Visiting children

Now we have a flat at Whitby we see Martin and family fairly often when we visit. We are also trying to keep in constant touch with Alison and Frances and their families.

Frances in Birmingham isn’t too much of a problem. We could visit for a few hours without great difficulty as she is less than a hours drive away. Her daughter Alice seems to grow taller every time we see her. She is head and shoulders above her cohort. This is genetic as Matt while being just averagely tall has two very tall brothers. Alice and Ben have both had their hair cut shorter; Alice to shoulder length while Ben has his great head of hair cut back to something I would think fairly average for his age.

Frances is taking a six month secondment to work on the new library system for the Dubai campus which Birmingham University is opening next September. This position will be based in Birmingham but as far as I can see should enable Dubai based students to access at least some of the home based documents. She isn’t too disappointed that travel to Dubai is not planned.

Their house while “modern estate style” is enlarged and is at the end of a cul-de-sac and backs on to Kings Norton Park. Because the park is bordered by trees and shrubs behind the house they are not bothered by any park activities but at the same time they have good access to the park via a gate in their back fence.

Visiting Alison in Guildford is more difficult. It takes maybe 4 or 5 hours by road. We were very interested to see the recent changes when we visited last week. Alison is a restless spirit and is continually making changes to her house. The latest is a very major change to include a second storey with an attic room for Ellie. The building work has been dogged by problems. The most recent is that the builder has injured himself and cannot work for a few weeks. The room is habitable but the adjacent bathroom remains to be completed.

Alison now has Alina staying with her as au pair. Alina from Germany is the daughter of a colleague. She gets on well with Ellie and I was amused to notice that when she joined Ellie’s bowling party she looked quite one of them despite being several years older.

Alison says work on her environmental science Masters degree is complete but her job remains mired in uncertainty. Apparently the new buzzword is stewardship which seems to mean taking a holistic view of the products; supplying a data sheet of hazards and usage isn’t enough.

Our visit coincided with the last of Ellie’s birthday celebrations, she is now a teenager as from September 11. This took the form of a ten pin bowling party at the local leisure centre. I was very pleased to see that Steve worked well together with Alison in cutting the cake and distributing party bags. Although they have now been divorced for several years it has been a most amicable split which I am very pleased about not least because it has minimised the effect on the children. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we visited when Ellie was born.

Nate is maturing very nicely. He clearly studies carefully the many books in his library. I was quite amazed at the understanding he displays of some quite esoteric subjects. It was a real joy to discuss some with him; I reckon his knowledge in some areas will be a challenge for me to keep pace.

Our trip together was to nearby Watts gallery. George Watts was a Victorian artist. He painted on a grand scale. He is called the English Michelangelo and some his work was murals. One mural has been rescued from its original building and is on display.

The gallery ( which also has some massive sculpture ) is part of a group of buildings which include an impressive brick chapel, his house and of course a large gift shop.

Coventry

Every year we spend the best part of a day in Coventry. This is mainly because our car dealer , TMS, is based there, where we go for annual service and repairs. As this is probably at least 25 miles away it probably seems rather unusual. However Volvo dealers are few on the ground and the most convenient near Cannock closed some time ago.

I prefer to go to a main dealer for servicing. This is more expensive but it does mean all the software upgrades are fitted at the same time, a facility many local garages won’t have.

Essentially provided we leave about 9 and return before 3pm we avoid the worst of the traffic. The location of TMS means circumnavigating Coventry as they are based near the airport. The A45 provides our route around the city but even that means contending with a lot of busy junctions.

The dealer is near a well travelled bus route so going into the city centre is no problem. Our first port of call is the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Over the 5 years we have been visiting we have explored practically all the permanent exhibitions. The most interesting is the city through the ages. We have very much reached the “do you remember…” stage where mid  20th century items excite our nostalgia. It is quite remarkable what changes have happened. They creep up slowly and then quite suddenly the world is different. The giant change in my lifetime has been microelectronics. ( mobile phones and the internet )

Even when I was at work in the early 70’s I remember arguing about whether we could justify adding a square root function to a new calculator. This cost £500 plus then ( thousands now ) and was the size of a typewriter. We thought we were very advanced having one large computer in the whole group of laboratories. Of course the scientific staff were not allowed near. this being reserved for a host of specialists.

Having looked around the Herbert we retire to its coffee shop for coffee and munchables, fruit loaf most recently. Then a walk into the shopping area by the cathedrals. The former cathedral was bombed out in the blitz in 1940 and the new cathedral is alongside with the old left as a ruin as a reminder. We have visited in the past and even for a non church person like me it is a moving experience.

