A trip down memory lane….

I went up to the Wirral at the weekend to see my Mum and Dad (Jase headed to Sheffield to see Nick, Helen and the children) Anyhow, Saturday morning saw Mum head off to Strictly Come Dancing Live on Tour with her friend Yvonne in Manchester (she looked lovely as she headed off all ready to go and had a great time!)

Anyhow, so it was me and Dad – and what to do with the day? We considered going over to Liverpool to the waterfront (it’s recently been done up as part of being the European City of Culture and looks fantastic – we were there at Christmas) Anyhow, Dad said ” well, where haven’t you been for a while?” ….hmmmm….how about Chester?

We headed off to the top of the road to get the bus – no point paying parking fees when one of you has a freebie pass and then you don’t have to worry about finding a parking spot – and we had all day! After taking in the sites along the way, we arrived in town and headed down to the River for a walk along the bank. It was a gorgeous day, and we wandered and chatted and bought ice-cream – yehay! Dad took some great photos, then we headed off into Grosvenor park to see the squirrels – haha! A guy was feeding them and really knew his squirrels explaining to a young couple how “that one has glaucoma I think as his eyes are very cloudy, so you need to make sure he gets his food” – he must come there a lot Dad and I got a couple more photos and carried on with our general banter about nothing and everything. Anyhow, as we’re walking through the park, Dad says “shall we go and have a look at the old baths” (they’re the other side of the park). Now, as many of you know, I used to be a competitive swimmer which involved training twice a day from the age of 10 for 1.5 hours at a time – Mum and Dad did the ferrying each time to get me there (half an hour each way) – what an amazing Mum and Dad they are! Over the years, I went in and out of that pool over 2,500 times – yep, you read it right – that’s a lot of trips to and from Mum’s and Dad’s house in all weathers!

Anyhow, great idea Dad, let’s go and look – I hadn’t been back since I left at 17! The pool is the old ROman Baths, so the building is quite stunning – see photo attached. A little bit of history on the Baths – a new pool was built around 1980, so these baths were no longer the public baths and became a charitable trust – as such, there’s never been a lot of money for them – we often fished dead cochroaches out at 6 in the morning before we could dive in – makes you tougher you know The Club I swam for formed when I was 10 as a result of the amalgamation of 2 smaller clubs and we got a professional coach for the first time. Only the club swam at the Baths in those days – we had 2 pools – a 25yd called “The Atlantic” and a 20yard called “The Pacific” – it was in the Pacific that Lesley, Neil and I used to all swim together on a Saturday morning for technique classes with Bill Parry!

Anyhow, getting back to the day out – we get to the Baths – and they’re open! We poke our heads in and wander through the door – it brought back so many memories! I was reminding myself of where Duncan Goodhew (he of Olympic gold medal fame) gave us a fantastic talk and where I sat on David Wilkie’s knee as a wee nipper (he also of Olympic fame). Then where the the medal ceremonies used to be up on the balcony – they were good days! But, the Baths really hadn’t changed a jot – they still needed a bit of love and care (and money!), but hey I bet the kids swimming in the pool that day were still having a great time.

The children were doing a distance swimming award session, and knowing how it can be with taking photos in pools with children in, we decided to wait until they’d finished before we asked if we could take a photo or 2 for old time’s sake! I explained that I used to be a squad swimmer and was about to emigrate to Canada, so would be great if I could take a photo with me – no problem, so off we clicked – look at the old style surroundings – aren’t they just fantastic. You see I spent a good 5,000 hours in those Baths, so there’s a lot of me that’s still down there…….

We then checked out the notice boards, see if we knew anyone from the Masters (older people!) swim team and I did – only 1, but there was one there! The club logo that you see there was designed as part of a competition when the club formed – oh, the children of today, they won’t understand all the heart ache that went into some of the designs entered…..:)

A great little visit though….bringing back a whole ton of really good memories!

Dad and I then wandered into town for a coffee (and rather large fresh fruit pavlova!) Lesley and Steve had just landed from their holidays in Egypt, we’d arranged a surprise – rather than them driving back to York, they’d come to Chester instead and just arrive in the coffee shop – it was hilarious! So, the 2 became 4, and so the afternoon continued…..lovely…..

One more for memory lane – this is nothing to do with the day out – but Mum’s recently been scanning in all of our old slides – here’s one of me being Dad’s caddy (I don’t think I really carried the bag all the way round!) – check out the anorak, wellies and no front teeth (quite timely actually as I also had a tooth out today – ouch!)

