Friday November 21st
On the way back from swimming this morning we were accosted by Steve who had some very important news. The Clay Pigeon event will start at 9am tomorrow and entry will be £10 not a fiver! Were we still interested? A brief consultation, consisting of a tilt of my head and a nod of Laura’s, meant ‘Yes, we were.’ Steve told us where the location was and where to park. The plan was to use four traps and set off as soon as possible. It seems some of the chaps wanted to go to football matches in the afternoon! How pathetic is that?
Time whizzed by this morning and it seemed it was lunchtime almost as soon as we’d started. We have had a great success with one of the palimpsests which does seem to be a letter on top of an inventory. It is pretty ordinary stuff in the letter, domestic arrangements and the like. Part of it is requesting some new cooking pots be made, as two of the writer’s pots were broken in the same week. Little touches of humanity like that are charming.
Felice wanted to know how cooking pots could get broken but I was able to tell her almost everything to do with cooking was made from pottery in those days. They we quick to make (relatively), from a convenient source of clay and efficient at their task. Metal pots weren’t used by common folk until much later in history. I keep forgetting she is a language scholar, not a historian!
We all lunched in the refec and then departed back to our respective faculties. I was still seeing my second years personal students, and some had requested a Friday afternoon slot. Friday afternoon? What is wrong with today’s student, don’t they realise Friday afternoon is the all hallowed skiving off home to mummy time of the week? It turned out the three I was meeting had things planned in the city over the weekend and wanted the time filled up in some useful way. (Nice to be considered a useful time waster on a Friday afternoon!)
Laura drove us home in her little car and we spent an age in a traffic jam on Langsett Road after an accident further along. Our salmon meal was waiting for us on arrival, fully cooked and needing its veggies sorting. This was because of the delay. It is amazing how quickly you can prep and cook vegetables when in a hurry. Laura chopped and I stir fried them to make it speedier. Not what we had planned but a very interesting taste combination. I think we may do this again instead of relying on our trusty old steamer!
Owing to the early start tomorrow, I took Loll on the back garden after tea and we went through several points of safe gun use. She was surprised at how light my Beretta is although after half an hour of waving it around and loading and unload and firing on snap-caps, she began to change her opinion slightly. I am a bit wary about letting her have a go in the morning without having actually fired off the gun at all. We are going to go into the back field after Callie’s walk tomorrow and fire off half a dozen cartridges so she gets a feel for how it behaves in action. To that end, after we’d finished I knocked on all the neighbours’ door to let them know what the banging would be at about 7.30 in the morning.
Saturday November 22nd.
This has proved to be a very busy, but fulfilling day. {And DRY!}
I dog walked and we swam as usual. Then after brekkers we trooped into the back field and I gave Laura a second lesson in shotgun etiquette and hands on experience of firing the thing for real. My cartridges aren’t using a powerful mix and the recoil is fairly slight. She was surprised the first time though as she hadn’t quite got the stock firmly into her shoulder. The next four shots she had sussed out that little tip. I got her to aim at outlying branches on the hawthorn bush and she managed to hit them fairly well. We then tired a couple of goes at her trying to hit an old ball of Callie’s which she’s sort of shredded. I threw it in the air and she fired at it. The first time my throw was pretty useless and we just laughed at my ineptitude. The second time, despite her saying she was ready she completely missed me throwing it!
The third time I was able to send the ball into a fairly high arc but she shot too soon and underneath it. The fourth go was perfect all round, my throw was pretty good, she actually hit the ball. You could tell by the way it deviated in its arc and Callie enjoyed fetching her old ball back too. I did have to point out that jumping up and down yelling, “I hit it. I hit it!” Would not be a good idea at the shoot proper.
The shoot proper.
First the important bit: it stopped raining. Even so we both had on our stockmen’s coats and Aigles so we were pretty well covered up if it decided to start again. Luckily it didn’t until Sunday.
We were given a number each on payment of our £10 and told which trap that referred to. I was seven; Loll was eight. This meant we were on trap four. They were being allocated in order of arrival and being used almost immediately. It seemed that this would mean we were through pretty quickly and could either hang around and watch the others or just head off again. The under-keeper was in charge of the record keeping and the trap loader reported each shot’s score to him.
