Jacobs is still standing

Ruth, Trevor, Gavin, Alex and I went down to Jacobs on Saturday. It's still standing and Granny and Grandpa are as hale and hearty as ever. We got lost on the way there. Alex drove his Range Rover down and asked me if the M20 was the right way. I said yes without thinking and he took my advice, oops. So we had a scenic ride (two sat navs and 4 back seat drivers) and arrived for a late tea, closely followed by dry martinis. How Alex managed to drive so calmly I do not know.

On Sunday we did some serious walking and inspected the Vinehall Berlin wall. We took the famous path from the five turnings to the reservoir where you have to walk on the wrong side of the wall, because they built it on Grandpa's territory. Then you come to that impressive gate, you can see Trevor helping Gavin to climb over and Alex observing at a safe distance. Alex took the sensible way through.

From the Brandenburg Gate we found our way to the reservoir. Being winter, it is easy to walk through the woods. On the way back we followed a path, which I have rarely seen. It is now equipped with two magnificent wooden bridges provided by some East Sussex council quango. It peters out when you leave reservoir land, but (in winter) you are almost in sight of a camouflaged hut. Granny says that it belongs to the neighbours. We found a gas heater and an empty crate of Waitrose wine when we peeked  inside it.

Behind it you can almost see the fields tha take you straight back to Jacobs, except that there is an impassable hedge, so you have to walk along it to find a gap.

When we got back for a delicious lunch Ruth was awake! After lunch we went to inspect a tree that Grandpa is chopping up/down. Well actually, it's a huge branch off a tree. Ruth was able to walk by this time, and Trevor stayed behind reading Tintin and Asterix. Granny gave us the job of burying a (dead) chicken, which had been languishing in the bin shed. We gave it a ceremonious burial and sang a dirge. Gavin made a video which I don't have yet, so I cant't post it here, but its probably blasphemous or something so that's OK. You can see Gavin digging the grave and Alex looking on, no doubt figuring out a much better way to do it. Note his excellently suitable clothing.

There is another pet dog grave in on Alex's right (not in picture). It got a better cross than the chicken. Quite the graveyard.

Gödel's incompleteness theorem

Melvyn Bragg's program 'In Our Time' on Radio 4 (Thursday's 9am) is an endless source of fascination. Last week it was the story how ancient Greek manuscripts were translated into Arabic in the 900's and eventually came back to Europe 200 years later. Some of them were still used as medical texts 100 years ago. And today it was the turn of Gödel. He is more modern. A brilliant mathematician called David Hilbert and a whole team of brais were trying to prove that number theory (1+1=2 etc) was consistent. They were slaving away for 30 years when Gödel popped up and proved that they were wasting their time.

1) You cannot prove that there are no contradictions in number theory.

2) There are true statements about numbers that you can never prove are true.

Poor old Hilbert never published anything on the subject again. You can listen to the program here.

Gödel also discovered a rotating universe solution to Einstein's theory of general relativity where time travel is possible - let's hope the universe is rotating!

Comment
It all sounds very interesting, but I'm not sure I have a clue. But, mostly, I dislike Melvyn Bragg. Probaly put off then by the 1st 2 words!
Posted by: Paul | October 10, 2008 at 03:14 PM

Alice's wedding and photos

Hi everyone,

my feet have only just touched the ground after the wedding, the day was amazing and we went straight off on honeymoon the next day. I started law college the day after I got back from honeymoon in sri lanka (11 hours after I got back, actually), have also started a job with a law firm, and we are finally moving for definite on friday week.

I will be including some of the photographer's photos in everyone's thankyou letters, although you will have to wait a little while for those, as he is out of the country until friday.

