Toy Box

The three tier cat toy cum scratching post, bought yesterday, has not been an unqualified success with the cats predictably ignoring it in favour of the cardboard box it came in.

End Game

The NPL play-off final at Brewery Field, Spennymoor, marked the end of the local non-league football season (though the double-header FA Vase / Trophy finals at Wembley await); those finals will take my match tally to thirty-eight for the season, a record in recent years, incorporating twenty different grounds including six not previously visited.

The White Horse

The White Horse was my dad’s local pub, at the top of our road, which meant I rarely went in it, at first because I was under age, then because I found the draught Boddington’s beer unsuited to my immature taste; today to commemorate a year since his passing I called in while visiting Salford and found the exterior unchanged, and inside the old warren of separate drinking rooms still discernable, despite some opening out of the area, along with a few remnants of the old place thankfully retained as ‘period features’, but the plan to toast the old man with a pint of Boddington’s was scuppered as Greene King are now in residence so I had to make do (no hardship) with Doombar instead.

Memories Aren’t Made of This

Today I helped out in a survey at the university involving among other things, prospective memory; I don’t know what my session told the research team but it certainly confirmed to me that, most of the time, things I am told just go in one ear and out the other without registering much in the grey matter in between.

Carpet Diem

The carpet fitters, due “mid-afternoon”, had me scurrying when they phoned at half past noon to say they were on their way, as I was in Stockton having taken the opportunity to nip to the library before their scheduled arrival; when I got back and let them in they were like a coiled spring, completing the fitting in thirty minutes flat.

Snow Football

After yesterday’s pink snow we had the real thing at tonight’s football match at Spennymoor, along with bright sunshine, driving rain and hail at various points in the evening with spectators flowing in and out of the limited shelter – alright for the home fans whose end is well covered but less so for the few away fans that had made the trip over the Pennines, who only had overhanging branches of a tree in an adjacent to cower beneath.

Pink Snow

For two or three days each year the local flowering cherry tree looks a picture, before the wind strips the blossom and produces pink snowdrifts that the rain then turns to grey mush; today saw that first transition with pink flakes drifting colourfully to earth.

Pigeon Loppers?

A bright day spent in the garden, first mowing the grass which was particularly thick under the tree where the pigeons sit and deposit their fertilising droppings (which also splatter the summer house and surrounding flagstones); once that was done I was able to try out the new extending tree pruner bought on Tuesday and while I could take out a few of the pigeons’ toilet seats, the birds themselves refused to put their cooing necks within lopping range.

Waitress Wait

A meal at the recently renamed Hammer & Pincers pub provided good food but some dilatory service, mainly as the owner/manager was trying to cover all the front of house bases herself – meeting, greeting, seating, taking orders, delivering meals and removing empty dishes – and in doing so giving an impression of a circus plate spinner; twice she arrived at our table to take the order and twice raced off to attend elsewhere before we could spit it out, so that when she arrived back the third time it was a case of “tell her quick before she disappears again”.

Extended Shopping

Today’s food shopping trips at Bolam’s and Sainsbury’s were not as entertaining as Tuesday’s at Aldi where I purchased one of their ‘special buys’ – an extending tree lopper; it did not make me the most popular shopper in the checkout queue, particularly as it had started to expand on its own accord, using up 2.4 metres of the conveyor belt, and preventing anyone else from unloading their trolley until I was out of the way.

Play on Words

My visit to the ARC in Stockton was rewarded with an excellent performance of “Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are Dead” streamed live from the Old Vic (where it was premiered fifty years ago) with Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire in the eponymous roles, and they made a very good partnership batting (literally at one point) lines to and fro as they, exasperated and puzzled, tried to make sense of their bit parts in Hamlet, delivering Tom Stoppard’s verbal acrobatics with consummate skill – but they were at least matched by David Haig as The Player whose appearances on stage brought light, colour and some killer lines.

No Show

My plans to visit the cinema tonight were scuppered by the paucity of films on offer at the Vue in Darlington, which seemed to aimed solely at the under-twelves, either in terms of age (Beauty and the Beast, Peppa Pig), IQ (Fast and Furious 8, Get Out) or both (Boss Baby).

Talking the Talk Talk

Having had my short weekly conversation with yet another scammer purporting to be my internet provider reporting a fault with my router (that will be the day when they ring me, they won’t even deal with a problem when you ring them) it was probably not the best time for a street sales team from Talk Talk to accost me in Newton Aycliffe town centre with the question “do you have broadband at home?”; to which my answer was “yes, yours, and it’s rubbish”.

Restricted View

Bank Holiday Monday and the visit of one of the best supported non-league clubs, FC United of Manchester, meant a decent crowd was expected at Darlington’s Blackwell Meadows, so I played safe and travelled via bus and foot to join the other 2,146 spectators in enjoying a good open game that yielded six goals; Darlo’s win keeps them in the top five but the play-offs have been denied (subject to appeal) by a change in the ground grading requirements for the National League, which is a shame but in all truth the ground needs more seats and some terracing as in a crowd of even this size many find their view restricted by the heads and shoulders of others, team dug-out shelters the size of small bungalows, and floodlight pylons the width of Redwoods bizarrely erected inside the pitch-side barriers.

Seaton Carew Slots

Easter Sunday with the undergrad back home, and the weather not yet raining, we took a short drive over to Seaton Carew for a walk along the prom and a session on the slot machines to use up our stock of 2p pieces accumulated over the year, which predictably soon disappeared into the shuffling piles of copper with only an occasional dribble coming out of the business end, however in a new (to us) development the machines randomly shot out tickets that could be then fed into another machine, that in turn printed out a receipt that could then be exchanged for ‘prizes’; also predictably our tickets broke the machine, but in fixing it the operative handed over more than we had put in, representing our only profit on the afternoon – sufficient to ‘win’ us a fudge bar each.