Gorgeous

Updated:The photos are in the gallery, just click on the camera icon below the map or wander over to the gallery and navigate through the albums…

You know how you can be in one place and it can look just like somewhere else entirely (e.g. almost any high street in any mid size British town), well the trail we walked yesterday reminded us of our trips to Lake Garda in Italy – blazing sun, bleached gravel roads and meadows all around.

We decided to go out for a trek to look for waterfalls and rapids on the Elk River over near Elko. After parking up, the path took us along the top of the Elk River Gorge where the white water rafting companies routinely scare the bejeesus out of their paying guests. The rapids start at the dam and carry on for miles, twisting and turning as they churn the river bed with a thundering roar. The shale walls of the gorge rise like multicoloured towerblocks with only the trees giving a sense of scale. Unfortunately because of the shale, the sides of the gorge are quite unstable, further down the walls are made of what appears to be sand or dust, with little pretence of being stone. Consequently the walls here regularly give up their mass and look like Carol Smilie has been round buffing the place up. The thin veneer of trees and plants at the top live a precarious lives with the only certainty of the ones on the edge being that they will eventually have the soil washed out from them and they will eventually plummet down into the river.

Around us up at the top of the gorge spring is definitely here. There are flower meadows that Heidi* would have been proud of, and lambs played by the side of the road while the rest of the herd looked on. Butterflies crossed our paths as did different of birds almost the entire length of the route.

Our destination, shown in the second picture, allowed us to come down from the top of the gorge so that we could sit with our aching feet in the river. I took a few photos (justifying the 3kg pack on my back!), and Cath dozed in the afternoon sun.

*hmm, some of you who didn’t watch kids tv in the ’70s might want to look that up.

Rave on

Well it was a busy weekend this weekend. My dad was down for a few days with his birthday and Christmas present that he “got” last year. Thursday was a Red Letter Days rock and roll tour of London which knackered him out good and proper – I don’t know how, because most of it was on a bus. Dad can now say that he went pass the building that Mama Cass was in when she choked on a sarnie (ooh, seems like she might not have), there were other places too such as Paul McCartney’s gaff and the Abbey Road.

Friday was a day at leisure, and Saturday necessitated a walk around Borough Market. This place used to be a large fruit and veg market (as was Covent Garden once) but in 1999 it changed to one of the largest fine food markets in the country. I’ve been a couple of times, mainly to buy Lincolnshire sausages because you just can’t get them down here! We also bought a load of cheese for fondue and had seriously psychedelic dreams all Sunday night.

Saturday night though was Buddy’s night. Yaay! It was the Buddy Holly Story at the Duchess Theatre in that there downtown London. I had a couple of doubts before we went in. Dad managed to get the chair next to a large woman who was overflowing around her chair and into the chairs of her neighbours – oh, and she couldn’t work out where her backside was and nearly sat on dad’s lap – nice! Overall, about 2/3 of the people there were over a certain age, and about a half of those were with their kids – lots of treats for parents eh? The other doubt was about the size of the theatre, I know I’ve been spoiled, but I’m used to bigger theatres than the Duchess, and the stage was minute to boot. But none of it mattered. The show was absolutely great! They sang every Buddy song that I’ve heard of and a few more besides, and at the end of the show people were dancing in the aisles! The ride home was just as exciting. The bus driver was evidently on a promise and drove like a stock car all the way up to our stop! Cath was nearly hit by the doors when she got off, and we all noticed the smell of burning rubber as as Nigel Mansell and his double-decker sped off over the humps into the night.

Sunday, rain. But hey, a busy weekend, so we made sure we had nothing on anyway. I managed an hour on the bike while watching The Cruel Sea on the wall of the living room before everyone came back (You can’t get better than that) and we tucked into our fondue with relish.

Rinky Dink Plink

Before I get into last night I can confirm that I managed to completely sidestep the jetlag that seems to have been plaguing all and sundry – I don’t know, what a bunch on moaners, eh?

