16 Jun 2010
Posted in Life, People, Travel at 5:34 pm by alby
We’ve recently bought a whole bunch of camping gear with an eye to more and longer camping trips. To test said kit we headed off into darkest Derbyshire on Friday last for an outdoor weekend. Place called “Rivendale” it was.
When I arrived the tent was already spread out ready for me. The thing claims a 45 minute pitch time. It took us over an hour but I reckon this will be much reduced next time round.
I then discovered that I needed a spanner for the gas connection. But apart from that things went quite well.
Saturday saw me driving into Ashbourne for a photo-shoot of all things. The new clinic I’m at is moving into swish new premises and the owner wanted as many staff to show up for the mandatory staff group photo in front of said new swish premises.
Got there to find a huge skip in front of the building and a fretting boss. Luckily the photographer was a dab hand at this sort of thing and managed a decent few pics whilst avoiding dodgy skips and various other building remnants.
After the group photo (where I unfortunately got to stand right in the middle at the back cos I was tallest) we all had to do individual face shots.
Not a great thing for me is having portraits done immediately after getting up at a campsite after a reasonably unrestful night’s sleep.
But hopefully this points to me being a bit more than maternity cover (as I currently officially am).
I briefly shopped in the town discovering such delights as “Vampire Relish” and a Waitrose. It’s quite a wealthy place. At the local car park I parked behind an Aston DBS and a v swanky Jag. My 03 Avensis really bringing the tone down.
Later that day P, C, D and d showed up for chats and games and barbie and beer in the campsite. Fun was had. We also discovered that kites don’t fly when it’s not windy. And I burnt, badly.
Sunday was rainy. I woke up to rain and spent the morning worrying about decamping with a wet tent. Luckily the rain stopped for long enough to get the thing down dry. Pretty much as soon as it was down the rain started again and then didn’t let up.
This was a great shame as 2 family’s worth of friends showed up to join us for fun and frolics. Ah well. I did discover that kites do fly when it’s windy tho.
The campsite itself was ok. Decent enough showers, a bit close to the road mind (and the on-site shop was appalling – v limited and not best friendly) but worth the entrance money. Lovely views.
At least we figured out what to take and what doesn’t need to come with. Next time will be a longer, more distant trip. Maybe Norfolk would be nice.
Have fun.
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07 Jun 2010
Posted in People, Work at 6:13 pm by alby
I’m one of work’s recruiters. As such I have to attend occasional courses to make sure that I’m not doing it wrong.
One such course was this morning. Odd thing it was.
In these days of belt-tightening there were no fewer than 3 presenters for the course, and no more than 6 or 7 participants.
One of the presenters started off and was a good speaker; she should be, she’s a manager. At one point she handed over to a young lady (no more than 17 or 18 I’d guess) who was visbly nervous.
This young lass stood up and started to speak very quietly. I was expecting a “speak up” from the crowd but, before anyone had a chance to say it, the lass just clammed up.
She looked nervously at her feet, made as if starting up again and then stopped again, more looking at her feet.
Silence for a bit.
The first presenter stepped in with “It’s her first presentation, she’s a little nervous”. And asked her “Are you ok?”
The reply came back in a slightly more firm “Yes, I can do this.”
She couldn’t.
The refrain “I can do this” was repeated lots of times before she began shaking. At this point the manager stepped in and ushered her back to her chair.
The rest of the session was taken by the manager.
Now I see the point of the young lass having a go. I’ll admit to being surprised by that level of nervousness; I suppose I’m used to physios standing up and teaching in front of large groups. Poor girl.
So yes, good idea for the manager being there. Nice idea to have a younger staff member present to have a go at presenting. But at no point was there any indication of why the 3rd HR staff member was there.
As far as I can see a total waste of money.
Oh yes and why are they bothering to update me on the trust’s recruitment policy anyway, there’s a recruitment freeze on!
Spending money everywhere except where it’s needed!
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20 Apr 2010
Posted in Grammar!, People at 7:58 am by alby
Overheard on way into the GP practice this morning:
“I’m not being funny but I think she’s a cow [pron "kaah"]“
No you are indeed not being funny. What was the point of the first third of that statement? I can’t think quite what it means.
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21 Feb 2010
Posted in Juggling, People at 11:27 pm by alby
Yesterday was the nth Ballring wot I’ve been to. And the first UK convention (for me) since last year’s BJC way back in August 09. A major shame that Leeds didn’t happen to break up the long stretch between.
Got there to find the PBs there and with friendly folk cooing near them.
Juggling was done. Me and Clurb actually managed some pretty good old patterns we’ve not done together for 8 months or so.
Fun was had with weird Korean rice crackers and Annabod had some crisps which tasted like candyfloss. Well only me and Kate reckoned there was a strong candyfloss taste; the others clearly don’t have the “candyfloss taste gene”.
I didn’t get to stay for the show though.
Hi to all I chatted to. Was lovely to meet you all again. Looking forward to a few more conventions this year.
Photos here.
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15 Feb 2010
Posted in News, People, Rants at 2:11 pm by alby
Apparently the truth can be decided upon by sheer popularity. I knew this happened in the past (see religion for details) but surely now we actually know some stuff.
From a letter in the local rag from an MEP no less:
I may sometimes take a nuanced view, for example on climate, I am at least in line with public opinion.
A recent BBC poll showed that after the scandals around the Climate Research Unit and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, only 26% of voters still believe in man-made global warming.
