Sunday Sundae

A quiet day at home putting the house in order was punctuated by a trip to Yarm to try out the new(ish) Sundaes ice cream parlour, where perched on high stools we scoffed our various selections - one nutty, one chocolatey, and one fudgey - and pronounced each quite delicious.

Cup Finals

After being messed around for a few years the FA Cup final returned to its traditional spot – the last game of the domestic season, on a Saturday, and on the BBC (only lacking a 3:00 kick-off) and though the game was fast paced and enjoyable, with Arsenal on top form it was as one-sided as the 4-0 score line suggests; the better contest was the Scottish version which did kick off at 3pm (found on BBC Scotland – channel 984 on Freesat) where Inverness Caledonian Thistle, down to ten men, scored a late winner to beat Falkirk 2-1.

Richmond Station

On the last day of the half term holiday my wife and I finally got a day out, heading to Richmond for a mooch round the town and lunch at The Station; no trains have been there for decades but the renovated building is now home to a cinema, café, vintage shop, bakery, cheese-maker and even a micro-brewery.

Test Drive

A full day of Dad duty in Salford with visits to hospital outpatients, the GP surgery, Tesco, and more enjoyably Worsley Old Hall for tea, but before all that I took him out to test drive his old, now redundant, Ford Fiesta with a view to borrowing it for the boy’s use as he learns to drive; it started first time and drove smoothly enough but made an annoying squeak every thirty seconds or so that seemed unrelated to the brakes, steering or anything else – it was only on hearing the same squeak back in the house that I realised it was from my Dad’s hearing aid not the car.

Chipped & Turfed

The front garden job that started on Saturday was finished off today as I took advantage of my over-sixties Wednesday discount at B&Q to save a few pounds on four bags of slate chippings and a roll of turf; the two items going straight from the car boot to their respective sides of the new brick edging, one to cover the black plastic weed barrier sheeting laid over the border, and the other replacing a couple of barren corners of the lawn, to complete a pretty tidy job.

Hudl Hushed

My Hudl, Tesco’s tablet, out of guarantee but less than 18 months old, has developed a loud static crackling whenever the touchscreen is touched (which is all the time) and the Tesco tech team’s attempt to rectify the fault by pushing the factory reset with a pin (i.e. turning it off and on again) was ineffective; left to my own devices I found I could mitigate the problem by inserting headphones, although this just transferred the crackle to a couple of feet away, but my next step – to cut the lead from the jack plug to the earplugs – finally did the trick and hushed the Hudl to at least make it usable.

Boro Beaten

Middlesbrough’s defeat today at Wembley, followed via radio Five Live as I went about my chores, finished off the football season in these parts, where the Boro’s experience – an excellent season ending in bitter disappointment at narrowly missing out on promotion to the Premier League via the play-off final – contrasted sharply with that of the other three professional NE teams – Newcastle, Sunderland and Hartlepool all having very poor seasons in which relegation looked likely (in one case almost certain), yet surviving with late wins that saw their supporters elated and off to the summer break on relative highs.

Garden Plan

The bank holiday weekend has been earmarked for gardening, in particular improving the appearance of the frontage by better defining where the slate-chip covered border ends and the lawn begins, there being some confusion on the part of the slate which is migrating to the lawn and the grass which is sending shoots up through the slate; yesterday much of the slate was removed and today I inserted a brick edging to help keep them apart - tomorrow some weed barrier should be laid and the slate replaced to finish the job.

Eurovision Cliché Contest

The annual Eurovision Song Contest is made bearable by making it the centrepiece of a party night where couples earn points based on what happens on stage such as use of special effects (wind machine, fog, pyrotechnics), the singer’s appearance (tattoos, hat, bare midriff) or antics (circus skills, discarding clothing), to which is added points earned by three countries drawn at random; the winners, and the losers, get European themed prizes, each attached to a home-made flag – Australia and Italy were good choices (wine), Greece less so (olives).

P60

The Which? magazine in today’s post names and shames the worst call centres in the UK and the usual suspects are in the frame – BT, Scottish Power and TalkTalk – so the only surprise is that the HM Revenue & Customs do not feature; their service is so bad I gave up trying to correct my tax code and instead have had to wait for my three P60s (one for each job) to roll in – and the final one also arrived in today’s post – enabling me now to get on with my tax return and relieve HMRC of their ill-gotten, over-taxed gains.

