A Smashing Time In The Ribble Valley

We went over to Ribchester yesterday to visit friends Mark and Nita Jones. We spent the afternoon watching Manchester City get within touching distance of the Premier League trophy and then went for a very late lunch at The Assheton Arms in nearby Downham. The sun was shining and, being Bank Holiday Sunday, it was no surprise that the pub was packed. Fortunately Mark had the foresight to reserve a table and we enjoyed an excellent meal and wine before heading off to Clitheroe.

Mark and Nita had booked to see Clare Teal who was closing the Clitheroe Jazz Festival at the Grand Theatre. I went with some trepidation as jazz is not my usual cup of tea and I had not heard of Clare Teal before Mark told us about the event. But I needn't have worried; she is a fabulous artiste. Accompanied by a fantastic trio on grand piano, double bass and percussion, Clare performed for two hours mixing a little traditional jazz with a helping of ballads and covers of classics by favourites like Annie Lennox and Snow Patrol. She has the winning combination of a tremendous voice and a sparkling personality and she certainly deserved her rapturous applause from a full house. Her final song Chasing Cars was sung with such feeling that Marion was moved to tears. We enjoyed the concert so much that we bought two CDs in the interval and we very much look forward to seeing Ms Teal perform again. 

I haven't blogged since our Orange Wednesday visit to VUE in Southport when we saw Avengers Assemble 3D. It's probably the best comic book hero movie that we've seen. I know that these films are daft but there's good daft and there's bad daft and this one is very firmly in the good camp. The film is well scripted with plenty of laughs from good one liners and the action is visually stunning; even if it's all done with computers, it's convincing enough for you to sit back and escape into a world of incredible invading aliens from another galaxy. The actors take their roles seriously; Robert Downey Jnr as Iron Man has the same charismatic twinkle in his performance that made him such a likeable Sherlock Holmes and Tom Hiddleston almost steals the show with his wicked Loki. At 142 minutes it's long but it didn't feel like it and that's a credit to Joss Whedon who has made an immensely entertaining film.

With all our plans for renovating the house in Framlingham we're going to make a visit to Excel in London's Docklands one day this week. It's not only an opportunity to get some ideas for the house but it's also our first chance to see Paul and Josephine together since Christmas. Lets hope that when we're in Suffolk we never have to go that long between visits.

Although I've been sounding like Victor Meldrew with my views on football on the blog recently, now and then something good crops up in the sport and even Victor would be hard pressed not to smile at this photo that swept around Twitter like wildfire at the weekend. Seems that Hartlepool fans descended on London en masse for their game with Charlton, dressed as Smurfs. What, with electing a monkey as mayor, it looks like there's no shortage of humour in Hartlepool. 

A Bit Of Light Relief

We took a day off from clearing Marion's mum's flat today. Marion had an appointment to have her hair done so I caught up with a huge pile of ironing (no don't stop reading, it will get better - honest). After a really good lunch at The Vincent on Lord St we headed to the local Vue to see 21 Jump St.

Looking at others in the audience Marion wondered if we had chosen something that's perhaps aimed at a slightly younger market. I started playing with my iPhone in an attempt to signal 'Hey kids we may be oldies but we're cool oldies' but then let myself down by switching it off when the film started. 

The film (21 Jump St) came highly recommended by reviewers across the whole spectrum of tabloid and broadsheets (although I seem to remember the same for Jackass 3D). This time the reviewers got it right as it has all the ingredients of a great comedy - superb performances from leads Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, a strong story line (based on an old TV show that we don't remember), a good script with plenty of  intelligent jokes thrown in amongst a minimal amount of the gross out stuff usually associated with this genre. 

Hill and Channing play a couple of rookie cops whose "youthful" looks leads to them being chosen to go undercover as high school students. Tatum was a jock at high school while Hill was the geeky kid that he bullied. They're chosen to reprise those roles in their assignment to bust a drugs ring but, as in most good comedy from Shakespeare onwards, things don't go exactly as planned. What follows is fast moving and laugh out loud funny and it certainly gave us a lift from a week of flat clearing.

