Valentine's Day weekend...

Friday Feb 13^th.

Tips for driving from Sheffield to Newcastle on Friday afternoon number 1: DON’T.

If we hadn’t set off at lunch time god only know what time we’d have got there. As it turned out it took us five hours. FIVE. That must be down to the several sets of road works and numbers of people getting away for half term.

Tips for driving from Sheffield to Newcastle on Friday afternoon number 2. Set off as early as possible.

We left at 1.00pm. We had a stop at Scotch Corner to give Callie a comfort break and then a second smaller one somewhere in Gateshead for the same reason. We pulled into the car park on Dean Street, a few hundred yards from the Theatre Royal, at 6pm. If we’d set off when we had planned, ie 3pm, we’d never have made it on time.

We strolled up Dean Street and then along Grey Street looking for an eaterie doing a deal. We found a pub doing two meals for a tenner so we hit that and ordered immediately. We also had a mini bottle of rose wine each. My ham, egg and chips were brilliant. The ham was so tasty. Loll had a lasagne, something she doesn’t cook at home as I can’t eat cheese. I couldn’t believe it though, no sooner had we sat down to wait for our meal than two bloody chancers tried to join us at our table. Why does it always happen? When they asked if they could sit at our table I said that I would rather they didn’t as we were about to be served a meal. This brought an attempt at a smart comment from one of them about my accent. (I do speak with RP at the best of times but I can also do supercilious cut-glass, like a very annoyed Queen Elizabeth, if I really want.)

I turned to Laura and said, “See what I mean? It’s an entire city with a speech impediment.” I don’t think they were amused by my Liz Windsor voice. But they took the hint and wandered off. After our bite to eat the place was still fairly empty, I suppose being only about 6.45 the hard drinkers were still at home getting pre-loaded. We found our way to the Theatre Royal and ensconced ourselves in the bar waiting for Avril and Kirsten and the two girls; we ordered a cup of tea at the bar, which flummoxed the staff for a while. Laura’s siblings and nieces arrived at about 10 past in a bit of a flap. They had also parked in Dean Street car park but had gone the wrong way down Dean and ended up at the river!

The show was really stunning. The sets and costumes were very good. I loved the Christmas baubles effect and the snow. I was a bit surprised that the choreography was rather different to the previous Nutcracker I’d seen, but borrowing Laura’s programme, I discovered it was the original Scottish ballet’s own version first danced about 40 years ago. It had been updated slightly but was essentially the same ballet. I had outlined the story to the girls before the start of the show and they were totally entranced by it all. They particularly loved the idea that there were loads of kids involved in the first half. I think they may end up asking for ballet lesson when they get home.

Plus points: the Sugar Plum Fairy was sublime. She really was expressive and lithe. Tchaikovsky’s music is an obvious winner too. I liked the Mouse King and Nutcracker battle which is always a treat, especially to eyes which haven’t seen it before. There was a woman in the bar saying how a reviewer had called the whole thing dull. I think that person may need a trip to the optician!

The journey home was punctuated by another toilet stop for Callie, so we lost Kirsten’s car just past the second roundabout over the A1. I wasn’t expecting Dad or Louisa to be waiting up for us, but they were still awake and watching TV when we finally rolled in at just before midnight. Louisa told us the hospital was going to induce the baby if she hadn’t put in an appearance by the end of next week. I was a bit surprised by this news.

Dad walked with me, up Tallentire Hill. to exercise the pack before bedtime. We walked arm in arm like we usually do and he seemed pre-occupied with thought of impending fatherhood again and the worry that there may be something wrong, as the baby hadn’t arrived yet. I tried to reassure him that all would be well, and the hospital would have pointed out any abnormalities when they had done the earlier tests Louisa had had. They had tested for all sorts of things because she is classed as an ‘older mother’. My kid sister doesn’t have downs syndrome or any other possible conditions that may strike a foetus when the mother is not in the first flush of youth. I told him I knew all this as it was something I had been thinking about, and researching, if I decided to have one when I finally had my career nailed down.

