Stop Time

Packing of bags has been taking place today, and we are just about ready for the off tomorrow morning, with our outrageously early start for the airport. Jake still needs to sort out his hand luggage, but he's out partying this evening with Izzy - a pool party in Longfield apparently, although I can't imagine much use will have been made of the pool given that it has been raining all evening.

One of the priority tasks pre holiday has been to finish my book! I have been reading the latest Matt Haig, 'How To Stop Time' (signed first edition from Goldsboro) and excellent it was too.

Very tempting to quote the last paragraph from the book, partly because it includes the title, mostly because it is quote-worthy, but seems a bit odd to quote the very end, so here is another paragraph from a little earlier that struck me:

"People you love never die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, then can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters. If you stop mourning them, and start listening to them, they still have the power to change your life. They can, in short, be salvation."

Marty

Sad news from Disney today. Marty's died.

Marty was one of the originals. He was there at the opening of Disneyland back in 1955, and had been at the opening of every Disney theme part since then. Marty was at Imagineering before Imagineering even existed. Marty wrote the words for Walt to say and to put his name to. He was a Disney Legend through and through.

He even had a window (a City Hall) on Main Street at Disneyland. I will be tracking it down and taking a picture next week.

See here for the news announcement from the front page of the company's website today.

McCain

I was thinking about mentioning Senator McCain the other day, and now I just have to.

Remember John McCain. He had a couple of goes at being President. First time around was for the 2000 election, but he lost out to George W Bush for the Republican party nomination. We all know how that went for the next eight years! Still, he stuck around as a senator, and when Dubya had run out of time, he had another go, this time securing the Republican nomination, and ran up against Obama as the Democratic nominee. Again, we know what happened, McCain was defeated, and we had the historic moment of a first black President of the USA.

However, having been a senator since the 1980s, McCain wasn't about to disappear, and he went back to work, and at the age of 80 has recently secured a sixth term in US Senate as the representative for Arizona.

Sadly, Senator McCain has been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, has had surgery, and is facing an uncertain future. Upon his return to the Senate earlier this week he was afforded a standing ovation. He took the opportunity to berate his colleagues, to remind them that they'd been listening to the wrong people, to the commentators and the news outlets, the 'loudmouths'. He said that what they needed to do was to return to 'regular order', which meant listening to constituents' needs, being willing to work in a cross-party fashion, and finding a way to get things done.

Well, it didn't take long for Senator McCain to be true to his word. Irrespective of huge pressure from his own party, last night he made a stand, and decided to vote against the latest attempt by the Trump administration to repeal Obama-care. In doing so, hopefully he has safeguarded access to affordable healthcare for millions of people (something we think of as normal) for the foreseeable future, and hopefully the Trump circus will turn its attention to something else. Senator McCain needed to be there to make the difference - the vote was 51-49.

Well done Senator McCain.

New garden

Jake has been having a pretty busy time over the last couple of weeks. He's just arrived back home after 5 nights in Wales doing his practice D of E expedition (which I think has gone well, apart from a minor ankle injury, but it seems as though he struggled on through). Before that he had four days of travelling around the South East doing work experience, and discovering that the world of work turned out to be OK after all, mostly thanks to working with some interesting people. And, that was hot on the heels of spending the previous weekend at a music festival in London.

So, I expect he's fairly worn out. Good job it's the end of term in a couple of days.

Well, whilst he's been dashing around, we decided to get on with a bit of a garden project, and to that end have had a bit of a sort out of the tatty old patio in the back corner of the garden, and turned it into what we think is a rather nice spot to relax with a glass of something cool during the hot weather.

Hat puzzle

Good puzzle this:

There are three prisoners in jail, one of whom is blind. The jailer decides to offer the prisoners their freedom if they can solve a puzzle. From a selection of three white hats and two red hats the jailer places one hat on each prisoner's head such that no-one can see what colour hat they are wearing, but the sighted ones can see the colour of the other prisoners' hats.

Freedom is offered if any prisoner can say, with absolute certainty, what colour hat they are wearing.

The jailer asks the first sighted prisoner, and he says that he doesn't know.

He then asks the second sighted prisoner, and gets the same reply.

He finally asks the blind prisoner. At this point the blind prisoner says that he does know what colour hat he is wearing. He tells the jailer the answer, thereby securing freedom for all three.

The question is this:

What colour hat was he wearing, and how did he know?

Looking down to look up

As I mentioned, I spent the morning of Jake's and my day in Durham having a look around the city, and based on advice given, this included a trip to the cathedral which is, after all, quite hard to miss being built on the top of the hill. Having had a wander around inside, I sat down inside one of the smaller chapels for a quiet moment of contemplation, away from the tourists and their cameras, and at times it was just me and a lady working on a flower arrangement.

I could hear the muffled sound of a tour guide, showing a group around somewhere else in the building, and I couldn't help but think about how many visitors were just there for the sights or for the history, rather than for anything more. As I sat there, I looked down, and noticed markings in the stone floor. There was a row of rounded out square indentations in one area, and then in another two rows of metallic-looking parallel tracks. I wondered what they could be for, maybe from a different configuration of the building that could have been in place centuries ago. Surely in a place like this there would be some record to show what that was, and things wouldn't just get forgotten.

Just as I believe that someone knows the answers to the other difficult questions I was asking as I sat there quietly.

Open

Jake is in the midst of open days at the moment. Last Wednesday he had a trip to Oxford by himself, after we'd taken him for a little look around and a trip to Corpus during half term. I took the train up to London with him in the morning as I had a meeting there, and we headed in opposite directions on the tube. Then at the end of the day we met up at St Pancras and went for a meal together before coming home. He seemed pretty enthusiastic about it, and has subsequently made specific mention of Merton College as a favourite.

On Friday we boarded the train at Ebbsfleet again, this time for a rather longer journey, and went all the way to Durham together, staying overnight in a hotel just outside the city before going to open day events on Saturday. I left Jake to it for the morning whilst he went to the business school, the sports centre, and a couple of colleges, and then met up with him for a bite to eat (at a café recommended by Dave). I joined him for the afternoon tour which included a drop-in maths talk and a look at Crockford's old college.

My verdict was that the place and the university seemed very good, but obviously it doesn't really matter what I think. Jake seemed a little less enamoured, but I think that was mainly due to the fact that his number one preference lies elsewhere at the moment.

Unfortunately the Saturday visit clashed with Founder's Day, and so Jake had to show his face for a while in school yesterday, but they released him towards the end of the morning, so he was still able to go to Westfield for a bit of retail therapy with Izzy. As for the rest of this week, there is a trip to LSE coming up on Thursday, so it will be interesting to see how that goes (not to mention stopping by at a few Californian colleges in a month or so).