Ah so that’s alright then. Lots of people don’t believe it therefore it’s not happening. Glad to see we sorted out the whole ecogeddon thing simply by closing our eyes and singing la la la.
At least it’s someone I now know not to vote for. Idiot.
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30 Dec 2009
Posted in Life, People at 4:04 pm by alby
For the first time in years Christmas was not spent at home with mates coming round in the evening. Rather I was invited with R to her sister’s place for food and company.
A fine time was had. Met one of the remaining 2 sisters I’d not met before who turned out to be perfectly pleasent and chatty.
Photos were taken too and can be found here.
The last few were of a walk in Belper where we found the most disturbing nativity scene I’ve ever clapped eyes on.
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23 Dec 2009
Posted in News, People at 4:42 pm by alby
This needs no comment from me. Here’s a letter from today’s Leicester Mercury. OMW.
I enjoy all forms of music from heavy rock to punk, garage, hip-hop, disco and even classical. Every Christmas from the very early 1960s I have bought the Christmas No 1 song and have never been disappointed.
Over the many years they have all been relevant to the season and most have contained in some form the spirit of Christmas. They were all able to be enjoyed and understood by the whole of society.
The current Christmas No 1, to be brutally frank, is the worst piece of music I have ever heard. It has not one solitary thing to do with this time of year and was apparently composed and played by a group of talentless and mindless youths who have engaged the “power” of that other waste-of-space, society-destroying junk, Facebook, which they have used to rally an easily-led and seemingly mindless section of our society into making some form of protest.
Rage against the “whatever” gives the truth to the story. Exactly what that protest is about I dread to think.
Even as I briefly watched the so-called performance of it, I could only describe that as being performed by a group of seriously demented individuals who had no idea of how ridiculous they looked.
Hopefully, this will be their one and only entry into the music world and they will disappear. Any DJ who gives this “music” airtime should be suspended – thankfully, some DJs have already stated that they will not play that piece of auditory torturous junk. Those are the ones I will listen to – and my extensive collection of CDs of past No 1s, too.
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06 Sep 2009
Posted in Life, People, Reviews at 8:55 pm by alby
Life continues to be fun.
I’ve spent the last couple of weekends with R and her daughter (N).
Last weekend was spent visiting Lincoln with R and meeting up with my folks for a meal and a couple of drinks. The Bank hols was spent with both of them at the Beacon Hill Wood Fair. This was a strange event of “learning about woods”. It should have been awful but was actually a nice way to spend a day.
N got to see a scary green wild man telling stories, me and R got to eat nice food including a self-made pizza and some proper burger. After that N went climbing and very nearly rode in a cherry-picker. Then we watched some countryfied version of the World’s Strongest Man with some butch lumberjacks chopping logs for our amusement.
As I said, very strange.
This weekend was spent in Derby watching some stuff at the “Derby Feste“. We saw the opening thing which had 2 groups of kids wandering into Derby square and playing an annoyingly repetitive riff over and over and over and over…..
Each group had their own mascot. One had a bird thing. The other had what we assume was meant to be the Derby Ram. In reality it was a bloke in a costume carrying a huge sheeps head thing. It was rubbish. Really very bad. It looked like it was manky from years of lying in a cupboard and patched together with bandages. It was horrible at best and scary at worst. Just nasty.
Anyway after about 3 months of them playing this tedious riff they headed off again, still playing it. We zoomed off to a small park where the fest had set up a stage.
Once there we found a small group of folk. Some of them clearly just liked hanging around the square normally and seemed mildly annoyed at this intrusion into their Sunday afternoon. The rest had, like us, a mild curiosity at just what was going on.
One small group seemed to be a juggling group. They had one guy juggling 3 teddy bears and then a couple of them doing quite basic diabolo tricks. After an hour or so they all stood up and then spent the rest of the afternoon playing catch with not 3 balls each, not 4 balls each, but 1 ball between them. Very poor. Earlier in the day I’d been thinking about going over and chatting but even my measly juggling skills would have shown this group up badly.
So the fun on stage starts. A hip and happening guy comes out giving it all “Come on Deeeerrrrrbbyyy!!!!” to muffled “hello”s and such from the mainly apathetic crowd. He witters on with some (I guess) street vocab for a bit until very few know what he’s on about. At this point he decides to do the “tell the crowd what to do” schtick that I loathe.
So we have to cheer when he shouts one thing and scream “Derby Feste” when he shouts another. N loved it, for about 3 minutes. When you’re boring to a 4 year old then you really need to change your spiel.
Then who shows up but the parading kids and their loathsome riff. Yes they’re still playing it, still annoying as hell.
The musicians turn out to be part of a Latin band that starts the show. Some good music and some dodgy singing later they depart to be replaced by a duo doing ukelele covers (oh the originality!). This would have been good if they’d bothered doing anything any good and maybe shortening some of the long songs. EG they did Thriller in its entirety. Come on guys give us a break and boil it down to the bits we know; that way we might not get bored off our tits with you. And no, we won’t be buying your CD.
After this we had a tired 4 year old on our hands so we went home. I don’t think we missed a lot.
Photos from Wood Fair here.
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02 Sep 2009
Posted in Juggling, People at 7:35 pm by alby
Was just watching “Would I Lie To You?” on the telly and Owen from off of the Gandinis was on it.
Coo.
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