Morris and Mortality

It has been an odd week.

Last weekend we were planning to go to Chippenham Folk Festival. Well, the plan was that I would be there for the whole weekend with the morris, camping for two nights, and <3 and the Youngling would be there for Saturday and Monday, and would do somethig different on the Sunday. Plans changed when the Youngling threw up in her bed on Friday night and we decided that a not-entirely-necessary trip out the following day would probably be less than ideal, so we stayed closer to home for the next couple of days -- at least we got some gardening done! On Monday we took the trip to Chippenham and had a great day dancing in the streets and on the arena stage.

Back at work after the bank holiday things were less happy as the word arrived that my office mate, Steve, had lost his 2 year battle with cancer. I didn't know Steve as well as I would have liked, largely as over the year or so we had shared an office, he had spent a lot of time away for treatment. He was a top bloke though, a pleasure to talk with, and a fighter who kept going far longer than expected and who has helped others like him get the treatment he was originally denied. Steve's death was not unexpected, but the sense of shock and grief in the department this week has been palpable. He really made a mark and will be greatly missed.

After that news, the week has had a slightly weird feel to it. We had a great dance out in Grove on Wednesday, and I now have some pretty decent homebrew beer (which should get better with a bit more conditioning) to drink, but all that doesn't seem to be worth writing about at the moment. I'll have a drink to Steve over the weekend and wish his family well. The funeral is next week and I expect there will be quite a few of us from work in attendance.

One Sheet to the Wind

Another good weekend, including a friend's 40th birthday barbecue on Saturday, and then a trip to Swindon Kite Festival today.

<3 and I used to go to a few kite festivals, partly to fly kites, partly (mostly for me) to buy kites and things to make them out of, partly to meet up with friends, and partly to just look at the pretty things in the sky. Since the arrival of the Youngling, however, we just don't seem to have got around to it.

Well, a couple of weeks back, <3 spotted that Swindon Kite Festival was coming up and as we had a day more-or-less free, we decided to take a trip. The venue was a little way the wrong side of Swindon for us, so it took up the better part of an hour to get there, and when we did, we found that the wind was a bit feeble and not much was flying.

Still, we had a cuppa with a couple of friends who arrived at about the same time, the Youngling had a ride on a bus on a kiddies' roundabout, and I took the Youngling along to buy her first kite, a "Super Flyer", a wide-tailed delta kite which I knew from experience was great for kids. With this in hand, we wandered over to a spare area of field, assembled the kite and I launched it. The Youngling wasn't too keen on anything other than watching at first, but a couple of minutes later I heard, "My hold it now!", so I dutifully handed over the handle and relaunched. It flew for a few seconds before the wind died and it fell to the ground. My flying companion was, by this point, jumping up and down and shrieking with laughter. So we had another go. Or ten.

After a picnic lunch, we got the kite out again and there was little to stop our little kite nut. She spent more time flying there (with some good flights when the wind allowed) than I could possibly imagined. We are certainly going to go flying again, and soon. The problem is that she now wants a fish kite. And a butterfly kite. And a...

Sumer is acumin in

According to some of the gents from the team, I have now been officially inducted into the morris, having taken part in my first Oxford May Morning. Up at stupid o'clock we were down outside Magdalen College before 06:00, and shortly afterwards began a couple of hours of dancing at Radcliffe Square followed by 3 other locations around the city. I had my first ale at around 07:15 (well after several others in the side). This is something that seems really bizarre: the mix of people watching were a mix drunken students from the previous night's parties, revellers coming in specially for the May festivities, and bemused people on their way in to work.

Eventually we ended up at St Edmund Hall for breakfast (and more ale plus singing), before a little bit more dancing and then a swift trip down to Grove where we danced for a primary school, and then again on to Wantage market square before finally getting to the pub for lunch and songs.

Saturday was spent pottering around town and then sitting in some friends' garden drinking tea while the Youngling played with their daughter (of the same age). Nice and relaxing. Then on Sunday, while <3 was away for a bellydancing practice, I did the Bad Dad thing and took the Youngling off to a pub where some friends were playing some music as part of a May weekend event thing. All went well.

Monday was another morris day as we had a booking for a May fun day thingy in Shrivenham, which is about 20-odd minutes away from us. We arrived just as a group of the men who had turned up earlier returned from the Prince of Wales, bearing news that the landlord had offered some beers in exchange for us turning up to dance later. It turned out that we had about an hour between the two slots we had been booked for and the pub was only 5 minutes from the event, so after we had done our bit we pottered over, so the WAGs could warm up on the inside (the wind was a bit on the cold side) while the rest of us leapt about outside, egged on by landlord and a few of the punters. We got back just in time for our second spot, making for a generally satisfactory afternoon.

I now have a couple of weeks off from dancing due to Other Stuff getting in the way, but this mini-drought will end with Chippenham Folk Festival, which promises to be a lot of fun and a lot of work. Possibly a lot of mud too, but we'll see how it all works out.

Jaunty

Wow, so I have the latest release (hot off the mirrors) of Ubuntu installed on my home PC, and so far so good apart from the fact that I can't get a Flash plugin to run (apparently it doesn't work under 64 bit — though it used to, and I'm sure I was previously running a 64 bit OS). On the up side, at least I have sound back — I had lost that a week or so back when I upgraded to the previous version. We'll see how things go from here on...

A Drop of Nelson's Blood

This weekend was a blinder. On Friday night I went up to Bromsgrove with about 20 other guys, mostly morris men (from various sides), for the stag weekend of our side's squire, who is gets wed in a few weeks' time.

