A Week on the Road

It was a hectic old week last week. Early Tuesday morning I was on the motorway, heading for Birmingham for the Association of Colleges conference. This was at the ICC, the International Conference Centre.

Over the three days of the conference I spoke to lots of old friends from my 18 years in Further Education colleges, met and chatted with Ruby Wax who since leaving the world of television has retrained in coaching skills and is now qualified to coach executives and spent some time on the exhibition stand with my colleagues from the world of JISC (it used to stand for Joint Information Systems Committee, but it's best to just to think of it as "JISC" these days in the same way you don't try to work out what FORD is an acronym for...)

I sat through some interesting sessions from Lord Peter Mandelson, Minister Ian Wright and Leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg and an absolutely spot-on assessment of the world recession by a Swiss chap, who managed to make it utterly entertaining.

There were lots of student demonstrations (of work, not of students getting uppity). Barnet College had a diversity display. I signed my name in Gujerati, feeling ridiculously pleased with myself when they pronounced it readable...

My hotel was a bit too far away and the receptionist asked if I wanted a room "with a bath?!?", managing to imbue the question with outraged astonishment as I checked in.

The Big Wheel outside the ICC looked nice but didn't actually spin round very much. Time did though and so on Thursday I left the delights of Birmingham and headed for Shrewsbury where I was to meet up with Clive and run a Process Review workshop on Friday.

The Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury has seen a few distinguished visitors in its time. Kings, Prime Ministers, stars of stage such as Paganini, stars of the written page, such as Charles Dickens whose favourite room bears his name. He wrote The Pickwick Papers there.

Our favourite spot is in front of the log fire in winter. As yet, it was just too warm for the fire to be lit. We sat in the bar and yarned and planned the following day. The event went well. The delegates seemed pleased and possibly relieved to find the day was not going to be as dry and boring as they had feared. Clive and I split up. He was heading back north to home. I was heading south, to join Fran, Gill and Eddie in London. More in the next entry!

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Farewell to Sorrento

Wednesday 24 August 2005. It's our last night in Sorrento.

Night time in the market streets of Sorrento. Whilst colourful by day, at night they have a special atmosphere! It's a place to see and be seen.

Whilst most holiday makers are dressed casually, occasionally a couple, a group of girls or an Italian housewife will stroll by, dressed to impress.

There were a large number of folk with rather familiar accents too - snapping up tiny bottles of Limoncella lemon liqueur, saying "Eeh, George, let's take some o' this back for our Florrie!"

In fact we've still got a couple of said small bottles gathering dust on the shelf, contents separating and looking not quite as appealing as it did when we bought it that night...

Eventually even the ladies had had enough of the markets and shops. We started to head back towards the hotel, past this little park which looked completely different to how it appears during the day.

The hotel next door had a DJ playing loud music until the early hours. The DJ was indistinguishable from an English DJ actually. "Verberve buh vebberrev, ha ha ha! Beverber ha ha! beebussy cooooobah! Hey ho! Ha ha ha!" Yep... just like any DJ in England at weddings, in pubs, clubs, etc...

The next day we have a few hours before the coach picks us up to take us to the airport. The ladies make back straight for the market streets, so I have a wander inland and find I'm walking over a bridge across an immensely steep and deep chasm.

At the bottom are the ruins of a large factory and to take the photo I'm shooting almost vertically down from the roadway bridge. A quite awesome viewpoint.

Further inland I find some of the old city walls. I hadn't even known that Sorrento had a city wall until I wandered up this far and passed under the gate in the photo.

They are fairly solid chunks of masonry though as you can see. And these lengths of wall that I saw are so complete and seemingly in such good condition that I had to conclude that the rest of the city wall was deliberately demolished, probably to allow the town to expand.

I couldn't really work out what the three corner corbels would have supported... The wall above them is unbroken so they are hardly likely to have held a fighting platform - which would have been more use on the inside of the wall anyway. Perhaps they had some extremely large hanging baskets?

Then as the heat grows, I head back towards the market and harbour and find somewhere cool to wait for Fran and Mum. The little open space here looks like they have set up for an open air concert of some kind for tonight. Typical - the day we go home! Ah well...

Ahhh.... yes, that'll do! And that's about it. Now we are whisked off to Naples airport where my battered hat gets stuck in the X-ray conveyor to be eventually thrown out to a bemused person who couldn't remember putting it in... I forgot all about it until I was on the plane when I suddenly said "Where's my hat?" but it was far too late! And probably far too battered to make me care all that much!

And by way of coincidence, as I finish writing about our Sorrrento holiday, my mate Clive is about to set off on his Sorrento holiday, so have a good one, bud!

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Good (Not Great) Railway Journeys

I occasionally watch programmes with names like "Great Railway Journeys" and wonder why can I not have some of those?

Today I had a "Good Railway Journey". Which means the trains were on time - one actually arrived nine minutes early, my goodness that must have thrown the station staff into a mild panic...!

