Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

There’s been a bit of a run of retirement do’s to go to over the last year or two and one a few months ago prompted the thoughts of a reunion of our team from around the 1990s which ended up being held a week ago.

Despite almost everyone having moved on over that time, we ended up with around 40 people turning up. My first thought was that I’d not recognise any of them or that it would be a crowd of doddery old men and women on their way to zimmer frame territory. However, it was nothing like that at all and in fact not only did most people change relatively little over what’s been anything up to 25 years or so but one even managed to look years younger than she did 20-odd years ago!

As usual with these things it was mix of reminiscing over the good old days and pumping people for information about job prospects (the grass always being greener elsewhere, of course). Although set around lunch, most people stayed on ’til into the evening and the last stragglers only heading home around 10pm.

Coincidently, I ran across and even older friend at the family fun day on Saturday and it looks like there’ll be a reunion of our merry band from the 1980s in the not too distant future too.

With the hectic pace of things over the past 12 months, I’ve not had a chance to take much time out for tidying up nor for catching up in quite a while. Net effect is, of course, that there’s a backlog of things in both categories.

What really needs caught up is the new entries on my holiday accommodation listings sites as I’ve only done the paid entries for several months now which means that I’ve now got over 100 of the free entries to get through. First up on that front will be those that don’t need tidying up. I’m constantly amazed at how little effort some people put into advertising their property. I can forgive (or, rather, correct) the odd spelling or grammatical mistake and I’ll tidy up the layout for people but why bother with an advert that’s just one sentence long and all in capitals? If I’ve time to spare I’ll drop the too short entries a line to say that they need to add a lot more text and some do really up their game when asked. If it’s otherwise good, I’ll even retype the all-capitals ones but generally they’ve got dreadful spelling and grammar too so I just delete them.

Also needing done is the upgrade of the Android applications. Those were put on as a trial about six months ago and are pulling a steady stream of downloads so the planned upgrade should improve on that somewhat as it’ll be a really major upgrade in terms of quality and usability.

Ongoing is a lot of administration which I’m starting to make some inroads with but there’s a long way to go.

And, of course, there’s the things that have been tootling along in the background. This afternoon for instance is a trip to the hospital with Mum to see about her upcoming operation.

We were all revved up for a decisive meeting with the solicitor this morning, nicely spruced up look, early departure to be sure to be there on time and all that. In fact we were so early that there was time for a really nice cooked breakfast which turned out to be surprisingly cheap.

Anyway, the appointed time arrived and a signature was collected. Well, these things always need a signature at some point, don’t they? Not too long after that we were called in and figured we were all set to go.

Well, it turns out that the other party couldn’t be contacted by their representative despite a number of attempts so the whole thing is adjourned until next week to give them a final opportunity. At the moment though it looks like the whole thing could fall through which is good for us though ’tis rather annoying to have had to collect everything together and for naught.

Which left us at a loose end quite early in the morning. All worked up to go for it and nothing to go for.

Oh well. At least it gave us a chance to have a relaxed morning for a change.

Things were going really well with the football coaching yesterday afternoon as with it being the week for the “FA Cup” the kids were all taking it really seriously.

One of the best players was a beefy kid who was unusual in being good both as a player and as a keeper. It was no surprise that his team were in the final two for the playoff.

And then it went to pieces. In a very fast paced match, the first goalkeeper let in four goals in a row and we saw the beefy kid first lie down on the floor then head off for his parents on the touch-line where the tears and wailing started. And kept going and then went on some more. In fact, he ended up wailing right through the rest of the match whilst another three goals were let in.

OK, not such a good game for his team, but the wailing seemed way over the top.

Part of the European Heritage weekend was a trip round the architectural highlights of Belfast. Not much was said about it in the little writeup other than naming four or five places which looked interesting enough. Many freebie events are abbreviated in some way and as this was a one-off bus trip we were expecting something like 40 minutes or so but it ran for a relatively packed two hours of sightseeing or rather site-seeing which is more than a tenners worth of value these days so we’re off to a good start for the weekend.

It started with a couple of orbits around the city hall which highlighted just how historic many of those buildings are. The City Hall itself dates back to 1898 and it built on the site of the Linen Hall, many of the major buildings surrounding it being former linen warehouses. There’s a duplicate of it in Durham, South Africa. In those days linen along with shipbuilding were the major industries of the city. Starting from the city hall many of the public buildings continue to use the Portland stone (from Dorset) which it does. Amongst all the white stone there are a number of sandstone buildings and those two materials are still used in many of the landmark projects to the present.

From there we were off towards the Falls Road passing the former Poor House (now a retirement community) and a little collection of unique buildings around Clifton Street including the heritage listed former Methodist church. Round the corner from that is St Peters cathedral which, despite its age, looks quite modern from the outside. We’ll have a return visit to a number of buildings in that area later on.

Along the way we went past Queen’s University which was the only building that Queen Victoria was brave enough to visit as it was felt safe from the cholera epidemic that was sweeping the city at the time. The plague pit in the Friar’s Bush cemetery is still not considered safe and is the reason why the road narrows at that point.

Heading on out of the city took us past the shipyard and, of course, the newest addition to the city: Titanic Quarter which is adding around 1/3rd to the overall built space of the city so should have quite a major impact once the project is completed. That leg took us to Parliament Buildings which has a lot more symbolism than I imagined: 365 feet wide for the days of the year, 7 stories for the days of the week and six columns for the six counties.

We were getting a little bit overdosed on architecture by then but on the way back into the town picked out a number of unexpectedly unique buildings eg the catholic church close to the halls of residence, the remains of the oldest house in Belfast and, of course, the many Victorian and Georgian buildings that you generally ignore as you pass them.

Definitely a worthwhile trip.