In the mean time, he has posted a few of the pictures (although by no means all of them as he got through at least 3 memory cards on the day) on his website :

www.davidtett.com/Events [no longer exists, 2017]

For those of you who couldn't make it because of various plane, work, or broken-bone related incidents, bad luck, you missed a great party, but I hope to catch up with you soon

Love to all

Alice x

Noilly Prat spray gun

I have discovered a new bar 2 minutes walk from my house. It's called Cafe Einstein (there's a chain), it's stylish and a bit pricey by Berlin standards. A friend and I had a drink there and were told they have a fabulous cocktail bar upstairs. We had to try it and I ordered dry martinis. They were good. To top it off the barman has a Noilly Prat spray gun (pictured, and click on it to see the spray). You know that Grampa says that you should only wave the Noilly Prat bottle over the glass. Well I guess that a little spray of NP would be about the same.

COMPLAINTS:

1) Trevor, you have not blogged about the Tintin play in Oxford. It's never too late.

2) Nobody has blogged about Alice's wedding. Granny wrote me a lovely letter about it "nobody was drunk" I find that hard to believe... Photos please.
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Ruths party -- PICTURES

As some of you may know Ruth was the grand old age of 27 last 30th Aug. She had told me that the party started at 7pm. Trevor came for a drink and dinner in Vauxhall then he, Alex, Gavin, Alexander and I arrived at the party in Hackney at 8. Carolyn was already waiting outside the pub. It was locked and dark. A man with keys arrived after about 5 minutes and let us in. Ruth came about 30 minutes after that!!!

It got off to a slow start, but was busy and very good fun from about 9. Lots of Ruths lovely crazed friends were there. Kieran, Nick, Megan, Tim, Holly, Lizzie, Kemi … It ended at 3am and I got to sleep about 6am. I proceeded to Suffolk where David and Camilla cured my hangover with lovely dry martinis. See you all next Saturday!

Alice's Hen Do

Much fun was had at Alice's hen do on Saturday. We met on Tooting Bec common, under a very cold and grey sky, where we had the first half of the festivities - sports day.

This involved relay, egg and spoon, and three-legged races, a lot of drinking, some eating and a lot more cat-calling of joggers who looked very bemused by the 15 or so of us with our mismatch of dayglo and retro sports wear.

We were going to have a wheel-barrow race (my all-time favourite) but sadly it began to rain so we adjourned to a nearby pub, where we proceeded to confound a few more people.

In preperation for the evening section of the hen-do we went back to champion organisor Emily's flat where we ate more, drank even more and transformed ourselves into the most gorgeous bunch of 1950s prom queens ever.

And we looked absolutely fabulous. So fabulous that, when we got to the Clapham Grand, a pair of twins declared their love for Alice and tried to persuade her to run away with them. But she was having none of it!

chronic keelings

I tried to use the **MAKE A NEW POST ** prompt today using 8brothers as the member name which was a failure. So I tried Tom instead which also did not work. Then I reverted to the typepad website which i am using now and I hope it works.

We are expecting Jim and family to drop in for lunch tomorrow on their way back from Salcombe. I spoke to Jim this morning and discovered that he has broken his wrist badly and gashed his neck after falling off a ten foot wall. He was admittedly under the influence of valium which had been prescribed to relieve the pain of sciatica. Clearly being at the top of a ten foot wall was a bad plan but a friend of theirs had discovered that their boat had been washed away by the storms and thought they should try to retrieve it.

Imogen was due in hospital this week to have the first of a series of operations on her mouth to cut back her overgrown gums (general anaesthetic and overnight stay). Very annoyingly the op was cancelled the day before it was scheduled, but we hope to get her back to the hospital next Wednesday for the op. All rather tiresome.

Simon should have had his knee op by now. I hope that went well.

Has Trevor had his hip replaced? I think it was due for this week.

At the moment we are under siege from builders. We are in the process of having our first floor completely upgraded and refurbished. Also we will have a ground floor loo and shower fitted. So we have moved out of the back of the house and we are consolidating into the front rooms. We are aiming to get the ground floor cloakroom finished asap and then move everything downstairs for the front rooms and our bathroom to be re-done.

