Bad Moms, Not Good

With the VUE cinema vouchers from Nectar about to expire with the month it was a case of beggars can’t be choosers that led to us getting tickets to see the nine o’clock screening of “Bad Moms”, making a night of it with a meal first at the Chinese Buffet, which though busy still had plenty of tasty dishes on offer; as for the film, the tone was set by the preceding adverts for sex toys and panty liners (actually not so much adverts as mini-documentaries) and the main feature lived down to them with more laughs due to embarrassment than humour, but costing nothing but a few Nectar points, I suppose it was value for money.

Sporting Nights

The winter rhythm of late evening TV sport highlights has settled in nicely and this week has provided nightly viewing with MOTD on Saturday & Sunday, Rugby Union on Monday, NFL on Tuesday, European Champions League on Wednesday, and the Europa League tonight; Friday night is usually a blank - but fortunately we have Ryder Cup highlights for the next four days.

Gate Danes

Accepting to tutor a new pupil whose parents run a boarding kennels did not seem such a good idea when I found the gate plastered with dire warnings not to enter; I got out the mobile and announced my arrival which prompted three figures to emerge from the house; the smallest was my pupil’s mother, the larger two turned out to be Great Danes, one old and disinterested, the other young and all too interested, which meant it had to be hauled into its kennel (bigger than our new summerhouse) before I could enter without risk of being bowled over.

Not 91

A year ago today we had a meal out to celebrate my dad’s 90^th birthday that had occurred the previous day and which turned out to be his last; in commemoration of what would have been his 91^st, a day late in line with my habitually tardy marking of the event, I finally hung on the wall the framed trio of photos I had put together for display at the wake.

Gotta Foolish Feeling

So I’m standing in a shop staring at my phone that I had hurriedly dug out of my pocket to answer before it (all too soon) cuts off and goes to voicemail, but the screen is dark and inactive despite the continued ringing in my ears, and then the Black Eyed Peas burst into voice and I realise (for the first time – pop not being my quiz forte) that my ringtone is the intro to “I Gotta Feeling” which is playing on the shop sound system.

Seasonal Change

Following Thursday’s equinox “winter drawers on” comes to mind and while my underwear remains consistent throughout the year my outer garments change according to the season, so today was a day for folding up and putting away the summer clothes – shorts, T-shirts, cotton socks and short sleeved shirts - and unearthing the winter wear – rugby shirts, sweaters, woolly (and Mongolian yak or camel hair) socks and, for those particularly chilly Saturday afternoons at the match, my thermal vest and long johns, when it really will be “winter drawers on”.

Cheap Day Out

A busy day began with mid-morning brunch at the Vane Arms (excellent as ever), followed by an afternoon drive up to Consett for their FA Vase match (a goodish game), topped off this evening with an Italian meal at Prezzo in Darlington (food good but music more intrusive than ambient) and a film at the adjacent newly opened VUE cinema (a very comfortable theatre and the film, Bridget Jones’ Baby, unexpectedly enjoyable); despite the full-on programme costs were minimal with our quiz-win voucher covering most of the brunch bill, a £3 OAP entry to the football, my wife paying for the pasta, and cinema tickets courtesy of an offer on my Nectar points.

Can’t Cope

A trip to B&Q in Middlesbrough proved fruitless in my search for coping stones to top off my painstakingly pointed, 20cm wide, garden wall; the building yard had plenty in stock at 14cm and 28cm, but the 19.5cm ones I found on their website were nowhere to be seen, which means ordering them on-line unseen – but it’s the only way I will be able to cope.

Techie Triumph

This morning the router (having been turned off and turned back on again) was up and running and the world wide web was my oyster; as for the scanner, in describing to my wife the shape of the unconventional USB port I likened it to the one in the back of the printer –doh! – and sure enough this morning I just uncoupled the printer lead,  stuck it into the scanner, and Bob’s your uncle as a test scan captured an image and put it somewhere in the computer not too difficult to locate.

