Our week goes like this.
Monday morning, Sarah gets on a train to London.
Wednesday evening, at 8:30pm, I get on a train to London (Jean is with her grandfather for this bit). Then at 10:15pm Sarah gets on a train back from London, the same time as my train gets in. She gets home at about midnight, then on Saturday, I come home and we get the weekend together before she goes off again next Monday morning. This is not a very pleasant state of affairs - we're a close couple, and we miss each other keenly.
Anyway, this evening, my train into Paddington was a bit early - so I rang her as my train was pulling in at 10:09. She was in coach D of the train on platform 2, waiting for it to go; my train came in on platform 3, and I was in coach E. Platforms 2 and 3 are opposite sides of the same physical platform. So I got out, crossed the platform, walked one carriage down, and there was Sarah! She came to the door of the train, and we had an unexpected five minutes together!
Alaric's Dad and Step-mother Lynne are in the country at the moment and took us on holiday to the Lakedistrict - Penrith to be precise. Unfortunatly it is like a five hour car journey and I managed to have a back spasm Thursday night.
This ment that a car journey that would have been very uncomftable for me was not really very pleasant but I managed to get some reading done on the Moon and thanks to Lynne had a great time teaching Jean set theory in the back of the car with some Gruffolo stickers. After the first hour and a half of counting and catagorising stickers and off course sticking them I asked Jean if she was bored of counting and numberrs - 'No want more' was her answer - followed by a belated, 'please'. Great as this was it did mean that I had to keep thinking of new ways of looking at the stickers and which groups could over lap and things.
How many owls are there?
Owls are a type of bird, what other birds can we see?
Woodpeckers - how many?
Oh and there's odd birds too?
So how many birds do we have?
Oh look there's a damsely fly - how many?
Oh look it can fl, yes so can the butterfly - they are instects - whow many insects?
Some of the insects can fly but not all - how many can fly?
So if the birds fly and some of the insects fly how many things are flying?
And on and on and on.... there was fungi arithmatic to conjur with too!
(to the last question Jean answered 'all' which was true as well due to the way she'd stuck the stickers to the page :/ But once I said which ones would we see in our garden flying she answered the question correctly.
After this it was time for a rendition of Old MacDonald and the like.
I was exhorsted by the end of it.
But there was a lovely cottage with baconies and everything - not to mention a pool at the accompanying hotel! Jean was transfixed by the swimmers. We had a lovely meal in the hotel resturant which has these lovely blue and turquoise ceramic abstracts up all over the place. I mad the med veg.
We then went back to the shalleee and watched a film.
After that I stayed up to await the arrival of Al and Simon (Al's step brother). I read alot of my moon book whilst doing hot and cold treatments on my back - the pain was affecting my breathing and had affected my eating as swollowing had become supremely painfull 🙁
At about 2 am they arrived consumed Jeans leftover tea and was all went to bed.
Yesturday me and Ella went for a walk in Cranham - she took lots of photos including some of Betsy (a cat) for Barbara. We walked to the Black Horse, our village pub, in a sort of round about way. Ella many listerning to me being sad about Alex and I mainly held her camera lenses which she seemed to be changing every few minutes.
I realised that I hadn't got to tell him that I would be back doing geology and i was upset becuase I had realised that I had been sending emails about his funeral and all the rest of it too his inbox. I run a mailing list for the goelogists and of course he was on it - I felt very bad about this and it was helpful for me to go through my feelings with Ella. Though she didn't know him she is an Imperial person and also went through Wilson's death with me two years ago. She knows what its like to loose a peer.
At the Black Horse we met Andrew another old Imperial geek and abit later Alaric arrived. We then proceeded to have one of the most stimulating conversations I've had for months. There was physics, there was politics, there was maths, there was philosphy, there was engerneering, there was info on the second world war, there was pyromania, there was science and reasoning in all its guises and then of course there was the Scifi!
And there was a pub full of villagers, a pub full of people who have now seen the true geekness that is me and Al and you know what? Though those who know us smiled and said hello there where some people in the pub who where glaring! Glaring at us becuase it would appear that we had the audacity to tell maths jokes and talk about science fiction plots deconstructing them into real science and speculation.
So after three years our cover is blown - I wonder slightly what the long term affects of this are going to be? Hopefully if people are acting as proper adults - nothing.
As an exercise in her art class, Sarah made some pictures by cutting out shapes in coloured paper:
Coincidentally, at about this time, I was thinking that I ought to screw a bit of wood to the wall in my workshop and hang tools from it to make them more accessible, and to store them more compactly than having them sitting on a shelf (which is the worst way of using a shelf EVER). So I was delighted when Sarah announced that she'd thought her pictures could be stuck to a piece of wood to make me a toolboard...
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Rather, the strap of the bag failed, dumping it onto the pavement.
Amazingly, it still works. Well done Apple!
However, there's another impressive dent, and the corner that hit the ground seems to have a small stone embedded in it:
Alaric, Sarah | alaric | 
Thu 30th Oct 2008 12:03 am | 
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