A few months of a very upside down house/life lie ahead of us. As Flora said, it will be like living in a bungalow.

love Tom
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Big sister trounces brother in mud wrestling row

After last year's stirling Keeling appearance at Secret Garden Party (Alice, Ryan, Jude, Lizzie, Ruth & Trevor) the George Keeling branch had to defend the family name alone this time.

But, as you may agree, we did our best in difficult circumstances and succeeded in making complete idiots of ourselves in true style.

For the record, Trev lost the mud wrestling (held in a purpose built pit) in a shamefully quick 15 second round. We were going to go for best of three but it was 5am, we were very tired and emotional, and Trevor realised he would be thrashed.

In other highlights, Trev lit a roaring fire under the piano players chair and tied a bemused couple to a pole (much to the amusement of the security guards - no really, they took pictures and laughed).

Ruth joined the suicide sports club (no bungee jumping or cliff skiing sadly) and took part in the world's first four-man wheelie bin downhill roll and the two-man piggy-back child's-tricycle hill dash which ended with synchronised diving into the stream. The tricycle was unhurt.
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How we nearly killed Tom

Having racked their brains how to amuse 6 pre/post pubescent public school teenagers, Granny and Grampa took us on a canal cruise on the Canal du Midi in the South of France. They had one boat, Barbar (Granny's mother) and Emma and Fanny (girl cousins) had another boat. The third and biggest boat was taken by Robert, Trevor, George, Simon, David and Tom. Tom was about 7. Jim and Paul were deemed too young and left in the care of nannies (or whatever) in London.

The scene is set. The boys boat was a pigsty. I remember cowering on my bunk to keep away from the mess in the galley. Granny sensibly refused to come on board. Trevor cunningly volunteered himself as boat cook so he didn't have to do any washing up, which was never done anyway. Canal cruises are quite boring. You proceed at a slow walking pace thrugh an endless vista of fields and trees. What could six boys do for fun? Water skiing seemed like a good idea. But there were no skis. The nexxt best thing was towing somebody behind the boat in the life saving ring. We tied a rope to it and elected Tom, as the youngest, to test it. We gathered at the back of the boat an Tom bravely jumped off in the life saving ring. I remember the rope unravelling on the water surface. Suddenly it became taut and Tom was dragged through the water with a terrific wake. His legs dragged back, the life ring tilted down and aqua planed underwater. Tom had disappeared. We could only see the taut rope disappearing into the water. Presumably he was being dragged along the bottom ot the canal.

Gulp. Gulp. Not a good look.

I dived into the water  to try to recover Tom from the bottom. The barge and Tom (still submerged) rapidly passed  me and I was left floundering. Luckily Simon had more sense. He calmly walked to the front of the barge and turned the engine off. Tom bobbed to the surface. Undamaged.
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Lizzie and friends come to Berlin

Lizzie with her fireman boyfriend James came to Berlin last weekend. They were accompanied by Kemi, Tricia, Sarah, Tarik and Greg. I met them in a restaurant in Friedrichshain near their hotel.  After that we went on to Tresor (http://www.tresorberlin.de/). Tresor has recently re-opened in a new location and Alexander and I wanted to test it. The location is fantastic. Serious industrial concrete. But its full of chavs, as Lizzie observed when we first went in. Still we had fun.

I saw them again on Sunday when they came over to Schoneberg where I live. They had done a pub crawl via the Bauhaus museum and the Reichstag. I found them in a the cheesy American cocktail bar slurping from a jug of Mohito. Then we all came back to my flat and had more drinks and a couple of rounds of racing demon. Sarah was an expert (apparently she has played at Jacobs.) James didn't get it.
Ruth commented
i wondered who that mysterious hunk was in lizzie's facebook pics! the infamous fireman.

Saturday, September 1, a London park

This post is an invitation to all, but also a plea for ideas.

I am planning my birthday party and I am thinking about having a Tintin themed picnic in the park.

