Birth Day Boy

Easter Sunday and a very auspicious day for the birth of our first grandson, as yet name undeclared, although Charles, Theo and Archie have been mentioned recently. Anyway baby brooks tumbled into the world at 3.13am 12th April weighing 8 lbs and 3 ozs but looks much older as he was a while overdue and came with a good head of hair!! So as our Lord is risen the baby was born which has to be a good start in life.
Our friends Marcus and Yue arrived back from Cuba minus the promised bottle of Cuban Rum!! Sadly for them their flight was routed back through Paris rather than direct to Heathrow or Gatwick and the French customs took the precious bottle of Legendario 7 year old rum, the bastards!!
While in Cuba they looked up our old friends Gasper and Hugo which was a great occasion for all as the Cuban colleagues have fond memories of other British visitors.

It was also the 50th birthday party of another friend on Sunday, so Melvin invited us to join him and his family for the celebrations which were blessed with lovely sunshine giving everybody the chance to enjoy the outdoor party. Thankfully his bottle of Jamaican Rum arrived ok!!

This Country??

The picture has nothing to do with the content of this blog but I thought it was an interesting one to grab your attention!!
After a busy week at a conference in York, Weymouth and Bournemouth and a visit to Tesco, I scanned the Radio Times for the week just to check what might be presented to us for Holy Week, in particular on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
At first my hopes were raised when I noticed that on the page that listed Good Fridays offerings, the margin of that page was decorated with images from the crucifixion in an artistic and tasteful manner. Imagine my disappointment and even disgust when I found NO religeous content at all on within the programmes listed!! I now discover that Great Britain, according to the BBC, is no longer a Christian Country!!!!!
There is NO reference to the Last Supper and no reference to the Crucifixion apart from Fridays tenuous link at 11.45am to "The Greatest Story Ever Told", rather an ancient american depiction of the story of Christ.
What harm would it do to have some religeous material on these days, tucked away on BBC3 or BBC4, by means of a televised service from Westminster Cathedral (not the Abbey, the lowest of low services) or any church that gives a worthwhile service with some reverence, good music, good silences and meaningful spirituality within it?
No wonder the country is falling apart at the seams and completely lost its way! We are more likely to hear or see references to a non-christian service on television nowadays. The government and the Beeb have gone far too far with its PC policies giving in to all other races, beliefs and non-British culture at the cost of sacrificing most of Britain's culture and history.

Moreover there is a very strange anomoly presented by HM Government! My wife, who is an immigrant, has to take a citizenship test shortly and has been avidly studying the course available on a CD/DVD. One of the questions was what perecentage of the UK is Christian? The answer apparently is 71.6%! Well, you could have fooled me on that one. If this is so why doesn't the BBC represent this within their programming over the most important religeous week of the Christian calendar? Just in passing, my wife has converted to Christianity during her 2 years in this country including baptism and confirmation.
Well I have had enough of this nonsense and would say that if immigrants don't like British culture, beliefs,laws, religeon and politics then they can go back to where they came from!
If any Brit tried to reject another countries culture,law and beliefs in say a Muslim country, then the Brit would end up in prison, or at best deported.
We are happy to tolerate freedom of belief and cultural differences but NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF OURS.
SO BBC, PLEASE GIVE US OUR CULTURE AND BELIEFS BACK?
Interestingly enough, just to prove how far the rot has set in, a colleague of mine recently told me of someone he knows who is getting married on Good Friday"! So just as they nail Christ to the Cross the unfortunate couple will be at their marriage, what about bad taste and bad luck? I am amazed beyond belief at their ingnorance or their lack of taste and equally amazed that none of their family or friends told them what they are doing. Also I am surprised that the Registrar agreed to marry them that day, or am I? After all the Registrar IS a CIVIL SERVANT and A) would not know any better and B) the Government would not know any better either. They are too busy working out how they can further enhance their earnings or expenses like charging pornography to the public purse!

Hold on please!!

This week I visited a remote farm and barn in Herefordshire and was confronted by an amusing sight. The picture illustrates the temporary support measures that the local builder provided to the wall of the barn..............

As you can see there is a canvas strap through the window / door reveal opening and then it is ties around the nearby TREE!!!!
I also went to Cardigan and spotted this sight outside the Town Hall.


Last night I attended a Faculty dinner where the guest speaker was Ann Widdicombe, who , to my surpise, was quite entertaining. The star of the evening though was Terry Langdon of Gleeds, the incoming President, who had me in stitches. He described the professional members of the Building Team as follows:
The Architects as knowing a little about quite a lot but as they progress through their careers end up knowing very little about nearly everything; the Structural Engineers as knowing a great deal about very little and who end up knowing everything about nothing; the Quantity Surveyors he described as those, who after the battle, go around bayonetting the wounded; and finally the Lawyers who follow them by skinning the dead!
My apologies for anyy errors in my memory of these descriptions. But I firmly believe that the Faculty will have a good year under Terry's guidance.
Have a good weekend.

