At a U3A meeting on China held in a townhouse near here on Tuesday 17th Nov, 2015. I was asked to comment on Australia’s relationship with China. Question without notice. Stephen took the photo on his iPhone 5. Shadow reduction in Lightroom.
“London and South East England Forecast Summary Today
A cloudy start with outbreaks of rain across the region. Rain clearing away to the east from mid-morning to give sunny spells by afternoon and just the odd shower.
Tonight
Showers becoming more frequent for a time overnight, but more general showery rain developing by morning, heavy at times, and with a wintry mix possible. Winds becoming strong by morning.”
I especially love ‘outbreaks of rain‘, as well as the familiar ‘sunny spells‘.
That all sounds OK, but there is also a warning out regarding high wind and possible snow for tonight. I think they mean sleet for Greater London because they suggest that it won’t be enough snow to settle on the ground except in higher areas. Temperatures will be 0 overnight and up to 5 during the day. Our first actual cold weather! We are going up to London to go to a musical tomorrow, so will have to allow for even more possible train disruptions than normal.
Temperatures will be in the range of 0 -5 degrees overnight and Saturday. the exact temperatures depend on where you are as in built up areas it tends to be slightly warmer than open country.
We hope to see snow when we are in Brandys Nad Labem, but it is unusual to have much there in December/early January. Pity.
The photos are of our workstations (me laptop and washing machine and Stephen iMac and sink), and a couple of the kitchen thrown in.
Yesterday evening we had a call from Ron, Stephen’s cousin. We already knew that he had a cold (Melanie got in contact with us on Monday) and might not be able to make it to our place to go to a show on Saturday with us. He said he is on antibiotics and his GP has told him to rest. He probably feels a bit bad about cancelling, but it could have happened with any one of us. We just hope he is better soon. It’s disappointing not to see him, but I was worried because the weather is going to be much colder this weekend, not good for someone recovering from a cold. Also, there is a LOT of walking involved in getting around without a car, and I wasn’t sure he would be well enough to tackle it.
Ron was going to be dropped off here at lunchtime on Friday to have some time with us, then picked up again on Sunday afternoon. Melanie offered us a ride back to Gloucester where we would stay the night with Ron, then take a bus to Bath for a few days, then catch a bus back to Ron’s place for a night, and return to Croydon on Friday. We have changed our arrangements to travel directly to Bath from London on Monday, and return from there on Friday. We’ve also booked an extra night at the hostel. We have let Melanie know what is happening so that they don’t need to plan around taking us to Gloucester, which is probably quite inconvenient for them – especially as Ron cannot be our host for the night.
I feel a bit of relief as this is far less complicated than the original arrangement – much as I would like to see the family on this trip.
Stephen is feeling better today, but it’s raining and not very inviting to go out. We have a bit of shopping to do later.
I was fiddling around with a photo I took of Stephen at the restaurant Monday night, and finally found a ‘look’ I was happy with.
Portrait of Stephen
We had a very windy night last night, with gusts that were almost scary given that we are quite high here and it was slamming against the windows. Today is partly cloudy, but sunny enough to make the house quite warm. I’ve switched off the heating and opened a couple of windows. Mind you, I’ve just done some housework, partly getting ready for Stephen’s cousin Ron, but partly just because it needed to be done. No wonder I feel warm!
We had a ‘heads up’ from Melanie on Monday that Ron has a cold and feeling pretty poorly, so we don’t know for sure that he will come and stay, but want to be ready, just in case.
Stephen is having a bit of a headache and nausea today, similar to what I felt on Monday. He has had a morning in bed – taking breakfast to him going up and down stairs was a bit challenging – but hopefully, like me, the fresh air will help him to recover. On the weather report it said that Saturday is to be the first really cold day here, with 8 degrees for the daytime maximum temperature. We shall see… So, far the temperatures have been mostly quite mild and our cold weather gear is not really had any sort of real test.
I’m very relieved that Lightroom has just been updated back to it’s normal importing setup, the one they introduced with the last update was slow and difficult to manage. Of course, I still don’t use it for importing from the SD card, I either use Adobe Bridge or the Sony app, so that I can put them into folders for use in any program. Then I import into Lightroom for light editing, then to Photoshop if I want to do something a bit more creative.
The photography site DPreview has finally done a comprehensive review of the Sony A7R II. They have done a few short articles on different features, and that has been incorporated into the final review. I felt it was a fair review because although it brought up some negatives, it also discussed some of the many innovative and photographer centric stuff that interests me as a landscape and travel photographer. In the end they gave it a Gold Award and 90%. One of the obvious comparisons was with the Canon 5DR, which is a 50 mp camera. For my purpose, as a stills camera, having more dynamic range is important. But in the video comparisons I liked the Canon ‘look’ very much. I can see why people still want to use Canon cameras for video. It is probably possible to replicate that look with grading, but that would take some experimenting and trialling LUTs.
I still have lots of photos that haven’t been edited and posted to Flickr. For this blog I am not choosing necessarily the best photos, but those that help to tell the story of what we are doing.
