Living It Up On The Costa Del Suffolk

What a weekend it's been! Apart from our son's creation winning a BAFTA, (see my last blog post) we've had plenty to keep us occupied.

On Friday evening we made the short walk up to the college for FramSoc's supper. FramSoc is an excellent society run by the college and open to those with connections to the college such as parents and teachers but also, importantly for us, to residents of the town. Regular talks and outings are held and as well as being educated and entertained by these it's also  a great way to get to meet people. The supper, served in the college hall, was excellent with four delicious courses each accompanied by a glass of fine wine. 

There was more excellent food in store for us on Saturday night when friends Mark and Nita Jones from Ribchester joined us. After Mark and I watched the Cup Final (an entertaining match for the neutral), we enjoyed these super fish platters prepared for us by Maximus Fishing of Friday St in Saxmundham. Chris from Maximus couldn't have been more helpful, we gave him a budget and a few ideas of what we did and didn't want and these were the result. Thanks Chris - it was a lovely meal with no work involved for us.

The weekend weather was perfect and we were able to show Mark and Nita the delights of our new home county in glorious sunshine.

We visited the beach at Walberswick after a good snack at the lovely Anchor.

Experimented with the new selfie craze.

Travelled to Walberswick from Southwold via the ferry.

And had a quick look at the outside of our own magnificent castle. It was a great weekend and we really enjoyed the company. Thanks to Mark and Nita's generosity we may have to travel to the bottle bank under the cloak of darkness this week to keep our reputations intact.

The glorious weather continued yesterday so, with a cycle tour of Provence coming up in under three weeks time, we thought it best to get on our bikes and get some practice in.

We headed to Orford via the beautiful Iken.

Although we've been to Orford many times, we hadn't ventured inside the castle until yesterday. The weather was too good not to climb the steps and take in the magnificent views.

The castle is an imposing edifice but inside it's surprisingly cosy. The audio tour is extremely interesting and it was well worth the visit.

I reckon that we rode over fifteen miles to get there so we earned the sandwich in the harbour side cafe. A thirty plus mile ride was a good start for the preparations for Provence - thank heavens for the new padded underwear.

A Great Week

We're back in Framlingham with another 1,000 miles on the car but plenty of memories of a great week away. I've already written about Dave Haworth's super private lunch at 60 Hope St in Liverpool but this weekend it was the turn of another very dear friend Dave Wareing to celebrate his 60th.

It was very much a flying visit to St Andrews but we crammed plenty in. We love the opportunity that the caravan has brought to see the grandchildren growing up. Rose is now following in her mum's footsteps as a dancer and has already mastered some simple moves. We spent plenty of time with the family and enjoyed a couple of meals in St Andrews at The Grill House and Zizzis (you're never short of anywhere to eat out in St Andrews).

From St Andrews we headed to the Lake District to meet up with Dave and his family. The weather was kind to us and the rain eased off just enough for us to enjoy a walk around Tarn Hows which holds some special memories for me. We stayed in a cottage there when I was about ten and I had another memorable visit with Marion when we were teenagers. 

Dave and Janet's daughter Lizzie and son William with his fiancee Sophie joined us on the walk before we headed to the celebrated Drunken Duck for an excellent pub snack.

Dave had booked a night at the famous Holbeck Ghyll above Ambleside. We were staying in the self-catering house Lowtherwood which is in the hotel grounds. It's a super house with four excellent bedrooms with luxurious bathrooms and an outdoor hot tub which we took full advantage of. In the evening Lizzie prepared nibbles and champagne and we presented Dave with his presents before heading off to the hotel for a fabulous meal in the Michelin starred restaurant. 

We had another fabulous meal on Sunday when we headed down to Ribchester to see our friends Mark and Nita who run the brilliant marketing company Workhouse Marketing. Nita cooked a sumptuous roast chicken dinner accompanied by some very fine wines from their son Tom's Whalley Wine Shop. We miss seeing friends Mark and Nita, Dave and Jane and Dave and Janet now we're in Suffolk but hopefully they will be visiting us in the not too distant future.

Mark has become a keen eBayer so I'm putting the following song on the blog for his benefit. I've put it on here before but he's not familiar with it and it's well worth another airing.

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.

You know you're getting old......

...when one of your son's old school friends turns up on Merseyside's biggest commercial talk radio station City Talk (105.9FM) and he's reviewing the day's papers! Yes, we got up early to listen to Jamie Gavin who not only got ten minutes prime time but also a big opportunity to plug his business InPress Online. His earlier claim to fame was as the bridegroom in the long running Daily Express TV ad campaign with its catch phrase "We stand for family values" but today was far more serious stuff with Jamie commenting on Kim Jong Il and showing a degree of empathy with his successor Kim Jong Un, who, like Jamie, is 28 but, unlike Jamie, has to run a whole country and not just a thriving internet business. He also found time to review the back pages and may have alienated some of his fellow Evertonians with his "if the price is right" attitude to the sale of the team's star players. So well done Jamie, hats off to your performance. We'll let you off your failure to get in the Alan Partridge quotes that your friends requested and applaud you for the professional way that you approached the task. Who knows, my anecdotes about my meetings with Robert Maxwell, Kenneth Clark and James Corden's dad may soon be usurped by my one day being able to name drop you.

