A weekend away

Hello all.

I spent Thursday and Friday at a conference in Leicester, which is north-ish of London. The conference was a museum one, and was mostly very interesting. I went with Alison from work. Her partner Phil also came up for the weekend, and drove us up on Wednesday evening.

The drive up took about 2 hours, and we arrived about well after 9pm. I felt bad about arriving so late, as the receptionist was due to go home and couldn't until we got there. We went to find some dinner after checking in. I felt very frustrated as I was tired and hungry, and Alison kept us wandering about the city looking for something suitable. At 10pm it's just food. I didn't really care what it was!! GRRRR!!!

Thursday was spent at the conference. All went very well, some interesting, and some boring papers. Lunch was included and was quite tasty. :-)

Thursday evening I caught up with Sanyu. She was another temp at the museum last summer, who goes to uni in Leicester. She found me in the city centre and we went to a shopping centre for a wander about. San introduced me to a mega cheap cosmetics store in which I bought some yummy shower gel and some gorgeous smelling spearmint soap. From there we wandered to a pub called the polar bear, a student hang out, famous for the huge meals they serve. And being a student pub, the prices were good too. We met her flatmate Natalie there. We each had a burger, which was too big to finish, but very yummy. From there we went back to San and Nat's student digs. It was better than I expected it to be really. Hung out there for a while looking at the internet and listening to music. Then we went out to another pub, this time a more yuppy one, but still good. I had a couple of drinks, did not pay for them, which is always good!! :-) At the pub there were four of us, as we gained an extra body by the name of Natasha, another friend of San's. I had a really fun night, they girls were all very amusing, and we got along very well. I was even in bed by 1am!!

Friday I got up early anough to get myself to the first session of the conference. There was only one paper I really wanted to hear. It ended up being a little boring, but one of the other ones I saw was very interesting and got me thinking. I was thinking about the exhibition I had proposed for my museum. And I was wondering how easy it would be to make it fully accessible to people with disabilities? The museum is fully physically accessible, and there are certain things we Visitor Assistants can use in touch tours, but there are always more things we could do really. Interesting idea, that I will investigate. It would probably be expensive, but an interesting exercise for the museum to undertake.

Friday afternoon I went shopping with Alison. I had found a great wool at a shop I visited on my last day off, but that shop did not have enough. I had previously rung a wool shop in Leicester to see if they had it and they put it aside for me. I am really getting into the knitting,and I am enjoying seeing things grow on my needles. I am currently making a giant cushion cover, with the wool I picked up. The wool is like a velour, and it is quite chunky. It is so far making a very soft cushion cover. :-)

Friday evening I veged out in front of the tv. We do not have a tv in the house we are living in at the moment, so having a tv is quite a strange thing. I miss not having a tv in the sense that I can't talk about what was on it when people ask me, but there is such crap on, it really made me realise why I am happy not to have one!! I met Scott at the train station very late, as he had been held up at work. We grabbed a snack as neither of us had eaten, then wandered back to the hotel.

Saturday morning was a sleep in, which was bliss. We wandered to a lovely tea house for a smashing breakfast of eggs florentine (for me) and copius amounts of tea. We wandered to the NewWalk Museum, which had an exhibition on board games from around the world. We spent a couple of hours there, playing games. I learnt a lot too, like Chess and Ludo were Indian games. Monopoly was invented by a Quaker woman to warn people of the dangers of landlords, and was copied and sold to Parker games by the guy who drew the board, so she got nothing for it. It was a very well done exhibition, with lots of interactives to play with, as well as historical museum objects to look at.

Saturday evening after a yummy dinner, we watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding on tv. Very good movie I thought. Sunday (today) we had breakfast in a cafe and caught the train home. We were going to be driven back with Alison and Phil but they were off seeing something else and we wanted to go back. We didn't really want to be at their mercy. The train ride was very pleasant. I did a lot of knitting.

I am coming to the conclusion that I do not like Phil - Alison's partner. Not only is he twice her age (which shouldn't make a difference) he seems to have quite an influence over her. He also has a tendency to interupt me (and I am sure others as well) when I am talking and just butt in with something really trivial. That really annoys me. And not just once either. It's damn rude really.

And that's all I have to say about that!