Eurovision Cliché Contest

Although the Eurovision Song Contest took place three weeks ago it clashed with Wembley so we recorded it and tonight were able to watch it, made enjoyable by using the programme as a base for a party game with friends where points are awarded for specified clichés in the performances, some environmental (wind, pyrotechnics, fog and mist), others personal to the performer (extreme hair, tattoos or bare feet), with the most surprising point scorer this year being the presence of circus skills including a man in a giant hamster wheel, one woman hanging on a trapeze, and another careering around on a pair of roller blades; combined with a meal, wine, flags and themed prizes it made for a fun evening.

Frugality Frustrated

I like to be frugal, not only with my resources but also with those of my employer, so I printed off (greyscale, fast) my 12 page student workbook on the reverse of some obsolete letter-headed notepaper – so far so frugal – however when I took it to be copied (six sets needed) instead of a slim booklet of six back-to-back pages the operator managed to produce a twenty-four page single-sided document of which every other page was blank apart from the redundant letter-head of a defunct college; so frugality was frustrated to the extent of an extra 108 sheets of A4 (albeit I will recycle 72 of them back through the printer).

Four Rules

Next week’s maths class is all about the four rules of arithmetic, the fundamental operations of plus, minus, times and divide, which most maths then depends on, and before putting the final touches to the workbook this evening, I was using all four throughout the day, first in compiling my four pay claims, adding up the hours and multiplying by the various hourly rates, and then in ordering a “take-away” (Chinese) and dividing it up between the three of us for tea.

Flying Visit

With younger daughter and partner making a flying visit en route from Aberdeenshire to Nottingham, my wife and I reverted to more traditional roles with me cracking on with the decorating and she preparing a meal worthy of the occasion - her signature dish of beef lasagne followed by a Guinness infused chocolate cake; both were much appreciated by our guests, although my driver-friendly offer of non-alcoholic wine was less universally acclaimed with my daughter instead homing in on a small Budweiser tucked away at the bottom of the fridge.

Whitby

It wouldn’t be half-term without a day in Whitby, even though the weather was a bit drizzly, and even though the remaining ‘child’ is sixteen and whose agreement to go was conditional on him being accompanied by his girlfriend and allowed to wander free on arrival, so no bucket and spade this year and another change was the new park and ride facility that eased access into the town; the rest of the trip followed a tried and tested itinerary that included a game of mini-golf (two holes-in-one), purchase of a quarter (or gram equivalent) of Uncle Joe’s mint balls, a trawl of the charity shops (a fiver secured a  copper hearth brush and a jigsaw), a visit to the remainder bookshop (buying a baking book and a walking guide), and of course, for lunch, Whitby fish and chips (featuring haddock battered with the skin on for extra flavour).

Not What-it-says-on-the-tin

The hope that we may be able to use up one of the half-dozen or so half empty containers of imaginatively named magnolia emulsion for decorating the dairy was short-lived as none provided sufficient contrast to the freshly re-painted woodwork, so it was off to the DIY store to buy something a little darker (and if necessary a new matching colour for the wood); a leaf through the Dulux, Crown and B&Q shade cards had me toying with the exotic before returning home with Chocolate Milkshake emulsion and Cocoa Bean gloss, where it was no real surprise to find the colour unfolding on the wall nothing like that depicted on the tin - a little pinkish, more mushroom pate than chocolate milkshake - but thankfully still an acceptable shade for the walls (particularly if the Cocoa Bean tends to the aubergine).

Varnishing Act

A cool showery bank holiday week-end tends to see me funnelled into repair and maintenance so I plumped for an easy option and did a vanishing act into the barn and spent several hours yesterday and another hour today sanding down and varnishing the patio table, a not unpleasant job provided there is some sport or drama on the radio to distract and entertain (Championship play-off yesterday and Monaco Grand Prix today); however it proved to be a mere appetiser as on my return to the house I found my wife had made a start on redecorating what we mysteriously call the dairy (a downstairs utility room containing sink, toilet, boiler, clothes dryer, shoe rack and coat hooks) – and what she starts to decorate I inevitably end up finishing.

