Flying visit from Brother and family: Flying Lancasters too!

Friday 19^th September.

A new start for a new semester.

I phoned Dad in a panic at about 10am reminding him that Laura and I were booked to see the Halle tonight at the Sheffield City Hall. Louisa answered from the car, which was heading along the A66 as we spoke. It was just approaching the Crossthwaite roundabout. Panic Over. They rolled up at about 10.30 so we had time for a shared cuppa, swift gossip and then we flew down the M6, M61, M60, Woodhead Pass, A616 and A6102. I have to say my Kia seemed a heck of a lot faster than Suze’s and mine’s a diesel! Maybe they have restricted them in some way for the Australian market. We hit our front garden at exactly 2.30, which for a Friday afternoon was pretty nippy driving, even if I say so myself. (Our front garden is all gravel and it doubles as a car park.)

We rushed around like blue arsed flies, unloading our gear, stowing it away in wardrobes, drawers or linen baskets. Callie had a swift walk through the back field and I phoned the usual suspects to check in with them all: Mum, Kaybers, Phil, Mrs Briggs, Felice and Sarah being the chief numbers I needed to contact. I couldn’t get Phil or Felice, their phones went straight to answer machine mode.

The concert tonight was the Halle doing a PMM programme: Prokofiev, Mozart and Mussorgsky – Cinderella Suite, PC 21 [Elvira Madigan] and Pictures at an Exhibition. When we had finished divvying about it was still only 3.30 so we sat down and had a rest from rushing around. Julie called round almost as soon as our bums hit the cushions with some milk and a loaf of bread, which she had arranged with us before we left. It is nice to know folk can be totally relied upon. She joined us in a cuppa and a gossip which was only going to be ten minutes but lasted about an hour!

We rustled up a swift risotto from stuff stolen from Dad’s fridge and then putting on our glad rags, waltzed off into town for the first night of our 2014/15 Ents Schedule. We went straight to the bar and ordered interval drinks and waited for Mum. (She was going to meet us in the bar.) I had a mad panic she’d go to the stalls bar but as we were in the Grand Circle I was sure she would find her way upstairs. She did. We have tried to be in the GC for all of the concerts we’ve been to, and as we booked our entire season in advance we had a choice of where we wanted to be. We chose GC, front row, on the aisle to the right of the stage so we are directly opposite the double bass section of the orchestra. These will be our seats for all the shows here.

Whilst waiting for Mum we encountered Mrs Briggs, which was no surprise, as that was why I had phoned her when we got home. We chatted about our summer and she said she would be so pleased to have me back at work as they seemed snowed under. I told her that once I had discovered out what my University commitments were I would call her straight away and try to get something arranged to our mutual benefit. She did broach the subject of Laura possibly working for them again but she had no idea of her timetable either and agreed to get in touch with Mrs B. when she did. Wouldn’t that be great, both of us at XXX & Y again? It might mean Laura could give up her waitressing at Dominic’s in the village, too.

Mum arrived a little breathless, clutching a large G & T, which she had bought in the stalls bar and then realised we must be in the circle bar. The jobsworth on the door was adamant she couldn’t wander about with her drink but she put on her Headmistress face and voice and he relented. I think he was being a pillock as people take drinks into the auditorium so what is the difference going from one bar to another? Mum & Mrs B. get on really well and they gossip on for ages and ages; well up to the five minute bell. Mum had got a ticket directly behind me and Laura (she hasn’t booked the whole season like we did) and she was keen to get to her seat when the bell went.

The concert itself was excellent. Laura has heard the Cinderella Ballet music a fair bit as I do play it a lot and of course she knew Pictures already. She was delighted by the Mozart, who could fail to be? Mum thought the pianist was too cheeky in his playing, I asked her what she meant and she was at a loss to explain it, though! I told her it was the result of too much G & T.  She gave me a sharp poke in the back and told me I was definitely too cheeky!

We decided not to go on to a bar for a swift snorterino, being a Friday night, the town was crawling with plebs and low life types out on the piss, so we said our goodbyes and headed home. (I know that sounds awfully snobby, especially as I have been there and done that in both Norwich and Cambridge, but some of the men can be just caveman like to anyone of the opposite sex.)

Callie had the longest walk before bedtime to get her nose attuned to the old smells she had missed over the last two months. She took an age to go through Hill Top Woods until I was almost tempted to put her on the lead and drag her along! At Onseacre the dozy bugger took it into her head to go downhill towards Coumes Brook so I did have to scoot after her and lead back onto MY route, not hers! Laura laughed when I told her about it and said that it showed the dog was being like its owner, stubborn and wanting its own way. This slightly upset me and I asked if I was really like that, especially as far as me and her were concerned. She realised that I had become worried about her joke and told me that if I ever became like that she would put a collar and lead on me and drag me the way I ought to be going. As if to emphasise the point she said, “Right, Miss Jay. Shower. Now!” and marched me into the bathroom. I didn’t need any encouragement and when I asked, “Please Miss, may I remove your dressing gown from you?” I got back, “There would be bloody trouble if you didn’t!”

