All right, I'm starting with the most recent event/trip first, and then working my way back. After the conference in London, I said good-bye to Joel and hopped on a train to Swindon. Well, rather I hopped on the tube, which got me about halfway to the train station, stopped, waited for about 10 minutes, and then announced we had to move to a different train. So I got into Paddington Station about 5:10 - no way I was going to catch the 5:00pm train to Swindon at that rate. I quite luckily made it onto the 5:20 one - which is impressive considering how darned impossible to navigate Paddington Station turned out to be. There were no signs any where, no information booths anywhere, lots of platforms nowhere near each other, and I hadn't a clue what the final destination of any train going via Swindon would be. I was lucky that when I finally found a sign with said info, it turned out to be closest to the train which was going where I was going, so I was able to rush and catch it. Then, we arrive at Swindon - and wait. And wait. We waited for almost 15 minutes for a platform to clear. So I made it in around 6:45 when the plan was that I'd be meeting John there around 6:00. Eep! Luckily, as soon as I got off the train things started getting better as I took about three steps, and a man walks up, asks, "Ary?" and we were off. It's always nice when you're meeting someone you've never met (in person) before works out well. By the time we picked Fiona up and made it out to the Mars & Mulled Wine event, it was a little after 7:00pm, but everything at the event was delayed by about 20 minutes so we didn't miss anything. There were
alot more people there than I expected! At least a hundred, if not more, kids up through grandparents. We stood in line and got our mulled wine, sausages, and mash (no mash for Fiona or me..., but the sausages were okay). The mulled wine, despite being pretty cheap tasting, definitely hit the spot as I'd had a very long day up till that point (more on that when I describe the London trip). There were two lectures - one by Colin Pillinger on the Beagle 2 explorer to Mars. That was interesting because I had heard a little about that mission when it was happening, so it wasn't completely out of context, and it was interesting to hear about some of the historical aspects - like the fact that it was named after the Beagle that Darwin sailed in while gathering data that resulted in
Origin of the Species. The second lecture was fascinating. I don't remember who the speaker was, but he was an astro-biologist, and his talk was on, naturally, the possibility of life outside of earth. He discussed the types of chemicals and elements that are required in order to sustain carbon-based life forms, why he and other astro-biologist
only look for evidence of carbon-based life forms, and not, say, silicon-based, and then discussed which of those features, etc., there is possible evidence for on Mars, or on other satellites of the sun, such as Europa. While he ended by saying that, much as he wished it was otherwise, he just doesn't see any reason to think that there was ever life on Mars, he seemd optimistic about the possibilities for other earth-like satellites around different stars. All in all, it kept me from falling asleep, which definitely took some doing by that point of the day (especially after the wine). One thing that I found really interesting from the point of view of a member of academia is how the lecture was presented. As I said, there were kids up through grandparents in the audience (two of which were sitting right in front of me and wouldn't stop squirming...), and hence the base level of chemistry that the speaker could assume had to be very low. But on the other hand, there are going to be people in the audience who probably
do have some chemistry background, and perhaps alot. So you need to make sure that you can speak to the people who know something about what you're talking about without completely losing the ones who don't. I thought this speaker did a very good job. He put all the chemical formulas on the power-point slides so that people who wanted to could read them, but he described all of the happenings in English as he went. Like I said, I was impressed.
Part of the draw of the event, in addition to the two lectures, was that a number of telescopes were set out so you could view Mars. Of course, this is England we're talking about, so what're the odds that you'd actually get a clear night? It wasn't clear, but that's OK, I've seen Mars through a telescope before, and anyways, it was incredibly windy out, and I was happy to not be outside for very long.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I bummed around John and Fiona's house. Mostly I slept late, drank alot of tea, procrastinated on doing my set theory homework by reading four or five novels, played with their cat, Shauna (a sweety!), and froze the tip of my nose off. Their house is coal-furnace heated, and the first day I was too chicken to try lighting the fire (so I just huddled in front of a space-heater), and the second day I got the fire started but didn't put enough wood or coal in so it never got warm, and the third day I was just too lazy to keep it going. Anyway, it was incredibly relaxing, but I find that spending three days without Joel and no distractions makes me miss him
very much.
Tuesday night I went with John to fighter practice. I haven't been to a fighter practice in forever, as Jara's always conflicted with boardgaming night. There were only four people (only three fighters), but since it had been so long since I'd been to a fighter practice, I found it lots of fun just to watch. They also did some drill work from a period German manual, and that was interesting.
Wednesday night we stewed some rabbit in red wine with capers. Yum! I wish I got to cook with rabbit more often.
Thursday night I went along with both of them to dance practice. Again, I haven't had a chance to do medieval dancing in ages. The last event I went to that had dancing at it was Boar's Head a year ago, and I spent most of the dancing part of the event putting chairs away, so I didn't even get to dance once before we had to go him. Most of the dances were new to me, but I put my 15 years of dance training to good use and could usually pick them up after seeing one run through. That was alot of fun too.
Friday John took off work, and took me sight-seeing (which was definitely a bonus! All I'd been hoping for, when I made the arrangements, was a place to crash between the London conference and Kingdom university.) We went to the West Kennet long barrow, which is like 5000 years old and the largest long barrow in England. It's on top of this fairly high, steep hill, and it was incredibly windy that day - gusts of up to 70mph. It made it almost impossible, at times, to walk up the hill. From the top of the hill you have a gorgeous view of the countryside around - including Silbury Hill, which is the next thing we went to go see. Silbury Hill is about 4000 years old, and it's a man made hill, 130 feet high, set in this otherwise fairly flat area. It looks like a great big pimple; it is immediately clear that it's not a naturally occuring phenomenon. Archaeologists haven't been able to figure out what the original purpose of the hill was, but it was not a barrow - they know that much. Now, the hill is completely fenced off to retain its structural integrity, but sheep are allowed to wander over it. There were sheep pretty much everywhere in the countryside. Oh! And I saw my first pheasants, one day sitting at the kitchen table. I'd never seen a pheasant before.
After Silbury Hill we went to Avebury to see the Avebury Henge, which is two roughly concentric circles of rocks of varying sized, surrounding which is a moderately deep but very steep-sided ditch. Again, the sheep are allowed to wander pretty much everywhere, but in this case, so are the people. You can walk right up to the rocks, wherever. (Unlike, I guess, Stonehenge, where you aren't allowed to get close to things like the stone altar). We had lunch at a little pub in the city, and what I had just hit the spot - a light salad, a soup (described as "seasonal") which looked like tomato but I think also had roasted peppers in it, and half of a brie and bacon tart. Mmmmmm...
I took various pictures of the barrow, the hill, and the henge (and the pheasants). They start here in my album:
http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/albums/img206.jpeg.htmlWhew! I think I'll actually leave the Essex part of this trip/event to another post.
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