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I have just completed a ten week work placement at Learning Works, an organisation whose King’s Lynn centre is located conveneintly close to my compact town centre flat. This was combined with an NVQ in Customer Services which I have also successfully completed.

How successful was my work placement? Well last week I had two issues to resolve. Firstly having enjoyed the placement I was keen to maintain my involvement with Learning Works, and secondly and even more important I wanted to gain a Sage qualification to open up some more possibilities jobs wise. On Wednesday of last week I offered to do one day a week as a volunteer at the same time as seeking to arrange the Sage course. Naturally the new arrangements had to be confirmed by head office, as did details of the Sage course. In exchange for my servcies as a a volunteer they will fully fund the Sage 50 course, which suggests I have done something right.

Changing the subject completely, congratulations to England on getting out of a sticky situation to go 1-0 up in the Test series against the West Indies. When Pietersen was out England were four down for not very many and defeat was a very real possibility, but Cook and Bell sa\w through the danger. All in all, this was a pulsating Test match. Games like this are only possible over the long haul – formulaic fifty over stuff and bish bash bosh twenty over stuff rarely if ever produce a match that remains in the memory once it is over, though the latter is always an entertaining spectacle while it lasts. In a deserved sharing of the honours Stuart Broad was man of the match for his 11 wickets while Andrew Strauss won the Champagne Moment for the stroke that completed has first test hundred since Brisbane 2010. The Champagne Moment is awarded by the TMS team what they consider the most memorable moment of the match, and the trophy is a magnum of the product.

The King’s Lynn Civic Society are doing a feature on living above the shop, so here is my own idiosyncratic contribution:

The advantages of living in the High Street (ignoring those which attach to this specific flat) are that one has shops on one’s doorstep, everything that is needed on a regular basis being purchasable somewhere within comfortable walking distance. Also, the bus and railway stations are close by, so travel out of town is straightforward when needed (though no bargain, with a return bus ticket to Fakenham costing £6.10 these days). The only negative to set against these general advanatages and the specific advantages that my place has of its own is that on Friday and Saturday nights the proximity of various pubs and bars is made loudly and sometimes unpleasantly obvious – especially if you stubbornly insist on keeping windows open to let air in to the flat.

Today’s View From the Rooftoops is a shot taken by lazy expedient of opening the door, pointing and clicking…

A cobination of a drought being declared and the cricket season starting was obviously too much of a temptation for the weather gods to resist. The world snooker championship was some consolation, especially the play of Ronnie O’Sullivan.

My placement at Learning Works is still going, and I am near completing the Customer Service course I have been doing.

Not much else to say except enjoy the photo…

The Classic FM Hall olf Fame is done for another year. There have been some huge changes there. The two most extraordinary new entries were Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu getting at number 16 with a video game theme tune (the first such piece ever to enter the hall of fame) and Paul Mealor achieving both the highest ever new entry and the highest position obtained by a living composer with “Wherever you are” entering at number 5. The top four were unchanged and in the same order. There was a tie for most indvidual entries, with Beethoven and Mozart each having 18. I thiink Beethoven gets the verdict as three of his were in the top 10 to only one of Mozart’s.

The US Masters yet again produced a cracking finish, going to a play off between Bubba Watson and the 2010 Open champion Louis Oosthuizen, which Watson won with a magnificent recovery from among the trees at the 10th. The other Watson in the field, Tom, just failed to make the halfway cut, which is good going for man of 63.

The county championship season is already looking good having only jus begun. Surrey celebrated their return to the top flight with a comfortable win over Sussex, whiile Middlesex, also promoted last season, were well beaten by Somerset. This week sees a new development, with the London derby being broadcast on sports extra. This is recognition of the fact that although few people are able to set aside four days to go and watch a county match live, there are plenty of us who will listen to commentary on the games, and who take a serious interest in the games.

Two Views from the Rooftop today, takne in very different weather as you will notice (this was one tie I could not split).

Good Friday is here, and with it a concatenation of Easter weekend fun. At the moment I am listening to England progressing towards victory in Colombo. The Classic FM Hall of Fame, an annual treat is just under way – I will have to catch up later. There is also the start of the County Championship season, with the first matches entering their second day, and the US Masters Golf. Plus after a cold, grey midweek, the sun has returned.

Already this test match has had a little piece of history, with one out of Mahela Jayawardene or Thilan Samaraweera having scored the 2,000,000 run in test cricket. The first 1,000,000 test runs were amassed over a period of 109 years (and the scorer of the 1,000,000th is likewise disputed between Allan border and Dean Jones), whereas the second million were accrued in a mere 26 years – testament to the mushrooming of international cricket in the modern era.

I have taken advantage of the relative emptiness of the car park to take a long range shot straight across it for my View from the Rooftops.

Yesterday was the day of the second stage of my contribution to some research in to Asperger’s Syndrome and Oxytocin, and also of a meeting of the King’s Lynn Social and Support Group, of which I am group leader.

I woke up at 5:40AM, which enabled me to take the morning at a leisurely pace, consuming two cups of decaf (no caffinated products for 24 hours pre testing) coffee along the way.

I arrived at Learning Works for placement in good time, but the Centre Manager, the only person to have a key to the office, was delayed at the doctor’s surgery. Nonetheless, and in spite of two separate trips out of the office, one to collect the Centre Manager’s prescription, and the other to the job centre as it was my signing day, I had a productive morning, before heading off at 12:30 to be able to catch the appropriate train to Cambridge.

The journey down was suitably uneventful, and having learned from last week I made use of the (excellent) bus service between the station and Addenbrookes. The testing session itself started with a basic language task (researcher read out a list of words, and I had to come with a concise definition for each one), then a blood pressure test (118 over 70, pulse rate 79), then the nasal spray and a 45 minute break. Then I performed the same post spray tasks as last week (not surprisingly finding them easier as it was the seocnd time I was doing them). After some very routine paperwork, the session ended with another blood pressure test (133 over 71, pulse rate 71). After this measurement the medic, both younger and obviously fitter than I, said that it was like measuring his blood pressure!

After the (clinical) trial, the tribulations. First of all, there was a delay on the buses towards Cambridge, so I arrived at the station with a bare few minutes to locate the correct platform for the train to Lynn. Then this train was delayed, good because it meant I could catch my breath, but bad because it meant that I would not be arriving early for my meeting, and might well end up being late. A blood pressure test at this stage of proceedings would probably have given a very high reading!. The train arrived into Lynn at 6:56 giving me four minutes to get from the train to the meeting room to be on time. Austin Fields is very close to the station, but given the presence of ticket inspectors, and the elongated exit because barriers are being built, it was beyond even me to get there in time, though I was only a couple of minutes late.

The meeting itself was a fun event. Somebody who was attending for the seocnd time brought along his photo album to show us, and I had a letter outlinining preliminary findings from Natalie Cross’s research into Asperger’s Syndrome and Difficult decision making.

By the time I got home I was so tired that I went straight to bed, where I read for about an hour before going to sleep. It was, as anticipated quite a gruelling day, but alson an enjoyable one. As Richmal Crompton’s William said: “A busy day is a happy day, so long as it doesn’t include scule.”

I think I have found a View from the Rooftop that I have not previously displayed…