I have never seen a shoot organised this way before but it seemed to work pretty efficiently. Being number seven meant I was first from trap four. This was a standard ‘bird taking off’ flight. One of them, from the tower was an ‘overhead’. There was a ‘towards you’ and a ‘running rabbit’ as well. I was pleased that the trap we’d been given was probably the easiest for a beginner. The traps were single load so that made it easier too.
I was a bit rusty at first missing my first three completely. I then nailed 10 in a row followed by another miss, 10 more smoked and a final miss again. 20 out of 25 is a bit lower than I would have hoped for. I haven’t done this for over a year though!
Laura was a star. She smoked her first two, and clipped the third. She then went in to a regular hit one; miss one sequence through the rest of her allocated clays. Scoring fourteen altogether. She was absolutely delighted with herself. She had easily beaten my score when I first did this all those years ago in Norwich. I got 12 then and the policeman in charge said I was a natural. He might have just been bullshitting a schoolgirl who was only one of three girls who had signed up for their summer school activity (all the rest were boys) but I was hooked despite his words. Who knows what would have happened if the Fencing Class I had gone to sign up for hadn’t been full?
We stayed to watch a few others but by 10.45 decided we’d better leave to get back and changed ready to take the two kids to see The Snowman. The matinee kicked off at 2pm. The leading guy at the time was on 24 and the leading woman 21. Curse her, curse her!
I had just got out of the shower when Callie did her ballistic bark at newcomers, so I knew that Phil and Jane had arrived. After a few minutes, Angela appeared in my bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed to watch me apply eyeliner and mascara, wanting to know if she could have some on? I sent her downstairs to ask her Mum. Jane came up with her, holding Sophie. I stole Sophie and Jane applied the eye liner and mascara to her own daughter’s eyes. Sophie is getting to be quite a weight. I wouldn’t fancy having to walk around holding her for long without a sling or harness or whatever. She actually smiled at me as I made gurgling noises and baby talk which made me feel proud of myself. I told Jane and Angela that she was smiling. Angela said, ”That probably means she’s doing a poo!”
She was! My god, it was whiffy! I declined the offer to change her if I wanted. The benefits of not being the child’s parent, eh? Angela and I went back down to tease Phil while Jane availed herself of our bathroom.
The plan was, Phil would drive us in and drop us outside the theatre on Furnival Gate. Illegally parking no doubt. But hey, he drives a BMW so he can do what he wants! LOL. He had to pull in a bit further along and we had to pile out swiftly before a jobsworth came along with a ticket or something. We arranged we’d wait by the bus stop further along, after the show, and he’d pick us up there.
The Snowman was great. I was really impressed. It had fairly similar sets and backdrops to the Raymond Briggs artwork and the music was the same as the cartoon, but just more of it. Just like the cartoon Act One was at the house and Act Two off to Santa’s. I was enthralled; Laura was enthralled and so was Angela. I had assumed that Peter would be too but during the interval he moaned, “It’s all blooming dancing!” As though dancing was the absolutely worst thing in the world.
We reminded him that he’d been equally unimpressed by the “silly puppet show” earlier in the year; “Peter and the Wolf” at first but by the end he’d loved it. He’d even gone and petted the wolf puppet after the show. This, though, was beyond the pale because it was dancing and it was girly. Dancing was definitely girly and this was definitely dancing. There were no words at all.
There is not a lot you can say to a 10 year old who is obviously echoing his father’s thoughts about things without causing trouble, so we let it rest and tried to persuade him that the second half would be better.
I thought the second half was way better and the ‘Walking in the Air’ sequence, to the ‘real’ music was exquisite. You could tell that Peter didn’t think that was too girly at all. In fact the boy playing “The Boy” and the guy as “The Snowman” were brilliant in the flying sequence. It was all done so discretely if you weren’t expecting it you’d have been taken totally by surprise when they suddenly launched themselves into the air. It was definitely an awe and wonder moment of theatre.
As they travelled they deviated from the cartoon a fair bit and the dancing fruit section was a hoot. Dancing bananas and pineapples may have been in Briggs’ imagination; they definitely were in the choreographers. The North Pole bit with Santa I thought might not go down well with our budding critic but even he seemed to forget it was all dancing. I guess that’s what happens in the cartoon so he was fine with that bit.