Uncorking Wine

Using a corkscrew is a dying art, not often needed these days with screw-tops pretty universal (at least in my price range), but last night a bottle of Rioja was unearthed from the back of the cupboard stoppered with a cork that disintegrated further with every attempt to extract it, leaving me no alternative but to unscrew some Merlot instead; my wife later resumed battle with the Rioja and managed to force entry at a cost of some debris entering the bottle, but tonight when I poured a glass it was reminiscent of many a 1970’s party (when we often hacked a cork to bits and pushed it in picking out the big floaters and spitting out or swallowing the sinkers) however being more particular these days I decanted the wine into the cafetiere, using the plunger to filter it for consumption – a cheeky number redolent of smoky blackberry with just a hint of coffee bean.

The May Skip

With the Whit bank holiday week-end commencing it is time in the village for the May Skip, not as you may imagine an age-old rural dance on the village green to welcome the spring but a slightly less ancient tradition of depositing a large metal container on the car park, to receive the fall-out of seasonal tidy-ups of houses and gardens, where it’s eagerly awaited arrival is celebrated by a civilised but frantic rush to get something in it before it starts to overflow a few hours later; spotting it on my way into the village this afternoon I quickly scrabbled around for something bulky and walked over and dumped an old bath panel, pleased to participate this year in the quaint old custom.

Democratic Processes

The local village hall has, over the last 24 hours, accommodated both ends of the democratic spectrum with yesterday hosting the Annual Parish Meeting and today providing a polling station for the European elections; there were only four interested residents turned up last night to hold their elected representatives to account and hear about the pressing issues in the village, viz: declining support for the village hall, no more facilities for youngsters, reductions in bus services, and diminishing numbers of volunteers for picking litter and raking leaves (in fact the only thing going up is the average speed of vehicles hurtling through the village as measured by the speed monitoring signs); and probably not many more turned up today to cast their European vote, hopefully for one of the sensible parties to be found here and there among the long list of crackpots.

Return of the Scones

I’m not one to complain, but having bitten into a cherry scone and found not only a stone (which possibility was, to be fair, foreseen by the warning on the wrapper) but also that the cherries had a greenish hue, I decided to make a point and return them to the supermarket (naming no names, but a certain Geordie pair would be disappointed) where I waited at Customer Services while the baker was summoned; our discussion went along the lines of her saying that that’s what their cherries look like and me saying that I prefer my cherries red and firm not green and slimy, before I eventually got my refund – which at £1.30 probably did not cover the fuel cost of my drive to the store and back.

Walking Fast

The recent glut of work and the need to park close enough to make the lugging of a heavy bag bearable, has made the mile a day walking target difficult to achieve in May, but a single hour session today gave an opportunity to walk into town and back before returning home, and accordingly I set off my Endomondo exercise tracker app as I started walking to get an accurate reading of the stroll; unfortunately I omitted to stop it on my return to the car, so on reaching home and unpacking my bag I had apparently walked an impressive 10 miles in 55 minutes, and tempting as it was to let it stand I reluctantly deleted it and manually input instead an estimated distance of 2 miles in 40 minutes.

Sixteen

The boy, unbelievably, turned sixteen today, but following a celebratory meal in advance at TGI Friday’s on Saturday, the birthday itself was fairly low key with the opening of cards and presents fitted around school and work (including my own double shift), but we did manage to convene around 5pm to cut the cake; and at sixteen you can still just about get away with one shaped as a caterpillar. 

Re-cycling

Just under seven weeks to Le Grand depart and I have this crazy idea of cycling from home to the nearest point that they will whizz past, about thirty miles away, which may not be far for an accomplished cyclist but is quite challenging for an aging, unaccomplished, lapsed, occasional ex-rider of a bicycle like me; so today the old, but classic, Arthur Caygill bike was lifted off its wall brackets and had its bits wiped, oiled or inflated as appropriate, before being taken out for a leisurely eight mile ride through the sunny country lanes – the first step in a planned build-up for Le Tour.

Medieval Fair

For once the sun shone warmly on the annual medieval fair at Sedgefield but umbrellas were the only traditional items missing, with fighting knights, Morris dancers, tugs-of war, stalls, rides and refreshments all in place; and of course there was Ye Old Book Shop where I made my traditional multiple purchase, unnecessarily adding a further four books to my more than adequate stock (six actually as one is a trilogy) but at least the money went to a good cause.

