What A Swell Party That Was

We headed down to Southport on Saturday for the first time since we sold the house in July. We met my mum and my sister Julie briefly for a coffee but the main purpose of our visit was to go to our old friend and colleague Liz Clayton's 50th birthday party. Liz is a female Michael Palin - the word that everyone associates with her is "nice"-  so it was hardly surprising that a huge crowd attended to wish her well. She and her family put on a super spread for us and a great time was had by all.

It was good to see old Instanta colleagues Max. Isla, Rebekah, Tony and Peter.

As well as Phil and Craig and a few more who managed to escape my camera. We didn't talk about the business a lot but it was interesting to catch a few snippets about what life is now like in the company after the Brassey era.


We stayed at the Vincent on Lord St on Saturday night (thanks Nick for negotiating a very good price for us). We used to eat there a lot when we lived in Southport but never had need to stay. I have to say that it's very good. Attentive and friendly staff, a beautifully fitted and comfortable (if a bit dark) bedroom and nice attention to detail - plenty of towels, toiletries and (nice touch) a Nespresso machine. With a decent breakfast thrown in it was an impressive stopover.

On the road on Sunday morning the omens were good with the Howgill Fells looking beautiful as we sped up the M6 in the autumn sunshine. After a great meal and good night's sleep at The Black Swan in Ravenstonedale where we are staying for a few nights, we awoke to thick fog but Google told us that Ullswater was going to be sunny.

And Google was dead right. We headed to Glenridding for the 11.10 steamer to Howtown and walked back the six miles amongst some of the most glorious scenery in Britain. Forgive all the photos but it was a spectacularly good day weather wise (we'd taken the sensible precaution of wrapping up well against the cold) and I can't remember seeing Ullswater looking better. There were quite a few cameramen around with all the gear. They must have taken some glorious scenes. Looking forward to another two nights here at the Black Swan before we head down to Ribchester to meet Mark and Nita from the excellent Workhouse Marketing.

The Goodbyes Begin

Although we've still been going to the gym this week, we haven't really needed to as the marathon packing job has given us plenty of exercise. Yesterday we moved the boxes packed with all the office and the attic contents down into the conservatory. We felt that we'd be less likely than the removal men to scuff the paintwork so we traipsed up and down three flights of stairs with approximately 240 boxes.

We're almost at the end of it all now and the removal man came round this morning to check out our handiwork - I think he was quite impressed. I've asked him to come and pack what's left now (some paintings, mirrors, glass and a few antiques)  as we aren't insured for breakages under his terms and conditions if we pack that stuff. We're going to head off up to Scotland on Monday for a well earned break and to celebrate Sarah and Rose's birthdays (can it really be a whole year since we made a mad dash up to Dundee to welcome her into the world?). Once we're back we've got to pack for four months of caravan living, help Paul and Josephine with their move to Rochester and choose a builder to renovate the new place in Framlingham - not much on our plates then.

Marion said a tearful goodbye to her friends at the gym last night and on Monday we took two of our oldest friends to The Vincent for a farewell meal. I'm sure we'll see plenty of them as David and Janet are in London frequently and it will be easy for us to arrange to meet up. Tonight we'll have our last ever Orange Wednesday at Vue in Southport. We're going to give The Five Year Engagement a try. It's been well received by the critics so hopefully we'll be leaving the local cinema on a high note.

It was also goodbye to Marion's car yesterday as we sold it to a local dealer. It's been a great little runaround for her but she didn't exactly drive far in it and, with just 10,400 miles on the clock after six years, someone is going to get a great buy. 

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.   

A Drive With Compo

When the taxi drew up outside on Friday evening to take us with friends Mark and Nita to the Vincent Hotel for a meal, I did a double take; our driver, complete with silvery stubble and wooly hat was the spitting image of The Last Of The Summer Wine's Compo. Fortunately he wasn't wearing wellies and driving a bathtub but he gave the impression that he shared Compo's reputation as a bit of a ladies' man.


'Where to?' he asked.


'The Vincent Hotel'


'I know it. I took my girlfriend there - cost me £100. Well £50 as she paid half. She lives down XXXX Road. I used to drop her off in my taxi. Never thought I'd have a chance.'


We didn't dwell on his Nora Batty for too long as he went on to tell us about all the beautiful young women he drove in his taxi. There's the local beauty queen - "lovely she is" - and the stunning young Lithuanian -  "absolutely gorgeous" ; she gave him a kiss on New Year's Eve but unfortunately she's only a teenager and he's sixty-three.


It may have all been bravado and he's probably totally harmless but it was an unusual conversation and I would feel very uncomfortable about Marion taking a taxi alone with a driver like him. Our friend Nita felt the same and I can imagine a fair few women having uneasy late night journeys home from a night out in town. 

We had a very enjoyable meal. The food at the Vincent is not special but it's good, there's a very wide choice, the service is friendly and there's a real buzz about the place. Our friends couldn't understand how a meal there cost Wayne Rooney £250k as I wrote on this blog - so, for the sake of clarity, I should point out that he was fined this sum by Sir Alex for breaking club rules and going out on a night when he was supposed to stay in.

