Panic on the forecourt of Piccadilly

Sometimes small factors seem to conspire against you. Today it was a combination of the postal strike and a heavy work schedule, that meant I came close to missing my train to London for the Greenbelt Management Group Review Meeting.

To cut a long and uninteresting story short (yeah, yeah, I know, and yet I'm still blogging it...), the postal strike meant that I needed to pick up my tickets from a fast-ticket machine and the work schedule meant that I'd not a lot of time and I was scurrying across the forecourt of Piccadilly station still in my work heels.

Credit card in slot, I expect it to spit out my tickets (that's how it works at the airport), but no, it wants a booking reference.

Crap.

I phone Stuart in a panic and ask him to log in to my webmail and see if he can find the booking email (hey he's a minister, I must be able to trust him with my email password right?).

Simultaneously it occurs to me that I have my laptop with me, so I squat on the floor (easier said than done in heels), fire up the Vaio and race Stuart to find the booking reference.

Number procured and entered, I have my tickets and make it to my train with just a few minutes to spare.

Now do you think I should change that email password just to be safe?

Oh and if you received an insulting email from me a little after 2pm today, then take it up with the reverend...

Quarry

An early start this morning to catch the bus to meet K at 9am in town. We have a clear mission – find the perfect party outfit for K’s upcoming ‘significant birthday’. Trust me, I only get up at that time on a Saturday for the very best of buddies.

Party wear is only just starting to filter into the stores and it’s a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears; too big, too small, too shiny, not shiny enough, too high cut, dear lord too low cut etc etc.

K has a stand by outfit, but we're hoping it can be improved upon. Surely there has to be something somewhere?

I'm having marginally more success and find a party top for myself and the most gorgeous grey military style Matthew Williamson coat. Sadly my size is the only one missing from the rack, but hey maybe another branch has one in stock and they could find out and reserve it for me, like numerous signs in the store advertise.

Honestly, from the response I receive from the assistant at the cash desk, you’d think I’d just asked if I could eat her recently deceased grandmother. Some people are born surly, others have surliness thrust upon them...and some have their picture on Wikipedia illustrating the entry for 'surly'. Even her co-workers were rolling their eyes.

After a little bit of persuasion she does eventually toddle of and return with the message that one in my side has been put aside for me at the Trafford Centre. Job's a good 'un.

Mooching around departments and carrying hangers isn’t exactly the best medicine for my back and after about an hour or so, it starts giving warning twinges and a café stop seems politic. Who should we see on the escalator coming up to the first floor as we’re heading up to the next level, but R.

I’m blaming the level of pain I was dealing with at the time, for the fact that for a good few seconds I just stood and pointed, before I managed to summon the more appropriate response of calling his name or notifying K.

A lovely chance to catch up with R, but before too long we have to bid him farewell and recommence the hunt.

Unfortunately, the main quarry of something for K's party continues to elude us and before we know it, I have to bale on her in order to make it to my hair appointment.

A fellow client has mucked my hair colourist about a bit, so I end up with a bit of a wait between cut and colour. A beautician has just opened up shop in the converted basement, so I figure it's time to experience my first ever manicure (honestly I could be a girl really if I tried hard enough).

Very impressed at the ability to make even my worn and cracked taloons into something almost respectable, but I'm fairly sure that cuticle removement isn't supposed to involve a bit of a slip and a chunk of flesh gouged out of the side of your finger. She's very lovely and apologetic and I downplay it with "oh don't worry I hardly think it's going to kill me", but if I'm honest if I'd realised at the time quite how deep the cut was, I might have held back on the tip a bit...

So all in all not a widely successful day. I did however take one of the 'Bristol' trip pairs of shoes back for a refund. Can you guess which ones?



And yes you did hear right, I came home one pair of shoes to the lighter.

And they say the age of miracles is dead.

Sightseeing or Shopping?

Up in Edinburgh for an all day meeting today, which unfortunately ends at such a time as to leave me with an hour and a half on my hands before a suitable train home (bad timing really, I blame the chair...oh wait, that was me...).

So what to do? What to do?

Hmmmm...it's years since I was in Edinburgh, maybe a spot of sightseeing? Plenty of time to wander up to the castle and back.

Then again we did pass a lot of fine looking shops in the taxi...

Ah the dilemma - sightseeing or shopping? Sightseeing or shopping?

Pah! I've see the castle before - it's hardly likely to have changed has it? Besides, there's an outstanding mission to find K the perfect outfit for her birthday do, I really ought to do some reconnaisance...