Praze-an-Beeble

The title of this blog, Praze-an-Beeble, is the name of a the village which I drove through to get to Godolphin House, a superb grade 1 listed granite built building dating from Tudor and Stuart times where once lived the Godolphin family until the 18th century. It is now owned by the National Trust but currently closed for some urgently needed restoration work. The collonade has some structural problems which the architects, conservation specialists "Architecton", aked me to look at.
Anyway, back to Praze-an-Beeble, which I hazarded a guess at the origin of this peculiar sounding appellation. I enquired of the National Trust buildings man, Malcolm who is a local person and extremely amiable, and confirmed my guess. The inhabitants of the eponomous village were strong Methodists and the adjoining villages referred to them as "all praise and bible people" hence the Cornish vernacular corruption into praze-an-beeble!


The other property which I visited was a fairly remote farm over the moor from the famous Daphne Du Maurier Jamaica Inn. It was a medieval hall house which was greatly changed over the centuries but retains its original "crossing" twixt animal house and human house. There are a number of ancient original features around the building too including granite gate posts, animal water troughs and steps.



The property can only be accessed by a track, which crosses a stream, and is totally unsuitable for any vehicle apart from a 4WD, so on this occasion I excuse the owners for possessing one!!! It is truly a beautiful collection of buildings encompassing a lot of history and set in a wonderful location. Once again I am lucky to see and work on such places.

Spring must be here! (Cornwall and Somerset)

In my role as a consultant in things "historical for the repair of structurally" I get to see some interesting buildings, places and countryside, and as such I am extremely lucky. This week is proving no exception.
A visit to a mediaeval barn in Somerset provided an opportunity to see some newly born lambs, and their mums, in addition to a magnificent barn which needs some serious work doing to it.





The barn is being restored and thankfully will remain as a barn as the owner of the farm recognises the important status of the building. The very caring consultant overseeing the structural aspects is my dear friend Patrick Stow, who also acts for Somerset County Council in things of historical importance.

Back in the fog

Our return flight from Beijing was delayed by one hour at departure due to "technical problems" on the incoming flight, always a bit worrying, and then we had a really smooth good flight as compensation. However when we neared Heathrow there was the inevitable fog and we were "stacked" in loops around the airport to allow waiting flights to get landed and others to take off. The food was as bad as ever and I fail to see why BA cannot serve up a half decent meal like Virgin does!
As we had landed so late we missed our connection and had to re-book and pay an extra fiver for the privelidge! We eventually arrived home after 10pm instead of the anticipated 7pm and dropped into bed without eating and just pleased to be at home again.
We might need to go back to Nanjing in March or April so should be a bit warmer then.

A Very Cold trip in Beijing

Our flight from Heathrow was delayed by nearly 2 hours due to the fog and allowing the waiting incoming flights to come in before our take off. 10 hours later we arrived at Beijing


We arrived in Beijing to a warm reception from our hosts who met us at the airport and whisked us off to our hotel but the weather was less than warm being a chilly minus 2. The next few days were spent in meetings with the Police and Army of the PRC and two outings.
We had a convivial time and some interesting meals, especially those in the country. We were accompanied by a colleague of mine this time who had not been to China before and it was all a bit of a shock to him!! I must say to his credit that he was brave and tried a number of unusual food items despite some initial misgivings. He even quickly learnt the use of chopsticks by necissity due to the lack of western "eating irons" in the country.



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The Army camp was located a few hours North of Beijing, beyond the Great Wall, and getting near to Inner Mongolia. Hence the coldness was nearing that of Siberia not too many miles Northwest of us!!
The writer and his companion took shelter from the bitter wind in an army bunker!

Overall the trip was very successful despite some shortcomings on the client side and we now expect to return again in the summer.

Have you seen any foxes...? Happy New Year

A Very Happy New Year to all friends & family and anyone who reads this blog.
We celebrated the coming of 2009 over a few days with family and friends and neighbours in various ways,all of which were most convivial and enjoyable. We will not bore you with the details of these intimate times spent by relating names, places and details apart from an anonymous event which was amusing to all who were there.
The aspects of local wildlife came into the conversation and a long term friend and partner, who live in woodlands, enquired of my wife if she sees any foxes in China?
She thoughtt for a moment and then said "Yes, in zoos", then added helpfully "and in restaurants". Our friends at first looked puzzled but then their expressions turned into one of slight shock and horror as it dawned on them that the restaurant inclusion meant that fox was on the menu!! My wife then laughed to cover her embarassment and apologised to them, bless her. Thankfully it was all taken well and the evening continued in a harmonious state.