Easby Loop, Double Scoop

We’d picked the day of the week with the best weather forecast for a trip to Richmond, and we were rewarded with blue skies, a warm sun, and parking still available at the Station, from where we walked downstream alongside the Swale to Easby Abbey and back along the old railway line; back at the Station where the familiar dilemma at the Seasons cafe – coffee and cake or Panini with trimmings – was settled in favour of the latter, but after a post-prandial stroll around the town we were ready on our return to the car to manage a couple of scoops of cooling Archer’s ice cream.

Straight Kinda Guy

The purchase of a new pair of jeans was pretty straightforward when they were all uniformly blue and the only issue was size and whether to get Wranglers or Levis; now there are more brands than enough, fifteen shades of blue (plus black), and even in a down to earth shop like Matalan there is a choice of something called “fit” - the options being regular, bootleg, straight, slim, skinny and twisted (thankfully none had ready-made tears in them, which I can arrange myself given time and a DIY disaster); I rejected four outright (bootleg on grounds of it no longer being 1970, skinny on the basis of time and effort needed to get them on, regular as lacking in imagination, and twisted as being meaningless to me), then tried on slim but found them a little clingy, so eventually had to settle for straight.

Time Machine

When I awoke yesterday morning my bedside radio alarm clock indicated it was 14:15, which seemed quite a lie-in even for a bank holiday and, worse, gave the date as 18 May 2004, which meant I had not yet retired and was back at work tomorrow, however my fears were allayed when I looked out of the window and saw the 2016 registered mini parked next door; by lunchtime it had automatically corrected but again this morning it had gone awry, showing 17:46 in the year 0000, providing a rare opportunity to fly to Bethlehem to witness an historic birth – except of course aeroplanes weren’t yet invented nor, for that matter, digital clocks.

Fresh Market, Familiar Fare

A change of Farmers’ Market today with a trip to Stewart Park in Middlesbrough, but though the venue was unfamiliar the purchases were the usual suspects – bread, cheese, pies, scones, and bottles of craft beer.

Season Finales

Watched some close-fought season-ending finals on TV today: first the Scottish FA Cup (having found BBC Scotland tucked away in the digital channels) in which Celtic beat Aberdeen with a last gasp winner; then the main event where two of my least favourite teams at least played out a good open game, again decided late as Chelsea missed out on the double and Arsenal got some compensation for a poor season; and, last thing (highlights only), Exeter v Wasps in the Rugby Union Play-off final that provided a fitting end to that season with the Chiefs coming out on top with only a minute of extra time remaining.

Latte Frappe

A trip to Durham on a hot day needed a cool interlude in Café Nero where they do an excellent latte frappe and provide a dark and cool interior in which to enjoy it; a bonus is you can spin it out as long as you like as it never goes cold.

Fidget Spinners

The latest craze for kids may absorb eight-year-olds, but our eight year old cat rapidly lost interest, possibly due to the lack of opposable thumbs.

Losing Face

Working on the front garden I was hailed by a passing horsewoman with a cheery “how are you”, to which I replied despite not having a clue who she was or possibly,  despite knowing her, just not recognising her face; this is not unusual for me but I now know is not my fault as I suffer from prosopagnosia – the latest condition to get a scientific name, following in the footsteps of dyslexia (can’t read), dyscalculia (can’t add up), dyspraxia (clumsy); in my case the condition is ‘can’t remember a face’ – that, according to the news report I read, I share with Brad Pitt and quite a few others.

Monkey Wrench

On what is becoming a regular visit to the real ale pub - Number Twenty2 – in Darlington I made the rookie mistake of choosing a beer without reference to its strength, although I should have twigged that any brew called Monkey Wrench was going to have a powerful effect.

Sunny Scarborough

Our late arrival last night in Scarborough meant I stayed over and, the weather being warm and sunny, I remained for the morning, enjoying a walk along North and South Bays, tea and cake at the Clock Café, and an open air bus trip back along the front; en route we had stopped to admire the splendid “Freddie Gilroy and the Belson Stragglers” artwork whose familiar style was explained by the information board naming the artist as Ray Lonsdale, who also created “Tommy” at Seaham.

