Nine Go Mad In Wiltshire

For something like 20 years public access to Stonehenge, one of Britains most famous ancient monuments, has been severely restricted due to fears of erosion, vandalism, and the possibility that someone might accidentally discover its true purpose and open a portal to another dimension and allow Unspeakable Horrors (TM) to conquer Wiltshire. Some more enlightened souls believe this may have already happened. Anyway, public access is now limited to being able to wander around a footpath a respectful distance from the stones themselves and visits by appointment only for restricted numbers of people at dawn and dusk, which do in fact allow you full access (but no climbing). Permission to conduct rituals, play drums, or dance naked are by special arrangement only.

A friend had arranged for a group of us to go to the dawn session yesterday. Of course, this being June, dawn was somewhat early and we left home shortly after three in order to allow plenty of time for the trip.

The whole trip was, I think, well worthwhile although unfortunately the sky was fairly cloudy and a thick fog had set in and shrouded Salisbury Plain so that the horizon could not be seen. Hence no dawn could really be seen. Pity.

I would be remiss, however, if I failed to confess to my own little part in the procedings when I saw a glimmer of light emerging over the brow of a fog-blurred hill. I was looking at the light for some time before concluding that it was not, in fact, the sun: the actual horizon (initially hidden by the fog) was somewhat higher than the light, the light did not change in size or position, and a quick reality check revealed that the light was actually in the carpark and not anywhere near the "heel stone", which actually marks the point of sunrise as viewed from the centre of the stones at the summer solstice.

Ho hum.

Rhubarb Rhubarb!

I got into a little bit of trouble the other day when <3 arrived home with a big bag full of rhubarb, kindly provided by some friends who are having a bit of a glut at the moment. Based on the conveniently appropriate quantity of said vegetable and the news that "there's more where that came from" I used it up as the basis for a batch of wine.

Of course, <3 had in mind a rhubarb crumble with custard, so I got a bit of a stern look when she returned home.

Luckily, a couple of days later, my sister and her family came visiting, bearing their own rhubarb, so the crumble was a possibility once more -- and very nice it was too. Now I'm looking forward to the wine, though that'll take a few months before it is ready. Our own rhubarb crop is starting to look reasonably healthy too, though we don't want to crop it too heavily this year as it is still a very young plant.

Exterminate!

Every desk should have a "buddy", a friendly being that resides there and who will listen to the main occupant's inane witterings without finding fault or falling asleep. It helps when debugging code, for instance, to have someone/thing to explain things to. Luckily I now have such a desk buddy, thanks to <3 who got all creative following an episode of Doctor Who...

It's That Time of Year

Happy Star Wars Day!

Hitch Who?

The bank holiday weekend turned out to be nice and productive, with a decent amount of gardening done, some good progress on my next assignment (using an AI package to simulate robots on a packaging production line) and some bits of culture. Sort of.

Saturday saw the return of the Daleks to Doctor Who. Or rather, a Dalek. I've heard plenty of people moaning about how much of a letdown this Dalek was, but I really enjoyed the story -- pathos, redemption and a display of awesome destructive power. Good storytelling from where I was sitting.

The other major bit of culture was the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which we went to see twice. Well, the first time we watched the Earth being destroyed, closely followed by watching the projector committing suicide. The cinema people apologised profusely and offered refunds, vouchers, or a chance to see the Heffalump Movie instead. We opted for vouchers (this is a small local cinema that is in severe danger and we don't want to lose) and came back the following day, when everything worked fine.

To digress for a moment, on the first visit we had a family sitting behind us, who had all brought along towels which they were wearing on their heads at appropriate times. The following night, they sat next to us (having recognised us) and much silliness ensued.

And the film? Well, again I've heard lots of moaning about how pants it is, how it isn't a patch on "the original" and how Ford shouldn't be American, but once again I'll put my hand up and say how much I enjoyed it. Yes, it's different, but the book, the radio series and the TV series were all very different, despite the latter two having largely the same cast. H2G2 is a movable feast of silliness and for me it worked, even though there was rather more plot in the film than I'm used to. And Ford wasn't British in the "original", he was from Betelgeuse.

Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

This gardening thing is getting to be addictive. The apple trees are budding and looking ready to produce a better than expected display of blossom. The lettuces are rapidly approaching "baby leaf" status. The onions and carrots have been steadily growing. My first leek has just poked a sprout above the level of the compost in its seed tray. We now have a few donated raspberry canes growing away in the corner of the garden. And -- most exciting to my mind -- three of our nine potato plants have managed to get sprouts above ground.

It's all good. Now I have to prepare myself for the inevitable battles with slugs and caterpillars...

Getting back on the horse

The longer I leave this, the more happens, so it's about time to bite the bullet, grab the bull by the horns and put the pedal to the metal. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

ITEM. The inlaws (ma, pa and bro) came to stay for a long weekend over Easter. Not a bad weekend, all told, and it was nice to be away from work for almost a week.

ITEM. On the first night of the visit the water stopped flowing, signalling our first crisis in the new house. Luckily pa-inlaw has experience with plumbing and to cut a long story short, much of the weekend was spent replacing the header tank in the loft which, after some 50 years of sterling service, appeared to be held together by a combination of rust and limescale.