Though for the record I'd like it noted that no shoes were bought in the making of this blog post...

Bonus

A lovely bonus surprise, P & S are in Manchester for the evening.

No surprises as to where we headed for a meal.

Mmmmm fish karahi…

Maximo Park

I suspect that if Stuart wasn’t dog tired and I wasn’t in constant pain from my back (I'm not saying it's bad, but let's just say it was bad enough to keep me from joining K on a planned shopping jaunt today), then rather than simply just enjoying this gig moderately, we would have found it decidedly above average.

Everything was there; good material, tight enough musicianship, excellent energetic and engaging live performance.



Oh and a man looking rather good in a hat.

Whatever happen to….?

Personally I can’t think of anything more disagreeable than chasing fame, but in this celebrity, overnight reality show success obsessed world it’s clear that there are plenty of people that don’t share my worldview.

However, for those that do crave celebrity, I guess it’s wise to ensure that any attainment of fame is suitably accompanied by complementary attainment of funds. After all, you really don’t want to find yourself in the situation where your earning potential is waning faster than your star; for where notoriety extends beyond the income generating opportunities, alternative, every-day employment is never going to be a realistic prospect.

For example, imagine finding out that the occupant in the cubicle next to you is Howard Jones. Face it, you’d see that floppy fringe in your mind’s eye, every time you looked at him and you’d half expect him to turn up at meetings tailed by a bloke called Jed or something who would emphasis the key points of Howard's presentation through the medium of mime.

Similarly, a friend of mine claims to have once held a summer job in a branch of Sainsburys that also provided employment for one Matthew Corbett in the quieter Sooty years.

Alledgedly making the "Sooty naked" joke with you hand from behind a shelving unit became a sackable offence...

Though I guess you can at least imagine how Jones or Corbett got through the interview stage. Whereas current cause celebres like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse may wish to think carefully about how quickly they allow what earnings they’ve achieved to date to errrr...'go up in smoke', given that they’re unlikely to be making the shortlist of any responsible civvy street job opportunity in the near future.

Which is possibly the ultimate curse for the ‘famous for being famous’ trench of reality show stars that recent years have produced. Big Brother is surely at the forefront of this movement, providing future potential employers with a unique opportunity of a prolonged interview (and you were worried about your Facebook profile...). Perhaps ‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman’s ultimate come-uppance for all the lying and deceit, will have been that I suspect many potential employers will have trust issues.

Similarly once you’ve witnessed the high-pitched squawking that Marco emitted in his role as sultan of the ‘lipgloss bitches’ it’s hard to imagine that the law student was deluged with hundreds of training contract offers on graduation. Indeed it was the fear of damaging her future career that drove a previous year's contestant from the same profession, to walk off the show a few days in. I guess she may in doing so have opened herself up to concerns about her ability to think something through properly upfront, but the fact that I can't recall her name suggests it was probably the lesser of the two available evils.

Charlie from this year’s offering of housemates doesn't at least seem to have any career prospects to jeopardise, but all the same the screaming harpie had probably better hope she finds herself a footballer, because her high-maintenance bitching ways have hardly commended her for any paid employment that involves interaction with the public, fellow workers, or well anyone basically.

So bearing all of this in mind, I can quite understand why Shaunie from this year's Big Brother would chose to try and shuffle through Manchester airport with hoodie up and eyes cast down. After all he's unlikely to make a lifetime's quantity of funding out of his post-show opportunities, so probably best to try and let the public profile die as quickly as possible.

Then again attempts at anonymity work so much better if you don't simultaneously attract attention to yourself with the brighest pair of canary yellow shoes I have ever had the misfortune to witness.

Hi-Fidelity and The Thirty-Nine Steps

Back to work with a bolt today and a pile of accumulated work awaits me. Worse still, my back really doesn't appreciate sitting at a desk.

I head home and get a few hours lying on my back before forcing myself out again to go to Book Group. I would happily give it a miss, but I haven't been able to make the last few and so I need to make the effort if I can. I do however, stop only for a short time and then make my excuses and take my aching back home.

Return

After breakfast, we bid the excellent folk at the hotel goodbye and thank them for again making our stay truly wonderful.

Then it's the long drive back to London and the chance to spend a couple of hours with Mum, before I commence on the final leg up to Manchester.

It's so good to see her. I know it isn't easy for her, having to do respite care, whilst Dad and I go away. Fortunately they have so many good friends, that form a wonderful support network and together with my brother a day hasn't gone by without a visitor.