I do love her so much. I keep telling her this and she tells me the same back. We are so lucky to have such a good relationship. I felt this as she fell asleep in my arms after our shower and lovemaking. We are just so lucky, full stop!

Saturday 20^th September.

Had our usual swim at the pool this morning, delayed by a long, long, long chat with Sarah who declared she has missed us and our mad life style stories for the past two months. She was so keen to know what we’d been doing and to tell us her news that we invited her to tea this afternoon. Our Aqua Jetty session had kept us in pretty good shape and we managed our 100 lengths as though we’d never been out of the water. (Of course we hadn’t really.)

Laura pointed out to me that we needed to restock the cupboard as we’d be like Mother Hubbard when Sarah came a calling. So after the swim we headed straight to Hillsborough for a mega food shop. We spent £148.37! I couldn’t believe it. I went over to the side after we’d cleared the checkout and went through the receipt to make sure the numbers added up. They did. Phew! This has to be the biggest amount I can remember spending on groceries in a single shopping trip. £148.37. It’s mind boggling.

We pulled in at Sylvia’s for our recommenced newspaper order and ended up gossiping for ages in there too; stopping to let other customers be served before starting again after they’d left. We probably spent a good half an hour in the shop. The newspaper proved a major worry. I finished the Times small cryptic crossword in 20 minutes. That is really bad and well down on my usual time. I thought I had been keeping in practice doing the West Australian cryptic crossword almost every day but obviously it doesn’t hold a candle to the Times level of deviousness. Laura said she would have to put a notice in the Star (Sheffield’s evening paper) announcing the death of my brain cells. I attempted to whack her arm, she caught my hand and we had a moment’s wrestling before ending up on the sofa with her removing my jeans to get her head between my legs! I had just finished giving her love bump a serious seeing to when we had a loud knocking at the door. I jumped up and got back into my jeans leaving Laura to scramble around for her clothes which I had thrown everywhere.

The knocking was Phil, Jane, Peter, Angela and baby Sophie. “Well, here we are…” announced my big brother as though we would understand perfectly what he was on about. I could tell that I must have looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights as he continued, “You haven’t checked your answer machine have you?”

Sure enough there was a flashing number 4 on the machine, meaning we had four unread messages. Numbers 1 and 4 were from Phil and Jane. “Hiya Kiddo. Is it OK if we come and see our intrepid explorers tomorrow before they head off to Mars or something? See you about 11.30, if that’s alright with you. Give us a ring if it isn’t.”

Number 4. “Just to let you know, we’re setting off. Expect the monkeys and their keepers in about 45 minutes!”

Number 2 was from Felice and number 3 from Mr Carr. (more later…)

“Erm… we have been a bit busy this morning!” I pointed to the unemptied shopping bags on the kitchen table. He laughed when I told him how much it had all cost. He claimed that was nothing, Jane agreed saying she often spent over £200 a week on feeding the animals! Pete and Angela were unimpressed by the repeated references to being monkeys and told us so; adding if they were monkeys then their Dad was a Gorilla.

I started to unpack the stuff so we could sit round the table with a cuppa and a bun. Angela volunteered to help but Laura said, “Watch out. If you don’t put the things away just so, she’ll spank you.” I think she thought Laura was joking until she saw the pantry shelves.

“Wow. It is so tidy. Our cupboards at home have it all just packed in any old how.”

I showed her where each item went and reminded her she had to face the labels to the front and if there was a batch of the same thing to put the longest sell-by date at the back, behind the others. Phil came over to inspect what we were doing and whistled, “Oh. You are still as bad as always then?”

I asked him what he meant by “bad” and he retreated saying he meant organised not bad. I told him to organise a cuppa for us all, and pointed out where the ‘pop’ and juice were if the kids didn’t want a cuppa. He got on with it. I ordered, “Make sure the milk and sugar goes in first, then line up the cup handles so they are facing you as you pour and put the tea spoons in line with the handles…” He thought I was serious until I couldn’t keep a straight face any more and spoiled it by laughing.

We had a choice of buns. There was a huge slab of Angel Layer cake, some ginger cake and a chocolate fudge cake. All bought because I was too lazy to bake and too forgetful to take out something from the freezer the night before. (I was planning on getting out either a lemon meringue or apple cake for our evening meal’s dessert but hadn’t.)

