Geoff Jones

Cambridge -UK – Open Coffee

Just back from the inaugural OpenCoffee meet up in Cambridge, UK. Organised by Jed. The event was in Cafe Nero on Kings Parade in Cambridge. A total of about 20 folks (Only two from the fairer sex, Juliette and ? Laura where did you get too!) turned up. I was, of cause, easily the oldest there!

It was a good turn out of VC’s, Angels and entrepreneurs with a lot of new faces to prove that the Cambridge scene is still as vibrant as ever. I met Chris from audioanalytic, Adriano? of Hotprints, Peter from Broadersheet plus Laurence & Alex.

Pretty ideal for a first event and actually worked very well in the regular coffee shop environment (apart from getting told to sit down once by the baristas). I quite like the slightly anarchic nature of the event compared to the regular structured evenings that are the norm around here, and it works better than in a pub type environment in my opinion. I can see why the coffee places were so popular in the 1700s

Will be interesting to see where it goes from here. Apparently there is another newish event, CamCreative next week at The Arts so will go and compare and contrast.

Subsidies in action

Posted on February 17, 2009March 8, 2017

From blogoir I discovered this cool site trying to throw light on EU farm & agricultural subsidies.

For instance in the UK the average direct aid per farm worker is €9,236 and each hectare of farm land gets €210. Huge companies also have their snout in the trough e.g. Tate & Lyle Europe receives an annual subsidy of over £120 million! Tate & Lyle is a company with annual turnover of over £3 billion and profits of £300m

I also see from the cabinet office that Tate & Lyle took Sir Brian Bender & his wife to Wimbledon too – must be to sample their sugar on the strawberries.

School work

Posted on February 16, 2009March 8, 2017
4 Comments on School work

Whilst in one of my attics, trying to sort out why the shower drain isn’t working.

I came across the ironing board that I made at school when I was 13 or 14. Since it was combined woodwork/metalwork I had to make the bracket as well! Interestingly my mum used it until she died, giving it well over 30 years of use!

Here’s the bracket that I so struggled with nearly 50 years ago :-

In those days we also had to make things like ashtrays and matchbox holders:-

alas, no longer polished to perfection 🙂

The Pièce de résistance however was the bookcase I made. Still in use to this day in my bedroom.

An other memory of metalwork was in our final school leavers exam, we had to make a toilet roll holder.

I was total clueless so the invigilator helped me and in fact just about made it! – Result a distinction in metalwork and a life lesson in always asking for help and getting other folks to do what you are not good at 🙂