This made him stop and look me full in the face. He asked me if I was thinking of having one any time soon? I whacked his arm and re-linked with him. I told him not to be an idiot. I wasn’t going to do anything until I had a stable and permanent job, instead of this temporary post which ends in 18 months, when I’ll be in limbo again.

I asked him why he was so bothered me podding. He said that he wasn’t, as such, it was just that he knew I would feel so unbelievably fulfilled when / if I had a child. According to him it transformed my Mum in ways he hadn’t expected at all. She had always been doubtful about kids (according to him) but the transformation in her when they had Susannah was magical. I told him he was living his life through his literature courses and he told me I was just a cynic.

He went on to say that I was like my Mum in so many ways, more so than Suze who just inherited Mum’s stubbornness (and size). At times, he claims, it has been like watching a re-run of his early life with Mum, before they got married. [I thought this was getting unnecessarily romantic and sentimental but I kept this to myself.] I told him he was still being an idiot; I was nothing like my Mum. He said we needed to agree to differ. So I did.

Back home, snuggled up with Laura and gently pulling my fingers through her hair, as she rested her head in the hollow below my shoulder, which I love doing and I know it gets her so turned on, I asked her if I was like my Mum. Without hesitation she said, “God, yes! You look just like her in certain lights and from certain angles. You have the same chin and eyes, that’s for sure. You do tower over her, which she must find really annoying, but you do look very alike!”

I decided not ask her about any similarities in our personality as her fingers had got busy as well, but in a place much lower than my head.

Saturday 14^th February

I looked in a couple of the photo albums on my shelves this morning and found one of Mum and me taken in Paris in 2011. This was snapped by the guy she was ‘seeing’ at the time and who had been surprised to find his girlfriend’s daughter accompanying her on a supposed romantic trip to the ‘city of love’. We are head to head and smiling at the camera. I do look like her. If you just found the photograph without knowing who it was you’d definitely say; “These must be mother and daughter.”

I extracted a fairly large card from my hold-all and placed it alongside Loll on her bedside cabinet, then took Callie off and down the stairs for her first walk of the day. I gathered up the other three mutts and we made our way back up Tallentire Hill, sans aged parent who was probably still in bed. I left a post it on the chalk board saying, ‘Gone up to the trig point, will be longer than usual.’ I expected to be able to take if off the chalk board when I got back down with no-one being the wiser. That didn’t work. When I got back into the kitchen, after performing the necessary paw wiping on 16 paws I was surprised to be met by a low flying Laura who flung her arms round me and hugged me. She then began telling me off, asking why the hell I had been so long up the bloody hill and couldn’t I have just done the short walk instead?

I asked what the matter was and she pointed to the bunch of roses wrapped in cellophane and tied with a huge purple bow. They were for me. I had missed the delivery from the florists, scheduled for 9am – in case we went out. A dozen red roses. I hunted a vase from the vase and sundries cupboard and brought out a stem vase too. I arranged eleven of the flowers into the vase and handed one back to Laura in the stem vase. We hugged a bit more then snogged some more then heard a cough behind us as Dad came down and asked if we could hide the roses for a while as he’d got to fetch his surprise for Louisa from the garage and he didn’t want her to think he’d sent the roses.

I took both vases up the other staircase to my room and when I got back down Loll had started cooking a full English breakfast for everyone and Dad had put his pot of bush roses on the side counter. He said he was going to buy cut flowers too but the lady in the florists had asked him why not get a growing bush which you could plant out in the garden as a constant reminder to your valentine? So that’s what he did.

Louisa appeared, as if on cue, no doubt attracted by the smell of cooking bacon and promptly burst into tears. Now it was her and Dad’s turn to hug and kiss, after a suitable time Laura gave a discreet cough and addressed the room in general asking if we all wanted mushrooms with our cooked breakfast. When we said yes she told me that was my job then. Louisa helped by nuking a huge bowl of baked beans and in a couple of minutes Laura brought out a plate each for Louisa and Dad, then mine and hers. She had used the heart silicon egg rings to fry the eggs and the heart stamp for the toast. That’s was why she wanted me to cook up the mushrooms so I wouldn’t see.