Yumacha

Arriving yesterday at West Bridgford we dined out with the daughter and son-in-law at the splendid Yumacha Bar and Brasserie, enjoying a fine selection of tapas dishes; the name apparently means “go eat” and we obliged again this morning with cakes and coffee before setting off home.

Staunton Harold

A grey morning but we made the planned visit to Staunton Harold and spent an hour or so strolling from the house to the pretty church and mooching round the stable block, now home to various galleries selling very expensive crafts and artwork, and more usefully a nice tearoom selling reasonably priced tea and cake.

National Memorial Arboretum

The visit to the National Memorial Arboretum at the peaceful juncture of the Rivers Trent and Tame was thought-provoking, particularly the memorials that featured symbolic installations such as the Christmas Truce, Shot at Dawn and the Burma Railway; the centre piece - the Armed Forces Memorial - is impressive and worrying, for both the number of names inscribed (16,000 killed since the end of the Second World War) and the space left available to add even more.

The Priest House

Took up residence in a cottage room at the Priest House on the River near Castle Donington; the hotel has a lovely setting on the Trent and bar meals to match most restaurants.

Sky Blue Thinking

A second coat of emulsion and the redecoration of spare bedroom was completed in a shade of sky blue that will make visiting Man City fans feel right at home.

IQ Masters

Another tight contest on TV as the final of University Challenge pitted Balliol (Oxford) against Wolfson (Cambridge), teams I had become familiar with over the weeks due to the convenient scheduling of the programme on BBC2 between the two episodes of Coronation Street on ITV; Balliol won out but the real fun is in getting a correct answer yourself (I’m happy with three or four in the half hour) particularly if neither team know it – score one to me last night as I correctly, and appropriately, guessed the author attributed with the first use of the word ‘nerd’, thanks to my long term study, or at least repeated reading to three children, of the works of the man: Dr Seuss.

EU Masters

The US Masters golf tournament became the EU Masters as the home challenge faded away leaving Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia to battle it out at Augusta, which made for great late night TV that extended to a play-off hole where Rose bogeyed and Garcia, despite able to take two puts to win, rattled in a birdie to take his first major title.

Step Change

A lovely sunny day on which to watch Darlington’s latest match in their attempt to gain promotion to Step 1 of the non-league pyramid was also a lovely sunny day for families to visit South Park and take up all available parking within miles of the Blackwell Meadows ground, so I gave up driving around and high-tailed it down the A66 to watch Stockton Town instead, where I was rewarded with adjacent parking, cheap entry, an excellent pie, and a six one romp for the home team as they clinched their own promotion out of Step 6.

X93 to Guisborough

This Friday’s outing on the bus pass was to the market town of Guisborough via the X93 service (though getting to that bus required a mile and a half walk, a bus to Stockton and another to Middlesbrough) which proved busy with trippers and holiday makers making for Whitby and Scarborough; once loaded up it was a quick journey as for as Guisborough where I met up with walking buddy Pete, though the  walk today was just up and down the high street, calling for lunch in the splendidly quirky Pie in the Sky (RAF themed) café and then in the Three Fiddlers pub for a couple of pints of excellent hand pulled draught Bass, setting me up nicely for those three busses and a hike home again.

Enemy Action

The splattered white blotches on my black car could mean one of two things; either my wife had started painting outdoors or, more likely, the pigeons had joined forces with the rooks in an avian campaign of harassment against me.

Re-retirement

I formally bowed out of my tutor job today, although I had not been needed for several weeks due to my absentee pupils; it was a low key affair as I handed over a text book and course file, said a few goodbyes, and left with a card signed by more people than I thought I had got to know over the three part time years employed there.

Rookie Mistake

Before cutting the grass at the back of the house I always spend some minutes picking up twigs that mysteriously seem to fall off the silver birch whether or not the wind has been blowing; my mistake has been to blame the wind as this morning I spotted the real culprits as several rooks descended on the tree and proceeded to peck away at its extremities before making off with what must be excellent nesting material – but not without dropping a good nest-load of rejects onto the lawn.

Prize Pots

I called at B&Q to get another match pot in the latest attempt to find the right shade in which to redecorate the spare bedroom; this is the sixth colour tried and the test wall now looks like a surrealist canvas with an outside shot at the Turner Prize.

Line of Fire

Decorating the spare bedroom had reached the stage when someone had to go up the ladder to paint the ceiling, and in consideration of my fragile knees my wife gave it a go on condition I assisted by holding the paint pot where she could reach it without surrendering her vice-like grip on the rungs; unfortunately that meant standing in the line of fire for drips, flicks and unintentional (I think) swipes of the paint brush.

Duck Food, Duck Weather

We made our annual visit to Bishop Auckland Food Festival and found it slightly curtailed as the castle grounds were not available due to work in progress on a visitor centre, but we still spent a sunny hour or so perusing the stalls and buying produce and I, for once, chose the right street food stall for my lunch – getting a toasted brioche filled with shredded duck, crispy bacon, red onion jam, mayo, lettuce and tomato, which was heaven in a bun; it was consumed just in time as the rain came down hard sending us through the puddles to one of the few places of shelter, in fact of sanctuary, in the church (briefly) then the adjacent church hall (longer) where mugs of tea could be had.