After the Lord Mayor's Show

2 weeks (so I am told - I missed most of the first week being away on holiday of course) of fantastic Olympic Games. Smooth running, well organised, a real triumph. The closing ceremony a masterpiece of organisation and a spectacular show by the Chinese, just like the Opening ceremony had been. A real class act. What does London offer in response? Leona Lewis. I am already embarassed for my city. They do all that amazing stuff with a cast of thousands and the best we can do is Leona Lewis. I mean, she's OK, but when push comes to shove she's not actually that good. Half the time she's unintelligible - has nobody taught her about enunciation and how to breathe? The rest of the time she's nasal. But she's the popular choice so she must be brilliant. Hmp. If that's the best we can do then we might as well all crawl into a hole and fill it in afterwards. Cheap and tacky is what I thought our presentation was and I bet I wasn't the only one.

One ray of hope. They haven't finalised anything yet. Maybe Boris Johnson can knock some sense into the organisers. Popular with the UK public isn't going to be good enough. The Olympics is about celebrating the sporting elite. Let's have a bit of elitsim in the opening and closing ceremonies as well. We can "do" culture. The UK has some of the best choirs (ask any Welsh person) the best singers (Classical and Jazz as well as Pop) the best orchestras in the world (the BBC has two of them all by itself), let's hope that some of the best this country can produce is invited to participate rather than the mediocre display we saw a few days ago.

If we are going to celebrate being British and London and the whole thing then let's do it properly. London is about more than wet weather and umbrellas (what a cliche) and jive or hip hop and David Beckham kicking a ball off the top of a tourist bus. London has history, it has art and music and literature produced by people who write on paper and not on walls let's use some of that.

Date posted: 26 Aug 2008

Back home

We finally got home a couple of days ago. While we were away I drove over 900 miles, which was quite scary. Luckily the fuel economy wasn't too bad, average was 65 mpg, which is lower than usual but then I had a top box and a full car to contend with. It took 2 tanks full of diesel to get us there and back. Comparing that to the cost of doing everything by public transport (if public transport exists for where you want to go) it's pretty good going. That's without working out how to transport sufficient camping equipment for 3 people for a week as well.

Of course it rained every day we were away, and most nights as well. The campsite was muddy all the time we were there. The first two nights we hardly got any sleep (though probably more than we thought) because of the noise of the rain and the wind. I say "we" but that's me and No. 1 son. No. 2 son slept though the whole thing. After that the weather calmed down a bit and there was less rain and more sleeping going on, but it never got really hot. This was probably a good thing.

We hardly went into any tourist type shops, though we visited several tourist areas - in the Lake District how can you not? We were with my mother, sister and brother-in-law and their son most of the time. We don't see my sister and her family very much as they live so far away so it was good to be able to spend time with them.

Highlights of the trip for the boys were visiting a cave somewhere between Caton and Dent and our day round WIndermere when we visited Bowness and fed the birds and then walked up Gommer's How. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, but I did a bit, then the next bit and then the next bit and then I was there. I need to get more exercise! The boys are already talking about a "next time" and I'm sure there will be one, though it would be nice not to have to stomp everywhere in wellies and waterproofs.

The whole camping experience was better than I expected, having known in advance that it was going to rain I thought we would be colder and damper. The campsite we stayed on was on a working organic farm. Only basic facilities were available and that was fine. We didn't want to go to one of the bigger all singing, all dancing campsites - there didn't seem to be much point. Of course they are also much more expensive, which might have had something to do with it. We had read the reviews of the campsite beforehand and followed the advice. We pitched with the back of the tent close to the hedge with the prevailing wind behind us. Not that we could have determined the prevailing wind when we arrived since it was quite still. We didn't get the views down Morecombe Bay but we did get the views up the valley and into the Lake District.

Lessons learned?

• My car certainly isn't big enough for 4 people plus their luggage and camping gear. We had my mother with us on the way home and that made the car seriously loaded. Not dangerously so (I did the calculations before we left) but not far short. We travelled back relatively slowly, 60mph or less down the M6 and A14. It took a long while, but we made it.
• Motorway service stations are ruinously expensive. I knew that, but we had to stop for coffee (next time remember to take a flask!) a couple of times.
• The boys can be together without fighting and arguing all the time - which I was seriously beginning to doubt before we went.
• We need a brighter lamp for the evenings - torches are OK but too wobbly about to use comfortably to read by in the tent.
• We need a stand so that next time we can get one of those portable barbeque things. Lots of people had them on site but you have to keep them off the grass.