Now then, we were at the Drill Hall last night watching the internationally acclaimed Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, and my weren’t they great? The main feller who sings on the Wuthering Heights You Tube video unfortunately had a cold last night, so that classic was unfortunately absent from the song list, in its stead we were treated to a Russian Navy Choir version of Leaning on the Lamppost! Fantastic and my favourite of the night. The group hardly broke into a smile all evening, but were as funny as hell (think of Buster Keaton) between each of the songs. One feller in particular looked like a very quiet and intense person – a cross between a lecturer and Anthony Perkins. He didn’t sing for the longest time until suddenly he came out with a rousing rendition of Psycho Killer (Talking Heads) that took Cath’s vote for song of the evening. We both loved the show and will definitely go to see them again some time before we flit continents.

Ukelele’s are the future.

Culture vultures and miniature guitars

Now then, we’ve found our next dose of culture waiting for us. We are going to book the incredibly brilliant Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain who are playing London in April! Now, you might think novelty band, and you may be right, but you’d also be very wrong. This blog isn’t going to become a YouTube video fest, but I can’t resist putting up their version of The Good the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a revelation.

He certainly won’t be missed..

This might surprise some of you , but I’ve always had a hankering to see The Mikado – but not just any Mikado. I first saw Jonathan Miller’s production on TV in the late 80s while in college. I didn’t remember much about the music, but the visual style of the opera stayed in my memory, and resurfaced over the years as a “well if only”. At the end of last year I saw they were showing it again at the Coliseum, just off Trafalgar Square, so I managed to get a couple of tickets. They didn’t cost a fortune, as they were about the same price as some of the big stadium shows by Kylie etc. Not only that, but we managed to get front row seats!

Well, there was a lot of titty-poo, tit willow and three little maids going on. I was enthralled that I was getting a chance to see something that I’d been thinking about albeit very infrequently, over the years. The singing was fantastic, and after a short while, I could even make out what even the most difficult to understand singer was saying. A bit like watching Shakespeare – to start off with you have no idea what’s going on, but after a while you start to understand the way they talk. That said, artistic license was knocking around the stage, so the school girls singing in the chorus were generally in their mid-fifties! A bit shocking to start off with.

Oh, and Boris Johnson’s dad almost crashed into her on the stairs.

Right, better get back to Proud Mary and my lunch…

tra la la

Out biking again – ouch!

We cycled up to St Albans yesterday. Now, we could have cycled using the dual carriage ways, but for a change, we decided to turn right just after Regent’s Park and cycle up the A5 through Kilburn – also known as Watling Street, the Roman road between Canterbury and St Albans and then to Wroxeter.

Unfortunately this was our first mistake. The A5 has traffic lights on it every hundred yards or so, and I’m convinced they’re programmed to turn red whenever we got to them! Our second mistake was to cycle when the weather man had said that it was going to be breezy – having cycled along the roads of Lincolnshire when I was a kid I should have known better! Our third mistake was not buying a train ticket! Actually, it wasn’t that bad, but it was definitely one of those cycle rides that I was very pleased to finish!

It was worth the pain in the end because St Albans is a great place to go for the day, and Alice and Neil, who we went to see were great hosts. After a spot of shopping (one hat for Cath, three DVDs and a big bag of prawns for £2 – I know! I couldn’t believe it either!) We did a spot of afternoon drinking in a pub called The Horn. It’s a rock and roll pub that puts gigs on and has urinals shaped like the Rolling Stones lips logo! Very odd

I decided that I wasn’t cycling back today, so I got the train. Cath is cycling back, so I’m waiting for her to get here as I write this. While you may think that I’m a lazy bugger, I like to think that I’m helping Cath spread her wings and really get some proper training in.

Update: Cath’s just got in having taken just an hour and 16 minutes. She was knocked off her bike on the Holloway road by an idiot in a car that overtook her and then turned left in front of her. She will probably get away with a grazed knee and some bruising. By the sounds of it , she was much more polite to the driver than I would have been! The bike is ok, but will need some patching of the elbow pads and the chain checking. I’m running a hot bath for her now so that she can relax and get the grit out. See you later.

Ray Lamontagne

Well we had tickets to see Ray Lamontagne at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday night. He’s an American singer songwriter who’s cd accompanied my flooring efforts over in Fernie for nigh on two weeks!

Now, when I say we had tickets, I’m not telling the whole story. I bought the tickets for a box back in June some time to make sure we could see the feller and weren’t sat at the back of the hall. Monday lunch time, and I’m chatting to Cath – “can you make sure you get the tickets out of the envelope?” Of course. I grabbed the envelope and the tickets weren’t there. I looked frantically all over the place until there was nowhere left – and in our flat this doesn’t take long! What to do? Well I called the box office at the Royal Albert Hall who told me to just make sure I bring the appropriate creditcard and they’ll reissue them again. I don’t know if you remember, but I had my wallet stolen in the summer, so this was not going to be a winner. “Well ok” she replied, “Bring a credit card statement”. Hmm, nope, our statements are all online, and the ones that far back that are on a stolen credit card can no longer be accessed. Bummer. Well eventually we decided on my passport, a utility bill, and my drivers license. It was possible that these would do.

