Day 5: Sunday 25th September
The light of day reveals that the window looks directly out onto the marina, with a view across to the Historic Quay museum. I watch the birds and boats bobbing and listen to the machinations of the evil Hazel (whose departure was far too quick and easy in my view) on the Archers minibus. Time’s pressing on so I switch off after a while, resolving to make sure not to hear any spoilers until I can catch up properly. To no avail, for when I go out to the car D, who’s been listening, says, “Emma’s just told Ed the baby’s his”. Well, we all saw that coming anyway. Not that I believe it.
Back at Grandma’s I’m offered tea and toast by her and Aunt C; their hospitality is jolly jolly, but I can’t help but wonder whether the menfolk around here are somewhat helpless. Later, a little tactlessly, I wonder this aloud, with the response from Uncle E that he was perfectly capable of fending for himself until he met Aunt E. Hehe. I observe a number of similarities between myself and Uncle A – both vegetarian, neither of us keen on alcohol, the same black track-top, an appreciation of the Ford Focus, and very little idea of what to do with our lives. The principal differences being that I have a degree whereas he has three children, a mortgage, and a twenty-year head start.
With us, Grandma, and Aunt & Uncle B, there are three sets of newspapers in the house so the rest of the morning is spent dossing around and reading – on my part, at least. One thing I notice whenever I visit is the relentless redevelopment of the town. There’s no doubt it needed it, and I suppose it’s as nothing compared to the redevelopment of, say, Birmingham, but redevelopment isn’t a familiar concept in southern market towns. In the last five years a 1960s school has been replaced by one of the first City Academies. It rather resembles a gasometer, and more importantly, has a distinctly less than good reputation amongst those we meet. Strikingly, the Victorian church I visited one Christmas is now buried under a branch of Morrison’s; a new church has been built a little way away, but Grandma shows me the silver plaque on the floor of the vegetable section, marking the former position of the altar.
We’re all going out to lunch – if we can find a table for thirteen on a Sunday with about an hour’s notice. Warning: car-based digression ahead. Uncle C has traded in his Hyundai for a Laguna since our last visit, but apparently what he really wanted was an Audi S3. A man with some taste, then. We eventually find two tables at a chain-pub on the hill above the Tees Barrage; I drive, and we give 9-year-old Cousin C and 11-year-old Cousine A a lift (they’re about the right size for those back seats). C gets to push the button for the roof, and I remember when I was thirteen and first had the excitement of a folding-roof-demonstration at the local Saab dealership. Ah, the heady pleasures of childhood… Disclaimer: my interactions with C have been cited by a certain red-haired friend as evidence that I’d make a good father. I’d like to make it clear that I’d make no such thing and have no intention of proving my point. I will, however, concede that I might just be suited for the rôle of outwardly-groovy-and-fun uncle who’s actually deeply unhappy, à la Erasmus Darwin. But I digress.
Whilst I ponder the restaurant’s grounds for restricting my choice by cooking vegetables in wine and battering onion rings in beer (?!), I step outside to take in the view. Uncle B is there already. There’s a good view of the Newport Bridge from here; ‘It doesn’t go up any more…’ &c. I notice that there’s actually not a great deal of evidence that we’re in the middle of a major industrial town. Below us are marshes created when the river was straightened in the 19th century; on the other bank, artificial hills screen the railway yards. And in the distance, the Cleveland Hills, including the distinctly amusingly-named Roseberry Topping.