Techie Trials

Another no-show for teaching gave no excuse not to tackle a couple of techie tasks I had been putting off for the usual reasons – a certainty that either the kit, the instructions (just pictures these days) or my IT skill swill fall short of the necessary; first up was installing a second-hand flat-bed scanner and all went well until the instructions said connect to the computer via the USB port, but the hole in the kit was square so not the usual USB shape, and none of the cables that came with it had a square connector to go in it, so bringing the job to a grinding halt; undeterred I moved on and unwrapped the new router (ignoring the smart TV box and mains-based ether-net connectors that came with it unbidden) and following the instruction picture-book set it up successfully and was soon able to hook up my tablet and PC to the cyber-sphere – for an hour or so before the world wide web went walkabout, visible, connected but unresponsive.

Triple Shifts

Tuesdays have become fragmented with three regular work shifts (two minibus driving and one tutoring), totalling just two and a half hours spread between noon and six p.m., and as there is not much time to do anything between shifts other than drink tea and eat cake, I also put in a triple shift of home chores this morning before the clock struck twelve: a laundry load washed and hung on the line, the front grass mown and, most innovatively, the car interior vacuum cleaned.

Plastering

The replacement utility room doorframe was roughly plastered around first by the joiner (hurriedly and inexpertly) and then by me (slowly and inexpertly) a month or two ago and though it is surprising how acceptable its appearance has become with familiarity I decided it should really be tidied up and finished off; cue an hour of scraping with a palette knife and rubbing with sandpaper, followed by another hour of applying plaster in a thin skim as I attempted to smooth out the lumps and bumps into a profile and surface acceptable for painting. 

Mixed Emotions

We moved the student into his university accommodation today with mixed emotions, not my wife sad and me happy, but both of us happy and proud to see him set off on the next stage of his life but sad and regretful that it signals an all too visible milestone in the parental continuum as eighteen years of daily care and attention (albeit declining recently in intensity) changes to an occasional intervention as and when needed (by him not us).

Tablets

A few weeks ago my Hudl2 died, and yesterday the creaking old Hudl1 that I had reverted to, gave up the ghost as well, but today my “partial refund” for the 15 month old Hudl2 arrived from Tesco in the form of one of their cash cards loaded with £40 towards a new tablet; my wavering about whether to buy another Hudl was rendered irrelevant when I discovered Tesco no longer sold them, so I purchased a Samsung Galaxy Tab instead, and a six inch model that will be more convenient to carry around and hopefully will lead to more frequent photos on the blog.

Tea for Two

The reality of our student’s departure at the weekend began to bite today as I planned, for the shopping list, next week’s meals – which will be for two instead of three - and while the change will open up more experimental cuisine options it will also feel strange for a while; but first it was tea for three tonight with a “see you off” meal at the Buck Inn.

Toilet Training

Our prospective student’s accommodation will be en-suite so today he got a quick lesson from me on how to clean the bathroom sink and how to operate a toilet brush, so no excuses for not keeping the facilities pristine; in my student days such luxury was unknown but the upside of a communal bathroom was a diffuse responsibility for its cleaning – either the university employed a cleaner or another resident with a lower dirt threshold stepped up to the porcelain.

Shredding

Cancellation of my teaching session this morning freed up the day, which I decided was best spent dealing with the accumulated paperwork on the study desk, mainly to do with insuring the house, two cars and two cats but with a few surprises unearthed as well, all of which took a few hours to sort, file, recycle and where necessary shred, the latter spawning the supplementary task of emptying, and so unjamming, and then hovering around, the shredder; it is a shame the venues for my daughter’s forthcoming wedding allows only organic biodegradable confetti, otherwise I could have supplied the whole guest list.

NFL

Each year it is pot luck what, if any, coverage NFL will get on Freesat channels, so I was glad to spot a highlights programme on BBC2 late tonight that will apparently run up to and include (hopefully live) the Superbowl next February; coverage of the Wembley games remains unknown but we live in hope.

Cold Feet

The return, after fourteen years, of Cold Feet on BBC1 (episode two tonight) is providing a treat on a Monday night; the characters have mellowed (if not matured) but remain credible and recognisable, the issues dealt with are pertinent to their and our age, and the actors have become even more accomplished over the intervening years.