Stephen in his normal research on things to do found out about a Sacred Harp Music singing group which meets in Bloomsbury at St George’s once a month on Monday night. Because we were going into the city anyway, he decided to visit the British Museum again during the afternoon.
Travelling to the British Museum by bus 38. We had our picnic lunch during the ride. There was some sunshine – sunny spells.
We enjoyed seeing a couple of things together, then I went off to amuse myself and he did some more areas of the Museum. In the course of that, he met up with an English couple, and they treated us to afternoon tea. We found we appeared to have much in common and really enjoyed their company.
A mask from Sutton Hoo, British Museum. The finished one is a reconstruction based on the damaged one from the site.
I showed Stephen how to photograph the exhibits by putting the iPhone camera lens against the glass casing, which eliminates reflections.
We had a small meal at a Chinese restaurant, then went along to the church. The Sacred Harp music session was enjoyable, but it did not really appeal as something we would like to do in future. It’s easy to find out more about it using Google.
This morning, Tuesday, we went to a U3A meeting on China. It was led by someone who has a lifetime of working in China (Taiwan). His wife is from Taiwan and he says he has one English daughter and one Chinese daughter and both speak Mandarin. We were very interested in his knowledge of China and we have bought his latest book, which was available as a Kindle e-book. It is looking at the future of China 2018 – China Goes Critical by Barnaby Powell and Alex Mackinnon.
The conversation on China took part in Barnaby’s house, with pumpkin cake and Chinese tea to follow. People were interested in what he had to say about the bilateral relationship between Britain and China and Chinese investment here. The Chinese investors want to be able to build high rise apartment blocks as they do in China. It makes sense by having the greatest number of people possible living on the one plot of land and avoids the issue of possible shrinking of the green belts. However, it is not something that the English people will necessarily embrace easily.
I was asked to speak a bit about Australia’s relationship with China. Stephen said that he asked for a pass because he couldn’t think of anything to say. I did say that our views are probably not representative because of our experiences of being in China a lot in the past few years. Still, it sparked more conversation with the group.
We walked home with a few of the other participants in the group. It was raining heavily by the time we got home and I was very glad to be using an umbrella that I found here in the house, rather than the cheap and flimsy one that I bought a couple of weeks ago.
Yesterday at about 3.00 p.m. we set off for Thornton Heath, catching bus 198 in Lebanon Road, to find a house where Stephen’s great grandfather lived with his family at the time of the 1891 census. He tracked this down using Ancestry.com. The house address is 69 The Drive, Thornton Heath. The bus took us from outside of our housing estate directly to Thornton Heath and home again.
This area was opened up after a railway station was built. The town centre appears a little shabby, but there are rather nice homes on the hill. As well as finding the actual house we walked up to what was a water tower for the town and is now used for flats (rather posh ones). We talked to a woman who had done some research on the building, though she said there wasn’t very much to go on and she is not sure when the building stopped being used as a water tower and was converted in homes. She lives in a little row of nice fairly modern houses that share the garden and parking area of the WT.
Details from the census are: Henry James Robinson, 29 years of age, a farm labourer, married to Emma and their son Henry John, 7 years of age.
Taking photos in the late afternoon, with sunset at about 4.15, meant there wasn’t much light. I’ve done a bit of work with them in Lightroom, but they are still rather dull, especially processed by WordPress for uploading here. Never mind, they document the visit.
Stephen standing outside of the actual house. The garden was unkempt, but there are some nice rosebushes.The street sign was just a little further along. We could see the water tower from this position, so decided to walk up to take a closer look. We didn’t know what it was at that stage.The Water Tower. Fortunately one of the residents from the newer houses was outside and we were able to ask her about the building.We noticed there was a nice looking park at the top of the hill, so we walked up there. We could see something of a view through the trees, but in summer that would have been hidden by leaves.Here is Stephen outside of the Thornton Heath Railway Station. The area was quite rural before the railway was built. Bearing in mind that Stephen’s great grandfather was a farm labourer.The Clock Tower at the town centre.
Yesterday we went to the Clock Tower Cafe for a German style lunch (German sausage, Sauerkraut, mash and gravy), followed by a German film about a boy in a village who dreams of having a broader life (Home from Home). This was in the little cinema in the library building. The movie was about 3 hrs long, with an interval in the middle. We found it very engaging.
Afterwards we were thinking of going to a concert at Croydon Minster, but the little restaurant where we had a meal took a long time to bring out our small meal, and we felt somewhat tired, so decided to go home.
The fireworks started up again – after not very much on Friday night. I felt it was very insensitive after what had happened in Paris on Friday.
I woke up with a headache and am not feeling too well today. We talked to Matt and Hidde on FaceTime, and I rang Mum a bit later as well. She said it was a nice few days to celebrate her 85th birthday.
There were no photos taken yesterday, so this is one from Bletchley Park.
A view of the sheds where people worked at Bletchley Park
As we were heading home yesterday after the fireworks we saw three fire engines heading towards the centre of town, sirens blaring. Friday morning Stephen read in the paper than there had been children who had their hair burnt slightly from the fireworks – little bits landing on their heads. We were right underneath, but the wind was blowing it mostly away from us, though I felt it a little. A safety issue that they could have thought about before launching fireworks over people’s heads?