As the weather was gorgeous we, Laura and I, decided we’d head off into the Park for the morning / afternoon and walk the circuit that takes you up to Watendlath and back down to the lake shore. We only took Callie as we planned to get the ferry to Ashness Bridge, walk upto Watendlath, drop down the path to Rossthwaite and get the bus back into Keswick. Managing four dogs on the ferry and bus could be a nightmare; especially if, at the end, they were all muddied up. Dad asked what time we planned on being at Watendlath and I gave him a rough estimate, He said he would drive both of them out and meet us at the café. It is usually open on Saturdays out of season.

It almost didn’t work as we were just giving them up as a bad job when I spotted a Land Rover heading down the cul-de-sac road to the hamlet. Sure enough it was Dad & Louisa. We stayed for another bladder filling pot of tea and yet more cake. I couldn’t believe how pleasant the weather was and how warm for mid February. D & L walked with us up to the little gate on the path to Rossthwaite and then wandered back to the tiny settlement. L & I yomped on up the track and at the brow we both had to hide behind a wall to squat and remove the excess liquid. How embarrassing. I told Laura that if we came up here in the summer we could find a secluded spot and have a sneaky bonk. She said I would not be allowed to forget that.

The road through Rossthwaite was incredibly busy. I asked in the local shop why it was so full of traffic and the owner thought it might be something to do with the road being closed in Portinscale. I couldn’t see how, myself, but I just agreed with him.

The concert this evening was very good. It seems they are doing a varied programme throughout the tour and they try to mix up the programme for each evening so that the performers don’t get to fed-up of playing the same thing over and over. That seems like a great idea. Other places were getting Tcahikovski’s 1^st Piano Concerto or a Shostakovich Symphony. Our evening was Beethoven Symphony one (a minnow) and Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No1 (soloist Natalie Clien). The second half had the Karelia Suite (one of the first pieces I remember as a child) and Tchaikovski’s Romeo & Juliet suite from the ballet. I suppose they included it to coincide with Valentine’s Day. We held hand through the R & J and at the end Laura whispered, I am sorry if I am an old cynic but if you kill yourself for love, I won’t copy you. We had a good giggle at that, even though at the back of my mind I was sharply reminded that I very, very nearly did exactly that. How glad am I that I was prevented from doing it?

Sunday 15^th Feb

Cumbrian weather eh? One day glorious next day iffy in the extreme. We had a lie in this morning after being overcome with a sudden and debilitating bout of wishy-washiness last night, on getting home from the Sands Centre. I snuggled up with Laura and we simply lay and hugged for a good half an hour without talking or anything. Eventually Loll said, “Oh I can’t wait any longer…” and dived under the covers. I felt her hot mouth over my important little place and we spent quite a while just pleasing each other with our tongues.

We decided to zoom off after lunch – a gorgeous chunk of beef from Thompson’s which will probably last Louisa and Dad the rest of the week now the gannets are going.

We hoped that there would be a good outcome with the bump soon and then whizzed off down the M6 this time as I was sick of the A1 and M1 road works. We were only held up at Mottram for a few minutes in the queue which forms at the traffic light bottleneck.

At home we piled the washing machine with clothes, found new vases for the flowers, had a pot of tea and toasted tea cake for a mid-afternoon snack and promptly fell asleep on the sofa together. Being totally stuffed from lunch and a tea cake each we decided to forgo a proper evening meal and have the remaining two teacakes with more tea instead. We are also a pair of lazy cows!

Callie was surprised to be walked at about 9.30 this evening. I wasn’t surprised to find a slender blonde nymph fast asleep in my bed when I got back. I carefully slipped into bed after my shower, rearranged her tangled mass of locks away from her face and kissed her ear before putting my head on the pillow. I whispered, “I love you so much.” The sleeping figure actually replied with an, ”I love you too…” How does she do that? I resolved to ask her in the morning. (I forgot.) 

