This year’s most annoying phrase has to be ‘going forward’. I listen to the Today programme every morning and almost without fail, some politician or other will say something like “Of course, going forward what we shall do is…”. In my day, time only ever went forward, so the phrase was never required, but there seems to have been a change that no-one told me about, since everyone now asserts that we are going forward before almost every phrase. Perhaps I now owe you an apology, because if you hadn’t noticed this phenomenon, you will now! (Or should I that going forward you will notice it?).
Anyway, I’m bucking the trend and looking backwards onto a fascinating year, if not terribly prosperous for many people. At least I can look back on 2008 as the year that I first owned a bank. I know I’m sharing ownership with you, but still, it’s something.
It’s also the year that the children are once more going their separate ways each morning, since Emily left school in July and started at Runshaw College in Leyland in September. This was not without its problems, since her close friends had all accepted places at Cardinal Newman College in Preston. We were successful in persuading Emily that Runshaw’s first class reputation (and also having a dedicated bus service from door to door) was very desirable, but Emily still found it difficult to settle down. It was a considerable problem at the time, but now, three months on, things are much improved. New friends and fresh challenges have done the trick, and Emily is getting good marks in her chosen subjects of Psychology, Biology, English and Dance. She took part in a dance show over three nights in early December, which meant that she was unable to collect her GCSE certificates from school at a presentation evening. This was very unfortunate, since she really wanted to thank her former teachers who helped her achieve better-than-anticipated grades at GCSE.
Career-wise, she is still uncertain what to do, but an adviser has suggested that her chosen subjects would be ideal for a career in Occupational Therapy, and so her short-term aim is directed at being accepted on this course at Salford University in 2010.
Laurence is now studying for his GCSEs, although we have yet to see any noticeable change in effort. I expect his workload to increase after the Christmas break and he will begin to spend more time studying. At present, he spends plenty of time on the computer, but it isn’t school work. Some of it is, though. They have this thing called Moodle where he can receive and send in homework over the internet and he gets the marks emailed from his teachers. The old ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse no longer cuts much ice. Especially when you don’t have a dog.
Changing times have meant that we have now begun going on separate holidays. We all had a lovely week in Sardinia in the summer, but it felt like it was going to be the last family holiday we take. Emily spent much of it planning a week in Spain where she intends to go next July with her mates. She has recently returned from a self-catering holiday in the Lakes with her friend, whilst Loz, Geraldine and I were in Bruges. Geraldine seems to have spent a lot of weekends away during the year and has just returned from a trip to Keswick with some girlfriends and is now planning a short break in Dublin. I’ve placed my Guinness order already.
In early August, Loz and I took ourselves off to Cornwall for a cycling holiday. Unfortunately, the weather was not kind to us. We had planned to cycle most days, but the rain put paid to that, and for two days we resorted to going for walks instead. We did get to cycle to Land’s End (but only from Penzance) and we also spent three marvellous days in a youth hostel right beside the lighthouse on Lizard Point. I can vouch for the fact that the foghorn is very loud, especially at 3am. We had a lovely break despite the rain, with very clear memories, such as watching a performance of Charley’s Aunt at the outdoor theatre at Minack swaddled in waterproofs and drinking hot chocolate. Geraldine watched it live on the theatre’s web-cam, but the mist kept rolling in and spoiling the view. We couldn’t even see the web-cam.
Regular readers will be pleased to hear that we finished decorating in March when we completed the lounge and study. We have now refurbished the ground floor and are psyching ourselves up to tackle the hall, stairs and landing which is planned for next spring.
Laurence is still playing 2nd Cornet with Brindle Band, although they are losing their conductor this month. He has been a great help to Loz, giving him private tuition and encouragement. Geraldine and I are also getting more involved with the band, helping with fund-raising, and I was asked to act as compere for the recent concerts at the Brindle Community Hall. I spent hours finding out about the pieces they were to play so that I could pretend to be knowledgeable. I was careful to get Dave lined up on the bass drum so that when I told a joke he came in with the “Boom Boom” to let people know when to laugh. I’m not sure how well the jokes went down, because during the interval, several people came to me and suggested other stories for me to tell.
In the garden, things are good. We are still eating the potatoes and we had a bumper crop of apples from our single tree. I’ve been eating them as fast as I can, but we still have 1½ crates left. We’ve managed to get things fairly straight before winter, and this was even after spending a couple of weeks in September building a new greenhouse. The old one had seen much better days and was condemned on safety grounds – it was with the house when we moved in 20 years ago and was probably older than me then. We had wanted a cedar one to replace it, but we found that green aluminium actually looked better when we went to choose one. I chose a dreadfully wet weekend to take down the old greenhouse, but thankfully it was a beautiful sunny weekend when it came to erect the new one. I had a great time, since Geraldine was away and I could play all weekend with my big Meccano set quite undisturbed. The female readers may not understand this, but I’m sure the blokes will. The greenhouse is now fine, but the window cleaning bills have rocketed.
During the summer the entire village had a shock when The Cavendish pub closed on Sunday night and didn’t re-open for 3 months. The landlord had been struggling with falling revenues for months, but no-one realised the extent of his woes until he just locked the pub and walked out in June. Emily worked as a waitress there, so she was one of the first to hear, getting a text to say that the pub had closed. So not only had we no pub in the village, Emily had no work! She soon found alternative employment at another pub a couple of miles away, which was not nearly so handy, especially for her drivers. Thankfully, the Cavendish re-opened in late September under the ownership of the parents of Emily’s boyfriend, which was very convenient indeed. So she got her job back with a bonus (I think) of having Dan not 200 yards down the road. So Emily is now doing her bit for global warming by walking everywhere instead of asking us to get the car out. It also means that we are spending much more time that we used to in the pub – we see it as a public service, since the village felt dead without a hostelry, and we can’t risk it going broke again.
I’m still struggling with the ever-changing language in our house. I cnt do txtng. (Even that took three attempts) Em and Loz send me unintelligible texts, the general gist of which usually appears to be a request to be picked up from somewhere. They are often so obscure that I have to phone them back to ask what they mean, which rather defeats the object. They sometimes end in LOL, which apparently does not have a single translation, but instead is context-specific. I take it to be a happy salutation, however. Which I suppose is a convenient time to end, and wish you all a Happy Christmas and peaceful New Year. LOL.