Roamers’ Route

I spent the afternoon looking in detail at the first stages of the St. Cuthbert’s Way walk route, checking distances and contours in an attempt to determine suitable sections for next week’s LGH old boys’ two day walking event in the Scottish Borders; given my recent knee troubles, “suitable” means no more than about ten miles and no challenging gradients, and I eventually managed not only to identify a gently undulating twenty miles that split well over two days but also optional add-on hills at each end for those who feel the irrepressible urge to go further and higher.

Library Find

I was surprised and pleased to find on the shelves of the mobile library a copy of ‘Go Set a Watchman’, Harper Lee’s follow-up (or pre-cursor) to her classic ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’; published just this year to some (if not all) bad reviews it will tick those two boxes on the reading challenge, but irrespective of that its curiosity value should make it worth reading.

Fun Day Monday

With my week for the time being structured around my work commitments Tuesdays to Fridays (albeit only two and a half hours each day) Monday has emerged as the day for trips, outings or just relaxation with time to catch up on my reading, writing or household admin; no outing today following yesterday’s trip down to Manchester so it was a case of reconciling the bank and credit card accounts and reviewing the finances (counts as fun for me), progressing Moby Dick (we have finally set sail), and writing up Saturdays FA Cup game on the football blog.

Long Awaited Meal

Drove down to Manchester to celebrate the first day of my Dad’s 91^st year with a family gathering and a meal at the Barton Arms in Worsley, a pleasant enough pub restaurant, built since my youth when I used to ride my bike down this way on along the adjacent Bridgewater Canal towpath; the food was pretty good and the prices very reasonable but the service was not so much slow as desultory as twice we had to send a delegation to search out the waiting on staff, remind them of our very existence and ask them first to remove used crockery and then offer some dessert (while some additional drinks never arrived at all), but we stayed cheerful throughout and filled the long gaps between courses catching up on family gossip, it being particularly good to see my far flung sister for the first time in over a year.

Photographic Memories

Ahead of tomorrow’s trip down to Manchester to celebrate my Dad’s 90th birthday I hauled out the crate of pre-digital photographs and made a selection to take with me of black and white prints, mainly taken on family holidays (when else in those days would you take a photograph given the hassle and expense of getting the film developed and printed); I got a couple scanned, enlarged, printed and framed (done while I waited at, of all places, Timpsons) to give my Dad – after all, as you get older, what is more valuable than good memories.

Birthday Card

Today, needing a card for my Dad’s special birthday tomorrow, I took a trip to the Card Factory shop only to be presented with the dilemma of whether to get a “90 today” card or a “happy birthday dad” card; with 90^th birthday cards clearly not a mass market (only three to choose from) I plumped for a suitable “dad” card, supplemented with an unexpectedly available and tasteful “90 today” sticker that saved me from attempting a do-it-yourself job with the felt tip pens.

Fish-less Pie

Fish pie, featuring smoked cod loin, salmon fillets and prawns, is one of my signature dishes, and having neglected it of late I decided to make one for today’s tea; an immediate setback was the absence of smoked cod loin on the fishmonger’s slab so instead I bought some smoked basa (a fish not previously heard of that looked similar but was considerably cheaper), and then in the hurly burly of the cooking, having applied the creamy mashed potato and cheese topping, I noticed the pawns still sat in their bowl on the worktop – so not one of my best efforts with two of the three key ingredients missing, and although the basa seemed an acceptable substitute the prawn garnish did not go down so well.

Learning Bus

Three weeks completed on the nursery bus run and we are all learning new things: I am learning the children’s names, how to reverse a big minibus into a small gateway, and how to play I-Spy when you are too young to spell; the children have learnt that when they get on the bus in the morning it is to take them somewhere nice (they cheer when we arrive) and that when they get back on the bus in the afternoon they should ask each other (repeatedly at the top of their voices) “did you have a good day”.

Cat v Stick

The white cat is under the impression that the rubber ferrule on the end of my elbow crutch is a new toy that he can stalk, pounce on, hold in his vice-like claws and chew; which would be fine if I wasn’t using it at the time to negotiate a path across the living room.

