Turkish food

We also went for some food afterwards, and the first restaurant we found was a Turkish place. We may have been unfair to it by eating vegetarian, and probably grilled lamb is their best thing, but they did advertise vegetarian menus . . . .

Thinking about it now, what it reminded me of, was if you go into Sainsburys and buy a bunch of things in pots. They gave us hummus, couscous, aubergine salad, yogurt with mint, broad beans in a creamy dressing, all with bread. . . . it was just exactly like taking one of everything from the cold salad display in Sainsburys.
I had "shredded wheat" for pudding. And indeed, that is exactly what it was like. Shredded wheat with honey and burnt butter on it. Quite nice.

Terracotta warriors

Karen and I went to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibition last night.

It's an amazing spectacle, although only a small sample of a few figures is physically present at the British Museum. The scale of it can only be suggested by the maps and photographs. There are thousands of figures -- over 8000 actually -- a whole underground city, with not just warriors, but entertainers, animals, and (terracotta) administrators in an office. It dates from around 210 BC. And most of it is still unexcavated. One account says only 1% of the site has been dug up -- they are trying not to damage the rest while science develops non-invasive ways of looking inside. That's impressive self-restraint by the Chinese.

Another fascinating thing that the exhibition claimed was that they had, at that time, the technology of interchangeable parts. For example, they made crossbows, and it was not that each one was uniquely crafted to work: the trigger mechanism from one crossbow would work in another crossbow. It wasn't hand-adjusted to fit its own particular bow.
I'm under the impression that this technology also arose in the West for military applications (guns) and pretty recently too. It was only in the 1700s that bolts could be uniformly made, so that any nut would fit any bolt reliably, and only in world war 2 that threads were really standardised. So if they were making interchangeable triggers in 200 BC that's quite something.

The terracotta figures were mass produced on a production line, but then individually hand finished so that each one looks like a different person with a different face, physique, pose, and so on.

I'm not sure whether the Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi) would have believed in an afterlife, or what religion they had. Buddhism didn't reach China until about 300 years after this, and didn't become big in China for another 300 years after that. Confucianism has many different interpretations, but is generally less of a religion and more a set of moral and political precepts and rituals to be followed. In any case, apparently the emperor was against it: he is said to have banned it, burned the books and buried many Confucian scholars alive. Different Wikipedia articles suggest different reasons for this. One says it was "after being deceived by two alchemists while seeking prolonged life". And then "the quick fall of the Qin Dynasty was attributed to this proscription. Confucianism was revived in the Han Dynasty that followed, and became the official ideology of the Chinese imperial state".

Another article makes it more of a political reason, which I find more convincing: "in 223 BC when the Qin state conquered all of China, Li Ssu, Prime Minister of the Qin Dynasty convinced the emperor to abandon the Confucians' recommendation of awarding fiefs akin to the Zhou Dynasty [...]. When the Confucian advisers pressed their point, Li Ssu had many Confucian scholars killed and their books burned - considered a huge blow to the philosophy and Chinese scholarship."

Confucius himself was a couple of hundred years earlier. I though I'd remembered reading about the Duke of Qin (who became the emperor) in the Analects, but it must have been a different other Duke.

So I do wonder whether the mausoleum was really part of a religious system, and the emperor really believed in an afterlife . . . or whether it was just an ostentatious display of power and wealth.

Another RW social

One of the RW forum people in Bristol bravely invited us to "warm" his new flat.

It was an excellent party, with just the right mix of seeing people I know, and meeting new people. The first face-to-face meeting with people I've seen online is always fascinating. Usually they are about how they seemed online, but there's something extra (obviously) in meeting them in real life. I think that's what makes the RW forum so successful.

Good news from some people (TT doesn't have MS); good conversation; and I learned some new Korean recipes (and something about Chinese food). There were a lot of pirates there (i.e. the triathlon types) and lots of talk about bikes and pedals and stuff.

The host had a suspiciously large collection of spirits and liqueurs (like about 30 full size bottles) and was making concoctions of fruit juice and/or cream with about six shots in them -- absolutely lethal. Kids eh? I stuck to the Stella.

The star of the show was undoubtedly Marvin the cat - a cat of a colour I've never seen before, and brave enough not to hide from all the strange new people. Here he is getting a drink from the bathroom tap.


His colour is much nicer than it looks in the photo. It's all silver, no brown in it.

Moving house

I realise I haven't kept everyone equally up to date about my progress on moving house.

I think I've said to everyone, I need to move. I don't need four bedrooms and I really don't want a garden! The two-hour commute to London is wiping me out, and now that I don't need to stay within the catchment area of the children's schools, there's no need to stay put. And, to speak frankly, continuing to live here makes things more painful. Obviously the stress of selling and moving is not what I need at this time either, but I think on balance it has to be done.

