This year, I have some very sad news to start with: Geraldine’s Mum, who had been suffering from cancer for some time, finally lost her battle in July this year after a short stay in St Catherine’s Hospital. She was cheerful early Friday evening when we saw her, but by 9pm she had suffered a haemorrhage and soon lost consciousness. She passed away on Sunday morning with her family at her bedside. We have spent much of the summer sorting out the many things required, including clearing the house and offering it for sale. Although it has generated considerable interest no sale has yet been agreed.
So, to happier topics. Regular subscribers to these newsletters will recall that we left off last year part way through decorating our hall. You will be delighted to hear (if belatedly) that we have now finished this, complete with a bespoke stairs carpet. The local carpet factory did not have quite the colours Geraldine required, and she mentioned this to them. “What sort of thing did you have in mind, then?” they asked. When Gee described the colours and style, they said “Well, we can do that”, and so after a few trial samples, we now enjoy our own carpet design which is being bought by consumers throughout Lancashire. Cool eh? No payment was received for the design, sadly.
The ongoing saga to buy part of the field behind our house moved quite rapidly after a few setbacks, and we finally took ownership of a section of the field in June this year. We probably won’t do anything with it, despite our intentions last year – the planned livestock now seem too much like hard work, especially in the winter. I think we’ll just stick with wandering round spotting wild flowers and admiring the views.
The field purchase was completed just a few days before Geraldine took part in the local gardening club’s Open Gardens evening, when a few gardens in Brindle were open to the public. The work that this entailed over the weeks prior to the event was staggering. We couldn’t bear to have people wandering round criticising the garden, or even thinking critical thoughts, so we spent hours and hours tidying everything up and encouraging all the plants to reach their peak at just the right time. On a marvellously sunny evening we were delighted to have several dozen people call round to see the garden and eat home-made scones. It was such a success for the gardening club that they are planning to hold a similar event next year.
I couldn’t do much to help tidy my part of the garden in the week prior to the event since I was away on a charity cycling trip in Scotland. I had signed up to the Prestwick Cycle Challenge which turned out to be a glorious tour of the islands to the west of Glasgow. About 120 people took part in the event, cycling around 240 miles over four days, visiting 4 islands and using 9 ferries. There were also over a dozen distilleries on the route, but these had little attraction for me. Although I was camping, the organisers had arranged for the luggage to be taken ahead by van, and also prepared numerous refreshment stops en route, so we could travel light. Early starts were the norm, since we often had to catch an early ferry from a port sometimes 20-odd miles away. These were countered by early nights, since we were usually too tired to stay up after dark (it was twilight until 11pm).
It was a thoroughly enjoyable trip, made slightly easier because I was fortunate to win a raffle late last year and used the proceeds to replace my 1976 vintage Dawes Galaxy touring bike. Although the new bike is exactly the same type, modern equipment makes it so much easier to ride. I took care to schedule in a couple of training weekends in March and May and so was able to keep up with the more seasoned cyclists.
I have been on a couple of rides with some of the same people since then, the latest being a three day trip in October to Ribblehead in the Yorkshire Dales. We stayed in a bunkhouse (like up-market camping, or down-market Youth Hostelling, depending on your viewpoint) adjacent to the viaduct and the Station Inn, a terrific real ale pub.
This was a wonderful weekend, but I’m glad I had plenty of training for it by attending the Cavendish Arms beer festival earlier in the year. This was once more a great success, with (I think) the entire village attending. I am ashamed to admit that we went every day – Thursday to Sunday. Our excuse is that we needed to go to see the children who were both employed there and were doing double shifts. The weather couldn’t have been better, and with varied entertainment, good food and of course plenty of real ales to sample, the weekend passed by in a very pleasant blur.
I became a film star in March, after being asked to record a short video by the Outward Bound Association. I attended an Outward Bound course in 1979 and have never forgotten the experience, so when I was looking for an alternative training course for some graduates at BAE Systems, I got in touch with Outward Bound and between us we organised a long weekend for the graduates at Eskdale in March. From this initial contact, I was asked to take part in a promotional video which is now featured on their website. Our relationship is continuing since I have now arranged for another course to be run next year. I don’t join in the activities, but I enjoy going along to give moral support, and I did have a ride down the zip wire.
