Long service award jan '11

18 Jan 2011: DNC has been at the University a VERY long time, and we were invited to a dinner and award ceremony.

The award is for 35 years, although it is technically 36 years, who is complaining. I seem to be the longest serving academic, the ones who have been longer seem to be technicians.



We had the honour of being accompanied by Tim Heath who is head of department, and by the way, lives in Musters Road, nearby.

Christmas at Norwich

24-26 Dec '10: We went to Norwich for the Xmas celebration, all meeting at Sophie's house. About 200m short of the house, there was a nasty noise from the engine, and it got us to the house, but had to be brought back on a low loader to Nottingham on Boxing day. We had to use Soph's Kia for the next two days. Henry and Carol also turned up for the weekend, and Sophie also had Rachel staying.
   Xmas morning, we went to the Cathedral because it was near our hotel, and we hoped to meet Peter Tregenza and Judy Torrington - we did meet them after the service.
  Sophie had more visitors to join us for Xmas, Keith, Helen, Mike and Steve, and later Tom Plackett and Tom the Baker... and then Ian. At one point we had three dogs in the house too!
[ I have more to write, and more pics, but will add them later.]

Gauguin Exhibition

15 Dec '10: We enjoyed a day in London, at the Tate Modern... rainy, cloudy and cold getting there, but the Tate Modern is always worth a visit - the restaurant is a great place to meet people even if you are not seeing the art exhibitions.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gauguin/
The exhibition is expertly curated, with a very clear range of Gauguin's paintings, drawings, woodcuts, pottery and sculpture, and supported by a lot of photos of contemporary Brittany, Tahiti or the Marquesas; and books, posters and letters from the time. The tour guides were adapted iPods with a good App on them that you can actually download from iTunes if you want to hear commentary on the paintings.

We also saw Ai WeiWei's  'Sunflower Seeds', the millions of tiny ceramic particles individually hand-painted by a team of chinese women. My idea is that they should allow Every visitor to have ONE seed, so part of the art idea is that we could see it go down slightly, and there would be no waste - it would be distributed to thousands, sorry, millions of homes, and continue to live somehow.

Buses
 The buses in London are really good, always friendly to wheelchair users. We only use buses as the London Tube is impossible for disabled access. Boris is mad to be trying to bring back rear entry buses, this is like 'war on the disabled'! The classic double decker bus is now the Leyland/Daimler one with front and centre entrance (and rear engine) and it has been evolving for 50 years everywhere else except London, and the proof of its excellence is that it is used in Hong Kong, home of the best public transport in the world. How can bringing back the early 20th Century 'London Routemaster' design be an improvement?
I know his motivation was to replace the Bendy Buses, but it must be said that Bendies are excellent on routes with long straight roads, and extremely good for disabled and elderly access - being a rail-less substitute for a tram. And as the standard double decker bus can only take one wheelchair or pushchair, there are often people left in the rain at bus stops because the bus already has one. This has happened to us sometimes, and today, we were the lucky ones on the bus, and a poor woman and child had to wait in the rain for the next bus to come by.
Boris's proposal for a new Routemaster will be absurdly expensive, and it still requires a side entrance for a single wheelchair, so no improvement there! Is it part of a Mayor's job to be inventing new types of bus that no other city in the world has found a necessity for? His motivation seems to be nostalgia.

Tall Building Students for lunch!

14 Dec '10: We invited the Tall Building students for lunch at Peveril. We couldn't do it earlier because the term has been so busy, and then we have some weeks of snow and icy roads making the house somewhat inaccessible.
It was a 'bring your own', so there was an interesting variety of food, and some students brought flowers - Thankyou!

One of the purposes was to discuss interseasonal storage, heat pumps, photovoltaic and underfloor heating all of which have some relevance to the high rise we are designing for New York.

Pre-Christmas at Wrington

12 December 2010: We plan to spend Christmas with Sophie in Norwich, so we did a short weekend visit to Oliver and Philippa in Wrington.

Bell's Walk is a welcoming house, not only for us but for many in Wrington	Oliver likes to make sure our tires and lights are in good condition before a long drive

Ruby is still in regular use

A night with Jools!

24 Nov '10: To the Royal Concert Hall for a wonderful evening with the big band of Jools Holland.... mostly we associate him with the small screen introducing other bands, but really, his own band is one of the most exciting you will ever hear - a genuine big band sound with great singers, pulsating excitement, and every member of the band an outstanding individual too.
  I never saw or heard Alison Moyet live before, but she now has another lifelong fan in me!

There were many songs in which the whole audience were standing up and dancing, it was very participatory. I bought a CD at the interval (right).
He is the most amazing pianist I have ever seen, his ability to allow any sound to pour out onto the keyboard, the ability to play very complex variations while looking around or aside, or singing.... there was a large screen above, so one had regular closeups of every thing that mattered.

The whole performance has to be repeated at Leicester the next day, and somewhere else the next, as the tour proceeds.... and yet somehow for Nottingham, Jools and the band brought a combination of freshness and smooth professionalism, and faultless display which made us feel that this is the first, final and bestest performance ever!

As a Postscript, I am highly complimented to discover that the official Jools Holland website master discovered the review and posted a link to this site! Thankyou very much, and good luck with the rest of the tour.

Merry Widow, by Opera North

16 Nov '10: We went to the Theatre Royal for the Opera North production of the Merry Widow, by Franz Lehar.

Unfortunately we bought these tickets a long time ago, and when Tuesday came round, we had Henry AND Sophie staying, the first time for a long time. And DNC had an invitation to be a panellist at a WB Ecohouses meeting on Renewable Technologies.
Never mind.... the Opera was great fun, and left us both humming all the way home.

More about it at:
http://www.operanorth.co.uk/events/merry-widow/