One flight later I'm back in Manchester and being greeted by the wonderful Stuart. I know, I know, short-haul flights are a great evil, but Dad really wanted to share the driving and it was the only realistic way to do the journey via London in a reasonable timescale.

Besides the introduction of shoe scanning at Gatwick, meant that whilst I just about managed to remove my own shoes, I paid a price. Ouch!

Still, back injuries aside (damn you pesky ponies), it was a great trip. Dad and I got on better than I could have dared hope and it seems like we achieved the objective of getting him a decent break. I just wish I had more leave and could do stuff like this more often.

Thurlestone to Bolt Head

The weather is a little better today, so for our last day away, we head to the coast and our last walk of the holiday.



Sitting on the tailgate of the car, putting my walking boots on, I laughingly comment to Dad, "if you loved me you'd do my boots up for me - don't you know I've got a bad back?".

Oh fatal last words, as I bend down to tie my second boot, there's a sickening sound and feeling of something shifting in my lower spine, that well just isn't supposed to do that. Screaming agony returns, forcing tears of pain to pour down my face and trust me it's of more credit than you can possibly imagine that I didn't issue profanities in front of a parent. The only part of my body that wasn't screaming the f word was my mouth.

I hadn't thought it possible, but this time the pain is even greater, but after ten minutes or so, it again lessens slightly and wincing with every step we commence our walk. After-all sitting or standing are also excrutiatingly painful, so we may as well walk, besides there's a school of thought that suggests it's better to keep a bad back moving and above all I don't want to let Dad down on the last day.

It's a little slow going, but we manage a decent distance from Thurlestone around to Bolt Head and back.



For the remainder of our trip however, I have to get Dad to help get my shoes on and off. As he wryly observes, he came away to get a break from such duties...

Totnes and Dartmouth

With the weather decidedly wet and foggy a day up on moors seems ill-advised, so instead we head to Totnes with the intention of taking a return trip by boat to Dartmouth.

Sadly our plans look like they may be thwarted as the boat company inform us that whilst a boat will be heading to Dartmouth at the allotted time, it will only return in the afternoon if at least twelve people book tickets. Dad enquires how many places have been booked so far and receives the reply "well if you two say yea, that will take us up to....errr....two".

With no better ideas for what to do on a wet Monday in Totnes, we decide to take the planned boat to Dartmouth and with bus timetable in hand, find alternative transport back.

There's not a great deal to do in Dartmouth, a bit of a walk down the front and a mooch around the town, but at least it provides the opportunity to find a thank you present for the Dog Collars & Rabbit Corpses. On top of the their taxi services at the start and end of this trip, Stuart has been the saviour of my ABS/MOT nightmares, by taking my car in to the garage whilst I'm away, to allow them to do the necessary work to stop a little yellow light shining and more importantly to them no doubt send me a huge bill, and more importantly to me, issue a MOT certificate.

But what is the suitable present to buy from Devon. Try as I can, I can't resist the vanilla and clotted cream smells emanating from 'Edwards' homemade fudge shop. It seems just a bit too clichéd, but a taster confirms this is good fudge and hey we could always call it post-modern irony. Yep, I'll take a large box of assorted flavours please Edward.

The bus trip back is fairly uneventful until we reach the outskirts of Totnes and stop at a high school and the bus fills with young, mobile phone and attitude brandishing adolescents.

I'm not sure which is more fascinating, the anthropological spectacular playing out before us, or the vision of incredulity on my father's face.

Oh and some young girls - they hunt in packs.

When Horses Attack!

Various kind souls have enquired as to why I'm quite so behind on my blogging. Well, the answer in part is that on the third day of our trip there was a nasty horse related incident, in which I sustained some damage to my lower back. That in turn has made life a little difficult since, but hey, I'm getting ahead of myself, I should explain the full sorry tale, but be warned dear reader that the details are fairly gruesome and not for the faint of heart.

So early on the Sunday, we drove the short distance to Becky Falls, parked up and put on our walking boots. As we crossed the car park to head out for our walk, a woman crossed our path leading two horses.

Well ok, they were Shetland Ponies, but as you'll see as this tale unfurls, their comparative lack of stature makes them all the more dangerous.

We stopped to chat and it seemed only polite to bend over to stroke their noses (the ponies, not the woman...we didn't need to bend to pat her nose obviously...).

Anyway, that's when it happened.

The net result, intense agony of a kind that I've never before experienced.

No really, there's no need to reread, you didn't miss anything, that really was all there was to it. Lean forward. Back clicks out. Intense agony.

Tricksy things those ponies. You've been warned.

