Saturday 20 December 2008

Christmas Round Robin Letter 2008

I finally got around to writing my Christmas cards today. I love getting Round Robin Christmas letters. Here is mine for this year.

2008 got off to a great start; Chris and I left the children at home and joined Chris’ sisters and brother, plus spouses, on a trip to Ecuador. We had a fantastic time with a week cruising around the Galapagos, snorkelling with sea-lions, sharks, penguins and flightless cormorants, with a few giant tortoises and iguanas on the land. Then, we had four days at Napo in the Amazon basin, where we were paddled along blackwater creeks by native Indian guides, Chris working on getting his holiday bird list up to 200 species. In between, we had several days in and around Quito, high in the Andes, where it was pleasantly cool, but where the air was so thin that several of us felt permanently queasy.


After escaping for two weeks, the rest of the year has largely revolved around the children and their activities. Rose and Alice left Selby High School in the summer with a memorable Prom night. After the formal Prom at the Parsonage Hotel in Escrick, about 70 of their friends came back to our house for an after-Prom party and sleepover. Fortunately it was one of the few dry nights in May so the party was outside and they slept in tents (if they slept at all). Chris complains that he still keeps finding beer and cider bottles in the hedge. In the same month, Lucy went on a school trip to Germany, apparently successful, other than that there is no sign that she learnt any German. Lucy and Jack also had a week at an outdoor adventure centre with School. After their GCSE exams, Rose and Alice had a camping holiday with some of their friends in Robin Hoods Bay, which involved squeezing them, their friends, and a massive amount of gear into our car because public transport was apparently going to be too complicated and they couldn’t carry everything that was “absolutely essential”. They then proceeded to get holiday/Saturday jobs. Alice has been working at Starbucks in the York Designer Outlet since July and brings free coffee beans back home every week. She has taken to making cappuccinos at home, resulting in large numbers of pans having to be cleaned after being used for frothing hot milk. But the fresh-ground coffee is good. Rose had finally settled on a job at Ralf Lauren in the York Designer Outlet after working in Levi jeans in York city Centre and – for one week only – at Mexx in the Designer Outlet. Chris is now sporting one or two items of designer clothes!


Lucy, Rose and Alice have continued with their musical theatre group and had a four night run at the Gate Theatre in Goole with a wonderful performance of their musical ‘Don’t Let the Big Man Win’ in July. After the success of the post-Prom party we followed up with the after-show party. One of the advantages of a barn and no neighbours within shouting distance is that you can host teenage parties without having them in the house and without disturbing the neighbours. Chris took the opportunity to be away; a week on Reunion Island, taking part in a conference on EU Overseas territories and climate change.

Chris and Jack are now Hull City season ticket holders. Chris queued for over 13 hours on what must have been the only sunny day this summer, to get the tickets, and returned with a very pink scalp. They are enjoying Hull’s surprisingly impressive progress in the Premier League. Jack has exchanged playing football for watching, with exercise now provided by sessions in the gym, which Lucy also does.

Since September, we have started a new morning and early evening routine. Rose and Alice are doing A levels at York College and so no longer get picked up at the house by taxi. North Yorkshire provides a minibus to York College from Wistow village so I have to get them to the village at 7.30am and pick them up at 5pm. It’s good for me because it means I can’t work for too many more hours that I’m paid for! I’m probably working fewer hours than I was, even though I’ve officially increased my hours to 90%. Alice is doing Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry A Levels and Rose is doing Maths, Chemistry, Psychology and Theatre Studies. They are both planning to continue with Science at University.

We are spending Christmas at my sister’s this year and planning a pretty uneventful two weeks. On the other hand, Rose and Alice had their 17th birthdays and have just start to learn to drive. Being driven around by them certainly gets the adrenalin rushing, especially on the icy lanes near home. The more confident they get, the scarier it becomes. I hope you have an enjoyable and restful Christmas holiday.

Monday 15 December 2008

Haddon Hall at Christmas


After last years very successful trip to Chatsworth at Christmas we made a return visit to Derbyshire and visited Haddon Hall.

Haddon Hall is both older and smaller than Chatsworth, dating from 11th Century [wikipedia]. In keeping with its age the Christmas decorations were almost all winter evergreens; holly, ivy and fir, plus lots of oranges studded with cloves. I particularly enjoyed the kitchens where they were selling mulled wine and the long gallery which was arranged for a 1930s family Christmas.

We had Christmas lunch in the restaurant and then spent a hour or so shopping in Bakewell.

Friday 31 October 2008

Coldest Week in Blackpool Ever

I was unbelievably cold. I should have taken some hot water bottles!

Despite the cold we had a great week in Blackpool. We stayed at the Haven Holidays caravan park in Fleetwood, Cala Gran. It was the last week of the season for Cala Gran and the last week for the illuminations. I love returning to the Blackpool illuminations. Every time I see them it takes me back to the very first time I went with my parents (1969?). I can still remember how magical it was. My children are a bit older, and a lot less easy to impress but they do like the Pleasure Beach.

