Changes
High time I reported on our news.
Warning: entry with family news/personal stuff follows!
The biggest news is that I have started a permanent job with a company in Gloucester, as an Infrastructre Technician in their IT department. The role is similar to the one I had in Barbados: second line desktop support, Lotus Notes administration and projects such as broadband installation and hopefully involvement in an Active Directory rollout. For those of you for whom the last sentence made no sense, I’m still in computers. Early indications are that my manager and team (seven of us) are a nice bunch and the culture of the company is employee-friendly. I had actually been working there as a self-employed contractor since mid November, so my “first day” (yesterday) was completely unremarkable: same desk, same computer, same job, same colleagues, but now paid holidays, pension etc. The trip to work is an hour in total, but the drive is largely through beautiful countryside on fast roads, so it’s not stressful.
Other big news is a forthcoming house move. Mum has bought a four/five bedroom house in the Osbaston suburb of Monmouth (if a small town the size of Monmouth can have a “suburb”) which we will rent from her. It gives us plenty of room and Mum will convert the garage into an annexe for her. In the medium term we want to buy a flat or small house which will get us back on the property ladder – tricky after five years off it, during which house prices in the UK quadrupled.
The view from the “Bell House” as it is known is lovely, as it it is set on a steep hillside overlooking Monmouth and on to the Brecon Beacons further into Wales.
Big A. has just returned from a (self-funded!) trip to Barbados, which she enjoyed as she was missing her friends there. Unfortunately, she appears to have brought back a case of viral tonsilitis!
Little A. is her usual perky self, becoming more verbal. Still calls Big A. “Daddy” for some reason and says “mup” when she wants you to pick her up or put her down.
K. is fine and getting quite excited about moving into the new house: buying furniture and decorating etc.
That’s all for now.
Vocabulary
Here is a sample of little A.’s current vocabulary, with meanings:
Dood – Dog
Wwwwuff – The noise a dog makes
Weeeow – Miaow – the noise a cat makes
Jhesh – Yes
Nah! – No
Mm Mm – Pick me up/Help!
Hi – Here, you take it (of toys, etc when proffered)
Shlite – Light
Daddy – Daddy, but also her older sister (really)
Oh! – Reaction to paternal flatulence
Ba Ba – What a sheep says
Pop Pop – What a fish does with its mouth
Yaay! – I want more, accompanied by the “Makaton” sign language gesture for “more”
Babby – Variously, any face or reflection, most commonly the girl in the reflective metal dustbin who copies everything little A. does.
Dit Dit – I want to listen to music on your lap while sitting at the computer. (From a song about clocks that go “tick-tock”)
Good dining in Monmouthshire
Ate dinner at “The Bell” at Skenfrith with friends from London on Saturday to celebrate K.’s birthday. To call it a “gastropub” seems a little unfair as it has a standard of cooking that would not be out of place in the best of London’s restaurants. All the better then that it is a fifteen minute drive from Monmouth and set in beautiful countryside. The ambiance is classy but not stuffy or pretentious and this seventeenth century coaching inn is obviously run by people who know – and care about – high quality local food. There’s even a blackboard with the names of the local suppliers so you know who provided that venison/guinea foul/sea bass etc.
I had been wondering where the upmarket restaurants were in Monmouth. Seemingly none. Odd, when it’s obvious that there are plenty of upmarket people around with the money and tastes to support them.
Aliens could be here, say proper scientists
A paper by a team of American scientists published in the January 2005 edition of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society proposes that the likelihood that the earth is being visited by extraterrestrial visitors is quite high. The paper, titled “Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation” even goes as far as to suggest that UFO reports may provide evidence of such visits. The scientists pick up where “Fermi’s Paradox” left off. Named after Enrico Fermi, a physicist, the paradox takes the theory that the universe is so vast and diverse it must have produced advanced civilisations (capable of using worm holes for interstellar travel) on other planets and asks, “Well, where are they?”.
Read more here
It’s good to see serious scientists taking this subject a little more, er, seriously. This is too important to be left to well meaning amateurs with beards and anoraks. It should be noted that the leading scientific journals in the US and the UK refused to even submit the paper for review, let alone publish it.
