Month: September 2012

I wiill be covering a lot of ground in this post, so to enable people to pick and choose should they so wish, I will be starting with the trivial stuff and dealing with more serious matters later.

The cricket season is over, with Warwickshire (county champions and losing fnalists in the CB40) and Hampshire (winners of both limited overs competitions – the CB40 and the T20) taking the honours. Derbyshire have brought to an end the longest spell in the second division since the two division structure was introduced by winning the second division. Also congratulations to Joe Root and Nick Compton (the latter following in his grandfather’s footsteps) on being named in the test squad for India this winter. These two will fill the gaps left by Strauss’s retirement (Root, an old fashioned Yorkshire opener with a first class double century already to his credit) and Pietersen’s fall from grace. The World T20 championship is under way in Sri Lanka. The hosts marmalised Zimbabwe in the first match, while Australia spearheaded by Shane Watson (3-21 off his four overs and 51 off 31 balls) accounted for Ireland. Afghanistan, whose presence at the tournament is a minor miracle in itself, made a brave though losing start against India, winning themselves many friends in the process.

Virgin Media have earned themselves several demerit marks in my book. I had passed the first two stages of their recruitment process and was all set to attend the assessment sessionin Peterborough when that was postponed due the assessor being ill. A week later I was told that they were looking to reschedule the assessments and asked about my availability for the following week. I then heard nothing for two weeks, at which point I phoned the agency who were handling the vacancy and was told that they (Virgin Media) had filled the vacancies with internal candidates. The person I spoke to at the agency did have the grace to apologise for the fact that I had not been inforned of this.

Last week I spent a day at Learning Works’ centre in Spalding. Spalding is a small market town set in the flattest expanse of land I have ever seen, in deepest Lincolnshire. Getting there for the start of the working day involved catching the 6:55 bus from Lynn, which should have arrived at Spalding bus station at 8:18 but was delayed ten minutes by roadworks on the way in to Spalding. Learning Works’ Spalding Centre is in a building that was once part of a huge factory that dominated the entire town, which means that there are no windows, which makes it a very curious place to work. Unlike certain organisations I could name Learning Works did pay my travel expenses (a mere bagatelle of £6.80)

There is a major database project in the offing at Learning Works, which if they decide to go for it, they would have to pay me for. I cannot reveal any detail about this project beyond that, and the fact that to enable me to work on producing a prototype database with complete security they will either be provding me with one of their laptops, or with a copy of the full version of Office 2010 to load on to my laptop.

Enjoy these photos from my archives…

 

This is going to be a big post (you have been warned!)

The Paralympics have finished, having managed to outdo the Olympics which preceded them. The noise that greeted Peacock when he won 100m gold (in a race that was of such quality that the great Oscar Pistorius finished out of the medals) was far louder even than the noise that greeted the triumphs of Ennis, Farah and Bolt. David Weir brought the games to suitable conclusion by winning the wheelchair marathon, for his fourth gold of the games. Meanwhile in the pool, where the British olympians had been almost uniformly disappointing, there were some incredible moments. China dominated, as they dominated the overall medals table, but Ellie Simmons took two gold, a silver and a bronze medal from her four events, and established four new world records along the way.

Meanwhiile at the US Open, in spite of the tournament organisers worst efforts, which have led to a Monday finish (Murray vs Djokovic in the final tonight), the tennis itself has been magnificent. Laura Robson showed the sky is the limit for her by taking out two grand slam winners before finally losing a humdinger of a match to the defending champion. The women’s final last night was a quite superb match, Serena Williams winning 7-5 in the final set to confirm once again that whatever the rankings say she is the best in the world.

Saturday saw a double header of T20 cricket (there is another today), which started with England Women dismantling the West Indies (winning by eight wickets with over half of their overs to spare) but unfortunately the men could not match that against South Africa, losing emphatically.

Yesterday I got to have a look around the Red Mount Chapel, one of the buildings that was open was part of a heritage day. Inside it is quite astonishing, with all manner of curiosities (see the photos at the end of this piece).

The Support Group I run for Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome will need to find a new meeting place because Norfolk County Council have cut the funding that Asperger East Anglia used to get for these groups. We will find a way to keep the group running (I have already been in touch with King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council and the Lynn News), but our current meeting room is too expensive to retain in these circumstances. Of course, AEA are being thoroughly supportive, and we will still be able to have regular visits from them once we have sorted out a new room.

Photos as usual…

On Saturday I visited Norwich to take advantage of the fact that I had received payment for attending to my Aunt’s house while she was away and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Yesterday I sent wn email to the Guardian about the job descriptiion that recently aroused my ire (having carefully constructed a reasoned argument about it). This morning at Seetec during my jobsearch there another job identical in all salinet respects including location cropped up. I decideed on the direct approach and actually applied for it, detailing in the process why i considered their requirement of own transport unjustified and inviting them to justify it if they could. Watch this space!

Enjoy my latest photos….