Bella and the Norwich 12: Assembly House

Bella was so interested in the Assembly House that she turned herself right round so all  you can see is her right ear and the back of her head!

Bella and The Norwich 12: Bonus photo

This is Cow Tower, part of the medieval defenses around Norwich and Bella likes it by the look of it. It is not one of the Norwich 12 but is an impressive feature of the excellent riverside walk.

Bella and the Norwich 12: The Cathedral

You can just about see the Catherdal behind us!

Bell and the Norwich 12: The Forum

Bella's keen to be going but a decent shot of The Forum!  The Forum is a subject of debate in the City with the range of opinions typical of those generated by modern architecture.  

For me - I LOVE IT.

Bella and the Norwich 12: City Hall

A lovely morning and Bella was being very cooperative.  I managed to get both of us and most of the City Hall.  Some of the other photos will not be as successful.

Bella and the Norwich 12: Introduction

Every morning Bella and I drop LJ in the city, park in one of the many city centre car parks and take a walk. Norwich is a beautiful city to walk through and we both have great fun: Bella with her nose to the ground and me with my nose a little higher. We vary our routes and over the course of a few days we pass by all of the 12 iconic buildings known as the Norwich 12 so we decided to record our walks by taking our photos in front of these wonderful landmarks and publishing the results here.

The pictures will not be the highest quality and occasionally Bella and I will have creative differences - she would rather be walking than having her picture taken - but we will be able to prove that Bella is gorgeous, Norwich is beautiful and I need to moisturise.

Cross country running? I can't be serious!

One of my achievements at CNS was not coming last in the first form cross country - I was 90th out if 91 - so why do I now have this urge to get my trainers on and head off to the nearest copse across some of the thickest mud since Monty Python and the Holy Grail? I can't really rationalise it beyond the attraction of the autumn colours and the desire to do as much active stuff as I can while the body still permits but it is real and I think I may have to do something about it.

Predictable outcome for a Dice-K start

I sort of expected to go all the way after we got the four run start. We need to get used to that with Dice-K on the mound. He certainly makes things interesting and we probably have to get used to his style of pitching. Bottom line - he gets results.

I bet McCain wishes he'd never said this

http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2008/09/20/why-mccain-should-lose-in-a-single-sentence/

Ice cream addict

II was given this very attractive cap for my loyalty and custom at Desideri gelateria in Montecatini. As you can see I was very pleased! We did go there a lot but the ice cream was just too good to miss. My favourite was a combination of yoghurt and Malaga. LJ preferred Gianduia, Limone and Panna Montata.

Central heating fun!

I spent the morning helping Arthur fit a new valve thingy. We had sieves full of gunge, a hosepipe, a very attractive fountain effect (attractive in the right place), damp carpet and plenty of frustrated impotence but it all ended up ok and we are set for the winter.

It;s been a while

Three months since my last post and a lot has happened. We've completed the Three Peaks Challenge, LJ has had her big birthday and I've got my head together about being a pensioner so it's time to start again.

Why are we surprised?

The signs that Burma is run by a repressive regime are easy to find and well reported so why do we think that anything changes when a cyclone arrives? The savage attacks on the monks and other protesters last year were a pretty clear example of what the military government thinks about it's own people so a few hundred thousand deaths is unlikely to give the leadership many sleepless nights.

The following is an extract from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society's report on internet censorship in Burma (2005) and gives a flavour of the paranoia of the regime.

"Internet access is costly and the state uses software-based filtering techniques to limit significantly the materials Burma's citizens can access on-line. Most dial-up Internet accounts provide access only to the limited Myanmar Internet, not to the global network that most people around the world can access. The state maintains the capability to conduct surveillance of communication methods such as e-mail, and to block users from viewing Web sites of political opposition groups, organizations working for democratic change in Burma, and pornographic material. As compared to states elsewhere around the world, Burma's censorship regime is among the most extensive."

What a week!

Last week we had six wonderful days in the Lake District to get some walking in and what a brilliant time we had.

That's the thing about mountain weather: it's unpredictable. We started all the walks in good conditions and by the time we reached the top we were in cloud or rain or hail or a thunderstorm. And then the weather clears and it's all worth it. The next pics are the same peaks on the same days, taken minutes later.

