As usual, Viki was pretending to be ill at Wendy, which meant she was feeling fully refreshed on Sunday morning having gone home early. You would think that would mean she could go and get breakfast, but apparently not. Luckily Fonze stepped up to the plate and delivered the goods, with Norm adding his cheffing expertise to prepare it all.
Having travelled round Europe last week I saw some amazing architecture, especially in Milan, Salzburg and Verona (where which both myself and Heather Nova now dream about).
However, thanks to the hard efforts of myself and Elina, Leeds now equally has its place among the great architectural works of the world, with our newly constructed Kopparberg tower.
This month’s Wendy House turned out to be a bit of a handful. The night started off with Viki’s 21st birthday party, to which none of Viki’s mates turned up, but luckily the three of us are so popular that we made up the numbers with our own friends ;).
To celebrate we did trays of shots, and managed to mix around eight different spirits leading to be receiving the following text next day from Jonni…
Fuck your shots. I woke up in the doorway of my old flat.
As I explained, it’s not really a good night unless you wake up on someone else’s porch. Having carefully planned ahead to make sure I would have chicken wings ready for when I got home too, what more could you really want from a night out.
Thanks to Nicola for the photos.
This month at Leeds Skeptics, Dr Jim Wild made the trip over to talk about weathering solar storms – how coronial mass ejection from The Sun has a significant impact on The Earth and given it has the power to knock out our electricity grid, is something we need to be taking seriously.
It was one of the best talks we have had a in recent times with great feedback coming from those who attended. Big thanks to Jim for making the trip over, you can find out more about him on his website.
On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.
She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.
It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.
We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.
Last Wednesday, I was out with the Humanist Action Group doing our usual feed the homeless bit, when we found a man who looked rather ill.
When we spoke to him, he said he was suffering from septicemia. He was clearly in a bad way, one foot was swollen so much you could see how much bigger it was than the other and he had some nasty holes in his legs which were slowly oozing puss. It really wasn’t something I enjoyed looking at.
When we asked him whether he had been to the hospital, he said yes and they had given him some antibiotics. However, they were about to run out and now he couldn’t afford any more.
Now, you would assume that a) he is clearly in need of medical treatment and b) he doesn’t have a job so doesn’t really have any means to pay for prescriptions, you would think that the supposed free healthcare system we operate in the UK, would provide.
But it doesn’t.
If you take a look at the NHS website, it explains that there are only a handful of exemptions to prescription charges and unless you’re on income support or income related job seekers allowance, you still have to pay. Of course, homeless people rarely are on these schemes, leaving them very little access to medical treatment.
I think my tax bill is very high. But, every month when I took at my payslip and see how much has been taken off by the government before I even get to see it, I take some comfort in the fact that it is going to help those less fortunate than me, I mean that’s the point of having a social welfare state right? But incidents like this make you question, how many people are slipping through the gaps?
Last Tuesday, I headed down to Nottingham to present a talk to Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub.
Nottingham seems to be a lot like Leeds – a reasonable sized city with a confusing one-way system running through the middle and a few gems hidden away inside it, such as our venue, Fellows Morton and Clayton, a traditional Victorian pub, with a traditional Victorian fruit machine by the door.
I got down there in plenty of time to grab some food beforehand (and because you never know with the M1) and found the place easily enough. The food was OK, the grilled chicken was excellent though the ribs were somewhat disappointing. However, given the last time I had ribs was at Cattle Grid, my standards are probably simply still tuned too high.
I also met Andy, who runs the group and is an absolutely lovely guy. He also works with computers so we managed to squeeze in a few minutes of geek talk before the event!
The talk itself went pretty well, at least from my perspective lol, and I hope the audience enjoyed it too. I think the questions and discussions afterwards lasted until nearly 10pm, which from a 7:30pm start is quite a lot of discussion.
In general, I think the talk was well received by the audience. They certainly weren’t as critical as when I spoke to Hull Humanists – not that I didn’t very much enjoy the tough questions I took there!
In general, a really enjoyable evening and a big thanks to Andy for inviting me down.
Last week I made a very embarrassing mistake.
The tread was getting rather low on my types, so I decided to change it myself. I managed to get the wheel off easily enough, put the fresh one on and screwed it back in place and then set off to work.
However, I only made it 5-10 metres before I realised my mistake – I hadn’t actually screwed the wheel nut on and the wheel was now at risk of flying off the car altogether!
Oh no wait, this wasn’t me – this was a guy whose sole job it is to screw the wheel nut back on. Unlucky :D.
Still, at least we got to see Patrick Stewart.
The recent AHS AGM, which took place in Southampton, was the a personal first for me in that it was the first AGM I haven’t attended (but in my defence – Southampton really is a long drive). Luckily James, Elettra, Nicola and Norm were all down there, so Leeds was well represented.
Tension was rather high going into the weekend with the far too public way that certain members of the outgoing executive choose to air their dirty laundry, as well as several societies quitting and people raising motions against the BHA’s ultimate control over the AHS, but never the less the storms seem to have been weathered.
The AHS now has a brand new committee, composed of Jenny Bartle, Michael Paynter and Dom Blacklock – a group of people which I am sure the AHS will be in safe hands with!
Most of us have seen Jenny’s leadership close up when we headed down to Bristol for the 2010 AGM, and she is clearly someone who has an ability to get things done.
This style should work well alongside Mike, who is almost certainly one of the nicest people you will ever meet. Always pleased to see you, even if he has never met you before, it is always a pleasure to see Mike’s face at an event.
While I’ve only briefly met Dom at the national convention and BHA reception, but he seems like a great guy as well and I’m sure the three of them will oversee a great year for the organisation. Congratulations to all!
Last Friday was Simon S’s last day at Buzz, which was unfortunate as, as a Leeds graduate, he was one point in favour of the Leeds side of the office (as opposed to the Leeds Met side). Never the less, he is leaving to return to the university to undertake a PhD – something the other side doesn’t really suffer from ;).
We saw him off in the usual manner – by hitting The Original Oak for lunch and getting the shots in. At one point Rebecca suggested we should do one shot per week – something that worries myself and Jason, who would now have to do over 100 shots to leave!