Harvest

At this time of year, with the weather remaining fine, the roads around the village are full of tractors hauling over-laden trailers of hay from field to somewhere mysterious but clearly very big; the compensation for being stuck driving behind them is the sight of the shaved fields randomly dotted with cylinders of gold, forming an alien-looking landscape for a day or two until the stacks are gathered up and stored away.

Tow Law Town

I use the early rounds of the FA Vase to visit new football venues, which today led me to Tow Law and the splendidly named Iron Works Road Ground, perched high in the North Pennines; with such a location the preferred time to visit is definitely in the first few weeks of the season (beyond then you risk frostbite or being snowed-in) and I was not the only football tourist who thought so with at least another four “ground-hoppers” in attendance.

Grow Up, Grandad

A cultured night out in Stockton-On-Tees (yes it is possible) with a quick dish of pasta at Carpaccio then across the road to ARC to see “Grow Up, Grandad”, a play by local writer Gordon Steel; the cast of three were excellent in the perceptive inter-generational drama laced with humour that had the audience laughing out loud and no little pathos that had them quietly sniffing back the tears.

Floored

The summerhouse erected last week has been in regular service since, but its springy floor proved a little unsettling so today I laid the tongue and groove brought home yesterday; the 18mm spruce board means the floor surface is now better than any in the house and would make an excellent dance-floor, provided the dance involved only two people and extremely limited movement (which sounds like my kind of dancing).

Juke no Joke

Though smaller than the C-Max and shorter than the Mondeo, the Nissan Juke still manages to hold some surprising loads, today easily swallowing seventeen 2.1m lengths of tongue and groove flooring, plus the weekly supermarket shop.

Gold Medal Performance

My through-the-night watching of the Olympics paid dividends at tonight’s pub quiz as the picture round and current affairs questions both concerned events in Rio, giving us a flying start that was consolidated by some inspired general knowledge answers; our lead at that point must have been massive for it to be sufficient to carry us through the music round (although even there I made a best ever contribution identifying three tracks straight out of my limited car CD collection) to a rare win and a £50 meal voucher.

S4C

Though Sky monopolise much of the football on TV, with a little digging around it is possible to access the odd snippet on the Welsh or Scottish digital channels, like tonight when I found highlights of Wales v Moldova on S4Cymru - entertaining enough once the Welsh language commentary was turned down.

Big Sam, Small Change

And so it starts again, another England world cup campaign, the fourteenth I have invested emotional capital in, and which, from the 1966 success, have steadily declined from expectation, confidence, pride and hopefulness to hopelessness and couldn’t care less; with Big Sam Allardyce now in charge there was little sign of change with Rooney still sitting deep and doing nothing useful, Kane still isolated up front, Hart still miskicking, and Sterling still running into blind alleys, so that it was only when Dele Alli came on (and Slovak captain Skirtl was sent off) that things looked better and a last gasp goal won the day.

Fair Price Film

Tonight we settled down to watch a DVD I purchased for £1 in a charity shop a week or two ago while waiting for the bus home from Stockton; “Revolutionary Road” was, despite its title and DiCaprio and Winslet leads, somewhat short on action being instead a tense domestic drama, or tragedy, that we were glad to get to the end of – I was also glad I only paid a pound for it, at £1.50 I would have felt cheated.

Last of the Summerhouse Whine

After literally a few years of my wife’s wishing, planning and whining, the summerhouse was in place today and finally ready to fulfil one of its purposes – to provide a peaceful space for her on returning from work (summer holidays being over) to sit and relax, with a cup of tea and piece of cake, and share with me the events of her day; it turned out so relaxing that we were still there an hour later, by then with a glass of wine each.

Unhinged

If the summerhouse started the day half-built, by lunchtime it was back to three-eighths, as after pulling my hair out for an hour puzzling how to attach the hinges in such a way that the doors could operate effectively, I had to dismantle pieces constructed according to the instructions but clearly preventing the doors being attached in such a way that they could open and close; as for the doors, the majority of the sixteen pieces of mitred beading fixing in the windows needed re-engineering to fit together (if you are not going to mitre at 45° why bother?) but eventually they were ready to hang, miraculously filling the gap formed by the adjusted frame – and with a few barrel bolts added we were more or less complete.