The best bits of today

• Reading a comment on my blog.  Thank you, Lily. You made my day.
• The sunset out of the office window this afternoon.  Having floor-to-ceiling windows in the office defnitely has its advantages.
• Now, listening to Etta James.

Today’s random photograph:

Another sunset. This one was in Norway, in June 2007.

Bringing the curtain down

At choir practice tonight we sang:

• Verses one and three of Hark the Herald Angels Sing
• We’re Walking in the Air
• An Eriskay Love Lilt
• Angel Carol
• The Little Road to Bethlehem
• A Clare Benediction
• The Ride of the Witch
• A descant to the last verse of O Come All Ye Faithful (attempted)
• Blow the Wind Southerly

Only one more rehearsal before the first of the Christmas concerts. Eek.

In other news, I managed to pull down a twenty-foot high curtain from one of the large windows (in the school hall where we rehearse) when attempting to pull it across to close it. Whoops. Double whoops when you consider that Mr C was, at the time, repeatedly telling me not to pull on the curtain string because he thought the curtain was about to fall down. He was right, I was wrong.  I am silly and quite glad that the school caretaker is not as scary as he pretends to be.

Fat cat

Today’s best bits:

• Leaving work early. I left work early due to train badness (see yesterday’s post), but I managed to get a train that got me home before I would usually have left work, so that was good.
• Eating chocolates left over from colleague’s birthday yesterday.
• A colleague telling me they’d found the third lost book – I found the other two yesterday.
• Reading my current ‘train reading’ book, Crime from the Mind of a Woman, by Elizabeth George.
• Eating dinner.

Random photo of the day:

Hendrix, the fattest cat I've ever met.

This is Hendrix (above). He is cool. He is also so fat that when he sits up he can’t put his front paws on the ground because his tummy is so big. He belongs to friends of ours. This photo was taken a couple of years ago and I haven’t seen him since, so I wonder if he’s lost any weight now. I hope he’s happy, anyway.

Trains, planes and automobiles

Well, maybe not planes, but my journey back from work city to home involved a train, a bus and then another train and took forty minutes longer than it usually does. I think the most worrying parts of the journey were the several occasions when we (passengers on bus) thought the bus was going to break down. That would not have been funny. Thankfully, we got to the station and caught the other train alright and I got home eventually.

Apparently, all this was due to a fire at a signal box and it will probably not be sorted out for twenty-four hours, so my journey to work tomorrow morning could be interesting.

Quick,

before my internet connection goes off again! Not sure what’s up with it this evening, but it keeps logging off for some reason. I survived my first day back at work after a week off and managed to reduce the size of my email inbox and the pile of stuff on my desk and dealt with the telephone messages that were left last week.

I’ll try and think of something more exciting to write about tomorrow, when hopefully the internet will be playing nicely again.

 

One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing

Mr C has not seen the above film. I haven’t seen it for years, but I was reminded of it when we went to the Natural History Museum on Thursday. I’d never been there before. We went because we happened to be in the area for my pacemaker check at the hospital. It was fine and didn’t need to be adjusted again. My next appointment is in six months time. Anyway, back to the museum. I really liked it and thought that the whole place was amazing, in terms of its own architecture as well as the exhibitions themselves. We enjoyed going through the “Cocoon” – it was very interesting and interactive. I’m not sure how the scientists must feel about being able to be seen working in their labs, though. However, I suppose it’s not really any worse than us working in our goldfish bowl office in the Shiny New Learning Centre.

I took some photos, but they were mainly of the building, rather than the exhibits. You could spend days and days just looking at the architecture, never mind anything else! I think we managed to go into all sections of the building but we got nowhere near to looking at everything. I’m looking forward to the next visit. Now I know how close it is to the hospital perhaps I’ll just book the day off work next time I have an appointment and spend the rest of the day in the museum. When I’ve finished at the Natural History Museum I’ll start on the Science Museum next door! No dinosaurs escaped on Thursday, as far as I know.

Steampunk

Churchtank Type 7C by Kris Kuksi

On another day in Oxford, we went to look at the Steampunk exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science. It was rather cool. We saw fascinating and sometimes disturbing examples of Steampunk art. All the exhibits were 3D objects made by various artists working in the Steampunk genre from various parts of the world including the UK, the USA and Japan. I don’t know why I took a photo of this piece in particular. It wasn’t really my favourite- maybe it just appealed because of the interesting use of a model church. I like the fact that there’s lots of detail on the sculpture and you have to look closely to see it all.  I don’t know if it’s a really good example of  what might spring to mind when one thinks of Steampunk, though. Not enough brass or clockwork bits and maybe no steam either, although this is hard to say. It could be a steam-powered Churchtank and, anyway, I don’t think steam is actually compulsory.

More photos of Oxford

It is a horrible, grey and wet day here today. I think the weather is affecting my brain, so today’s offering will not contain many words, but will mainly made up of more photos of an also rather grey and dark Oxford.

Entrance to the Covered Market from High Street

Pointy buildings

Leaves in the dark

The Forest Fire

This is my favourite  painting in the Ashmolean Museum. I saw it again and realised why I like it so much. It’s because the bears look really cheesed off:

The Forest Fire (Piero di Cosimo, 1461-1522)

See? Poor bears!

I know I shouldn’t like to see the poor bears looking so fed up, but their facial expressions are just so good. They really convey how tired the bears are and how upset they must have been to have had to leave their nice cosy dens and venture outside the forest. It makes an already interesting painting just that bit more engaging – that and the human faces that Piero di Cosimo drew onto some of the animals some years after he originally painted them. Apparently, he saw the forest fire as a symbol of regeneration, rather than of destruction and lived on a diet of hard boiled eggs.

The Ashmolean Museum revisited

We’ve just spent a couple of days in Oxford. Most of yesterday was taken up with visiting the redeveloped Ashmolean Museum. I liked what they’ve done to the place. The beauty of the building is still there, but it’s easier to see everything and you feel a bit less like you’re going from room to room in an endless maze of rooms not knowing when it’s going to end. This kind of feeling is not necessarily a bad thing in a museum, unless you are horribly bored or need to get out quickly, but it’s good to actually be able to see the objects in a (literally) better light.  It’s a lot lighter, brighter and erm…smoother, is the only word I can find to describe it without using a thesaurus. I took some pictures (you’re allowed to, don’t worry).

I was relieved to see that the gigantic blue doors are still there. They remind me of the TARDIS, for some reason. I think it's the colour.

I used to work in this building (in the library, on your right). It was lovely.

Looking down and across from the stairs in the new part of the museum.