Training in Cirencester, November 1999

Thursday 25 November 1999. For the moment I had done what I could for the I.T. network at Myerscough College and it was time to start to look at the Management Information System.

At Preston we had Femis software provided by EMIS, the company, with the data store running on Oracle. EMIS had been bought out, merged or otherwise acquired by Capita with the intention that all colleges using Femis would eventually move to their Dolphin software which, at Myerscough, used SQL*Server as a data store. SQL*Server still used the same SQL (Structured Query Language) as Oracle and also MS Access which I could use as a front end for running reports once I got my head around the Dolphin structure diagram. This latter looked a bit similar to the star charts used by the Millenium Falcon...

So this night I found myself staying at a tiny B&B in Cirencester where Capita had a training base. They didn't do evening meals so after the course finished on day one of two, I went into town to see what was available.

Well the Romans hadn't left much... By the time I got out of the course it was starting to go dark but there was just time for a quick look around the town. The first thing to catch the eye was the age of the buildings.

Cirencester has Roman roots and had an abbey built by the Normans and demolished by Henry VIII. The locals were not too sorry to see it go by all accounts as the Abbot dealt out severe punishments for petty crimes. In the Abbey Grounds a small section of the Roman Town Wall is preserved.

And elsewhere yet again - at the opposite end of the Abbey Grounds was the Norman arch that was the gateway to the Abbey. The Gatehouse was a small and picturesque 12th century building with heavy studded wooden doors. It is seen here from inside the grounds. Inside the arch were plaques on the passage walls.

One told us: The 12th century gate house, the only surviving building of the great Augustinian abbey of St. Mary, was one of the entrances to the precincts of the monastery until its dissolution in 1539. Purchased from Queen Elizabeth I By Dr. Richard Master, physician to the queen, the abbey site remained in the ownership of his descendants until 1954 when the gate house was presented to Cirencester in memory of the late Col. W.A. Chester Master by his family.

As it got darker, so I got hungrier. It would seem that nowhere opened until 6:30. The most likely looking place was The King's Head Hotel which had a few meals on the menu that sounded alright. I walked back to the B&B for a while and got some work done on the College's Intranet pages. I ventured out again at 7:00pm.

By now it had gone dark a bit more and I took another shot of the church, which is floodlit from the centre of the town square. The town had more or less gone to sleep and few people were about.

The receptionist of the King's Head told me that the restaurant was a carvery and I was looking forward to a meal as I walked through the ancient courtyard of the inn to the seperate building at the back. What's this? Only one other couple eating and in the bar, just two old men and a dog. And even the dog was asleep...

One of the men called out as I approached the empty bar: "She's gone to change a barrel - help yourself and get me a pint while you're at it!" It turned out to be a carvery with no roast... I had to make do with a chicken kiev, which although nice, was a bit of a let-down!

When I came out of the inn the night was black and still... (still what?) still black! If the town had gone to sleep before it was definitely snoring now! Even the teenagers were walking about in subdued groups. You might also notice that it was pouring with rain...

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