Shrivenham Flypast

I was near to Shrivenham this evening when suddenly a Lancaster Bomber and (I think) two Typhoon fighters appeared in close formation and performed a flypast over the Defence Academy. The two fighters disappeared, but the Lancaster did a few more circuits as pictured above. This appears to have been part of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Programme.

Jubilee Spirit in Wantage and Grove

The pictures above were taken last Saturday and show that Wantage has entered into the full spirit of celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Even the market stalls stood out with a prominent display of Union Jacks.

The Bay Tree in Grove has also put up some great decorations (bottom-right photo) on the exterior of the pub.

Mayor Making in Oxford

On Wednesday, I attended the ceremony at Oxford Town Hall when Cllr. Alan Armitage took over the chains of offices as Lord Mayor of Oxford from Cllr. Elise Benjamin. Apparently, the first recorded Mayor of Oxford is Turchillus in 1122-23 and it was in 1962 that the title of Lord Mayor was granted. 

Another unusual fact, the Oxford city mace - which was on display during the ceremony - is over 5 feet tall and the largest one in Britain.

With the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the London Olympics, I am sure this will be a busy year for the new mayor!

County Hall Crossroads

It was the Annual County Council meeting last Tuesday where we had to decide on the new Tory leader of the Council.   We also had to elect a new Chairman and Vice Chairman.   Keith Mitchell was standing down after 10 years of rule and during that time I have served six years as Leader of the Opposition.  It has been a challenging task, especially as the ruling group insist on taking all the chairs and vice chairs of the scrutiny committees. So, in effect, they scrutinise themselves. 

Also, we used to have a long tradition of sharing the Council Chairmanship role around the three main political groups, but that all changed three years ago when the Conservatives increased their majority.  Now, of course, the landscape has changed and nationally we are in coalition government.  Locally, however, that made little difference to the leadership style.

Now that Ian Hudspeth has taken up the reins, we are at a crossroads so it will be interesting to see if there is any difference. Maybe, the sign above should be realigned to point to Woodstock rather than Bloxham?

Geneva - Style and Engineering

Apologies for the lack of blogging, but I have been away on a short break to Geneva. As my husband works at CERN, this gave me a chance to visit the LHCb experiment on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The bottom two photos show me in the experiment control room and assembly hall. The whole thing is an amazing feat of engineering - a 27km particle accelerator constructed in a tunnel bored through the rock 100m beneath the ground.

Of course, Geneva is also known for another landmark - the Jet d'Eau (first photo), which pumps water to a height of 140m. Another amazing feat of engineering when it was built in 1886.

Equally impressive is the Geneva tram network - the construction of the line shown below involved boring a tunnel underneath the village of Meyrin to accommodate the road traffic!