Code & Cross

Both words combine with word to give a word puzzle, which were today’s ‘sitting down while I rest my leg’ activity: the codewords I usually manage to solve, particularly if one of the given letters is a vowel; the crossword was in the BBC History magazine and so knowledge based rather than cryptic, but I gave it a good go and using Google to check / correct some guesses got there in the end.

Shredded Wheat

During a day resting a gammy knee the mind wanders to all sorts of trivia, including how much the packaging of shredded wheat has improved over the years, the biscuits now coming in well-sealed packs of two rather than the often gaping (staleness-inducing) packs of three – itself curiously inappropriate for a cereal that ran a whole advertising campaign around the inability of anyone (including the mighty Ian Botham) to eat more than two for breakfast; perhaps, rather datedly, they were designed to provide two for the man of the house and one for the little lady, but I’ve never known a woman (little or large) eat even one shredded wheat.

Feet Up

Whether it was the steep railway incline, the equally steep descent of Jackson’s Bank, or just the ten mile distance that did for my knee yesterday is uncertain, but whatever the cause the result is a need today to dig out my Naproxen tablets from the back of the drawer and the crutches out of the back of the barn in an attempt to make a swift recovery; also needed is rest, so it was without guilt that I put my feet up and watched the succession of opening games in the Rugby World Cup on TV, highlighted by Japan’s thrilling last gasp victory over South Africa.

Extended Walk

Did one of Tom Scott Burns’ Walks in the Cleveland Hills – this one going from Ingleby Greenhow along the track bed of the old Rosedale ironstone mining railway, including up the steep, straight and intimidating incline, along the top of Urra Moor then back down via Jackson’s Bank – that included interesting archaeological aspects, which along with details of the geology, flora and fauna feature prominently in Scott Burns’ commentary, more so in fact than the route does, making finding the right way tricky sometimes, like today when we lost concentration towards the end and as a result put an extra two miles on to the walk.

Coffee Stop

A bad morning with a couple of learners who show great tenacity in their determination not to learn; so to sooth my banging head I routed my drive to Newton Aycliffe (for shopping and banking) via Jacksons coffee shop in the industrial estate where a large latte and a proportionately large caramel slice did the necessary.

Fair Weather Football

With family commitments taking precedence on Saturday I not only missed the FA Cup ties that day but also the good soaking I would have got in the pouring rain; and my hopes of an accessible replay were fulfilled tonight when I was able to go to the King George V Stadium at Gainsborough to see a game that was not only well contested but also played in perfectly dry and still conditions.

Wet Weather Driving

When the rain pours like this morning and sections of the road disappear under puddles, pools, ponds and streams of surface water it is not much fun driving on our country lanes – unless you are in a minibus and then you can plough serenely on regardless; what is a problem, with eight children in sopping wet raincoats on board, is the water vapour inside the vehicle that continually condenses on the windows.

Tax Return

Although I had gathered the information and done the calculations a couple of months ago, only today did I pluck up courage to do battle with the HMRC on-line tax return submission system; however it all went smoothly and by the end I had not only submitted a valid tax return but also a confirmed I was due a substantial return of tax.

An Inspector Calls

Viewed the new BBC adaptation of the JB Priestley classic tonight with interest but felt the insertion of on-location flashbacks to supplement the characters’ testimonies added little drama and reduced the ambiguities and uncertainties that are such an important feature of the original; definitely third place behind the 1954 film version that had the incomparable Alastair Sim as the inspector and which better avoided the temptation to expand the setting, and the brilliant Stephen Daldry directed stage version we saw three years ago at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal.

Leeds Trinity

A wet day in Leeds was not the best one on which to visit one of the boy’s prospective university choices, but Leeds Trinity put on a good, well organised open day on their bijou campus on the edge of the city; whether it’s self-contained and supportive or isolated and claustrophobic depends on your point of view.

History’s Footsteps

On a fine afternoon I took a short, five mile, circular walk from Royal Oak that was packed with historic connections, heading down a remnant of  Dere Street along which Roman soldiers tramped en route from York to Scotland, then crossing the original line of the Darlington & Stockton Railway (no rails now - just a track), before returning through the gnarled and twisted ancient oak and birch trees of Brusselton Wood; on this last leg my route card failed me, a petering out path leaving me waist deep in ferns, through which I pressed on, creating my own historic route that, with good reason, no-one had ever used before (and probably won't again).