Two Finals, One Day

Though I have been to FA Trophy finals and FA Vase finals at Wembley in recent years this was my first time at the double-header event where they play both on one day, which requires an early start (Vase KO 12:15), late finish (Trophy KO 16:15, finishing about 6pm if no extra time), and a sizeable gap between, thoughtfully filled by a big TV screen in each of the fan zones showing Sky’s coverage of the final round of Premiership games; the day went well, the easy route into Wembley via the train from Aylesbury, the stadium splendid under the sun with red seats and green grass gleaming, two good games with victories for the North East teams, a decent pie and a pint in between while watching Liverpool v Boro, a well-timed exit to catch the 18:22 train, and a trouble-free (if long) drive back from Aylesbury arriving in Scarborough at twenty past midnight – a long day but worth the effort.

Wembley Bound

The Wembley road trip to see the non-league cup finals commenced with a drive to Scarborough to meet up with my match-day companion, and then a five hour trip riding shotgun to and down the M1, periodically doused in heavy downpours that particularly targeted me the two times I left the vehicle - for a coffee at Tibshelf and crossing the car park at our hotel outside Dunstable; the Premier Inn did what the Premier Inn does well enough – providing a comfortable room (especially if you win the toss for the double, rather than the sofa, bed) and an adjacent pub with acceptable food and drinkable beer.

Hairdryer Treatment

Renowned football manager Alex Ferguson famously gave his players the ‘hairdryer treatment’ with a verbal roasting at half time if they ever needed waking up from a soporific performance; I get the hairdryer treatment every morning – literally, my wife turning it on in our bedroom as she prepares for her working day is sufficient to rouse me from any remnants of sleep and drive me bleary-eyed into the bathroom.

Sporting Activity

Driving 29 seven- and eight-year-olds to their school sports meeting was the easy bit (though it did require two shuttle runs with just the one bus available); keeping them roughly in one group was like marshalling a pack of puppies, but at least they were active for a couple of hours, generally keen and enthusiastic as they ran, jumped and threw to the best of their individual ability.

Any Volunteers?

I feel residents should show support to their parish councillors by at least attending the annual meeting in the village hall to listen to what they have done on our behalf and make them feel valued (though based on the turnout I am in a small minority) but the downside of course is that you have to field their repeated pleas for volunteers for this, that or the other; I didn’t volunteer for this (join them as a councillor) or that (organise a neighbourhood watch scheme) but put my name down for the other – training for ‘speedwatch’, where we get to use traffic cop equipment to clock cars speeding through the village and grass up the owners to the police.

Supermarket Sweep

It happens every time, having trawled round the supermarket aisles you approach the tills and take a look at your shopping list only to find there is one, two, three, even four items that have somehow avoided your gaze, so it is back round the shelves you have to go; not today though – once round and all items trolleyed, a rare clean (supermarket) sweep.

Book Shelf Shuffle

The two books purchased on Saturday were sufficient to create a critical mass of recent acquisitions, mostly laid horizontally anyhow above the carefully organised pre-established volumes, so it was clearly time for one of my periodic bookshelf shuffles to restore order; inevitably there are casualties with some consigned to the charity shop pile and others boxed up for posterity.

The Wally and the Ivy

Having completed the repair work on the barn door lintel and patched some of the damaged rendering, I was able today to apply the final touch with a coat of masonry paint, which required climbing the ladder and stretching to the highest corner of the wall and, having applied the paint, I thought while I was up there I may as well pull off a few clumps of ivy that were threatening the solar panels; it wasn’t a few clumps it was fistfuls, armfuls even, and down with it came a fair bit of muck, seeds and dried vegetation that of course stuck to the wet paint.

Fair Enough

Home alone today, but while recycling the newspapers I noticed publicity for a book fair at QE College in Darlington so bus-passed it into town and perused what was on offer, which was, as to be expected, low in volume but high in quality (and price); I used to seek these events out regularly but with Amazon and charity shops providing cheaper alternatives this was the first I had browsed for a while, and having poked and fingered a few volumes it would have been rude not to buy something, or two somethings as it turned out – a Folio Society edition of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” and a hardback of David Starkey’s “Crown and Country”.

Tate Pictures

On a quiet day in, I spent time mounting in my Art gallery album the postcards brought back from Tate Liverpool, one from each floor: floor one was devoted to Ellsworth Kelly whose coloured shape combinations I viewed with the benefit of his quoted advice to “turn off the mind and look only with the eyes”; floor two had put together ‘constellations’ of modern art thematically connected to a more traditional piece also on view, so that provided a mix that happily included a Lowry, Pissarro and Picasso as well as the abstract stuff (a piece of which I nearly rearranged by stumbling against the tripwire protecting its sanctity); floor three made a connection (tenuous to me) between Tracey Emin’s ‘unmade bed’ (on loan so she must be sleeping on the sofa for now) and the work of William Blake, whose dozen or so paintings on show were my highlight of the visit.