As we left the cinema I got an email with the surveyor's report on our proposed house purchase in Suffolk. While the man from the architect said yes, the man from the surveyor's says yes ...... but;  and then gave us a pretty long list of buts.   

All Cleared

We sold Marion's mum's flat recently so this week we've set aside four days to empty it before the new owners move in. It hasn't been the happiest job sorting everything Flo owns into just three piles - keep, charity shop and tip. We made a few journeys to the tip and we've given a selection of things to various charities and now we're left sifting through the "keep" pile. Going through everything that Flo and Marion's dad Doug kept - all the little personal mementos, cards, certificates, photos and nick nacks - is extremely sad but it has to be done. And it has made us realise that we don't want our own kids to have to do the same one day in the future. So, when we sell the house, we're going to do it for them. Whilst it's nice to have things like the lovely anniversary cards that we gave each other, our school certificates and reports, souvenirs and reminders of things that meant something to us in our lives, we never look at them; they're simply gathering dust in boxes in the attic awaiting the day when someone does what we've just done and takes them all down to the tip. So we've got a big de-clutter to carry out soon. We're going to be ruthless so Paul and Sarah don't have to. We'll keep plenty of photos in case anybody ever wants to make a family tree but the rest is simply sentimental and we'll have to rely on our memories instead.

My blog about my model mum resulted in an email from my sister linking me to an American used car seller's website. There's Mum again. This time with a megaphone and the catchy slogan "It's sale time Honey".   

   


We had planned a day out at our favourite cinema FACT in Liverpool tomorrow. We were going to see the Polish film In Darkness, the new Robots and Avatars exhibition and 21 Jump St. But clearing the flat has been so draining , both physically and mentally, that we don't think we could cope with the journey and a subtitled film about refugees hiding from the Nazis. So we're going for a lighter option of lunch in Southport and 21 Jump St at Vue. It's been getting great reviews so maybe it will give us something to smile about. I'll let you know.


  

In Praise Of Modern Family (Again)

We sat down in front of the telly last night to catch up with the stuff we’ve got on the SkyPlus which is almost full of things we’d love to have seen and will probably never get around to. One that most definitely doesn’t fall into that category is Sky1’s Modern Family, which has been amongst our favourites since it launched. We’re now into Series 3. By this time even the greatest sitcoms have usually started to flag; not Modern Family. Episode 10 of the series is the family’s Christmas which is being celebrated a week early due to problems getting everyone together on the big day. From the opening pre credit scene around the swimming pool to the final post credit scene at home, this was perfect television. I can’t reveal the plot for fear of spoiling it for others who have it saved. All I can say is that Christmas came early for us too and I can’t remember watching anything with so many laugh out loud moments; the writers crammed in more in thirty minutes than many Hollywood blockbuster comedies achieve in two hours.

And it’s not even as if the show has one stand out star like Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart or  Will Smith; even the smallest character got at least one big laugh in this episode and the rest got plenty. And it’s also not even as if all the comedy is the same. There are elements of slapstick and farce as well as great lines and brilliantly observed situations. The actors are universally excellent from the patriarch Jay (Ed O’Neill), his glorious Latino wife Gloria (Sofia Vergera), very gay son Michael (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and his even gayer partner Cam (Eric Stonestreet) but my favourite is the hapless Phil (Ty Burrell) an eternal optimist who always does everything to make things right and inevitably makes everything anything but – a bit like me really. “Down with the kids” Phil’s classic interpretation of WTF (Why The Face) sums him up in a nutshell – wonderful. The kids are all outstanding too. If you haven’t seen Modern Family, treat yourself to a box set for Christmas and lift your family out of the great depression that was 2011.

No Orange Wednesday for us this week; just not enough time week as we’re preparing a tea party for Marion’s mum and we’ve got four old ladies and old man coming round to join us. We’ve just roasted this turkey crown and we’re going to use it to make turkey sandwiches, (which are always the best food bit about Christmas for me). The fridge is absolutely packed so I imagine that our guests will be going home with their usual goody bags that will do them for another couple of meals as they don’t tend to have enormous appetites at 80 plus.

