|
[30 May 2009|07:32pm] |
Okay, this is a rating I can live with:
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -2.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.69
Test your political leanings at The Political Compass.
|
|
|
[06 Mar 2008|04:43pm] |
|
As in previous years, we spent most of February in Gran Canaria, to avoid the worst of the English winter. It wasn't a total success, mainly because the apartment above ours was being renovated. Among other things, they were replacing all their floor tiles. So we were subjected to a continual noise of drilling, banging and hammering all day long. In the afternoons, Mary likes to laze on a sunbed in the apartment's small garden while I go swimming or hiking. But she felt nervous because the tall palm tree that dominates the garden had some very large coconuts that looked as though they were about to drop on the sunbed. So Gustavo the gardener was called in to remove them, using his impressive telescopic pruning saw. 
The only reason for mentioning this is that it gives me an excuse to show a photo of the dishy Gustavo holding his nuts (so to speak). 
For anyone who's interested, there are two more pages of photos here (no more of Gustavo, unfortunately, but there is one of Hans, the cute gay waiter at our favourite harbourside restaurant).
|
|
|
[04 Oct 2007|09:44pm] |
|
Last week we spent a few days in Prague, using a low-cost airline to spread our carbon footprint across the globe. I was last there in 1992 when they were just emerging from communism. As you would expect, there have been huge changes since then, especially now that the Czech Republic is part of the European Union. Shops that were previously practically empty are now stacked high with all the latest consumer goods and fashions (though prices have rocketed, of course). Restaurants, which were very thin on the ground in 1992 (I was taken for a meal at "Restaurant No. 8", which had a fixed menu of tough beef and boiled potatoes), are now everywhere, still very reasonably priced and with excellent, varied menus. All traces of communism have disappeared. Well, not quite. The woman in charge of the buffet breakfast room at our hotel clearly saw herself as an upholder of totalitarian values, and treated guests as though she was a prison camp commandant. Anyone who dared to smile at her and say Good morning was ignored or greeted with a withering glare. One morning, Mary decided that she didn't like the coffee, so she went to the drinks counter to get a cup of tea. There was a stack of cups on a table behind the counter, but as Mary went to pick one up she was intercepted by Madame Kommandant, who barred her way and barked "Table", pointing to one of the dining tables to indicate that the places were set with plates and cups. Of course, Mary had already used her cup and needed a fresh one. Rather than explain this to Mme K, she shrugged her shoulders and took a cup from an unoccupied table. This meant that Mme K then had to replace that cup, but apparently that was considered permissible. The next morning, I wanted some toast. On one of the buffet tables there was an electric toaster and a plate of unappetising-looking sliced white bread. On another table there was a plate of delicious rye bread, so I took a couple of slices of that and put them in the toaster. Mme K was there in a flash. Mme K: (pointing to toaster) No in machine! Me: Huh? What's wrong? Mme K: (indicates rye bread) No! Make machine kaput! Me: No it won't, it's working fine. Mme K: (points to white bread) This one! Me: No, I don't like that one. Mme K: (picks up a slice of rye bread and waves it in my face) No, no, no! Me: Yes, yes, yes! Mme K: NO!! Me: Oh, sod off. At which point, she gave up and stomped off, leaving me to enjoy my breakfast of toasted rye bread (without any damage to the toaster). If she hadn't been so aggressive, and if she hadn't previously been hostile to Mary, I wouldn't have been rude to her—it's not normally my style. But I have to admit I rather enjoyed that little exchange. Prague is a beautiful city, full of flamboyant baroque architecture. Three days was not enough to see all that we wanted to see of it. 
Gothic turrets of the church of Our Lady Before Týn.
Frescoes on one of the buildings in the Old Town Square.
(Three pages of photos here!)
|
|
|
[11 Jun 2007|09:21pm] |
Our younger grandson had his fourth birthday yesterday. Davy is a cute little guy, very good-natured and cheerful but distinctly odd. For a start, he isn't toilet-trained yet. He doesn't really interact much with other people except for his older brother Tom. He plays on his own for hours, in a compulsive way, with toy soldiers or animals, and pays no attention when people talk to him. His parents have had him tested for deafness, but his hearing is fine. We thought at one time that he might be autistic, but if so then he doesn't display many of the standard symptoms. He doesn't talk at all, except to babble away in his own private language which nobody but Tom is able to interpret. What really worries us is the fear that he might be brain-damaged. He had a difficult birth and there is the possibility that he may have been starved of oxygen at one stage.
