New job, new car, new boss. {Scampi Tails win AGAIN!}

Diary 2013 – Week Thirteen. Part Two.

Monday 23^rd September.

We went for our usual swim this morning in rather subdued fashion! That whisky was the nail in the coffin of our sobriety last night. It was a Lowland malt called Auchentoshan and it was so smooth and palatable. It slipped down with no effort at all. It did make slipping through the water a huge effort this morning though. After 50 lengths I thought we’d had enough, Laura was only too pleased to agree.

Meetings, meetings and more meetings today. I hadn’t realised there’d be so many. Loll went off for Fresher Week things while I sat and felt my gluteus grow numb in the meetings. Still it will be worth it I suppose.

The chest is back and we had a woman come along today and tell us all about the embroidery it was, partially, covered in. This was absolutely fascinating. So afterwards I looked up on line more information. I discovered there is a woman in the US who teaches people how to make replicas of these things. She’s employed a joiner to make some rather more elaborate caskets than ours and then over the course of a year she teaches you how to do the required stiches and techniques to make the pieces of work which are put onto the caskets. The price for this activity? $3700!

Apparently the V & A have several examples of this kind of casket in their collection, two of which are on permanent display. It may be worth have a little trip down to London to have a look at theirs. I haven’t been to the V & A since I was a teenager. I think we’d have to go by train, I wouldn’t fancy driving all the way down to London. Well, the drive to Mill Hill would be fine it’s then the tedium of trying to negotiate London traffic that is the anal irritation! I shall apply my little grey cells to the matter.

We were back home by about 3.45 which made for quite a short day really. I could get used to this. Felice is back on Wednesday [my non day] so we will get started proper on Thursday. I shall probably spend tomorrow reviewing what materials I have got and my notes on what we have translated so far from the chest. I unearthed, from one of my plastic crates in the under-eaves storage space, a piece of stump-work I began in Australia just after my Breakdown. I found the concentration required in its making was quite therapeutic at the time. I haven’t even looked at it since I came back from Oz. The techniques I have used on this piece are a contemporary adaptation of the work on the casket. There the technique is a bit clumsy in places and the range of stitches quite different to what we use to today but looking at my cottage garden picture [it wasn’t my choice] and the photographs of the work on the casket, there is a definite line of progression between the two.

Loll was quite excited about the whole new term too. She has taken flyers from lots of undergraduate societies although she hasn’t actually signed up for anything yet. There is a canoe/kayak one which looked interesting and of course there is our Climbing for Novices one which she’ll be coming on anyway, if she wants.

I have had an e-mail from Mum. She has had her return flight rescheduled for next Tuesday and the whole family are going to the MCG to watch the Grand Final on Saturday! She is using her Lotto win as money to pay for it all. If I was slightly jealous before, I am incredible hulk coloured now! As it was about 5pm when this little snippet arrived through the ether it was too late to call the antipodes so I will do so tomorrow morning. Assuming she is in. Last week she went up to Geraldton [on her own] and took one of the day trips through the Pinnacles Desert. Then she went up to Monkey Mia to see the Dolphins. I am pleased that she has branched out and not stayed in Warnbro.

Laura wasn’t needed at work tonight after all. Monday is usually very quiet and Dominic had only about twenty bookings for the whole evening. That meant we had a night together. We had a dinner of home made curry, a Madhur Jaffrey one. Then we spent a lazy evening watching the backlog of things recorded on the PVR. OK, it was only an episode of Young Montalbano. OMG, he is so cute. Even nicer than Luca Zingaretti who plays the older version. I could have become part of his investigations any day. We also watched the Lucy Worsley programme about Murder. I think she could be my role model. Imagine a female historian presenting so many different TV shows? Wow!

Callie’s last walk was a joint one again. I wonder if she actually notices that there are two of us with her? She hasn’t shown Laura any particular attention at home as far as I am aware.

 

Tuesday 24^th September.