I hope that we will get to the pictures again before Christmas as I quite fancy the new Sherlock Holmes. I loved the last one and the new one has got even better reviews from the critics so I hope that it gets to FACT or Vue next week. We’ve seen so many films this year that it’s hard to say which was my favourite. If pushed I would probably have to go for Submarine – one of the few feel good movies of the year, although A Separation, Of Gods And Men and Cave Of Forgotten Dreams were all memorable.

I’m struggling to read The Slap. I usually fly through novels in a couple of days but this one has really slowed me down. I don’t know if it is all the different characters or the Australian slang that’s making me struggle but I’m persevering as Marion’s got it saved on the SkyPlus and doesn’t want to watch it while I’m still reading the book (Kindle says I’ve got 50% left). Books that were a pleasure to read this year were The White Woman On The Green Bicycle and Florence And Giles both of which I strongly recommend.

So Sad

I knew that there was a double murder in Southport this week but the victims' names meant nothing to me and I paid little attention to the story. But when I opened the local free newspaper that dropped through the letterbox today I immediately recognised the younger woman as Angela, one of the checkout operators at the local Tesco. It's a very big store and has scores of men and women who operate the checkouts but we always look for a familiar face and are prepared to wait for an operator who we know will guarantee a friendly smile and a few minutes' conversation over the tedium of packing the groceries. There are perhaps four or five on the checkouts who are always worth an extra few minutes queueing and Angela Holgate was one of them. Always polite, efficient and friendly and prepared to say 'hello' when we passed in the street, she was a person at the periphery of our lives. We didn't know her in any capacity other than someone who scanned our shopping. But she was someone who made that weekly chore a pleasant and friendly experience and treated us as customers rather than just another trolley to scan. Her premature and violent death is a very sad and tragic reminder of the fragility of life.

We can't wait to see our granddaughter Rose tomorrow. Fortunately she has yet to encounter the horrible world that can snuff life out so needlessly and hopefully it will be many years before she understands such horrors of 21st century living. Our daughter Sarah is travelling down from Leuchars to Preston and we've got a whole four days with them before they have to head back to Scotland. Sadly Duncan can't make it this time but we hope to see him in the New Year.

I see the payroll loan companies are in the news again today. There was a bloke on Radio 4 this morning attempting to justify their enormous interest rates. But there is no way that you can justify charging somebody £50 to borrow £100 for two months. It means that if the lender started with £100 and lent it out on 1st Jan, on 1st March they would have £150. If they continued to roll up the loan (or lend it to another borrower), on 1st June they would have £225, on 1st August they would have £337.50, on 1st November £506.25 and at the end of the year £759.37. This is an annual interest rate of 659%. Now I don't know about you but if I could get 5% interest on our savings at the moment I would be quite happy. That means that my £100 would be worth £105 on 31st December compared to £759.37 "earned" by the payroll loan company. So are the payroll loan companies respectable or are they simply loan sharks under another name? I'll let you decide.

 We saw Hugo on our Orange Wednesday trip to Vue today. Although it's classified U, this is not a childrens' film. Filmed in (for once) spectacular 3D it is a magical story of a young orphan who lives amongst a labyrinth of clocks in a Paris railway station. It is very much a film buff's film with director Martin Scorcese playing homage to the early days of moving pictures in a whimsical tale of a boy, a girl, an old man and the boy's father who are all connected to a wonderful mechanical automaton. Sacha Baron Cohen adds a touch of comedy as a Railway Inspector cum child catcher and Chloe Moretz adds yet another fine performance to her already impressive CV. She's only fourteen but has already stolen three big films. As I said on an earlier blog, the most impressive child actor since Jodie Foster.

