Things that are so much of my daily life are novel to others, and things that are so much part of their daily life are new and novel to me. After all, everyone's got a different life, different tastes and different experiences. Wouldn't it be fearsome if that wasn't the case ... everyone in the world would turn up at London's Paddington station to catch the 17:15 to Slough
and there would be no driver.
But celebrating the difference, I can spread what I hear, and learn, and do to others who are interested. And I seem to be fortunate it being able to find my words to do so, especially on technical matters. Hundreds of people a day visit pages such as the one I wrote explaining
the difference between a join and a left join in MySQL, or the longer article on
uploading images with PHP and storing them in a MySQL database.
I was chatting with someone the other day and talking about a "Splash page" for the Well House Manor network ... and realised that's a term that needs explanation. And chatting with someone else, I realise just how much of an experience a first airline flight can be, especially if your background's such that you happen to have never been airborne until after you're retired.
King Edward the Seventh was King of England for 10 years from 1901. By all accounts, a "bit of a lad" in his youth he came to the throne much later in life after the incredibly long reign of his mother, Queen Victoria. Those were the days of "Empire", when England ruled the world, controlling many large and distant lands from these shores, often with an incredibly small number of local troops and officials. My picture shows the statue of King Edward VII seated on his horse on the dock front at Liverpool Pier - looking out over the Mersey, where so many of the ships left for the colonies.
Why my interest in King Edward? Because Well House Manor was built in 1906, and part of our centenary restoration is taking some of the elements back to original. We've been looking round the local antique shops - hoping to find a tasteful picture of the King, for example, and we're opening up some of the old fire places.
The Edwardian era was, perhaps, halcyon days. World wars, the depression, and the end of empire were still a way forward over the distant horizon, and contruction standards were solid to put it mildly. We're finding that Well House Manor is a fine building, all be it in need of some works where maintainance has been skimped in the past couple of decades.
(written 2006-06-20)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
[677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
[742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
[897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
[927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
[931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
[939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
[951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
[1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
[1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
[1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
[1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
[1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
[1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
[1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
[1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
[1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
[1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
[1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
[1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
[1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
[1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
[1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
[1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
[1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
[1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
[1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
[1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
[1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
[1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
[2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
[2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
[2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
[2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
[2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
[2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
[2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
[3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
[3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
[3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
[3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
[4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
[4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)
Some other Articles
Breaking breadTraining in LiverpoolFrom cat breeder to Cobol to PerlSplash!King Edward VII - days of empireOur new .eu top level domainFinding the language preference of a web site visitorDiscounts and approved supplier listsPerl - turning seconds into days, hours, minutes and secondsJourney planning - Xephos v Transport Direct