a look at the new extension from the outside.

Went over to Gail and Rob's house on Saturday 3rd for little Emily's second birthday tea party. Small gathering of only us plus Rob's nice father Brian. Emily is an outrageously cute child with a mop of blonde hair. Amused to see that she is now speaking a few words, including "More icing, Dad".

As part of ongoing quest to find a suitable hearth, or a piece of stone that could be fashioned into a hearth, I drove Ruth out to a stone merchants’ near Basingstoke on the afternoon of the 8th. We stopped off at The Vyne on the way to have lunch and make some use of our National Trust cards. Had a walk around the walled garden which had a gorgeous bed of pompom dahlias. The house is under scaffolding at the moment as there seems to be a major roof project underway.



Then found our way to stoneCIRCLE where Ruth spent some time in the yard browsing offcuts, seemingly mainly from kitchen worktops. Some discussion with the saleswoman followed but we didn’t end up actually ordering anything.

Managed to mess up our visit to the London 'Open House' weekend this year, entirely through not being sufficiently organised. Firstly, we were too lazy to stir ourselves on the Saturday morning and postponed our visit to the Sunday, thereby missing the chance to view Goldfinger's Haggerston School in Hackney, which I had been interested in seeing. When we arrived at Reading station on the Sunday morning, it turned out there were no trains running between Reading and Paddington because of line works, so we had to travel in to Waterloo instead, which, if you're unlucky (we were) takes almost three times as long.

On arrival, we headed over to Regent's Park to visit the Royal College of Physicians, though on arrival we discovered that the building is actually open to the public most days throughout the year. We signed up for a tour of the building and gardens, which was quite interesting though the tour guide was a bit over-theatrical for my taste.



We then took the bus to Hackney intending to see a few things there, but lost some enthusiasm after an interminable circa 24-stop bus journey. Queued for a while to see a wooden eco-house whose name I've forgotten, behind a bickering family of four whose bickering then descended into a brawl between the father and his teenage son. We went off the whole idea after that and took the bus back to Islington, where we had beer and crisps in The York. We should have focused on one borough and a handful of properties within easy reach of each other, but we never quite seem to manage to do that.

On the following Monday, my colleague Galina saw fit to share that she'd managed to visit four Open House properties with her daughter, in between taking her son to the junior parkrun and seeing a show. Some people are just made of sterner stuff.

On the 22nd we hosted Book Group at the house, to discuss Ruth's book choice 'Exposure' by Helen Dunmore. Quite an easy read; background of Cold War, spies etc. Of the four regular attendees who might have come, two were away but Ali and Lesley managed to make it. Ruth had tackled a new recipe involving halloumi-stuffed meatballs in a chermoula sauce - the preparation involved some ridiculously middle-class bleating over the phone about how the Caversham Waitrose were out of chermoula. Luckily I did an emergency chermoula run to the bigger MK Waitrose and managed to get some. We served polenta as an accompaniment, which I'd only attempted to prepare once before and been slightly bemused by. It was OK. By the following day it had become a shiny bouncy lump as per the photo. We marvelled at it for a while, prodding it at intervals. I eventually cut off a couple of slices and fried them as a dinner accompaniment - OK but I can't say I'd go a long way to seek it out.

Ray came up to MK to visit me on the 27th and we went for dinner again at the Antep Kitchen over the road from Tesco. Busy and humming, as per the last time.

Went down to Abergavenny the last weekend in September, stopping on the way at Westbury Court Garden, to make yet more use of our NT cards. I'd located it on the map as being reasonably conveniently located en route - the blurb claims it's the finest example of a
Dutch-style water garden in the country. It turned out to be a small place (euphemism for the fact that it didn't have a tea room, which we were a bit disappointed about, though I think the lady at the admissions hut might have been selling KitKats) but it's a dear little formal garden with some eye-catching planting.

Cone-shaped trees	One of the canals
Prettiness	Reputedly the oldest evergreen oak in England