Our Orange Wednesday With Marilyn

We're back into Orange Wednesday. We've been using the Orange phone more since we've had the caravan (it's all about signals - they aren't very strong in St Andrews on any networks) so, once again, Orange are texting us our free ticket every week. This afternoon it was the excellent My Week With Marilyn. It's a gentle story about a young cinema runner's week long association with mega star Marilyn Monroe when she visits England to film at Pinewood with Sir Larry Olivier. Kenneth Branagh steals the show as the actorly actorrr Olivier with his wonderfully theatrical enunciation feebly attempting to win over the young, talented and extremely vulnerable Munroe (another fine performance from Michelle Williams, so impressive in Blue Valentine and a safe bet for another Academy Award Nomination in this role). Olivier's attempt at movie success depends upon Monroe but her erratic and unmanageable behaviour threatens to wreck the production. Bullying Sir Laurence can't handle her and she is frightened of him. Step in twenty three year old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) the 3rd assistant director or "gopher" as he calls himself . Marilyn seems to like him and the film chronicles his increasingly love struck efforts to keep Olivier's movie afloat. It's a very enjoyable film based on a real life story. Now we will have to see The Prince And The Showgirl - the real 1957 film in the story.

I'm not going to get political again and go on about today's strike but the local Vue must have been over the moon as the place was packed with families with kids and teenagers going to see Arthur Christmas, Tin Tin, Immortals and that Twilight film. It was as busy as a typical weekend. The local shops were pretty busy too. Maybe Vue and the retailers will be asking for another strike next week.

A few weeks ago I mentioned on the blog that I'd downloaded a selection of books for the Kindle in an attempt to find a good comic novel. To date the covers misled as neither The Rotters' Club nor Skippy Dies were exactly a barrel of laughs and I don't know where on earth I got the impression that Rabbit Run was humorous. However, unlike the other books I mentioned which, though entertaining enough, were not particularly thought provoking, Rabbit Run really is a classic deserving of its place in the stratosphere of American fiction. It's hard going. Not an easy read and, I worry, somewhat misogonist but what a piece of writing! Updike's prose is both lyrical and poetical and gives this aspiring writer one hell of an inferiority complex. There are another three Rabbit books written at around ten year intervals. I won't be waiting ten years to read the next.

  
We've got friends coming on Saturday to celebrate Josephine's success in developing Sorority Girls and Holding Out For A Hero. We've got an episode of each to watch as well as fitting in drinks and a three course meal. So our guests are arriving at 5.30. It promises to be a good night.


  

Almost There

It's a sign that we're getting old when we are excited about the news that the caravan will be ready next week. What happened to kite boarding in the Caribbean or climbing Kilimanjaro? In honesty it's not something that we ever thought we'd do but the animal instinct of wanting to be near family is a powerful one and wild horses couldn't keep us away from our new granddaughter (and her mum and dad of course). So on Wednesday we'll be packing the car to the roof again and heading up the motorway to St Andrews and hopefully this time we'll be there for a couple of weeks. It will probably take that long to unload the car and set everything up.

Today we're off to Liverpool for more stuff that we've ordered from John Lewis (duvet covers etc) and then I've got to order a Protect-A-Cycle storage unit like this for our bikes and then I've got to order some bikes to go in it. I think we've done a pretty thorough job of fitting the caravan out and if any friends every borrow it they should have everything they need. No satellite dish allowed unfortunately so there'll be no Sky Plus whenever we're there. We thought that we might bring one of the boxes with us when we visit and watch some of the stuff we've recorded and haven't got around to viewing.

I'll be taking the metal detector with me to avoid withdrawal symptoms and I'm looking forward to finding a few friendly Scottish farmers who might let me have a look around their fields. The rules in Scotland are different and I have to report everything I find to the local museum which is no problem and will hopefully add to the local history records. I'l let you know how we get on.

I was on an exercise bike at the gym when Murdoch was attacked by the idiot with the custard pie so I saw it happen on one of the multitude of screens dotted around the place. The Murdochs must have been delighted to have been turned from villains to victims in just a couple of seconds. I was also following the events on Twitter and it struck me that many thousands of people were tweeting during the proceedings. On the assumption that they weren't all on holiday I wonder how many man hours were effectively fiddled from employers as productivity in the white collar world ground to a halt for an entire afternoon.


