The House Husband

I had another uni result today. One of my essays was a purely philosophical one in that it was about the philosophy of information. Now, I always love to babble and this was the perfect opportunity. Naturally, by the time I’d finished and submitted it, I was convinced it wasn’t very good and I’d babbled far too much. I guess I didn’t. I managed 80%! Who’da thunk it? I am rather pleased. As well as surprised.

To be honest, uni wasn’t a lot of fun today. It started ok, though the weather was foul and I was damp for most of the day. We discussed a lot of information retrieval stuff and then it came time for the tutorial presentations. It was the usual long drawn out process of getting people to go out to the front to present their findings. As usual this was like pulling teeth.

It was, however, exacerbated by the lecturer filling in forms with each group’s results. This took an age – there are eight groups – and, quite frankly, was a huge waste of time. It would have been a lot better had he asked us to fill in the forms prior to class so the findings could just be discussed.

The results were interesting and we managed to discuss some of them but the time was running out and we had to abandon class before the final group entered their figures. The class finished just before the next class were due to take over the room.

I headed out to get some lunch. The day was still miserable and my mood wasn’t much better. I decided to ditch my second class and give myself an early mark. The notes are all on the uni website and I could study in the warmth and comfort at home. The poodles were very pleased. I was very pleased.

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Butterick Update!!
Following on from yesterdays post…After a bit more research into St Augustine’s, Kilburn, I discovered that it was only consecrated the year before the Butterick mass baptisms (1880). Apparently, the priest at the old parish church wasn’t too happy with the way things were going and decided to branch out on his own. He wanted a more Catholic approach and so opened his own church, with the bishop’s blessing, of course. This was St Augustine’s. Now, my assumption is that the Butterick family were all for this new brand of worship and so shifted allegiances from the church they knew and loved to the new one down the road which promised more in heavenly trading stamps. This belief is strengthened in that a few years later, another Butterick child was baptised at the new font. This one was also well past birth.

“Well, she crossed her legs so there can’t be too much wrong” – two old ladies talking in Waitrose in the dairy aisle. I assume they were talking about someone’s plastic hip. Actually I found out the other day that Waitrose was named after two grocer-type chaps who joined together in 1908; a Mr Waite and a Mr Rose. Actually, there was also a Mr Taylor, but he left in 1906. It was then called Waite, Rose and Taylor, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Had Mr Rose left, it may now be called Waitaylor. Or if Mr Waite had slipped off, it could be Rosetaylor, which is almost Rose Tyler, and we know what happened to her. I can’t imagine having to dimension hop for my groceries.

Having a rest from my presentation preparation this afternoon, I had a dig around the old family tree for about half an hour. I have been a tad remiss in keeping up with the ancestors, I must admit. I did find something interesting about the Buttericks. For some reason (a reason I may find out one day) three of the Butterick children were baptised on the same day at St Augustine’s church in Kilburn. This may not sound particularly odd, but bear in mind they weren’t the only children and one of them not baptised was, I think, a twin of one who was. Bloody confusing!

The rest of the afternoon was spent on my presentation, prettying it up, basically, and making sure my jokes are evenly spaced. Mirinda was doing a bit of work, so we both beavered away in adjacent rooms while the puppies occasionally wandered from one room to the other. There is also the occasional movement of documents between email accounts as Mirinda finishes drafts of things for me to proof read and give an opinion on.

We did take a break to wander up to the castle and back. Though, I should admit, we didn’t quite make it to the castle because of the deep mud we’d have had to plough through. The park, like our back garden, is not particularly pleasant this time of year. I think February in England – I think rain and mud. Naturally, while the sun has shone for large extents of the day, it drizzled with rain the whole way around, soaking the dogs.

Which reminds me, the odd hail storm we had last night and the fact that the temperature took a while to creep into positive figures this morning, made the path into town quite slippery this morning and I was fortunate that my muscles remembered the various flexing techniques learnt from a year spent ice skating in Homebush, or I would have found myself with a wet butt on a number of occasions.

This is an experiment. I have uploaded a video of the poodles to YouTube. You should be able to see it below. Please let me know if you can’t.