If you live in a pre-1940s house, consider having your walls insulated, either externally or internally.
If you live in or near Nottingham, consider getting Nottingham Energy Partnership to help.
I understand this film will be shown at Grand Designs Live in the next few days.
My commute to work initially took me up the M1 from J26, but the A610 is so congested and slow every morning adjusted my route to go through Hucknall and Annesley and join the motorway at J27.
There is a superb stretch of the A611 when the road splits into separate carriageways and it takes you through fields and woodlands, and I look forward to it every morning. It was utterly beautiful in the snow, and at the moment, I am just getting used to seeing the leafless, skeletal trees breaking through the dawn. It’s a much needed little lift to the spirits every time I drive through.
But at the far side of one of the fields was a large, double bay house which looked rather special. As the snow fell and I looked out for it every morning, I came to realise it was deserted. There was never a light in the windows, the snow didn’t move, no sign or heating. I started little fantasies about moving in and doing it up, having my own Grand Design.
As you turn the corner, the road travels quite close to the building, and there are clearly public info boards next to it, as well as some completely derelict buildings with the roof falling in. Further along, still from the road, you can see what I assumed to be a walled garden.
A few weeks of thoughts like this and I took to Google Maps to find out what exactly the place was, and it turns out that it is Annesley Hall. The modest two bays you can see from the A611 are in fact the building end-on and it is huge – six bays in the other direction – along with a mass of ancillary buildings like stables, lodges and a ruined 11th century church.
Given that there are info boards, and small places to park, I decided to visit last weekend, when the weather warmed up a little and the sun came out.
It’s all rather lovely. Huge stables, massive house, large parts of it derelict with the roof caved in.
It needs millions of pounds worth of restoration, and as a listed building that wouldn’t be straightforward.
It was initially down on my “if I won the lottery” list, but I think now my putative lottery win would be better spent elsewhere. My next thoughts were Landmark Trust, of Holiday Property Bond but its location is now hugely overlooked from various busy main roads, and it is right next door to a huge business park. It doesn’t have the seclusion needed for a luxury holiday location.
It’s also one of the most haunted buildings in England. Tough sell as a health spa.
Annesley Hall – Wikipedia / Ashfield District Council planning pages / Most Haunted Youtube
This has been going on for weeks now.
The Times Educational Supplement has fantastic resources for teachers – including the best job search system out there that got me all of my interviews and my NQT post.
It has loads of articles and blogs that are useful, and once you log in you can download other resources that teachers have uploaded, that can really help make your lesson planning quicker.
I get sent multiple links to the TES every day – I subscribe to their 50% helpful “New Teacher” mailing list (the other half is mostly about primary and mostly not applicable). I follow TESmfl on twitter, and they tweet about the crème de la crème of MFL resources – both individual activities and wider professional development suggestions.
And then I want to log in and search. Does anyone else’s scheme of work teach German prepositions in a town context? Apparently not, they’re all doing it in a bedroom context (the teddybear is ON the bed, the table is NEXT TO the door etc).
But at the moment I can’t get in! It’s extremely frustrating! Neither my Mac or my PC on my desk can log in. I can use my school laptop at school to do it, but not at home. Every time I get the Chrome error “This web page has a redirect loop” and the helpful suggestion to clear my cookies for this page.
I have googled until I am blue in the face, but cannot work out how to make Chrome clear the cookies for a single page. I’ve found a nice helpful setting to clear ALL the cookies, but that seems a little bit drastic.
I have tried firing up Indernet Exploder to do the work I need to, but that is now completely ghastly. It takes over half an hour to load, is festooned with weird toolbars that must have come in with games, and fires up so many different error and warning messages you start to wonder if you’re really wise to continue.
Aarrgh. Grrr. Any thoughts?
Promised over Christmas holidays to make short recording of short story for online SF magazine StarShipSofa.
Reckoned without illness and throat pain.
Thought, sod it, let’s tape it anyway and see if they accept, can always redo it next week if necessary.
Here’s an outtake to share just how awesomely gravelly it all is, even if it does now actually hurt quite a lot to speak.
(It’s odd and disproportionate that two blog posts in a row should be about stuff I’ve been offered for free as a result of blogging but hey ho!)
During our PGCE it was often said that we knew which children would prosper most at school: it was those that read for pleasure. And certainly reading for pleasure was a strong feature of my own childhood and definitely something I do whenever my leisure time outweighs my commitments. Definitely, a holiday wouldn’t be a holiday without a small mountain of trashy detective fiction.
But again during our PGCE there was a point when we were discussing reading and a class of us were asked to raise our hands if we a) liked reading for pleasure and b) were managing to do any during the course. We all liked reading; next to no-one was still doing any when the chips were down.