No strenuous exercise said the doctor

The doctor at the hospital said no strenuous exercise for four to six weeks the day before I was off to the Lake District for a week of fell walking. Bad timing.

It started with a wart on my knee and when the nurse had diagnosed that I stood up, and in true Carry On fashion reached for my belt and said "while I'm here there's something else I'd like to show you". She looked suitably horrified until I explained that I had a birthmark where SPF 15 isn't necessary and it had changed a bit in the last few weeks. She suggests that a viewing by a doctor would be best so off I go to see the GP and he takes one look and says I need to go to the hospital asap. Fair enough I say and am impressed with the efficiency of the good old NHS. I start to think a bit more about this speed and efficiency when the letter confirming my "emergency appointment" arrives. Hmm, that's the first time those words have been used. I arrive at the hospital on time and within an hour I've been examined, photographed and had the birthmark and associated extension removed for tests. Yes, photographed. There I am, in a photographer's studio, trousers and pants round my ankles with the full range of lights and equipment aimed at my groin making conversation with the photographer about anything but the focus of his lens. All in a day's work for him but altogether surreal for me.

I was on my way back to the car when it dawned on me what I had said to the doctor. "When can I start strenuous exercise?" I was thinking of any impact on the training for the Three Peaks Challenge but bearing in mind where he was operating I imagine he thought I meant something else. Ooops!

Time for a catch up

The loaf was very good and there was only enough left for toast for LJ the next morning.



Michael had his first round of golf on a full course on Friday and I give myself about six months before he's giving me shots. Despite the biting wind it was great fun and, hopefully, the start of a regular event.



I am on target to have my weight start with a 13 by the time we hit the Lake District for more training on the way to the Three Peaks Challenge. That means half a pound so it's down to pretty much down to touching distance ounces Only three months to go before the challenge - not much time at all really.

Can you smell it?

I've just baked a loaf and it smells gorgeous. Can I wait until LJ gets home from Scouts before getting stuck in?

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press

The BBC iPlayer is a marvellous thing and has allowed me to watch Stephen Fry telling the story of Gutenberg's press which I missed when it was first broadcast on Monday. I know there are other ways of getting to see it through a range of sources, more or less legal and moral, but the iPlayer is easy to use and does as much as I need.

The programme follows the model of providing a history lesson while a bunch of eccentric experts attempt to recreate the subject using traditional techniques. The press that is, not Stephen Fry. This, in itself, is interesting enough but the best thing about the programme, and the element that is Stephen Fry at his best, is the reminder of the transformational impact the press and the introduction of movable type printing had on European civilisation. All that and some wonderful camera work, particularly in Strasbourg.

Time for a cup of tea before I start painting the utility room.

A good day

Last Friday I met with some of my friends from work to mark my leaving with a few cold drinks. After 32 years at the same place my head has been in a bit of a whirl with all the things going on and I was right to leave it for a couple of weeks before meeting up to celebrate. Everybody was very kind and wished me well for the future and I can think of worse things to do on a Friday afternoon than sitting in the sunshine with good friends and good beer.

Jif and the also rans

It all started so well as you can see from the picture. We look a perfect example of confident athleticism and I had the comedy trousers on to celebrate the first event of the spring. Unfortunately they are sturdy, woollen and unforgiving so by the end of the day the inside of my thighs were redder than Max Mosley's cheeks (his face I mean - behave!).


Well that's my excuse taken care of but what Patrick and Craig were up to is anyone's guess. Is Craig finding it so tough giving up the ciggies that he has to put both morning and afternoon drives on the 17th by the bonfire to get a quick fix of smoke?

That left Jif to salvage some pride for the team and his well deserved third place was all the more creditable as he spent most of the round waiting for the rest of us to return, cursing and moss covered, to the fairways.

The final comment on the golf has to be Craig's splendid Eagle on the 16th in the afternoon. No fluke: the shot was imagined, planned and executed to perfection.

Tea anyone?

After a very pleasant long weekend in Yorkshire I suppose I need to get used to my new routine which I plan to be a lack of routine as much as possible.

