Monday 18th November.
Phew. Getting up early was no
problem. Driving back down was a bit hairy at times. The amount of traffic as
we hit the outskirts of Manchester was incredible, especially as it was just
7.15 am! What the hell must it be like at the heart of the rush hour? I didn’t
pour Laura on to the back seat of Quokka but she was asleep within minutes of
us hitting the A66. She woke up as we got to the Flouch Inn Roundabout on the
Woodhead route over the Pennines [I know the Flouch Inn has been marooned by
the new road, but everyone still calls it the Flouch Inn Roundabout.] We were
home by 8.30.
At my broom cupboard door was a
certain Amanda Scothern. She was waiting for me with a wide grin on her face
and a bunch of flowers in her hand. She just turned round, saw me approaching
and gave me a huge hug. She then spent the next few minutes apologising, every
other sentence, while she told me that going to Hull and back was exactly what
she had needed. I sort of hoped it would be. We are having lunch in the refec
later as I had work to do and she was late for a 9 am lecture!
At lunch we got a blow by blow
account of the entire weekend. It was quite an eye opener into how other people
live their lives. She had seen her old boyfriend and was able to tell him to
his face that it was definitely over and he had to stop pestering her or she
would set her brother on him! I had wondered [OK Laura had wondered and I
agreed] that there might have been a guy at the bottom of it all. Bloody men,
eh? Like a woman after my own heart, she had dumped him on moving away from
Hull and he couldn’t accept the fact. That sounds so familiar! LOL. We had a
long moan about men in general and then she started going on about how she
really fancied one of her lecturers!
Feli was intrigued by our weekend
on Arran and accepted, immediately, the offer of coming to stay on the island
during one of the vacations. I still keep breaking out into enormous demented
looking grins at the thought of owning something there which we can visit
whenever we want! I transferred my half of the money to Dad’s bank account this
morning, which means almost my entire dividend for the first half of the year
has now been spent! I was going to use it to pay some more of my mortgage off,
but that will have to wait until the next lot is due at the end of March.
After work we went food shopping
as we were so Mother Hubbardy back home. We drew up a menu for the week over
lunch and Mandy [as she prefers to be known] was really impressed by the idea.
She had never even thought of doing that, she just buys her food as and when –
which must cost her an absolute fortune. We still managed to spend over £100
altogether, despite having our menu for the week planned out. We had a large
stir fry with prawns for tea as it is quick and Loll was back at the restaurant
for 7.
I was able to tell Dominic that
Dad would be going to Germany [Cochem] during the first weekend in December so
he could expect his wine soon after. The revised plan was that he and Louisa
would go, I would stay in the UK and then on the way back they’d come up to
Sheffield and drop my wine off (and Dominic’s) and break the journey with an
overnight stay. I was a bit disappointed at his revision of our plans as I was
looking forward to seeing Uncle Hilmar and the family again. Still, as Laura
said, why can’t we go under our own steam in the New Year? I could get Callie a
doggy passport and she could come too! Taking a Weimaraner back to Germany has
a certain humour attached to it. Before he goes I will have to ask Dad to find
out if there is a time we can make a visit.
Laura found me fast asleep on the
sofa again, when she got back in from work. Needle in hand, embroidery on my
lap. This time the TV was on as I had tried to watch “Last tango in Halifax”
but had nodded off halfway through it. Luckily Loll had wanted to watch it,
too, so it is recorded on my PVR. We missed the first series but I bought the
boxed set [I buy a lot of boxed sets of TV shows] and we both loved it. Bloody
hell. Do you realise I think this may be the first TV show I have mentioned in
this entire blog? I don’t count watching Aussie Rules Football with my family
in OZ.
Tuesday November 19th.
