Half-Way House

On this last day of the summer months our flat pack summerhouse arrived early and I got cracking straight away, identifying all the bits of wood and ironmongery (which took an hour) before calling in the student for some technical assistance (“hold that up while I drill/screw/hammer”); it was a bit more complex than the average flat pack construction, particularly it being outdoors on a breezy day, but we managed to get the four walls attached together and to the floor, and then the roof fixed on, complete with felting (in this element the student graduated to skilled apprentice) before it went dark, leaving it a summer-half-way-house (door-less and window-less) overnight.

University Challenge

The time was ripe today for my wife (along with many other such parents) to undertake the challenge of kitting out for university our new student, which required dragging him around a couple of key stores (Wilkinson’s and Matalan, but thankfully not Ikea this time) trying to get him interested in colour schemes for bedding and bathroom, and what cooking utensils and equipment he might need (beyond a pizza cutting wheel); it took a while for him to engage but by the end he was throwing stuff into the trolley with abandon so that it had become less university challenge and more supermarket sweep.

Historical Fiction

The problem with historical fiction, be it a novel or TV series, is my inability to distinguish between the hopefully accurate historical context and the presumably embellished or just plain made up fiction; today I finished Bruce Holsinger’s novel “A Burnable Book” set in the troubled reign of Richard II and watched the second episode of ITV’s presentation of the early reign of Queen Victoria – both shed light on the respective monarchs’ life and times but was Richard actually moments from assassination by a papal envoy and did rats really emerge from Victoria’s 19^th birthday cake?

Wall Eyed

I checked, and there appears to be two definitions of the term depending on whether it is hyphenated (wall-eyed – the opposite of cross-eyed) or a single word (walleyed – having a light coloured iris), but I can add a third (say two words not hyphenated) condition: that of continuing to see a bricks and mortar pattern even through closed eyes, caused by excessive pointing, particularly in bright sunlight.

A Long Time Ago on a Ground Far Far Away

Football can be a small world but I was still surprised to find one of the coaches at my Northern League game today was Willie Donachie who I used to watch play left back for Manchester City at Maine Road throughout the 1970’s; I took the opportunity for a quick word to remind him of those days, to which he replied (accurately) “that was a long time ago”.

Stockton Library

With Darlington’s fine old library scheduled for closure I determined it timely to join Stockton Library and today called in to get my membership card; what the building lacks in character it makes up for in airiness, opening hours, accessibility by public transport, and an in-house tea and coffee shop – delightfully named “Starbooks” – and while I took out no books today I did ensure their stock of cheese scones was one down by the time I left.

Fine Walking

To offset the fine dining (which includes the breakfast here) my wife and I opted for some fine walking, from the hotel along a circular route up to Ghyll Head Reservoir and back; the good walking weather – dry, still and cloudy, so not too hot – and clear directions given on the leaflet supplied meant a pleasant stress free hike although the general description given of “six miles gently undulating” suckered us into biting off a bit more than we could comfortably chew – it was more like seven miles with lots of ups and downs, including many stiles, that left us at times rather too breathless to fully enjoy the equally numerous kissing gates.

Boat Trip

A hot and sunny day in the Lakes, just right for a boat trip up Windermere to Ambleside, a coffee and blueberry scone at a lakeside café, a stroll into the town for a mooch, a stroll back to the lakeside for a cold beer and cider, before another chug down the lake back to Bowness; the only downside was a lack of sun-block which meant back at the hotel my face was turning red enough to match the beetroot that accompanied my venison starter and the cherries that went surprisingly well with my mackerel main course.

Fine Dining

Linthwaite House at Bowness-on-Windermere has lots to recommend it – stunning views, luxurious rooms, meticulous service, and eye-wateringly high prices to keep out the riff-raff (not wholly effective as we save up for a few years so we can rub shoulders with the well-heeled and loud-voiced) – but what makes it stand out from our other favoured hotels is the fine dining, exemplified by my six courses tonight: a broccoli mousse in a filo pastry cone; an amuse-bouche of carrot and ginger foamed soup; a starter of yellow fin tuna with anchovy and things I’ve never heard of; rump and neck of lamb with trimmings; custard tart with nutmeg; petit-fours and coffee.

Regular Guy

With a stay at a high-end hotel imminent I high-tailed it to a not-so-high-end clothing retailer to buy a smart pair of trousers (so as not to detract from my wife’s haute couture at dinner) and took a pair of my usual ‘34 short’ into the fitting room to try on, only to find the bottoms of the trouser legs flapping round my ankles when I stood and shooting up my calves when I sat; I tried again with a ’34 regular’ and found them perfect, so either my legs have had a long-delayed growth spurt or, more likely, my waist has moved north as my stomach has moved south.

