Cryptic clues

Husband has a tendency to cryptic remarks, or perhaps just doesn't talk. Put another way, sometimes we don't understand each other and we don't talk enough. One of way of remedying this is to travel together to work. So we sit in the car together for forty five minutes each morning and each evening. We might still not talk. Possibly because I'm quietly doing the sudoku while he drives.

Then I had this brilliant idea. Instead of the sudoku I open the paper at the crossword page. I cannot understand these cryptic clues bu he gaily romps through them. So I tell him the clues, and he thinks through them as we drive, occasionally talking in order to tell me how they work.

And we get communication!

Council meeting

I've not been to a county council meeting before, but this one was walking distance, so I thought I'd go for an hour or two. It's in the Crown Courts, so I arrive at the front door. Being the courts, there's a guard at the door, ready to scan visitors.

"What can I do for you, Ma'am?"

"There's a public meeting here today" I say, expecting to be scanned and allowed in, but he sends me round the back. I go round with another chap who explains that he's going to present. We find a small man in a security jacket who asks if we are councillors and we explain ourselves. I'm a member of the public so he tells me to go round the front, but I protest that I've been sent round here, so he relents and shows me in with the presenting chap. Half way up the back stairs, we can see the guard at the front so small man in security jacket shouts down to him:

"Bert! Let the public in that way!"
"What?"
"Let the members of the public in!"

Guard protests he doesn't know who's public and who's councillor so SMiSJ promises to come and talk to him in a minute.

The meeting is in court number 2. I'm in a balcony with a lovely wood balustrade (apart from a bit of graffiti carved into it). Below I can see the judge's seat where the chair of the meeting is already sitting. Paper rustles. Members take their places, but I don't know who is sitting where as there's no name plan and the slope on their desks along with the mass of papers they have means there's nowhere to put a name card. I can see the CEO, Chris Williams, sitting at the centre of a green felt covered table and assume the people round him are council officers, not councillors. There are some young men and women on side benches - I can't think they are councillors - perhaps they're journalists. There aren't any other members of the public.

The chap in the central and high up judge's chair calls the meeting to order, but doesn't introduce himself and I don't know his name.

I recognise one of our local councillors, Mary Baldwin. She presents a petition for a 20 mile per hour limit in Aylesbury Old Town. She speaks clearly and to the point. Cheers! The petition is passed to the CEO. Two more bring petitions though they don't speak as clearly as Mary. Mary's was the only petition the Chair was expecting.

Then Mr Macalister-Smith stands up to speak on the Buckinghamshire Primary Care Trust's five year strategy. He's stuck with a Powerpoint presentation and no equipment. I hope he's a good speaker, but I'm happy not to see bullet pointed slides. All the councillors have copies of the slides on handouts.

He talks about the context: good health in Bucks but the NHS has a low financial allocation more than 18% below national level funding, so the financial situation here is difficult.
So in order to add life to years and years to life (i.e. add quality) the PCT wants consistent local area agreements investing in clinical leadership. He concludes they need to manage their money, put leadership in place, including supporting emerging clinical leaders, and working with local government is key to their success.

Question time

The councillors argue about who is the first to ask questions. There is such a "forest of hands" that the Chair complains he can't tell who put their hand up first. Questions include

• Mrs Manon on polyclinics and people's fear of them (I can't always hear the name of the speaker nor the question)
• Mr Colesten - cabinet member for adult social care comments that the revolving door of people in the PCT hinders. Mr Macalister-Smith says something about building a sustainable team (first time I've had the term 'sustainable' in that context)
• Mrs Baldwin asks first if the super surgeries are the same as polyclinics and secondly what investment is going to be be made, that is what is the PCT doing to target areas of deprivation.
• someone asks about dental problems
• there's a question on transport and on access from rural areas

Things are degrading; there are discontentful murmurings that people who've been waiting can't ask a question. Chair says he'll take two more questions then takes only one from someone who mumbles something about Chalfont St Peter but it doesn't seem to be a question. The chair then rabbits on.

"It's unfair, so unfair!"

grumbles Mary Baldwin, sotte voce.

Mr Appleyard raises a point of order to request that this one last person be allowed to ask a question and the chamber agrees with sounds of assent. The Chair grumbles:

"Is it a brief one?"
"It's briefer than your preamble, Chairman."

The question is about purchasing block beds but Mr Macalister-Smith can't answer it.

Question time must finish. Mr Macalister-Smith is praised for his presentation, which must be difficult in front of so many knowledgeable people. In turn, he courteously thanks the chair, suggesting that his job is difficult, and mentions that he hadn't realised it was the first time he'd chaired the meeting here.

I stayed only a few more minutes, just enough to hear that the cabinet member for transport supported the petition to lower the limit in the town centre.

I might go again - the PCT information was useful and relevant. The councillors' behaviour was amusing.