 Also, he is extremely finicky about food, and scarcely eats anything. Some time last month Jo was trying to get him to eat a mouthful of lunch, which he refused. She pleaded with him to try it, but he wouldn't. "Oh go on, Davy, try just one mouthful," she said. Davy looked at her and said, very carefully and distinctly, "I would not, could not, with a goat." (Aficionados of Dr Seuss will recognise the allusion.) That was three weeks ago. Since then he hasn't spoken, but now we know that he can when he wants to.
He may be an odd little kid, but somewhere inside that mysterious brain there's a bit of a joker waiting to emerge.
|
|
|
[20 Apr 2007|08:30pm] |
|
About a year ago, Mary announced that for her 65th birthday present she wanted something special: a trip to Japan in springtime to see the cherry blossom. So what could I do but agree? We started looking for a package tour. I didn't think it was feasible to organise a trip there on our own (seeing as how neither of us speaks a word of Japanese), but having seen how easy it is to navigate the excellent public transport system I wouldn't have any qualms about doing that in future. Anyway, we saw an advert for a tour entitled "Gardens of Japan", from a small travel agency that specialises in holidays with a horticultural theme. We signed up for it, and it was an outstanding success. I don't normally like the idea of being in a group that gets bussed around with a tour guide. In fact, we have never done such a thing before and probably won't do so again. But it was a reasonably small group of people who all got on well together, with an excellent guide, and we had a great time. We got home ten days ago, but it took us a while to adjust to the time difference, and it took me even longer to edit my pictures and get them onto our web site. Here's a taster: 
Crowds enjoying the spectacular avenue leading to the Shintō shrine in Kamakura.
On a fine Sunday afternoon, it seemed that half the population of Tokyo was in these gardens picnicking under the cherry blossom.
"... every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment."
Shakespeare, Sonnet 15
(Seven pages of photos here!)
|
|
|
[01 Mar 2007|07:34pm] |
|
March already, so where did January and February go? Part of the reason they went by so painlessly is that we have had one of the mildest winters on record. Mary always insists that we go away to somewhere warmer during February, so as to avoid the worst of the winter, but this year we need hardly have bothered. Not that I'm complaining about our winter sunshine break. As usual, we stayed at Puerto de Mogán on Gran Canaria. We have been there every year since 2000 (except for a couple of years when we went further afield) and we have never grown tired of it. We stayed in one of the apartments by the fishermen's harbour, and spent most of the time in more or less complete idleness. 
The fishermen's harbour at Puerto de Mogán; our apartment was near the left end of this row, behind the palm trees.
We passed the time by walking in the barranco, reading, sitting in beachfront cafes. In the afternoons, Mary stayed at the apartment, reading in the shade of the little front garden, and I alternated the days between hiking in the Maspalomas dunes and swimming in the sea at Playa de Mogán. The sea temperature was 22°C, which feels cold when you first dive in, but is just right for swimming once you get used to it. Then the best part of the day is to dry off by sunbathing on the beach, where the temperature was in the upper 20s, around 80°F. I guess even the mildest-ever winter in Leeds can't really begin to compete with the Canary Isles. 
Mary at La Cicala, our favourite cafe on the Playa promenade.
(More photos here.)
|
|
|
[31 Dec 2006|08:05pm] |
|
|
|
|
[20 Nov 2006|09:46pm] |
|
As usual on the third weekend of November, we have been in London. The main reason for the trip is to attend the annual dinner of the math society, which took place on Friday evening. There were lots of old friends and colleagues there and it was a very happy occasion. We stayed for two nights with our friend Gill who lives in north London, close to the Arsenal football ground. We didn't actually see that much of her because her husband had been taken into hospital with some sort of intestinal complaint. Gill was obviously preoccupied with this, and was fretting that he might have bowel cancer. We did our best to reassure her that this was very unlikely, and sure enough it turned out that it was just a digestive upset, nothing too serious. But they kept Roger in hospital for various tests for the whole of our visit, so we didn't see him.  On Saturday morning we had arranged to meet some other friends at the Royal Academy to see the Rodin exhibition. This was definitely the highlight of the weekend, a magnificent collection of all Rodin's greatest works including The Kiss, The Thinker, The Burghers of Calais and The Gates of Hell, with an excellent audio guide to lead one through the exhibition. I kept going back to the first of the galleries, which contained an early Rodin sculpture that I had not heard of before, The Age of Bronze. The pictures to the right (lifted from somewhere on the web) show a small-scale reproduction of this work– nice enough, but it doesn't begin to capture the power of the original life-size bronze statue. If you are in London between now and the end of December you should definitely see this exhibition.
