Chris and Flora's wedding

Chris and Flora were married at the Danish Church on Regents Park today. The reception took place at the Royal Institute of British Architects on Portland Place. We took a few photos, which you can see here via Dropbox. I've a few personal highlights, after the jump.

It's been a while, hasn't it?

It sure has - and so much has happened since I last caught up with you all. What kind of thing? Well how about:

• Quitting my job - part one, part two, epilogue
• Joining the gym, losing 21-ish lbs
• Visiting the Tower of London - it's awesome!
• My sister's had a baby, a healthy girl called Baden Rose
• Finding out about JET - I'm in!
• Having an inpromptu Parsonage reunion
• Deciding to move to London for July

And that's just for the start of things, really. Busy busy busy. It's cheating I know, but I'll be backdating a few posts to fill in the gaps, and back-linking this post to them retrospectively.

And it's the end of things too. A kind of end at least. My last bullet point is the clue: no more Manchester. So no more DTRMCR? Well, let's see...

Colin and Jane's Wedding

Jane and Colin’s wedding was unconventional, practical, and lots of fun. Much like the bride and groom themselves.

The registry office was too small for all of the guests to attend, so Dominic organised a webcam in a room of a local pub where the excess guests – Laura and myself included – could watch the wedding on a big screen. Laura got stuck in to meeting and greeting different people in the room, making a storming impression on Helen Clarke with her background in floristry whilst making some flower petal confetti.

After the wedding – with a quick detour to watch the end of Argentina vs Germany – it was all back to Lewisham for food, cabaret and the band. The food was lush, a compendium of tasty vegetarian treats. Our evening’s entertainment came from the guests at the wedding. The cabaret saw Skinner as the compere, and several acts performing.

• Martin performing his poem "The Wedding of Jalin O'Clossick
• The Overlooked Bridesmaids and their version of "I will survive"
• “Always been the best damn part of me…” by Dominic Bristow
• "Let’s drain all the champagne" by Jamie and Dom
• Jane's beautiful song about flying hand in hand with Colin*
• Colin's cousin, pictured, singing old Irish love songs.

Vin's band played. Wine was drunk. And so were we...

*EDIT: The song is called 'Tonight we fly," and it's by the Divine Comedy.

Cricket

Or, how to see Vinny get a split lip...

Oh cricket! Praise be! Sport of the summer! Of lounging! Of booze! Drafted in from twelfth man, I was on the pitch for the second innings of the day when Vin sauntered up for a bat. He'd been swigging rose from the bottle, as he waited to weave the willow. As a joke, as the hour was drawing on apace, Skinner and I announced that we would like to offer Vinny the option of taking the light.

"Is it getting," we asked, "a little dark to continue safely?"
"Fuck off, I'm batting," said Vin.

Two balls later, Vin clips an edge into his own top lip.

"That's going to need stitching," said Dr Jim.
"Well, we did offer him the light," said Skinner.

And the news, in your underpants today, is...

A hotel room can be a terribly lonely place. A Corby Trouser Press isn’t much company. There was one chair at the desk, and another at a small round table. This was room 628, but I imagined that it was the same as pretty much any room in the whole building. There’s nothing like the anonymity of a one-night visit to make you feel like a cog in the machine. I put my trousers in the Corby, and sat down to watch telly in my underpants.

“This is the Virgin Pendalino service to London Euston…”

As the clock struck three, I strolled out of work and headed off onto the first leg of my Autumn break: tonight, London; tomorrow and beyond, Ventenac. I was almost whistling as I skipped my way to the train station, the warm sun tickling my neck. Vive les vaccances!

“Mate, can you wait for me in the Salisbury? I’ve got to stay at work for an hour or so?”

Wait in the pub? Yes, I think I can handle a bit of waiting in the pub. I sat down and enjoyed a beer or two, a little bit of David Bowie on the jukebox, and a few stories about Bob Dylan from my book. It’s a cracking pub, one that’d be easy to get used to.

I was feeling quite relaxed – having consumed around about two pints of relaxation-facilitator – when Vin arrived. It was brilliant to see him, and I’m glad we had a chance to catch up before leaving for France. We went through our careers, our recent romantic histories, and other issues of the day. We were pestered by kids with stickers, two demonic little girls, running around the pub. Their parents were our age. Chilling stuff.

We took on a few more beers, then swung back to Pemberton Towers. The new resident there, Louise, is stunningly beautiful. Olly was there, and not bad looking himself. I spent the night in Skinner’s bed because he had already left for Belgium. What happened to Skinner in Belgium, however, is entirely another story…

I have seen the light

Every time I go to a conference, I leave it with my faith in my job renewed. Like a pilgrimage to the source of true holiness, it makes me forget the sin and corruption of my godless backwater, and charges up my stocks of zeal. My heart cries out, “Hallelujah!” all the way home. And today I was filled with the spirit.

The second speaker, Peter, was inspirational. It wasn’t that he had a new approach, but that he actually did the things that he was supposed to do. The Department Of _______ insists that all of our work is evidence-led. A Google search for “evidence based practice” yields around 30,400,000 hits. But the amount of people working in my field that understand what that means… I’m not confident it’s very many.