Back inside, we (Aunt B in particular) do nothing for the waitress’s nerves, but eventually we’re all fed. Hurrah. The A’s have to rush off to get Cousin A to a football match; he’s a season-ticket holder but I have to wonder why, since he seems not to have a good word to say about the team, the fans, the ground… Cousin C joins us at our table for pudding. He rather reminds me of me, as he adds cola to a glass of water and discovers that what you get is a rather unpleasant-tasting glass of water. I show him another favourite experiment of mine – filling a glass until the water’s higher than the glass is – and we debate the question of whether, when the ice melts, the level of the water goes down or up. If any chemists are reading this, I would actually like to know the answer – presumably the water level will go up if the volume of water contained in the ice cubes is greater than the volume of water displaced by them? It’s those hydrogen bonds confusing the issue. ‘Are you my cousin?’ asks C, ‘wow, I’ve got a brainbox for a cousin’. Gosh, not sure how to take that…
After lunch the B’s head for home (somewhere in the North West) and the rest of us decamp to visit Aunt & Uncle E in possibly the most expensive house I’ve ever visited. Whilst large and fashionable it’s not hugely impressive, but the neighbourhood is very … erm … aspirational. The low density means big uncultivated gardens with lots of trees, squirrels caching nuts etc. Across the street some even bigger houses with half-acre gardens are being built; not quite footballers’ houses, but apparently footballers’ parents’ houses. ‘We call that one Southfork,’ quips Uncle E. It’d been ten years since I’d seen the E’s and I was a little unsure what to expect, especially as I knew them to be BMW drivers. Thankfully no crass yuppies were in evidence and their (only) BMW was the oldest on the street (bit of a Donald Woods moment there) – this was two-BMWs-on-every-driveway territory. My unswerving capacity for tact is displayed yet again when I suggest that Great-Aunt-E’s-Grandson’s new Peugeot 206CC is a horrible girly car. ‘Well he does have a girlfriend, you know’. Frankly I think I’d rather be single and decorous. The matter is taken before Uncle C for adjudication. Without loss of attention to the football match on the (large Sony LCD) TV he mutters something along the lines of ‘pah, don’t talk to me about Peugeots’ and I feel somewhat vindicated; I do wonder whether I should go to the library and look for a copy of Tact For Dummies, though.
Conversation includes dodgy fast food and I’m regaled with tales of a local phenomenon known as a ‘parmesan’, which apparently consists of processed meat smothered in processed cheese and is to be consumed only under emergency cases of self-loathing. Presumably. Thankfully there’s none of that in evidence (the food or the loathing) and the afternoon passes pleasantly.
Driving back to Grandma’s I realise that the reason some drivers don’t like modern advice to use third gear in a 30mph zone is because most drivers simply don’t do 30mph in a 30mph zone. Experience suggests that although probably the most important of all speed limits it’s the one that’s almost universally disregarded. Except by people who are stuck behind me, of course. Hoary old cliché it may be, it’s abundantly clear that there really are people who drive at 40mph at all times…
And so to Grandma’s, to dinner, to TV, to books, to bed.
Posted at 1137 on Monday 17th October
Back at Grandma’s I’m offered tea and toast by her and Aunt C; their hospitality is jolly jolly, but I can’t help but wonder whether the menfolk around here are somewhat helpless. Later, a little tactlessly, I wonder this aloud, with the response from Uncle E that he was perfectly capable of fending for himself until he met Aunt E. Hehe. I observe a number of similarities between myself and Uncle A – both vegetarian, neither of us keen on alcohol, the same black track-top, an appreciation of the Ford Focus, and very little idea of what to do with our lives. The principal differences being that I have a degree whereas he has three children, a mortgage, and a twenty-year head start.
With us, Grandma, and Aunt & Uncle B, there are three sets of newspapers in the house so the rest of the morning is spent dossing around and reading – on my part, at least. One thing I notice whenever I visit is the relentless redevelopment of the town. There’s no doubt it needed it, and I suppose it’s as nothing compared to the redevelopment of, say, Birmingham, but redevelopment isn’t a familiar concept in southern market towns. In the last five years a 1960s school has been replaced by one of the first City Academies. It rather resembles a gasometer, and more importantly, has a distinctly less than good reputation amongst those we meet. Strikingly, the Victorian church I visited one Christmas is now buried under a branch of Morrison’s; a new church has been built a little way away, but Grandma shows me the silver plaque on the floor of the vegetable section, marking the former position of the altar.
We’re all going out to lunch – if we can find a table for thirteen on a Sunday with about an hour’s notice. Warning: car-based digression ahead. Uncle C has traded in his Hyundai for a Laguna since our last visit, but apparently what he really wanted was an Audi S3. A man with some taste, then. We eventually find two tables at a chain-pub on the hill above the Tees Barrage; I drive, and we give 9-year-old Cousin C and 11-year-old Cousine A a lift (they’re about the right size for those back seats). C gets to push the button for the roof, and I remember when I was thirteen and first had the excitement of a folding-roof-demonstration at the local Saab dealership. Ah, the heady pleasures of childhood… Disclaimer: my interactions with C have been cited by a certain red-haired friend as evidence that I’d make a good father. I’d like to make it clear that I’d make no such thing and have no intention of proving my point. I will, however, concede that I might just be suited for the rôle of outwardly-groovy-and-fun uncle who’s actually deeply unhappy, à la Erasmus Darwin. But I digress.