Angela loved it to bits. She was dying to get home and watch her DVD again! I think it is a treat for most kids (and their parents) but be wary of worldly wise ten year old boys finding it a bit too ballet-like for their preconceptions to handle.
Phil, as promised, was less than five minutes from the bus stop, and we piled into the car during a lull in the bus traffic. The kids launched into a description of what they’d seen and while the substance of their comments may have differed they were unanimous in saying the flying was magical. I could tell Jane was wishing she’d come too but… leaving Daddy in charge of Baby Sophie, mmmm….. I doubt if Phil is ready for that just yet!
They loved their tea. Comfort food, extra-ordinaire: my cottage pie, with veggies followed by another of the cherry meringue pies as dessert. Replete in both food and culture they wobbled back up to Leeds at about 7.50, leaving us time for a snuggle on the sofa and a reflection on how busy today had just been before Montalbano was shown on BBC 4.
Steve phoned just after the programme started to let me know I had won 2nd prize in the women’s competition, which sort of made up for the interruption of our viewing. The prize money was £75 for 1st; £50 for 2nd and £25 for 3rd. A litre of whisky for 1st; a 75cl bottle for 2nd and a half bottle for 3rd. It is a pity if the winners don’t like whisky as that was the only choice. Steve has my winnings at his house, I’ll pick them up in the morning.
Rah rah rah. In the women’s group Laura’s 14 was a very creditable joint 7th.
Sunday 23rd November.
What a morning. It was raining when Callie woke me up. It rained all through our walk, which was curtailed somewhat by the rain and it rained even after we'd got home again. Often, when we go out for a walk when it's raining it as as though Fortuna (another of the Pantheon from which I am descended... Maia, remember?) is playing a trick on her fellow goddess and she persuades Zeus to stop raining on Maia when she returns home. Today the rain continued and continued and continued. I was so pleased the clay shoot was yesterday.
I didn't get to Steve's to collect my winnings, he called round ours first. Which was good of him. he'd probably seen me and Callie coming back bedraggled and looking like drowned rats so he braved the elements instead. Good bloke. The whisky was Bell's, which isn't a bad blend, I would happily quaff away. My favourite blend is Famous Grouse, I do like the sweetness of that particular blend.
Mum rescued us from a potential day stuck indoors by phoning and asking if we fancied coming to lunch. Of course we went and spent all of the day light hours at her place. Eating several slices of juicy roast beef. Scoffing down a huge piece of apple and blackberry pie, unearthed from Mum's freezer and demolishing a gorgeous bottle of Vino Nobile de Mntepulciano which she found lurking on her wine rack. ( I brought it over a year ago and she'd forgotten all about it!). It was much nicer than I thought it would be but I couldn't remember where the hell I'd bought it.
We told her all about the Snowman and she was miffed she hadn't come with us. She said it sounded brilliant, which it was. She also passed a brief remark about how Peter may be turning out like his father but refused to be drawn on the subject when I pressed her. It would be awfully disappointing if he does. It is not for nothing that I call my brother a boring old fart - it is because he IS a boring old fart!
He used to be funny and risk taking and exciting and dangerous and now he is almost the exact opposite of all those things. Jane has never seen the wild brother who with me blew up a tree stump with home-made explosive, or sailed our yacht all the way from University Broad to Yarmouth or who once handcuffed me to a tree for several hours (he had forgotten I was there when one of his friends called for him!).
It would be lovely to see glimpses of the old Philip, peeping out from below his carapace every once in a while. Sadly it never happens.
We had to stay until after it had gone dark as we felt a bit inebriated during the afternoon and it was only after a set of beef salad sandwiches and several cups of tea that we thought either of us may be legal to drive. Laura declared she hadn't drunk as much as I had so she drove us home.
Neither of us were too far gone to indulge our passions when we got home. As a bonus it had also stopped raining. Laura decided that as she'd driven home she needn't walk Callie but she'd have a surprise waiting on my return. The surprise was a sleeping Loll with our double ender on the pillow next to her. Much as I would have loved more sex, I decided not to wake her, so I just climbed in along side her and slept too.
No comments:
Post a Comment