Work
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Wednesday, 13th October 2010
Posted by Judith on 13 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Work
A rain free day! Still very cloudy and Meteocat promised howling winds, so we didn’t think it would be flyable. In the end there wasn’t actually any wind at all, so we didn’t think it was worth going as we didn’t think we could stay up. Ho hum.
We did go out for a wander round Besalu to see what improvements they have made over the summer. We tried to explore some of the bits we’ve not seen before and tried to get up to the restored church, but it’s in a private garden and you can’t get there. We did discover a hill top outdoor swimming pool called ‘Vista de Basalu’ and it really is a pool with a hell of a view!
Otherwise it was more work. I’m in mega marketing mode, trying to plug the November conference. But there was some light relief too. I’ve been spending the time looking at Anita Hafdís Björnsdóttir’s videos of the practice day and the crazy dancing at the Women’s Open in Ager. Happy days… can’t wait to see the full vids.
Monday, 11th October 2010
Posted by Judith on 11 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Miscellaneous activities, Work
The rain today reached biblical proportions. We no longer have a river outside the house, but a torrent. You can’t see the weirs any more and the river is about sixteen times the width it normally is. It’s not reached the bottom of the cliff yet, but if it rains hard tonight and tomorrow, it might yet.
So some work and then another lunch with my parents. Geoff only does restaurant lunch once a year, so he didn’t come and missed profiteroles to die for.
I went to the post office in Olot on the way. Going to the post office is something of a saga in our village. It’s only open weekdays until 10am. We used to lovingly call it the post hovel, because it was just a hole in the wall. Our local postie only delivers once a week and he’s the most disorganised public official I’ve ever seen. His desk is so full of junk that it normally takes him ages to locate the scales to weigh our letters. He never has change and often has to either ask other customers or pay us in stamps – when he has any. He usually runs out, so has to take our letters to Olot. It’s actually rather charming. With the rain this morning, I couldn’t face walking to the post office but going to Olot felt like sneaking off for an illicit liaison – I hope the postie doesn’t find out we went elsewhere.
Later in the afternoon we watched Blue Peter and finally saw the epidsode we watched being filmed on the Mynd with Judy Leden and the peregrine falcon. We even saw ourselves in it, but blink and you miss us. It’s available to view online for a week.
Saturday, 9th October 2010
Posted by Judith on 10 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Miscellaneous activities, Work
The forecast was atrocious (both in terms of weather and accuracy), but very educational. They predicted cloud, rain, then storms, with possible tornados and the odd ‘mànega’, which I have now learned is a funnel cloud. Later still there would be rain with ‘fang’, which literally means mud. We were a bit stumped by what this could mean, until I asked my multilingual mum who explained that it was Sahara dust that was being sucked up and blown over, which the Catalans term ‘it’s raining mud’. In the event it didn’t rain a drop during the day and there were patches of blue sky throughout the daylight hours. Marc would have gone flying if others had been out, but we expected it to get worse at any time, so didn’t even bother considering flying/walking/cycling. Bloody forecasters!
So we worked some more on the conferences, LMSC stuff and prep for the next webcast. We had lovely dinner at Marc and Isabel’s and met their new son Sergi, who is gorgeous.
The drink driving laws have been tightened up here and since there are millions of different police forces you have to be careful. Geoff had never been breathalysed in 40 years of driving until he was twice here last winter. As we were driving home last night I commented that I had only seen road blocks when it was dry and you didn’t see many Mossos (the Catalan police force) standing around in the rain at night. Two minutes later… we hit a road block. Luckily, the person waving people through was a paragliding friend of ours who cheered us on with a hearty “Adéu, Geoff!”. So much for my daft theories.
At night the spectacular thunderstorms arrived. Some of the thunder claps actually shook the house and I worried that the washing might be blown away on the terrace.
Friday, 8th October 2010
Posted by Judith on 08 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Work
The forecast was rubbish. Geoff had more meetings this morning and I went back to bed. A niggling headache that I have been having for a couple of days really developed last night and had me scuttling to bed at 8.30pm. Not having slept well, I needed the extra few hours to try to recover. The weather was a lot better than expected. No rain and the odd bit of sunshine, but probably too windy and too easterly to fly. So a day of work and reading.
Thursday, 23rd September 2010
Posted by Judith on 24 Sep 2010 | Tagged as: Work
A showery, then stormy day. After a couple of days away we had plenty of catching up to do, as well as more little pre-going away jobs like a hair cut, buying things you can’t get in Spain (like washing powder I am not allergic to), cancelling the DVD rental contract, etc.
What was really good to hear was that the recent rumours about Niviuk and their gliders were completely fabricated. Although why someone would stoop so low as to do such a horrible hoax I can’t work out. I’m just really glad no one did die and that their gliders are as good as ever.
Sunday, 19th September 2010
Posted by Judith on 19 Sep 2010 | Tagged as: Party, party, party..., Work
After going to the Michaelmas Fair in Bishops Castle last night, we decided to do some work today, but we needed some shopping and headed back to BC this afternoon. Needless to say, we stayed rather longer than expected. First we watched the end of a show of a company of jugglers. Then we could hear drumming up the hill and went to watch Siyaya, a band from Zimbabwe. They were amazing. Great music and incredibly energetic dancing. I was most impressed by the fact that they could do incredible footwork whilst keeping their upper bodies completely still.
As we walked down the hill there was Morris dancing. We’re usually quite scathing about this, but they really put their heart and soul into it. Next we saw Savage Skills, a freestyle bike stunt team. They did leaps and jumps; bouncing around their colleague; crushing cans from a great height; high jumps and finally pin-point precision jumps with only one wheel.
All the museums were open today and we went into the house on stilts and Geoff was right, well worth a visit. Eventually, we did go back home to do more work and had I known what news I was going to get on my return, I would have bought a bottle of bubbly at the supermarket. The keynote speaker I was hoping for has confirmed. Harlan Lane is going to be taking part in the SDP conference. When I first started working with deaf people in 1992, his book ‘When the Mind Hears’ was the first one I bought about deafness and deaf history, and it is still a seminal work on the topic. He is still at the forefront of his field and I’m very excited about his presentation and his discussion at the conference.
Friday, 17th September 2010
Posted by Geoff on 18 Sep 2010 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly, Work
With a synoptic like this, you’d think it would be flyable, but no… it was too windy again! We had meetings in the morning and were already getting calls asking if it was flyable on the Long Mynd, but it was clear from early on that it wasn’t. By lunchtime the sky was looking very good indeed, so Geoff packed the hang glider and we were about to head up the hill when Martin phoned to say that it was flyable for paragliders. We raced up, but when we got there it had started gusting again and we wrote it off. The rather large area (many square miles) of rain in the distance, as well as the cold, was putting Geoff off getting the hangie out, so we all went for cream tea in Stretton instead. You can’t beat the easy option!
We tried again on the way home, but it had picked up even more and Geoff doesn’t like gale hanging on the HG either, so we canned it and went home to have a bonfire instead.