Give it another twenty years and the aliens will be coming out of the closet: mark my words. You read it here first! And no, they’re not all cuddly like ET was 
Bridge
Found a nice picture of the thirteenth century Monnow Bridge here. It was taken in the summer and I can tell you that at the moment it looks distinctly grim in the bleak February sun. The site it’s on, incidentally, is that of a Geo, a sort of German counterpart to the American National Geographic magazine.
Proust and Masonic Spam
The BBC today started a six-part dramatisation of one of the greatest works (in any language) of 20th century literature, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu or In Search of Lost Time, by Proust. Why is this significant? Well, when I was an French Studies undergraduate at Warwick University I was expected to read this book and found it pretty heavy going.
In a disconcertingly post-modern way, it dispenses with the conventions of narrative and focuses on mood, characters and – most particularly – memory. Sentences could get very long (two pages long on occasion) with so many sub-clauses you could have a tea-break in the middle. No doubt it provided fascinating insights into the human condition, but, aged 19 and three quarters I simply didn’t have the intellectual maturity to digest it. Now, however, at the grand age of 35, I reckon I might have acquired sufficient profondeur (or at least pretentiousness) to approach it with a little more confidence, by listening to the BBC’s version on my hour long trips to and from work in Gloucester over the next week.
A friend in Barbados forwarded me this bizarre email, which simply had me smiling, shaking my head and thinking “Riiiiight…..”. Make of it what you will:
Subject: 2005 GRANT,VERY URGENTThe Freemason society of Bournemouth under the jurisdiction of the all Seeing Eye, Master Nicholas Brenner has after series of secret deliberations selected you to be a beneficiary of our 2005 foundation laying grants and also an optional opening at the round table of the Freemason society.
These grants are issued every year around the world in accordance with the objective of the Freemasons as stated by Thomas Paine in 1810 which is to ensure the continuous freedom of man and to enhance mans living conditions.
We will also advice that these funds which amount to USD2.5million be used to better the lot of man through your own initiative and also we will go further to inform that the open slot to become a Freemason is optional, you can decline the offer.
In order to claim your grant, contact the Grand Lodge Office secretary David P. Owen.
Grand Lodge Office Secretary’s email: [address deleted]
Paul Landy,
PRO Freemason Society of Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth.
Ladybirds
I imagine that most of us don’t associate ladybirds with the middle of winter in these northern climes. However, perhaps someone can explain the following: One evening about a month ago I noticed a ladybird creeping up the wall next to the lamp on my bedside table. I thought it odd, as it was the middle of winter and besides, how did it get into the house when so few windows are opened?
Imagine my surprise when, earlier this week I saw a ladybird creeping around (the same one? I should have counted the spots – damn) in the same place. Is it a sign? If so what? Perhaps it is a sign that God/fate/providence/supreme being of your choice is fond of playing absurd jokes.
On the subject of cosmic jokes, I can’t help but squirm (in a mature and manly way – not a giggly girlish way) with anticipation at the release of the film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now that Stephen Fry is on board (as the voice of the Guide) it is getting even more interesting. Pencil in the release date of 30th June.
Vanity, family and sign language
Been looking for suitable episodes for inclusion in this blog, but on a “quality is better than quantity” principle”, I’m restraining myself from adding lots that is uninteresting or unamusing. Added to that, since starting work again, I haven’t had many opportunities when at home to muse, cogitate and generally allow myself to be creative. So no stories or rants for the moment.
An update on what the family is up to: K is pretty much a full time housewife now. Little A is keeping her busy. Little A herself has a cold but still manages to be charming. K is teaching her sign language to help her communication skills. She can now sign “more” by patting the palm of one hand against the clenched fist of her other hand, after doing which, she copies our praise by clapping , grinning and saying “yaay!”. I wonder if she will follow every new sign that she acquires with applause. Never mind – it’s very entertaining.
Big A has done the first of her AS level exams. All very strange to me. What happened to waiting until the June of the Upper Sixth?