We're off to FACT again this afternoon. It is Orange Wednesday of course although it seems that Orange may have twigged to the fact that we only use the Orange phone once a week to text for tickets and none have come today. Maybe they are overloaded with Harry Potter fans. We were going to watch Cell 211 but maybe we'll try this instead.

Such Fun!

As Miranda'a mum would say. And that's our verdict on last night's Orange Wednesday cinema visit to see Thor. A cross between Superman and Lord Of The Rings, Thor is colourful, funny, action packed and just the right length. The movie opens with a trio of scientists out in the New Mexico desert searching for astral phenomena when they are drawn into the most spectacular astral event of their lives. At the same time young Thor (relative newcomer Chris Hemsworth) is just about to be crowned king by his father Odin (Athony Hopkins) when all hell breaks out in Asgard their magical kingdom  ( a CGI tour de force). From then onwards director Kenneth Branagh takes us on two parallel journeys in Asgard and New Mexico as Thor's people battle the evil Ice Giants (a tribe of huge and wicked goblins) and on earth our scientist heroes are up against the secret service who are hugely interested in their research. It's an extremely entertaining couple of hours, the 3D is unobtrusive and very well done, Hemsworth is a likable Thor and it's certainly worth four stars from us.

And it has to be five stars for Hillfoot Plants Nursery who Marion has been emailing to order some special geraniums. Marion's order was only worth twenty or thirty pounds but Annie's response to her complex requests re timing, plant sizes etc was perfect - very friendly and helpful - something that is so rare in these days of one-click internet shopping. We are sure that the geraniums will be excellent when they arrive. You can check out their website HERE

I'm loving my foray back into the world of metal detecting but yesterday it took me on  a merry dance. I decided to find some new places to try the detector and spent some time on Tuesday and Wednesday researching potential sites. I checked them out on Google Earth and the landscape looked right so I set off in the car without the detector to do some knocking on doors. The first site went well and I gained permission to search a small area. Buoyed up by my success I travelled to farm number two. The farmer, Andy, was great and said that it would be fine by him but I had to clear it with his landlord. I drove to the landlord who was an estate manager who told me that I had to clear it with his superiors. So I got in touch with them and they're going to phone me back. Thirty hours later there's been no response so, with the Bank Holiday weekend ahead, I imagine that the field will be sown with a new crop and out of bounds before I hear back.

I drove another hour into the countryside. It was a beautiful day and it would have been a glorious drive had I not been stuck behind a couple of pensioners (I know pot-kettle and all that) on a winding road watching the ETA on the sat nat increase minute by minute. I'm not exactly Lewis Hamilton myself but these two were doing thirty in a sixty limit. At one point they turned off and I was able to put my foot down for a minute only to discover that they had taken a short cut and there they were again just around the bend. I eventually arrived at the farm and the door was answered by a friendly decorator who told me that the farmer was out. I explained the purpose of my visit and asked the decorator to give me the farmer's number (he couldn't find it but he gave me the full name and address and said I'd get it from the directory). Ninety minutes later I arrived home and the bloody number's ex-directory. Hence the accompanying pic.


I would have loved to have done this to those doddering drivers yesterday.

The God Of War Was On His Horse

There's bound to be no end of puns to accompany the release of Kenneth Branagh's Thor, our choice of Orange Wednesday viewing this week, so I'll get my groan quota in now with a little rhyme that I remember reading in Marion's Manchester University Rag Mag circa 1974.

The God of War was on his horse

She was a dashing filly

"I'm Thor" he cried

The horse replied

"You forgot your thaddle, thilly" 

Which just goes to show that student humour was not quite so sophisticated forty years ago. We're looking forward to it.

I went to the dentist fully expecting the extraction of my badly damaged tooth. I didn't go to my regular practice as, in an emergency, I would have been expected to wait until someone was available (last time I gave up after two hours). I went instead to 10Dental who I found advertised on the Internet. I got an appointment inside two hours, was seen promptly by a young and seemingly very competent young dentist who told me that the tooth was not beyond salvation although it would cost over £370 to get it capped. I've said I will think about it but in the meantime he has fitted a temporary filing that should see me right for a few weeks while I make my mind up. I thought that was good value at just under £50. Our own dentist (NHS) retired last year and Marion's first visit to his replacement was a painful experience and my own was not exactly pleasant so perhaps we should be looking for a permanent change.