It helps to avoid a pattern to the day when the car gets a puncture, LJ forgets a dental appointment and I need to get a lump on my knee sorted out. It turns out to be a wart. How very reassuring and disappointing at the same time

I am writing this while drinking white tea I found at Imperial Teas in Lincoln and it's gorgeous. I bought it as an experiment and I got to the end of Tuesday before I had my first coffee of the week. That's a bit of an event for me and not something I had consciously attempted or expected from my tea upgrade but the tea is so good I forgot to make coffee and didn't miss it. I've been using the standard, supermarket green teas and other herbal teas in tea bag form for a few months now and I am very impressed with the improved quality of my new find which is in loose form.

I'm quite particular about the type of coffee I drink and I've a feeling I'm about to develop into a tea snob. In a non-routine way of course.

Let's hope it's an omen

The weather yesterday was perfect. A glorious day and I ate a leek and bacon tart sitting in the sunshine on a bench at Southwold before walking along the beach to the harbour. I bought some sea bass fillets and watched a lark rising from the marshes until it was out of sight and only it's song remained. Back home to prepare my first tarte au citron before a trip to the Village Inn where Soupy had arranged for a bottle of Champagne to be waiting for us.

I think I'm going to like life after Aviva.

Change of weather, change of direction

One week after a snowbound Easter and I've been cutting the grass in a tee-shirt. It really does feel like Spring and I feel refreshed and ready for my last day as an Aviva employee. I'll be in and out with as much time as it takes to hand over my id pass and the keys to the cupboard where I've stored a collection of kit I've collected from other members of the escape committee.

I know I've made the right decision to leave but I was not looking forward to the last month and Friday afternoon was pretty awful. I didn't think such practical things as logging off the e-mail system for the last time would seem so significant but I was pretty choked while I was doing that and I'm glad there was nobody about looking for a chat as I wasn't in a fit state for the routine "what are you doing this weekend?" conversation, however well meaning.

Tomorrow will be different. I've got a tarte au citron to make, fish to buy and jobs to apply for so with the emotion out of the way I can dash into the building, conclude the formalities and crack on with the rest of my life.

Chilly start to my last week

One more week to go and I have a series of people to take through the exit process. It's a shame it's so cold in the office and I'm writing this wearing a woolly hat. Seriously! Our bonuses were cut by 25% to reflect poor business performance and it looks like they've done the same with the heating.

Like most large organisations we have turned office moves into an art form over the last few years and by amazing coincidence the merry-go-round has put me back at the same location where I started my career over 32 years ago. The building is not the same one I started in as that had been condemned even before I moved in and we had rats in the filing room. It was soon demolished to make way for the one I'm now in and this one is being emptied as it is no longer needed so perhaps that's why there's no heating: they don't realise there are some stragglers still here.

One way or another I'm not having any second thoughts about leaving.

Snow stops Easter Egg Hunt? I don't think so!

It'll take more than a little snow to stop the family scouring the garden for the hidden Easter Eggs. I was happy to stay inside with the camera but the seasoned chocaholics were out there with their usual tenacity.

Ozarks, what have you done?

A long while ago I was into the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Time passed and I started listening to other music but I still kept the records until last week when I hired a skip and cleared out the garage and the last 32 years of my working life as I prepare for life outside NU. Out went the last remnants of the record collection, including the Ozarks because I thought that it would be easy enough to download the key tracks as I've already done with Russ Ballard etc. But this morning I downloaded "It'll shine when it shines" from the greates hits collection on iTunes and it's not the original version. It's been re-recorded with all the worst aspects of formula country music and it is truly sad. The whole point of that track is summarised in the line "You might think I'm wasting time but I'm just a good old boy that's learned to wait" and it needs an understated, laconic delivery so why the whining harmonica and fairground guitar?

Luckily the original albums have been released on CD so now I have to find them.

Complexity at LSE

I was looking through some old links on IE this morning and found one for ICoSS. It was a complexity research programme that had some funding from NU Life although I could never find anyone to admit to being responsible within NU so I gave up and looked elsewhere. I followed the link again today, for no particular reason, and ended up here.

Plenty of material to get stuck into and the first one I've dipped into is rewarding enough to encurage me to go further.

