Sing Like an Angel

So on Friday we tried out Didcot's new and shiney Cornerstone arts centre, with its oh-so-interesting orange and grey boxy architecture (it's tempting to refer to it as EasyArts). It's actually quite a nice venue and really ups Didcot as a place to go, particularly given that they have booked some great acts for their first season, several of which we would like to get to. In the end the one act we were able to go to was Mitch Benn star of... well, mostly star of assorted radio shows.

We saw Mitch a few years ago, so knew pretty much what to expect and were not disappointed as he and his band gave us a great evening of music and laughs (and taking the in-laws along, we have a couple of new converts too). It was especially interesting to find that our previous Mitch Benn gig was referred to on several occasions, leaving us to mutter "We were there!" to each other. Clearly it was a seminal evening!

Cafe Culture

I've had something stewing in my head for months about taking a small child to cafes and restaurants for food or snacks. This happens quite regularly for both myself and <3 so we seem to be building up a fair bit of experience.

Very often we grab a snack or a meal at a supermarket cafe, generally being convenient, decent value, and having the "right" facilities (primarily good baby changing spaces). Our experience is mostly with Tesco and Sainsbury's, and some thoughts come to mind...

• In one of the Sainsbury's stores we go to, the till service is usually slow due to a poorly thought out workflow (one person takes money and makes coffee, making for huge queues at busy times).
• Our other usual Sainsbury's has self-service drinks, which speeds things up, but usually has a very limited selection of "kiddie meals" available, even though the full range is still displayed on the menu boards. This can lead to frustration, but at least the Youngling isn't old enough to choose her own meals.
• Most Tesco cafes used to have a fantastic system where most adult meals were available in mini-portions, so we weren't limited to the usual fish fingers or chicken nugget child options. Unfortunately, over the last year or so, Tesco have been replacing their in-house cafes with Costa Coffee franchises, which means nice but pricey coffee and far less child-friendly.

It must be said that most motorway service stations are pretty darn good for dealing with kids (even if they are not that good for adults!) but that's no good when out shopping. We're also impressed with Ikea (though the nearest is over an hour away), but there is little they do that isn't well thought out from a family point of view. Then, of course, there are the independent cafes and smaller chains, but I could probably write a book on them, so I won't bother.

No real point to this, just some musings.

Ideas Worth Spreading

Thanks to my father-in-law, who has mentioned this several times over the last year or two, I have become somewhat addicted to TED talks. Basically TED is an annual conference (plus spin-offs) full of very clever and interesting people speaking (or performing) on pretty much anything they want.

Browse through the archives and you will find Al Gore telling us how to combat climate change, geeks demonstrating spectacular user interfaces, a neuroscientist talking about what it is like to have a stroke, a presentation of images from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and my new hero, Clifford Stoll, talking about... well... pretty much everything and anything.

Inspiring stuff, this, and I've barely scraped the surface so far.

The Definite Particle

Well, we have a beam going all the way around, yay! Looking at the grid monitoring systems our site is still up and running. All good.

Actually, not much work is being done here at RAL — there is a big area in one of the other buildings with a couple of screens showing News24, and this is full of people drinking coffee and eating cake. Elsewhere on site, many of the people not down there have live news coming out of radios and PCs in their offices.

This really is a big deal. While we are some way off actually having any serious results coming out of the LHC (they need to get a beam circulating in the other direction, then get collisions happening, and then ramp the energy levels up to the point where the exciting stuff can actually happen), the media coverage has been phenomenal and despite the rubbish being spouted about the end of the world, we are actually seeing some good mainstream science coverage. It's really difficult to explain just how cool this is, but I think this will probably have the significance of (or exceeding) the moon landings. Only time will tell.

I'm just chuffed (and humbled) to actually be a very tiny part of this experiment. I wish I understood it better, but it's a good incentive to do some more studying.

Post-Hectic

Things are finally settling down after a rather hectic few weeks. First <3 went off to a conference in the USA, then we all piled into the car for the long trip to Cornwall for a cousin's wedding, then I was in London for a week for a course, then we had the bank holiday weekend, which seemed full of things to do (and by this time the Youngling didn't know if she was coming or going). We have now had a few days of something approaching a normal routine reasserting itself and life is feeling a little calmer again. Apart from anything else, it's nice to have all three of us in the same place and not having to drive anywhere (other than between work and home).

On the plus side, my course was a good one and has resulted in me qualifying as a Red Hat Certified Technician, which is only really an entry level system administration certification, but as I am only a novice sysadmin, it is a nice extra certificate to have.