Whilst I ponder the restaurant’s grounds for restricting my choice by cooking vegetables in wine and battering onion rings in beer (?!), I step outside to take in the view. Uncle B is there already. There’s a good view of the Newport Bridge from here; ‘It doesn’t go up any more…’ &c. I notice that there’s actually not a great deal of evidence that we’re in the middle of a major industrial town. Below us are marshes created when the river was straightened in the 19th century; on the other bank, artificial hills screen the railway yards. And in the distance, the Cleveland Hills, including the distinctly amusingly-named Roseberry Topping.
Back inside, we (Aunt B in particular) do nothing for the waitress’s nerves, but eventually we’re all fed. Hurrah. The A’s have to rush off to get Cousin A to a football match; he’s a season-ticket holder but I have to wonder why, since he seems not to have a good word to say about the team, the fans, the ground… Cousin C joins us at our table for pudding. He rather reminds me of me, as he adds cola to a glass of water and discovers that what you get is a rather unpleasant-tasting glass of water. I show him another favourite experiment of mine – filling a glass until the water’s higher than the glass is – and we debate the question of whether, when the ice melts, the level of the water goes down or up. If any chemists are reading this, I would actually like to know the answer – presumably the water level will go up if the volume of water contained in the ice cubes is greater than the volume of water displaced by them? It’s those hydrogen bonds confusing the issue. ‘Are you my cousin?’ asks C, ‘wow, I’ve got a brainbox for a cousin’. Gosh, not sure how to take that…
After lunch the B’s head for home (somewhere in the North West) and the rest of us decamp to visit Aunt & Uncle E in possibly the most expensive house I’ve ever visited. Whilst large and fashionable it’s not hugely impressive, but the neighbourhood is very … erm … aspirational. The low density means big uncultivated gardens with lots of trees, squirrels caching nuts etc. Across the street some even bigger houses with half-acre gardens are being built; not quite footballers’ houses, but apparently footballers’ parents’ houses. ‘We call that one Southfork,’ quips Uncle E. It’d been ten years since I’d seen the E’s and I was a little unsure what to expect, especially as I knew them to be BMW drivers. Thankfully no crass yuppies were in evidence and their (only) BMW was the oldest on the street (bit of a Donald Woods moment there) – this was two-BMWs-on-every-driveway territory. My unswerving capacity for tact is displayed yet again when I suggest that Great-Aunt-E’s-Grandson’s new Peugeot 206CC is a horrible girly car. ‘Well he does have a girlfriend, you know’. Frankly I think I’d rather be single and decorous. The matter is taken before Uncle C for adjudication. Without loss of attention to the football match on the (large Sony LCD) TV he mutters something along the lines of ‘pah, don’t talk to me about Peugeots’ and I feel somewhat vindicated; I do wonder whether I should go to the library and look for a copy of Tact For Dummies, though.
Conversation includes dodgy fast food and I’m regaled with tales of a local phenomenon known as a ‘parmesan’, which apparently consists of processed meat smothered in processed cheese and is to be consumed only under emergency cases of self-loathing. Presumably. Thankfully there’s none of that in evidence (the food or the loathing) and the afternoon passes pleasantly.
Driving back to Grandma’s I realise that the reason some drivers don’t like modern advice to use third gear in a 30mph zone is because most drivers simply don’t do 30mph in a 30mph zone. Experience suggests that although probably the most important of all speed limits it’s the one that’s almost universally disregarded. Except by people who are stuck behind me, of course. Hoary old cliché it may be, it’s abundantly clear that there really are people who drive at 40mph at all times…
And so to Grandma’s, to dinner, to TV, to books, to bed.
Posted at 1137 on Monday 17th October
posted by Z31 at 5:00 am
3 Comments:
Well, liquid water takes up less space than ice, but the water level will still probably rise assuming that some of the ice is sticking out of the top of the water, and thus not displacing water, but air. If you fully submerged the ice, however, the water line would sink slightly once the ice melted.
TCH
I did, of course, think about the buoyancy issue; in fact that's what made it confusing because of course as you say an ice cube displaces, as a whole, more water than it contains.
As I understand it the 'buoyancy issue' is one of the most important things about water and is thought to be one of the reason that life works. As for whether the water level goes up or down it depends how much ice is in the glass. If there's only one cube then the lower density of the water under the water level is probly balanced by the water not under the water level. If there's lots of ice, as there often is in drinks then there's generally at least one completely submerged ice cube at which point the water level would go down, however unmeasurably, as when the highly structured h-bonds in ice break down to the less structured liquid state the molecules can be more closely packed and thus raising the density and lowering the volume of the system.......erm water.
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