No Time To Blog

This retirement lark is not all sitting around in carpet slippers twiddling your thumbs and waiting for the grim reaper you know. In fact this last couple of days has been so hectic I haven't had time to write this  blog and keep up my writing practice. It started with Fathers' Day on Sunday (great cards thanks kids) when we had a trip with friends to Hoghton Tower for the monthly Farmers' Market. Though billed as the largest in the North West it was not exactly enormous although what it lacked in quantity was more than made up for in quality with some outstanding local produce on display. Despite our healthy food regime the temptation of fine organic cheeses and home made macaroons was too much and we left with a bag full of goodies. 

We then went on to the super Freemasons at Wiswell and enjoyed a very fine lunch before driving to the excellent Whalley Wine Shop in Whalley (where else) and stocking up with a couple of super wines. It's great to see an independent specialist retailer thriving like this against stiff competition but you can't beat top quality and expertise.

Before we left home on Sunday I opened the fridge to find these. Oops. Marion had been to a party on Saturday night and she promised to provide some cakes and pastries which she duly did. Unfortunately these were hidden behind some eggs and got left behind so I hope the guests didn't think she'd been a bit stingy with just three boxes. We aren't eating too many calories at the moment so we returned to the hosts and, as they still had a full house, they were happy to take them off our hands.

It's farewell to Paul's season ticket today. Mine has already gone out on loan to a friend and another friend has put me in touch with someone who wants to take this one for the season. So no more trips to Anfield. No traffic jams. No worrying if the car will be in one piece when I get back to it. No standing up throughout the game. No crappy sausage rolls. No overpriced programmes. No having my ears bludgeoned with foul mouthed abuse. No kick offs at 5.15 p.m on Saturday for the benefit of TV. No sulky players who don't give a toss. God I'll really miss it.

Bit of a disaster on the metal detecting front this week. I went on Monday with a really nice bloke that I met on the internet (don't get the wrong idea). We drove an hour or so and got out of the car in the middle of nowhere with all the gear only for Fred (not his real name) to discover that he had forgotten the battery for his detector. Groan. However he did have with him an emergency battery pack. Hooray. But the batteries in it were flat. Groan again. Oh well there was a garage about five miles down the road so we were able to pack the car back up and go and buy some. Unfortunately to no avail as, apart from a few nice buttons and the usual shotgun cartridge cases and bits of junk, this coin was the only find of any interest. It's a Roman sestertius from around the first century but in such lousy condition that there's little hope of identifying it. It means that I can't write up the day's detecting and blog on it which is a real pity as I've increased the blog readership by hundreds when I've had something of interest to report. Oh well there's always next week.


Went to FACT in Liverpool yesterday but I've written enough today and I'll blog on the films (Point Blank and Potiche) tomorrow.

Here's a taster.





  

Doh!

We're going to see Lenny Henry at the Lowry in Manchester tomorrow. I saw the show reviewed in a couple of papers and thought that it sounded good so I booked a couple of tickets. Although the show is also appearing at our local theatre here in Southport I decided that it would be good to make a short break of it, visit the Imperial War Museum nearby and book a hotel for the night. I had heard good things about the Lowry Hotel so I went on the internet and sorted out a night there. "Great" I said to Marion - "we can stroll from the Lowry Hotel past the Lowry centre to the Lowry theatre and back again afterwards". We were telling a couple of friends of our plan on Thursday when they pointed out that the Lowry Hotel is not near the Lowry theatre at all but almost bang in the centre of Manchester. I'd always assumed that it was on part of the same complex so now we've got to drive or get a taxi. Oh well, the best laid plans and all that.

Friends Mark and Nita (who saw and thoroughly enjoyed the Lenny Henry show when he came to Preston) took us out for a meal last night at the Freemasons in Wiswell near Ribchester. It's a pub with an excellent chef and we ate an exceptional meal and drank some very fine wine. I can thoroughly recommend it for a special occasion as it is many notches above traditional pub food and very close to the standards achieved at the nearby Northcote Manor which is Michelin starred. It is not surprising that the pub has won awards at the Publican awards in both 2010 and 2011. Thanks Mark and Nita for your hospitality.

We had been visiting Mark and Nita as Mark (above) had expressed an interest in trying out metal detecting. As they live in the countryside outside the Roman settlement of Ribchester he asked his neighbouring farmer if we could give it a try in the fields next to the house. We found a few bits and pieces but then Mark had an enormous loud signal on a bank near to a stream. We dug and we dug and we dug all the time thinking that for something to be so deep and right out in the country it must be ancient. Finally we saw a glint of metal. Could it be at Roman hoard? Alas no. It was this enormous cast iron plate. The detectors discriminate and reject iron but when it is so deep the machines are not always able to differentiate and by the time that we got to it we decided to dig it out just in case it was an ancient chunk of iron.  Never mind, we enjoyed the exercise and we had quite a few laughs in the process.


It's not long to the Royal Wedding now. I'm not really interested although I am interested in anything to do with St Andrews as our daughter Sarah lives there after studying at the university. Here's a tribute to the wedding from the university choir with a great St Andrews backdrop.