And November of course is also the start of firework season for us with Guy Fawkes night and then new years eve and finally Australia Day. So I'll only include two shots of the Wetherby Fireworks this year, we spent the night at David and Carolyn's but I had man flu and retired before the private firework show..... Sorry David.
The month also required us to eat out a bit.
Scones and coffee at Betty's
The markets are the same as last year but that doesn't make them any less fun. We will go back in December so may take some more pics then.
I took Carolyn to the British Library at Boston Spa. They are celebrating 50 years of being the national scientific library for Great Britain. Every journal, thesis, reference book text or magazine and newspaper ever published has a copy stored in the British Library. Boston Spa is about to take in every newspaper ever published. I won't drown you in stats but that's alotta paper. Thousands of kilometres now all being transferred to robot stored low oxygen racks in this building and another one for newspapers.
The automated storage robot fed retrieval clerks ask for a book and it comes to them in a box full of unrelated books but sorted by frequency of request. The books are either sent to the requester or scanned or digitised and emailed around the world to research clients. The general public can use the facility but can't take books away only See them for reference. The Boston Spa site sits on 60 acres of land in a 400 acre industrial park just up the road from Wetherby.
The transfer of all books to the robot store will take some time and the older reference material is still stored in manual access buildings each of 6 stories. Each floor has picking people and scanning people and admin people and each floor supplies about 1000 requests a day. That's picked, recorded scanned or sent.
So you need some fancy scanners. these are the overhead dual page scanners with image rectification and page justification but as all the operators need to do is turn pages they are fat slugs of people... We began to think you had to be fat to work there but that was not the case. There are a lot of slow fat public servants there though. We decided we didn't want to work there but if you want to find out everything about the library go to www.bl.uk/ or keep reading for more interesting stuff we did in November 2011.
Kegworth Cottage restaurant. We have decided that rather than stop at motorway services we will take a slip road off to a local town and use their local shops. Cheaper and better food but you have to look. This was a great find and we had a lunch that made us late for London but who cared, it was great.
Heaps of fish and veg, and veg, and veg and veg.... and the dessert was fantastic chocolate concoction, nice wine and dirt cheap. http://www.cottage-restaurant.co.uk/
Next day was spent playing cards and drinking wine with a night out at a local pub near their flat. I was less than impressed with the food but I may be spoiled by Yorkshire standards.... Still miss my majic Sydney food too. Anyway we had a fantastic time and stayed the night. We headed off the next day after a slap up french toast and fresh fruit breakfast cooked by Cora. A short but sweet visit and most pleasant.
I took Carolyn to the British Library at Boston Spa. They are celebrating 50 years of being the national scientific library for Great Britain. Every journal, thesis, reference book text or magazine and newspaper ever published has a copy stored in the British Library. Boston Spa is about to take in every newspaper ever published. I won't drown you in stats but that's alotta paper. Thousands of kilometres now all being transferred to robot stored low oxygen racks in this building and another one for newspapers.
So you need some fancy scanners. these are the overhead dual page scanners with image rectification and page justification but as all the operators need to do is turn pages they are fat slugs of people... We began to think you had to be fat to work there but that was not the case. There are a lot of slow fat public servants there though. We decided we didn't want to work there but if you want to find out everything about the library go to www.bl.uk/ or keep reading for more interesting stuff we did in November 2011. We headed off to London to see Cora and Trish and to learn how to play cribbage, and to teach them how to play canasta. we did all these things and managed to slot in some eating and drinking time. The first bit of eating fro us was at
Anyway in no time at all we were in Hampstead and had picked up Cora and Tricia in a London hackney cab on a quick trip to the Bull and Bush pub for a slap up meal and a great catch up chat.
Next stop , Cheltnam, to catch up with Peter and Ann who have just bought a new house having sold Richmond and Winchcombe this year.
We enjoyed a great evening around the kitchen table and I managed to resolve a couple of problems they had with their lights, sound system and other niggles that old homes bring. Had a fantastic night catching up and solving the worlds problems Before a much needed sleep and super breakfast before heading back to Leeds.
The Leeds booking was for the Savage social night. The writers and sketchers of who there are about 30 now were holding a night out and I was keen to take a place at the table.
As usual the company was great and the food fantastic, Gail drove home so I could have a pint or two and as you can see a happy time was had. I think it closed off nicely the 600 mile driving holiday over the 4 days Gail had rota'ed off work and we felt like we had rewarded ourselves and fully relaxed in that time.
But November still had a couple of things left in store. There was a night at the Muse with Graeme, Kate and Bently the Great Dane and, as the photos above indicate, a Lions black tie night for the ladies....In the posh room at the Wetherby Golf Club with posh waiters, champagne and stuff. All the blokes made the effort with tux's and bow ties but Gail was doubly disappointed . The singer was out of tune or off key and while Gail made an effort with the glad rags, bling and face paint, some of the wives sort of let the team down making Gail think she need not try so hard next time..... I have to tell her there is another one in March..... This time in a posher place so maybe the girls will all spark out. Anyway the food was great, the wine quite nice and we were made most welcome and I am sure, once I get some younger friends to join the Wetherby Lions we will have a much better time of it. I am on the entertainments committee this year and they are a fun bunch of blokes so I'm sure stories will result.
Lots of other things happened to us in November but these are the highlights. December sees us off to Snowdonia in Wales and then to Jersey in January so the adventures continue.