You’ve Got Mail (and Meal)

I drove over to Middlesbrough today to take the undergraduate a bit of post and while there treated him to some lunch at the increasingly impressive Café @ 23, which now has an upstairs dining area and still provides good-sized and delicious melts – sausages and mozzarella for him and smoked bacon and Stilton for me.

Albert Dock

My first visit to Albert Dock in Liverpool was blessed by a fine sunny day and after a good walk around and a visit to the Tate I settled down for a glass of cask ale outside the Pump House pub and looked out on the hotchpotch of old and new, smart and scruffy, high art and pop culture: on one side the old dock buildings themselves, square and functional in their brick uniformity while on the other side the new commercial blocks of glass, steel and concrete competed with each other for eccentricity of angle, curve or other form, designed to attract the investor even at some detriment to functionality; in between the two sectors an isthmus of post-industrial detritus dotted with cast iron reminders of the former functionality – beached marker buoys, winches, davits, lock gates, swing foot bridges, and even an anchor - left there for effect or just forsaken; and at a respectable distance from the Tate, the Beatles Story attraction outside which the outsized figure of the fab four was attracting more attention than anything I had seen in the aforementioned gallery of modern art.

Changing Trains

Year 6 SATS week means no tutoring for me and a freedom to roam that happily coincides with forecast good weather for a day or two, so I researched a train trip to Edinburgh that looked a good deal at £19 on the soon expiring Transpennine Club 55 offer, but looked less attractive when it transpired that Transpennine trains don’t run north of Newcastle on the east coast line, so the route would be south to York, west to Manchester, then north via Carlisle to the Scottish capital arriving just in time to change platforms at Waverley station and set off back home again; instead I booked a ticket for Liverpool, two and a half hours with no changes and, with the railcard knocking off another 20%, only £15.20.

Fighting Weight

After eight weeks on two thousand calories a day (or near enough) my weight has steadily dropped to the eleven and a half stone that I consider my ‘fighting weight’, though checking Google I need to lose another pound before I could enter the ring as even a middleweight.

More Mortar

My fourth day up a ladder (not exclusively – an hour a day is the most my knees can take) brought the barn door lintel repair closer to conclusion, rotten wood out, the gap filled with new wood, primed and ready to paint, and some minor mortar work done; naturally I mixed too much mortar so used the excess on another job and, again naturally, there was not enough to finish that one so I had to mix even more of the stuff.

Lessagne

What do you call a lasagne in which the layers of pasta are replaced by thin slices of butternut squash – ‘tasty’, at least when cooked by my wife (an expert in the more traditional version) using the ready sliced vegetable from Sainsbury’s; it’s probably lower in calories too, so let’s call it lessagne.

Cats on Board

By locating the cats’ new platform thing in the sunny spot by the patio doors and removing the more interesting cardboard box it came in, the fussy felines have finally deigned to climb on board and enjoy its facilities.

Rotten Job

The plan to run a power line from the barn to the summer house should have involved just drilling a hole in the wooden barn door lintel, but closer inspection revealed that the drill would have been superfluous as I could have poked a hole through the rotten wood with my finger, which meant the job somewhat mushroomed; out came the crumbling old lintel and off I went back to B&Q to find a six foot length of four by two to replace it – but at least I now had a hole of those dimensions to feed my power cable through.

Unfettered

My first term time Wednesday unfettered by feckless youths faking learning was bright and sunny and perfect for pottering, so I did: returning some merchandise to The Range (nice to see the money going the other way for once), buying some DIY supplies at B&Q (with the pensioner Wednesday discount, its benefit offset by the congested parking as everyone tried to park within Zimmer frame distance), and dumping some accumulated old shoes in the clothes bank at Asda, before flashing the bus pass to get into Darlington town centre to visit the bank, tea shop and library.

Points Mean Prizes

Having missed last month’s pub quiz the team returned tonight refreshed and with a keen appetite for the fray, or at least the beer; we bossed the ‘in the news’ questions, did as well as usual on the general knowledge, and had one of our better music rounds, which resulted in high points, second place and, as our prize, money off a future meal.

Lopping Mad

I went a little crazy with the extending tree pruner over the last couple of days, increasing its range by standing on first a work bench and then the garden wall as I progressed down the hedge and finally tackled the sprawling tree in the corner that poses problems having its trunk in one neighbour’s garden and overhanging branches in another’s, but actually blocks the light from ours; by the time I had finished the daylight was flooding in to that corner of the garden even if it was under a mountain of leylandii cuttings.