Neuadd Ogwen makes space

Almost two years ago, Neuadd Ogwen started some building work. Soon I couldn't park in front of the door any more. I thought it would take a few months. It clearly took a lot more! I recently had a discussion with the neighbour, who said it was going to last into spring. And I am resigned. If I am carrying a lot of stuff, for instance in case of something having to do with cave rescue, it is a bit of a faff I can't park in front of the door. But otherwise it's okay.

The situation in September 

Then one Monday I came home and I didn't know what I saw. The fences around the building were gone! It's clearly not finished yet; the outside of the new porch still needs some sort of finishing, and it also doesn't quite have doors yet. But the scaffolding had been gone for a short while, and now all the fences were too! It was so tidy and spacious!

All that space! 

The next day my car needed some maintenance, so it was on the move. And when I came home, I gleefully parked in front of the house for the first time in almost two years. It was really nice!

In front of the house, again (notice the added temporary stairs)

It couldn’t last! Two days later, a new scaffolding structure was erected. Maybe this will be for finishing the work? I can only hope! But the good news is that I could still fit my car in front of the house. I could imagine I sometimes won't, while the work is getting finished, but maybe it is now the default situation again. Good!

It will be great when the work is really done. It would be nice to see that porch looking as if it has been part of the hall forever!

Car tyres sorted (hopefully)

My car is 16 years old, and I think it sometimes feels its age. I think it has tired feet. I suppose I have had to regularly re-inflate tyres since I’ve had it, but I have the impression it has been getting worse. And that is bad. Not only is it a pain to have to check your pressure all the time, and top it up, but also, sometimes you might forget, and drive around with slightly floppy tyres. That makes your car a lot less efficient! And I really don't want to be wasteful with fossil fuels.

Initially I was just relying on petrol stations for topping up the pressure, but after a while I didn't want that anymore. I bought a foot pump. And it got a lot of use! So much so that it started to falter. The metal rods that move in and out started to wear out so much they were getting rough, so the whole pump would snag. It was time for another solution!

I then bought an electric pump. That's a lot quicker! Although at some point I accidentally pulled off the plug. Luckily I managed to solder that back together. But I had had to bring it out so often I figured I needed to tackle the problem at the cause. 

Detached (half) plug

One day during lunch, people were talking about having one’s tyres resealed at a local business. Then I decided I needed to act. It was also reading week, so my diary was quite flexible. I could just go there and wait for the work to be done without having to worry too much about making it to my next engagement. So the next morning I rocked up there.

It was busy, but they had a lot of tyre fitters in action, so it didn't take too long. They were a bit surprised I wanted all of them sealed. I suppose most people maintain their cars better. Oh dear. And I had come prepared, and had brought my laptop. I just did a fair bit of dissertation topic allocation in the waiting room! Time well spent.

In the waiting room

I really hope this will sort me out now for the foreseeable future! I hope to drive around as efficiently as I can, and not have to spend too much time on the parking lot with a pump buzzing away. I will find out!

Surprise bench install

I had had a bench in flatpack in my garage for a while! When to find time to make it into a real bench? My weekends were filling up! But after I came home from Bodnant Garden I needed to do something in the garage, and when I was there anyway, I moved a lot of wood out of the way, which would possibly free up enough space to put up my bench.

The next day I again had to be in the garage. And I couldn't resist. I opened the cardboard box. And I had a look at what I had bought. I didn't look too complicated. I decided to make a start!

Soon after I started I decided to go inside and get my reading glasses and a head torch. It was late in the afternoon, and I struggled a bit with the instructions. But my additional aids sorted that. And I soon had the framework sorted. It was easy to assemble! And seemed sturdy. 

I decided I needed to do a bit of reshuffling of my other stuff, as the space against the wall wasn't wide enough for the bench, but that wasn't difficult to achieve. So I put it in position, and then I finished it off by fixing the two hardboard surfaces that belonged with it. Success!

Next is fixing my two main tools to it: the vice and the saw. And then I can go and do buckets of DIY! And some dealing with firewood backlog. Watch this space! 

Welsh class officially left

I dropped out of Wales class. I don't think anyone who read my report of the first session will be surprised! I did not experience it is a success. And I fully intended to do a second session in order to see or if things would improve, but the week after I was on the beach with the students, and the week after that I was teaching until 5 pm, while the class starts at 6 pm, and it is not that much less than an hour to bike home. If I'm really keen on making it to Welsh class I try to make it work somehow, by driving for instance, but I couldn't motivate myself for that.

The week after that I had a meeting with the sustainability initiative. And the week after that I really couldn't be bothered. I had woken up with a bit of a cold, and the day after I would have to lead a student field trip, probably on my own. I wanted to save my energy!

Later that week I emailed the tutor, saying I wanted to withdraw from the class. I didn't really see this happening anymore. And that next week I was going to be in the field again, and you never know what time you will be home. And I tend to be knackered at the end of a day like that! So I would just keep missing sessions if I would remain registered.

The tutor asked me to not leave. I didn't quite get around to answering her anytime soon. And the week after was the week with the panic about the Welsh teaching. I didn't have time for Welsh class!

Before that was going to be another session, which I could have made, I received an email. I was now officially deregistered from the course! I knew that if you are absent too often they boot you out. So that was it then! Or so I thought.

