A brilliant "Nutcracker" and ARSON in the village - shock horror!

Friday 10^th January.

Swimming in a proper size pool was quite a shock after the dinky Cockermouth one and it was nice to see Sarah again. She was surprised to see us so I explained about our theatre commitments and she had to admit she has never been to either the Crucible or the Lyceum. I told her when there was something coming up I thought she’d enjoy I would let her know about it. You have to evangelise about theatre going or people think it is just for an elite.

We whizzed into town and did a mini food shop and major apple purchase! The rest of the morning was spent batch baking six apple pies and six apple cakes! The house smelt gorgeous for ages afterwards. Julie came round in the middle of baking to see how we were doing and I had a call from Kaybers [who I have been neglecting a bit]. She was bringing us up to date on her pregnancy; she and the little Orr are doing fine. She has ultra sound stuff too and we are going to see her, Jan and the film tomorrow morning. I will take her one of the apple cakes.

Mid arvo we went across to Mum’s, she was cooking our meal before the theatre. Callie seemed a bit miffed to be left alone. I think it is the first time she’ll have been by herself since before Christmas. Still she got to in her crate for her biscuits happily enough.

The Nutcracker is one of the most formal of Classical Ballets and needs to be treated with respect. The Moscow City Ballet had done just that. The scenery was spectacular and the costuming stunning plus they had a live orchestra, how cool is that? Of course this is as nothing if Clara and Drosselmeyer aren’t any good. Drosselmeyer was pretty impressive but Clara was beautiful and delicate and full of stamina. She danced her little points off. She was danced by Anna Ivanova and was really impressive. She managed the childlike innocence of Clara so well.

I especially loved the section in Act II where we had dancers from the world entertaining Clara. I think the audience’s favourite was the China girl. She was a real delight and showed the depth of dancing talent available in the corps de ballet. Plus she had the most engaging smiley face. Mum thought the corps was a little rusty looking in parts of Act I but maybe she is being too picky. She has seen this ballet so many times during her 60 years so has loads of performances to compare it with.

Laura was entranced by the whole thing. She especially loved the music and the Mouse king’s defeat by the Nutcracker. We need more dance performances in town. According to the programme notes this company are dancing four ballets altogether on the tour. Imagine that? Having the choreography for four different pieces in your head at once and being asked to switch from venue to venue. It sort of makes me wish I hadn’t been as graceful as a ruptured duck when I was a little girl. [I would have killed Philip for that description when I was younger, but he was right… sadly.]

The bottom line is, if they tour again, we WILL be there! I imagine the almost full house of the Lyceum will be thinking the same as me, too.

We went for a swift snorterino in the bar after the show and got talking to a couple whom I have seen at other productions at the Lyceum and Crucible before. They were probably about Mum’s age or just a bit younger and were full of enthusiasm for the show. They acknowledged the fact that they had seen me and Laura at a number of things since September and asked Mum if it was her influence that her two daughters had a liking for the Arts. I thought Mum would say something like, Yes they have always gone to the theatre but instead she came out with, “Actually Vicki is my daughter and Laura is her partner.” I was so impressed by the way she was able to say that to complete strangers in a manner that showed she was obviously so supportive of Laura and Me and proud of us too. The couple didn’t flinch at the revelation but I detected a slight cooling in the woman’s manner towards us.

As we left the theatre Laura took Mum’s arm and thanked her for what she’d said to the couple in the bar. She uses the term Mrs S when talking to Mum, it is something she has always done. Mum said, “Please, could you call me Helen or Mum? Mrs S sounds like I am your teacher or something.” Laura opted for Mum as she can’t bring herself to call her Helen. I am afraid to say I shed a tear.

Saturday January 11^th.

A strange yellow object appeared in the sky today and stayed there for most of the day! We left the pool this morning in a very premature lightness and the whole day just stretched out as a sunny treat for us all.

I took Callie round Agden Reservoir rather than the usual walk through Hill Top Woods and Onesacre. I think she enjoyed it. She certainly loved having a swim in the reservoir itself, although the temperature can’t have been much above freezing for her. Dogs sometimes have no sense though. I discovered all I had in the back of the car were dirty dog towels, some mistake there I fear, so I dried her off on a dirty towel and we zoomed home for a serious wash of all things doggy. I am considering buy a cheap second washing machine just for dog stuff. I am not convinced it can be all that healthy for us, washing our things in the same machine as Callie’s things are washed.

Kaybers and Jan were delighted to see us and the Apple Cake. In fact we demolished half of it with a cuppa as soon as we got there. We filled each other in on all our news over the past month and we watched yet another ultra sound scan. It looked exactly like Jane’s to be honest but I kept schtum about that. Laura gushed about the baby’s tiny fingers being so cute but she does that every time [well, for every one of these CDs we have watched that is].

They are still thinking about trying to have Charlotte’s confinement in Norway but the airlines are being a bit iffy over a near term woman travelling with them and the insurance premiums they have been quoted are silly! Jan’s plan, now, is to go by train over land from the UK to Brussels, Brussels to Copenhagen, crossing the Oresund Bridge and then on to Oslo. It will only take nearly a whole day and a half of travelling! Plus it will cost them £350 each! I think he is mad! I guess flying or a ferry will be the way they finally select.