His insistence on using research to inform decision-making should be normal practice, but it’s rare. His insistence on evaluating any research before it is acted on should be normal practice, but it’s rare. Planning the means to gather evidence about a project’s effectiveness before the project begins should be normal practice, but it’s rare.

Peter rubbished an intervention that is very popular in schools across the country.

“Absolutely no evidence that it works, none whatsoever.”

Later, during the Q&A, a member of the audience challenged him:

“We’ve done focus groups, people said they really…”

“Well, that’s great, but it doesn’t show that it works overall, what people say and how they behave aren’t necessarily aligned."

“B-b-but we’ve even rolled it out to the Army garrisons in the area, who say that it’s one of the best things they’ve ever…”

“You’re using the same intervention with soldiers and eleven year-olds?”

The challenger piped down.

And, sitting silently at the side of the room, I buzzed. More evidence means more research, i.e. more of my work being the part of my job that I like the most. Preach! Preach to my already converted heart!

A sneaky hour

I arrived an hour early for my conference at Birkbeck, so I popped around the corner to The British Museum. I didn’t wander far from the North Entrance, up that amazing staircase, into east Asia, and specifically Japan. I saw an embossed box that was five-hundred years old, and shone blue like a beetle’s back. Its simple beauty stunned me.

Downstairs, in room 91, an exhibition of pacific shields took my breath away. They’re bright, dazzling, designed to scare the enemy.




I was most touched by the modern shields. Made using car bodywork, and decorated with the logos of contemporary rugby league teams, they are designed to withstand shotgun fire. Shield and shotgun battles are going on today in the pacific.

Zoe

After hammering the ass out of the presentation (to a great response from the audience), and a really exciting afternoon of workshops, I felt enthused about my job in a way that I hadn't in ages. It turns out that my boss isn't typical of our field, and that there are some really committed and keen people. It's not me, it's her, actually. What a relief. I had a couple of pints in the hotel bar, writing up my notes, and waited to meet up with my old and dear friend Zoe. We went for some noodles, and a bottle of wine. The waitress poured our wine, and offered it to me to taste. I took a sip, and screwed my face up, put my tounge out a little, held my throat in pain, "yuck!" She looked shocked. I smiled at her, "Only joking, it's lovely. Thank you." Zoe and I laughed. It was the first of many that night.

NTS @ Conference

Pre-conference nerves

The Russell is the swankiest hotel I've ever stayed at. This was the view from my room.





This was my bed.



This was Waterloo Bridge, fifteen minutes walk away.





And all this in exchange for showing a video and chatting for five minutes tomorrow. Why do only fools and horses work? I was really stressed about it, bravado aside, especially after my fucking rubbish boss had slagged off my presentation skills without ever seeing me give a presentation. Fuck her, I thought, and spent a lot of time in my room practising before dinner. I got stuck on a table with the couple that had organised the event, two tech support people and somebody from the Department for _______. Bummer, no networking with other officers who were doing my job in other places. I've never sat through such a dull conversation. I wasn't drinking at all, as I wanted to hammer the ass out of the presentation. My sobriety made their drunken babbling all the more tiresome. I was glad to be through with my pudding. Ted from _____ arrived, who gave me a bit of an outlet of normality, and we chatted through our presentations in the bar until about midnight. Nervous much? Yes.

Celebrity Salad

Vin lives just off Green Lanes, near Finsbury Park. Even though I’d seen him recently, I felt pretty bad for ditching on the Ship’s birthday bash, so I gladly accepted the invitation to his Christmas meal. The house is lovely, with lots of communal space. It felt very homely to sit at the table, reading the letters page of New Scientist, as Helen made a cake and Hammond assembled mince pies. We drank champagne and watched Arsenal v Liverpool. I hadn’t seen Anna, Martin or Dave O since what felt like forever, and I really enjoyed catching up with them - even Martin, who I pretend to hate. Mulled wine followed, and then Celebrity Salad, a game.

1. Find a hat, some paper, some pens, and a watch that counts seconds.
2. Divide into two equal teams, appoint a scorer for each.
3. Each player writes five names of noteworthy people on slips of paper and tosses them into the hat.
4. Players take turns, alternating between teams, of one minute to get their team mates to guess the names pulled out of the hat, with the following restrictions:
· ROUND 1 – Players can say anything except what is written on the cards.
· ROUND 2 – Normal charades rules.
· ROUND 3 – A one-word clue, delivered with no actions.
5. One name guessed is one point scored.
6. No name pulled from the hat can be skipped.
7. A name is ‘live’ until successfully guessed, at which point it is put outside the hat until the next round.
8. A name pulled out of the hat, but not correctly guessed by the end of the turn is ‘live’ and goes back into the hat.
9. A round goes on until all names in the hat have been correctly guessed.
10. At the end of the round, all names go back into the hat for the next round.
11. After three rounds, the team with the highest score wins.
12. The non-guessing team are responsible for making sure the guessing team and the clue-giver are within the rules of the game.

It was great to see Chris Sewards and John Gripton too. Good times. Port followed, then Jack Daniels, and eventually stupor.