Month: June 2012

In my last post I mentioned that there had been upsets in the Women’s draw at Wimbledon. Since then there has been a king size upset in the Men’s and yesterday evening there was nearly another. On Thursday Rafael Nadal, one of three players who had a chance of eneding the fortnight as world number one was dumped out by a complete unknown. Yesterday, Roger Federer, another of the big three had to fight back from two sets to love down against Julian Bennetto of France. The fourth set went to a tie-break but once Federer had got through that there was only ever going to be one winner, especially as Bennetto was out on his feet by then. The world number one slot now comes down to this: If Novak Djokovic reaches the final he retains the no1 slot, while if Federer wins outright he regains the number one slot. If these two both make it through their sections of the draw they will meet in the semifinal which could therefore decide who finishes the fortnight as no 1.

On Thursday I got another demonstration of Sutcliffe’s first law of traveling by public transport. I got the 2:45 X8/X29 bus to Norwich, which broke down at Fakenham, necessitating a wait and onward travel on the bus an hour later (in fairness to Norfolk Green such mishaps are about as common with them as genuinely memorable T20 matches or hen”s teeth). Fortunately, I had allowed time for a mishap to occur and was still able to visit Norwich library, go for some supper and get to the meeting I was there for in time (only just).

Here are some photos for you to enjoy…

After an appalling April, a miserable May and what has largely been a joke of a June some decent weather has finally put in an appearance. Even the View from the Rooftops picture taken yesterday was taken at a time when I was outisde in shorts and t-shirt (the less than pleasant looking sky was a bit like a large, loud dog – bark worse than bite).

All is still going well at Learning Works. Yesterday I helped three new learners to access their online learning, as well as my usual administrative stuff.

I notice on the news that yet more deatils of banks behaving badly have emerged – what about these people and the their sense of entitlement, Mr Cameron? Talking of which, I did some job searching today, and did decline to go for one vacancy for which I was theoretically equipped – it was based in a place called Ingham which a bit digging revealed would entail three hours travelling each way (assuming I could make all the connections at suitable times for going to and from work). On the other hand I did go for a vacancy based in Cottenham because I established that the travel for that was manageable if a trifle excessive. There would be two possibilities for getting there by 9 o’clock – leave Lynn on the 6:12 train, arriving in Cottenham at 8:05 via  a bus connection at Cambridge, or leave Lynn on the 6:46 train, and again via a change at Cambridge get to Cottenham at 8:45. Sutcliffe’s first law of travelling by public transport (if you decline to allow scope for things to go wrong they will) dictates the use of the first of these possibilities should I get the job.

Some interesting photos today…

A double event today. I received my OCR Customer Service Level 2 and Business Skills Level 2 certificates and also completed the Sage 50 course.

The Nicotiana and Geraniums  planted for Helen are flourishing (see photos). The broad beans at the allotment have been ultra bountiful (three large harvests to date and I have hopes of a fourth this Sunday).

A selection of photos follows. I have attached them enbloc rather than separately, but if you click on any individual picture you can view the whole gallery at full size.

The reason why so much time has elapsed since my last post is that I have had a hectic week. My Nephew was staying with parents from Friday afternoon until Wednesday morning and I wanted to miss as little of that period as feasible, so I was away from the computer for almost all of that period, and after a day at Learning Works the last thing I was going to do was anything on a computer so no blog yesterday either.

I had a public meeting to attend in Norwich on Thursday night, which meant an overnight stay there, and I also needed to harvest broad beans from my aunt’s allotment in King’s Lynn on the Friday and to be in East Rudham by midday (or so I had been advised). Normally when journeying between Lynn and Norwich I use the X8/X29 servcie run by Norfolk Green because it is cheaper than the X1 and Castle Meadow is nore conveniently located for my purposes than the main bus station, but the above constraints meant that on Friday morning I had to use the X1. The only bus that would serve my purposes was departiing at 6:30AM.