Today was our first time at the
pool since Thursday. Sarah is having trouble keeping track of our comings and
goings. I told her about the trip to Arran and buying the van. She said she had
one of the sweaters! I had to tell her that was the other Aran. She hadn’t
realised there were two. Quite a lot of people don’t. She was surprised and
said I didn’t look the type to be buying a static caravan. I asked her what
type of person does buy one but she couldn’t answer. I told her about going
halves with Dad and suddenly that was different, then! People do have some
funny ideas.
Mandy was at my door again this
morning, but this time it was for her scheduled meeting with me and the other
tutees. I had to scavenge the area for mugs to drink from as I had forgotten to
bring my little boxful with me. I have started to take it home as one of them
has gone walkabout already! Can you believe that? It was a really cute Wallace
and Gromit one, too. This is the third meeting where I get the group all
together. I thought it would be a good idea for them to get to know someone
outside their own discipline. They seemed to be quite friendly with each other,
despite only meeting because of my machinations. I’ll be seeing them again,
individually before term goes down for Christmas, to monitor how they are doing
etc. This was just an informal gathering really. I had booked a room especially
for it as my “office” is just too small.
One of them dropped a bombshell
on me. She told me Runrig were playing Sheffield City Hall, next March [26th]
and that the tickets went on sale last Saturday. I then did something really
rude, I told them I had to make a quick phone call, and got through to Dad’s
office in Lancaster. It sounds so cool when you ask the switch board to get
another University and there is a roomful of people listening. They may have
been surprised by the rest of my conversation though.
The students heard only my side of the conversation
which went something like this:
Mr Jay,
please.
Ms Smith.
Sheffield University.
Hi Dad.
No,
nothing’s wrong.
No, I…
That’s good…
I transferred it on Monday.
Yes. I am
OK. Just ask Hilmar if we can come down and stay in the New Year. Could you?
Look, Dad…
No. Of
course not.
No. Don’t be
silly! No.
Look, Dad…
DAD!!
Look, I am
ringing because Runrig are playing Sheffield next March and tickets went on
sale on…
Oh.
How come?
Ooh, Daad!
OMG. Thank you, thank you, thank you. To the power of infinity.
No, it
hasn’t spoilt it. It’s brilliant. Oh, Wow!
Yes, of
course you can. I’ll get Callie to clean her kennel out!
For being such
a sly dog.
No. I have a
room full of students listening to every word.
No. It’s a
mentoring session!
Well, it’ll
show them people this side of the desk as just as human as everyone else.
Yes, I know.
I’m going.
What.
No, I am
really, really pleased. I am not disappointed to find out. It hasn’t spoilt the
surprise at all. Honestly. Anyway, knowing you, you’d never have managed to
keep it a secret. Would you?
Well, I
don’t think so. You always blab.
Yes you do!
Of course I
do.
Yes, of
course.
She doesn’t
know yet. We haven’t been over. I just phoned her from here yesterday morning,
to let her know we were back safely.
Oh. OK,
then.
Right.
Yes. About
6.30? We’re at a concert at 7.30.
Ensemble
360.
OK, we’ll be
back about 10, either…
Love you,
too. Bye.
No, you…
No, you…
They were
chatting amongst themselves initially but gradually they all stopped and just
listened in to our conversation. Well, my half of it. I think I have written my
side pretty much as it occurred!
When they
all gone Mandy stayed behind. I thought she was going to thank me again but she
said, “Did you know, inside 10 seconds of making that call you went from being
our tutor to being a little girl!”
I was a bit
mortified. She said that she wasn’t being rude or anything, she just thought it
was so sweet. She bet that the others thought the same. I was lost for words.
That is so unlike me! LOL.
In case you
hadn’t worked it out. Dad knew about the tour before we even left for Arran. He
was delighted to let us zoom off up Goat Fell on Saturday morning as it meant
he could buy tickets for the concert without us knowing. He was third in the
queue at 9.30 when the box office opened and he has bought four front row
circle tickets. Him and Louisa; Laura and me. I had spoiled his surprise. It
was going to be a birthday surprise as it is only a few days after my birthday!
