Westminster, Then East on The Strand

Saturday 30 November 2002. We had had a bit of a turn on the London Eye and came down to terra firma to walk across the Thames over Westminster Bridge.

We walked behind the Houses of Parliament. Fran fancied looking around Westminster Abbey but there was a huge queue. So we went back to Whitehall and a look at the imposing but not exactly inviting offices of Government.

I had an idea and we decided to go off in search of the Cabinet War Rooms, passing Her Majesty's Treasury.

We eventually found it at the end of the street facing St James' Park near a statue of Clive of India. During World War II this was Prime Minister Churchill's secret bunker from which the war was directed.

Inside all was as it had been left at the end of the war. The Government staff and Senior Officers of the Armed Forces had been replaced with waxworks but everything else was original. It was kept secret for forty years. The day after the Japanese surrendered the lights were switched off for the first time in six years, the doors locked and it was left exactly as it was. The yellow-stained maps and surfaces bear testament to the fog of years of cigar and cigarette smoke. A stark reminder of how close we came to being ruled by Hitler.

It was one of the most interesting places I've ever been. Then we decided to walk down The Strand to St Paul's, passing Charing Cross and The Savoy Hotel.

This is - and isn't - Charing Cross. It is the forecourt of Charing Cross Station, to be sure. The monumental cross is a representation, not even a replica, of the Queen Eleanor Cross which was the final such monument along the route from Lincoln to the then hamlet of Charing which at the time of the original cross in 1249 occupied what is now Trafalgar Square and the extension south along what is now Whitehall to The Strand. Twelve crosses between Lincoln and here in Charing marked the nightly resting places of King Edward I's beloved wife Queen Eleanor of Castile during her post mortem journey from Lincoln back to Westminster Abbey after dying during a Royal Progress, probably of fever, in 1290.

The original cross was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell's order in 1647. Upon it's site in 1675 after the Restoration of the Monarchy, an equestrian statue of King Charles I was erected where it stands to this day at the south of Trafalgar Square, the centre of London from where all measurements to London terminated. So if you see a sign "London 213 miles" then you are 213 miles from the horse's tail of the statue.

But back to Charing Cross Station which takes its name from the long-lost hamlet. The cross there was built to commemorate the opening of the station in 1864 and it is taller than the original Eleanor Cross.

The Savoy Hotel stands on land between The Strand and the River Thames and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte using the profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan light operas. Opening in August 1889, it set standards far in excess of the normal for its time. It was the first hotel with electric lighting throughout, the first with electric lifts, the first with constant hot and cold running water and most of its rooms included bathrooms.

After six months of opening César Ritz was engaged as manager and he brought in Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine and Louis Echenard as maître d'hôtel. In 1897 they were dismissed. Both Ritz and Echenard were implicated in the loss of wines and spirits on a grand scale and Escoffier was found to have been accepting gifts from the hotel's suppliers. This was hushed up at the time, though Ritz was inclined to sue for wrongful dismissal. With the probable scandal likely to affect other rather successful business interests he was persuaded to not to make a fuss. Amazingly the full details were only publicly known in 1985.

The Savoy became wildly successful. Even their own orchestras, The Savoy Havana Band in the 1920s and laterThe Savoy Orpheans led by Geraldo in particular became well known through early BBC broadcasts live from the Savoy Ballroom and through sales of dance music released on 78rpm records. Most of Hollywood's famous stars have stayed there including Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra and Churchill was wont to take his cabinet to lunch there.

Nearby there was the faint sound of music and happy voices and we passed under the arches into the courtyard of The Courtauld's Gallery to see what was going on.

Passing through into the courtyard we saw first a large Christmas tree and then the skating rink seen in the photograph below. The Courtauld Gallery was established at Somerset House on this site in 1932. It has a large collection of important works of art from such illuminaries as Manet, Monet, Rubens, Turner, Constable, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gainsborough, Gauguin, Degas, Van Dyke, Renoir and Van Gogh (including his self-portrait with bandaged ear).

