The nationals

Well this weekend we headed up to Harrogate for the national brass band championships - Tim spent the weekend with his band in Leeds, while I stayed with Chris ans Sian in Huddersfield. Chris and I went over to listen to the competition on the Sunday - I'll leave it up to Chris to blog his experience of the brass band sub-culture!

The day involved a fair amount of hanging round, as Hitchin played 15th out of 19 bands. Still, that gave Chris and I plenty of time for a very nice cup of tea and a sit down in Betty's. We also listened to the opposition, in the form of Slaithwaite. Tim also managed a trip to betty's, and spent most of the day hanging around waiting to play and then hanging around to find out the results. We managed time for a photo shoot, though...




And the result? I'll let Tim tell you that...

A short break

We've got a week off work - hooray! So we have just spent a couple of days up at Rutland Water, which is about an hour away from Bedford. Those of you with long memories will recall that we stayed there on the first night of our honeymoon and resolved to come back again. We wimped out of camping as we thought it would be too cold, although in the end the weather was lovely. We stayed in a very nice B&B, visited the sculpture garden at Burghley house, a falconry centre, Oakham and Uppingham for shopping and tea shops and cycled all the way around the reservoir (23 miles) on a tandem - my knees are now very sore!

The next couple of days will be spent in Bedford before we head North for the brass Band nationals (and a visit to Chris and Sian). The plan is to finally strip the turquoise paint off the living room fireplace - wish us luck...


Tim tries to ride a tandem on his own - note that I sat at the back so the seat is a little low for him!

Hello and welcome

Say hello to the newest addition to our garden - parthenocissus henryana.




OK, he doesn't look like much now but he'll be much more impressive when he
grows up.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the garden we're enjoying plenty of late summer colour. The summer sorbet is blooming its little leaves off, and attracting plenty of bees:




We've got a nice pink flowering plant which came from our 'wild flower mix' that we can't identify. It's now producing seeds so we might try to grow some more next year.




And the climber at the back is covered in orange trumpets - and ants as I planted it on top of a nest of them. Ooops.

We are the champions...

OK, I may be a JCL as the guardian over by over coverage calls them, but I'm rejoicing in our win of the ashes. It's been a long day of hitting reload on the web browser - I left dot on time today to get home and watch the end. Thanks to Tim and my office mates, I've learnt a lot about cricket over the last few weeks. We're looking forward to the two-hour smug-fest on Channel 4 on Saturday :-)

We had a lovely quiet weekend with both of us at home for a change. We had grand plans of going orienteering, as I'd found out about a permanent course in some local woodland. Unfortunately, the forest centre, which was supposed to have details, knew nothing about it. We've visited the forest centre before and weren't impressed then either - shame, as it should be a good day out. Still, Tim got plenty of studying done and I had a potter around the garden - I'm waiting for our rhubarb and gooseberries to be delivered :-)

Amusing video conference at work today - we couldn't hear the guys at the other end, so called in our technical specialist to check the connections. Turned out the volume had been turned down on the TV...

The cricket...

...is taking over the office. Thanks to my office-mates, aided by an A4 wicket and some pens for stumps, I now know what a googly is. Our justification for all the cricket discussion is that it's all to do with aerodynamics...

Officers and gentlemen

I've just been away for a couple of days at Shrivenham - the military training college. I was at a conference on 'Integrating CFD and wind tunnel experiments' and very good it was too - unbelievably, all the presentations were interesting and all of them kept to time. I was of course the only female out of forty delegates, which was the cause of much amusement to me. One presenter started his talk by saying 'thank you Lady and Gentlemen' - nice to be singled out! And I don't think I opened a door all conference - someone always held it open for me.

We were staying in the officers mess on the campus, which was a bit like being back at university - single study bedrooms with showers down the hallway. The place was full of army-types, all of whom seemed to have different uniforms, and all of whom greeted us politely every time they passed us in the corridor. So it wasn't entirely like being back at university!

Still, a good conference which reminded me that there are some benefits to my job. I got back to a vegetable patch full of growing things as well! Oh, and a lovely husband and his fish ;-)

Clear out

Elspeth is away visitng Shrewsbury to see Catriona (and get the last requests for official wedding photos) and then Reading (for a BBQ at the Silverstones'), and while she's away I've tasked myself with clearing up a bit around the house. So I've been getting rid of almost all of my unnecessary thesis junk - the recylcing people will be pleased with the haul from our house this week. It's been quite fun loking back on all the stuff I did, but I won't be sorry never to see those papers again. Anyway, here's a nice photo I call "Distillation of Knowledge".



What was really fun was looking through the plots I had. Given that I only kept the ones which were useful (otherwise that pile would have been many times as high), I was impressed to find these fantastic correlation plots. Really instructive. Perhaps the beginning of an online plot graveyard?