Back in Harness

With the knee now just weak rather than wonky, it was back in harness today and it was a full load with three teaching sessions and two supermarket shops; on reflection my earnings from the former may just about cover my spending on the latter, leaving me financially no better off than if I’d stayed in bed all day.

Goldfinches

Today a couple of goldfinches appeared in the garden, unmistakeable from their size and red face feathers, rooting round in the longish grass; they, or another pair, turn up for a few days each May then disappear for the rest of the year, though where to is a mystery as my Big Book of British Birds confirms they are resident in the UK, still their brief annual visit is cheering and reminds me that summer is nearly here.

Old China

The plan to have a Chinese meal for tea as a birthday treat for the boy was looking in danger when the two takeaway leaflets in our kitchen draw – for Lucky Garden and Overseas – indicated closure on Tuesdays; undeterred I set off to trawl a few others not used for a decade or so, and fortunately found Tommy Lee’s open and still doing the business down at the Glebe in Stockton.

It’s a Wrap

On the eve of the boy’s seventeenth birthday I took a trip to Halfords to get him some L plates, it being a bit difficult to wrap up his main present of driving lessons.

Rugby League

Today, still confined to light duties, I found time to watch the exciting RL Challenge Cup tie on BBC2 in which Leigh overturned a 24-6 half time deficit to beat Wakefield 36-30; I watch few of the Northern code games these days and it has changed a bit in the fifty years since I used to go to Station Road (to watch my local team Swinton win back to back championships) with new rules such as uncontested scrums and the forty-twenty kick, and marketing-led additions to the traditional team names – Wakefield now being Wildcats and Leigh Centurions – and a quick look on t’internet revealed Swinton (no longer at station Road and no longer a force) are now Swinton Lions, which of course to their fans they always were.

Fat Quarters

Nipped out today to help buy some fat quarters; for the uninitiated these are not a choice cut of meat or a rich confection for our tea, but squares of fabric from which to make a quilt, signalling the commencement of my wife’s latest sewing project and the take over the living room carpet for the foreseeable future.

Avengers Remembered

With my wife hosting a Girls’ Night In to raise funds for charity, the boy and I headed off to the cinema to see the latest Avengers film – The Age of Ultron - and despite not seeing any of the previous seven or eight editions in the blockbusting franchise I was able to recognise and relate to the superheroes thanks to my misspent childhood reading of the original imported Marvel comics bought second hand from the bookstall on Eccles market.

Bye-Bye Blackbird

The white cat spends most of his limited outdoor time sat under a tree gazing up, waiting for a bird to drop at his feet, but today I don’t know whether his dream came true or whether he actually stirred himself to stalk and pounce on a particularly dopey specimen, but there he was in the middle of the garden with a blackbird at his feet, wondering what to do next; I saved him the decision by shooing him off and removing the (mercifully dead) remains.

Liquid Gold

The unwholesome smell that had been emanating from the environs of the central heating boiler was confirmed by the repairman on Saturday as seepage from the oil pump, which he advised meant fitting a new pump next week and in the meantime shoving a drip tray under the offending part to catch the few drops escaping; unfortunately the pump responded to his poking by developing from seepage to leakage, with the drip tray needing to be emptied three times a day, each time requiring a trip down to the bottom of the garden with a suspicious looking jam jar of golden liquid to pour back into the tank – goodness knows what the neighbours thought I was up to - but needed no more as the repair was effected today.

Eggless

We like to be neighbourly in our village so last Saturday we were happy to oblige when the lady next door asked to borrow four eggs to enable her to get on with some baking before her husband returned with the shopping, and we thought we had done well out of the deal when three cupcakes (but no eggs) were passed back later in the day; however the short term gratification was offset tonight when the two eggs remaining in the tray were all we had for the planned evening meal of omelette, enough just for the boy leaving me with a leftover bacon sandwich and my wife with an emergency bowl of pasta.