Trev and I had a bit of a brain storming session and we came up with a couple of good ideas.

- Fancy dress, obviously

- Tintin-quiz treasure hunt

- A mass game of kick the can, the can being an empty tin of the infamous Golden Claws crab meat (this is definitely our best idea)

And then we got stuck

I’d also like to use this opportunity to formally ask Uncle Tom if he would be master of ceremonies, if he can make it

Tom's post

Yesterday I had another visit from our resident stoat.

We first saw it one day when we were parking our car in the garage and we saw this little creature looking at us from our kindling pile in the corner of the garage. A couple of weeks later I spotted it from my office window prancing around on the garage roof, a few feet away from me. It was there for about five minutes and I tried to photograph it but the pictures were very bad through my window panes. I did open the window to improve my line of vision but then it ran over right to the window, stared at me and then shot out of sight.

Yesterday it appeared on the window sill in front of me peering into my office for a few moments and then scuttled off along the sill into the brambles. I did grab the camera again but I was not quick enough to get a snap.

This morning when I came into the office there was a crashing noise beside one window and there was a gigantic hornet trying to get outside. I fetched a jam jar and trapped it so that I could leave it in the kitchen for the children to see while they had breakfast. I have now released it outside. During that process I used a four foot stick to transplant it onto an oak tree and I could feel its wings buzzing my hand, all the way from the end of the stick.

Yesterday evening I played cricket and things went unbelievably well. I clean bowled two batsmen and another was stumped while I was bowling. Also I caught out a fourth batsman. That tally accounted for two of the most reliable batsmen on the other team. When I batted things continued very well and I scored our winning run, hit a six and totalled 31 not out. In the pub afterwards I was called the  man of the match!

my new post

Last week Imogen was in a long distance race at school (running round their playing fields a couple of times). The race was for her year and the year above. Three boys from the year above her took first second and third places and she came fourth. Last term she had been captain of her cross country team against other schools. Edward had also been captain of his team in his year.

Last holidays Imo taught herself to do forward somersaults on the trampoline so she can get right round in the air and land firmly on her feet.

Last weekend we played cricket against the village. Very unusually the result was a draw with both teams bowled out for 129 runs. Archie, Fred and Ted all played well, representing the spirit of youth. In the pub afterwards we learnt that this weekend's fixture is the product of a match that has been played every year since 1964 when Howard and Trevor were both twelve. There had been a few previous skirmishes between the family ad the Village when Dad was even younger than then.

Electricity - 'live' and 'neutral'

I have often wondered why electric plugs has a 'live' and 'neutral' connections and you are strictly supposed to wire the live wire to the live connection and neutral to neutral. I have long suspected that this is nonsense. After all we know that + and - in electricity is just a convention. In basic physics you are taught that current flows from + to -. Later on you find out than in a wire the current is electrons, and they actually 'flow' from - to +. Anyway mains electricity is alternating, its not flowing anywhere its just vibrating backwards and forwards 50 times a second.

Recently I have been changing quite a lot of plugs from British to German.  German plugs only have two prongs and you can put either prong in either hole. They do have a live connection and a neutral one but you can turn the plug over

to connect them the wrong way round. All my rewired appliances work fine. Even the fan heater. (I dont know if the fan goes backwards!)

I am staying with David and he had a theory that you couldn't be electrocuted by the neutral wire. He has a screwdriver which, he says, lights up when you touch the live but not when you touch the neutral. It seemed to do that but I didn't believe it. So we unscrewed the socket from the wall and I touched live then neutral in turn. I was wearing socks. They BOTH gave me mild electric shocks. David didn't dare do it without his rubber soled shoes on.

CONCLUSION: It doesn't matter whether you wire live to live or live to neutral. You can forget the stupid colours. (But do remember to wire the nice green and yellow one to earth!)