Ice skating is a form of sport, exercise and/or fun that I've never felt the compunction to try somehow. Now don't get me wrong - as a kid you would find me in a school playground running full tilt on snow to launch myself onto an ice slide of twenty or thirty feet long, standing sideways to the direction of travel, feet rigidly spread to maintain balance and would present any torn and bloody flesh for purple iodine to be liberally painted on my knees should my exit from the slide be less than elegant... But skates, like skis, have never presented themselves of any great appeal to me.

Ice skating though is thought to go back some 4,000 years would you believe. In southern Finland travellers would skate to save energy on journeys. Animal bones would be favourite I imagine. Certainly sharp edged skates made from steel would only start to be used in the 13th or 14th centuries. But the basic design hasn't changed much since then.

In England, skating on metal skates developed after the Restoration in 1660. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that on 15 December 1662 he had gone with the Duke of York (later King James II) to watch the latter skate on the frozen lake in St James Park, remarking that the Duke "slides very well"...

We carried on along The Strand and came to The City of London - the famous square mile that contains the law courts and financial business centre of London. It is a county in its own right and at the time when the Romans were still knocking about, falling over themselves laughing at the locals' wood and mud houses, it was pretty much all there was of London.

The church is St Clement Danes, of nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons fame, although St Clement's church in Eastcheap not far away also claims to be the church associated with the rhyme.

There are several theories as to why the name includes the word "Danes". London was on the border between the English and the Norse of the Danelaw and it may have originally been built to commemorate massacres. It also was the burial place of one of England's Danish kings, King Harold I - Harold "Harefoot" from 1040, though any remains of the tomb have long since vanished.

The church was rebuilt by William the Conqueror and again in the Middle Ages. Following the Great Fire of London in 1666 the tower had to be rebuilt from the very foundations. The tower survived when the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1680-82 and a steeple was added in 1719.

On 10 May 1941 during The Blitz the church was bombed and gutted by fire. Looking at photographs taken during that night you could scarce believe that it could have survived. The ten bells fell from the tower to the ground, yet whilst the interior was devastated, the outer walls, tower and steeple survived. The church was fully restored funded by an appeal by the Royal Air Force and in 1958 it was reconsecrated in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip as the Central Church of the Royal Air Force.

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A Spin on the London Eye

Saturday 30 November 2002. There's some sort of event on in Wembley on Sunday 1 December so Fran and I are staying in a Premier Inn at Wembley for the weekend. I can't quite remember what it was advertised as, but there was a large record fair and a particular draw was that both actresses Caroline Munro and Ingrid Pitt were to be there. We had met them both some five years previously and thought it would be fun to meet up again.

9:30am Saturday morning we head for Waterloo Station on the Underground. We had decided to try to get on the London Eye. At this time of morning there were no queues. We got tickets and walked straight on.

Whilst we were near the bottom it was interesting watching the pods discharge and take on passengers!

There's a fabulous view all the way around and it's easy to spot landmarks such as St Paul's and Big Ben.

There were few enough people in each pod to be able to get to a window to allow a good viewpoint.

It wasn't what you would call the sunniest of mornings - the view must be even better when it's sunny. But given that we are on the last day of November, we can't really expect sunny skies and weather fit for t-shirts and shorts.

At the top of the wheel with the next pod on the same level. The pod looks very space age!

Starting to come down. The whole trip takes half an hour. A great view of the Houses of Parliament, or the Palace of Westminster whichever floats your boat. Though if you're going to be picky then your boat is the one turning sideways further up the river past Vauxhall Bridge...

After passengers leave a pod it is scanned with metal detectors before anyone else can enter. This is done quite quickly so that the wheel isn't forced to stop to long each time a pod unloads and loads.

As we walk away to wonder what to do next we notice a piece of blue string fastened to a lamp post - obviously the lamp post too was trying to remember something...