So it was that I headed off to meet Cath at the RAH with almost as much ID as it takes to get a Canadian Visa. When I got to the box office I told them what the trouble was and threw myself onto their mercy, and they gave me the tickets to get rid of me.

I’d forgotten we had a box, so with the contraband that I’d smuggled in from the supermarket (sandwiches, danish pastries, etc), we settled down to the show. Oh, actually this brings me to the people behind me. A weirder pair you’ll never meet in your life. He was sat with headphones on – evidently he didn’t want to be there, he was only there for his girlfriend, and she was sat reading a book. I ask you? Well after that they had a short whispered argument and then quietened down.

The warmup were rubbish – that’s an hour of my life that I’ll never get back, but Ray was fantastic. The space in the Royal Albert Hall allowed him to belt out the songs that we’ve come to know. It all got too much for the lady next to me who seemed to be having kittens at one point!

So there you go. Absolutely worth the hassle for a great night out. Mind you, it was murder getting up the next day…

Up the Chilterns!

We decided to get on our bikes again on Saturday and go for a ride out in the Chilterns. Well, you know how it is, Cath had a 2 1/2 hour training session to do, I was at a loose end, and I need to be fitter than I am, so pretty much case closed. We loaded our bikes on the train and headed out to Berkhamsted. Now, for those of you that haven’t known us for long, we bought our first house on Holliday Street in the picturesque town, birthplace of Graham Greene, William Cowper and Esther Ransen. It was also the birthplace of Thomas Stevenson, the first person to ever cycle around the world on a penny-farthing. So where better to start?

Now, Saturday afternoon was not a case of plus-fours, cravats and panniers full of picnics and binoculars. No, it was a training session. Once we got started, Cath told me that we should be averaging somewhere around 16-17mph for the whole 32 miles. MPH? Now she tells me, I thought it was km/h.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t long after leaving Berko that we hit Tring station (ok, for those that don’t know, it’s about 5 miles away)  on our way to Aldbury. Apparently a lot of chase scenes in The Avengers were filmed at Aldbury, and many’s the time that the same cars were seen racing around the same village pond near the stocks in different episodes. Tring was home to the incredibly rich Rothschild banking family who thought nothing of using a zebra and trap/carriage as his main form of local transport. From there we headed out towards Ivinghoe, a site of an iron age hill fort. I was thoroughly warmed up by now, though a bit snotty, but I knew what was to come: Ivinghoe Beacon. While we lived in Berko and then Tring I couldn’t cycle up that damn lump of chalk, because it was too steep and it went on for too long. This time around I didn’t even get into bottom gear! A steady 8/9mph and I was at the top before you could say herrrr, herrrr, herrrr, herrrr!

Anyway, the weather was kind in the end, and the winds were low. Through the old hunting forest at Ashridge, down through Hemel Hempstead, and into Kings Langley we flew. Well, I say flew, we were stuck in traffic for a while, but then we flew after we passed Sainsburys. Into KL, and Cath was off an running – another part of her madness, while I was standing in my rather fetching cycling gear smiling at West Highland Terriers and such like. They are cute little dogs, always seem to be in a good mood.

I digress, Cath managed to get back in one piece, so we jumped back on the bikes to try to get a train back to London. We knew they were about every thirty minutes, so you can imagine how chuffed (or is that chuff chuffed?) we were when the train rolled into the station as we got onto the platform! A quick and easy journey home and that was that.

Yesterday I developed a bit of a cold that Lesley had kindly left behind when she came down last week. And no, not man cold or man flu, a bit of a cold. Suffice to say Lesley could be looking for a different place to stay next time – like an isolation hospital. There used to be one just outside Skegness I can direct her to!

The Chilterns are a great area, and we got to see a lot of places we haven’t been to in years. I think in the end we took 2hours and 40 minutes to do about 35miles – and I was ready for that bath afterwards.

One last thing, Garners, Haywards or Branston?