An old roller

Last weekend a friend of mine and I visited a local car workshop where the owner builds classic Jaguar cars to order for anyone with about £40,000 to blow. There were some very beautiful looking machines there, my spider looked rather self-conscious.

There was also a 1936 Rolls Royce which somebody had brought along for the day and I thought it looked very similar to my memory of Grandpa's old roller that we used to play in at the Oast House. I took a photo of it which is attached. Does it ring a bell with any of you?

Later:  Dad reckons the number plate of Grandpa's roller was DLW 656 which they remembered because of the useful acronym Dawes Loses Weight.....However he also thinks tha the coachwork would have been done by Jack Barclay rather than Park Shaw.

Trev reckons the model of car is the same, so my conclusion is that the rolls royce I saw the other day probably was the same model as Grandpa's. How interesting for me!!
Click read more for fascinating comment posted five years later

Ruth in Berlin

I have just got back from spending the weekend in Berlin, visiting Dad in his lovely new flat. We spent about half the time putting together flatpack furniture and half the time having fun in cool bars with the cutting edge Berlin crew.

From Thursday until Sunday it was gloriously sunny and hot and we were fortunate enough to spend the last hours of the spring-summer in a very nice club/bar/circus (no, really!) which looked over the river and even had swings that you could be dangerously drunk and near the water on. Sadly it then poured down for the

rest of our trip and I got drenched and caught a cold.

I managed to make my holiday last just a little bit longer, be a bit more exciting and cost about twice as much by losing my passport on the way to the airport late on Tuesday night.

But I got to see Dad again, twice, learnt the train journey to the airport off by heart and went to see the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate while I waited for the British Embassy staff to get their lazy arses out of bed. So it was all good xx

Silver Wedding PARTY

July 14 2007 from 12 noon

Celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary

     at a Summer Party at Model Farm

There will be lunch, tea and supper, and camping space and local B&B’s.

Tell us which meals you hope to be here for.

Reply on the blog, or to camillakeeling@hotmail.com. Hard copy invites to follow.
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Belated happy birthday

I am SO bad at birthdays,

I am SO bad at birthdays,

Happy birthday dear georgie boy,

Happy birthday to you.

My new flat

I am now the proud owner (for a year and if I don’t get thrown out) of a flat in the heart of Schöneberg. Schöneberg is Berlin's equivalent of Soho. I got the keys on Tuesday. On the 4th floor, it has a nice south-facing balcony and a large kitchen with all units installed and a gas cooker. Both are rare in a flat in Berlin. My stuff should come over from the Jacobs before May. There's plenty of room. Ruth is booked in for May 4th, make your bookings now! It needs a new floor, lots of lights and furniture. So there’s a lot to do. I bought the floor (imitation parquet – cheap as chips) in Bauhaus yesterday.

And this is the living room / balcony.

The German language

I’ve been learning German these last few weeks. I’m at German lessons three hours per day + homework and five days per week. Its very amusing and interesting. We are doing prepositions. It seems that most German prepositions can be translated into most English prepositions. You just have to know the right context to do it. For example an English preposition is ‘at’. In German it can be an, auf, bei, für, in, mit, nach, über, um, von, vor, zu. That covers about half of common German prepositions. I have made a small matrix to map German prepositions against English ones. There's a dot where one can mean the other.

Yesterday we studied a short passage about Grunewald, which is a huge wood in Berlin and is ‘beloved of Berliners’. In the six year war (Weltkrieg II) it got bombed to bits. (God knows why the Brits an Yanks were bombing a forest.) The Berliners replanted it and also build ‘devils mountain’ (Teufelsberg) with the rubble from the destroyed city. As homework we were asked to write a short essay about Grunewald. I am proud to say that I invented a new word. It’s Weltkriegschutt. That means world-war-rubble – quite an important natural resource in Berlin! When I read out the sentence: Der Teufelberg war vom Weltkriegschutt gebaut, my teacher looked up and nodded in agreement. Hurrah.