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Myerscough College 2002

Well of course there was much more going on at Myerscough College other than moving whopping great trees and building new blocks. I would end the year working my notice in preparation to joining JISC infoNet, my exploits during that employment are already open to scrutiny and the odd hilarity.

17 March 2002. I found myself (I think, for the last time) down at Coombe Lodge, venue for so many FEMIS courses in the 1990s.

Back then we had stayed in The Webbington hotel, a rather posh establishment where dinner was served at large communal round tables in the dining room. A refined lady with pearls and elaborate hair would play selections from (I swear) Watch With Mother on the piano and Rob Burnett would look across at the stuffed head of Bambi's mum on the wall, nudge me and say "Go on John - do the joke!"

The joke involved me drawing everyone's attention to the deer head and remarking "That thing must have been doing a hell of a lick when it hit that wall on the other side..." Never failed to bring a laugh... Why I'll never know. Rob and I once found ourselves seated after one meal with two very glamorous girls, far too young for us and with skirts far too short for keeping warm. They were absolutely gorgeous. One leaned forward slightly to ask, "So what do you think of this *%&*ing FEMIS then?" They had come from a very small specialised college and whilst one was the Principal's PA they were expected to also do all the work on the college's Management Information System. The other one was sitting thoughfully looking critically at her glass... "*%&*ing Vice Principal came upto me the other day and stuck his hand up my skirt, dirty sod!" she informed us. It was an enlightening evening... I remember the next day, which was the second of our 2-day course, the girls somehow learned how to do all sorts of tricks in the UNIX operating system to cause embarrassment to the VP...

This time I was staying at Coombe Lodge itself. Very boring as I was the only guest and I trotted off after arriving to have tea in Weston Super Mare which was just a few miles away. The following day after the course I went down to the nearby farmhouse where the FEMIS headquarters had been and the last few staff who had made the transfer to Capita were still working.

The programming team worked in the old stables and I went down to see Christina and her colleagues to make sure they had been properly mucked out... Happy days!

2002 was Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. She had visited Myerscough College twice and they created a new space called Jubilee Court with a centrepiece of a 3D sculptured representation of the college logo, which was two ears of wheat set curving opposite each other. The sculpture set another two at right angles so they made four spokes or points of the compass (or ears of wheat...).

The college network was moving into the final phase of development with the instalation of new batch of managed network hubs which would be housed in a cabinet in the new build described in previous articles. On 20 May 2002 Jayne and I had another trip to Research Machines in Oxford to learn all about them and walked into this market just as the doors were locked at the far end. By the time we realised there were no stalls open the doors behind us had been locked as well. Luckily we found someone still in the place to let us out!

With similar luck we went to the Bodleian Library. We were unable to enter the library itself as there was some sort of graduation event going on.

In the courtyard stands King Charles I. In 1645 he was refused permission to borrow a book as the library's rule is not to allow books out of the building. It acts as a reference library only.

I got asked to contribute to another conference for NILTA and found myself on a platform with the head of a software company discussing whether paperless enrolments would ever become a reality. At the time the only thing holding this up was the Government's insistance that students should physically sign a form. Given that one college (there's always one...) had just made up a load of false students to fraudulently claim funding may have had some bearing on the Government's reluctance to allow digital signatures...

I also manned the NILTA stand at a local conference for North West colleges on 2 July 2002. About this time I received a strange telephone call one morning from a recruitment agency asking if I would be interested in a highly paid job for a national agency. They wouldn't disclose who it was but said that I had been specifically suggested as a likely candidate but that I would have to attend an interview that same day in York during the afternoon.

This was a deliberate ploy to see if I could actually do it and get there on time, whereupon I was told I had already passed several levels of criteria including being known to at least two currrent Government Ministers. (I've never been quiet in meetings or conferences, but as I've already mentioned somewhere, I never criticised without making positive suggestions for going forward.) The post turned out to be as head of an well known education support quango's Further Education arm. I later found lots of acquaintances doing similar work had also been approached and in the end I didn't get the job, but it was a very rewarding experience to go through.