It looked as though it could be quite sunny in town but over the hill behind the house there were lots of clouds. Does the weather know what it is supposed to be doing today? Did it listen to the forecast? I bet it didn’t. Swimming was fun today as we decided to try and swim backwards. This is easy with breast stroke but impossible with any other. It takes a hell of a lot more effort than swimming forwards and by 10 lengths we were both as tired as if we’d done or usual amount. It did make lots of the other swimmers stop and gawp at us. I suggested it as Laura had another bikini on and I knew that without a distraction I wouldn’t be able to control myself. Back home we spent almost 30 minutes in the shower together! I dread to think what my water bill will look like!

This morning I was given a list of students who would [if they turn up] be members of my personal tutor group. OK, it was e-mailed to me. Nothing like the personal touch, eh? I have only really spoken to the ancillary staff, everybody else seems to communicate with each other by e-mail, even if they are just one room away from each other. Still the cleaner knows me and the secretarial pool and the caretaker. Lol.

I am at a loss as to what to do with the list, so I have decided to do what happened to me. I have allocated each of them a 30 minute spot next week, put it on a piece of paper and pinned it on the notice board outside my office. What more can I do? We have our own little notice boards. To be fair, I have copied what I have seen on a couple of other boards. I’ve put details of what my lectures will be for the first three weeks as well. That appears to be what some of the others have done too. Spoke to one of the lecturers and she pointed out to me that the e-mailed list had the students’ new Uni e-mail addresses as well. What an idiot! I spent the next few minutes sending each of them their meeting appointment. I hope she doesn’t pass on this information, I’ll look like a complete drongo.

Part of my day has been negotiating with the science department which dated the casket, and contents, to get a copy of their results. I was fobbed off with “Andrea already has them!” I had to explain she has left and taken them with her! This lead into a long chat about why she left and as I felt absolutely no loyalty to her at all, I explained clearly and in detail why she left and what I thought about it. Maybe that was a mistake. I have been promised a copy of all the findings – by e-mail ! !

Out at 3.45 again. I received a flyer from the garage which services my car yesterday, advertising a mega sale. They are offering a 62 plate Kia Ce’ed for just under £9K. [They have a few of them, actually.] I ‘phoned Dad from work and he told me if it’s genuine bite their hands off; especially if they have a diesel model with low mileage. We stopped at the garage on the way home. They had three 62 plated diesels, one with 32K on the clock! How can you do 32K miles in a year? Bloody hell. One with 5.5K and one with 8K. The 8K one was white and had quite a lot of added extras – tow bar, alloy wheels, window spoiler, load space protector, mud flaps. I took it for a test drive up the Halifax road and it was a dream to drive. Plus it seemed very quick. It reminded me a little of Mum’s Audi A3 inside.

The asking price was £8995, they offered me £6200 for my little Picanto, so I did as Dad suggested. I have bitten their hand off. They will valet and fully service the car before I collect it and they are going to put a dog guard in it for me for free [how’s that?]. Laura was quick off the mark with the maths and told the salesman the difference in price would be £2795 before he had even switched on his calculator. You could see his expression change as he looked at her, wondering how could such a gorgeous blonde be so quick at maths. [I have similar thoughts about her all the time. She astounds me with her calculations – she can tot up the prices in the shopping trolley at the supermarket in her head. She has often amazed the checkout person by saying it will come to £XX.YY and she’s right!]

We will do the swap on Saturday morning. The new plate will be a Sheffield one YS62; my last was a Cumbrian one PX11. We looked at the vehicle registration document in their office and although it is a 62 plate it was first registered in January of this year. When I phoned Dad [again], when we got home, he was really chuffed for me. Callie will love it. There is enough space in the boot for her to have a party. Laura and I were both able to climb into the boot and sit down in there. I think the salesman thought we were mad. The only downsides are; the colour – will it get dirty quickly?  I will no longer have Callie being able to put her head over my shoulder as we motor along. The plus side, if I do get a second dog there will be plenty of room in it for her. Oh, another plus, the road tax per year is only £30! That is around £150 less than I pay for my little car!