5@50 at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre was a pleasant afternoon out. The theatre is a wonderful building and their productions are always innovative, using the the theatre in the round setting in very imaginative ways. The shop sells some excellent locally made glass, ceramics and jewellery and the restaurant is OK with some very friendly staff. As for the play?Sadly the critics were not wrong and, although the idea of focusing on a group of women worked well in Desperate Housewives and Sex In The City I didn't enjoy it as none of the characters was particularly likable and all had problems of one sort or another so it appeared that each was only really interested in their self and I'm afraid that I was interested in none of them. 

We've got Marion's mum Flo with us for the next three days. She's having her flat decorated so she's coming round to keep out of the decorator's way and then going home again in the evenings. We've got the Royal Wedding for her to watch on Friday (I wonder if it's on in 3D) and we've planned a garden centre visit for Wednesday. I'm sure we'll find something for Thursday. Hopefully the decorator will finish on plan and she can be enjoying her spruced up pad by friday evening.


I'll leave you today with the official trailer for Thor.

Grannie Training

Marion was in trainee grannie mode today as our ex-colleague Nat and her seven month old daughter Isabella visited us. Nat brought round a super baby bath and bouncing chair plus loads of clothes that Isabella and her sister Olivia have grown out of and we were delighted to buy the lot for Sarah's baby who is due in July. We don't know what sex our new grandchild will be so Nat restricted the clothes to those in neutral colours. I want to be green rather than cheap in buying second hand clothes and these are barely worn and in some cases still in the original packaging. It means that we can now spend more on other stuff for the baby as there is a hell of a long list facing all new mums nowadays.

If Sarah's baby is anywhere near as good as 'Bella, it will be wonderful for her.The baby was here for almost four hours and was nothing but smiles and chuckles apart from when she had a well earned nap. Nat (who is camera shy hence the absence of a photo on here), is a brilliant, loving and natural young mother whose children are a credit to her. The cocky,streetwise and savvy teenager I interviewed for her first job on leaving school around five or six years ago is now just a distant memory.

It's Wednesday which means just one thing - our regular Orange Wednesday trip to the cinema. There's not much we fancy in the latest releases so we've got the opportunity to see Unknown which has been out since 4th March and is still running at the local VUE. It's one of those films that we always thought we'd go to but every week there was something we wanted to see a bit more and amazingly, as it has been here for six weeks, now we've got the chance. Mind you, having seen the trailer so many times I think I've got a pretty good idea of 90% of the plot although I'm sure that there will be a pretty significant twist that we don't know about.

It would be a right miserable sod who complained about the weather that we are having. So call me a right miserable sod. I've arranged another day out with the metal detector for tomorrow. My brother Pete is coming along with a couple of blokes I met on an internet forum (no, not like that). We've got some interesting fields to search but the problem is that, with the lack of rain for the last few weeks, the ground is going to be rock hard so if we do happen to strike it lucky and find some decent signals it's going to be a hell of a job finding out what they are. Oh well I suppose it's a lot better than getting ourselves frozen and soaked. I'll let you know how we get on.


When the babies grow up they will hopefully be looking to go to university. Lincoln looks like it has potential.

Boys' Own Stuff

When I was a kid growing up in the sixties "The Eagle" was a boys' own comic so it is quite appropriate that the film of the same name (our Orange Wednesday choice for this week) is very much in the boys' own vein. An old fashioned swashbuckling movie, the story could have been set in the Wild West, Vietnam or the Eastern Front but instead we were whisked back in time to the wild northern frontier of Brittania where Roman commander Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) is on the hunt for the golden eagle standard lost by his father twenty years earlier when he ventured north with 5,000 men and none was ever seen again. He is accompanied by a British slave played by Jamie Bell (of Billy Elliot fame).