Myerscough held a graduation ceremony and as a member of the support staff rather than academic, I found myself in red robes. Mick who I had worked with at Preston and subsequently brought to Myerscough to support me (and bypass me!) with programming of report output from the Management Information System took this photo from a low level. it emphasises the noble brow, the proud features, the double chin...

The ceremony was held over two days, one for Higher Education students and one for Further Education students. On each day a guest was invited to do a speech and to hand out the certificates. On the second day I was quite pleased to shake the hand and chat to Lord Brian Rix, the famous actor from the Whitehall Farces and then acting as President of MENCAP. "I've seen you before," I told him, "...but I doubt if you'll remember!"

It was a touching experience that day, I had no teaching duties but occasionally spent time with students to help them over an I.T. problem and some of those who I'd spent time with made a special effort to come and say thanks.

In August a new Business Incubator building was planned and an old barn had to come down to make way for it. This would change the road plan of the college also. By now I had gotten involved, again through NILTA, with a project to set up a new Advisory Service for JISC. JISC was a committee at the time, not an organisation, so all its staff were employed by various universities around the UK. The University of Northumbria at Newcastle would be hosting this new service which would support Information Systems and development, planning and implementation of I.T. use within colleges and universities.

With the opening of the new building featured in the previous couple of articles, a new I.T. drop-in centre was opened. The old one still existed but from 60 total PCs, we had now added this - a considerable achievement but which matched in terms of percentages the growth in student numbers over the past two years or so. Use of the Internet was expanding rapidly and demanding far greater computing power than was even envisioned when I started at Myerscough in 1999.

Use of images in particular had gone from almost zero to unbelievable in that time - we had software to help, but policing access to pornography on the Network was a necessary and onerous task. The reluctance of teaching staff to discipline students, leaving it to us to "ban" them temporarily from the network was an annoying - and completely useless - imposition. I argued with management over this but they said it was all they could do. This is what would happen: Despite my protests that my staff were not policemen, judge and jury, I had one young student, not the most intelligent, sent to me so I could block his access to the network. He had been looking at porn whilst seated next to a girl student and some rather unsavoury noises had resulted from what he was doing...

Sternly I made him tell me why he had been sent to me. "I was looking at porn, sir!" he admitted readily with a huge grin. "Well, I've got to take away your access to computers for the next two weeks so you are going to fall behind on your work unless you have computer access at home!" I waited for his response. "Yes I know, Sir!" Still grinning... "So what will you do now?" I asked still trying to be stern, but knowing I just wasn't getting through to him that he shouldn't think of continuing to not only watch porn at college but do it openly whilst enjoying it to the full, in front of other students female or male. "Oh, I'm going to borrow my mate's password!" Total waste of time. Teachers and management, do not do this to your busy I.T. staff!

26 November 2002. At Hinckley, near Leicester for the Ferl conference on a stand for the recently announced new service JISC infoNet. Ferl if I remember rightly - someone will correct me if I'm wrong - stood for Further Education Resources for Learning and was a joint project involving the National Learning Network and Becta and possibly more (Someone help me out here!)

Also at this conference were a couple of respected colleagues: Keith Duckett of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) and John Bushnell of the Department for Education and Science (DFES). I always used to say it wasn't a proper conference unless you found out a couple of PUAs (Previously Unknown Acronyms)...

The weather threw up more floods again in 2002. It was time (if not already past time) to start taking this Global Warming thing seriously. The hand rail in the photo is that of a bridge over a stream...

As a writer and especially as a writer of (hopefully) good advice, it's always nice to get the occasional bit of feedback that proves that what you are doing is of some use or interest to someone. In one issue of NILTA's newsletter/magazine in 2002 there was a letter from a relieved member of staff from the University of Illinois in America who had struggled with a problem and found the answer in an article that I had published. I was quick to point out that the solution to his problem had been discovered by Jayne, not by me!