The shopping area is looking a bit jaded now. After the war is seemed an impressively modern centre, all pedestrianised long before it became a general fashion Cars are separated into cavernous parks below the centre.

On this visit we spent some time in Waterstones booksellers. The basement ( adult non fiction ) was very quiet and I was happy to sit and read about the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in a recently published book. It doesn’t seem very long ago and it is a slight shock to realise it has passed into history. It had nearly the same impact as when my children studied the Cuban missile crisis in history at school. I was a student at that time and it stays fairly vivid in my memory but as a history topic! All I can say is that history as a subject was different when I was at school; I recall being rather disgusted when we stopped at 1870.

I find it difficult to visit a bookshop without buying a book. I settled on a new book about Philip Larkin. I well remember reading the Andrew Motion biography when Frances had decided to study English at A level. I thought I should make an effort towards keeping pace with her. Along with a book on WW11 special weapons this made a reduced price deal.

We then went on past the main shopping area to Ikea and straight to the restaurant. Two mains, tea and coffee for £9, surely unbeatable value. We then made the mistake of looking in the shop. Ikea trails seemed never ending and we were quite worn out before returning to TMS.

Guisborough Forest Festival

Martin has become very interested in forest skills in the most general sense. He was keen to visit this forest event near Guisborough which is about halfway between Whitby and Teesside.

I must say it was very well organised taking place at the forest centre; clearly an all year round centre, with an immense number of stalls and exhibits. Some stalls were demonstrating forest crafts, others selling craft items and yet others representing a wide variety of organisations. The festival organisation started straight away with a good park and ride operation from a car park on the outskirts of the town: and all free.

There were fields set aside near the event for anyone going direct to park and these seemed rather crowded. The regular car park was set aside for disabled folk.

The  skills shown are always impressive at these events. Several had pole lathes set up and turning all kinds of things. We watched one who literally started with a length of debarked branch and produced a turned table leg in minutes. All the while he was conducting a conversation. There was also one who sort of cheated with an electric lathe turning door knobs.

For a forest festival there did seem to be quite a lot of ceramics. One stall where we spent quite a lot of time claimed Raku ceramic processes. I still don’t understand what the difference was from standard pottery although I was assured it was much faster. Annette and Ellen chose pieces to paint on glaze which were then fired in about an hour ready to collect. The potters had butane gas fired cubic kilns; about a half  a cubic metre capacity I would guess.. The interiors gave off a fierce glow as the lids were left permanently ajar.

More forest orientated were demonstrations of hurdle making and basket making. The baskets appeared to be larger than usual and with a special name which I forget.

A blacksmith was both demonstrating and selling various tools such as pokers and companion sets. I’m afraid I blanched at the prices.

Martin is taking over a small piece of woodland owned by a friend near Scarborough. He had been with this friend on a forestry skills course. He was pleased to quietly boast that he lit a fire by the old fashioned method of a spark lighting tinder and then building through sticks  and through to logs. They are clearing an area to set out a camp and have already spent a weekend there. Apparently the kids took in turn sleeping in a hammock while a tent provides other accommodation.

The woodland owner is apparently a former potter who had a successful business before winding down and recently retiring after ill health. We were introduced to him as Keith and wife Jane. Apparently Keith spends a lot of time in his wood and Martin feels that he is glad to have company sometimes as well as passing on some of his craft skills to the kids. Apparently he soon said he could replicate the pottery work in Martin’s den. Certainly all the gear in use seemed portable in principle.

At present although the den area is habitable it required a large stump to be removed by a combination of digging and winching.  From what Martin said this was going to be the site of their fire pit.

The festival showed the traditional way of logging with a single log towed by a shire horse. I understand from TV documentaries that while logging equipment is very sophisticated this is still the best method on difficult terrain.

Although the festival had many food and drink stalls we had a picnic. There were spare picnic benches so clearly this wasn’t the popular option.

Staithes Art Festival

Staithes is small town, maybe a large village, about 10 miles North of Whitby. They have an annual festival of arts and heritage. This takes a distinctive form as events and exhibitions are largely in individual houses throughout the town .Although an artistic centre the event drew in artists from miles around.

We travelled by bus with Martin and family. This necessitated a short walk from the main road into the town. We soon encountered the first of 90 exhibitions in guesthouses on the edge of the town. These largely featured the stylised animals produced by welding together waste bits of steel. The components were often gearwheels and the like taken from scrap cars. This type of work was thoroughly original and intriguing when it first appeared maybe 10 years ago. It has now become a cliché with little originality- it now almost a mass produced art form. We didn’t waste much time before moving on.