I suppose I could call for the offending beast to be put down under the equine equivalent of the Dangerous Dogs Act, but that seems a little excessive and well frankly maybe a touch churlish.

Anyway, after the first ten minutes or so, the pain dropped off a little and not wishing to let Dad down, I soldiered on with the morning's planned walking, every single step was intense pain, but some of the views of the waterfalls almost made it worthwhile.



In the afternoon we drove on to Bel Rocks and relaxed for a while in the shelter of the tor (sitting proving too painful for me, so I lay out as best I could) and then walked around various tors in the area before heading back to the hotel, where after a good swim a spell in the jacuzzi helped ease my pain a little.

Burrator Reservoir

Ilsington Hotel is as welcoming as ever and after a wonderful meal and a fine night's sleep we drive across the moors beyond Princetown and park up at Burrator Reservoir.



If you stick to the roads that encircle the reservoir it's an easy walk of about 4 or 5 miles, but it's all on tarmac and you won't see too much of the resrvoir. If you divert off into the wooded areas where major footpaths allow, it's a bit rougher going, but you're off the roads and you'll see a bit more of the reservoir.

But, why would you want to do that, when you can follow tiny paths that weave in and out and where possible get right on to the shores of the reservoir?

Sure the paths can be a bit treacherous, but it's more of an adventure and it's the best way to see the reservoir and enjoy views over the surrounding tors.

Of course there was that point when I ended up to my knees in sandy mud, oh and that bit where we ended up scrambling around rocks only to then re-join a proper path which led to a dead end cut-off by an 8ft granite block wall.

I mean I suppose we could have turned back, but obviously the better choice was to scale the wall. Even if at the top all you find is a short stretch of earth bounded on the other side by a stone wall, with a wire fence on top, all topped with some lovely barbed wire.

I somehow managed to crawl through a small gap between one bit of the wall and fence and Dad managed to climb up onto the stone wall, traverse it as I pulled the barbed wire away from him and then make it to a point where he could straddle the wire fence. At 69 years of age I reckon he's doing quite well...

Then of course there was the bit when we followed a fairly hairy path only to emerge at a gate onto the roadway to come up behind a sign post, displaying this useful message:



Of course a sign at each end of the path might be a better idea, but hey...

Still who wants a boring easy walk? This was much more fun.

Jurassic Coast

Sharing the driving, we set off for the south-west and decide that given the weather is good, we'll break the journey and rediscover some holiday haunts of year's past.

First off is Chagford, which I vaguely recall from the self-catering holidays of my junior years. Driving through the village we head up to Stonebarrow Hill and enjoy a fine walk round the cliffs towards Golden Cap.



I should warn you, this was my first real chance to try out my new compact digital camera, so there way be the odd photo or two in the coming posts - strictly point and press, but I'm liking it.

Anyway...then we headed to Lyme Regis, which was the location of my father's first ever holiday as Britain started to recover post-war. Mackerel fishing was apparently a very popular way of supplementing rations.



Fortunately times have changed and we enjoy a rather lovely ice-cream as we walk along the beach.

Dartmoor Redux

Following the premature end to their holiday to Dartmoor, Mum is thankfully doing better, though her standing is still not great, which makes transfers (eg from a chair to wheelchair etc) tricky as the equipment of choice, a rota-stand, requires Mum to pull herself up and holding on for a few seconds.

The dip in her health has also left Dad even more tired than usual and so a spot of respite care is in order.

The usual and understandable drawback is that it's not much fun for Mum. Her care needs are such that she ends up in places with very elderly and poorly folk, which hardly gives her the most riveting of times. However, this time there is a second issue, Dad is 'bored' of going away on his own and furthermore his activity of choice, long-walks in the country, is becoming increasingly something that as a 69 year-old diabetic, he shouldn't undertake alone.

Somehow this develops into a solution whereby he and I are returning to Dartmoor for a walking holiday.

Those of you aware of our somewhat tempestuous history will no doubt be wondering, like myself, whether this is an entirely wise move.

Ah well we'll see.

Still we get on so much better these days and after getting to their house in London later than anticipated tonight, we just got through our first potential point of conflict, what time to set-off for Devon in the morning, without falling out, so the omens are favourable.

Run Fat Boy Run

Completing our film weekend, IMc and I return to Showcase for Simon Pegg's latest offering, Run Fat Boy Run.

It's not going to set the world alight and it certainly lacks the wit and innovation of Spaced or Shaun of the Dead, but Pegg is as likeable as ever and for a light bit of escapism we could have done a lot worse.