I love my
Dad so much. I feel so sorry for those whose fathers aren’t as loving and
supportive and silly as mine is. Laura is so jealous of me for having a Dad
that is cool! I keep telling her that he isn’t cool at all, but she thinks he
is. She totally understands why I wanted to marry him when I was a little girl!
[A major embarrassing thing to have said, although I was only 5 or 6!]
Our evening concert: If you ever
get the chance to see Ensemble 360, then do! They play in the round! It is
amazing. I wondered why they had this name and now I know. We arranged to meet
Mrs B and partner at a pub outside the Firth Hall as she had never been before.
I was surprised because she has lived here for almost 20 years and not found
out this venue. I jokingly said to her, “I suppose you’ve never been to the
Montgomery Hall?” She hasn’t! Nor the Catholic Cathedral. Nor the Library
Theatre. I decided I had better stop listing places as it may have become
embarrassing.
The programme, as well as the
Debussy – which was what I really wanted to hear – included some Britten!
Arrggh! I normally go out of my way to avoid him, but these pieces weren’t too
bad. I recently heard his Japanese influenced Curlew River “church opera” which
was quite a surprise. That may have begun my revision of his oeuvre! There are usually
about a dozen performers with Ensemble 360: one Bass, one Cello, a couple of
Violins and a Viola, Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon, Oboe, French Horn, even a piano!
Even more surprising is they are based in Sheffield! They have not been on my
radar at all. Tonight’s pieces were all string quartets, though, so we had but
four players; three women and a man. The women played one of the violins, the
viola and the cello.
To say that I had found something
which surprised Mrs B is an understatement. She was overwhelmed by the whole
thing and was really grateful that I had added a new venue and ‘orchestra’ to
her list of orchestras and venues to visit. The Britten Three Divertimenti were
excellent, and based on the book / film of Eric Kastner’s “Emil and the
Detectives”. I read it when I was little. One of Dad’s ‘just must read this’
books. That Britten had turned the idea into a trio of string pieces has
actually made me think even more about him than I did before!
I told Feli about the concert at
work in the morning and she didn’t see how playing in the round would work, of
course for a string quartet it wasn’t a problem. I would love to see the full
ensemble playing sometime. I am afraid I even told Christopher this afternoon
before the performance and you could see he was more than miffed that he
couldn’t go, he had a prior engagement! I knew this already; which was the only
reason why I told him about it! Am I wicked or what?
Wednesday
November 20th.
Swimming and
dog walking as usual this morning. Although Laura swam in her bikini which was
a real distraction and we had to avoid helping each other to get dry afterwards
as we just knew we’d end up having sex in the cubicle again, and we have vowed
not to do that. We did spend quite a while at home having sex though. We each
wore fresh bikinis and then we didn’t!
I wore one
of my “business woman” outfits to work today. I do love dressing up and
confounding people’s expectations of me. Today I was in a pale grey pin striped
suit – tailored jacket and pencil skirt- an azure blouse and azure court shoes
and matching handbag. My legs were in black tights. [I'd tried to get the right shade of blue but failed miserably!] The skirt was relatively short,
about five inches over the knee. I must have looked like one of our solicitors
as I entered the building. It was all somewhat spoiled down in ARR by wearing my lab
coat over the top to stop me getting messed up by some of the archive
paperwork. The digitising of our records is going fairly well, even though I am
only devoting one day a week to it now, rather than the five half days a week I
did last year.
You can bet
on the day I have finished they will announce they are scrapping the computer
system or something equally silly!
I got a
visit from Christopher, who came to ask about Ensemble 360. How does he find
time to come down to archives? I am sure the accounts department is rushed off
its feet! I am finding it quite hard to remain polite and nice towards him. I
know I should be, but he really is a pain of the first water! I suppose he is
like a dog waiting for any scraps to be dropped from the dining table, well
he’s going to have a bloody long wait at my table.