On Saturday evening the plan was for Gill to cook dinner for us. But since she had been at the hospital for most of the day we offered to take her out to dinner. We went to a little Thai restaurant just round the corner from her house and had a very good meal there. The journey home yesterday was fairly grim, in a very overcrowded train on which all the seats were reserved. We didn't have reserved seats (my fault for leaving the booking until too late), but we sat in a couple of empty seats hoping that the people who had reserved them would fail to turn up. Fortunately they didn't, and we were spared having to stand for the two and a half hour journey. Others were not so lucky, and had to give up their seats to those who had booked them. Now that I'm home again I am going to start on the major project of renovating the house bathroom, which hasn't been redecorated for about 30 years. Step 1 is to chip all the tiles off the walls. That should keep me busy for the next little while.
|
|
|
[29 Oct 2006|09:15pm] |
|
Journal entry (What I Did This Month (not a lot)).
|
|
|
[02 Oct 2006|08:51pm] |
|
So, it's all over. After 41 years of employment I am, as from the end of September, officially retired. For the time being, that won't make any noticeable difference to me. I still haven't finished clearing out my office, and the Chairman has said that he doesn't have anyone else wanting to move into that room for the next few weeks, so I have until the end of October to sort through the remaining files and bring home anything that I want to keep. Seeing all the new students milling around the place, I can't pretend that I feel any regret that I no longer have to teach them. On the contrary, I'm enjoying the luxury of taking my time over breakfast each morning instead of battling with the rush hour. I no longer have a parking permit for the University precinct but that doesn't matter, because I now have a senior citizen's bus pass and can travel on the buses anywhere in West Yorkshire after 9.30am without having to pay anything. The only drawback doesn't hit me until the end of the month, when I will not get a paycheck. I'm not sure how we'll get by with only our pensions and savings for support. Even with my salary we have been living beyond our means, what with all our foreign travel, and we don't want to cut back on that at all. In fact, we have already lined up trips to Gran Canaria and Japan in the next six months in an outburst of what they call SKIing (Spending the Kids' Inheritance). I forgot to mention my retirement conference, which took place last week. It was a great success, with lots of old friends attending and a panel of very distinguished speakers. I had to make a speech at the conference dinner, but I had thought out carefully what I wanted to say and I think I made a good job of it, without even feeling nervous about it. Since the speeches came after the dinner, I had to be careful not to have too much to drink during the meal, but I think it was worth that sacrifice (a drunken speech is rarely successful). I took several photos at the dinner, and you can find them here. So now I'm free to do what I want, when I want (until the money runs out). We're going to take advantage of this straight away by going for a week's trip to the West Country, staying with Liz in Bristol for a few days and then going on down to Cornwall to visit the Eden Project.
|
|
|
[19 Sep 2006|08:11pm] |
|
The end of this month marks my official retirement. As from the first of October I shall have no further obligations to the university, though in truth I have not had any for the past eight months anyway, so it won't make a great deal of difference to me. I expect I'll still go in once a week or so to meet colleagues and to attend our research seminar. Some months ago, a couple of colleagues offered to organise a short conference to mark my retirement. I was a bit diffident at the prospect, knowing that this would mean that I'd have to stay awake through all the lectures and probably make a speech at the conference dinner. But vanity overcame apprehension and I agreed to let them go ahead with plans. I envisaged a fairly small-scale meeting, but they had more ambitious plans. As you can see from the conference announcement on the Department's home page, the meeting will spread over three days and has a dozen very eminent speakers, including my old research supervisor and several distinguished mathematicians from Germany and America. I'm still feeling a bit apprehensive about it, but I suspect that I will actually enjoy it a lot, and I'm very flattered that people have gone to such lengths to lay on a really special event to mark my retirement. [Abrupt change of subject.] Photos from the trip to Spain are now on the family web site. There are lots of them (five pages) but I'm disappointed with the quality. A lot of what I thought would be the best shots turned out to be hopelessly out of focus and I couldn't use them. I'm going to have to work out what went wrong before the next trip (which will be a week in the southwest of England next month to stay with Liz and visit various friends in that part of the country).