Later that week, suddenly an email appeared in my mailbox that said that the course had got itself a new tutor. Maybe there had been a bit of an exodus? So I wondered if I should go back. But before I could have acted on anything, yet another email appeared: it was another meeting having to do with sustainability in the valley on the Monday night, so getting in the way of any Welsh class. So I have another week to get my arse into gear and decide how to respond to this!

I have never left a Welsh class before, except for trading it in for another Welsh class. I have never quit. I take my Welsh seriously! But that first session just knocked all the motivation out of me. And a lot of things legitimately getting in the way of the class wasn't helping. But now I am at least temporarily Welsh class free! I really should make sure that if I don't go back, I swot up on my own, in order to improve anyway…

60 seconds with me

The University issues a weekly online staff bulletin. And one of the standard items in it is "60 seconds with…" Every week, someone is featured who answers a number of standard questions.

The chair of the Athena Swan committee wanted as many Committee members as possible to feature in that. So she asked me if I was willing to join in. And I was. 

I had a look at the questions, and had a stab at them. The first questions were about Athena Swan. And there was one about the three priorities in my job. I skipped that one! Was I supposed to talk about my lecturing or Athena Swan? Would I not descend into platitudes? You're not expected to answer all of them, anyway. After all, it is called "60 seconds with" so you have to be brief. And then later there are some less applied questions.

I filled it all out, I'm got feedback; I was writing too much! Sixty seconds, after all. So I made my text a bit more concise, and booted another question out entirely. One question I really wanted to keep was the question about what I wanted to put in room 101. I really wanted to bring up climate somewhere! And that's where it fit.

I was also asked to explain a bit more about my dream dinner companion. I suppose not everybody keeps track of all the Vikings that have roamed the Earth. But with some extra explanation there, and the cutting out text elsewhere, it was good to go. And I used a cropped version of a race picture to go with it.

The day it would come out I received a message from a colleague. She said the mini interview had made her laugh! That was a bit unexpected; was it out yet? The next email I received was the actual Staff Bulletin. My colleague must have had that one a few minutes before me, for some reason. I wasn't quite sure what was so funny about it.

Marjan also commented on it. She said she was glad to see someone featured that she actually knew! But later, after a meeting, another colleague commended; he said that he had chuckled at the fact I had to put the actual government in room 101, and got away with that. I had to admit I hadn't considered the possibility that the University might want to censor something like that! But yes, they sure might. Maybe that was also my other colleague’s cause for amusement!

Altogether it was alright! I'm always happy to make people smile by dissing the Tories. Even more so when the whole purpose of doing so is to draw attention to the fight for gender equality, what was what this all started with. A successful mission, I would say…

The earlier questions (that didn't fit in the screenshot) were about Athena Swan

Appreciation of a student

I received an email from one of the students who had done a dissertation with me last year. I had said in the feedback I had provided, that she hadn't noticed that she had misinterpreted results by one of the sources she had used, and that therefore a calculation she had performed had yielded unrealistic values. She hadn't really picked up on that until now, but she is now doing a Master’s, and she wanted to know what had gone wrong. Probably to avoid similar things in the future. And I am always happy if students actually pay attention to feedback, so I was quite willing to elaborate on that.

It didn't take long to show her where the misinterpretation had occurred. But the meeting was memorable anyway. She had brought me a little gift as thanks for my support the previous year! That was so sweet. It was a packet of coffee and one of tea, and a mug that says "strong women make waves”. I was really chuffed! I must have been doing something right last year...

Bodnant Garden with Kate

Since the last time I had seen Kate, she had been everywhere and done everything. So I was glad I could pin her down again for a Sunday. She was still recovering from quite an impressive physical feat, so she didn't want to do anything particularly strenuous. And she suggested Bodnant Garden. That was fine with me; I had never been!

I drove up to her place where I was greeted enthusiastically by Bryn the dog. And a few minutes later we were on our way north.

The bloke who sold us our tickets was very enamoured of Bryn. He wouldn't be the last! And as soon as we came through the entrance we were enamoured with the garden. We were immediately impressed by the stunning autumn colours!

First view of the garden

We had a good walk around. Quite soon we sat on one of the benches to eat some cake, as we were both peckish. Then we walked all the way to the far end (which is actually called the Far End), and then back, taking in most of the particular sights, such as the skating pond, the mausoleum, and the terraces. It is amazing the amount of effort that has gone into this. In a way that shows you how beautiful are garden can be; it also shows you how crazily stupidly rich some Victorian industrialists were. The gardens were bought by one of them in 1874, and his wealth must have been obscene. But at least something good came out of it. Now it entertains lots of people, and undoubtedly provides a fair amount of employment for regional gardeners, and also a variety of other people who sort out the ticket sales, or the website, or things like that.

The skating pond seen from downstream

As stunning as autumn colours get

The mausoleum

The Pin Mill

Triple selfie (pic by Kate)

We had lunch on the bench within amazing view. It was sunny and calm! It was really a perfect day for this. 

There is also a small garden centre associated with it, so although this one is considerably more expensive than the one in Bangor, I figured it would be a good idea to buy a plant I had wanted to buy for a few months, and some plant food, given that I had run out months ago. Supermarkets don't seem to sell that! I don't know why. And the lady who sold it to me immediately fell in love with Bryn. Typical.

On the way back we each bought a pumpkin. On the way out we had seen a little stall by the road selling them. And both of us were interested in the thought of pumpkin soup.

My weekend wasn't very diehard! But it was good. I got two picnics with lovely friends. And a bonus dog! And great views. I am very content with that!