Weekend in Leicester

I spent the weekend from Thursday 29 September to Monday 2 October in Leicester, playing in the Chess Congress and attending meetings at Secular Hall. The weather was very hot and sunny, not what I had expected for this time of year, and not ideal for playing chess. However I suppose I can't really blame the weather for my poor results, just two draws (in the first and fifth games) and one of those was against a junior.

At Secular Hall there was a lecture on 29 September about the situation in Libya, though the speaker was a supported of the Gaddaffi regime, who described his 40-year rule as a type of socialist utopia! What is going to happen there in future is of course difficult to predict. On Sunday there was a meeting of a new History Group in the afternoon, and in the evening a most interesting talk on Thomas Babbington and his friends and family and their work for the abolition of the Slave Trade. They did a lot of the work in preparing evidence for William Wilberforce to use in his speeches in Parliament (from which Quakers and nonconformists were excluded).

I travelled to London by train, and to Leicester by coach. On the return journey, also by coach from Leicester I thought I would try the coach to Hastings. This proved to be a mistake, as the so-called 'Express' took nearly 4 hours! It began by going south-west to Mitcham, and so on to Coulsdon and East Grinstead. Then it went on a grand round tour of East Sussex, stopping at Uckfield, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Pevensey, Bexhill and other places.

A Disorienting Day

There was a concert of light music, of which I am a fan, due to be held at St George's Church in Beckenham this evening. So I thought I would look into the possibility of travelling there by public transport. According to the National Rail Enquiries website, which I've found to be reliable previously there was a train at 4:55 that would get me to Beckenham Junction by 17:15 with one change at East Croydon.

However, when I tried to buy such a ticket at Hastings station I was told such a trip was "impossible"! Also that the National Rail Enquiries were now run by a bus company who didn't understand the railways. Apparently the link from East Croydon to Beckenham Junction is via a Tram line. This appears to be correct: it is on something called the London Tramlink, which I've never heard of before, though it has been around for ten years.

So, lacking a clear route, I aborted the trip and decided to listen to a concert on Classic FM. This was a Prokofiev concert introduced by Howard Goodall. The first item announced was his Classical Symphony, number 1. However the music played bore little resemblance to previous performances of that work I had heard. I suspect it was some other of his symphonies, in far more modern style. The second item was announced as the music from Romeo and Juliet, including the "Dance of the Knights". However, unless I fell asleep, this was not the music played.

Tomorrow apparently it's time to put the clocks back, or is it forward? I'm not sure if I'm coming or going.

Outing to London and Leicester

On Saturday morning I decided on something of an impulse to combine a trip to London to attend the Conway Hall talk by Jim Moore on "Darwin and the Sin of Slavery", with a trip to Leicester to attend the lecture by Ken MacLeod on "Darwin Dawkins and the Left". This was just about possible in the time by using booking.com to locate a Hotel and the National Rail Enquiries to book the trains, using a debit card and collecting the tickets from the machine at Hastings station. The machine was a bit recalcitrant but finally came up with the tickets.

One of the interesting points from the Moore lecture that I'd not been aware of was the role of Louis Agassiz (now best known for his work on ice ages) in diverting Darwin's efforts into countering Agassiz's strange theory of multiple 'creations' of separate human races known as polygenism.

Ken McLeod's thesis was that many people on the political Left have deliberately misunderstood Richard Dawkins, or the implications of his "Selfish Gene" idea, though it seems to me that many of other persuasions have been equally free in criticising Dawkins without having apparently read his books.

I was hoping also to fit in a Gresham Lecture by Christopher Hogwood, given at the Museum of London at 1pm today (Tuesday). But this was scuppered since my train was over half an hour late arriving at St Pancras, due apparently to signaling problems. It was also raining, so I used my bus pass to get the No.17 to London Bridge, but managed to get there just in time to miss the first Hastings train.

