Going bananas

As a long-term resident of Thailand during the first 10 years or so of this century I am well used to seeing bananas. My father-in-law has several different varieties in his garden. On my return to the UK I thought it might be fun to see if I can grow a banana or two here in England.

I tried to buy a variety that would live outdoors in the UK perhaps Musa basjoo, however, there were none left at my usual Dutch plant supplier. Then in May I saw some small banana plants in 5" pots for sale in my local branch of Lidl, a German-owned supermarket. I bought two for £5.00 and put them in my conservatory as they were not a hardy variety. After a few days it became obvious that were going to grow at a prodigious rate. I potted them into 12" pots and detached a few pups at the same time. The pups are now the size of the originals and the parents are looking really quite impressive. They were labelled as Musa acuminata 'Tropicana' and appear to be a dwarf Cavendish related strain, at least I hope they are 'dwarf'. The Cavendish is the main banana we eat here in Europe, and indeed North America. I've seen huge plantations of them in The Canary Islands and some of the plants towered above me. Probably no hope of them setting fruit here in York, but you never know.

At the moment they are outdoors enjoying our unseasonally mild autumn weather. I'll bring them in when the temperature consistently drops below about 12 degrees centigrade.

New TEFL teacher training course in York

I have now taught a TEFL teacher training for about a year in both Hull and Manchester. Now, I have decided to offer one nearer home in conjunction with a colleague. His name is Ben Dobbs and we have taught various courses together at a couple of institutions, most recently at York University for York Associates. We both have our own teaching/training organisations. We offer expertise in complementary areas, so it seemed natural to combine forces and offer a really good introductory TEFL course in York. 

We both began teaching English after attending an introductory course in York, ooh, too many years ago. Sadly this course no longer runs, so we have decided to fill the gap. 

We are hoping to deliver the first course early in the new year.

Get up to date news from either of these sites:

www.facebook.com/AEIOUKEducation?ref=br_rs  

or

www.bd-comms.co.uk

Bernard's Morning

A piece of creative writing I wrote for my York University course. We were asked to write a piece using trees as a metaphor. 

Bernard's Morning

Bernard bleeped the car locked, pocketed his keys and walked into the wood, the darkness held no fear for him. He’d walked this way many times before. He hoped to reach the high ground just as the sun was rising. He had two miles to go and about 25 minutes to complete the distance. It was early summer now and it was never really dark at this time of year anyway. The eyes adjusted as soon as you left the brightness of the car behind in the car park he had noticed. Bernard was getting old now but he knew he could do the distance by the time dawn glimmered over the high ground beyond the wood. He’d been coming here, to watch the sunrise for 70 years. He did it each year without fail. For more than sixty years now, on the morning of 6^th June: D-Day.

It was here, in this particular wood, that he’d done a great deal of training, with number 2 parachute regiment, during the Second World War. He’d grown to trust his comrades during those exercises and knew they trusted him; all gone now. He came to honour those men so needlessly taken, well before their time. There was Jimmy Rice - a budding architect, Peter Thompson – a skilled mechanic, John Rutter – earmarked for great things in the world of law. All wasted on the beaches of Normandy. He tried to remember the names of as many of his old friends as he could. More difficult now as age had eroded chunks of memory away, piece by relentless piece.

After 22 minutes he reached the crest of a small hillock, beyond this lay the bulk of the forest and the view he remembered from all those years ago. He gazed out over a scene of carnage, acres of trees cut down, clear felled. Nothing left but grave-like stumps and snapped minor branches. No trees now, nothing living over one foot tall.

Just then the sun crested the higher ground beyond and revealed the full brutal results of the mechanical timber garnering that had obviously finished only recently. The sharp acrid smell of too much pine resin in the air almost too much for Bernard. He knew the trees as his friends and now they were gone. He caught a glimpse of colour about 40 feet off. It was a lone red poppy. 

Father's Day gift - a different kind of strawberry plant

I was invited to the garden centre by my wife and family to buy a plant for Father's Day. No particular thing in mind. Maybe an orchid, perhaps a hardy geranium, or something completely different. Well I didn't see anything different or inspiring in the orchid department. I probably have more different varieties of hardy geraniums than most garden centres already. I've been getting interested in ferns of late. However, once again there was nothing that inspired me.
It was my youngest daughter who spotted some strawberry plants in a hanging basket. The amazing thing was the colour of the flowers. They were pink. The variety is called 'Toscana', I don't know what they taste like yet but they are very decorative when in flower. All the other strawberry varieties I've seen have had white flowers on them, like the wild ancestor has. These were very very striking and I asked if I could have a pot.
Thanks for my Father's Day present. I hope they taste as good as they look.