Olympic Opportunities

The Rio Olympic Games came to an end with the GB medal haul of 67 being remarkable not only for the quantity but also the spread, covering 19 of the 31 sports, going to show the breadth of sporting opportunity offered in the country; this is also illustrated by my own experience of having participated to a greater, lesser, or one-off extent in (coincidentally also, but not the same) 19 of them; the 12 sports I have missed out on include five that require fighting and six that involve excessive involvement with water, to both of which I have an aversion.

Hopping Mad

Every four years is often enough to watch taekwondo, the wacky Olympic sport that has provided a few GB medals the last few days, where combatants hop on one leg while trying to kick their opponent in the head; the women’s team would do well to recruit on Newcastle Quayside on a Saturday night where such skills are often in evidence with the added ingredient of a swinging handbag.

Beach BC

Hats off to the BBC for adopting distinct styles of coverage on their two main Olympic channels, with BBC1 aimed at the sports enthusiast, studio based with expert analysis, and BBC4 aimed at those looking for a more relaxed social vibe, presented in the evening from a table on Copacabana Beach; at the fag-end of the fortnight I’m increasingly tuning-in to the inconsequential nonsense - conversations with the locals, spotting the binmen and, last night, commenting on the “red” moon - at least until the athletics begins at midnight UK time.

Family Success

In Rio the Brownlee brothers delivered gold and silver in the three discipline triathlon; at home my son delivered on his three A-level results – call them a gold, a copper and a tin, still sufficient to secure his university place and so provide an excuse for a celebratory breakfast at Maggie’s Place, just down the road from the college.

Orienteering

With the action in Rio in a relative lull (after the gymnastics and cycling ending with another medal flourish last night) it was time to get off the sofa and participate, and while orienteering is not an Olympic sport it was what I needed to negotiate an eight mile circuit around Jervaulx Abbey guided only by a screenshot of a leaflet that disappeared from my tablet after mile or so; the riverside path to the Coverbridge Inn was straightforward and the lunch in the sunny garden of the pub was excellent (and leisurely), however the six or seven miles back to Jervaulx over the fields were more problematic involving a couple of U-turns, inconsequential advice from other ramblers, and flagging down a car to get directions (they helpfully showed us their road atlas) before our goal – the tea shop at the abbey – was eventually reached.

Circus Skills

Ten more medals for GB in the last two days, six in what I consider proper sports – golf, tennis, cycling, hammer where winning depends on objective scoring criteria like fewest golf strokes, quickest time, furthest distance – and four in more dubious disciplines – gymnastics, dressage, (and previously diving), where success depends on the subjective opinion of judges who are observing minute deviations from a perceived perfection while us lay spectators grasp at straws such as how big a splash is made, whether a dismount is ‘spotted’, or whether someone falls off a horse (pommel or equine) or not; I am not saying such activities don’t require high skill levels, just questioning whether they should be in the Olympics or the circus.

Lightning Bolt

More early morning television from Rio as I stayed up to see Usain Bolt retain his Olympic sprint title; lightning may not strike twice but Bolt has now struck gold thrice in this event alone.

Three Medal Brag

The Super-Saturday athletics gold medal trio from London 2012 (Farah, Ennis, Rutherford) were in action again today - early morning viewing here requiring staying up until three in the morning – but instead of an unbeatable ‘three of a kind’ we had to settle for a still impressive ‘straight’ this time, as they respectively won gold, silver and bronze.

Ready, Sit, Go

British competitors have achieved great success over the last few days in Rio with multiple gold and silver medals in cycling and rowing, supplemented by medals in canoeing, equestrian and sailing, which once again goes to show we do best in sports where you sit down to compete, be it on a bike, on a horse or in a boat of some description; no doubt we would do even better if any of these also involved drinking a cup of tea.

Wet or Dry

While flicking through the Olympic channels on TV I have paused a moment or two to watch some play in Water Polo and Handball matches, which to my uneducated eye seem to be basically the same game apart from one being in water and the other on dry land; I wonder which came first and whether the other developed when either the pool sprang a leak or the pitch sank underwater.

Bowing Out

With a British woman flirting with success, before bowing out, in the archery contest at Rio we had a brief view on TV of her at work with her bow and arrow, or at least I think the contraption she was holding was a bow, though it bore only a passing resemblance to Robin Hood’s weapon of choice; yes it had a ‘string’ to it but instead of a stave of ash was a length of synthetic material off which sprung about half a dozen spurs in several directions (stabilisers, counterbalances, range finders etc.) the only thing lacking was a set of wheels to save her the bother of holding it up – it may all make for accuracy but it would never have caught on in Sherwood Forest.