Parents and kids

Next week my Sister and Brother-in-law, Sally and Raymond, celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary on the same day as their son, Matt, celebrates his 21st birthday. I was chatting about this with a colleague who is married but not yet a father. His reaction was that it was a shame they had to share their big day with another person's celebration. That reaction surprised me because as a parent I think it would be completely marvellous to share such major milestones with your child.

Yet another way in which parenthood completely changes your perspective.

I wonder how Matt feels about sharing his big day with his parents?

First attempt with scanning negatives

I've no idea where I took this photo or who the cats belonged to but you just can't beat a picture of kittens to put a smile on your face. By the look of other pictures on the negative they must be about 30 years old.

The process of scanning and editing the picture was pretty simple and I think I can get a much better quality result if I play with the various settings.

Time to try a few things

It's taken me a long while to start blogging and I had this one set up a couple of months before I started doing anything with it. But now I'm up and running I'm getting lots of ideas about how I can improve the layout, include interesting items, categorise the links and all that sort of thing. This is really going to test my HTML skills, even if I reuse stuff from other people but it'll be fun.

I've noticed that I like blogs with pictures but I've put none here yet. I've just heard that you can get reasonable results by scanning old black and white negatives so I may start my photo publishing with an experiment with one of those. I used to develop and print my own black and white photos so I've got loads and as I stopped about 25 years ago there will be some dodgy material and some I've completely forgotten about. At least I'll be safely behind the camera.

Miliband -v- Hague

The Radio 4 Today programme main feature for this morning was a head to head between David Miliband and William Hague on the subject of the EU treaty referendum (or lack of one). I am normally a big fan of William Hague's performances in these set piece confontations but he came off second best today. You would expect a Tory spokesman to be very well rehearsed on the subject of Euro bashing, they've had so much practice, but Miliband was effective in making the case that this is a revising treaty and not the full constitution that was originally proposed but was rejected by the French and Dutch before the rest of us could have a vote. Shame on them and a very nice Frenchman apologised to me that they hadn't meant to vote against it. They used their referendum to have a go at Chirac and the rejection of the EU constitution was a bit of collateral damage!

Mobile blog test

I thought i'd try out mobile blogging.

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I just don't get it.

I turned up for golf yesterday feeling as well as I have for months, if not years. I felt strong, fit, healthy, mentally alert and put on the most embarassing display of rubbish golf I can remember. Why does that happen? How does that happen? I suppose the search for those answers will keep me amused for a while and I think I need to read Hank Haney again. That will be four times but Hank has come through for me in the past so I'll put my faith in him once more.

PS No images of Les to blame for the poor play.

I can't get you out of my head

We were into the second hour of a meeting with a software supplier about collaboration tools when Mike said that their products were developed by some amazing guys based on Australia's Gold Coast. Not only that but the atmosphere in their office was so relaxed that they wore thongs! NO NO NO! That is not a picture I ever want in my mind but it was too late. Phil, an Aussie, said "you call them flip-flops" but an image of the archetypal Australian male, Sir Les Patterson, wearing far too little down under kept floating into my head. That was two days ago and it is still happening. I am putting a lot of faith in my round of golf tomorrow morning and if my putting is up to it's normal standard I'll have far too much on my mind to worry about Les and his nasties.

What I'll miss the most

We had a meeting of the 1-2-many club yesterday lunchtime and it brought home to me how much I'm going to miss the companionship of my colleagues when I leave at the end of March. I say companionship rarther than friendship because I know we shall remain friends but there will not be the easy familiarity that develops when you work together.

Interesting comment on sub prime disaster

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/02/19/Black-Scholes-Pricing-Model/?PMID=#

Earthquake in England, snow in New England

So not only am I woken up by an earthquake http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm
but I have to listen to reports of record snowfall in New England on the BBC World Service as I try to get back to sleep. Looks like dreaming of skiing is as close as I'll get this season.

Not long now

Not much more than a month to go before I leave the comapny I have worked for since leaving school and that's over 32 years. I thought it would be tougher to get used to than it is but as the weeks pass and I explore what to do next I am looking forward with more excitement than apprehension.

We'll see if that is still the case at the end of March.