The new JISC infoNet was given the green light and one dark night on 27 November 2002 I found myself driving over to Newcastle dodging snowflakes, swooping owls, the ghosts of Roman Auxilliaries from Hadrian's Wall and large lorries on small roads over the Pennines for a formal interview to become a member of staff. As I gave in my one month's notice, Myerscough was hit with a notice that HM Inspectors would be visiting the day after I left... They negotiated with JISC to extend my notice for a further month and I would join the University of Northumbria at the end of January instead of the beginning.

As the new job would entail lots of travelling about the four countries of the UK, I didn't really want to uproot my family to the North East and then just leave them there whilst I went off all over the place so we negotiated to rent an office at Myerscough College with Internet access etc. whilst I would go over to Newcastle regularly for meetings and so on. Myerscough would have me available if needed. (I can't remember it happening - no matter how indisensable you may think you are and indeed may be, the cracks don't begin to show until you have been gone long enough for people not to associate them with you.) Besides, I was pleased when Jayne secured a promotion to the vacancy I left and I knew they were in good hands. Mick too had already acquired greater knowledge than I had had time to keep up with regarding new web-based languages to interrogate the college student and finance systems.

Despite the obvious advantages of sharing some information from HR systems - teaching timetables; deletion of access when staff left employment etc. - in both colleges and universities HR systems were never ever allowed to be accessed even by programmers who would only draw the necessary data out of the system without anyone else being able to see any other details. I suspect more because of dire warnings by software house training events than anything else, HR systems were installed within barbed wire, concrete gun emplacements and the excuse of, but with little understanding of, the Data Protection Act. It is not there to stop your organisation from working efficiently. The times I heard "Well people could see what the Principal was paid!" - yes... you mean the same as any CEO whose salary has to be published in publicly available Annual Reports?

Work Index

View to a Building, Myerscough College Jan-Apr 2002

Following on from the previous article in which I described the transplanting of a maple tree, the site it occupied is to be prepared and subsequently built on as a new laboratories and classroom block arises from the er... leaf mould...

11 January 2002. The same day that the tree is moved, work begins on the site for the new building. First the plot is levelled. Mud is relocated from the rise to the right of the photograph and some is used to fill the hole where the tree came from.

By 15 January 2002 the site is flattened ready for cables, utility and I.T. network to be re-routed. Two days later some heavier machinery comes along to spread gravel to strengthen and dry out the mud and on 21 January, seen above, work begins on sinking piles to support the building.

28 January 2002. Having spent so much time and effort in flattening the site, more diggers arrive to dig trenches through the whole shebang. The foundations will go in these. The piles have had concrete poured down them - a handy hint for any sufferers out there... On second thoughts let me make it clear that the last suggestion was a JOKE!

7 February 2002. Framework is being laid down into the trenches for the concrete foundations. Plastic liners are filled with steel cages that are made from rods on-site. Trying to concentrate on complicated programming and writing code is not made easier by the many flashes of light from welding equipment...

8 February 2002. Concrete is poured from overhead into the foundations, being pumped from the side of the site. A large hole is left for the lift shaft for the building. Smoothing off is done by hand.

22 February 2002. The building framework starts to go up. Once it starts the building takes shape very quickly.

March 2002. As the new building comes closer to the I.T. office we see girders and concrete hoppers flying close by the window!

10 March 2002. The metal base for the flooring goes in. At ground floor level internal walls are started.

21 March 2002. What on earth is that man... ah... he's just holding the hose that pours the concrete onto the floor! The other end is attached to a mixer at ground level and as a crane lifts the mid section of the long hose up, liquid concrete is pumped through.

9 April 2002. The walls are starting to be built on the inside and protective sheeting is put up - effectively blocking our view of the proceedings! 25 April 2002 just over a fortnight later, the sheeting comes off.

