A trip to Birmingham

A feast of ripe, sweet blackberries

It seems a while since I posted a blog, a while filled with activity, including a Sunday morning in the woods behind Clare gathering blackberries. They are so plump and prolific in the warm sun, I quickly filled a punnet from just two bushes.

Oh yes, we've also had a change in Prime Minister since I last wrote. As with Brexit, the powers that be seem intent on running another project fear. With all the gloomy news about forthcoming heating costs, we've decided to hunker down for the winter. To this end, we moved the spare bed in Ann's special room up to our bedroom for Ann to use, and I now have Ann's old bed. My old bed was Edwin's bunk bed from when he was a toddler, which I had cut down from its base and was now very old, so I have dismantled it and we took it and the spare old mattress to the tip.

We spent another two days shopping for new chairs, a table and a small television for the corner. The chairs arrived today, and with their presence the room is complete. We may be able to turn off most of the radiators in the house, just leaving the one small radiator for the central room. We never had the radiators on in the bedroom anyway, just extra blankets as needed.

On Asha's red carpet

Last week, Andre had a conference in Birmingham where he was manning a stand for his company. The Automotive Electronics Systems Innovation Network Conference (the title alone suggests serious intent here) was held at The National Conference Centre in Solihull, for companies that make electronic gizmos for the motor trade: companies such as Bosch, and Siemens, and naturally Cadence was prominent among them. Modern cars rely on electronics not just for their power control and automated driving, but for the new electronic cockpits that have replaced traditional dials and knobs. In the words of their blurb, "Cars are becoming computers on wheels with more processing power than the average personal computer", and Cadence are at the forefront of bespoke chip design and programming. In consequence, he and Edwin invited us to go with them to Birmingham where we stayed in the Rotunda. Edwin took Ann round their favourite haunts while I relaxed over a Terry Pratchett book. The first night, Andre treated us to a meal in Birmingham's most celebrated Indian restaurant, Asha's. They even have a roped off red carpet area for their visiting celebrities, so naturally we stood there and got some other guest to snap us.

We enjoy cocktails in Asha's

We moved on to The Alchemist for post-prandial cocktails, then next evening we ate at a lively Cuban restaurant, with live music. One of the guests was dancing wildly to the beat, so naturally Andre, ever cheerful and outgoing, joined in. This brought the woman and her friend to our table, where we all introduced themselves before dancing lady gave me a big hug and began telling me something of her life. As I understood it, she worked by organising maintenance engineers for commercial sites that had drinking water available; her friend apparently was "an influencer", with some promotional blog. I guess she must have a few more readers than I get for my blog - I could never sell anything with my writing. That was the second unexpected hug I had that day. Earlier, while waiting outside Selfridges for Ann, a lady had come up to me saying, "Dr Marr - I was your receptionist at Clare". She had left some years ago, and now worked in the shopping centre in Birmingham Bullring. Before moving on, she threw her arm round me and said how lovely to meet again. I didn't remember her specifically, but I enjoyed the hug. Women can still get away with this, but as a man I am very reluctant to hug any strange female these days.

On the way home, we stopped at Huntingdon for Edwin to collect his new car. He had already sold his old one on WeBuyAnyCar and had used the money to pay for the new one, so the transition was quite swift. A couple of days later, I had an urgent call from Edwin to rescue him from a garden centre. He and Andre had bought a large parasol for their patio table, too big to fit in Edwin's new little Polo. We lowered the rear seats and slid it into my car where it still overhung the front seat. They also had a dozen large boulders to weigh it down. Edwin refused point blank to take a single one of them in his car; he never allows even food or a takeaway meal to travel in it, so they too had to be loaded into my car, filling the front footwell and surrounding poor Byron in the boot. The car drove like a pig with the added weight, struggling on hills and grossly over-steering on bends, but eventually I got to Bury. The boys unloaded and Edwin brought out his portable vacuum cleaner to tidy the mess from the dirty rocks. Today, I even received a bottle of whisky as a thank you.