|
|
|
[12 Sep 2006|10:06pm] |
|
The good thing about being retired is that you can go out for the day whenever you feel like it. No need to wait for the weekend when everyone else is out and about and the roads are congested with traffic. Yesterday was a fine, warm, late summer's day, and I took the opportunity to go for a walk in the Yorkshire Dales. I drove to the tiny hamlet of Litton in Littondale and walked over Plover Hill to Pen-y-ghent. I stopped for lunch at the top of Pen-y-ghent, and there were about half a dozen other people there. There were also several other people on the short stretch of Pennine Way that I walked along. Apart from that, I had the hills to myself and didn't meet another person all day. On the drive home, I was held up by a farmer who was slowly shepherding a flock of sheep along the narrow road with the aid of an eager and hardworking sheepdog. I had to follow them along at slower than walking pace for about 15 minutes until they turned off into a field. But I don't mind that sort of hold-up. It's not nearly so frustrating as a traffic jam in the city or on a motorway. Here's a photo of Pen-y-ghent Beck and Pen-y-ghent Hill, with the green pasture of Upper Hesleden farm sandwiched between them. 
And this is the steep end of Pen-y-ghent, as seen from the Pennine Way. 
|
|
|
[20 Aug 2006|04:01pm] |
|
It's still not at all clear whether or not the huge terrorist scare last week was a false alarm, but at least the government has begun to relax the emergency airport security measures that were introduced in such a panic, and it's now permissible to have a small amount of carry-on baggage including books. It seems that dangerous materials such as toothpaste are still banned on board. 'Tis a mad world, indeed. So we're off to Spain tomorrow, hoping to enjoy two weeks of sunshine, seeing new places and meeting old friends and family. I'll be back here sometime in September.
|
|
|
[12 Aug 2006|07:50pm] |
|
I hope the people who were grumbling about the heat last month are happy with what we've got now. It's more like November than August here, with dark grey skies and a blustery wind threatening rain any moment. Temperatures didn't even reach 60°F today. This is obviously the time to be heading for warmer parts, and for the past few days I have been putting the finishing touches on our travel plans for Spain. Ten days from now (terrorists, airlines and politicians permitting) we'll be in Madrid. We're staying there for a week, notionally to attend the International Congress of Mathematicians, but since I'm now retired I won't take that too seriously. We're looking forward to meeting lots of old friends and colleagues there, but I'm likely to be spending more time in art galleries than in lecture theatres. When we leave Madrid we'll rent a car and drive slowly southwest, stopping for a couple of days in Toledo, then in Guadalupe and Mérida before going on to stay with Steve, Jo and the grandchildren for a few days. I have been looking for accommodation in cheap hostals, but with the proviso that they must have air-conditioned rooms. Today I had an email from the hostal in Guadalupe confirming that they have reserved a room for us, and that completes all the accommodation arrangements. I'm very glad that we were not due to travel during the past two days, with all the delays, cancellations and confusion caused by the latest terrorist scare. It's very good news if some horrific outrage has indeed been thwarted, and I realise that the authorities have to introduce extra security procedures, but I do wish the government would not over-react quite so hysterically. What they are saying at the moment is that passengers can take nothing on board except the clothes they are wearing, tickets, passports and wallets. Nothing in pockets, no handbags or cabin baggage of any kind, not even a book to read, and I'm not sure whether they're even allowing wristwatches to be worn. Everything has to go into the checked-in baggage. I don't see how it's possible to endure a long-haul flight without a book to read. Even the two-hour trip to Madrid is going to be mind-numbingly tedious.
|
|
|
[02 Aug 2006|09:23pm] |
|
There's an interesting and heartening little item in this week's Sunday Times. It reminded me of something I wrote about in my journal four years ago, when I gave a short review of Benjamin Britten's opera Albert Herring after seeing a performance of it by Opera North. Here's part of what I wrote then. Albert Herring is an interesting opera by Benjamin Britten. At one level, it is a comedy about English social attitudes, set in the deeply conservative rural community of Loxford, where they are unable to find a suitable May Queen for the May Day ceremonies. Eventually they hit on the idea of choosing instead a May King, the greengrocer's assistant Albert Herring. [...] Britten uses this scenario to explore issues of sexual identity and gender transgression.