Roman coins discovered in 2000 year old yew tree

There are several venerable old yew trees in the British Isles. Each one of them has a great many tales to tell I'm sure. However, one old tree, the location of which I shall keep secret, has tales to tell from many hundreds of years ago. The recent stormy weather ripped limbs from many trees and completely downed many hundreds up and down the land.
Our tree fell victim to these winds too and a huge section of its massive central trunk fell away; ripping a huge section off the tree's Eastern flank. On inspection of the damage a horde of silver and gold Roman coins has been discovered.

They were in a lead box and it is thought this had been hidden in the trunk of the tree for many hundreds of years. It is of course not possible to know exactly when they were hidden. However the lead box is inscribed with Roman letters and although crushed over the ages it is possible to read the word 'arbor' - Latin for 'tree'. The local museum has provisionally valued them at "Not less than 4.5 million pounds." They would not be drawn on when the box had been hidden, but do not rule out the possibility that they were hidden there during the Roman occupation of Britain. They await the results of a dendrochronological survey of the tree being carried out by Durham University. The newest coin has been dated at 379 AD so obviously they are all at least 1635 years old and may very well have been in the boughs of the ancient tree since that date.
If all this seems a little too incredible to believe look at the date of this post. 

A change of roles this week

I have been teaching a Thai student intensively for the last month. He needs to get a good score in the IELTS test to enable him to enter a university in the UK. He had a test on Saturday and so today he is having a break from learning English. 

Our purpose built classroom has not been idle though. My wife, who is Thai, has begun teaching Thai and taught her first student today. She will be fine as she trained in Bangkok at the British Council to teach English and was better than some of the native speakers. 

I enjoyed the change, but tomorrow I'm back at the chalk face and my wife doesn't teach again until next Monday. 

New job as a teacher trainer - well, one weekend a month at first.

Further to my post about about passing on my 15 years plus of English as a foreign language teaching I am pleased to announce that I have been selected.
I will begin by teaching a 20 hour course in Hull once a month.
I'm very pleased to have been selected as the competition was stiff.
Here is a link to their website:
www.theteflacademy.co.uk

The World's scariest landings

A few years ago, 2010 to be exact, I was invited to write a guest blog on Rachel Cotterill's very popular blog. I chose to write about airports and some of the scarier landings to a few of them that I have experienced.
I thought I should share this post with you here on my own blog.  So, I've included a link to the original post on Rachel's blog which I urge you to visit. Her posts are varied and always interesting.

http://blog.rachelcotterill.com/2010/06/worlds-scariest-landings.html

15 years of teaching EFL - time to pass on the knowledge

After 15 years of teaching English as a Foreign Language it's time I took more of a role teaching and training other teachers. Although I have presented at conferences and seminars for many years and taught occasional input sessions for Cambridge CELTA courses I've never done a whole training course myself. Last Saturday I attended a short training course and interview which included a 10 minute presentation. I'm hopeful that the outcome is that I run training course for one or two weekends each month.
It's for a company that run introductory courses for those wishing to become TEFL teachers. They are 120 hour courses with 20 hours face to face (me I hope) and the remaining 100 hours online.

I will know on Monday if I've been selected. Watch this space.

5 years on - still no nicotine

While sitting at my computer this morning I realised that it is now five years since I smoked a cigarette. At that time I was on retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. I had applied for a job in York after 10 years living and working in Thailand. I thought to myself that as cigarettes in Thailand were less than £1 per packet but were at least £5, possibly as much as £7 per packet, depending on the brand, in England, I had better think about stopping.

I'd never really tried to stop before, thinking it would be much too difficult. In the end I just stopped. A day or two of craving then nothing at all. And this after more than 30 years of smoking.

Since that time I've seen a whole new industry spring up making 'electronic cigarettes'. I see these are very popular, but have the smokers really given up smoking? I think not, merely changed their way of taking nicotine.

How do I feel? Much fitter, no cough, clean smell. I wish I'd done it years ago. 

Khao Soi - my favourite Thai meal

We recently travelled from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. It's a long way so we needed to stop several times for food. We were with my brother-in-law who works for EGAT (Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand). In his job he travels all over Thailand and is great for knowing the best places to eat. He recommended a restaurant in Lampang which serves a really great dish of Khao Soi, sometimes spelled Kao Soi.

I had eaten Khao Soi while living in Bangkok. The shop which used to sell it though fell victim to the riots of 2008 and I have been longing for a dish since that time. So, as you can imagine, I was very pleased to hear we'd be stopping at a restaurant well-known for this speciality of Northern Thailand. I usually choose to eat chicken breast and was a little disappointed to hear they only served chicken legs here. It tasted amazing though and I washed it down with a glass of guava juice. I asked for an extra portion of crispy noodles, as I like that part the most. Then my brother-in-law ordered another bowl for me of just the curry and noodles. I ate the lot. It really is that good.