I was at a lodge meeting last weekend. Passed off reasonably well – a second degree ceremony. Nice to have some work to do. A bit disappointed that I didn’t get “Heimat” on DVD for Christmas. Compensated by wearing a Bavarian shirt to work today.
Mum is completing the sale of her house in Chiswick next Friday and moving to a temporary rented place just around the corner. It’ll be nice to have all my immediate family in the same neighbourhood. It also means that my ties to London are now weaker. It will now be the four-times-a-year lodge meetings that will bring me back, although I don’t know if visiting central Staines qualifies as going to London, unless, of course I stay overnight with friends.
Got a new mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson K700i. Very nice – loads of memory (40mb), camera, radio etc. I can synch it with my contacts and diary on my PC, download music to it to listen to while stuck in dentists’ waiting rooms (and unwilling to read dog eared editions of old golfing magazines).
That’s your lot.
National Cliches
Happy New Year!
As a Freemason and film enthusiast, I took the opportunity of seeing the Nicholas Cage vehicle “National Treasure” recently. It concerns the attempt by Cage’s character to locate a vast treasure hoard brought to America by the Knights Templar and guarded by their supposed heirs, the Freemasons. You might think that the portrayal of Freemasons as noble guardians of a “national treasure” would make me well disposed towards the film. I mean, it’s not as if we Freemasons get favourable exposure in the media very often, is it?
As you may have guessed by now, I thought the film failed in several respects. From a film critic’s perspective, it was cliche-ridden: it had all the standard elements of Hollywood thrillers from the self effacing hero, blonde, feisty love interest, computer geek who could get past security systems, car chase, British villain (you knew the Sean Bean character was going to turn out to be the baddy simply because he was cast in the film), huge holes in the plot’s plausibility, etc. It was boringly predictable in those respects. But don’t watch it and get the idea that you now know some history about Freemasonry. The background story, about how the mediaeval Knights Templar brought a vast treasure hoard from Europe to America where they somehow changed into Freemasons is wildly off the mark. Firstly, Freemasonry, it is agreed by most scholars, was a British phenomenon that started in Britain and spread from there to Europe and America in the eighteenth century. Secondly, the whole “Templars as precursors to Freemasonry” theory is still very much conjecture and lacking in good evidence. Thirdly, there is, indeed, a myth in Freemasonry dealing with something important that has been lost, but it is not a treasure hoard under a church in America. We have enough silly myths about us to deal with already and even though this one, for a change, puts us in a good light, it’s still nonsense.
Work. Moi?
Well, I’m working.
I’ve secured a three month contract as a PC Support Anlayst at a Gloucester company. It’s second line support: fixing software, setting up new PC’s, etc. within a very structured helpdesk system. Not very intellectually challenging or varied but I’m not complaining.
My day now starts at about 6.40 am when I am woken either by my alarm or Amelie shouting “Woof!”, “Baa” or other favoured animal noise. A kiss for a still slumbering K., then a breakfast of Allbran with a handful of almonds then a drive through the damp darkness of three counties: Monmouthshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire for 45 minutes until I reach the “Park and Ride” in Gloucester. There, I park the car and get a free bus trip into the centre of the city. By the time I arrive at work, the sun has risen, but it’s rare that we see it at the moment, thanks to the blanket of cloud. I have yet to perfect lunch, but am likely to settle on a quick dash past the cathedral to M&S for a pack of sushi, thence to the only big bookshop for a browse and a return to eat my sushi at the desk.
The drive back is unremarkably similar, even to the extent that, like the outbound leg, the return is in darkness too.
Little A. had her hearing tested at the hospital in Abergavenny today and it was pronounced in fine working order. We had always thought as much, but it’s good to have the reassurance of a professional.
Reading The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg at the moment. Recommended if you want to know how the English language evolved. I’m surprisd at the extent to which the language was nearly snuffed out by the Scandinavian and Norman invasions. Had it been, we might be speaking a variant of Danish today. Did you know that the words “they”, “their” and “them” are 8th century Danish? Nor did I.
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