There's something about a Virgin train that somehow conspires to take the "Great" out of a journey though. Small seats (or is that just my large figure?) and luggage space for a packet of smarties each. Every seat taken and people walking past glaring at seat reservation signs that since digitisation hardly ever work or (as in my case) have been double booked.

But the weather was fine and made for pleasant views of England's green and pleasant - er... make that waterlogged - land. Streams, rivers and dykes looking full and land at either side showing signs of recent flooding with a water table levelling out around half an inch above ground level. That can't be good for crops or sheep's feet...

Nobody in any of the three trains I've been on seemed to want to inflict their personality on the rest of the carriage. This is frequently not a good thing anyway but very occasionally there is a gem who brightens the journey of everyone else. Today the closest was a lively 3 year old who had been on the train for far too long, travelling to Penzance and even then he did nothing more annoying than run up and down the deserted aisle, smiling wonderfully at us all. In turn everyone else smiled back at him and at anyone else who met their eyes. I can certainly live with that!

And despite a journey with crowded trains and two connections to be made I arrived tonight in Taunton at the time originally planned and to a climate borrowed from Summer.

I jumped straight into a taxi with no waiting or fuss. The driver had an agreeable and totally desirable "Zummerzet ahhhxant" and furthermore had a face full of beard that would have not been out of place on an 18th Century stagecoach and which I could immediately picture streaming with cider later on tonight.

Clive meanwhile is battling the roadworks on the M1 and I can do no more than leave him alone to it and sit down to enjoy a relaxed meal and then wait for him in the bar. It's tough but someone's got to do it.

Tomorrow we treat the colleges and universities of the South West to a Change Management workshop. Then more travelling. I'll tell you about that later! For now, I'm going to go and peruse the menu!

Greenwich

I spent yesterday at the old Royal Naval College at Greenwich. It is now Greenwich University.

Altogether an impressive place. Clive and I were delivering a Project Management workshop but managed a lunchtime walk-about. Unfortunately I hadn't picked up a camera before leaving home. A very late doctor's appointment the day before had made me miss my booked train and very nearly had me missing Fran who was working from lunchtime so it was a bit of a rush to get down to London.

Luckily my phone takes photos - of a sort - and I was able to at least get something. Hopefully we will get a chance in the future sometime to visit again.

The place is steeped in history with a royal park and house which has a vista down to the River Thames, through the Naval College. The Meridian, zero degrees Longitude runs through Greenwich and King Henry VIII was born there.

The Cutty Sark, the famous tea clipper was badly damaged in a fire recently and is currently swathed in hoardings undergoing restoration. It is hoped to have it back on display within a year.

We walked down from the hotel on Tuesday night to have a look at it whilst we looked for a place to eat and sadly apart from a glimpse of the stern you can't see anything of the ship currently.

We did come across this rather strange little building. It houses the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. If you have a fancy to walk beneath the Thames over to the Isle of Dogs then you will find a similar building to emerge from on the other side!

Tamed by the Shrew

I'm in Shrewsbury on a 57k connection so no photo on this until I get home I think! [Coo-ee! I'm home!]

Clive and I are ensconced in the Lion Hotel, an establishment enjoyed in the past by Charles Dickens who wrote something here - perhaps a note saying his radiator was cold, Paganini who sang in the Minstrels Gallery in the ballroom - I haven't seen that, as it is in use for some sort of event; and Prince William Henry - I'm sure there must have been more than one of those. Anyway the one who was here danced in the same ballroom that Paganini had sung in. Probably because Paganini had shut up and gone back to wherever he came from?

Those damn foreigners - they just turn up and start singing all over the place...! (I do the same when I'm abroad!) They still are - the legendary Julie Felix is here on Friday on a "Forever Young" tour. She's only kidding herself I fear, but a shame I'll miss her all the same.

After last night the conversation over a pint or two has been Disney and Florida and (because it's me and Clive and it's what we do) about the differences in culture between Americans and the UK both in business and in personal life.

Thankfully, sense has prevailed back at the Burke household and Florida is "off" for next year at least...

Wear is This?

No, my speling hasnn't gon on the blinck - this is the River Wear at Sunderland. Or just outside Sunderland anyway. This was taken last night just after I arrived in Sunderland ready for running a Change Management workshop with Clive today for JISC's RSC Northern.

I normally have a look to make sure I know where the venue is if it's somewhere I haven't been before and this was the view from over the road, so it was worth rummaging in the boot and taking the camera out. Makes walking very uncomfortable anyway...

The photograph shows the cliffs alongside the Wear at Wessington, just outside Sunderland. Clive lives in Sunderland anyway and said he used to climb them as a lad - must have been mad! He did tell me the name of them but it's gone!

The workshop went well, in fact we got almost a perfect score from the feedback forms. Thanks to the delegates - we thought you were pretty good too!