I received interest statements on my savings earlier this month and the main one has given me just over £6K in the last six months, so I will use that to pay for new purchase. I am going to call the car Quokka. It is small, but unbelievably cute, just like quokkas.

Laura has arranged to swap Wednesday night for Friday so she can come with us to the girly meal at Collette’s. This is miles away on the route to Mum’s on Carter Knowle Road. So I will go and check on Mum’s first before going. I have told the girls I will bring the most amazing apple cake for one of the desserts. It is brilliant. They will love it as much as they love my lemon meringue pie, I am sure.

Wednesday 25^th September.

Swimming again, luckily a more practical costume today for the skinny blonde, unfortunately she seemed to be the fruity one and kept trying to interfere with me as I swam. We really will have to stop using the changing cubicle for sex, someone is bound to find out and I’ll get banned! I wonder if it is all a ploy by Laura to get out of swimming altogether?

Everyone was really pleased to see me back at X, X, X and Y this morning. I even had a visit from Christopher. He had heard about Mrs Briggs and I meeting at the Halle concert. He came to give me the DVD copy of the four seasons he’d recorded from the BBC Proms broadcasts. I am really looking forward to hearing it. The newspapers gave it an excellent review [according to Dad, anyway]. I gave Chris a quick peck on the cheek as a thank you. I also warned him that I was only doing it as a thank you as it seemed appropriate. He wasn’t to read any more into it. He got that stupid bloody dreamy look in his eyes again, so I left the staff kitchen. Why do I do it? I am just being me but he sees it as a come on! Oh, Bugger!

I am back on the digitisation programme unless there is no-else free for retrieval. I really enjoy this as I come across all sorts of strange and lunatic cases. There are the mundane and ordinary too but the weird and wonderful make up for it. It seems strange without Catherine in the office. She would always say really silly, unexpected things. I obviously can’t think of any now I have said that, isn’t that just typical? I think she may have been a secret Comedy Store performer in her free time!

Laura caught the bus back to the village tonight, she didn’t need to stay as late as I did and thought she’d zoom back and rescue Callie from the palace. Bonding, perhaps? When I got home she was all changed and ready so all I had to do was have a swift shower, put on some glad rags and hot the road. We decided that the girly / startling thing was totally inappropriate for our GDG, so we dressed in any old stuff. Laura was in jeans and T-shirt; I had leggings and a tie-dyed top. 

If you asked where Collette lives, on hearing the answer you’d automatically assume she’s really posh. Living on Carterknowle Road is one of the smarter addresses in Sheffield. Actually, if she owned the whole house it would be very smart, as it is she has a two bedroomed ground-floor flat. There aren’t all that many on this road, believe me! We didn’t drive on past and head for Mum’s after all. I had forgotten just how long it can take to drive those few miles.

Despite being a ground floor flat in a big house I swear Collette’s place is bigger than mine overall. It is stuffed with bloody nick nacks though. It would drive me barmy all this clutter. On the walls are loads of pictures, I am not sure if they have any significance for her or not. She has a huge block mounted print of Derwentwater looking north east to Blencathra in the distance. When I commented on how stunning it was she just went, “Oh. I wondered where that was!”

She’d done us a huge pie with game – rabbit, pigeon, pheasant, grouse etc . I thought it was very good. You could see some of the others trying to hide their surprise but, as I shoot and eat what I dispatch, I wasn’t complaining.  They eventually starting making the appropriate noises but I could sense they were a bit insincere. By this time my appropriate noise was the sound of me finishing the last morsels of the pie in the hope there’d be more. Even Laura who isn’t usually squeamish about food seemed to baulk at the idea of game pie.