Thus I arrived back in Lynn at 8:15, headed to the flat, unpacked and then repacked, before dashing for the allotment with a couple of plastic bags. A whirlwind 15 minutes of picking (all I could spare) and both bags were full. I then returned to the flat, picked up by bags for East Rudham and headed for the bus station in time for the last bus that would have me in Rudham by 12. After all this on my part, Simon and Zac were then so late that the lunch at Thams (A pub cum Thai restaurant in West Rudham) had to be shelved, although mummy got back from Repton in time to join us for the actual lunch.

On Saturday, mummy, Zac and I had an enjoyable morning shopping in Fakenham and then made pizzas for lunch (at Zs request). mummy, Z and daddy went to watch a showing of the rereleased Jaws at the Fakenham Fleapit (official name Hollywood Cinemas) in the evening, while I attended to the supper, my signature Chicken and Coriander dish (see my first ever post for the recipe), and though I say it myself, even by my standards it was excellent.

On Sunday Z, daddy and I went to Extreeme (their spelling gimmick), an adventure playground utilising some exceptionally tall trees. The wall-less hut (see picture) that serves as their visitors centre had a log fire burning, and at times daddy and I were very grateful for this (it was not the most summery of days). The various ways of progressing through the trees above ground-level certainly lived up to the establishment’s name (there will be pictures either in this post or later). I think this could be improved by the addition of an orthodox treetop walk such as there is at Denmark, Western Australia for those of us who are not averse to viewing trees from amongst the canopy but not care for having the crap scared out of us.

On Monday I had to attend a supervised jobsearch session at Seetec, starting at 9:00, which meant getting the 7:57 bus in to Lynn. We had been planning to visit the allotment but it rained so hard that this was abandoned. On Tuesday I finally I got to start the Sage 50 course (another trip into and out of Lynn, starting with the early bus).

On Wednesday, having said goodbye to Zac the previous night, mummy and I set off early, and she dropped me off in Lynn, where I had time to change in to office clothes and get down to Learning Works for my day as a volunteer (which went well as always).

 

A couple more pictures in this post – Zac and companions on a forest swing and the view from the rooftops, which for reasons the picture makes apparent I declined to go outside to take! I will include more shots from extreeme in future posts.

The weather has been vile this last week, to the extent that for the first time since 1964 the first two days of a test match in England have been absolutely washed out. This has meant that I have not needed to deploy the watering can for the last few days as there has been enough from the sky. England with the series already won should be going all out for a third victory, which means that if they end up batting first they should look to declare before the close of play today.

Both today and tomorrow could witness historic achievements at the French Open. If Maria Sharapova beats Sara Erani she will join the select group of players to have won all four grand slam titles. The Men’s final meanwhile cannot fail to prove historic: either Rafael Nadal overtakes Bjorn Borg by winning it for a seventh time or Novak Djokovic becomes the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four grand slam titles simultaneously.

Learning Works continues to go well, although I am still waiting for a start date for my Sage 50 course. On my last visit I actually marked some practice assessments for a learner, which I had not previously done.

The View from the Rooftop is a shot taken through the living room window…

 

The anti-austerity meeting I attended in Norwich was good but not as good as it should of been, although I enjoyed catching up with people I had not seen in  a while. The problems were caused by the chair, who was far too fond of the sound of his own voice and who failed to keep the meeting within a sensible time frame. It took the chair ten minutes to introduce the two speakers, and in spite of a number of people leaving he failed to close the meeting until 9:30, which made two hours twenty minutes – too long.

The moment of cricket history occurred only a few minutes ago as Nick Compton, grandson of the legendary Denis, reached 1,000 first class runs for the season. He missed out by only a day on joining the select company of WG Grace, Tom Hayward, Walter Hammond, Charles Hallows, Don Bradman (twice), Bill Edrich, Glenn Turner and Graeme Hick in reaching this landmakr by the end of May.

Todays View from the Rooftops is a rare shot taken through the sitting room window…