It’s been a rather difficult year for me, because as some of you will know, I lost my Mum in early autumn. She had been getting progressively more poorly since she turned 80 last year, but in the spring she suffered a stroke which set her back significantly and appeared to take away her formerly strong enthusiasm for life. We spent a miserable summer watching her deteriorate physically and seeing her will to live slowly ebb away. Two days after her birthday she suffered a heart attack and died later than evening. Thankfully she had her children with her at the end, so everything happened as well as it could in the circumstances. Writing this is bringing painful memories back once more, so I’ll move on to brighter subjects.
Once more, our year has followed the usual pattern of running the children to their various activities whilst we try and fit our own lives in around them. Laurence is now a member of the Brindle Brass Band playing 3rd Cornet. We went to see them at the Community Hall last Christmas, and were so impressed that Laurence signed up in January. He’s making very good progress (moving up to 2nd Cornet next year) and thoroughly enjoys the whole scene.
They rehearse twice a week but during the summer they were in great demand at various carnivals and walking days. The best event was the Whit Friday contest at Saddleworth. If you’ve ever seen the film ‘Brassed Off’, this contest featured strongly. Typically around 150 bands play at a dozen outdoor venues around Oldham. They march to the venue, play their set piece, jump on a coach and dash off to the next venue. We marched behind The Black Dyke band at one venue and heard the Brighouse and Rastrick at another. (No doubt their members will be saying that they’d marched in front of Brindle Band in their Christmas letters…). Loz can be seen on t’internet here: http://www.whitfriday.brassbands.saddleworth.org/images/DN_4_2007.jpg. (But the link no longer works.)
The band’s activities don’t slacken off much in the winter, though. They are playing at 12 events in the five weeks before Christmas. And they still rehearse twice a week if they can!
This is the only reason that Laurence hung up his football boots in September after playing for 7 seasons at Gregson Lane Juniors. I don’t think he misses it – we certainly don’t miss the cold and wet Sunday mornings stood in a field. Laurence and I have taken to going for a bike ride on Sunday mornings instead, which is over within an hour or so, and much more enjoyable (for me at least!)
Emily is still a keen dancer, and has been accepted as one of the Blackburn Rovers Cheerleaders. This is a new venture for the Rovers, and seems to be going down very well if the press reports are to be believed. It hasn’t helped their results, though, since the first time they danced, the team got thrashed 4-0!
Wouldn’t you think that a club like Blackburn would be able to afford to sponsor the cheerleaders? They don’t. The girls (and one boy!) have to buy their own costumes and pay for the weekly training sessions! (It’s strange that this policy doesn’t apply to the footballers…) The cheerleaders get the chance to watch the match however, but this is wasted on most of them. Emily was delighted with the many texts and emails she got after being spotted on Sky Sport.
She manages to fit this in around her school work (GCSEs in June 2008) and working as a waitress at both Hoghton Tower and the Cavendish Arms. She’s planning to attend Runshaw College in September, if they’ll have her. She was very impressed by the place when we visited in autumn, so she’s trying hard to get the requisite grades.
She had a wonderful fortnight in June at the Lancashire Constabulary headquarters at Hutton where she did her work experience. The father of her boyfriend at the time was in charge of the training school there, so Emily had the chance to help out with, and sometimes attend, various training courses for detectives. On one day, she was asked to help out on a course by acting as a suspect while detectives interviewed her! She loved the role play, but I just hope that she will never need to use this experience in a real situation. I suppose if she does, she will at least have some idea what to do.
Loz decided that he wanted a road bike when he outgrew his mountain bike in the summer so to test the new bike properly we planned a 140 mile tour up to Hawes, stopping at youth hostels there and back. We spent the first night at Stainforth which was the first hostel I ever stayed at back in 1975! Sadly, the hostel closed in September so we can never follow that route again. We were met by Geraldine on the last night at Slaidburn who kindly carried home our dirty clothes and supplied food for our meal. The weather was kind, only raining on the Sunday when we were returning home. But boy did it rain then! Laurence wants to do something bigger and better next year. He did mutter something about Lands End to John O’Groats, but that’s rather ambitious, so we might settle for a tour round the coast of Cornwall, if we can persuade Mum not to worry about us. (It’s a long way to come for our washing, though…)
We all spent a lovely week in Sorrento in August. We booked an apartment which was within a campsite a short walk from the town, so we had all the facilities we needed, and a roof over our heads rather than canvas. The restaurant on the site was wonderful, so we ate far more delicious pizzas than was good for us.
We also were thrilled to go on all the tours the holiday rep tried to sell us, but for a fraction of the cost since we jumped on trains and boats and buses and did our own thing. It was very exciting at times (if you’ve ever ridden Neapolitan trains, you’ll know what I mean) but far more fulfilling. The money we saved paid for all the pizzas. It helped (so I tell everyone) that I had been attending Italian classes since June. It was true that I could better understand what was being said, but despite my best accent, as soon as I opened my mouth, the locals said “Oh, you’re British.” and replied to my carefully crafted Italian phrases in unaccented English. I plan to continue the Italian classes since we hope to return in the future.
A trip to Dorset in October did not present the same linguistic problems, but neither did the culinary experience quite match up. We did spend a lovely day at the Dorset Food Festival, however, sampling many local cheeses, ciders, chocolates and sausages. The rest of the time was spent walking on the beautiful Jurassic Coast or just chilling out in Lyme Regis or Dorchester.
Well the last of my Christmas shopping deliveries has just arrived, so I can start wrapping presents now. I took a couple of days off work to receive the packages that I’ve ordered from various on-line suppliers. Amazingly, all five have arrived in the two days, which is great. I just need to check that I still have money in my bank account to pay for them all, after the fiasco with HM Revenue and Customs and the Child Benefit data. (One neat solution would be for all the Chid Benefit recipients to close their current bank accounts and to open new ones with Northern Rock. That would solve several of Gordon’s problems in one hit!)
I do hope that you’ve had a lovely year, and are looking forward to an even better 2008.