Lesbo pash on Emily Blunt? Guilty!

Monday February 9^th.

Déjà vu, it’s happened before,

Déjà vu, it’ll happen once more,

You can’t be sure of when,

But it’s déjà vu, it’ll happen again!

Today’s déjà vu was another newtmageddon! I can’t believe it. What were the silly buggers thinking, coming out while it is so cold and wintry? They are supposed to say somewhere warm and damp, not venture on to the public highway and risk getting squished by passing cars! OK, it was only a mini-newtmageddon compared to last year’s carnage – there were just three dead [common] newts but that is three too many. There were also two flattened toads, too. What was it about last night’s weather that made them decide to be so reckless? I know I am stupid and foolish, but it makes me cry when these beautiful little creatures end up under a car’s wheels. It also begs the question how can newts get run over on such a quiet road? Do the local motorists deliberately drive up there in the hope of committing newticide? It is a very under-used road really. I am stunned, still, hours after the event. Maybe I need to get a life?

Sarah was shocked that I was shocked. She thought newts were horrible. I asked her if she’d ever seen one close up and she had to admit she was mixing them up with the lizards she had seen in Spain which frightened her. (How can you be frightened of a lizard?) She couldn’t get her head round the fact that I actually picked up live ones who were stranded on the road and moved them to the verge to avoid squishing. The most I have moved in a single night is about twelve! I think they are wonderful, oh dear, I am sounding rather like Gussie Finknottle from the Jeeves and Wooster stories!

Our two part day at work went pretty much as it usually does. Mrs B offered her opinion of Tony – she thought if he was genuine, he would be a great BF for my Mum. These sort of echo my thoughts, I guess. Why am I suspicious of Mum’s men? It seems a bit like a role reversal in a way. Laura thinks I am just being naturally protective of her and it’s nothing to fret about. She is right.

Trevor was on time and his usual stereotypical self. If I didn’t know he lacked an imagination (you can’t help but notice after talking with him for a while) I would think his studied machismo was just an act to try and wind us up. I sincerely hope he isn’t representative of the men out there. Some of my personal tutees are just as insensitive and emotionally retarded too. Worrying, isn’t it?

Tuesday Feb 10^th

A full day at Uni and I got masses done without interference or restraint from anyone. I also managed to drink my way through fifteen mugs of tea. Do you know that after a while it just flows straight through you? I would drink a mugful and a few minutes later I’d be trooping down to the ladies to empty the tank. Perhaps my body had become a super-saturated solution! At lunch, with Loll, Feli and a couple of others of our acquaintance I was told it was a psychological reflex, not a physical one. Once my mind thinks I need to pee I won’t be happy until I have, despite the fact that my bladder can take half as much again after I think I want to go. I need to resist the temptation to go immediately and by doing that I will eventually break the cycle. I said maybe I shouldn’t drink so much tea.

It was weird having Sally and Olivia on the same day. (We have done it a couple of times in the past, but now Sally has agreed to a permanent move.) We decided that the fairest way to sort out who would use the study was to flip a coin for it this time and then just alternate after that. Sally won so Olivia and I sat in the kitchen while her Mum surfed the net on her tablet in our lounge.

Her last written piece of work for class was excellent. She has, at last, seen the benefit of using a plan before putting her thoughts onto paper. The results were clear to see. I was so impressed with her I went through to tell her Mum that the piece she’d brought was probably the best she had ever written for me in the few months we’ve been working together. Her Mum was as chuffed as I was. If she can keep this up I can’t see any reason why she can’t get the A grade she wants.

Olivia was still about doubtful. She was worried that it was just ordinary, it wasn’t exciting or “Wowy” her word. I told her that the examiners were not looking for the next JK Rowling or whoever, they realised that a 16 year old isn’t going to be writing a best seller. What they want is as close to technical perfection that they can get. The piece she gave me was punctuated properly, had no spelling or grammatical errors and had a feeling of truth about it. I usually use a pencil to go through her work with her, underlining things which are awkward, clumsy or wrong, tonight’s piece had no pencil at all (apart from a missed capital letter).