On the return journey, three days later, we stopped at the same restaurant (Khao Soi O-Ma) and had two bowls again. Yes, I put weight on during this holiday.

Below you will find a link to a recipe for it. Enjoy.

Link to Recipe on food.com

Back from Thailand and full of resolutions to post at least once a week to this blog.

Just returned from Thailand. Not as warm as may think at this time of year. We visited many places and took a lot of pics. I'll drip feed them over the next few weeks rather than all in one go. 

Working on a new website - posts may be a little sparse for a while.

 

Hi, big changes in my life. New job, new house! Two of the most stressful things that can happen in one's life apparently.

I appear to be enjoying the challenge though. Nothing too stressful so far. Usual niggles with tradesmen, solicitors and building societies. But, nothing a grown man with the support of his family can't deal with.

Maybe it's because I've just returned from a week's retreat at a Buddhist monastery.

I'm also working on a new website for our family business. Have a look and see how it progresses and morphs over the next few weeks.
http://aeioukeducation.co.uk/

 

Latest orchid photos

 

A few months ago I posted a couple of photos showing some of the orchids from my bathroom. I promised to post more as they bloomed. The latest crop of flowers from one species were particularly magnificent, so here is a photo. For the botanically minded it is Dendrobium compactum, a species native to South East Asia.

A budding designer in the family

My eldest daughter has just started secondary school. She seems to be enjoying it so far. One of the last things she did at primary school before the summer break was to design a logo for the local church. We didn't think anymore about it until we passed the church recently. You can imagine our surprise when we saw her group's design outside the church professionally produced and full size. What do you think?

The Zugspitze - top of Germany

The family recently had a well earned holiday in Germany and Austria. One of the places we had been told was a must see was the highest mountain in Germany - Der Zugspitze. The mountain is by no means the highest I've climbed, but it is certainly the most spectacular. The sense of exposure and vertigo inducing drops on all sides at the summit were truly awesome. Those who know me well will know that I don't use that adjective lightly and reserve it for places and experiences that really deserve it. The Zugspitze most certainly fitted that category.

That's me in the orange t-shirt. The photo was taken by my wife from the buildings near the summit across to the highest point. To reach the very top you need to use a via ferrata or iron stairway: very scary with no safety equipment and a pair of trainers!

 Once again the guy in the orange shirt with the blue rucksack is me. The drop from this point is about 1 kilometre straight down. You cannot tell from the picture but my legs were a bit wobbly here.

Reunited with my wife further down the mountain. A great day. I took a little piece of rock from the summit which I am going to mount on a plinth with a little plaque in German saying where it came from. Photos later. 

Butterfly Central - by chance

Took this at my local garden centre. Didn't  have a good camera with me so just grabbed the opportunity with my mobile phone. I think it turned out all right. I must take a rooted piece of this plant (Sedum spectabile) from mum's garden next time I visit if it is this good at attracting butterflies. I'm pretty certain they are small tortoiseshell butterflies. (Aglais urticae)

Return to blogging

After some months away from blogging due to work pressure I'm now back to the blogosphere. I work full time at teaching as opposed to mornings teaching and afternoons doing things digital. The digital side of things has been taken away from branch level in the main. Not really sad about it.
I've also discovered a new hobby for all the family - geocaching. See www.geocaching.com for details. More when I have a spare half hour or so to do it justice.

Maths and 10 year olds

As someone who can barely remember what I had for lunch each day for the last week I am struggling to check my daughter's maths homework, despite being an accountant for more years than I care to recall. We have recently been looking at the differences between area and volume today. I became more than a little agitated -at one point I looked skywards and must have transmitted my dismay to my daughter. Looking on the bright side of things she patently has no problem with English because her reply was "I'm not stupid dad, just partially confused" 

Pointless Signs: Harewood House Yorkshire

The first in an occasional series focusing on signs that, quite frankly, would have been better left unmade.
I was enjoying a rather pleasant Saturday afternoon walk in the grounds of Harewood House in Yorkshire. The house itself is owned by a noble family closely related to the Queen and is well worth a visit. The grounds however, like so many gardens and grounds of the once grand country houses of the nobility, have seen better days. The fact that there is not a staff of twenty gardeners anymore is probably the main reason for this. There are some good walks to be had though, and the walled garden and lake on the far side of the estate looked as if they would provide a quiet few miles of walking.

Back to my walk, I was ambling along the path skirting the lake when my attention was caught by a small notice about 20 feet off to the right in the surrounding woods. Being a rather inquisitive sort of person I naturally took a detour from the path and went closer to read what it had to say. You judge for yourselves if the notice was worth making.