The film has all the features we knew and loved in the sixties - a big battle scene (without CGI), a heavy emphasis on honour and comradeship, a good chase and absolutely no sex or love interest whatsoever. Filmed on location in Hungary and on the Coigach Peninsula in Scotland (which should expect a big influx of tourists as it looks stunningly beautiful) the film has its critics who claim it is boring but Marion and I liked it very much. Don't expect anything challenging, just sit back and enjoy a good old fashioned yarn.

We hoped that Submarine would come to VUE in Southport but there's still no sign of it so we're going to have to go to Liverpool where it is on until the weekend when I expect it will finish. Fortunately retirement means that it's no big problem so we'll head off to FACT on Friday afternoon and see if it's as good as everyone says it is.

Which means that we're not going to get to Ken Loach's "Route Irish" which has Liverpool comic John Bishop of "A League Of Their Own" fame in a serious role. But good news on that front as it has been simultaneously released on Sky Box Office so we'll probably catch it on Saturday night now that we are Forbrydelsenless.

Marcus Aquila might have found a metal detector useful in his hunt for that gold eagle. I am afraid that my finds on this week's outing with my detector were a long way from Roman gold or the bronze age axe that my brother found recently. I found all the usual bits of lead, a ring pull and a few buttons but nothing historical at all. On the plus side I found over twenty items in a field that I've searched a few times and any one of these signals could have turned up a Roman coin like the one I found in the same field last week. That coin has been recorded and is now on the national finds database. The new detector arrived today. Cant wait to give it a try. It's a big change on my own machine, uses the very latest technology and, being wireless, it's as light as a feather.  Should be able to get out in a couple of weeks.


I'm a mug for anything new on the technology front. I'm going to have a look at those new Nintendo 3D portable games machines soon.

A Visit To FLO, Another Ancient Find And Two Super Films

I visited FLO yesterday. No she isn't my sordid little secret , she is Dot Boughton, the North West's Finds Liaison Officer responsible for recording historic finds made by the public. She works out of Preston's, Carlisle's and Lancaster's museums and has regular meetings with metal detector users. I took my brother Peter's Bronze Age axe head to her for recording and thought that I might as well take all of my own significant finds made in her area of over the past twenty years before FLO's existed. Dot was delighted with the small collection of Roman and later artifacts and over almost two hours she painstakingly photographed and recorded everything including measurements and weight. I should get a copy of her report on them all in about eight weeks. As I had travelled all the way to Lancaster and the sun was shining brightly I thought that I might as well travel on a little further to where the bronze axe was found and do a little more searching.

It's good to be getting back into the hobby of metal detecting now that I have both the time afforded me by retirement and the new hip which makes walking more than a few yards possible. Here are yesterday's finds. As usual there are the shotgun cartridge cases and bits of foil that litter most fields in the area but in addition to those, the tiny washer and the old bulb, I found three coins. A 1960's threepence, a Victorian sixpence and a beautiful Roman coin.

I couldn't identify the coin but the metal detecting fraternity are a helpful bunch and a quick posting on one of their forums revealed that it is a Sestertius of the Emperor Trajan and it dates to c100AD. It's quite rare to find a brass coin from this period in such nice condition so it was a worthwhile trip. Funnily enough it was only a couple of inches deep whereas some of the shotgun cartridges were a foot down. I emailed a photo to Dot and she's recording it without me having to travel back to Lancaster.

The beauty of the hobby is that you really never know what you are going to find. On holiday last week in the Lake District I turned up this old tinplate model of the royal coach. It's a worthless piece of junk but interesting all the same.

An altogether different type of vehicle featured in The Lincoln Lawyer last night's Orange Wednesday offering at the local VUE. Matthew McConaughey plays a Californian lawyer who works from the back of his classic Lincoln. It's an excellent courtroom drama starring McConaughey as Mickey Haller,  a hard drinking but brilliant attorney who gets results. When hired to defend a wealthy young man who is accused of assault and attempted rape, Haller faces a tough assignment. The way that he oozes "cool" as he handles the case is a joy to watch. We both enjoyed the film very much. It's pacey, well directed, full of good performances and has a cool soundtrack to boot. Give it a try.

