Brrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's getting a little chilly round these parts. I think it was below zero all the way to work today.

The other snag with driving in winter is the glare from the Sun being low in the sky. There are a couple of places on my way to work where you're looking straight into the sun. It's essentially impossible to see properly, which makes it a little tricky to say the least.

The general opinion seems to be that it's going to be a hard winter. I really don't mind that. I would much rather see some decent hard weather than 3 months of dank chills.

Bells all day

Yesterday was a busy ringing day.

We started with a nice quarter of coldstream at Duxford, conducted by yours truly.

Then on to a new tower and a new method for me - stamford at Thriplow.

This was followed by an excellent lunch at the Star in Melbourn.

Then just down the road to the Cambridge District meeting, ringing on the eight at Melbourn, followed by an excellent tea and short meeting. Just a quick diversion via Foxton on the way home to round off a busy day.

That made three new towers for me, 2 successful quarter-peal attempts, and one new method.

Lower than low

There are some heartless morons in this world, including the one (or group of) who stole the pumpkin off our doorstep tonight. What's the point?

District Outing

We went on the district outing yesterday, round the Peterborough area.

First up was Fotherighay, a very impressive church in what is now a pretty small village. A nice (although loud) ring of 6, and we managed a lovely course of Cambridge minor.

Next up was the lovely 8 at Castor, followed by speading out for lunch so as not to overwhelm any of the local establishments.

After lunch, we went to the very light 6 at Wansford. Many struggled, but it was a good experience - visiting a variety of towers will help improve most people's ringing. Amanda grabbed the tenor, which is probably the lightest bell she's ever rung.

Off to Peterborough for some serious rings. St John the Baptist are a 25cwt eight, in stark contrast to a very light six. And then off to the Cathedral, to try out the twelve.

Unfortunately, we simply didn't have the ringers to do more than rounds on the twelve. I guess that many people on the outing had never been to a twelve before. Good experience, but not enough strength overall to bring anybody on.

Last week of the holidays

Time flies, and it's the last week of the summer holidays: school starts tomorrow or Monday (depending on which school).

The weather has been good too, so we've squeezed in a couple of trips.

Monday (that quaint and mindless British invention the bank holiday) we went to Felixstowe. Some hours on the beach, a picnic lunch, feeding the slot machines, and a swim at the pool.

Yesterday we went to Chessington World of Adventures. Those who know us will know that we're keen on theme parks, and we hadn't been to Chessington before.

It was hot, the park was busy, and the queues were long. That's only to be expected. But again, the park did a less than optimal job. To start with, the ticket sales at the entrance were excruciatingly slow - it took about 45 minutes to buy a ticket. Then the ride staff were doing an indifferent job of filling the rides. Few rides were full up - some only half full - which extended the queues even further. One of the major rides was closed all day, and another operating at partial capacity. On the plus side, they did let the rides run over the scheduled closing time slightly so we managed to get an extra ride and came away feeling happy.

(One hint to theme park operators: you're missing a trick here. It's a baking hot day, people are standing in a queue for an hour, and you have a non queue-jumping policy that means people can't leave the queue and join back. You could make a fortune by having roving ice-cream and drinks sellers working along the queue line - we would have bought something more than once.)

Fixing the plumbing

Plumbing isn't my strong point. Frankly, it's pretty weak.

Yet occasionally it has to be done. We had a leaky cistern, and after plucking up courage we changed a washer.

Didn't fix it. We still had leaks. Clearly more drastic action was called for.

So I ended up changing the entire valve mechanism for a new one. With a quick break in the middle to get some extra tools, and a second attempt to fit it correctly, it was eventually fitted.

And successfully, too. No leaks now!

Holiday Orchestra Concert

Another week of ferrying around ends with a successful concert.

The girls have been going to Holiday Orchestra again this week. And tonight they got to show off their skills at the concert. Both in the String orchestras and the choirs, and they both did very well.

Misrecommendations

eBay has this new feature called My Recommendations.

Frankly, it's useless. What it does is give you some more items that are being sold by someone you've bought stuff off recently. If they specialize in one particular area, then that's fine. Often, though, eBay sellers have an astonishing variety of goods on offer that bear no relationship to something you might have bought in the past.