Since we got back we have been remarkably idle. Of course having the Olympics on every morning doesn't help. More about that another time. The boys have been pottering around doing a bit of this and a bit of that. They went to the cinema a couple of times and have had friends round to play. No.1 son and I have an appointment with the BBC on Monday (Bank Holiday) to play in the Proms Family Orchestra. We are looking forward to that.

Before we went away I recall mumbling something about Russian Imperilalism. I wonder just how many Hungarians are remembering when the Russians sent "peacekeepers@quot; to their country. It took a while to get rid of them if I recall. Looks like Georgia is beginning to have a similar problem. What else could we expect with Puppetmaster Putin's attitude. I just can't work out if he's planning to become King or President for life (and don't tell me the Constitution doesn't allow it - they can be changed). Either way I'm glad we live a way distant from Russia and don't depend on them for oil or gas supplies. If I was Polish I wouldn't be sleeping well in my bed.

Date posted: 20 Aug 2008

The Mad Englishwoman is on holiday

If you see a slightly harassed-looking, "lightly plump" greying woman with two (almost) teenage sons wandering round the English Lake District it might be me! We are camping - regardless of the weather!

I'll be back after the 18th August.

Before I go though, one phrase comes to mind "Russian Imperialism" I wonder how many of the old "slave" states they want back. I hope there's still an independent Georgia when I get home, but somehow I don't feel very confident of that.

Date posted: 10 Aug 2008

Bletchley Park

We are just back from a couple of days spent visiting Bletchley Park. This is the place where many of the German codes of World War 2 were broken. The work there was very important and very secret and it wasn't until relatively recently that anybody other than those who worked there actually knew about it.

It's a fascinating place crammed with all sorts of kit and memorabilia. We spent an afternoon and a morning there (not on the same day) and probably saw less than half the collection. It literally has something for everybody. The National Museum of Computing is housed there, and apart from the codebreaking exhibitions, there is a collection of vintage vehicles, an exhibition relating to Winston Churchill, another relating to Ian Fleming, a toy museum a model railway and a ton of other interesting stuff. The grounds are pleasant, with a lake and fountain, and the house is interesting in itself as an example of different architectural styles. Of course we picked the wrong day to go. The night before we left we discovered that Bletchley Park was closed until 2pm so our planned all day from 10am visit was blown out of the water. We did something else in the morning and arrived at the Park at about 2 minutes past 2pm. The reason for the closure was that Prince Charles was making a visit in the morning. Shame, he missed meeting us! By all accounts he had an interesting and enjoyable time, but nobody at the Park knew about it much before the event. On the way round the M25 in the car we heard a piece on BBC radion 4 about the Park and the dire state some of the buildings had fallen into. It was no exaggeration. The huts are in a really bad state of repair and some of them appear to me to be almost beyond rescue. One had been covered with plastic sheeting, others had holes in and almost all of them had rotten window frames and peeling paint. Why Bletchley Park isn't part of the Imperial War Museum or doesn't have official funding I don't know, but it needs to be properly looked after before it's too late.

Date posted: 26 Jul 2008

Pay Attention Woman!

Before we went away I started knitting a cape. I know it's not exactly the weather for that sort of clothing but I wanted to do something and I had the yarn and the pattern so away I went. Using my knitting machine it didn't take long, four pieces finished in a couple of days. 2 fronts (left and right) and 2 backs (left and right). Then I came to the joining together on the machine. This involved a technique called grafting whereby you leave the stitches to be grafted open (knit a few rows on waste yarn). The open stitches of the pieces to be joined are then put back onto the machine with the two pieces right sides together and another row is knitted which joins them in an almost invisible seam. Then you cast off as normal. Hmp. In the past I have been known to put the pieces the wrong way round so they are wrong sides together, I have been known to put the pieces one right side out and one wrong side out, but I hadn't ever, before today, managed to join the two back pieces together at the shoulder. I said a few things. I managed to get the two pieces separated OK but one of them started to unravel. In a simple stocking stitch pattern I might have been able to retrieve it but this was a fairly complicated tuck stitch and by the time I had caught up with the dropped stitches they were so far gone that it would probably have taken longer to fix than to re-knit. Tomorrow I am out for the day - guess what I will be doing on Monday?

The moral of this story is "Don't talk to people when doing anything that requires your attention!"

