Toiletries

Price-cutting supermarkets have made the local discount wholesaler less competitive to the extent that I now visit just to buy two, albeit essential, bulk commodities; thus today my trolley was loaded with the usual ‘toiletries’ – four 20 litre bags of cat litter and 32 toilet rolls.

Decreasing Circles

For once my going round in ever decreasing circles was quite productive as I cut out of a very large cardboard box seven concentric 12cm wide rings of decreasing diameter that will form both a plan and a framework for a milk carton igloo I am committed to build at school next week.

American Pancakes

Tried the smoked bacon and American pancakes with maple syrup option on the Vane Arms brunch menu; for “American” read “enormous” as I was presented with two fluffy pancakes, each as big as my head, effectively providing two courses, one savoury with tasty bacon and one sweet with sticky syrup, both delicious and filling enough to easily get me through to teatime.  

Black Pudding Friday

The seasonal shopping frenzy largely passed me by, although I did get 50p off two packs of pork medallions at the butchers, while resisting the special offer on black pudding.

Box Clever

As part of the eye-watering insurance arrangements for the boy’s car, its driving has to monitored by a ‘black box’ that records speed, acceleration, braking and cornering g-force to provide reassurance that he is no boy racer (other than on GTA of course); as the equipment was fitted to the Fiesta today I think I will now stick to driving the Juke where my driving stays unexposed.

Fired Up

It has been an odd November, weather wise, mild at the start, wet and stormy in the middle, and mild again today in the sunshine; but the clear sky made for a cold evening – cold enough to get the wood-burner fired up for the first time, and not before time according to my wife and, more obviously, the black cat.

Starters for Ten

That could have been an appropriate order for the first course at our quiz team’s annual dinner at the Talbot in Bishopton, but only four of us plumped for starters; these along with ten mains and nine desserts racked up a reasonable bill of just under £200 (excluding drinks) and applying our accumulated cash winnings of £40 lessened the individual impact - so good food and a pleasant night out with, for once, no pesky questions to interrupt the conversation.

York

York won the ‘best Christmas market at least distance’ competition, being just an hour’s drive, having plenty of seasonal stalls and being a good city to visit at any time, and despite the paucity of gift ideas we had a very pleasant day mooching around the markets and shops, sustaining our efforts with morning coffee (Nero), lunch (Ask), and afternoon tea (Bullivant’s); just four presents were actually bought, two of which I know will be well received, as they are destined for me.

Tardy Lists

The Christmas wish lists, indicating acceptable presents, have been a little slow in arriving from family members; that is unfortunate as, with my wife due a rare day off work, tomorrow is pencilled in for some seasonal shopping, and those sluggish with their list may regret it come the big day.

Seaham Red Star

The FA Vase match between Seaham Red Star and Maltby Main enabled me to add another ground to my ‘been there’ list - Seaham Town Park, a neat and tidy ground featuring a colourful clubhouse and a tiny refreshment counter, the latter doing good business in Bovril as the kick off temperature of two degrees in the bright sunshine dropped to zero as the sun sank; Red Star didn’t sink, they went two goals ahead, then conceded one and lived dangerously for a while, before adding a third near the end to secure progress to the next round.

Waffle Biscuits

I was pleased to spot these delicious confectionary items in Aldi during my last shop, having been introduced to them when my daughter brought us a packet back from Amsterdam; the trick is to place the waffle on top of your hot drink for a while until the biscuit softens and the caramel melts – a continental version of dunking really.

Indoor Athletics

Took the boy up to the indoor athletics meeting at Gateshead College’s impressive facility next to the International Stadium, where as well as a full program of 60m sprints and hurdles there was shot put, high jump, long jump and even pole vault going on keeping, on a cold November night, a couple of hundred young people positively engaged in sport, and me out from in front of the telly.

Ladder Luck

While a wet day is a good one on which to diagnose issues with a roof, its adverse effect on the coefficient of friction makes it a poor one for using a ladder, and having climbed one to gain some elevation to investigate things at a mercifully low level it was a bit of a shock to feel the rungs disappear from under my feet as the ladder slid down and away from the wall, leaving me in a tangled heap of limbs and aluminium; most surprising was the lack of damage – the ladder suffered a severe cursing, I got away with a grazed ankle and a scraped shinbone, with the guttering, that I grabbed on the way down, coming off worst with a couple of broken brackets.

Top Scone

My first visit to the Toshach Tea Shop in Sedgefield will not be my last, as the cherry and almond scone I had there today was delicious – light, fluffy, melt-in-the-mouth, and served with butter, jam and clotted cream; apparently there are another fourteen varieties of scone on offer from time to time, a claim I feel I will need to verify over the next few months.

Nous Sommes Paris

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite; and soldarity

Radio Four

A prickly throat and pounding head (possibly man flu on the way) sent me to bed for the afternoon, and unable to read meant resorting to BBC Radio Four and being treated to the usual eclectic mix of programmes that I would not have sought out but enjoyed thoroughly – a satire on 1930s Hollywood, an appreciation of a Welsh miner (not minor) poet, and an analysis of the British criminal involvement in people smuggling; ironically the one programme I may have chosen (Open Book) I have no recollection of, so must have slept through.