Greedy guts did have a second slice, I think I was the only one. Everyone gushed about my magnificent apple cake, so I confessed that I had heard the recipe on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. I pointed those who were interested in the direction of the website which was where I had taken the recipe from. A couple of them had never even heard of Woman’s Hour! Can you believe that? I may have converted a few to listen in the future.

The Scampis who’d walked upto Derwent Edge were mad keen to do another this coming weekend if the weather was good. I suggested Alport Castles in the next Valley west from the Upper Derwent Valley, we said we’d finalise plans at the pub tomorrow, where the Scampis will ride again. Although it looks like we will field only one team as the others had forgotten during the ten week Hiatus of YT.

Next time, in a fortnight for some reason which seemed logical at the time but which I can’t recall now, we’ll be at the baby of the group’s place, Claire. She is 22 and was fresh out of University last year. She’s only done one meal before but that was a brilliant Spanish evening so we all pressed her for another.

We rolled home at about 11.30 on the drive back Laura and I had a character assessment of all the participants. She has met some of them before, obviously, but it was fun to talk about the others behind their backs as it were. It was just Callie and me for the final walk tonight and when I got back in little Loll was pushing the zeds. She had obviously tried to stay awake and surprise me because the double ender was lying beside her as she slept. I’ll have to make sure we use it in the morning. As I slipped into bed she muttered, “I love you, you know…” but had dozed off again before I could reply.

 Thursday 26^th September.

We didn’t wait until the morning. At about 5am I was woken by a delightful sensation down below and found Loll’s busy fingers at work! This must be sort of how Richard felt when he woke up to find himself deep inside me, I used to take advantage of his morning glory while he was still asleep!

Just me walking Callie again but both of us went to the pool. I told Sarah about the Scampi Tails outing at the pub and she said she’d try and get along. That would be nice. Laura was almost up to my speed today and we finished on 80 each as I slowed down to let her keep up. I haven’t had conversations while swimming before at this early morning session, which seemed unusual. Although you do learn stuff. She told me that she has already been given her University e-mail address, which means my ten students should have got theirs by now too. I must check my account pronto when we get in.

The ‘we’ turned out to be me as Laura isn’t in today. The real stuff begins next week for both of us, I guess. Although with another two meeting this morning it felt pretty real to me already.

Pretty ordinary day to be honest. Felice isn’t back yet, she will definitely be in tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing her again. She makes me smile as her English is so good yet she lapses into very Gallic gestures while she’s talking to you. I wonder if she’s an embroiderer. That could be useful. We may be able to get the Uni to fund a trip down to the V & A to examine their caskets as part of our study. I will put that to her when she does arrive.

“Scampi Tails are Go!” again. Eva was pleased to see us once more. I am not so sure some of the regulars were though. We actually had enough for two teams, and Sarah did turn up with her friend who I think was called Sally. They made up enough for team two.  I am sorry to have to report we won again. This is getting to be a bit beyond a joke. Once again we donated our winnings to charity [of Eva’s choice]. Our second team managed to come fifth out of eleven teams. We were miles ahead of the second placed team, by at least twelve points.

I didn’t have a meal with the girls tonight as Loll had been at work in the kitchen while I was at Uni. I arrived home to a brilliant chicken dish which was almost like a fricassee. It was really tasty whatever it was. We finished with some more apple cake. I’d made three altogether with the intention of taking one to the GDG, putting one in the freezer and eating one. We are on the freezer one already!

Dominic was keen on knowing about my taste in wines tonight when I walked across from the pub to the restaurant to pick up Laura. He had never heard of Dornfelder, for example but he listed a lot of Italian reds I’d never heard of. I asked him if Vino Nobile de Montepulciano was the same as M.D’Abruzzo and learned that it is not related at all! We shared a glass to illustrate the point. Loll was whacked when she finished. The restaurant had been very busy, so after driving us home, I walked Callie alone again. I was expecting to find Laura asleep when I got back, but she seemed to have gained her second wind and we didn’t get to sleep for at least another hour!