Reverse Psychology?

Posters have sprung up at work, as these things are wont to do on occasion, sporting slogans such as:

It's OK...
...To Leave Work On Time To Catch Your Train

It's OK...
...To Keep Personal Commitments

It's OK...
...To Meet A Friend For Lunch


I think the point of these are to convince us that we're working for a caring employer who actually knows what "Work-life balance" means, rather than just having heard of it. My problem is that I always thought it was ok to leave on time for your train, or to avoid working at weekends, or whatever. Now I'm thinking that maybe I'm the only one who was keeping such standards, and that everyone else is letting their trains go by below their windows, or sitting at their desks for 10 hour stretches. Maybe I should be giving up more of my life for my employer. Maybe that's precisely what they want us to think.

Best get on - 3.30 and if I'm not careful I'll miss my train.

Elspeth singing

This weekend is a weekend of singing for Elspeth, which is nice as I think she'd rather sing more than she does. Today she sang a duet with Margaret for Eileen and Alan's wedding at church. They sang 'Love Changes Everything' - maybe not my favourite piece, but it was very nice to hear Elspeth's lovely voice clearly again after many choral concerts where she's just one of a crowd. Tomorrow she has her choir christmas concert, where she will be one of said crowd. She hasn't lost her voice yet (which has sidelined her from each of the previous two years) so all should be well.

I'd just like to share with you a scene from today's wedding. We were sat at the back of one of the rooms in the church watching a (Powerpoint, no less) presentation of photos from Eileen and Alan's wedding. Sat next to us were two old ladies. Let's call them Old Lady 1 and Old Lady 2:



Old Lady 1 (sat 2 seats down from Elspeth): Do you know who that Elspeth was who did the singing?
Old Lady 2: No, I don't.

[pause]

Old Lady 1: Do you know her?
Old Lady 2: No.

[pause]

Old Lady 2: I think she comes to church, but I'm not sure.
Old Lady 1: Do you know who she is?
Old Lady 2: No, I don't think so.

[pause]

Old Lady 1: Shall we get that cup of tea?

Back to work

After 2 weeks away from the office I have been back in Southwark Towers this week. Admittedly the first 2 days of those 2 weeks I had a training course at a hotel in Victoria (London, not British Columbia), and for the fourth day I was ill with food poisoning from said course, and for the rest of the time I was studying, but 2 weeks away is still pleasant.

To quickly tie up loose ends: the exam went well. More guesswork than I would like, but not too much stabbing in the dark. No idea how I performed relative to a pass/fail decision, as we don't get told what the pass mark is, so we'll just have to wait until some time at the end of January (precisely when? We don't get told).

Anyway, it's been a tough week back. Monday was the team away day, a trip to Oxford for an overpriced treasure hunt. It was fairly fun though - deciphering clues, finding landmarks, harrassing tourists etc. The twist being that we had an 8 foot length of rope which we all (10 of use) had to keep hold of all the time. Yes. Quite. We then had some proper bonding in the minibus on the way home (i.e. drinking games, drinking from the bottle of gin or malibu) and a nice meal in a kosher restaurant. All in, a good day if rather alcohol-fuelled.

The other difficult day of work was yesterday, the combined team annual meeting/christmas lunch. Last year the traditional cambridge jolly was rather spoiled by my impending viva the next day, so I made the most of it this year. Plenty of drink all round, which led to some interesting moments and a true building of team spirit. Or rather more than team spirit in the case of two particular people. Hehehe. Gossip is fun. Discretion is overrated.

Can't work out how to finish this post. So I'll just stop.

A little bit of history

A photo of the latest addition to our dining room - a little bit of Crocker family history. The plaque on the front states that this clock was 'presented to Mr. H.G. Brazier on the occasion of his retirement from the Naval Ordinance Inspection Department on 20th February 1931'. H.G. Brazier was my Nan's father - my great-grandfather.

This clock hung in the hallway of my grandparents' house and I have always remembered its beautiful chime. After my grandparents had died, my sister and I both chose something to remember them by, and this was my choice. Since then it's been sitting in my parents attic waiting for me to own a house to put it in. Mum and Dad kindly took it to a local clock restorer and we brought it back last weekend, cleaned and oiled. Finally it's hanging on a wall again - I'm glad to have such a beautiful link to my past.