I told her off. I said that if she continued like this she’d be doing me out of a job. This made her smile but at the same time her eyes welled up. I asked her what was the matter and she said she enjoyed my lessons and thought she had made progress but she was worried that she had no idea what she wanted to do after her GCSEs. She hasn’t a career goal in her head and her careers adviser at school wasn’t helpful at all. (I know the feeling. Ours were only interested in getting us to Oxbridge!) I told her if she felt like she needed to think about the subjects she most enjoyed at GCSE and do them at A Level. That’s basically what I did, my A Levels were Eng Lit, History, Geology, Chemistry and Latin.

My teachers were keen for me to go down the Chemistry route but I love Literature and History so I ended up applying to read Classics. Which is exactly what I did; despite it having no ‘market place’ value. She wanted to know what my parents thought about that. I explained that Dad was out of the picture by then but he was happy with anything which took me to University. Mum was still trying to persuade me not to go into teaching and was pleased that Classics didn’t look like a likely path into her profession. She needn’t have fretted, having seen the stress, worry and unbelievable work load she had as a school teacher there is no way on earth I am going to do anything like that at all, ever! She was an Assistant Head Teacher by the time I was in a position to understand these things and that made me even more certain. If someone so high up the food chain in her school could be under that much stress, what must it be like at the actual chalk-face? Mmm… Thanks but No Thanks!

Olivia thought this was good advice and, I hope, was a bit more cheered. It would be useful to know what her mother’s take on this is. I decided the best way to do that was to call her when Olivia would be at school, or something, so she wouldn’t be an eavesdropper to our conversation. She and Trev left just after nine and Lol and I shared a bottle of Hilmar’s Dornfelder as a reward for our efforts.

Wednesday Feb 11^th.

Our 100 lengths are going as fast as we were before our sojourn in Cumbria. We are now a good four or five minutes quicker than when we started again in mid January. This is where we have decided to stick, rather than push on for faster times or more lengths. Not that you’d notice if you were waiting for us, it just means we are taking a bit longer in the changing rooms than we used to. Callie gets left in the back of the car while we swim so we can’t be too dilatory for her sake. It’s also a way of getting the woofter dried off before we get back from our walk. Loll picks me up on the lane as I am making my way back home, which makes it simpler all round. The only downside of doing this is it makes the car boot a mess. I have to clean it out a least once a week and her boot bedding needs a wash on a weekly basis too.

Tonight we did the first of our midweek cinema trips. Laura’s choice this week. It was ‘Into The Woods’. I hadn’t realised it was musical! Durr! I really enjoyed it. I thought Emily Blunt was a revelation. I can’t recall seeing her act in anything before but I was really impressed by her. More so than by Meryl Streep who took the histrionics a bit far in my opinion (and why did she turn herself into a tar pool near the end? I didn’t get that at all!) What I did like was the way it changed from all cutesy Disney into more honest realism in the final quarter. I thought that was a very good touch. Laura kept whispering that I had a lezzie pash on Emily Blunt, which was a bit embarrassing. I should have kept my gob shut. I will have to remember to clear my tablet’s search history too. (Yes, I did, I googled her and looked at her pictures.)

The next film we have planned is my choice and its ‘Kingsmen’. I think it could be good as it is made by the people who made Kiss-Ass which I loved so much and has Colin Firth. What more can I say? Apart from, “Dive into the lake for me Colin!”

Thursday Feb 12^th.

One day before our silly expedition to Dad’s via Newcastle. Laura phoned her sisters to check that all was OK and that we’d meet them in the Theatre Royal foyer at 7pm. At the time we booked the tickets this seemed like a sensible thing to do but now I have checked google maps and had a few nights sleep to mull it over I realise we must be complete and total nutters. It’s about 130 miles and we will be hitting Newcastle at rush hour! The girls will be travelling almost as far from Maryport it’s about 90 miles to the car park by the theatre. All so that Laura’s nieces will see one of the best introductions to live ballet you can give them. The Nutcracker; performed by the Scottish Ballet. If I could chose the exact ballet to take them to then it would definitely be La Fille Mal Gardee, but as there are no productions of it in the north for a while this is a pretty good second choice.