It’s true for me still. I had planned to ensure I read a book during half term if I did nothing else, but just didn’t get around to it. Any leisure reading I do do is attempting to make a teeny dent in feedreader: blog posts. Lolcats. And that’s about it.
Perhaps as the work/life balance is slowly restored towards life as and when I end up being a more experienced teacher, I’ll manage to get into a more sensible routine. Maybe one that means I’m in bed by 9pm and I read for an hour. At the minute that barely seems possible.
This week, the Folio Society sent me a book, a super wonderful edition of Fahrenheit 451. It has a real feeling of luxury – the book has its own box; the paper feels sturdy and good quality. There are a series of illustrations as well. When I finally find time for reading for pleasure the quality will enhance the pleasure no end.
I did manage to pop along to church on Monday night for a brief look see of the bells out of the tower before they were taken to the foundry for attention.
There were a few other ringers there including our youngest recruit who had been there since (primary) school kicking out time and had been having a whale of a time having a hands-on go at the heavy engineering, and actually got to help lower the bells from the tower.
Now they are out, they look tiny to me. I have seen them a few times as I have done some basic maintenance on them in situ, including botch repairing to shrouding and fitting muffles. In their frame, when they are hard to access and you have to do a lot of clambering to get to them, they seemed much more imposing than when they sat, mute and clapperless, on sheets on the church floor.
The 10cwt tenor (and the bells have handled so badly for so long it is always surprising to see the tenor is only 10cwt!) is barely waist high when removed from its person-sized wheel.
As the bells were being worked on, the wheels showed just what poor condition they were in, almost collapsing as they were removed. It really was probably only months before one of them broke whilst being used.
A few other things: these bells are surprisingly cracked around the rims.
We were there during choir practice, and the choir was getting going on Christmas carols, which made the evening a little surreal.
And the musicians were also keen to hear the bells when they were down. Whacking the 8 bells with a big spanner in sequence leaves you in no doubt at all just how out of tune they are with each other!
Yesterday we rang for a service at Daybrook St Pauls for the last time for a good few months.
Our tower captain’s decades of fundraising have finally paid off and the bells are due a big renovation, including some tuning work, and a new frame, lower in the tower.
They have been getting steadily worse over the few years I have been ringing them, and some, in particular the 5, have something seriously wrong with them.
Yesterday afternoon, bellhangers were doing preparatory work and today, the bells will be lowered down the tower.
Tonight from 7pm there will be an opportunity to see the bells as they will be in the nave of the church on display to the public. If you can pop along to see them you will be very welcome.
Tomorrow, Frank Key Builders Merchants are very kindly loaning the use of a flat bed lorry and crane to take the bells to Loughborough where they will be serviced by Taylors.
The band has been growing in recent months and there are some keen new ringers who are learning the ropes, if you will excuse the pun. Whilst our own bells are out being spruced up, we are relocating for practice nights to Basford St Leodegarious, 7.30-9pm on Friday nights. If you’d like to come along and have a go, we’d be happy to see you.
The bells are due back just before Christmas, although that is a slightly ambitious time frame and it may take a little longer than that.
A link to the Telegraph where they have a video of nautical church bells.
So many questions.
What if it rains?
If the boat hits something, will the bells be knocked off the stay?
A friend on facebook has already asked whether the speed of the peal will be recorded in knots.
How much has it cost? how big are the bells? What will happen to them afterwards?
Stories I have heard about how mean school HR staff and headteachers go about recruiting. I have no way of knowing whether or not they are true.
1)
The school had a preferred style for referring to its charges. They were students, not pupils or children. They were referred to consistently on the school’s website as students. Applicants who used the wrong word in their application letter were summarily rejected, regardless of their other suitability.
2)
The school preferred neat, organised candidates. Whilst the applicants were busy with interview day procedures, the school sent someone out to look at their cars in the car park. If they were untidy or messy or showed other signs of a less than organised personality, including not being regularly washed, then it was a black mark for that candidate.
3)
Horror of horrors – the school made all sorts of IT available to the candidates for their interview lesson… but planned to hit the trip switch half way through the lesson. How well could the candidate continue teaching when they didn’t have their planned electronic resources available to them?
(This last one happened, not during an interview, but during an Ofsted observed lesson, to a colleague at school. The homework sheet became the rest of the lesson.)
I don’t think most schools would do anything like the three above horrors, and I have not been subject to anything like it on interview myself. Most of my interview days have actually been quite nice affairs, with headteachers keen to show their schools in the best possible light and all the candidates being super collegiate in the inevitable long pauses as we wait for the next activity.
Source: Staples eReader Department