Part of the festival were buskers at intervals. The first we came across was a young man playing an alto saxophone. He was playing jazz classics; “Birdland” when we were nearby. He was extremely good, clearly a very talented young man who seemed to be only a teenager. I’m sorry to say he set a standard unmatched by other buskers on the trail. By the harbour were presumably the pick of the crop with timed sessions. It was “Jinski” when we passed who I thought very ordinary, compensating with volume instead of talent.

Staithes has a very steep hill down to a harbour side. There was so much on show it was quite impossible to see everything. I very soon got visual indigestion. I find when visiting galleries that after the first dozen pictures I start to glaze over.

It wasn’t just art of all sorts on display. There was “John” the last traditional sailing coble. I’m always surprised that there are so many esoteric interest groups and this craft was on its trailer courtesy of the Coble and Keelboat society.

Annette was keen to see any new ideas and hopes to draw inspiration from a demonstration of monoprinting. As far as I can gather this involves the one off printing of natural objects by inking them and then applying to paper. Another exhibition which impressed showed giclee prints. As far as I can see this meant a larger range of inks by inkjet printing on archive quality paper.

One demonstration which was quite interesting in its own way was someone weaving the netting on a lobster pot. This came just at the right time for us as we sheltered from a shower. As Annette remarked the weaving with its gentle repetition reminded her of the potters wheel shown in breaks in early TV. This shows her age as this dates to the 50’s. It was all simple stuff but the precision was clearly the result of long experience. This demonstration was part of one of the permanent galleries cum shops in Staithes..

By this time everywhere was so crowded it was difficult to see much that was on display. Because Staithes is on a steep hill the old houses are very individual with a footpath passing the front door of one but immediately above a steep drop into the courtyard of another. To one side of the town is a very steep sided ravine where a small river runs down to the sea. A footbridge crosses at the foot of the ravine where we went in search of refreshment; predictably all the little cafes were packed with massive queues. The lifeboat was drawn up along with it’s massive tractor. There is a very slowly shelving harbour so at low tide the sea retreats some distance.

We gave up by the lifeboat station and trudged back up the hill. Towards the top was a small café which had space for all six of us. Ellen elected to have cake but the massive slice was just too much for her. It was very nice to sit and rest awhile before we queued for the return bus.

Manned space flight

Since the Apollo missions to the moon in the late 60’s/early 70’s the only manned space flights have been to low earth orbit . Latterly this has meant flights to the International Space Station. NASA has come up with numerous plans for ambitious manned flights but they are all foundering  for the simple reason that they lack the money.

In particular while trips to Mars are much talked about by NASA and others there is a lack of credibility in that the necessary finance has got to be secured. It is quite apparent that NASA while talking Mars and making some early preparatory steps are looking beyond the middle of the century at best before any trip.

It is this lack of  firm short term finance for NASA which makes Space-X such an interesting alternative. I wrote a few posts ago about Elon Musk and Space-X. One of the things which separates Space-X from other space ventures is the focus Musk puts on cost efficiency.. The NASA reusability plan with the space shuttle was a failure: a magnificent  failure in that it scored much technical success  but a failure in saving money. In contrast the Falcon 9 reuse has been demonstrated.

The savings are not massive but they are an important step forward. An important step in that Space-X is a more competitive at the satellite launch business. Several organisations currently have a slice of the satellite launch business but none have the ambitions of Elon Musk. The proviso is that a big chunk of launch business is Russian and their aims are unclear. What can be said is that the Russian efforts use technology developed in the 60’s and there isn’t much sign they intend ( or can afford ) to develop further.

In Space-X Musk has the ambition, the technical know how and importantly the business sense to move much faster than NASA. While NASA does excellent work it is now a bureaucracy more concerned with protecting its structure than moving forward with manned space flight. Clearly the best policy for the immediate future is for NASA to focus on robotic exploration of the solar system and let Space-X press on with the technology of manned space flight.

At present this seems like a fairly distant hope. Space-X doesn’t at present have a man rated spacecraft while NASA is investing in a space program with no realistic prospect that it will be fully funded.

The next question is whether Musk and Space-X can finance their future ambitions. It is slightly ironic that it is NASA which has placed the launch contracts to supply the ISS which have financed a chunk of Space-X costs. Musk has money raising talent but financing Space-X moving forward will be a huge challenge. He is a rich man and is not afraid to risk his own money to seed more.

There is a technological outsider which just might be the way forward. This is British Reaction Engines and the Sabre engine. The Sabre is a radical new design of part air breathing and part rocket which could reduce  launch costs significantly. Sabre has solved one major problem so with the investment by European and UK sources promised it could be the technology which gets mankind into space at reasonable cost.

Something totally different from the Edinburgh Festival.

The man who invented the individual portable rain protector was going to call it a “brella” but he hesitated over the name.