I see that Sir Alex was back in the news again this weekend with his comments on Luis Suarez's refusal to shake hands with Patrice Evra. He's really enjoying piling on the agony for Kenny Dalglish at the moment. After the totally inept handling of the whole affair by Liverpool FC during the last couple of weeks, the statements from Kenny and Suarez over the weekend bore the stamp of influence from on high. Both sounded like naughty schoolboys told by the headmaster to apologise;  I imagined headmaster JW Henry saying 'Now Kenny and Luis What have you got to say to the class?' and them staring down at their feet while giving their responses  'Sorry sir'. An abject end to a dismal affair.

 I read a tiny book yesterday; in fact The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman is so tiny that I read it all during a session on the exercise bike at the gym. And it was so enigmatic that I read it a second time when I was pedaling again today. Although the book opens with a real situation - an armed man (in a purple hat) walks into a bank, fires into the ceiling and tells everyone to lie on the floor - before long it's apparent that if Kaufman was an artist he would be Salvador Dali rather than Rembrandt;  the book becomes a series of fables after each hostage hands the robber the most precious item they have with them and subsequently weird and sometimes wonderful things happen to them. The fate of Stacey, the wife of the title who starts to shrink, is the central theme of the book but half a dozen or more small parables are cleverly interwoven into it - the author has crammed a great deal into eighteen short chapters. The book could be open to several interpretations and I'm sure that this was the author's intention but I was left (quite appropriately on the eve of Valentine's day) with an overriding message of the importance of love. This is a book that you'll either love or hate and you may take some time to decide which but, after the second reading, I'm in the love camp.

And on the subject of love and Feb 14th, we're off to FACT in Liverpool tomorrow to see Romantics Anonymous. I know that going to the Silver Screening (free tea and biscuits for pensioners) at 12 noon is hardly the stuff that dreams are made of but it's the only screening of this quirky French love story and it should set the tone before we head to The Monro later for a Vaelntine's dinner. 
 

Dr Jekyll & Mrs Hyde

I have pangs of conscience writing about my Alzheimer's suffering mother-in-law on this blog but it's supposed to be a retirement blog and it's something that looms very large in our retirement at the moment and I'm sure that it will loom large in other retiree's lives.  I'm not going to damage her dignity with a photo this time as she isn't looking her best having been (as I wrote earlier in the week) rushed into hospital in the early hours of Sunday . I can't praise Ward 11b in Southport hospital enough for the way that they looked after Flo for the four nights of her stay. She was given constant attention and kept comfortable throughout.


She's back at her care home now and on medication to help with a chest infection (possibly pneumonia) that resulted in an irregular heartbeat and breathlessness. Her colour has returned and her breathing is back to normal; the problem lies in her mental state. Whenever we visited the hospital we could hear Flo (she has a loud and distinctive London accent) long before we reached the ward entrance. Invariably she was laughing and in good spirits. The second that Marion and I were in view this changed and she would slump onto the bed crying and claiming a myriad of aches and pains - perhaps we just have this effect on some people. So our visits would pass with Flo in abject misery for the full hour and us lost for anything positive to say. The ward staff expressed surprise at the changes that came over her and they told us that she had been walking around freely for hours on end. When we came to collect her at four p.m yesterday she insisted that she couldn't walk and we had to get a wheelchair. In the past she has always been good on her feet.


This Jekyll and Hyde behavior continued as we left the ward - big smiles and huge hugs and kisses for the nursing staff together with 'You take care' at the top of her voice - followed by a constant litany of complaints en route to the car, during the drive and again when we walked her back to her room. On arrival in the room a carer welcomed her and the mask was switched again to huge hugs, laughter and smiles only to disappear the second that the carer left and the miserable mask returned.


I know that Alzheimer's is a terrible disease and it must be horrendous for Flo and every one else who suffers from it but there is certainly still something there in her brain that allows these huge changes in mood between the one that we get and the one that's on show to others. Perhaps the bad mood is the real Flo and she feels comfortable enough with us to show her true colours or perhaps we are being punished and seen as responsible for confining her to a home after other family members told her she would never be put in one. Whichever it is, it's extremely dispiriting as our frequent visits are tinged with a foreboding gloom that is difficult to feel positive about.

We do feel positive however about this evening when our friends Mark and Nita Jones from Workhouse Marketing in Ribchester are visiting and we're off to The Vincent in Southport for a bite to eat. That's the place where Wayne Rooney's meal at Christmas ended up costing him £250k. I hope it's a bit cheaper for us. Mark and Nita have cause to celebrate as their son Tom's The Whalley Wine Shop won the prestigious Independent Drinks Retailer Of The Year at the Off Licence News awards in London earlier this week - and well deserved it was too. It's a super little shop with a wonderful selection of fine wines, beers and spirits coupled with excellent advice and great service.


I'm busy preparing a talk on metal detecting for a local history society in the Yorkshire Dales on Wednesday. I hope that the snow holds off. One of the themes of my talk is how the public sees detector users and I think this advert just about sums it up.