Time for a new banner with a touch more spring about it, even though we had hail yesterday and it isn’t exactly warm out there. Because of the way my templates work, it’s back-dated across all the May entries.

16 May 2012 · · Site News

The AFOL Truth

I was never the Lego kid in my family; that was my brother. Over the years, my handful of Lego sets were subsumed into his, leaving me with only one. When it came to toys, my focus was on Matchbox cars and action figures, but I knew the sight and sound of Lego all too well. G. kept it in a divided wooden caddy our Dad had made him, and throughout the summer holidays it would be spread out in the lounge-room somewhere, waiting for someone in bare feet to tread on it.

So there’s some irony in being father to a Lego kid of the 2010s. I’m reliving part of my childhood vicariously through him, but it’s a part that was vicarious in the first place.

Numbers Games

The frying pan as canvas: Saipancakes.

Robert Downey Jr teaches you maths.

Michael Rosen goes on a bear hunt: The billions we’re not allowed to talk about.

MP Michael Meacher on the Sunday Times Rich List.

13 May 2012 · · Weblog

Well, that little unplanned gap between posts sure put to rest the post-every-day challenge. I had a few too many things on my plate after our time away, including gathering photos for the Lego Show postmortem. I’d better write that up, I guess.

12 May 2012 · · Site News

Never Let Me Go

The Lego Show

In the end, we spent all three days at the Lego Show. I’m just about all Lego’d out, but I’ll try to post a proper account of it tomorrow.

7 May 2012 · x1 · Journal

Manchester Sans Mad

For some reason or other, I’d never been to Manchester before this weekend. Never been to Liverpool, either. I’d been to Chester (man) and Blackpool, but not their big brothers.

Visiting a place for the first time with a five-year-old, and specifically for that five-year-old, is an odd experience. I haven’t done any of the general wandering around to get my bearings that I otherwise would have, so haven’t seen many of the supposedly nice bits yet. Instead, after getting off the train at Manchester Piccadilly, which is surrounded by a jumble of nondescript buildings, we caught a cab to our hotel and then two buses out to the Trafford Centre, the neo-Victorian shopping mall where the Lego Show has been held. Along the way we passed Daniel Libeskind’s striking Imperial War Museum North and the new BBC buildings, but haven’t visited either. On our bus trips up and down Oxford and Wilmslow Roads we’ve been travelling along the “Curry Mile” of Rusholme, which has left Mint Royale running through my head and my tastebuds tingling, but we haven’t eaten there—we ate at Pizza Express last night and the hotel restaurant tonight so that we could avoid scary spices and stick to the bedtime routine. Manchester’s famous nightlife is just up the road, but for this trip it might as well be on the Moon.

But never mind: the Lego, and especially W.’s reaction to the Lego, has been worth it. Two full days of it seem to have satisfied him, so we might get to see something else before we catch the train back tomorrow afternoon. I don’t think it’ll be the War Museum—or, as one of his nursery friends told him it was called, the National Worm Museum (in memory of all those worms who have given their lives for us...). Maybe it’ll be some of the fancier Victorian buildings of the West End. I hope they’re fancier, anyway; so far, Manchester reminds me of the dingier parts of Glasgow or London. But I’m sure my limited exposure to its non-Lego charms isn’t doing it justice.

6 May 2012 · · Journal

The Lego Show

W. and I have spent the afternoon at the Lego Show in Manchester, and will be back there tomorrow. It’s five-year-old heaven. A fuller report will follow in due course—it’s been a long day of trains, buses and bricks.

5 May 2012 · · Journal

Half a world away and more than half a lifetime ago...

My Dad once asked me to make a sign for the gate next to his workshop, one of those wide metal gates that spans a car-width, to say something like “Please Close the Gate” or “Close the Gate Behind You” or “Please Keep Closed” so that the sheep wouldn’t get out. He left the exact wording up to my seventeen-year-old discretion.

Which is how he ended up with a sign that read DO NOT OPEN.

4 May 2012 · · Memory

Today I was in Durham for a few hours as the external examiner for a doctoral viva, which went happily for all involved. Afterwards I went for a wander along the River Wear, over the Elvet Bridge, and up the hill to the castle and cathedral, between which are several old university buildings and a grassy square. I’d been to Durham a couple of times before, in 1985 and 2003, and even went on a student-guided tour of the castle the last time, but it was still good to see it again, even if briefly. A shame it was a bit grey there today. GREY. I DIDN’T SAY GRIM. (Actually, I inadvertently did, when I was chatting with the receptionist on my arrival. Oh dear.)

Click on the photo above for a bit of a gallery.

3 May 2012 · · Travel

Teeny tiny things (in Russki, via Meefski). Click the links that say “как это делается” to see how each one was made, and marvel at their ingenuity.

2 May 2012 · · Weblog

Punning Hunt

I was at a pub quiz last night, where we tossed around team names inspired by Jeremy Hunt’s ministerial woes since he was caught sucking up to the aging prince of the tabloids. Mine carried the evening:

Hunt for Red Tops Over.

I thank you.

1 May 2012 · x1 · Journal

April 2012