Dinner and a Film

While pursuing our respective Saturday afternoon activities (me football, she retail) my wife and I independently homed in on the best way to spend the wet November evening; I called in Tesco to pick up a DVD and she had already purchased an M&S ‘two dine for £10’ meal, so it was duck in plum and brandy sauce, garlic mushrooms, a bottle of rose wine, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Car Park Pounded

The midweek TV documentary exposing Aldi’s cost-cutting, corner-cutting practices did not seem to have any effect on the supermarket’s popularity, or at least the popularity of its car park in Newton Aycliffe, which I circled twice in vain before giving up, parking elsewhere and going to the bakers to buy some bread (the only necessity on the shopping list); my subsequent check back on the Aldi car park was more successful, enabling me to slot into the only one of the seventy-five bays free, however with no more than twenty or so in the store it was apparent that the rest of the drivers were queuing at the tills of the newly opened £1 shop next door.

Brave New World

With the (unbelievably first) stage adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ showing at the Darlington Civic, I took in this afternoon’s performance and found it vibrant, absorbing, and still worryingly relevant; it was well received by a small but appreciative audience with a demographic evenly split between school children presumably studying the book for GCSE and retirees like me, who probably last read it when they were that age, back in the 1970s. 

Forgottence

A confession: I meant to go to a local Remembrance commemoration at Sedgefield, but forgot and missed it.

Class Documentary

Caught up this evening with the recorded concluding part of the excellent “Class of 92: Out of Their League” documentary that followed the ex-Manchester United players’ first season as joint owners of non-league Salford City; it was refreshing for such a programme not to focus on the celebrity angle but instead spread the coverage across all aspects of the club – owners, managers, players and volunteer staff – to give a realistic view of the non-league scene that may encourage more to try it out and discover why even the likes of Messrs Scholes, Giggs, Butt and the Neville brothers can get drawn into the intensity and immediacy of this level in the beautiful game.

Adverts’ Effect

Despite my scornful comments, the avalanche of Christmas advertisements on the box must have had some effect on me as while in Stockton town centre to do some banking I found myself browsing in Debenhams and purchasing someone’s present; actually it is the third in the bag, which with 45 shopping days still to go must be a record.

Dead Balls, Deaf Ears

Watching the FA Cup first round highlights today I paid particular attention to the dead ball situations following a football question at last night’s quiz, which posed “in which two dead ball restarts does the ball have to be kicked forwards” that stimulated heated debate over the second one (the kick-off was agreed), that the protagonists then missed the next three questions in getting to an impasse over the interpretation of “forward” – I took the absolutist view that forward was towards the opponent’s goal, which by a process of elimination gave the penalty kick as the answer, while others took a relative point of view that forward was the way the kicker was facing and so reckoned a corner, with my reductio ad absurdum counter-argument that in fact you could back heel any dead ball so none had to go forward, falling on deaf ears; so a corner kick was included in our answer to be duly marked wrong.

Beginnings

Attended our final campus open day today with a two hour drive to the University of Cumbria, small but perfectly formed on the edge of the compact city of Carlisle; the weather over the Pennines was foul but cleared up on the return trip sufficiently to permit a detour to Piercebridge to have an early evening meal in the George Hotel, a strangely disconcerting place to mull over at which institution the boy’s independent adult life will begin, a prospect that would have seemed impossibly remote when his parents got married in that very room eighteen and a half years previous.

Red Riding Hood

Being the driver for the school trip to Hardwick Country Park generally means a good day out and today was no exception, with the weather mild and the multi-coloured leaves plentiful to collect and later stick on paper crowns; another highlight was hearing and re-enacting the story of Little Red Riding Hood (the sanitised version for five year-olds where the wolf just gets knocked unconscious by the woodcutter and transported safely to the wolf reservation and grandma is found locked in a cupboard) which had to be performed six times by my group of six boys as they all wanted a go at being the wolf but could only do so on condition that they agreed to also take a turn at being Red Riding Hood.

Monkton PB

The boy needing additional sprinting video footage for his college PE course sent us grumbling up the congested A1(M) on a wet Thursday night to Monkton Stadium at Jarrow, but the trip was worthwhile not only for the successfully recorded images but also for his surprise win; less surprising was beating his personal best time for sixty metres, as it was set eight years ago running outdoors as an under twelve athlete.

Thanks, Suckers

Spotting council workers in the village raking and blowing autumn debris off the green and paths into heaps to be vacuumed up, I took the opportunity to brush the growing carpet of soggy leaves off our driveway into their route, where they were sucked up and carted off.

Cask Night

An added attraction of the Vane Arms quiz night is the availability of guest cask ales, tonight White Rat (hoppy and golden) and Victoria (dark and tasty); the latter was the nearest I was going to get to victory, with the quiz including a picture round of fashion designers and a music round of arcane tracks on the theme of Halloween and Bonfire Night.

Rail Ranger

Taking advantage of a Northern Echo reader offer I purchased, for £10, an unlimited day pass on Northern Rail, not as good a deal as you may expect as the company’s services are limited to rather parochial lines, but I was able to plot a route from a fog shrouded Darlington to a grey Middlesbrough (involving five stops) and then to a blue-skied Hexham (fifteen stops), the latter journey enjoyably scenic in parts, first up the misty North Sea coast and then along the sunlit Tyne valley; a couple of hours in Hexham was enough to have a wander round and a good value lunch upstairs at the cosy ‘Deli at number 4’ opposite the Abbey before getting back to the station for the three hour return trip.

Riding Shotgun

The boy passed his driving test yesterday but having learned in a modern diesel powered Peugeot he now needs to familiarise himself with the twelve year old petrol-engine Fiesta, so it was back on the road with me riding shotgun as he practiced balancing an unfamiliar clutch and accelerator; not too scary with just one stall and one wheel-spinning getaway start that had me thinking I really was riding shotgun.