Advent-ures

We had a home morning today - at least, after I got back from my ride. I'm suffering a bit from lack of exercise, and with my new weather gear, I was able to puff along in the drizzle without concerns about my visibility and vision. There were some rather heavy and blustery showers mid morning.

But we weren't going to stay home all day, when there was a chocolate opportunity. We called into Cadbury World, and had a fun tour of the place. I thought it was very well done, with a variety of presentation styles: some self guided through a spooky rainforest (first picture) reading little signs about Aztecs, listening to Mr Cortez bringing beans back to Spain on his boat fending off pirates, some sitting in theatrettes, some walking along looking at machinery, and a cute little kids train ride through a Cocoa Bean village, with all the beans in their daily life (from which these pictures come).


















We saw some fancy hand-made Christmassy chocolates being made, were able to choose our own mixture of add-ins to try to develop the next world-famous chocolate taste, and learn about the history of the company and the founders' Quaker philosophies. And the girls liked the playground as well. I think I'd recommend this visit to anyone between the ages of 5-12 and for those over twenty-something. The teenagers seemed to rush through without trying to take much in.

As soon as we got home at 5pm, I left for Tewkesbury Abbey, to catch the 6pm Advent Carol Service. I wasn't exactly sure where things were, but it wasn't too hard to find, and the campanologists were providing a wonderful change on the bells to help me find my way from the car park to the Abbey. The service was very well sung, and I'm glad that I have the opportunity (most years!) to participate in such things. For those interested, the program included, amongst the sorts of hymns you might expect:

• I look from afar (Palestrina)
• "O" Antiphons
• This is the truth sent from above (Vaughan Williams)
• The tree of life my soul hath seen (Elizabeth Poston)
  
• Peace be to you (Paul & Ruth Manz)
• Bogoroditse dyevo, raduisya, blagodatnaya Mariye (Rachmaninoff)
  
• Dixit Maria (Hassler)
• The Angel Gabriel from heaven came (trad)
• And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed (Handel)
• Voluntary: Final from Symphony I (Vierne)
  

And now the bad news: My new laptop has died again. It's not exactly the same symptoms as before - in fact they're arguably worse: I don't even get any options about whether to recover or boot safely, it just cycles. But I strongly suspect the same fault. I may ask the nice people at BITS if they can help me again (to save a set of about 15 photos that weren't copied onto the other laptop, and a bunch of downloads and bookmarks that aren't that critical), but even if that doesn't work, I'll action that warranty repair plan that I'd started. Misplaced optimism that it would be a once off - the BITS prediction was that the fault would probably recur. So we may have a slightly reduced blogging/skyping frequency over the next little while.