Plumbing

Our higgledy-piggledy house has some higgledy-piggledy plumbing with one or two issues, including a long-standing irritation of a boiler that sends hot water to the radiators even when the heating is supposedly switched off, and a more recent annoyance of a dripping kitchen tap that had begun to rival the Chinese water torture, so it was good news when the plumber arrived this morning; less so when he left this afternoon with the boiler serviced but still sending hot water the wrong way (pending his return tomorrow with another boiler part) – at least the new kitchen tap doesn’t drip but, sadly, neither does it deliver water above room temperature.

Summer of Sport

The arrival of our Commonwealth Games tickets in the week after Wembley, should herald the transition from football, that rules in winter, to the more varied fare of summer, particularly the athletics in Glasgow and the Tour de France (with the Grand Depart just down the road in the Yorkshire Dales) plus an overdue visit to the county cricket at Durham; however the beautiful game will just not go away with the small matter of a World Cup in Brazil to accommodate in what looks to be a busy, potentially overloaded, summer of sport.

Revision

GCSE exams have commenced for the boy but my attempts to help with revision have not been well received as he is concerned that following a full day of revision classes at school any further effort at home may ‘over-stuff’ his mind – presumably with unhelpful things such as relevant facts, rehearsed opinions and prepared analysis – and so inhibit his uncluttered, free-thinking, intuitive approach to answering questions; why didn’t I think of that when I was sixteen.

City Champions

I am a day or two late in commenting on Manchester City’s second title win in three years, but the less dramatic climax this year allows for a more relaxed reaction, with the clinching game on Sunday won without hiccup in a most un-City-like fashion; as a fifteen year-old I celebrated the 1968 League Championship with youthful cheers and little appreciation of its significance (which then grew with every subsequent year of under-achievement), and 44 years later I marked the 2012 win with tears, but this time it was just a contented “yes” as the Radio Five Live commentary counted down the last minutes of the season.

Building Bridges

As part of today’s teaching I used the dead hour before lunch (following an hour long session on sexual health, thankfully delivered by a professional in the subject) to get the learners to team up and build bridges out of just paper and sticky tape, of a specified minimum span and clearance, and capable of carrying a significant load (of Haribo sweets); the results were three surprisingly sturdy constructions, of variable architectural merit, not only able to support all the available sweets, but also in one case a fragile looking vase in the wrong room at the wrong time, which all went to provide a quite successful way of smuggling some functional skills (measuring and communication) into the day. 

Clairville Stadium

The annual Cyril Elliott open track and field meeting (named to commemorate a much loved coach of the Middlesbrough Mandale AC) was held today at the Clairville Stadium in Middlesbrough for what will be the last time at that venue, as the 51 year-old stadium is due for demolition with a replacement promised elsewhere in the town for next season; Clairville has served well as a base not only for athlete development and club meetings but also for school athletics, and we have shivered in the old concrete stand on many occasions as the boy won a few medals over the years, finishing today with a fine brace (bronze & silver).

Wembley

This year’s tracking of the FA Vase competition, which began last September in Jarrow and has seen me take in a game from each of the nine rounds, culminated today at Wembley, necessitating an early 7.30 start for the 200 mile drive down to Banbury whence a train service runs direct to the stadium, where I joined 5,430 other fans (constituting a crowd in non-league terms) in enjoying a tense seventy minutes until Sholing scored, then a frantic last twenty minutes as West Auckland Town strove hard but failed to beat an inspired goalkeeper; at least the lack of an equaliser meant no extra time and enabled the return trip to run to schedule and get me home half an hour before midnight.

Day Off

Having worked for three consecutive days this felt like a day off, and with a busy weekend ahead a lot of errands needed running – the kind that as a retired person I would spread over the week to give each day a purpose and each evening a sense of achievement – but no such luxury today, instead a carefully planned whistle-stop itinerary that included three shops, the railway station, the post office, a building society, a community centre, a plumbers’ merchants and, inevitably after all that, the petrol filling station.

Transporter

A third solid day back at work in Middlesbrough, modelling the financial future of a business, working in the shadow of the iconic Transporter Bridge, currently undergoing some maintenance; in my previous three month stint here I could lose minutes gazing out of the office window watching it cradle vehicles across the Tees a few at a time – for it is not so much a bridge as a ferry, as my new car insists on informing me in a slightly panicky voice each morning as soon as we get within 100 yards of it on my way to my parking spot.