Hockey Stick

I have come to the conclusion, without any evidence to support it other than dipping in and out of some of today’s games in Rio, that while hockey may have made sense once upon a time, it really should have become obsolete once humanity evolved the ability to kick and so play football; as it is the hockey players’ feet inevitably get in the way of the ball to interrupt the flow of play with a free hit (or worse an undeserved penalty corner), the goalkeeper’s stick is more of a hindrance than a help, and why only use one side of the stick – it’s as if they want to make the game as awkward as possible for players and spectators alike.

Ping Pong

Today’s choice of Olympic sport is ridiculed by some as just ping pong, but table tennis gets the thumbs up from me, and having enjoyed this week watching the perennial Paul Drinkhall battle his way to the last sixteen (but no further), tonight I caught a couple of excellent quarter finals; it must be the sport that demands the most from hand eye coordination and speed of reaction, particularly when the players decide to go at it hammer and tongs with quick-fire forehand and backhands.

Diving; Tackles

Today’s silly sport at the Olympics was the synchronised diving that appears to be a grown-up version of jumping into the pool while holding hands with your mate, and in which you seem to get more marks if both divers cock up the dive in the same way than if one gets it right and the other wrong – maybe it will catch on in athletics with medals going to the long-jumpers who achieve exactly the same distance or to the two marathon runners who come in last but have run side by side for twenty-six miles; the mirrored diving may look pretty on TV and it did get GB a bronze but I preferred the reassuringly physical tackling and competitive nature of the women’s rugby sevens even if it ended with a disappointing fourth place for our lasses.

Foiled

The possibility of Olympic medals can draw you into unfamiliar sporting territory via the BBC red button facility and today with a Brit going for a bronze in the men’s foil fencing I watched the full contest, despite it resembling two blokes fighting with bent radio aerials, scoring points for the merest touch on the opponent – not exactly mortal combat in the style of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; if they were kids you would tell them “be careful before someone loses an eye” – but as they were wearing tea-strainer masks even that was unlikely.

On the Road

The Olympic highlight of day one was the men’s cycling road race around a testing course that had everything – cobbles, stiff climbs, nerve-jangling descents, crashes, breakaways, catches and a tight finish; closer to home another road came back on the sporting agenda with the long road to the FA Cup final at Wembley beginning this afternoon with the extra preliminary round ties, including that at a hot and sunny Dean Street where I saw Shildon comfortably make it through at the expense of Bedlington Terriers.

Olympics

Ahead of tonight’s opening ceremony in Rio, news came through of the extra sports to be included at Tokyo in 2020; the climber in the family was pleased with the addition of his discipline and while I will look forward to the baseball I remain mystified at the continued absence of dog agility.

Food Boundaries

From the Peak District we moved on to Nottingham to stay a couple of nights with the younger daughter and her fiancé who, as is their wont, expanded my gastronomic boundaries with, last night, a home-cooked West African dish of chicken and peanut stew which gave me my first taste of okra, and tonight, at the excellent Yumacha bar/restaurant in West Bridgford, an oriental tapas that included some delicious Taiwanese gua bao - a soft doughy bun to fill with slow braised belly pork, five spice, picked vegetables and crushed peanut.

Makeney Hall

We departed our accommodation for the last two nights well satisfied with our stay, finding the hotel comfortable if a little ‘lived-in’, with its wood panelled corridors, stairways, and drawing room elegant, spacious but careworn, and our large bedroom well-appointed but lacking attention to detail; what could not be faulted were the dinners – tasty and uncluttered fare – and the items from the bar – be it wine, beer, cocktails or coffee.

Cloudy Heights of Abraham

With the clouds low and the air damp we put our planned walk on hold and instead visited the Heights of Abraham at Matlock Bath, which involved a cable car ascent to the eponymous hilltop from where we got an excellent view of – the clouds; less weather-affected was our descent from there into the Great Masson Cavern – or rather ascent, as counter-intuitively the mineshaft led upwards though mined voids and natural clefts to emerge higher up the peak, from where an even more impressive view was available - but still of the clouds.

Matlock

Began our East Midlands meander with a two hour drive to Matlock in Derbyshire, which appears to major in antique / vintage shops, in one of which we also found Miss Marddle’s Tea Shop where surrounded by china tea pots, cups, saucers, plates and jugs we had tea and toasties followed by Bakewell tarts; a stroll was needed to walk off the calories - and very pleasant it was through the park and along the banks of the River Derwent.