Weekend in Leicester

On Saturday 11 September I took the train to Charing Cross, walked to Victoria and bought a single National Express coach ticket to Leicester, where I had booked to stay two nights at self-catering apartments by the Grand Union Canal, as illustrated here, although my apartment in fact proved to be on the other side, overlooking the road. The attraction was to revisit my old haunts in Leicester where I lived for nine years, meet some old friends, and to attend the Secular Hall Open Day on the Sunday. (See Hastings Humanists for a brief report).

The idea of buying a single ticket was that I might decide to stay a little longer, but in the event I returned on the Monday. The 11:45 am coach I booked on was about half an hour late, but I wasn't really in any hurry. I sat next to a lady who said nothing, and busied myself mostly with doing the puzzles in the Times. At Victoria Coach Station the lady seemed rather agitated to find her connection on to Portsmouth, and I did my best to direct her, but now feel somewhat guilty that I didn't actually see her to the right bay, or converse with her on the trip.

There didn't seem to be any trains scheduled from Victoria to Hastings so I walked again to Charing Cross. This is quite a pleasant walk, via Buckingham Palace, St James' Park, Admiralty Arch and Trafalgar Square, though I was carrying too much in the form of provisions I had bought, but over-estimated, for self-catering purposes in Leicester. The next day I felt quite tired. I don't suppose I will be going back to Leicester again for some time; there is the AGM of the Society in November, but I don't think I want to get involved in their politics again.

Travelling to and in London

On Monday I went up to London for a Humanist Heritage meeting (as reported on the Hastings Humanists blog). Just going to London for a meeting is not really a good use of time and money, so I always try to fit in other activities.

I travelled up to London, and back, via Ashford and St Pancras, using the high speed train service that runs on that line. This was a bit more expensive than my usual route to Charing Cross, and the ride was not particularly smooth, especially in the tunnel between the Stratford and Rainham area where it vibrated rather noticeably from side to side. So I don't think I will use that route again.

I took a bus to Queensway to check out if the old Ethical Church was still there.
(see the HH blog for photo). Afterwards I spent some the time walking through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, seeing the Diana fountain for the first time, though it seems to be more of a paddling pool than a fountain, and on this hot day was crowded with children.

I also walked down Exhibition Road and visited the Victoria and Albert museum for the first time. I must certainly go back there again for a longer exploration. Previously I've only visited the Science and Natural History Museums.

The whole of Exhibition Road and half of Oxford Street were being dug up, which didn't assist the bus traffic, so I ended up a bit late for the meeting, but don't think I missed much.

More Random Thoughts

I spent most of Thursday journeying to and from Uckfield to attend the East Sussex SACRE meeting on behalf of Hastings Humanists. Since I have a Senior Railcard and a Buspass this was not expensive, just time-consuming. When I returned, and all next day, I had a headache. Whether this was due to bumping about on the bus, or waiting for it in the cold and wet, or some other cause I'm not sure, but at least it seems to have cleared up today. At any rate it stopped me going to the chess club on Friday evening.

While in Uckfield I chanced to go into a Health Food shop and bought a jar of Barley Cup as a possible substitute for drinkng too much Coffee. It doesn't have any distinctive taste that I can detect, just a smooth texture. I did try flavouring it with some Malt Extract, bought at the same shop, but Honey would probably be better. Since I arrived in plenty of time for the meeting I looked around to see what cafes were available and ended up in a Poppins restaurant, which provided a nice lesagna with baked potato and salad.

I'm still working on the knight's tours book. I had hoped to get it finished for my 70 th birthday, but there is still a lot to be done. At present I'm on the chapter dealing with tours on oblong boards. I completely rechecked the tours on the 3x9 board, finding 146 as reported on the KTN website back in year 2000, although there is a minor misprint there, the number of {1,1} tours, with ends a diagonal step apart, is 28 not 29. The next section to check is on the 4xn boards, where I did some work trying to generate recursion relations for the numbers of half-tours, which has never yet been reported on the KTN site.