Exams

I wonder how long ago I took my first exam. It may well be measurable in decades rather than years now, but I'm still ploughing through them, the latest courtesy of the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) pofessional qualification that I am pursuing.

Tomorrow morning I need to be in East London at 8.00 for 6 hours of CFA level I exam, including such subjects as financial statement analysis, portfolio management, asset valuation, economics, and, um, well there are others which I have temporarily forgotten. Ooops. Revising again has been an interesting experience - the last time I did it in earnest being for my finals 4+ years ago. I've remembered why I dislike it so much, and have also realised the importance of practical use of the things in the syllabus and familiarity with the concepts. It may be an obvious statement, but the areas that I've struggled with are such as economics which I have never had cause to use in real life, rather than the quantitative analysis section (never really going to trouble me) or the bits on futures and options contracts and the debt investments, which I have experienced in the course of my work.

All in, I'm feeling confident (there's no point in approaching it any other way) but am aware that a lot of the material is on the edge of my consciousness if in my head at all, and I'd ideally be going in with stronger understanding of quite a large proportion of it. At least I feel pretty secure in the knowledge that having faced my third year cambridge maths exams and my PhD viva, exam experiences can't be any more daunting.

Well, I'd best go and limber up my brain. Wish me good memory for tomorrow.

Tim's view on veg

Despite doing my best to devegetarianise Elspeth, I too am enjoying our veg box of delights. As can be seen from the accompanying photo.



The obvious question is: What veg am I?

In work and not execting to be!

Life is very confusing at the moment... I was expecting to spend today in hospital having my wisdom teeth out (ouch). I'd spent the last week psyching myself up for this, making sure we had plenty of soup for me to eat and buying a selection of magazines to flick through while I spent the rest of the week recuperating. I'd also planned to do some Christmas shopping before visiting Mum and Dad this weekend.

However, at ten past seven this morning the hospital rang to cancel the op. So now I'm in work, when I was expecting a week off! While it's nice to still be in one piece I've now got the op hanging over me again...

I had a very musical weekend as it was my choir's concert on Sunday evening. We had a rehearsal on Friday night, then I went to see Cinderella by Rossini with some friends on Saturday, then spent Sunday afternoon rehearsing and Sunday evening performing. I think Tim was starting to forget what I looked like! Chris managed one of his grand plans and came to the concert, which he thoroughly enjoyed. I'm glad I haven't put him off choral music for life - at least not yet... We decided it was rather more mainstream than the sub-culture of banding, mainly because it wasn't a competition, but also because we had Brian Blessed there narrating, and anything with a 'celebrity' can't be too sub-culture-ish!

This weekend is suposed to be a trip to my parents. I'll try to get some nice snowy pictures of Yorkshire to put on here.

Veg

Much excitement in the Mosedale houshold last night with the delivery of our first organic veg box - supplied by a local firm and almost all grown on local farms. We've now got leeks, carrots, potatoes, very cute mushrooms and the world's biggest cabbage. And does anyone know a good recipe for swede?

Not only does the veg taste good it adds to my ethical smugness as well - and means I don't have to go to Sainsbury's as often. What more could you ask for?

A trip to London

We popped down to London on Saturday evening to go to Lucy's flat warming party. I found the train/tube trip very exciting - needless to say, Tim was slightly less bothered about it as he spends three hours a day commuting. The party was very good fun but due to my ineptness at reading the train timetables we missed the last fast train home and had to catch the Thameslink, which was standing room only and took over an hour to get to Bedford.

We made up for the late night by having a very lazy day today. The morning was spent lazing around with the Sunday papers, bacon sandwiches and fruit juice, while this afternoon has been spent doing nothing in particular. Bliss!

Dealgaeficationism

As Elspeth mentioned previously, we have the pleasure of having nothing specific to do this weekend. It is entirely welcome, as I'm having a frustrating week or two at work (more may follow on this, if venting is required). We;ve both been busy all day, but there's nothing we had to do, which makes a huge difference!

I have taken the opportunity today to have a good clean of the fish tank. The major contributor to its previous dirty look was algae: all over the rocks, wood, plants, and probably the slower moving fish. So I've taken all of the furniture out of the tank, given it a good scrub to get rid of the algae, cleaned up the gravel and plants, and rearranged it all to give a different feel to the tank. Think Changing Rooms without the power tools. I'm really happy with the result - the tank looks much cleaner and more interesting.