Our work today was just as usual once more. Mrs B at Triple Ecks and Why was amazed by what we were going to be doing tomorrow. We are sneaking off from Uni at 3pm, having worked over lunch time. (Well, I will, Loll is going to go home, walk Callie then bring her back to Uni at 1.15 so she can kip in the back of the car and we will be able to head north pronto ballero!

Jenny-Leigh and Roberta thought we were mad. Roberta’s Dad said we should forget the afternoon and leave at lunchtime instead. We’ll sleep on that and make an executive decision tomorrow. J-L is getting stressed about her exams again. I am not sure why, she is doing pretty well on all the practice stuff we’ve done and in the preparation. Nerves I suppose.

When the two of them went their way home we finished off Tuesday night’s Dornfelder, watched our recording of Wolf Hall, and had a relatively early night. Fortifying ourselves for the whacky races tomorrow.

Meeting Mum's New Boyfriend.

Friday February 6^th

We were lying in bed having a snuggle and whispered talk before the advent of our pad-footed alarm clock (if we talk in louder voices Callie hears us and doesn’t come up the stair to wake me up) and I asked my blonde bombshell if something had happened in the last week which had caused her to be upset or anything. She did the, “Ah… Um…” conversation pre-amble.

“Have you noticed something then, MyMy?” [That’s her nickname for me.]

“Well, I am not sure if I am being silly but I think that in the last week you have seemed a bit more assertive than you used to be and more forthright… I don’t know. I am probably just being foolish… Has something happened?”

“You mean the ‘me taking more control of our bonking’ sort of thing?”

“Well, there’s that and the idea of moving Sally’s day so we could do more things in the week. Getting tickets to see Paddington tonight. I am being mad aren’t I?”

“I am so pleased you’ve noticed. I was beginning to worry that you were insensitive to what I have been doing.”

It turns out that her and her friends [mainly Deborah, Kay, Janet, Kim, and Mary] had been discussing our relationship. (Thanks a bunch guys!) They arrived at the opinion that I was a bit controlling and she was a bit of a passive partner. I have agonised about this very thing for the whole of our relationship and we have talked about it ad infinitum, too. Laura had assured me, again and again, there was nothing wrong and she was happy with the dynamics of our partnership. She liked me taking decisions, after consulting her about them; she enjoyed being “educated” into the arts and music and culture, and the like, as she had a huge hole in her life where those things were concerned.

Her friends seemed to think there should be more of Laura’s input into what we did. I was about to protest at this point but she stopped me and explained that she was happy going to the theatre and concerts and exhibitions that I had chosen because she wouldn’t know where to start if she was left to do it all herself. She had told her friends this. They asked her what she did socially before we were a couple. (Sensible question, I thought.) She had to admit that all she really did was hang around in Carlisle with her mates on a Saturday, sneak into the pub in the village – underage, of course - and go to the cinema. Occasionally she’d go out for a meal with family or friends and, even more rarely, to a disco with her friends or something which she absolutely hated as it seemed like a cattle market where the idea was to meet the opposite sex to find someone to shag.

They’d asked her what we didn’t currently do that she’d like to do more. There were three things: she would like to have more spontaneous, dangerous sex. Sex where we could be caught doing it! She’d like to go to other places than the Peak and the Lakes all the time and she’d love to go to the cinema more often.

The two trips to London we have made in the past few months – to see Veronese and Rubens – had opened her eyes to the possibilities of visiting more places to widen our shared experience.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. I’d had the horrible feeling that what she was saying might be going to take a direction that would be heart-breaking for me. I was wrong. I told her this and she started kissing me, telling me that she would never do anything like that. I asked her what she’d got planned, when she could be gently prised away from my face.