Still, it's a bit of light relief to see what junk it's come up with this time. Do I want a Hot Pink Flowered Halterneck Top? Or an Adorable Baby Pink Poodle Bag with Handles?

I think not.

Ipswich at Cottenham

Took 2 attempts, but we just rang a quarter peal of Ipswich Surprise Minor at Cottenham.

I think it's the first time I've rung there. Nice bells, went well, but - at 15cwt - slightly heavier than most of the rings round here.

Bouncing in the rain

We've only got a small garden, but 2 children to play in it. We've just bought an 8ft trampoline, which takes up about half the garden!

These trampolines seem to be all the rage at the moment - a lot of friends have them, so our 2 youngsters have been feeling left out. The swing and slide are obviously a bit tame for them. And we were left a small amount of money earlier in the year so decided that a treat was in order.

There was a minor mix up in delivery. The company had an off-by-one error in the address, so they tried to deliver it to the house opposite. That wasn't ever going to work, because it was sold a couple of months ago and has been empty since. So we arranged for one of use to stay in, but nothing arrived. After a few phone calls, it finally got delivered to the right place.

It says that it takes two people to assemble. It's true that an extra person would be a help, as the trampoline is sufficiently large that you can't reach across it on your own, but I managed anyway. The safety net that surrounds it was a different matter - that was a game even with two of us!

So we have much less garden and a nice trampoline. How much time the kids will have to play on it remains to be seen - we've had an awful lot of rain this last week.

Warkworth at Littlebury

Just got back from a quarter of Warkworth at Littlebury. Nice bells - slightly loud, so some real effort had to be put into yelling the calls, but generally good ringing.

A few trips, and it was a bit longer than anticipated (1440 vs 1320) due to a slight miscall.

Overall, a good quarter.

It reminds me of why I don't ring peals any more, though, as my fingers locked up. In peals, they tend to do this after an hour or hour and a half, so a quarter is usually fine. It's like cramp, and not only painful but makes it difficult to ring well. I hope this is an isolated incident, as I'm starting to ring more and quite enjoying it, so I wouldn't want to give up again.

Wall to wall sunshine

Went to France on holiday last week.

Drove down to Dover through the rain. Had terrible rain for the first hour or so from Calais, then wall to wall sunshine as we went south. Sunshine all week. Drove back through glorious sunshine until we got to Boulogne, then it chucked it down with rain the rest of the way home.

Which is pretty typical really. I can understand why so many people leave the country to go on holiday!

We went to a beautiful farmhouse near Riberac, on the Dronne - near the Dordogne, inland from Bordeaux. A week relaxing, swimming, canoeing, visiting caves, and swinging through the trees.

Good fun was had by all. Now back to finding a job :-(

Signing On

Not having a job (temporarily, I hope), I've started the process of signing on.

For some bizarre reason, the UK government seems to think it's a good idea to give me money (albeit a pittance) while I'm looking for a job. This despite a generous redundancy package, and the fact that being temporarily out of work for short periods should be considered a normal part of the employment cycle.

Still, one shouldn't complain too much or look this gift horse in the mouth. After all, I've paid my taxes and NI contributions for heaven only knows how long so it's only fair to get some benefit back.

Thorpe Park - Thumbs Down

Went to Thorpe Park on Monday. The drive down was a bit protracted (the M25 was as bad as normal) and the weather wasn't too promising - but we were gambling that it would improve and that the park wouldn't be too busy.

While we had rain showers en route, some of them heavy, and there was a bit of rain in the air as we entered the park, it did improve as the day went on, so we won that gamble.

The first snag was that the park was supposed to close at 6pm, but on arrival we found they had changed to a 5pm closure. That's irritating, and very bad form.

Even worse was the reliability of the rides. Frankly, I was appalled. They were breaking down and being closed all day long. I've never known a theme park have this sort of problems before. We would go to a ride to find it closed, go to the next ride and queue up (and the queues on the working rides were longer than normal because there were so many rides not working), wait a while (sometimes getting close to the front of the queue) only for that ride to break down.

While we did manage to get on a few rides (and as many as we would have done on a busy summer day in peak season) it was a bit of a shambles, and some of the rides that we would have liked to try we didn't manage to get on at all.

All in all a frustrating day.