Taking pictures of shoals of fish is even harder than of single fish. These are 5 of my half dozen penguin tetras - resident since last weekend. These are one of the fish that I've always liked back in the days when I used to spend hours in fish shops dreaming of my own tank! I especially like the way the black stripe goes right down the bottom half of the fin, and their swimming position which is much more 'head up' than most other fishes. It makes them always seem inquisitive to me, which I like! We bought these fish from the garden centre which Elspeth and I frequent more and more regularly. Recently they've had some lovely fish in, including some torpedo barbs which Elspeth ahs her eye on (although these would be a more significant outlay than on any other fish to date - they're £10 each at the moment). They also have some upside down catfish which I've only seen once before, and are *very* tempting. One of the guys that we play badminton with happens to work in the aquatics department there, so it's nice to know one of my stockists quite well!




The new tank setup has more hiding places than the old setup, but at the same time these hiding places are more easily visible from outisde the tank. This is one of my female platies with the alpha male. They seemed to be having a nice intimate moment, and I confess that I felt a bit voyeuristic taking the photo. Maybe they're making some more babies. I realise I never really updated you on the story of the baby platies. I just found the picture of them when there were two and they were tiny. This isn't the case any more - there's only 1 left but he's really grown up. I always said I wouldn't be bothered, but there's something pleasing about knowing that this fish was born in my tank and doesn't know any other home. Bless. I'll try and get a photo for next time.

Oh, and that happened to be the 1000th picture with our digital camera. How have we found 1000 things to take photos of in the last 6 months?!



Mr rainbowfish. He was the only one not moving at the time, so you have a picture of him. He has settled a lot since last I blogged, when he was terrorising everyfish. I suspect this is with the influx of more fish so he doesn't feel quite confident enough to try and be king of the tank. This title could potentially belong to the sole remaining tiger barb (following a disease outbreak a few weeks ago which wiped the other 5 out - quite a sad occurrence as I really liked the barbs and I'm worried about getting any more). Anyway, he seems fine, is clearly a hard fish for surviving the illness, and was the only one not to run away and hide when I was chucking stuff about all over the tank.



One of the secondary reasons for the tank clean was to see how many corys I had left! They're very shy (at least during the day) and I can't remember the last time I could spot all four that I started out with. They are still all alive and kicking, and I hope I haven't scared them too much with today's activities - hey didn't seem happy about having their hiding places removed. Hopefully now they will feel safer with more spots to hide in and we will see more of them.

The census did reveal that an oto has gone missing, presumed eaten. Or it's exceptionally good at hiding.

A long birthday

Well my birthday has lasted just over a week this year: I had cards and presents last Wednesday, drinks with work on Friday and a meal out with Tim last night. We tried out a very nice Italian restaurant in Bedford - definitely a good choice!

We've both been rather quiet on the blog front recently, not through lack of things to write about, more through lack of time. We had Hannah come to visit a couple of weeks ago as our first proper weekend guest. Chris has already updated us on his failed attempt to visit, but Rachel David and Samuel did manage to arrive and stayed overnight last week. The spare room is now usable as a guest bedroom and we'll be glad to welcome visitors!

We're looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home - Tim's planning a major fish tank cleaning session and I'm sure I'll end up in the garden again :-)

Hooray!

Much excitement in the Mosedale house this weekend, as we discovered that the birds are finally eating the seeds on our bird table. If we stand in the spare room we can watch them - so far we've seen a large crowd of sparrows, the odd starling, and some king of tit, either blue or black we're not sure. Plus, I was out in the garden this afternoon and spotted a robin watching me from next door's tree - word of our table is obviously spreading!

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?

Meanwhile in the garden...

... a bird table and alpine patch have appeared. I should point out that I did this all by myself, which Tim was watching the cricket. This involved digging out half the earth from the flower bed and carrying large amounts of grit and gravel up the garden. I'm feeling quite proud of myself... 


As of this evening, the vegetable patch is also planted up with lettuce, pak choi, carrots and peas. I'll let you know if anything actually germinates and makes it to the edible stage!