An estate agent came around today to value the house. This gives me an idea what amount I might be able to afford, so I can now start looking at possible areas. This house isn't going on the market just yet. The plan is
(a) Start looking at possible areas (not possible houses). Get a feel for the character and prices of different areas with reasonable transport to work.
(b) In parallel with that, empty this house as far as possible, either getting rid of stuff or putting it into storage, to make the place feel bigger. And a few simple redecorations.
(c) When those are done, put the house on the market.
(d) Once I have offers, start finding an actual property to move to. It needs to be resaleable, and have rooms for Jamie and myself. And minimum garden. Beyond that I'm not fussy.
(e) Once contracts are exchanged on this house, put in an offer on the place I want.

As far as emptying the house goes, I WILL NEED HELP from everyone who has an interest in stuff here, to designate what they need to keep and what they don't. This is no small task. You have to come and sort through your things. I could be looking at moving in the summer.

Eastleigh 10k

Well, I am pleased with my Eastleigh result, a "chip time" of 49:57 for the 10k.

That's my best result since 2001. In 2001, I was running with the Alresford running club twice a week, which was always a hard run as I was the slowest person there; plus two more easy runs a week on my own. A total of four runs a week, two hard, two easy.

In the spring of 2001, I ran three sub-50 10ks (all slightly faster than yesterday's).

I haven't been as fast as that since. Part of the lesson may be that with the much larger Winchester running club, it's too easy for me to run comfortably with the slow group and not push myself.

Provisional Calendar

Some more dates from my diary:

Good Friday 21st March: singing at Cathedral from 4:45pm onwards

Sat 22nd: Party in Bristol, stopping over there, back Sunday lunchtime.

Mon 24th: visiting Souldern, leave Winchester about 10:30

Tues 25th: seeing the Terracotta Warriors with Karen, evening

Fri 28th: RW social at Doggetts in the evening

Sat 29th: Concert (The Jamm) with Karen

Sun 30th: Annie visiting us in Winchester?

Sun 6th April: Totton 10k in the morning (part of Hampshire road race league)

Mon 7th April: Anniversary of Mary's death

Sun 13th April: London Marathon, if Karen is running then I will be attending all day to socialise but not running myself

Weds 16th April: Jamie's birthday

Skiing

The skiing holiday was great!

It was a long time since I'd skied, apart from a one-day intensive refresher course at the snowdome in Milton Keynes. So I was in a "one notch up from beginner" class, which was good --- lots of scope for rapid progress.

But there's so much to learn around the skiing . . . how to use a chairlift . . . how to use the boots (and walk in them) . . . the clothing . . . . I've never been so velcroed. When you go in a shop or cafe, do you just leave your skis outside? How do you carry them?

I'd never really done the "package holiday" thing before, with reps in uniformed jackets and clipboards making jolly announcements through microphones and all that. I'd only seen it on sitcoms on tv, so I assumed it didn't really exist. It does.

And the chalet experience. Normally I'm a die-hard self-catering person, as I want to be able to make a cup of tea or a sandwich when I want one, not eat in a dining room all the time. However the chalet thing appeared to be the best of both worlds. Basically a house which we shared with 6 other people (a friendly bunch), with a kitchen where I could make things and keep milk and beer in the fridge and so on . . . but with a slave who lived in the cellar (with some nocturnal friends apparently) who cooked us three meals a day. He was a good cook, too.

View from our sitting room window:


So we had a sitting room, a kitchen, and so on, which is just what I like, not a hotel bedroom.

I can't really describe the skiing itself, if you haven't done it. It's a combination of scary and fun. Like many things, it's all about breathing and relaxing into it. The pattern of the day for me was a morning session and an afternoon session, where each one generally consisted of getting lifts up the mountain, skiing down to somewhere else (e.g. next village along), then lifts up again, and back to home. Finishing by about 4 or 4:30, because then the sun goes behind the mountains, and although it's not dark, it's really difficult skiing without direct sunlight because there are no sharp shadows and the shape of the snow becomes impossible to discern. You end up skiing into bumps or down dips that you didn't see coming because it's all just flat and white.

Map of the ski area

We were at the South end of Val Claret (which sounds like a sitcom woman's name) approximately where there's a bus stop shown at the bottom of a track labelled "merles".
So typically we might ride up "Tichot" and "Grattalu", ski down into Le Lac, then up "Paquis" and back down "piste H" to where we started. Or up "Fresse" and down into La Daille.

It did occur to me, as the week progressed, that the names of all these ski lifts sounded a bit like strange sexual perversions . . . "Fresse", "Grattalu", the "Grand Huit" (big eight?), "Bollin", "Tommeuses", "Marmottes" . . . . just me then? Never mind.

View from the "Fresse" chairlift:




You can sort of see the top in the distance.

Karen at the top:


All in all, a very good week. Had some nice meals, did some crosswords, good company...