Tag Archives: presentation

Preparing to Prepare

22 Replies

I have started.

After looking at a number of sites for advice on Power Point I found myself no wiser after a couple of hours. I recognised the words but not the concepts. It involves buttons and menus and stuff, but I knew that when I started. If you told me it involved dancing elephants and the Dagenham Girl Pipers I wouldn’t actually have any proof that you weren’t telling the truth. I am going to have to involve somebody considerably smarter and more technical than I am. Regular readers will realise that I am, of course, referring to Julia.

I did, however, take on one gem of wisdom – that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Or, to put it another way, if the content is poor Power Point won’t improve it, just project it on the wall so that even people at the back of the room can see how bad it really is.

With that in mind I have started to think about the content.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Bradford on Avon Tribute Medal with Great War Campaign Medals

Another thing that I read was that you should follow the 10 – 20 – 30 rule. This states that a presentation should feature ten slides or less, last twenty minutes or less and involve a typeface of at least 30 points. This means that it has to be punchy, to the point and written in big letters so you can’t fit too many words onto a slide. As a further refinement they suggest dividing the age of the oldest member of the audience audience by two and using that as the minimum font size. As we have an eighty-year-old member that means 40 point, which, as he’s troubled by cataracts, is probably not a bad idea.

You see, I’m getting better already…

They actually expect about an hour, and to be fair, it needs to be around that length to make it worth people making then effort of comiing to the meeting. The material falls neatly into two halves so I’m going to aim for an introduction, two twenty minute sections and a summing up. That should keep it snappy and fill the time.

On that note I had better get off, as I now have some research to do.

The top picture is the Brighouse Tribute Medal with a pair of Great War Campaign Medals, the other is the medal from Bradford on Avon with a similar pair of medals. They are both going to feature in the presentation.

 

Some Unexpected Snow

17 Replies

We did expect snow this afternoon, it was just that we were expecting it in a different place. It was supposed to be on high ground in Derbyshire. Instead, it snowed on the low ground of Nottingham.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Carlton Hill – Nottingham

At 12.30 pm it started to rain. By 1.00 it had started to resemble a wintry shower.Then it began to look like snow, which it wasn’t, as none was forecast. By the time I parked by the side of the road it was beginning to stick.

I nearly went straight home, as I had things to do, but I went to visit the jewellers instead and watched from their office window as the flakes became larger and formed a four inch blanket of snow.

That, of course, was just the start of my problems.As I sat in the car to come home, the road seemed to fill with traffic. I cut through a side street and joined a main road. If only I had known what horrors lurked ahead…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Snow in the Trees

I won’t bore you with details, but will merely point out that a fifteen minute journey took me two hours as the traffic system of Nottingham proved unable to accommodate snow and travel at the same time. I actually had to stop at KFC to use the toilets. Such are the demands of an ancient  bladder.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Porchester Road – Nottingham

This gave me plenty of time to take photos, as a lot of the time was spent parked and waiting. It was, at the same time, both very annoying and an opportunity for photography.

It’s currently melting nicely, and I’m hoping that driving conditions will be good in the morning.

Magpie in the snow
View across the Rooftops
Snowy Detail

 

In the evening I battled with the remains of the day’s gridlock as I made it through to the Numismatic Society meeting. The speaker had managed to make it, so it seemed only fair to turn up, despite the temptation to stay at home. He was talking about his hobby – metal detecting – and was an entertaining speaker.  I now have just 4 weeks to prepare my presentation…

It seems the bridge will be staying closed for a few days more, and that the Highways Agency has been way out in its estimates of the re-opening. Julia is back on the bus tomorrow. I feel guilty but the bus was delayed badly today, and is likely to be delayed tomorrow, despite using bus lanes. In a car we have no chance of getting through without queuing for hours.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Detail on a Snowy Day

More from Sibsey

8 Replies

I wanted a look at the church and war memorial at Sibsey because I have a medallion awarded to a Sibsey man for his part in the Great War – normally called a tribute medal. It’s just over an inch high and I always thought it was a watch fob, but I’ve recently seen one pictured and it should have a bar and pin, the bar bearing the words “Sibsey Boys Fund Great War Souvenir”. Research doesn’t always turnn up the things you want. Corporal Good seems to have survived the war, as he doesn’t appear on the war memorial.

Gift from Sibsey 1918
Gift from Sibsey 1918 – Cpl S. Good

According to the Boston Guardian 22 January 1916, Corporal S. Good of the RAMC had just spent a week on leave with his parents, Mr and Mrs F Good  of Sibsey. I used this information to check the census – no sign of him in 1911, but he was listed in 1891 – Samuel Good.

I haven’t been able to pick him up on the military records, which is annoying, but I did pick him up on the 1939 Roll, the one that was used for ID Cards and rationing. As the 1931 Census results were destroyed in the Blitz and the 1941 Census was postponed, the 1939 list is quite important.

In 1939 he was the landlord of the Britannia Inn, Church St, Boston. It is now “Boston’s premier fun bar”. Those words, to be honest, appear to be like a glimpse into hell.

Searching newspapers on-line for the pub name I found that his wife had died in 1942, that they had been married 15 years and that they had one daughter, who went to Boston High School. He was an ex-serviceman, holder of the Mons Star and two of his brothers had died as a result of being gassed in the previous war.

I have found that he set fire to his curtains when he used petrol in an attempt to light his fire and that he was summonsed for two blackout offences during the war, which is ironic when you consider that he was an Air Raid Warden.

There’s still a lot more to find, but I’ve managed to rough out a good part of his life, which will be appearing as part of my talk at the Numismatic Society. There is, however, quite a lot more to do.

 

Only 51 weeks until Christmas!

10 Replies

Yesterday, one of the customers told me the fact I have used in the title. It makes the year seem rather short.

This, in turn, lead me to calculate the length of time before Spring starts. Just 56 days. That, of course, is only half the story. Meteorological Spring may start on 1st March according to the scientists, but the weather doesn’t always agree.

My parents were married at the end of March and, as they told me for 60 years, it snowed.

One thing you can rely on is the daylength. It’s already feeling longer than it did (and it is actually ten minutes longer than it was on the shortest day). This means that it is lighter when we leave the shop, which makes a big psychological difference. On 29th February, in Nottingham, the day will be over three hours longer than it is now. Even the thought of it is enough to cheer me up.

It’s a sobering insight into the shortness of life. The days of wine and roses are indeed not long…

deer3

I was watching the Christmas University Challenge Final tonight and found myself doing quite well against a number of people with high-powered jobs and multiple degrees. The main difference between us, apart from my lack of degree and a job as a shop assistant, is that I suspect they all had confidence, plans ambition and productive work habits. I’ve just spent Christmas watching TV and playing Candy Crush when I should have been writing a best-seller and running an eBay business.

Ah well…

I did manage to get the outline of my presentation done. I have quite a lot of material on 1919 and went through it, with suitable reference to mutinies, Russia, Ireland, strikes, riots, war memorials and the Baltic.

Happy at the breadth and depth of my knowledge, and my grasp of the subject matter, I was alerted to the fact that this feeling was not universal by a gentle snore from Julia’s direction.

It looks like I’m going to have to do some editing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

UK £5 2017

Today’s pictures are all recycled, with vague links to Christmas and 1919.