Work Index

Moving the Maple Tree, January 2002

This article covers the lifting and transplanting of a fully grown sugar maple tree at Myerscough College to make way for the building of a new laboratories and classroom block. The tree was listed as it was a rare specimen for England and it had to be secured for the future. The article will cover two days, 10-11 January 2002.

9 January, the tree has been prepared by excavating the root ball which has been bound by hessian and netting. to stop the roots from spreading too much and to keep a surrounding ball of soil to nourish the tree. It is now early morning on 10 January. We are expecting cranes to arrive. The crane to lift the tree will have to be so large that it has to be put together on-site

It's 8:00am. The main part of the crane arrives like this. Another crane comes with the parts for the jib and a pile of steel plates and weights.

The steel plates are placed on the ground. Legs extend from the sides of the crane so that it doesn't topple as the boom arm swings. The weights are lifted and placed on the bed of the main crane.

Meanwhile this hole is to be the recipient of the tree once moved. The College Arboriculture team have to level and finish preparations.

12:30pm - the crane is still being built. This process could take up to three hours. The packing around the rootball is checked to make certain it is secure.

The jib boom is put together on the ground. The tree (on the extreme right) has to be lifted and swung around the building behind to reach it's new spot. It has to be swung by the crane arm as there is no way the crane can lift it and then move itself and its load.

1:00pm . The pulley system for the main jib is placed between the counter weights - now at an immense weight. Not counting the weight of the motor and pulleys there are 15 weights at 7.5 tonnes each, making over 100 tonnes in all.

2:00pm. This is why all that weight is necessary, the weights counterbalance the weight of the arm of the crane plus its load when extended out to the side. The whole thing has to be able to swing freely and extend in any direction. There is another hour of setting up to go.

The Arboriculture Department have had to create a route for the chains to come vertically down the tree without being diverted by branches. Otherwise once they bear the weight of the tree the chains would snap them, leaving the way clear for the chains to jerk and risking the tree falling.

3:00pm - the chains and arm are attached to the crane. Meanwhile the job of passing slings underneath the tree commences. The rootball is so heavy that it must be lifted from below not by the trunk or branches. The slings are like very large straps attached at both ends to chains either side of the tree.

4:00pm and it is going dark again. Buildings within the distance the tree might fall are evacuated - my office is the dark window on the first floor.

4:30pm - it seems that the tree and soil around the rootball may be heavier than the straps can cope with. An air gun (a form of very powerful hairdryer!)) is used to blast away loose soil from the the rootball.

5:15pm - the tree has been moved but not lifted yet. Rocking motion allows the air gun to be used underneath. A short break is taken whilst staff go back into affected buildings to collect their belongings and leave the college at the end of the working day. It gives me chance to take two more shots from my office window!

9:00am 11 January. During the evening yesterday it became apparent that the tree would not lift because it had been planted over an old existing tree stump and the roots had entangled with the root system of the stump.

9:15am. The roots were cut away during the night and after waiting for daylight for a final visual inspection, the tree was lifted within ten minutes.

The crane then simply swings, moving the tree carefully past the Fitzherbert Brockholes building towards its new home.

This is a fairly slow process, no one wanted the tree to lose balance by moving too quickly!

9:20am - the tree swings over the hole prepared earlier. Lots of relayed arm-waving tells the crane operator how to respond - he is sitting in his cab quite a way away!

In the end manpower is required to push the rootball into the exact spot than at a signal, the crane driver lowers the tree gently into its new home.

Once the soil and gravel mix has been shovelled around the rootball so that the tree can be confirmed as safely planted, the Arboriculture team once again climb into its canopy to secure steel cables to hold it steady and to fit a complex hose system around it with tiny holes that for the next two or three weeks will create a mist of moisture, the tree's very own microclimate to ensure it does not dry out and die. Over twenty years later the tree remains healthy and growing.

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