Marion's feeling a lot better today and in an hour or two hopes to eat her first meal of any significance since Saturday. I've built a nice log fire and it's blazing away as I write and she's snuggled by it under a blanket reading her Kindle. We've a bit of a break from the routine of visiting Flo tomorrow when we hope to get to Vue to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I know that Holmes purists will be apoplectic with the transformation of the cerebral Holmes into a sort of Victorian James Bond but we could do with a bit of escapism and we're off to the 11.20 am performance. I'll let you know what we think.

I've lost contact with almost everyone and everything to do with work in the twelve months since we retired. But I'm pleased to say that we're still in touch with the lovely Mark and Nita Jones from Workhouse Marketing in Ribchester who did so much fabulous work for our business in the short time that we used their creative services. Workhouse have made it a seasonal tradition to produce a short Christmas film and this year's (another cracker) arrived in my mailbox today. Do you have a Secret Santa?





Secret Santa from Workhouse on Vimeo.

Before I go, just a quick reminder that it's Rev on telly tonight. If you only watch one thing, watch this. It's been a fabulous series and I'll be sorry to see it end. I've been amazed that some Christians are up in arms about the show but I think that forward thinking churchmen such as the Rev Richard Coles would find it difficult to take offence. Coles tweeted this morning with a word which my computer Scrabble wouldn't allow when I used it. He said that his dogs had been playing up and he'd found a big shit under his piano.  I tweeted back asking what Piers Morgan was doing under his piano. Others asked if it was Jeremy Clarkson whilst one,  (a vicar perhaps) suggested it was his archdeacon.That's the sort of vicar who might get a few more bums on seats.

On Winter, Strikers And Indian Talent

I'd like to start today with a thank you to the three kind souls who have "flattrd' the blog to date (giant oaks from little acorns and all that). Your support is appreciated.


As I write, it looks like winter has finally started to head our way and in the past hour the house has been buffeted by gale force winds and hailstones and there's a distinct chill in the air. We're off to Ribchester shortly to visit some friends. It's quite hilly up there but I don't think we need to pack the snow gear yet although it's around this time last year that we awoke on our first morning of retirement to a heavy blizzard in Manchester. We're looking forward to visiting Mark and Nita who run the excellent Workhouse Marketing the best creative marketing agency in the North West.

Last time we got together Mark had a try metal detecting with me and I gave him my old machine. I don't think he's had much success to date. Pretty much like me I suppose. Yesterday I headed up to Cumbria with my detecting pal Ed. We put in about five hours on the fields where I found my Roman gold bracelet link in the summer but all I had to show for it was this small Roman bronze coin. Ed had a similar one. At least we didn't go home completely empty handed but we will have to try and come up with some new places to go when we get out again in 2012. I think I will hang up the detector, spade and wellies for a few months now unless we get a very mild spell.

I don't tend to get political at all on here usually but the impending public sector workers' strike is really getting my back up. It's not because our son and daughter in law are flying back into Heathrow on Wednesday night/Thursday morning having been delayed on their outward flight to a wedding in the USA because of fog and now face more misery on their return. No, it's because I just can't see the point. I know that it's hard to discover that you are going to have to work longer before you get your pension and you may have to contribute more to it but it's something that has been coming for years and successive governments have failed to do anything about it. When most pensions were set up the average life expectancy was much lower. It is now heading towards eighty years which is eight years longer than it was even as recently as the 1970's. It doesn't take a mathematician to work out that a scheme set up to fund a pension for say fifteen years on average will run out of money if it has to pay the pensioners for twenty three. And, as these are public sector pensions, it is the UK tax payers that will have to foot the enormous shortfall. So it is common sense to make pensions kick in at a later age. Marion is one of those unlucky women in their fifties who expected a state pension at sixty and now has to wait another five years but, however much she dislikes it, she understands why it is essential to the economy and someone, somewhere, who is organising this strike should know that public sector workers will have to accept change too (unless they want us to end up like Greece that is).


Sorry about that but I can't see the point of damaging our fragile economy to further personal aims. If they've got a proposal of how it's going to be paid for, I would love to hear it. Rant over. Normal blogging resumes.


It's the X Factor quarter final tomorrow night. We've still got our bets on the two favourites Marcus and Little Mix although Marcus's odds went up the other day and Little Mix are now favourites by some way. Which is strange considering that they have not performed since last weekend. Have I missed something in the press? If both survive this week without being in the final two it should be a certainty that one of them will win (unless Janet, the only other act to escape the sing offs so far is a dark horse). It hasn't been a classic series this one, although it's still pulling in huge audiences - like that other Simon Cowell franchise "....'s Got Talent". I said on here that Britain clearly didn't have talent but has India? Judge for yourself.


 

Weighty Decisions

As I mentioned recently, Marion's mum Flo has been finding it difficult living alone of late and is struggling with every day things like visiting the shops and taking a shower. She has done extremely well for sixteen years alone but, at 86, is having to rely more on us and neighbours to help her out of minor scrapes. We don't want these to turn into major scrapes like leaving something on in the kitchen or falling in the shower so, on her doctor's advice, we took her to look around a residential home this morning.