ITEM. About a bottle and a half of the rosehip wine has now been drunk and another bottle presented to the guy who first persuaded me to try homebrewing and gave me my first couple of demijohns. While it isn't exactly Chateau Lafitte, I reckon it's a well drinkable drop of plonk, and as the first wine I finished (not counting the abortive port 10 years back and the apple wine made at school -- but that's another story), I'm taking it as great encouragement.

ITEM. A couple of weeks back, my gallon of mead remained cloudy. After coming back from a local shop with the better part of a kilo of black bananas (which cost 10p), I tried out a trick from CJJ Berry, which involves boiling up black bananas with water and using the juice as finings. A few days later and what do you know? -- the mead was almost crystal clear! Life is good.

ITEM. The latest bit of obsession is gardening for food. Having dug up large chunks of the garden, I have planted carrots, onions, lettuces and potatos, with leaks and cabbages to join them soon. In addition, we have a couple of apple trees (planted the day after we bought the house), rhubarb and a gooseberry bush plus assorted herbs around the place. Now we just have to keep weeds and pests clear, and trust to the climate.

Just When We Thought It Was Safe...

So there we were, moving towards completion of our house purchase, the contracts signed and a date set, when <3 received a phonecall from our solicitor saying that the bank wasn't happy with the arrangements for our mortgage.

This story goes back to early January, when we met with our Personal Financial Mangler and went through all the paperwork for the mortgage application and the various other things euphemistically described as Financial Products that we were buying (insurance, income protection...). Ms. Mangler set up direct debit mandates for us, filling in the appropriate forms from some plasticwear provided by <3. We signed on the assorted dotted lines, shook hands and went away, somewhat shellshocked.

Since then, we have had a series of letters from various different bank departments, each wanting us to sign a new direct debit mandate as there was, apparently, something wrong with the original forms (which, you will remember, were filled in on our behalf by an officer of the bank).

Here is where I could go off on a rant about large organisations with customer relationship management systems which are so disjointed that each of the company's many tentacles has no idea what the others are up to. I won't. Much.

Now, back to the start of the story, and it turns out that yet more DD mandates are required. <3 extended a lunch break and went to our branch of the bank, handed over completed forms and was assured that everything was now OK.

Come the day of completion, we receive a phonecall from the branch to say that everything was definitely still hunky-dory and the mortgage funds would be drawn down forthwith.

We twiddled our thumbs and drank tea until lunchtime, when the solicitor phoned to let us know that the bank's head office were still refusing to release the funds as they had not received authorisation from the branch -- and he had been unable to reach someone at the branch.

Remember what I was saying about tentacles?

So we tore into town and burst into the bank with fury before us and all hell at our backs (<3 is magnificent when enraged) and demanded to speak to someone in charge (our normal policy of being nice to the poor saps at the first point of contact had, to our shame, gone out of the window). A manager-type woman came to see us and assured us that she had just spoken with head office to authorise the payment and, yes, she would be happy to phone our solicitor to inform him of this.

Shortly thereafter, we had another call from the solicitor to confirm that the mortgage was indeed about to be drawn down, but it would be a few hours before this would be complete. As this would probably delay the completion of the house purchase until the following week, he told us that his firm would pay for the house and reimburse itself from the mortgage funds later in the day.

So, thanks to a solicitor who acted above and beyond the call of duty (and who we will happily recommend to anyone buying a house in the area) and despite shoddy service from the bank (who I doubt we will be buying further "financial services" from), we are now home owners. And thanks to the efforts of many friends over the last couple of weeks, we have decorated a couple of rooms and moved almost all our worldly belongings in.

A brief epilogue:

A couple of days ago we received another letter from the bank requesting a freshly completed direct debit mandate.

Settlings and Upheavals

Well, I've been in the new job for over two weeks now and despite a chaotic start where I had no email and nobody to show/tell me what to do for several days, things are settling down and I am slowly starting to get the hang of some parts of my job. It's a very different job to my last one, where I was out, about and busy among ordinary users, as opposed to my current situation of sitting at a desk, leaping tall filesystems with a single keystroke.

So just as that portion of my life begins to approach some form of normality, another prepares to go mental. In two days time, we complete the purchase of our new house, pick up the keys, and begin the process of moving. It all seems to have gone remarkably smoothly so far, but no doubt chaos will kick in as soon as we get there. We have many volunteers to help with decorating and shifting furniture.

Momentous Times

Just before Christmas, <3 and I decided to start looking for a house of our own, found a strong contender in Wantage, put in an offer and had it accepted. Since then we have applied for a mortgage, engaged a solicitor, and found out from the surveyor that he will recommend to our lender that they approve the mortgage. Scary stuff, but it looks like we should soon own our very own house.

In the last few months of 2004 I had no less than three job interviews in various places. The third one resulted in a job offer on the same day our offer on the house was accepted. Since then I have handed in my notice at my current employer, done assorted paperwork, and arranged a start date for the new employer. The new job is as a "Data Storage Administrator", which involves helping to look after a scientific data storage facility and doing some programming in Python -- a language that I admitted in the interview to not knowing, but which I am currently learning the basics of to give myself a headstart.

Also before Christmas I found out that I had achieved a distinction in my last OU course. This means that, as far as I can make out, all I have to do is pass my remaining three courses to get the best degree classification possible. Yay!

A momentous end to last year.