September is looking like it will be a little easier going. Still lots to do, but no big trips planned so far. Let's hope it stays that way.

Enter the Babbit

Yesterday a couple of friends threw a party in honour of the fact that they are about to naff off around the world for a year, partly travelling, site-seeing and visiting overseas friends, and partly to put in a few months of volunteer work around the place. So the Youngling and I went along (<3 is away at the moment) and had a great time for a couple of hours, mostly due to the fact that the Youngling was fascinated by our friends' three chickens.

Part of the deal of the party was that everyone had to take away some of the "free stuff" that our friends were trying to unload before they left. The Youngling had a root about and chose an orange plastic bowl (clearly the most exciting thing there judging by her reaction: "Bowl! Bowl!"), a set of rubber stamps with Xmas designs (they came in a nice case with a nice little handle, which is a bonus) and a small, blue, cuddly rabbit, quickly dubbed "Babbit" for fairly obvious reasons.

Anyway, fast forward a few hours until we have had tea, Youngling has had a bath and I am off in the kitchen fixing a cup of milk for her bedtime. Then I notice things have gone rather quiet. I look into the living room and there is the Youngling spoonfeeding her leftover dinner (which I had neglected to clear away/out of reach) to a now red-with-gloop Babbit.

I took the food and rabbit away and ran the latter under the tap but failed to get him clean, so figured I should stick him in the wash. By this point the Youngling was calling a plaintive "Babbit?... Babbit?..." which looked like it would develop into a tantrum if things didn't go just right.

So in one of my clearer thinking moments, I got Youngling to put the slightly wet Babbit to bed a cardboard box and say "night night" to him. Bizarrely this worked fabulously and after I'd got Youngling to bed, Babbit was put into the washing machine with a load of other stuff and was clean and dry by the morning. Win!

Morris In

I am so annoyed at myself for not taking my camera with me last night. We (in the morris sense) were dancing out at a couple of pubs in the market town on Faringdon. I was in two minds as to whether to go or not because of the combination of distance (not that great, but a bit of a drive) and inclement weather (it had been persisting down all day). But turn out I did, and met up with a bunch more of the team at The Bell, a nice old coaching inn on the market square.

The rain didn't stop much, so we danced for a while underneath the quaint C17th town hall, which was a challenge in itself, trying to avoid the pillars and steps around the edge of the rather restricted space. We had an audience of a few passing teenagers huddled under umbrellas and some smokers (and a big black dog) outside the various nearby pubs, but who cares about audiences?

After a good few dances and a quick "bagging" (administrative) session, we made the short walk up the gentle hill to the next pub, The Folly, under the power of melodeon, harmonica and bells, to be greeted by a shout of "You're late, sod off!" from the landlord, who then went on to say it was good to see us and that the drinks were on the house.

The rain had stopped by this point, so we set up in the street and performed one dance which did a great job of summoning the rain back again, so we gave up and went indoors.

Of course, we didn't want to abuse the landlord's hospitality without putting on a show, so someone had the idea of performing the Upton On Severn Cocktail Stirrer Dance (more often performed with sticks than cocktail stirrers, but sometimes you have to improvise). So there were six of us laying into each other with short lengths of coloured plastic in the corner of a small bar, just in front of the darts board, which made our previous dancing venue seem positively spacious.

Over the following hour we performed a whole heap more dances in ludicrously cramped conditions, which was a lot of fun for us (though very hot and sweaty) and I think the locals enjoyed themselves. Then it was the rest of the evening spend singing songs and playing tunes. I bailed out far too early, but it was a trip home and I needed to be up for work in the morning.

Cracking evening, and very silly indeed.

Babies

For some reason this has some resonance...

Asylum Seekers

This one is particularly aimed at my father-in-law. Radio 4 has a weekly program for kids, Go4It, which often tackles some pretty serious issues in a way that does its best to really engage with its audience in a productive way. This week they had a big feature on asylum seekers, which involved quite a challenging bit of roleplay where the kids had to take on the roles of a family being forced to flee their home and had some very tough decisions to make which would affect what happened to them later. We had to stop what we were doing and listen to this compelling radio. It's available to listen again until Sunday. (Hopefully it can be listened to in the RoI.)

Wimbledon, here we come...

I got myself a new camera the other day, the excuse being so that I can send pictures of the Youngling to <3 while she is away (as now). It's only a bog standard snappy camera, but it's nice and easy to use. I'm really pleased with this pic of the Youngling getting in preparation to compete for a Wimbledon singles title some time around 2022 or so.