An evening of Travel

It’s been a busy week so far. As you know, we started with my triumphant return to the dance floor(!) on Monday. This was followed by jumping on the train to York on Tuesday morning to see Steve and Lesley (Cath’s brother in law and sister), and to get some work done. Now, I had to be back in plenty of time last night because we were going to see Michael Palin give a talk about his latest series called “The New Europe” which is about his travels around eastern Europe. I thought, if I catch the 3:30pm train, I’ll be in London at 5:30pm, and that’ll give me an hour and a half to walk half a mile to the venue – not a difficult one is it?

Well I got to York station and it was packed!Now, for all you Canadiaians out there, this is not a good sign, because it is usually a warning that someone has cocked up. It seemed that there was a bridge problem between York and Doncaster, and there was only one train an hour going south. The two previous London trains had been cancelled at York, and everyone was waiting for my train. Good job I didn’t need to leave earlier, eh?

Well I got on the train, and nobody was in my seat, so that saved a fraught conversation, and off the train trundled out of the station and towards the south of the country. It only started at about 50mph, but soon got down to 30mph, and eventually came to a grinding great halt in the middle of a load of fields. Now, I always see that as a bad sign on an intercity express train! Well we sat for quite a while, before the train started up, and at a heady 20mph finally got through the problem area and got into Doncaster about 40 minutes late (not bad on a 20 minute journey). At Doncaster, the guard/train manager/commercial director/your personal ticket collecting friend (delete as appropriate, I can’t keep up on these job titles) sent a message out saying that there was a second train two minutes behind us that would stop at Doncaster, so if you’re stood up, get on that because it’ll get in to London only 2 minutes after us. Now, I had a seat, so I decided to stay where I was, but quite a few people who were stood up decided to get off.

Out of Doncaster we carried on down the line, the estimated time of arrival at Kings Cross was now a heady 6:39pm – only 20 minutes before the start of the talk!!! Now, I hate being late for things, so I started to get pretty annoyed by now. Not half as annoyed as I was when we stopped further down the line at Retford. We were told we were waiting there to let the other train pass us. It was decided that this express express would got straight from Doncaster to London without stopping, and instead of following us as they previously said, it was going to get in at London 15 minutes before us!! I did swear ever so slightly under my breath at this point so as not to upset the woman from Tesco’s supermarket in Newcastle who was sat next to me and was travelling to Spalding to “experience potato picking” – I told her not to put her hand through the green mushy ones, not without a gas mask on, anyway. Actually as I sit here writing this I realise that she’ll be in the field right now enjoying herself. I have to say, there are worse jobs on the land.

Right, back to the train. I decided to visit the toilet before we pulled in to London, as I didn’t think there would be time afterwards. I pressed the door close button and watched it roll around until it was within an inch of closing before it changed it’s mind and opened up again. Good job I wasn’t assuming anything eh? I reckoned that it wasn’t working so I started walking away, only to be met by the eastern European cleaning lady who barked “What’s up?” – “The door doesn’t close,” I told her. “It does!” she replied. Well I went back in and she shouted at me trying to tell me how to work a toilet door. I gave her what I hoped was a withering look, and told her that I had had experience closing doors. Of course, when you do it a second time with the person looking on the bloody thing shuts properly, doesn’t it?

So we trundled along and finally got into the big smoke (hmm, I did notice that nobody was brave enough to check our tickets, wonder why?). I had thought ahead, so had moved to the front of the train so that I could be first at the taxi rank. As soon as the doors were unlocked I shot out of the train like a speeding bullet. Luckily I knew where the taxi rank was, so I raced down to it – it wasn’t there! No signs to say where it was either, only a sign that said that the station staff were there to help you – except they weren’t. Ok, I’ll race outside, the taxi rank wasn’t there, but, there was a taxi dropping off, so I jumped in, and managed to get to the venue at 5:50pm – ironically I was there a few minutes before Cath.

Sooo, Michael Palin, was it worth the hassle? Well, in short no. It was interesting enough, but it was a talk with a slide show. The lighting was pretty poor, so you could hardly see him, and he tried to cram too much in so there weren’t too many humorous moments. He was also running so far out of time that at the end of the last slide he pretty much bolted out of the room to get ready for the book signing. So although we were pleased we’d gone (to say we had), I don’t think we’d do it again.

There you go, bit disappointing, but life’s apparently like a box of chocolates or something. We ended up going home and practising some of our steps ready for next week. We do it in our socks so we don’t annoy the neighbours. We must look like right buggers…