Tag Archives: future learn

Tuesday 20th October 2015 – IT SEEMS THAT …

… I might be getting back to normal now. I was awake at about 08:30 (although it was about 09:15 when I finally crawled out of bed). And I was greeted by a typical Auvergnat hanging cloud. It’s good to be back home, isn’t it?

But I wasn’t at home during the night. I was in the USA driving a school bus taking a pile of girls to their High School. And after I had dropped them off and I was checking my tachograph there was a shooting in the school and half of my schoolgirls were mown down. It was a very sad sight in the school. So I parked the bus up after my journey and caught the plane back home in the UK where I lived, arriving back in the early afternoon (there’s a lot to be said about this long-distance commuting to work, which is perfectly feasible when you are on another plane – if you pardon the pun). I told everyone what had happened, because of course I had beaten the newspapers back to the UK. Once that was over, Nerina and I took the caravan (one a couple of sizes bigger than we used to have) off somewhere in the driving rain and despite the caravan being absolutely ancient, it was still good nevertheless to hear the rain beating down on the roof and not leaking through to the inside.

So with breakfast out of the way I had another relaxing day not doing very much. I really do need to get myself into gear and get going on the work that I have to do. But I did have a very long e-mail to write to someone who has contacted me about a couple of problems he’s been having.

I’ve also signed up for a course of Higher Education. As long-term readers of this rubbish will know, I have a little hobby of messing about with a 3D animation program but I’m not much good at it. I’m on the mailing list of a couple of on-line universities and one of the courses proposed for the New Year is “Explore Animation” – a basic course of Computer-Aided Animation. With nothing much better to do, I’ve signed up for it and we’ll see what we shall see.

I’ve cooked tea tonight too. I’ve not had a full three meals per day for ages but today I managed it and about time too. Now I’m going to wash up and I’m off to bed to see where I’ll end up tonight.

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Monday 27th October 2014 – RED SKY AT NIGHT …

sunset auzances creuse birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… means that Auzances is on fire.

Yes, on the way back home this evening as the sun was setting, I stopped off at my favourite haunt, the St Gervais Ornithological Centre to take one or two photos. The sun setting below the horizon in the clouds in the general direction of Auzances was particularly impressive.

birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe view in the opposite direction, while not being quite as spectacular, was nevertheless quite impressive in its own right.

Here, with the evening drawing on and the damp mist slowly rising out of the fields, the Puy de Dome looks as if it is slowly disappearing from view behind a kind of diaphanous veil. It gives a completely different aspect to this view, of which you have seen dozens of examples over the years.

This morning we went to record the Radio Anglais programmes at Marcillat-en-Cembraille for Radio Tartasse. We had a few technical issues but they were resolved by simply returning to the very first version of the studio’s computer program. This new upgrade has caused nothing but problems.

We went from there to Clermont-Ferrand and the Auchan where I did a big pile of shopping. I’d run out of oats for my muesli and lentils for my curries, and so I needed to stock up. I also took advantage of the proximity of the Auchan to the recording studios at Gerzat to do a mega-shop.

The radio session at Gerzat went surprisigly well – in fact four programmes of 15 minutes each took just 1 hour and 5 minutes to record in total. It’s never happened like this before and I wish that it had happened like this that time just before I went to Canada.

Afterwards, we celebrated by going for coffee at Menetrol and doing a lap around the Carrefour there to buy the things that I had forgotten.

And after dropping Liz off, I came home via the birdwatching site at St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tonihgt, I’ve enrolled in another Higher Education course. The University of Birmingham, in its Future Learn Programme is offering a course in the Development of Aviation in World War I and there was a free place even though the course started a week ago. This kind of thing is right up my Alley as you know and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.

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