Over Café und Kuchen we gossiped and talked about Australia and Suze and the kids. We showed them some of our camera films of places we’d been, especially the wildlife ones. They thought me getting whale snotted was hilarious and they all just fell in love with Quokkas. Peter (prescient boy) asked why they had never been out to Australia to visit Aunt Susannah and his namesake. Phil actually blushed as he tried to give an answer. I helped him out saying how much our flights had cost and if you multiplied that by five it would buy a new car! (He doesn’t know about 1^st Class, Business and Economy yet.) I said I knew the real reason. You could see Phil tense up in his chair. I said that it was because since they moved to Leeds he had become an honorary Yorkshireman and they were well known for being even more tight-fisted than Scotsmen. Angela and Pete didn’t get it so Jane explained it to them.

The real reason is he and Suze had a huge falling out over something. I have no idea what and Suze never talks about it. I wouldn’t dream of asking Phil as his Mr Angry routine is not a fake, he really can get very angry very quickly. I was told by Mum that they called their first child Peter as a way of trying to heal the rift (I bet that was Jane’s doing, not Phil’s) but it hadn’t fully mended the breach.

I asked if they wanted to stop for tea but they declined, they were driving on to Jane’s folks for their evening meal, which was good as they eat like a plague of locusts and I could envisage all our groceries for the week being devoured in just one meal. LOL.

They left at about five pm, heading to the wilds of West Yorkshire.

Felice’s breathless message. She started in English but must have forgotten she was talking to me and switched to French half way through. The upshot is she is going to be late back for the start of the year and wanted me to make her apologies to our supervisor. She has already cleared it with her head of faculty (she’s actually in the French Faculty) but thought our supervisor the PhD project needed to know too. Thanks a bunch mam’selle. She also said that she wasn’t pregnant. This was in the French bit so I may not have got the translation quite right for she speaks at a mile a minute in French and it is hard to keep up. Once again her phone went straight to voice mail!

Mr Carr was calling to ask if there was any chance of me being available for a bit of extra time next year. Mmmm…. That’s an interesting one. Salary will increase, naturally, and I can fit my hours round the University as before. The message was left on Tuesday of last week, just as we were flying back. Interesting timing. I tried calling him immediately but had the same response as my call to Feli. So unlike on Feli’s call I did leave Mr C a message, explaining the situation and how I had already spoken to Mrs B.

We spent a quiet evening in just chilling, watching BBC 4 and planning to go and watch the Lancaster bombers fly over the reservoirs tomorrow.  Naturally we indulged in several un-natural practices for women before hitting the charp.

Sunday 21^st September.

The flypast wasn’t until about a quarter to five so we decided to do a two part day. We spent the morning on some rock and the afternoon heading for Derwent Edge to watch the flypast. I drove us up to Burbage Brook and we climbed on some of the grit edges along there towards Stanage Pole. We scoffed our lunch at the bridge over the brook at about 1.30 and then wandered back to the car to drive across to Hollow Meadows, where I planned to park up and walk over to the edge from there.

It was packed. There were masses of cars parked there. I know some will have been there for the northern approach to Stanage but I guessed a lot had come for the Lancasters. We headed down the valley and over the ridge to Derwent Edge. There were loads of people here too! We had put our tripod stools in our rucksacks and so, finding a suitable place as a view point we settled down to wait for the planes to arrive. The second batch of sandwiches was opened and the number two flask of tea helped wash the chicken salad and bread down nicely.

I kept callie amused by chucking her retrieving dummy into the heather and getting her to wait a few minutes before sending her off for it. Despite all the people about she was very focused on the dummy. This came to grief  a while later when a couple and their two kids pitched up alongside us and Callie found the kids very accommodating  with their food. You can’t compete with a child feeding your dog, so I gave up for a while and they fussed and petted the soppy ha’porth.

We had been there for about 40 minutes or so when someone shouted they’re here. Sure enough there was a deep throb away to the north west and two specks appeared in the sky getting closer. Laura, with her bins saw them first and I picked them up shortly afterwards. They came quite high over the dams and down the valley towards Chatsworth. Banking round they came over three times altogether, which was a surprise, I assumed they’d just fly by once and then head off home. Laura told me to look at the bridges over the dam and they were blocked solid with cars and people. I assume the cars must have just stopped in the roadway, blocking it completely, and got out of their cars to watch the Lancasters fly over their heads.

Once the planes had become distant spots on the horizon we trooped back down to Hollow Meadows, in the company of quite a few other people, to retrieve the car and drive through Bradfield to home. Being stuffed with two lots of sandwiches didn’t stop us having a third meal later on, though to be fair, home-made pasties count as a mere snack really.

We planned tomorrow’s assault on the University and then watched the first of our recorded Wallander series, the last which Krister Henderiksson will make apparently.

Feeling unexpectedly tired we both took Callie for the short walk up Onseacre Road to the big house and back, then a shared shower and bed. Once again we found ourselves drawn towards acts which would have been deemed illegal a few years ago.