King Edward VII - days of empire

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 under

M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes
  [3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
  [3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
  [3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
  [2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
  [2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
  [2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
  [2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
  [2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
  [2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
  [1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
  [1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
  [1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
  [1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
  [1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
  [1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
  [1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
  [1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
  [1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
  [1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
  [1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
  [1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
  [1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
  [939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
  [931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
  [927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
  [897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
  [868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
  [813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
  [742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
  [677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
  [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)

2c07

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Some other Articles

Breaking bread
Training in Liverpool
From cat breeder to Cobol to Perl
Splash!
King Edward VII - days of empire
Our new .eu top level domain
Finding the language preference of a web site visitor
Discounts and approved supplier lists
Perl - turning seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds
Journey planning - Xephos v Transport Direct