Met up with
Loll at lunch and we went into town to order some tickets for shows at the
Lyceum and Crucible for both before and after Christmas. We bought them for: The
Arcadia String Quartet, Ensemble 360 [doing a different programme], “The
Nutcracker” [ballet], “Blink”, “The Comedy of Errors” and “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream” the last four in January. We got
Mum tickets for The Nutcracker, C. of E. and M. N. D. too. Well, she used to be
a Head of English and loves watching the Bard [and ballet].
Funnily
enough, this month’s BBC Music magazine has The Nutcracker as its main cover
feature. I suppose that is only natural, given the theme of the ballet!
When I got
back to XXX & Y I told Mrs Briggs about Ensemble 360 being at the Crucible
and The Nutcracker, so she phoned them straight away to get tickets for both
performances. I bit the bullet and strolled up into accounts to tell
Christopher about the next E 360 performance. This was a mistake as I could hear
some of the other guys in there making snide remarks about me coming up to pass
on this information. One particularly obnoxious little tw@t was so full of
himself I just had to give him a gob full back. I don’t think that he knew what
had hit him. He certainly wasn’t expecting a string of invective directed at
his obnoxious countenance, culminating in my maligning his major flaws: his
complete lack of intelligence, the paucity of his ‘wit’ and the fact that
obviously his dick was smaller than my pinky! I parted company from the baying
hyenas with; “and even tumescent it wouldn’t be sufficient to double as a hat
rack! Could one of you monkeys provide him with a dictionary so that he can
work out whether or not he has been insulted.” I left to a stunned silence.
I knew I
shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. He was being a complete @rsehole. It helps
to have a range of withering phrases ready to fling at a second’s notice! I
thought it wise to go and tell Mrs B what I had done in case there were
repercussions. She simply hooted. This will now get Christopher on my case even
more. Doh!
I recounted
all this to Mum after work, we'd driven over to hers for our dinner. She loved the
idea of him being too small to be a hat rack!
She laughed at my sarcasm then went on to describe me to Laura, “Do you know, she never
does what you expect. She fell out of a tree on campus once, in Norwich. I saw
it happen but was too far away to help. Do you know what she was doing when I
got over to her? Remember, she was six. She had just fallen out of a massive
tree, broken her arm and had a cut on her forehead dripping blood. Guess what
she was doing?!
Laura
couldn’t.
“She was
kicking the tree and swearing at it! As if it was the tree’s fault she had
fallen out of it! You could always tell she was going to be different. She had
tears streaming down her face but they were rage tears, not pain tears. Then at
the hospital her Dad and one of the doctors played a joke on her. They told her
when they had x-rayed her head her brain was missing! She just howled and
sobbed and was heart-broken!”
I had the
good grace to giggle and look embarrassed.
Laura, who’s
heard part of the tree story before, laughed along with Mum.
“What can we
do with her?”
I could see
from her expression exactly what Laura thought she could do with me!
Thursday 21st
November.
Abso bloody
lutely freezing this morning. The ice had turned the crazy paving into a psycho path! I
almost measured my length against the ground even before we got from our little
lane. It is a good job Bradfield Council grit the hill or there would be a
piled of wrecked cars at the bottom where it meets the A6102.
Callie loves
running in frosty grass, she loves snow even more. I guess it won’t be long now
until we have some of the white stuff. The top end of the village usually gets
a covering, down in the valley where the paper shop and restaurant are it
hardly ever gets any!
The pool was
less busy this morning, maybe that is a result of the weather. Our 100 lengths
were soon done and we spent a few minutes slobbing out in the Jacuzzi. Laura wriggled her
hand under my bottom and spent a large amount of the time with her fingers
wiggling about inside me! There were two older biddies in there with us so I
had a really hard time keeping my expression and voice calm. I don’t think they
had any idea what was going on just across from them. I am afraid we did it in
the cubicle again. [Well, there were so few people about!]