Cycle to work

So I was told The weather report says that there will be good weather for tomorrow morning, so let's all get out there and cycle!

Yeah right. So there was more uphill than I was expecting, there was a stiff breeze in my face, it was cool, and started to rain about half way to work. Generally, harder work than I wanted.

I was pleased to make it in as close to an hour as I could measure. Which was what I expected to take anyway. I could have pushed harder, but the idea was to be able to do some work once I got here.

Provided the wind stays where it is, it could be an easy trip home. What's the odds that it swings round 180 degrees though?

Cycling on the up

A decent ride out this afternoon. I haven't measured it precisely, but about 15 miles around Cambridge in about an hour.

That's pretty good. Not only am I getting a bit fitter and able to do longer trips, but I'm also not suffering afterwards. This ws easily my hardest cycle ride for many years, so I reckon that cycling to work is actually a viable proposition for me.

Just in time too. Next week is National Bike Week and wednesday is Campus cycle to work day.

Queues in York

An observation based on a (wet) week in York.

York doesn't seem to grok traffic queues.

(And, given that their idea of transport planning seems to be to throw a bunch of roads down at random and put a roundabout wherever the roads cross, queues are fairly common.)

What is odd is that it seems to be commonplace for drivers, upon joining a queue, to decide to try an alternative route and immediately turn round. Not just turn round - do a 3-point turn in the middle of a busy A road at that!

Several times, we were travelling in the opposite direction to the queue and had to break pretty hard to let some moron do a 3-point turn right in front of us.

Cycling

Cycling is something I ought to do more of.

I had a bad fall a few years ago. Just a simple slip, but broke my arm landing. More damaging was the fact that my knees are pretty well gone. I had to do a lot of physiotherapy before being able to walk comfortably, and still suffer a lot of pain and stiffness.

So, in order to get some decent exercise, I ought to cycle more. The point about cycling is that I don't put so much stress on the knees - they aren't having to support me, they aren't getting any impacts, and they're not in danger of being twisted. Which is all good.

The first time on the bike this year really hurt. The worrying thing was that it was only about a mile. But more practice and it's getting easier.

But on Wednesday I had the day off and we took the girls to school by bike, and cyycled over to the park and ride. About 10 miles in the day, and only slightly sore knees afterwards.

I reckon that with a bit more work I could feasibly cycle to work - it's about 10 miles in a straight line, but 15 by a more reasonable route avoiding the worst roads (and the odd hill). Good exercise for me; good for the environment; saves the expense of driving to work; saves the hassle of finding somewhere to park. All good things, but it's going to be a while before I'm fit enough.

Gardening

One day it's the middle of winter, the next it's summer and the garden changes from a bleak wasteland into a mess of overgrown bushes.

We hired an electric lawn rake yesterday. It sure beats the manual method!

We've only got a tiny garden, but on the first pass, simply taking it from one end of the lawn to the other filled the collection basket. We did 4 passes in all, and could probably have done more. The front lawn still looks in pretty good shape - the back (where there's less sun and the children play) is showing obvious signs of distress.

Mel sprayed the garden furniture today. So we'll soon be able to sit oustide eating and drinking and being pestered by the local insect population.

Ringing Outing

Had an enjoyable outing yesterday, out to the Watton area. A combination of Cherry Hinton and Trumpington ringers were in attendance.

It was Amanda's first outing, and she got to ring twice at every tower - and rang very well.

First up was Watton, a beautiful ring of 6 accessed by a fairly steep ladder, with the tenor ringer standing on the trapdoor.

Next up was Caston, with a bit more character. Slightly lumpy and harder work than most modern rings, with the two trebles rung from a ledge (with part of the ledge being a flap by the door). Amanda got attacked by the 2nd rope, but recovered to ring the 3rd later.

Lunch followed at the Chequers in Thompson.

Then off to Shipdham. After a set of rounds and call changes, Ian queries whether the third was particularly deep set. Rather than a broken stay, it transpired that they had hastings stays and the dingler had fallen off.

After three rings of 6, the final tower of the day was Ashill, a nice 8. This was Amanda's first time on 8 (while we've been to Trumpington, she only rang on the back 6).

So, a good day, and thanks to Amanda and Stephen for organizing it all.