Rowing

I got a little wet while rowing this evening which is surprising as I was indoors at the time, but with the choice of gym rowing machines restricted by non-functioning consoles, broken foot-straps and another user, I ended up in front of the open window, cool when the wind whistled in and wet when the heavy shower followed; still, at least I had one foot strapped in and the console worked , confirming a good time for my 2,000 metres, that must have been helped by the following wind!

Magritte

I first came across surrealist painter Rene Magritte at an impressionable age via a Sunday Times magazine that had improbably found its way into our working class home during my elder sister’s (short) intellectual sixth former phase, and from which I cut out and mounted some choice images – most memorably the man with his nose in his pipe – that then decorated the walls of first my bedroom and then various student digs, becoming more dog-eared and blu-tac stained over the years until I could eventually replace it with a proper book of his work; it all came back to me today as I watched the ‘Perspectives’ documentary appreciation of the artist’s work, presented by Will Young on whom Magritte clearly had a similar impact at a similar age.

Daisy Cutter

Not the sweetly-hit (and in my case rarely-hit) football shot that skims an inch over the turf to nestle in the corner of the goal net, this daisy cutter is an old but brutally effective Fly-Mo that not so much cuts as masticates the grass and daisies, half of which go into the grass box while the other half compacts itself to the underside of the Fly-Mo, transforming it into more of a Drag-Mo, until it is scraped off at each emptying of the clippings; twenty such tippings later the job was done, front and back – a good bank holiday Monday’s work, allowing me to retire to watch the snooker final with a clear conscience.

Drive Mode

One of the unfamiliar features of the new car is a ‘drive mode’ which I had kept on ‘Eco’ since purchase, and while this had minimised my carbon emissions (and fuel costs) I had been a bit disappointed with the resulting lack of umph, so today I selected ‘Normal’ for a trip to Sedgefield farmers’ market and immediately felt the difference in performance; on the way back I selected ‘Sport’ and fairly flew home with the cheese and sponge cake.

WarHorse

We travelled to Sunderland’s Empire Theatre after months of anticipation with high expectations which were more than met by this brilliant National Theatre production, with the horses and their handlers (to call them puppets and puppeteers would be a disservice) naturally (and I mean naturally) the stars, but the staging was equally excellent, transforming seamlessly into a scarily believable World War 1 battlefield with few props but terrific light and sound, and of course those actors playing humans were faultless too; it all provided two and a half hours of great drama - senseless tragedy of war, moments of humour, pathos, redemption, lumps in the throat, moist eyes and a standing ovation.

Sutton Arms

It was with some trepidation that we set off for a meal out with the in-laws tonight, not due to the company, but because the otherwise modest Sutton Arms in Elton offers a notoriously extensive, not to say exotic, menu which includes every cut of every animal on the farm, types of fish I have never heard of, and an international selection usually only found on a world cruise or in a street full of takeaways (curries, Chinese, Thai, Italian, paella, etc.) and even a couple of dishes featuring fresh lobster; this is rarely an indicator of good quality so I played safe with Thai fishcakes for starters followed by steak and ale pie, which to be fair were fine, complemented by a pleasant hand-pulled draught beer – so in the end no complaints for my £20.

Snooker

The World Championships at The Crucible in Sheffield are nearing their climax with the heavyweight semi-final between Neil Robertson and Mike Selby likely to be the match of the tournament, the only drawback for the winner will be recovering from an exhausting contest to face (probably) Ronnie O’Sullivan whose path to the final looks much more straightforward; snooker is a sport I have followed on and off for 40 years, beginning with Pot Black on in shades of grey on BBC2 where I’m sure I heard the classic line, possibly misremembered as,  “for those of you watching in black and white, the pink is behind the blue”, then taking in the golden years of Cliff Thorburn’s first televised 147 and Dennis Taylor’s late night, last frame, black ball victory over Steve Davis, but nowadays I tend to pick my matches to get into, and Robertson v Selby looks like a cracker. 

Shopping Centres (Wednesday 30/4/14)

The need to purchase a birthday present led us first to Teesside Retail Park for what turned out to be a soulless, fruitless, chain-store shopping experience, so instead we headed twelve miles south to the old-fashioned market town of Northallerton where we not only found a range of suitable items among the independent shops but also enjoyed a tasty cheese-and-ham-filled toasted croissant at the very pleasant Olivia’s Café.