Date posted: 26 Jul 2008

Best Laid Plans

This weekend didn't quite go according to plan. Not that we are great for planning round here anyway, but this weekend we had definite plans. They didn't exactly come to fruition.

On Friday we had only one plan for the weekend. No1. son and I were going to the Proms Folk Day on Sunday as we were accepted for the orchestra again this year. We didn't get there. Long(ish) story. Last weekend No.1 son had a mishap on his bike and removed a quantity of skin from the side of his calf. By Thursday it was quite clearly infected so on Friday I yanked him in to see the Doctor. Yep. It's infected, take these antibiotics come back if it doesn't get better in a week.

So on Saturday we do this and that, the usual domestic round of laundry, cooking, cleaning and so on. No.1 son went to the cinema with his friends to see "Hancock" rather than go an play tennis. On the way there on his bike his foot slips off the pedal and the pedal whacks him on the leg - guess where! He came home with his sock (my sock actually - he takes almost the same size shoe as I do and so scrounges my socks when he can't find any of his own) covered in blood and gunge. At least the gunge was out of the thing on his leg. He's all scabby but otherwise his leg is getting better.

We did some preparation for out outing. No. 2 son was staying at home with Himself. They had things to do - there was talk of having a friend over to play and revision for a test on Tuesday. So at 6:30 on Sunday morning we were all up so that No. 1 son and I could leave at 7:30 get to where we were going in London by 9:30ish to start rehearsals by 10am. At 6:45 No. 1 son disappeared into the bathroom and didn't come out. The world was falling out of his bottom. When we investigated further it seems that this is a known but not very common side-effect of the antibiotics he is taking. He came out of the bathroom at about 7am and was back in my 7:15. Which was when I decided we weren't going to London. It's a 2 hour drive (probably a bit less that early on a Sunday am) and no easy access to toilets on the way. Also, with a live performance in Kensington Gardens at lunchtime, he's not going to be able to get off the stage in a hurry if he needs to. So we stayed home.

At lunchtime we were thinking about going to see Prince Caspian at our local cinema. No. 2 son was wearing the same scruffy clothes he was wearing yesterday and I told him to get changed, but he decided he couldn't get changed because he hadn't got any clean clothes and it was all my fault! Except there were clean clothes in his room. I knew this because I put them there on Friday when he was out - and he would have had to move them off his bed before he went to bed. So he knew it too. Anyway after a few words here and there No. 2 son lost it big time and was throwing a major strop. No. 1 son edged past him to get his jacket and No. 2 son was yelling that No. 1 son had deliberately hurt his foot (No. 2 son had an accident on Thursday and twisted his foot, it's sore but no major damage - and No. 2 son has been known to forget which foot has been hurt and limp on the wrong foot so we aren't taking a lot of notice). I saw what happened and nothing came into contact with No. 2 son's foot. Long story short, No. 2 son is banished to his room and I refuse to take either of them to see "Prince Caspian". In any case I can't somehow get excited about this new film. "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" was OK but not as good as I had hoped. Not as bad as I had feared either, but it didn't have me beating a path to the cinema doors to see "Prince Caspian".

Later on No. 1 son and I went to see Wall-e, which was good fun. No. 1 son managed to get through with only 1 dash out. We didn't tell No. 2 son we were going. He was grounded so there was no way he was going anywhere and had shut himself up in his room. He was pretty fed up that we went but accepted that throwing a major strop like that was a good enough reason for not taking him. His blood sugar was quite high and we know he's what is called an "angry hyper" but he must learn to control it better (temper and blood sugar both).

We were going to have a barbeque for dinner. It was quite nice outside when No. 1 son lit it, but by the time it got going enough to cook on, clouds had come over and the wind was up so it wasn't all that great. We decided that instead of eating outside we'd eat inside. That decision was vindicated when it started to rain! No. 2 son and I were out there rescuing burgers (home made) and chicken drumsticks in the rain. Cooked indoors as well as ate indoors.

Only three more days at school for the boys, though quite a lot of schools seem to be finished already. Somehow, with No. 1 son and No. 2 son spending half their time bickering and half their time being friends I'm not quite looking forward to the school holidays as much as I should. I will be here with them all of the time, at least Himself gets to go back to work after the first couple of weeks!

Date posted: 21 Jul 2008

That's an Ugly Car!

I saw a white Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn the other day. That's got to be the ugliest car they ever produced. It looks like a badly-made Volvo. Not only that, it was a white one but it had a gold coloured Spirit of Ecstasy on the front. Yuk.

Date posted: 18 Jul 2008