As I left the office one of my colleagues said “See you next Tuesday”, which I’m sure was an acknowledgment of when I would next be in the office, rather a jealously-induced reaction to my time off.

Back to work tomorrow, but only a three-day week as it’s the Easter long weekend. Then two weeks after that there’s another long weekend, as the May Bank Holiday coincides with a non-working Friday.

Mrs B and I have been to Worcester for a couple of nights. Why Worcester? Because it’s there (and we like the sauce).

We took the scenic route on the way there, through places with wonderful names such as Bourton-on-the-Hill, Moreton-in-Marsh, Chipping Norton. Yes, these are all real places – and just as picturesque as their names suggest. There’s also a Chipping Campden, an Over Norton, and a Bouton-on-the-Water. In fact, there are so many “on-the”, “over” “under”, “great” and “little” in that part of the world, I think that when the local inhabitants decided to name their locations they just took some nearby place name and added a preposition or adjective. How about White Ladies Aston as a village? There must be some history behind that name.

We had a bit of an Elgar-fest in Worcester. Friday, we started at his birthplace, where there is a small museum and tours round the cottage – which is a fascinating insight into 19th century living even without the Elgar connection. The museum has the piano that had been in Elgar’s study, which Mrs B was able to play. One useless fact I learned was that when Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius was first performed in Worcester (Anglican) cathedral, bits of it had to be cut because they were “too Catholic”. Another was that Elgar performed the official opening of both London’s first HMV store and the EMI Abbey Road studios.

Then we drove the few miles to the Malvern’s (a few hills in the middle of Worcestershire). As we were driving down the edge of the hills, Mrs B looked at Google Maps and exclaimed “Oh! We’re about to drive past Elgar’s grave. We have to stop and look”. Not the easiest place to stop – the road is narrow and twisty. It took two U-turns and a trip down three side roads until we found somewhere safe to park.

The hotel I’d found was gorgeous. I’m slightly worried that I’ve set the bar a bit high when it comes to selecting accommodation. A huge room – about the size of one floor of our house. There was an indoor swimming pool (I did about 15 lengths both evenings - most of which I walked), sauna, hot tub, steam room and a bar with reasonably-priced drinks and a good menu. We ate there both evenings.

Saturday, we spent the day in Worcester. It’s a lovely city, with lots of history and old buildings. OK, it’s also got a monstrosity of a car park that someone should be imprisoned for, but what city hasn’t?

We started off with a parkrun (of course). The course runs around the horse racing track, so we could pretend we were racehorses. It’s very flat and fast, and we both ran our fastest-ever time. 23:33 for me, and 31:27 for Mrs B.

Then we visited a few museums – a mediaeval house, a Tudor house, and a porcelain factory (now closed, but with examples of porcelain going back several centuries) and the cathedral. We had lunch at a Thai place a friend had recommended. We were just thinking about having something to eat, and noticed we were outside that restaurant. It was also in a mediaeval / Tudor (is there a difference?) building.

All in all, a great couple of days away. Oh - and on they way we stopped and photographed ourselves at a street named "Barefoot Close". Not just any Barefoot Close; this one is named after my great-uncle H Barefoot. Just saying.

A family funeral a couple of weeks ago – by which I mean a member of the family, not an entire family. An uncle who, as well as being elderly, had not been in the best of health in recent years so not much quality of life.

It was a long way to go so I made an overnight trip of it – driving up after work. I drove so far east I was beginning to think I would fall off the edge of the world. One road had been built since my sat-nav was last updated. It was geekily exciting watching my position on the screen getting slowly closer to where it thought the road was, while listening to a Genesis track. I also drove along the Acle Straight, which wasn’t very exciting at all; more tedious. I was quite glad when I got to the roundabout at the end.

When I arrived, I popped down to see The Ageds in their hotel room for a bit until it was their time for bed (they’re old so go to bed early). When I got back to my room and switched on t’internet I saw that my cousins had messaged me – they were staying at the same hotel and were in the pub net door, so I went and joined them for a couple of drinks.

It was good to catch up – both with the cousins then, and with other cousins who came just for the funeral. We’re going to try and arrange a get-together in the summer (by “we” I mean a couple of my cousins). We came to the shocking realisation that we are now the “senior generation” of the family; it’s now our responsibility to organise family reunions as our parents are all too old.

More running-ness. Eastleigh 10km a couple of weeks ago and I ran it in UNDER 50 MINUTES (49:35). Even more impressive is that Youngest Child – who has never even run as much as 5km (she runs and walks parkrun), and her fastest parkrun is around 45 mins – completed it in 1 hr 15. Barefooted. And before you send Social Services round to investigate our negligence in not providing her with shoes, I should point out that this is her idea. She walked to Winchester today barefooted too (and kept herself going by reciting poetry). I think we should have a shirt made: “I do have shoes – I just choose not to wear them”

Mrs B brought home a paper of example Grade 9 GCSE maths questions. Grade 9 is the level for people who are even cleverer than the people who are cleverer than A-grade. I had a go at some – the ones that didn’t involve geometry or trigonometry – and was able to solve most of them (eventually). It was a non-calculator paper so if the formula started to fall into east-to-solve calculations, that was a pretty good bet you were on the right track.

Some of them were “is that all there is to it”, and others fell into quite elegant solutions. OK, one of them I took numerous attempts. I was almost on the right lines, but each time I made slight mistakes – either in the original formula, or in subsequent calculations. However, once I worked out exactly what I needed to do I solved it in less time than it took Mrs B to take a shower.

Mrs B hasn’t yet looked at my work which is just as well, as the paper said “show your workings” and, although some of my workings are scribbled at various places on the page, I’m not sure it counts as “show your working”. Not in any manner of clarity or progressive thought, anyway.