We stayed for quite a while gossiping and being silly. Kaybers loves hearing tales about Felice, she thinks she is a typically wappy Frenchwoman. Sadly apart from the message I had earlier in the holidays I wasn’t able to indulge her prurient interest. I have said I will keep her informed about the “affair” with Michael R. I am not sure if affair is the right word for what they have going on, from the position of casual observer it seems that Michael is the one who is being used her, but he doesn’t see it.

Back home we had a quiet evening and actually watched some more TV. The Bridge on BBC 4 continues to be brilliant. I think the more I watch the Saga Noren character the more I think she is unique in detective fiction. I love the way nothing gets sanitised or polished up for other people’s consumption. The character just says the truth regardless. It may be interesting to try to emulate her for a week and see what sort of effect it has on people. I may end up being smacked a lot! LOL

The downside of lovely sunny days at this time of year of freezing cold nights. On our last walk of the day we met the gritting lorry going down Cockshutts Lane as we were walking up it and round the corner Long Lane, being ungritted, was beginning to get a bit tricksy to walk on. There were masses of stars visible though.

Sunday January 12th.

OMG. At about 3am I was grabbed by the gorgeous, slim young lady I love who seemed genuinely worried and said, “WTF was that?”

I am a sound sleeper. I have been known to sleep through thunderstorms and force 10 gales on board ships, so if it was something I might have heard there was no chance I would be able to answer.

“Erm… What was what?”

“That huge bang? It was massive. It woke me up.”

Laura is a lighter sleep than me, admittedly but usually nothing much wakes her. Even me typing on my laptop next to her in bed doesn’t usually disturb her sleep. So I was sure she must’ve really heard something. I went over to our bedroom window (we don’t close the curtains as we are not over looked, unless you have a really powerful telescope and live in Grenoside Woods) and saw that there was a fairly large plume of smoke rising up against the night sky and the ridge that makes up the top of Jaw Bone Hill. [I don’t actually know what the real name for this road is, but all the locals call it Jaw Bone, so I do too.]

After a few minutes a blue flashing light appeared then another and another and another. These were quite visible from our window, in fact their flashes shone off the paintwork in our room even though they were half a mile away on the other slope of the Don Valley. There was also a fairly large orange glow in the area round the lights. Obviously something had gone up in smoke over there and was being dealt with by the fire brigade. We hadn’t heard their sirens though.

With our own fires lit by getting woken so early we had a session of inflaming our passions, which must’ve lasted for a good 40 minutes [during which we gave each other an O] and during all our excitement under the covers, the excitement outside continued. We dozed off again by about four, I would guess.

When I woke again at 6.30 [I have a lie in on Sundays because the pool doesn’t open early] the blue lights were still flashing across the valley but the orange glow had gone. I walked Callie along Long Lane to have a rubber neck with my binoculars and I counted at least six fire engines across the way and what were probably police cars blocking the road up and down the hill near the location of the fire.

It was seriously cold out walking and although our road was clear of ice – Bradfield Council's gritter had taken care of that last night – Long Lane was like a skating rink in places. We trucked on up to Onesacre and then dropped down into the Coumes Valley. Here, the place where Coumes Brook sometimes floods the lane was really, really icy. So much so that I feared I may end up on my gluteus if I wasn’t careful.

At just after 7am I went into Sylv’s and picked up the Sunday Times and The Sunday Independent and had a good old gossip with her. She had missed me coming down to collect my morning papers, even though she knew the reason why and I told her that I would be back for the new semester on the weekend before the 27th. We then gossiped about the raging local news.

She had heard the bang too and then heard the fire engine approach. She had assumed there was only one as she had only heard one. I was able to tell her there were at least 6 up the hill as I had seen them through my binoculars from Long Lane. She also thought that jaw Bone must be closed as she hadn’t heard any vehicles going up or down it since she opened up the shop. I was able to tell her about the police cars I’d seen too.

After I’d paid up, and bought a Fry’s Chocolate Orange Cream bar, I took Callie and went to have a snoop at the bottom of the hill. Sure enough there was a Police “Road Closed” sign blocking the left turn off Langsett Road and a police car with a bored looking guy sat inside it. Being a nosy little cow, I crossed over to the car and knocked on the window. I asked the policeman inside why the road was closed. He told me there was a fire up the hill. I explained that I knew that because we had heard the bang and seen the smoke and blue lights. He said the road had been closed because the fire engines’ water had spilled out across the road and with it being so cold had frozen solid, making the hill extremely dangerous. Until they stopped dousing down the blaze the road would have to remain closed to avoid traffic accidents on the hill.

I asked how they would clear the ice and he told me that the council were sending a gritting lorry especially to spread on that section of road. He also said they thought the bang we’d heard was probably a gas cylinder going up! I thanked him for the information and left him to sit in his car and look bored.