Office in The Mansion, BP
It was sunny when we got up yesterday, very cheery. We were out of here by about 9.15 and were able to catch a direct train to Bletchley at about 10.15 a.m. The weather was colder, but partly sunny.
We enjoyed the day very much. We have seen The Imitation Game, and read books about the code breaking at Bletchley Park, so it was incredibly interesting to see the place. A lot of careful restoration has been going on, and there were quite a few visitors – interesting considering the time of year. It is a lovely setting, and amazing to think of all the people involved in making things work.
The Mansion on the site is a particularly beautiful house, with rooms set up to show what went on during the war. One of the rooms was a normal room with with stained glass windows in the roof letting in natural light.
The huts where people mostly worked were long and narrow, and where the Bombes did their work, they were quite stuffy. Interesting that the women working on intercepting wireless signals (at different locations) were required to really use their intelligence, yet this appears to have been scarcely acknowledged at the time.
We watched a demonstration of the setting up of a Bombe, though the mathematical reasoning went mostly over my head. We also bought a book by Dermot During which helps. Nevertheless, the demonstration was very interesting and the presenter was doing his best to simplify things for us.
Overall an amazing experience. At the end of the day after getting home, we began to read reports of the terrorism in Paris. A thought I can’t help having is that given the amazing work done all those years ago, why are we still missing things. The planning and co-ordination that went into these attacks must have created some noise, and with all the surveillance that happens these day of ordinary citizens, why was it not picked up? We know that the decision makers in the UK during the war had to make some very hard decisions about acting on the information provided out of Bletchley Park. If they could not come up with a cover story of how the information could have been obtained (other than code breaking) they couldn’t do anything without letting the enemy know they were able to read their signals. Was something like that happening here?
I also think of the countries of Europe coping with hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge from Syria and other countries. They have been far more welcoming and accomodating than Australia with our terrible offshore camps. Yet, this can still happen. I feel so sad about it.
Entrance to Bletchley Park
The Lake at BP
The Mansion at BPThe Bombe used in the movie The Imitation GameThe rear of the Bombe used in the demonstration in the Museum at BP
We stayed home for the morning yesterday. Stephen did some work on the Working Voices Choir website and I did some blogging, writing to people, and updated the Welcome Sheet for the choir to be put onto the website.
Late in the afternoon we went down to the centre of town for a little celebration of switching on the Christmas lights. Most of the entertainment was poor, but they did have some characters from the Christmas Pantomime here in Croydon, and so we even had a Santa who could sing.
There was a countdown to the switching on of the lights, then some fireworks. Not that big a deal, with a smallish audience with lots of kids. Still, it was an interesting time for us to see how it was done. I finally have a couple of photos of fireworks.
The little centre stage with Santa, his elves and the compere.
Yesterday we did a trip to Waitrose with our trolley and did a major shop. This always makes us feel good, though doesn’t stop us from having to pick up items on our way home from our outings. Stephen is very used to this, it’s what he tends to do when we are at home – going over to the shops approximately every second day. I like to take the car and do one big shop for at least a week of supplies, but we don’t have that option here.
We have one trip away planned, Stephen’s cousin Ron is coming to stay next weekend. We will go out to a show together and Melanie and Mark will come back to pick him up and take all of us to Gloucester. Stephen and I will stay overnight, then go from there to Bath for three nights, then come back to stay with Ron for another night. Then catch the bus home again. Apart from that, we plan to just make day trips out.
Tomorrow (Friday 13th) is Mum’s 85th birthday, and I will be the only child not celebrating it with her. Stephen, Matt and I took her out to lunch in the Swan Valley before we left, but it’s not quite the same thing. I will ring her before we go out tomorrow – late in the afternoon for her.
Something I haven’t mentioned is that for about the last month we have had fireworks exploding around us at night. People are allowed to buy their own and it seems that many people want to have a go, no matter how small. From up here we can see for miles and they were mostly happening in the distance until the last few days where they even seem to be happening on our housing estate. I can’t help wondering what it’s like for people coming from war zones to have explosions going on each night – I think it must be pretty horrible. We find it almost annoying since they are pretty unpredictable and sometimes close to our apartment, but not easily visible.
In the afternoon we went to a meeting of the local U3A. They have approximately 650 members with a lot of special interest groups, as someone said to me, there is something for everyone. The meeting was followed by a really interesting talk titled something like “the conjurer in the bottle” and was an extremely interesting look at the early days of cartoon satire in Britain, dating from about the 1750s. Well worth going to, especially as there was no cost beyond a pound for raffle tickets.
No photos from me yesterday, and I haven’t tried to take any fireworks photos because of the unpredictability of when they would happen.
Stephen singing at a soiree organised by members of the WASO chorus. This is a small JPEG from the video. It looks a bit dark here even though I’ve tried to lighten it in Lightroom. As someone once said to Stephen: “do you realise that there is someone following you around with a camera?”