We had another cinema outing this week when we went to FACT to see the new Herzog film Cave Of Forgotten Dreams. Herzog got access to the magnificent Chauvet Cave in France. It was discovered in 1994 and contains the oldest art works known in the world at over 30,000 years old. Such is the fragility of the environment, only a handful of people have ever been inside and very few every will. The paintings are quite stunning and, although on one level the film could be seen as "just a documentary", with Herzog directing, there is a sense of humour and character that only he could achieve - the archaeologist who was once a circus performer, the perfumer who sniffs the hillside for signs of more hidden caves and the enormously mustachioed historian who demonstrates the stone age art of bison hunting in a wonderfully inept and endearing fashion.  An added bonus at FACT was the live link up by satellite to a Q&A session hosted by Jason Solomons in which Herzog showed himself to be as charming and enigmatic as his wonderful films. 


So many films to see at the moment ( we've still not seen Submarine and want to try The Eagle) but at least with retirement there's plenty of time to get to them. 

And The Best British City To Live In?.... Manchester

I've just been reading about a report that's brought out annually by The Economist Intelligence Unit. It scores all the top cities in the world on five areas : healthcare, stability, culture, environment and education. The world's top city for the last five years has been Vancouver but the top UK city is Manchester. If you have read this blog recently you may have seen that I commented on Manchester's attractions under the title "There's More To Manchester Than Rain And Football" and my observations have proved consistent with the findings of the EIU. Manchester came 42nd whilst London came 53rd.

In reality there was little to choose between London and Manchester in the scores but I am commenting because Marion and I have plans to move to London in the near future. We are attracted to the culture and the recreational opportunities to fill our retirement but, living in a pleasant detached house here in the north, we are somewhat worried about where we will find ourselves living when we take the plunge. Having enjoyed the pleasures of a decent garden and plenty of space for over twenty years we may find it hard to live in a two bedroomed flat with no open space although the ability to use London's facilities on a daily basis should help to offset that. On the other hand, property prices in Manchester are similar to what they are here. Time for a rethink? Probably not, as London scored very highly in the culture and recreational categories and its score was only lowered by perceived crime levels and risk of terrorism. And that shouldn't worry me and Marion as, being from near Liverpool, we're dead hard - honest.

We were away last week so didn't make our regular Orange Wednesday cinema visit. Hopefully this week we will get to see True Grit which has been pretty well received. As it is half term here in Southport there's not a huge choice showing for adults this week with Gnomeo and Juliet, Tangled,Justin Bieber, Yogi Bear  and Paul taking up many of the screenings and, with Just Go With It and Big Mommas being as appealing as a fart in a lift, True Grit is all that's left.

I was involved in a brief discussion with a fellow blogger Rodney Willet (click here for his website) on Twitter this morning about the merits and otherwise of the iPhone. A year or two ago I wrote on my old blog about how I hated my new Samsung smart phone and that all I wanted was to be able to make phone calls and had no need for the multiple functions that it offered. And Rodney feels the same today. He is fed up with the many offers of an iPhone that have come his way and he feels that he doesn't need one thank you very much. I, on the other hand, am now a convert. The iPhone is so much more than a phone and is, in reality, a more powerful computer than many pcs that I have used in the not too distant past. This morning I had an hour in the gym. To lighten the dreariness of a forty minute stint on an exercise bike I listened to Mark Kermode's film podcast and at the same time played scrabble on the iPhone. I checked my email, worried about the plunge on the stock market (thankfully now recovered) and looked at the weather forecast. I also had my discussion on the merits of the phone with Rodney. And I have to say that I think that the iPhone is an outstanding aid to modern living. I don't make many phone calls but now I always have a camera with me plus the ability to check film times, find local restaurants, place a bet and much much more. I've been converted (but I am glad that I didn't have one while I was working - who wants work emails when you are out of the office?).


And of course there are these extra features too..