At work
Mandy was outside my door again. I hope she isn’t going to become a limpet now
I have shown some interest in her and her woes. She wanted to know if I thought
she should tell her crush that she fancied them! I told her that it often
wouldn’t result in anything happening at all. I fessed up about me and my Art
teacher and she was appalled and enthralled in equal measure.
“Would you
have… You Know? If he’d responded?”
I had to
admit I would have tripped him up and been on the floor underneath him before
he knew what had happened! She promised that she wouldn’t do anything foolish
or that she’d regret [or illegal]. I couldn’t help but wonder who the poor
hapless victim might be. I knew she was doing Biology but as I didn’t know any
of the staff yet I couldn’t even begin to speculate. According to Feli you
don’t get to know all that many staff members at all, really. I found this news
sort of disheartening.
Equally
disheartening; my current account balance seemed to have shrunk like a willy in a
cold stream. [I have seen this happen with my own eyes – to Richard. Even a hot
Fiance’s mouth took ages to make a difference to him!] I digress.
I suddenly
seemed to be nearly £250 out in my balance. I had no idea what had happened. I
was using the ATM on campus to get some readies and my jaw dropped. I must have
looked totally stunned because Laura asked me what was wrong. I explained. She
told me I was being the drongo now [strange to hear one of your own words used
back at you]. I had bought all those tickets yesterday. That is nine sets of
tickets for six shows; naturally my balance would be down. My Mum gave me a
cheque last night for her share and Laura is going to do so when Dominic pays
her this weekend, so it is all accounted for. I couldn’t believe the number
that came up before the machine gave me my cash. It was a horrible feeling. All
sorts of terrible possibilities flashed across my mind. A doomy feeling
descended into the pit of my stomach. Laura was right. I was a drongo.
I cheered
myself up by suggesting we had lunch off campus at the Thai place that had a
“Lunchtime Specials” sign written across its window. So we did. Unbelievable
value, £6.95 each for as much as we could eat from three courses. The range was
pretty large and we sampled a massive number of different dishes. I waddled
back to my office, I am sure. The special is repeated in the evening although
then the price rises to £10.95. Even at that though you’d be getting far more
than you could actually eat!
Feli hasn’t
been there yet! How come? So we are going to go next week. Two days in a row
would just spoil our taste for it.
News from
Dad this evening. They are going to deliver the caravan to the site on the week
before Christmas! That is excellent news. Of course I have now fully booked up all
the weekends after New Year until February. So a visit may not be an option. As
it is, we are going to have to drive down from Dad’s to one of the shows as it
happens during the time we are house sitting for him! Looks like it won’t be
until the dead of winter [February] before we’ll be able to go and stay.
Kaybers and
Jan called round this evening. Laura was at the restaurant. They had brought
Kaybers’ ultrasound scan. It was taken a bit later in the pregnancy than Jane’s
so the image is more recognisably a baby. Their Norway trip has been revised.
They are not going there to live. Just to show off the baby bump at first but
then nearer her time they are heading out to Jan’s folks so the baby can be born
there. This seems like an unnecessary complication to me, but if it’s what they
want why not?
The
brilliant news is they are not going to go and live in Norway after all. They
are going to stay in Sheffield. [Kaybers explained when Jan went to the loo, that
her Mum had played Merry Hell when they announced this scheme to her. That is
the main reason why they had revised their plans. I mustn’t let on that I
knew!] Kaybers is actually glowing! I know I am a bit cynical about the whole
child birth thing to be honest, but Kaybers genuinely does look radiant. He
cheeks are suffused with a pinkness she doesn’t normally have at all. I told
her this and she said that loads of people had said the same thing but she
couldn’t see it herself. How could she not? It is as plain as the nose on your
face.
They stayed
to show Laura the CD scan and then zoomed off pretty pronto afterwards. Laura
could tell that their news had made me really happy. It has. I was going to miss her a lot when they went. Now I won’t. Is that selfish of me? Who cares?
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