But now it seems that fact has caught up with fiction. Here's what the Sunday Times reports. (Considering that both it and The Sun are Rupert Murdoch papers with a strong conservative bias, and that it's writing about a small town in rural England, I think it's very encouraging that social attitudes have become so accepting and relaxed. It's a far cry from the hysterical intolerance of Margaret Thatcher's time only 20 years ago.)  Only gay in the village of the week
A gay teenager has been chosen as carnival queen by a small Somerset town. David Bridge, 15, will parade through the streets of Axbridge wearing a dress, tiara and high heels. He auditioned in front of the mayor, who didn't have the heart to turn him down, reported The Sun. "It seemed fun and I thought I'd enjoy dressing up," said David, pictured right. Just four people applied to head the parade, so mayor Barry Hamblin named two previous queens as princesses, picked a 16-year-old girl as queen with David as "alternative queen". Said one member of the selection committee: "It's hard enough to get people involved as it is."
|
|
|
[01 Aug 2006|07:50pm] |
|
The annual walking holiday in Scotland is always the highlight of my year, and this year's was as good as ever. I stayed for a week with the usual gang, in a farmhouse they had rented somewhere north of Inverness. As last year, I drove up to Scotland a few days before joining them and did some walking and climbing on my own in an attempt to get at least partially fit, so that I would be able to keep up with the rest of the gang. Since we were staying fairly far north anyway, I took the opportunity to go right up to the north coast of Scotland, which I have never visited before. The rest of Britain was sweltering in a heatwave, but up at the top of the country it was just pleasantly warm, with a fair amount of cloud cover and even some occasional rain. In other words, conditions for climbing were just about perfect. On the three days when I was on my own, I walked out to Sandwood Bay (which claims to have the most unspoilt beach in Europe) and climbed the two most northerly Munros. I then had an excellent week with the gang, but I won't say any more about that here because I have already posted a photoblog of the trip on the family web site (link below for anyone who's interested). I have been going on these holidays for over 20 years, and Allan started organising them several years before that. In the past, we have always unthinkingly assumed that they would go on for ever. But this year for the first time we actually discussed the sad truth that the time will come when we can no longer climb mountains. There was a time when we confidently reckoned that we could beat the time that the guidebook gave for a climb. More recently, we have found that the guidebook's timing was just about right for us. But this year we had to face the fact that we are slowing down and taking longer than the guidebook times. Given reasonable health, we should have ten years or more of climbing left in our legs. In the hills, you quite often see wiry little old Scottish ladies in their mid or even late seventies who still manage substantial climbs. But obviously the time will come when that will no longer be possible. What happens then? When I jokingly suggested a coach tour of the Highlands they practically threw things at me. We certainly wouldn't want to be reduced to that. But I hope that we'll still find some way of enjoying the hills together, even in our dotage. Here's a couple of pictures from the holiday. The first one is Sandwood Bay, now owned and protected by the John Muir Trust. Even on the hottest, sunniest day of the year there were only half a dozen people along its 2km of golden sand. Being over four miles from the nearest road (and then 60 miles of narrow, twisting road from anything resembling a town) helps to keep the crowds away. 
And here's one of me with my head in the clouds (or a bit above them) on the summit of Ben Klibreck. 
( Three pages of photoblog start here. )
|
|
|
[14 Jul 2006|09:50am] |
|
It's less than a week until my annual walking holiday in Scotland and I seriously need to get into shape, having had virtually no exercise at all this year. Mary is worried that with me being as unfit as I am, I'll collapse on some Scottish hill through overexertion. Last weekend, she more or less insisted that I should go for a good long walk in the Yorkshire Dales, in preparation for Scotland. This was something that I wanted to do in any case, and on Tuesday I drove up the Wharfe valley past Bolton Abbey to Barden and had a fairly strenuous hike in upper Wharfedale. It was an ideal day for walking, dry and warm but with enough cloud cover that it wasn't too hot. This part of Wharfedale has very picturesque scenery but also many interesting remains of industrial activities from previous centuries, such as this elegant aqueduct over the Wharfe, 
and this dangerous-looking entrance to a long-abandoned mine shaft. 
( two more pages of photos here ) I was feeling tired and stiff the following day, but in much better shape for tackling Scotland next week.
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lobosolo's journal