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Governors' Award Evening, Selby Abbey

Jack gained his much deserved Governors' award for 100% attendance this evening. The service was in Selby Abbey. He managed to get through last year without missing a day of school. Quite an achievement. He's now aiming to do the same this year. He'd also like to get a subject award too. He has his sights set on History. Time will tell.[School web page]

Sunday 14 September 2008

Categories of complaint


 Laurie Taylor reviews the book Complaint by Julian Baggini in the Times Higher this week. The book, an analysis of complaint distinguishes between the following categories of complaint

“Impossible Complaints,Contradictory Complaints, Self-defeating Complaints, Nostalgic and Luddite Complaints, Paranoid Complaints, Conformist Complaints and Empty Complaints.”

I’m contemplating putting up a notice next to my desk:
We welcome constructive complaints but if your complaint falls into one of the following categories we are unlikely to be able to resolve it.
To be fair I mainly get grumbles rather than full scale complaints. At the moment these tend to be about on-line timetables, room allocations, blackboard, the portal (from people who haven’t selected the current academic year on their ‘my modules’ page) and the faculty intranet.

Saturday 23 August 2008

Another book of Mitford Letters

I've been an avid reader of the books and letters of the Mitford sisters for years so I was very pleased to see the article about another book of letters in the Times Magazine today. There are still tickets left for the book launch at Chatsworth on September 1st. I'm very tempted to go:
    "Sir Tom Stoppard in conversation with Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Charlotte Moseley"
Unfortunately  I'm supposed to be going on a work awayday to discuss learning and teaching. I'll have to make do with putting the book on my Amazon wishlist. 

Wednesday 16 April 2008

How much does an Aga cost to run?


According to Valley Girl, Jane Wheatley in The Times on Saturday Magazine the average consumption of an oil fired Aga is 60 litres a week
Jane writes

"All over the country people are facing up to the hideous cost of running their Agas. "We should really get rid of ours," my friend Mark said the other day, "but how will we be middle class then?" The Times 12 April 2008
I have just been out to our oil tank to work out how much oil we've used since our last delivery on 11th February. The Aga has used 376 litres in 8 weeks so that is an average of 47 litres a week. My last oil delivery was 40p per litre so its costing me £18.80 a week to run the Aga. Thats all our cooking, hot water and, of course, drying the washing. Is this reasonable?

I can't bring myself to work out if I'd save anything by having an electric cooker, tumbler dryer and used the immersion heater for water because I wouldn't want to give up my Aga. I'm sure that the cost of replacing the Aga with a cooker, clothes dryer and water heater would negate any saving in running costs. Of course if we ever get around to installing a wind turbine to generate electricity it may be worth making the swop.

Incidentally, we have used 867 litres of oil since 11th February for the central heating! That is costing us an average of £43.35 a week. Roll on the summer........although the Aga uses oil all year round we can usually manage without the central heating for 4-5 months.

Monday 14 April 2008

Ness Gardens - Happy memories

When I got home from work this evening the postman had delivered a copy of Insight, the University of Liverpool alumni magazine. Being 'in the business' I like to look through this and CAM the alumni magazine from the University of Cambridge to keep up with what is going on and to spot any of my contempories who may be mentioned.

The current edition of Insight has a two page article on Ness Gardens with an invitation to anyone who carried out research at Ness Gardens to send in their memories and photos.

All my photos are slides and, when I searched them out this evening they were still sellotaped into their boxes since the last time we moved (or maybe the time before that) but I've just spent a happy hour going through them. UnfortunatelyI can't find the bit that came with my scanner that can be used for scanning slides.

I did my PhD research at Ness Gardens from 1982-85 and was there during the restoration of the Gardens under the Director Ken Hulme. I remember the opening of the Conservatory in 1984 and the excellent departmental garden parties every summer. I keep in touch with a few of the other PhD students who worked at Ness at the same time; Dave Watson, Margaret Hill and Jill Thompson.

Friday 14 March 2008

Mumsnet - not just for new mums

I was reading an article in The Times today 'Mumsnet parenting advice expands to books' about the "addictive world of Mumsnet". Although I'd read about Mumsnet before I had always imagine it was for pre- and post-natal mums to swop information about buggies and breastfeeding - things I long ago lost interest in.

Having logged in I found that there are discussion threads for parents of teens, larger families, multiples and secondary schools. I haven't felt the need to start a new discussion (yet) but I've posted my thoughts on the state of teenagers bedrooms, how often I change the sheets on the children's beds and whether or not to allow boyfriends to sleep over. Its a great place to find out what other parents put up with, worry about and celebrate. I'd recommend it.

www.mumsnet.com

Tuesday 8 January 2008

Quito



After 27 hours of travelling we arrived at the Hotel Patio Andaluz at 10am this morning. The hotel is in the old city of Quito and is one block from the Presidents Palace and the central square. The hotel is an old colonial building with internal squares and balconies. Tomorrow Chris and I are going to a forest nature reserve at Pasochoa. We have booked a taxi to pick us up at 6am because we know we will be awake well before that. On Wednesday we fly to the Galapogos to pick up the yacht Diamante (and its crewe) for a week.

Quito is a big city with over 2million occupants. It is the second highest capital city (2850m) after Lima and it is 15 miles south of the equator. It is lovely to be back in a south/central American city. It reminds us of San Jose in Costa Rica where we spent so much time in the 80´s.