The thought of elderly care sometimes conjures up images like this. I certainly experienced this sort of place (like God's waiting rooms), during my time as a bank manager and couldn't get out of them quick enough. But I also had good memories of my own Nan living on Lord St Southport in a fairly posh place where she had a whale of a time and even ended up with a 'boyfriend' (quite an achievement as the ratio of women to men was about ten to one). 

The one we visited was a little more like this (albeit through rose coloured spectacles) and I have to say that we were pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere with only the occasional whiff of stale urine that totally pervades some residential homes. It was quite a lively place with plenty going on. While Marion and her mum were doing the tour I managed to speak to a 95 year old and ask him how he enjoyed things. He had only been there a month and, although it was not home, the food was good, he was being well looked after and he was happier than he had been on his own. A pretty good (and unforced) endorsement. We also managed to speak to a woman of our age whose mother had similar difficulties to Flo and she spoke very well of the home.


I suppose that in Spain, France, Italy and many other of our European neighbours  the question of packing an elderly relative off to a place like this would not arise and it would be simply taken for granted that she would come and live with us. It's a dilemma isn't it? Nobody wants to see a parent unhappy but at the same time, other than a few saints out there, none of us wants a huge chunk of our retirement sacrificed to caring. That sounds selfish doesn't it? And yes we could devote hours every day to Flo if we gave up everything else as we have no excuse like work to stand in our way. But would that be the correct decision? I've thought long and hard about this and I don't think so. The home can provide support that we can't. Flo's dignity can be preserved by having a qualified carer rather than a family member help her to bathe and there is emergency medical support on hand 24 hours a day as well as daily activities, fifty others her own age and a varied and healthy menu.


After looking around the home we went to a cafe for a sandwich. Sitting opposite, enjoying a cup of tea, was a woman who lives in the adjacent flat to Flo. She told us that she was off to lunch and a concert in Southport and had a diary packed full of similar engagements and was disappointed that similar concerts she travelled to in Bootle had been hit by the cuts. She was well over ninety but told us that yesterday she had sorted out Flo's central heating for her. She strode out of the cafe and over to the bus stop with an air of happy independence. An air that Flo is sadly unable to emulate.


She has decided to give the care home a try. She's going to treat it like a holiday for a week while we are having a break in a cottage in Kirkby Lonsdale. We'll see how things go. At least we will not have to worry while we are away but if she decides that it's not for her we'll be back to square one.

On a lighter note, good luck to our friend Mark Jones who has just embarked on a very big adventure. Passionately patriotic, Mark enjoyed watching Wales win through to their World Cup semi final on Saturday morning so much that by Saturday evening he was so delighted with the result that he somehow managed to book himself onto a flight to New Zealand for the remainder of the tournament. It's amazing the lengths some people will go to to avoid an evening with me and Marion (dinner was scheduled for Saturday). If you read this Mark (we're sure that you will have more than a few free minutes alone in New Zealand for two weeks, especially if your match tickets don't materialise), good luck mate. We'll be rooting for you.

Powerful Stuff

We went to see Senna at FACT in Liverpool this afternoon - phew. Its a quite remarkable documentary made up entirely from archive footage of motor racing, home videos, television news and interviews brilliantly edited together to create a compelling drama. Although the audience is completely aware of what the ultimate outcome will be, the film is like an action movie and you can't help wishing it might change. For a slow driver like me, the cockpit shots are genuinely terrifying and I found myself gripping my armrest as Ayrton approached bends at unimaginable speeds ...... in the rain. Even if, like us, you are not a F1 fan, this is a movie that is well worth seeing. Let's hope it gets a wider release.

Before the film we treated ourselves to a bite to eat at Salt House Tapas in Liverpool One. They serve a great lunch menu offering three tapas plus sourdough bread and dipping oil for £8.95. We both chose this option which gave us six tasty little dishes between us. The portions are a nice and manageable size and freshly cooked and the restaurant is bright with a pleasant atmosphere. Service was warm, friendly and efficient and we will certainly give it another try when we make another Orange Wednesday trip to FACT.

We've a bit of a day out tomorrow. Our financial advisers, Cumberland Place, have invited us to their summer party at The Foundling Museum in London. It's only a couple of hours on the train so we're catching the 13.59 from Preston and coming back on the 2100 from Euston. We're looking forward to this as we will get the chance to have a look around the museum which celebrates the philanthropists such as Hogarth and Handel who dedicated themselves to London's foundlings and orphans. Should be an enjoyable event.

And on Sunday we're going with a couple of friends to have a look at the monthly Farmers' market at Hoghton Tower between Preston and Blackburn. It's reported to be the biggest and best in the area so it should be interesting. If it's not we've got the fallback of lunch at the Freemasons in Wiswell which was introduced to us by friends Mark and Nita from Workhouse Marketing.


Amongst lots of other things, Workhouse produce great advertising. I always enjoy original advertising and loved this new film for Virgin Media that was on before today's film.

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.