We tootled back up the lane and I fed the woof before sneaking back up stairs and then surprised Laura by crawling under the duvet from the foot of the bed to reach her important little place to give it a good licking. It didn’t take her long to become fully aroused and my tongue was soon augmented by my fingers. She usually will climax after a few minutes of this and today was no exception. She pulled my hair to drag me up the bed and we snogged for ages before she repeated what I had done to her on me. We need more early morning fires I think!

After a leisurely, shared, shower we had brekkers and thought about what we were going to do for the day. The plan was to drive up today and then back down next Friday morning so we could go to the Crucible next Friday night. Laura starts back at Uni on Monday the 20th I was all set to go back up to Cumbria on the 20th  alone, but after getting such a sad look from my babe I decided that I would check with Dad if it was OK to leave his house from the 17th as far as insurance was concerned. If it was OK with him I’d stay in Sheffield too. I would be welcomed with open arms at XXX & Y, I am sure, for the whole week before starting the usual regime of one full day and an afternoon.

With that decided, we also planned our route back to Dad’s. The A66, A1, M1 route was so much less stressful that the M6, M61 and the crap round Manchester so we chose to do that route in reverse until Bedale and then branch off to visit the Tan Hill Inn and have lunch there.

The house was cleaned and tidied by 10.30 so we loaded up and zoomed off. The traffic was fairly busy until the Leeds section where we merged with the A1 then it thinned out considerably. We were at Bedale by 11.30 and wandered through the lanes which took us to Leyburn. It is beautiful, I have never been here before but we will have to come back for an exploration. From Leyburn we drove over the top of the moor past a whole spread of Army shooting ranges to drop down into Grinton. A few miles west of Grinton, along the river valley, is Reeth – where we turned off onto the road to Tan Hill.

It is only 11 miles from Reeth to the pub but they are amazingly beautiful and stark miles. You climb steadily almost all the time along a narrow country lane which takes you through several small, rugged looking villages. Some of them reminded me of the villages to the west and north of my own on the outskirts of Sheffield. The majority of houses were small, built in rows and made form local millstone grit [by its appearance]. They must be a typical style of dwelling in rural Yorkshire hill villages.

Eventually the villages run out and you rise onto what seems like a long fairly level(ish) plateau of land. We could spot what was probably the A66 away to the north running roughly parallel to our road and after turning a sharp corner over a slight steep bit, there was the pub! It was a shame the day was so grey as it would be a wonderful place in bright sunshine. I was surprised to find there were already over half a dozen cars parked outside. So I let Callie have a gallop along the bit of the Pennine Way which heads south and then we sallied forth and infiltrated their place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some commestables!

I have been here before when we did the Pennine Way when I was a child so my memories of it are pretty vague to be honest. But I remembered clearly the little rooms and roaring fires and they were just the same. We got askance looks when we asked for a pot of tea rather than a pint [I dislike the taste of beer] but when we ordered food as well the looks seemed to disappear. I had a filled Yorkie with beef and Laura had a Yorkie with chicken.

We grabbed seats in the room to the left of the bar and ate our meal in there. It was delivered surprisingly quickly and the amount in each Yorkie must have been scale models of one of the three peaks! In fact I jokingly said to the guy who brought our food, “If we had ordered a third one, we’d have had Pen-y-ghent, Inglebrough and Whernside on our plates!” 

Lead Balloon. Didn’t even crack a smile. There is no pleasing some people. 

We ordered the most chocolatey thing on the dessert menu for our pudding and then had a second pot of tea. Yummy in our Tummies. If you ever want a nice meal in a brilliant place it is well worth a visit.

After scoffing we let Callie have another run and then wound our way down the little lanes to Brough in Cumbria. From here it is usually just over an hour to Dad’s. So it proved. Laura phoned the kennel from the car so when we got to Dad’s I simply jumped into his Land Rover and collected Dad’s trio from their holiday home. They had the silly heads on when they saw me and went even more wappy back at Dad’s when they met up with Callie again. I let them into the paddock behind Dad’s and they had a good old chase about for a while. It is a shame humans don’t have the same forgiving qualities that dogs have. The world would be much nicer.

Arrgghh! Yet more TV watching tonight, we are turning into Chavs, I fear. Sherlock was the programme and I was boggled by it again. Interesting but why? Is my question to Moffat and Gatiss. Watson’s wife a hit woman? Really? Oh, come on! This is becoming telly for short attention span morons who need constant stimulation because they don’t have a proper functioning brain cell under their skulls! [I bet none of those who watch Sherlock could manage Bron/Broen at all! Or I am being an intellectual snob?]

It was bloody raining again by the time of the dogs’ evening walk. Only in Cumbria, eh?

Final snippet. We inter-webbed this morning’s fire in Oughtibridge. It turns out to have been relatively huge. Almost a dozen vehicles destroyed and a building. That isn’t the worst aspect of it all though; it turns out to have been ARSON! It was all started deliberately. We can’t have a pyromaniac in our village.

Laura thinks it was probably an insurance scam as she went to the company’s website and it looks decidedly dodgy [that’s the website, not the company]. So based on a dodgy website she has leapt to the instant conclusion that the owners of the company started the fire to get insurance money. I have bet her £10 she is wrong. I’ll never live it down if she is!