So Friday night involved a load of driving, increased by the fact that the best man (or rather one of them!) had had a flat tyre, broke his jack, and was stuck in the middle of nowhere with four polypins of local ale. We went off to rescue him, hindered by the fact that he was on a road and near a village both small enough that they didn't appear in my road atlas. After eventually homing in, he fixed his wheel and we moved on to the scout hut in which we would be staying and had pies, peas and ale for dinner before heading in to town to a fine pub where we stayed well past midnight, singing and playing, much to the amusement of the landlord and staff, who actually said we'd be welcome back — even after we performed the Upton-On-Severn Bendy Straws dance in the bar.

Saturday was mostly taken up by a trip on the Worcester and Birmingham canal (dressed as pirates), during which we were split between two small narrowboats on a sedate cruise northwards, which took us through two tunnels (the second being some 2.5 km long) and back again. This being a morris outing, there were tunes and songs and much fun had by almost all (the exceptions being a couple of casualties from the Friday night who were struggling somewhat). A few jigs were danced (including one on the roof of a boat), and I have now discovered the joys of tunnel sessions. Playing tunes in a tunnel has an amazing acoustic, but what was really awesome was singing shanties, with 20 men all belting out the responses for all they were worth. Great stuff.

After a curry we were back out in town and ended up back in the same pub as before, where even more dances were performed, many songs sung, and the pub pretty near ran out of ale.

By the time we had got home on the Sunday and I was delivering the stag back to his house, we discovered that he had lost his house keys, so the trip was extended to drop him over at another nearby friend's house until his fiancee got home. You can't beat a bit of excitement like that.

Top weekend.

Hankies at Dawn

So a couple of weeks back I went to my first ale of the year, hosted by the Kennet Morris Men, who organised a stomping evening of pickles, ale, chili, dancing and singing. There was a decent contingent of our side, despite which, I (of all people) was elected to sing on behalf of the side after dinner (the standard etiquette is that each side who has a reasonable turnout provides a song). It all went pretty well apart from me forgetting an entire verse. I don't think many people noticed.

Anyway, the picture is from a massed dance (ales generally involve alternating between one side showing off and massed dances where everyone who wants to gets up and you end up with sets made up of men from mixed sides, which can prove amusing) of Queen's Delight (Bucknell). Now, my first thought on this photo was that I must have been on the wrong foot as I should have been on the same foot as my partner (who is a lot more experienced than I am), but seeing the guys in the next set are also on their left foot, perhaps I was doing it right after all!

What I Did on My Holiday

So I was back at work today after a week off during which the father-in-law was down to install a new bathroom suite for us. It took longer than expected, largely thanks to having to interact with cranky half-century-old plumbing, but after some valiant efforts, it is all plumbed in. We still have tiling and other decorating to do, but the end is in sight and soon we will be able to enjoy a lovely, new bathroom.

During this week I just provided a spare pair of hands where required, acted as a taxi to various shops and spent the rest of the time in the garden with a saw, a hammer, a bag of nails, a spade, a pile of old paving slabs and a few bags of sand. The results (a set of raised beds and paved surround) aren't exactly fine architecture, but I'm pleased with it so far. There's still a bit more to do, but we've already started planting things.

Angels and Positrons

So we will shortly be having another film based on another Dan Brown book: Angels and Demons. I'll say now that I have neither read the book of or seen the film of The Da Vinci Code and have not read Angels and Demons and strongly doubt I will watch the film. Nothing personal, but I only have my allotted span and suspect I would rather avoid spending the requisite hours getting annoyed.

Anyway, the plot of the forthcoming film involves antimatter created at CERN (and, so I understand, a man-portable antimatter bomb), and members of the cast and production team have recently made a publicity trip to CERN itself. Seeing as the people at CERN know a thing or two about antimatter (yes, it does exist and, yes, they do create it at CERN) they have a web page explaining some of the science, which was initially published a few years back (after the book came out) and has been updated more recently. Great stuff.

Back in the Garden

I have a good feeling about the garden this year. 2007 was a dead loss (horticulturally speaking), with a new baby plus an OU course leaving me with precious little time or energy to do anything much outside. 2008 was not much better, having fallen off the wagon the year before what little effort I did put in was in trying to prevent the garden from reverting to Ancient Forest. This year we are off to a decent start though.

We've been discovering that the Youngling, now past her 2nd birthday, is interested in helping out with things outside. Of course, this sort of help tends to slow things down somewhat, but them's the breaks. So a couple of weeks back we took a few bits of 6"x1" and built a raised bed (my assistant happily dropping nails around the place and occasionally passing them to me at useful times), which is still only half filled with soil, sand, compost and the like. The plan is to add another raised section or two and pave around them (for non-muddy access) using the slabs that came off our patio when the conservatory was being built.

Last week we planted some broad beans, with me poking holes in the ground and the youngling dropping beans into the holes. She loved that — it's just a pity she will have to wait some time for seedlings to start to appear.

Then over this weekend we planted some basil to grow indoors (I pledge this year to start a fresh pot of basil every few weeks to feed my herb habit!) and sowed some seed trays with broccoli and parsley to plant out when the weather gets warmer.

This is turning out to be a very equitable arrangement: the Youngling gets to help out, spend time outside, and hopefully learn some stuff, and I get to do some gardening while still spending time with my daughter. Hopefully we'll be able to continue this for years to come.

In the meantime, the rhubarb is just starting to show its head. Give it a month or so and we'll be able to take a crop. I'm looking forward to that.

Life With Bells On

Yeah, I know I have been going on about morris a bit lately, but this film has just come to my attention. The website has a fantastic trailer and the film has Derek Jacobi in it, so what could go wrong? I'm hoping someone puts it on where I can go and see it (it's not exactly on general release), or at least that it gets on to DVD in the not too distant future. Cracking stuff by the looks of it.