What No Parrot

Today I decided to venture back into civilization, necessitating shaving a week’s growth off the beard, jettisoning the tracksuit bottoms, and driving the car over to Newton Aycliffe; once parked it was a steady one-crutched walk to the bank, on the way back the resemblance to Long John Silver exacerbated by the clink of sixty pieces of eight in my pocket – well pound coins actually, destined for the boy’s daily dinner money allowance.

Movie Matinee

My prolonged immobility (relative now as I am down to one crutch) has driven me to daytime TV, but fortunately only in the form of a couple of films; yesterday it was Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” – dated but clever – and today it was “Little Miss Sunshine” (which never having seen before I recorded a while ago) – a funny and charming depiction of a dysfunctional family who take an eventful road trip to California to support little Olive Hoover’s ill-advised entry into the eponymous beauty pageant. 

Dog Fight

With the Premier League championship settled the Match of the Day focus was firmly on the dog fight to avoid the final relegation place, and with teams suddenly discovering how to win games it is entertaining as well as tense; Hull, the only team to lose yesterday, are in dire straits, two points adrift with two tough games to come, however just above them the NE pair of Sunderland and Newcastle are still vulnerable with Leicester and Villa better placed but not yet out of the woods.

Tories In

By 4am it was clear that the exit poll was spot on so I went to bed for a few hours, my head full of the sight of Tory grins and Labour frowns, the sound of SNP cheers raising the roof and LibDem support dropping through the floor (as huge chunks of last time's protest vote support were diverted to the irrelevance of UKIP); by noon Cameron was in Downing Street and Miliband, Clegg and Farage had all departed their leadership posts giving the Conservative party free rein to further shrink the public sector, transferring costs of essential services to the individual, which is fine if you can pay, but disastrous if you can't.

Election Night

This is the eleventh general election in which I have been eligible to vote and it will be another long night in front of the TV watching the numbers rack up, the swingometer swing, and the various virtual reality graphics forming imaginative ways to illustrate the results; I don't know why I need to watch it beyond the one minute past ten exit poll announcement - but I do.

Campaign Over

The general election campaign reached the final day of its six or so week duration, during which I have refrained from commenting on the media hype, unrealistic promises, mud-slinging, misinformation, celebrity endorsement, childish point-scoring, and last minute entreaties to "vote for us to stop them winning" – mainly as having seen it all ten times before, I have learned to ignore it; at the end of the day (tomorrow) the vote will be cast, as always, on the basis of a party’s fundamental philosophy rather than its electioneering waffle.

Crutch 22

I could do with going to see the doctor about my knee, if only to get a pair of crutches to enable me to get around while giving it time to recover, the problem being that I need a pair of crutches to get to the surgery; the way out of this particular catch 22 is, of course, Amazon who will deliver a set tomorrow.

Freeze-frame Snooker

Still laid up but the snooker world championship provided an excellent diversion with the Shaun Murphy v Stuart Bingham final swinging first one way and then the other; so as not to miss a vital frame I watched via the BBC sport website, which was fine for most of the day, an occasional freeze-frame not too noticeable in a sport where the players spend a lot of time standing still, but in the evening it started to buffer badly with sixty second stills not uncommon, such that the epic (and as it turned out decisive) 31st frame of 64 minutes took me an hour and a half to watch.

Ditto

The knee is still like a balloon so another day laid up in bed reading, puzzling (Sudoku, free cell, spider solitaire, even a digital jigsaw), watching snooker and trying not to be too burdensome for my wife and son who are having to cover my domestic duties and minister to my needs; there will be payback.

The Knee’s a Balloon

Keeping my weight off my poorly left foot has enabled it to recover but the consequent excess strain one my right leg proved too much for my knee which has swollen up like a balloon; it’s not the first time it has responded this way but fortunately the anti-inflammatory pills were still in date, so it was a case of spending most of the day in bed with my book, my Sudoku puzzles, and my tablets (both the pills for my knee and the Hudl for the snooker).

Crown Hotel

It was off for a meal out to celebrate my Father-in-law’s birthday tonight; and a good choice of venue this year in the Crown Hotel at Kirklevington where my retro prawn cocktail and tasty pork pancetta hit the spot, as did the Black Sheep beer on draught.