Looking Out To Sea

I’ve just had to defrost the freezer again — just three months since the last defrost — and it’s currently humming away trying to get back down to temperature. This time it was dual-hairdryer action! We discovered the fridge compartment warm and the milk sour this morning. See the story in the previous post to learn why the fridge dies when the freezer is choked with ice.

I think the time between defrosts is so short now because the inside of the freezer, and in particular the refrigerator element, were still quite wet when I connected everything back up. In order to get everything properly dry it really needs to sit for 24 hours. But we don’t really have that luxury when there’s a freezer full of frozen food sitting on the floor wrapped only in towels.

So within the next month or so we’ll try to run the freezer down and, if necessary, have some kind of defrost party to use up random things which we can’t eat on our own.

Would it be “ludicrous to think of hiring a juggler without first seeing him perform”? Raganwald has made this point in the past, with reference to professional interviews. But if someone comes to you claiming to be a yo-yo champion it would be rude to challenge them on this point.

At work there’s a tentative conversation about a book group, to read and discuss (and presumably work through) books like SICP. I’m tempted to join in but I wonder if I’d actually get anything done. I haven’t been to the Science and Society Reading Group for several sessions because I just haven’t had time to read the books in question.

(This is why our other book group is better because reading books is optional and finishing books is not necessary.)

But the combination of SICP and discussion with some of the engaged programmers at work might be really useful. I will put my name down and see what happens. The starting book suggested was the aforementioned SICP but after that they’re going to look at something Agile/XP related which is generally an area I know nothing about except by hyped reputation. I’d also be interested in reading research papers so I might suggest that too.

A year ago we were at a wedding in Glasgow. Six months ago we were at a wedding in Milngavie. Obviously I needed an excuse to get a haircut again so I neatly arranged for my aunt to get married on the May Day weekend — cunning, eh? — and we went down for a great weekend on the south coast of England. My aunt Pamela and her family live in a little town near Worthing, only five minutes walk from the sea. They’ve been together for nearly as long as I’ve been alive but clearly decided it was worth getting this marriage thing done at some point! Their daughter said lots of people were asking whether she was happy to no longer be a bastard, which is a strange question if ever there was one. Does bastardry get removed retroactively? :-)

Unusually I was the only person there in a kilt, which was strange but quite enjoyable. I assumed there would be at least one other Scotsman there but apparently not. Stranger, though, was how unusual it seemed — it’s like the other guests had never seen anyone in a kilt before. Lots of people asked us “so are you Scottish?”.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We flew down on Friday night from Glasgow because Helen was in class until 5pm. The train from Gatwick was easy though I couldn’t help being alarmed at the names of places we passed — are Lancing and Goring-by-Sea quaint villages or ways to die in battle? Pamela picked us up from the station and we stayed in their spare room for the duration of our visit.

On Saturday morning the house was transformed for the post-wedding reception. My mum and her other sisters and brother came in and everybody swept and mopped and made sandwiches and so on.

The ceremony at Worthing Registrar was in a fairly small modern room. The readings were lovely and the couple looked incredibly happy. Back at their house we drank champagne and the weather blessed us with a warm sunny afternoon. Stood in the garden talking nonsense to various people who wanted to know why I was wearing a kilt…

After the best man speech and the cutting of the cake and consumption of more sandwiches we all trooped out to a cafe on the beach front for a meal and live jazz and dancing. The food was excellent and the band really good too, and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves.

We left at the same time as my mum who was driving back to the cottage they had hired in Arundel. I don’t know why we departed at that point but realised when we got back to the house we were staying at that the people with the keys were still chatting back at the party. We sat on a bench near the front door in the darkness, drinking whisky from a hipflask and enjoying the silence. It’s such a strange quiet place: no traffic, no street lights. Just darkness and silence.

Next day we sat round the kitchen table in the conservatory while the rain lashed the windows. Mid-afternoon it had died down a bit so a bunch of us trooped out to a restored 18th century windmill which was really good if you’re a bit of a nerd like me, though the weather was crap for it. They didn’t have any wind-milled flour in the visitor centre shop because it had all sold out. They only mill once or twice a year but clearly we arrived at just the wrong point.

In the evening Helen and I took the train into Brighton to see some friends who were also in the area for a few days. We forgot/left behind our phones so had to wait around in the cold at the arranged meeting point wondering “is this how things were done before mobile phones?” and being a bit miserable. The rain had stopped but the wind was bitter. Some guy was skinny-dipping in the sea beside the pier and quickly turned from pink to blue when he came back out. Then his friends — loose term — proceeded to slap him with his leather belt while he tried to get dressed again with numb hands. I don’t think I’d be sticking my neck out to suggest alcohol was involved.

There was a restaurant that came recommended (“English’s”) but was full so went next door. I think this place was called The Gallery. Food was quite nice though we did end up with a green-dye-swirled meringue as the base of the Pavlova. We later discovered that there is a Brighton shop which sells meringues swirled with a variety of dyes, though why they chose the St Patrick’s Day meringue to build a Pavlova around is anyone’s guess. Eating was made difficult through laughing at the colour.

We spent Monday back in Brighton again with our baggage this time. Absurdly enough, Brighton, tourist town that it is, has decided that left luggage is the work of the devil and they’ve removed every trace of it from the public facilities. We know this for certain because we asked at the bus station, the train station and the travel centre. This curtailed our day as we couldn’t really wander comfortably around with several bags of luggage. We cut our losses and went to Gatwick early. Checked everything in and had a nice meal at Cafe Rouge in the secure area while watching the board for our gate to open.

We got back to Edinburgh on time but sat on the runway for a while because our berth was being occupied by an EasyJet flight that wasn’t moving. Don’t know why. We got in eventually, though I didn’t mind because I had my book with me. Aeroplanes are much more comfortable on the ground, without the noise and the juddering and the earache. It helped that the plane was mostly empty.

There should be some photos of all this to come but they’ve not been sifted and cropped yet. I’ll put up a post later on with photos when they’re ready.

Just finished two books in the last week: Sword Song and Making History, both with a vaguely historical theme.

Sword Song is one book from the middle of a series by Bernard Cornwell, of Sharpe fame. Sword Song follows the adventures of Uhtred of Babbenburg in the reign of Alfred the Great. That’s about 880AD, in case Wikipedia’s not working for you at the moment. It is more or less Sharpe-in-Wessex: orphan boy, good military strategist, brave, canny, etc, struggling against his own incompetent superiors who were born into positions of power, rather than earning them. The language of people and place names takes a bit of getting used to but luckily there’s a glossary to help you translate Hrofeceastre to Rochester and so on. After a while you learn to guess what the modern equivalents might be.

It was enjoyable enough though I don’t think I would rush back for another one. I didn’t feel greatly involved in Uhtred’s struggle nor did I care much for the welfare of the kingdom as a whole. Interesting but ultimately uninvolving.

Making History is the first Stephen Fry novel that I’ve read. I had assumed that his books would be rather obscure or learned — the product of a literature degree, in fact — but if this one’s anything to go by there’s nothing to worry about. A history student finishes his PhD dissertation on the childhood and early years of Adolf Hitler and ends up using a time machine to change the past and prevent Hitler’s birth. So the characters ends up adrift in an alternate twentieth century with his own memories of our century still intact. (There are interesting snippets of fact amongst it all which makes me want to follow up the one or two biographies recommended in the author’s notes at the end. How did the epitome of evil in Western society get to be that way?) The book is funny, prompts interesting questions about the role of circumstance and accident in history and, thankfully, not in the least bit difficult. I am keen to read some more of Fry’s books now.