Long term

I've been away for work, not far and only for three days, but it makes a nice change. I'm loving it.

Husband texted me morning greetings.
Son rang home and then me.
Daughter rang home.

So I rang them.

Both children (children still?) are low. There's a lot of work, little time, people to cope with and daughter is off colour with a headache. Headache slows down writing the 300 word French essay. Fortunately, it's nice to know that step daughter #3 is feeling smug about understanding a lecture on structural analysis.

It's nearly the end of term, and I fetch one home in ten days, the other the next week and SD #3 will be back for Christmas.

Busy

I'm away for work, with little time even for lunch. But it's nice to have the break, especially with a view like this.

Bath and Bristol

We visited the Bath spa on Friday night, meaning to buy a twilight session, but they were all booked up. So we had a shorter session and more expensive package and it was still good - especially the steam rooms with different aromas and heats and foot baths.

We ate Sally Lunn Bath buns for tea, which are something amazing - huge as a tea plate, but light as a fairy cake, and delicious with cinnamon butter - I'm glad we found that café.

We made a quick wander round the Roman Baths yesterday morning before visiting daughter. So I need to come back because there wasn't time to see everything.

Daughter's fine physically, intellectually, academically and socially - I think. She grumbled mildly about hall food and ate a splendid meal with us in a fish restaurant. We talked lots, and then husband drove us into the city where we explored shops like the new precinct, and bought a piece of jewellery that she'd seen. Husband showed us some of his old haunts so daughter knows even more shops to explore in the years that she is there.

Long weekend

Off to Bath for a long weekend and a day trip to Bristol to see daughter

Birthday

It's a bit quiet now all the children have gone. I toodled off to tae kwondo and pleaded birthday as an excuse for doing fewer press ups. The instruction was to do ten press ups but five if you were under 14. It is not wise to draw attention to yourself at tae kwondo as the subum is inclined to give you as many press ups as you are old. However, this was not the usual subum, but one who just told everyone it was my birthday and to give me a clap!

"Choosing chocolates" I mused on my Facebook status, which drew "Eeny meeny miny mo! Happy Birthday" from SD#2

Test of Intelligence and observation

You will be allowed five minutes to complete this paper. Mark your answers in the space preceding each item number. Work as quickly as you can.

1. Do they have a fifth of November in America?
2. Some months have thirty days; some have thirty-one, how many months have twenty-eight days?
3. If you had only one match and entered a dark room where there was an oil lamp, oil heater and some kindling wood which would you light first?
4. If a doctor gave you three pills and told you to take one every half hour, how long would they last?
5. A man builds a house with four sides, a rectangular structure each having a southern exposure. A bear comes wandering by. What colour is the bear?
6. A farmer has seventeen sheep. All but nine die. How many did he have left?
7. Divide thirty by a half. Add ten. What is the answer?
8. Take two apples from three apples. What do you have?
9. How many animals of each species did Moses take on the Ark?
10. If you drove a bus with forty-two people on it from London and stopped at Watford to pick up seven more and drop off five passengers and at Luton you dropped off eight and picked up four and arrive at Edinburgh twenty hours later, what is the driver's name?

That is what the 11+ test questions seemed like to me - and the requirement to be quick still makes me panic, so I can't read them properly. But even worse, now so often there are multiple choice answers, which confuse me even more. Yeuch.

Do you want the answers?

Six characters

What's real? What's reality?

That's the problem at the heart of Pirandello's play "Six Characters in search of an Author", which husband and I saw today at the Gielgud Theatre. It's a fascinating update on Pirendello's early twentieth century production. Apparently, he never finished fiddling with this play - no wonder I couldn't remember the ending - but he considered turning it into a film or a novel.

The six characters have developed a life of their own, in the way that a writer finds he doesn't (or she) always know what is going to come out of the pen - the story develops by itself sometimes. These six characters have a story that they insist on telling. But this is a play within a play, for the six characters interrupt a rehearsal - in the Gielgud, a film rehearsal for a documentary on assisted suicide.

Each of the six characters wants to give his or her version of the reality that happened to them, in their life. Each has a different take on their lives together. Each constructs the same story according his/her own perception and personality.

• The Father - guilt ridden
• The Step-daughter - haughty, sexy
• The Mother - distraught, weak and weepy
• The Son - arrogant, distant
• The silent Girl and Boy - why are they silent?

Then the actors attempt to reconstruct their story, putting a different angle to it. And here is yet another production of this play, with a different take from the one that Pirandello first produced:

• Madame Pace becomes a pimp,
  
• it's a documentary being filmed rather than a rehearsal of a Pirandello play,
• there's a scene where Pirandello discusses problems of this play, in Italian
• The Mother sings as if in an Opera
  

Why am I so interested?

Because we studied the play in depth when I was at college. I played the Mother. And because the problem of reality still haunts me; it comes up in the way I approach and write up my research.