Potato Crop

Harvested the fifth of my six potato tubs, the three plants therein producing twelve smallish potatoes, which does not seem much of a yield to me; however they were beautifully formed and went well with the lightly smoked salmon fillets, steamed broccoli and cheese sauce at tea time.

School Run

It is a good few years since I had to do a regular school run (regularly late as my daughters often remind me) but my new role as a two-day-a-week nursery school bus driver requires me to get back behind the wheel and once more do battle with the rush hour traffic with three- and four-year-olds in the back, but with two important distinctions – there are a couple of minders in the back and I get paid; a third less welcome difference is that I have to be punctual.

Accounting for Taste

When people say there is no accounting for taste they must be unaware of the custom whereby retired accountants, like me, perform valuable auditing services to worthy voluntary organisations for no remuneration (while receiving the occasional non-pecuniary benefit); so it was today as I handed over a set of corrected and certified accounts and received in return several bottles of premium ales – hence proving that, for me at least, there is some accounting for taste.

Three Books in a Day

The 2015 Reading Challenge includes a book you can read in a day, a book written by an author with your initials (AP in my case), and a book set at Christmas, so “A New York Christmas” by Anne Perry at only 154 uncluttered pages looked a good bet when I found it on the library shelf, and today I easily romped through the lightweight crime caper; however it provided little in the way of plot, character, atmosphere or literary merit – such is the downside of reading challenges, but I tick three boxes and move on to better choices.

Bushed

A lovely day, as good as any seen over summer, was spent largely in the garden tackling our elderberry bush (more like a tree really), which having escaped our attention last year was heading up and over the barn roof threatening to impair our solar energy production; stage one, shinning up the ladders into the jungle canopy and lopping off branches was strenuous enough, but having left the lawn submerged in a foot or two of greenery (fortunately the numerous berries had not yet ripened otherwise it would have been squidgy and purplery as well), stage two entailed spending a couple of hours cutting it to size and bagging it up for the tip – which all left us, by teatime, somewhat bushed.

Crook Town

This football season my plan is to use the FA Vase competition to explore a few new grounds, and today the first qualifying round took me to Crook Town (FA Amateur Cup winners fifty years ago but now trying to recover from a relegation season that saw them concede 169 goals), whose home ground, now called the Sir Tom Cowie Millfield, has an expansive feel - a big pitch surrounded by grassy banks, with a terrace behind one goal, and a couple of rickety stands along one touchline; one of these is fitted with wooden benches and while the other meant for standing, the locals seem to have dragged out padded chairs from the bar to provide more luxurious seating, conveniently close to “Only Food and Sauces” (the ingeniously named refreshment hut), and from where they can view in comfort their team’s valiant but fruitless efforts, as they lose 0-2 to near neighbours west Auckland Town.

Non-mobile Library

Visited Sedgefield Library for the first time in a while, having transferred my allegiance to the mobile unit that comes into the village every three weeks, and as I wandered unhindered among the unfamiliarly large number of shelves I was able to locate a couple of books that will help me achieve my reading challenge.

Teaching Unknowns

Teaching maths began again today, although in which room, to whom, and to what qualification aim were three unknowns (not unusual with the disaffected client group) in my personal equation; the solution method in such circumstances is a mixture of trial and error and iteration, so I bagged a small room, waited to see who turned up, and taught them some basic number theory.

Reading Challenge

Checked up on how I was doing in the 2015 reading challenge to read 50 books covering 50 sometimes spurious categories and so far, with just my normal reading, I was able to tick off 31 (and a third – one category is a trilogy of which I am one book into) helped by the fact that one book can sometimes satisfy more than one category; for the same reason I worked out that I could complete the challenge with another 14 carefully chosen books, six of which I have in stock, four are identified but need procuring, leaving four to be determined (or three if I can find a play whose title contains antonyms).

Third Year, Third Place

Today marked the commencement of the blog’s third year and in harmony with it our team picked up third place in the pub quiz, helped by a couple of inspired answers that correctly named Sherlock Holmes’ dog (I didn’t know he had one either but apparently it shares its name with an old prime minister so a guess came home) and identified Chuck Yeager’s claim to fame (known due to reading Tom Wolfe’s excellent book on astronauts ‘The Right Stuff’).