The lives of both children underwent significant change during the summer when Emily left to go to Sheffield Hallam University to study Occupational Therapy and Laurence went to Runshaw College to study Business. Both are enjoying their courses, especially Emily who loves the city and thoroughly enjoys the work. She begins her first work placement in January which is in a Learning Disability complex in Sheffield.
Emily has learned to cook and now prides herself on being able to budget for food, drink and entertainment for just £50 per week. Her cost allocation was quite an eye-opener, however, with food appearing much lower down the list than you’d imagine. She seems to be thriving off it though, as does Aldi which is situated conveniently across the road from her flat.
Laurence is still playing cornet for two bands, but his other musical interest is to follow rock bands with obscure names. He regularly attends gigs, usually in Manchester, so we are now getting familiar with odd venues around the university area.
We are still visiting our neighbours for live musical entertainment. This year, Graham has put on four house gigs with bands as diverse as Ezio (a track (called Cancel Today) was chosen by Tony Blair as one of his eight selections on Desert Island Discs: is this good or bad?), a marvellous Australian guy called Mick Thomas, a Manchester singer, Karima Francis and the most bizarrely named band we’ve seen yet, Harp & a Monkey. The acts are very diverse, and should not really be categorised together, but they are all extremely entertaining and the audience (up to 40 of them) are really friendly. In such a cosy venue, they need to be…
On a similar theme, five couples on the Close take turn every few months to act as hosts for a meal together. Sometimes the meals are home cooked, other times they are supplemented with a takeaway for the main course, but the evenings are always thoroughly enjoyable. We have eaten Spanish, Italian, Greek, Indian and Chinese recently, and we have a visit to the Cavendish planned for mid December.
Hoghton Tower featured strongly in my year, with 24 historical tours and 10 ghost tours being delivered. In addition, I now offer slide shows of the house for groups and societies, including the Women’s Institutes. The WI are my biggest customers and usually provide interesting evenings. They often call me ‘young man’ (!) and feed me copious amounts of tea and biscuits. The drawbacks are that I need to know the words to Jerusalem and I occasionally need to turn a blind eye to one or two of them sleeping in the second row.
When Laurence plays with the Brindle Band, I usually drive him there, and one Saturday in June I was asked at 8.30am whether I was attending the Garstang carnival that morning. A positive reply then led to a sentence starting with “You can say no if you like, but…”. I’m a sucker for anything like that, and so after a 5 minute rehearsal in the car park, I found myself replacing the absent bass drummer leading the band on a 2 hour march round town. It was surprisingly good fun, since I received comprehensive instructions: just march normally, and every time you put your left foot down, hit the drum. There’s slightly more to it than that, but not much. Stopping and starting are the worrying bits because everyone follows the drummer – oh dear! I was also asked to do the Lytham carnival too, so I couldn’t have been that bad. The most difficult bit was trying to concentrate and ignore colleagues on the route who spotted me and tried to put me off.
Gee and I have enjoyed a couple of long weekends away on our own this year, which is the first time for nearly 20 years. In February we spent a very chilly, but not too snowy, weekend in Edinburgh seeing all the major sights. We thought we’d have a walk up Arthur’s Seat, but we failed to take appropriate walking gear – I didn’t realise that it was quite so wild up there. The part I found most enjoyable, surprisingly, was the tour of the Scottish Parliament building. I found it fascinating, and from initially disliking the place, I am now a convert, appreciating its artistry, sustainability and abundant design metaphors.
In October, we snook away to Buxton and stayed at the magnificent Buxton Palace hotel, a tired but very grand Victorian hotel occupying a commanding position in the town. The weather was very wet for much of the time, but on Monday, the sun came out for our visit to Chatsworth where we took in the gardens and the fantastic sculptures which were on display in the grounds at that time.
And so once more the year draws to a close. When I started writing this note, the snow was falling heavily onto frozen ground, and this is only November. Goodness knows what the coming winter holds for us. Whatever meteorological events occur, I hope that you keep warm and have a lovely Christmas.
