Dangerous Sports

I know that you wouldn't normally include metal detecting in the category of dangerous sports but my detecting colleague almost came a cropper yesterday. I was chatting to one of the farmers who allows me to search his fields last week and he told me that the local history society had suggested that one of his fields might be a site of ancient activity. He suggested that I have a look over it with the detector so I checked it out on the map. It was about a mile from the nearest road and at the top of a steep hill. I told my pal about it and asked if he was up for it. No problem. He was happy to give it a try.

So yesterday at about 9 o'clock I found myself here, half way up the hill, with an extremely shattered detecting partner. He found the going extremely tough and had to stop and lie down. He's not that old (early sixties) and thought that he was pretty fit. He's not terribly overweight either but, although he used to ramble regularly, he hasn't done much physical activity other than detecting for some time and the climb up the hill was a real shock to the system. I had a horrible vision of him suffering a heart attack a mile away from the car but after a while he recovered sufficiently to make it to the top of the hill. Sadly I can't report that the effort was worthwhile as we only found a button, a buckle, a lead weight and a spindle whorl between us. I think we'll stick to easily accessible sites in future.

Finds to die for?

There's been hardly any time to blog this week as we were up at four thirty on Tuesday and heading back to St Andrews to bring Sarah and our new granddaughter Rose out of hospital. After worrying us all with her sleepiness and failure to feed which resulted in a big weight loss, Rose finally got used to the idea of feeding and is now doing fine. We spent Wednesday in St Andrews in some glorious sunshine before heading back to Southport and arriving home at one in the morning. But no complaints. It's so fantastic to be able to see our family.

And we would drive five hundred miles

You would think that perhaps after such a hectic couple of days we would have a lie in on Thursday but no. We were off to Liverpool first thing in the morning in order to buy what was needed for the new St Andrews caravan. It's like setting up home all over again. This was how the car looked by mid afternoon. The fridge, the TV and the DVD player are being shipped to Scotland and we still haven't got everything with bed and pillow covers and towels still on the list along with a fair bit more. We're off to Southport today to stock up on the missing items.

When the car was full we went and had another light lunch at Salt House Tapas. We've become regulars there over the past month as the food and service are great and the portion sizes are small which means that we don't over do it. After lunch we headed for FACT and saw the acclaimed Palme D'Or winning film The Tree Of Life. Now I would have loved to have said that this was as brilliant as some of the critics have said but we found it seriously flawed. The underlying story of a family growing up in the early fifties is good but it's wrapped into a lot of quasi religious mumbo jumbo involving dinosaurs, planets and heaven which drag on for ages and made no sense to me and Marion at all. It was a bit like 2001 A Space Odyssey in parts (and nobody understood that either) and I can't help feeling that a lot of the praisers of this film jumped on the bandwagon for fear of being unable to see the King's new clothes. It's certainly different but I would not recommend it.

Here's something that is not particularly different. It's been done before by a car manufacturer (Audi I think) and OK Go but I think that this one is the best yet.

Back Home

It really was a flying visit to St Andrews yesterday. I didn't know the Prius would go that fast. I'm normally the world's most boring driver with the cruise control set at bang on the speed limit but with the prospect of arriving at Dundee's Ninewell's Hospital too late to see our new granddaughter I thought "what the hell" and even touched over 80 for the last forty miles. She came home today so we beat a hasty retreat back to Southport as it's a really important time for the new family to get used to life together without any intrusion. However they won't be escaping us that easily as we nipped out this morning and bought a caravan at a site two minutes down the road from their house. It will be sited in a couple of weeks so we hope that we'll be regularly commuting to St Andrews for baby sitting duties from then onwards.

The family back home

In the meantime we're still able to travel to Lichfield  a day later than planned for our great friends' David and Jane Haworth's daughter Katie's wedding. We were going to make a short break of it and still will by stretching our stay to include Sunday night. There's a big festival on in Lichfield this weekend and, weather permitting, we hope to go and see an outdoor Shakespeare performance on Sunday afternoon and possibly an outdoor showing of Casablanca tomorrow night. On the way down I'm dropping off a couple of antiques at an auction in Knutsford as we are doing a bit of de-cluttering.

It's been such a hectic week that this is the first opportunity I've had to mention this week's cinema outing. We went to the wonderful FACT in Liverpool again to see the multi award winning Iranian film 'A Separation'. It's not difficult to see why this film has won so many plaudits. It's a gripping tale of a young couple with a problem. The wife wants the family to emigrate. The husband wants to stay in Iran and look after his aged father who is suffering from dementia. Their  eleven year old daughter is torn between the two when the mother moves back to her own family home. Though set in Iran, it is a dilemma that anyone in the world could encounter and, when a problem arises with the young woman taken on to care for the old man, life becomes extremely difficult for all involved. The acting is superb and totally believable and the drama is intense and ultimately very moving. Although I said that the dilemma could happen anywhere in the world,  the Iranian justice system and the religious undertones depicted in the film do add an extra dimension to the story. It is a beautiful study of relationships and you should not be put off by the subtitles.

After another excellent light lunch at Salt House Tapas in Hanover St (where they serve the nicest olives you will ever taste), it was back to FACT for 'Life In A Day'. This is an experimental film made by Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald who asked the world to send in their videos of July 24 2010. It was a very brave and exciting idea but was totally dependent upon the clips sent in and the end result is a bit of a disappointment. There are some memorable moments - a segment centering on three African women threshing grain to their own rhythmic singing was outstanding, a teenager's first shave was touching and an old couple remaking their marriage vows were charming but too many clips washed over me without leaving any impression and I feel that it was an opportunity lost. I did enjoy the final clip which may or may not have been contrived but, for me, the fact that a couple of the audience left before the end, spoke volumes.  All credit to Scott and MacDonald for giving it a try.

Whilst at FACT we saw the trailer for Brad Pitt and Sean Penn in 'The Tree Of Life'. An intriguing trailer which certainly whet our appetites and has to be our choice for next week.
Here's a taste.