She is going to scour the listings for cinema visits. She fancies one per week but one a fortnight may be more realistic. She’d like to visit more stately homes and National Trust properties, we are NT members but tend to use the membership to get free car parking in the Lakes and the Peak! She also fancies more museum visiting and we have to use our static caravan on Arran. It has only been my Dad & Louisa who have used it. I need to get my money’s worth out of it. [That told me!]

Could we do some trips abroad like to Paris or Brussels or Bruges for long weekends away? She feels that because I have seen masses of places in the UK and Europe it seems like I don’t really feel the need to go again but she hasn’t even been to any of them, once.

I told her I was 100% behind this initiative and we’d start today by thinking about a weekend away before Easter and then we’d definitely go to the van for a fortnight on Arran during that holiday. We could do the cinema as and when and museum trips could be weekend day excursions either in the car or on the train.

We spent a good part of our swimming time indulging in speculation about possible destinations, which meant we were much slower completing our 100 lengths than usual. Sarah had noticed and asked if we’d upped the number again. (We did this once before and it completely knackered us!) We explained about wanting to more travelling in the UK apart from the Lake District and she came up with the notion of using Travelodges. Apparently they do amazingly good deals if you book well in advance (I seem to have heard this idea somewhere else before!) and she thinks dogs are welcome too.

Laura said she’d get on the case in between lectures today and I had the brainwave of chasing Cathedrals. I have been to a lot already as part of my Masters’ Degree and Laura has always expressed a desire to see some to, so that is our plan. We are going to chase all the mediaeval British cathedrals, we’ll capture them in photgraphs and words and in our memories. Maybe we could make our own Cathedrals Photobook?

Loll said she’d get sangers and rendezvous back at my broom cupboard for lunch and we could surf using the Uni’s computer network. After we had had some more bonking. I had to put paid to the latter suggestion as Ma Nature had come calling when Laura arrived with the sandwiches.

Laura found that the Travelodge deals didn’t always work out pretty cheap at all. However, with persistence and a good deal of swearing at the computer she found three nights in July, at the Travelodge in Durham, for a grand total of £105! She said that could be our first cathedral. I had to disagree. Whilst she’d been busy on the Uni’s computer I had been tableting East Coast Trains and found us a day return ticket to York, in May, for £11 each (standard class). That could be our first cathedral; plus we could visit the Jorvik exhibiton, as well, and maybe York Museum. All in all a very lucrative lunchtime.

Afterwards Laura said, “You know I haven’t started yet…” I spent a few delightful minutes giving her delight across my desk.

Seeing Paddington in the cinema at 4pm was a master stroke. It was nearly deserted. Well, OK, it was about a third full and the majority of people in there were either wrinklies or mums with children. We found ourselves seated at the end of a row with about a dozen children and three women who could have been their parents stretched out along our row.

If you want a really feel good film this is it. We have seen it before but there is so much more you notice the second time around that you missed before. The audience were very vocal with their laughter and I found myself laughing along with them too. The most amusing audience reaction came when Paddington was using the cordless hand vacuums to climb the chimney. When he couldn’t quite reach the top of the chimney and looked to be falling to a fiery doom below there was a collective sigh from the older people as he started descending. That started me off giggling and Laura wanted to know what had made me giggle in the first place.

Buoyed with the success of Paddington our next foray into a kinematographic emporium is next Wednesday for Into the Woods. Laura thinks that Shaun the Sheep should be on our agenda too. Are we dumbing down a little? Perhaps, but what the hell.

Saturday 7^th Feb.

So, what exactly is Tony like then?

He’s about 6’ tall. He certainly towers over Mum, but then most people do as she is quite tiny. He is slim-ish. He seemed to be a bit skinnier than Dad although, to be fair, Dad has put on some weight round his middle these last few years, so it wouldn’t be hard to be thinner than him. He has all his hair, which was cut quite short and arranged without a parting. It is mostly grey. He has a beard which is about the same length as his hair. This is unusual as it is white at his chin but brown on his cheeks – I assume brown would have been his natural colouring. His eyes are a rich brown colour, a lightish brown, not the really deep brown you sometimes see.

His manner is quite striking. He appears to be very quiet but comes across as very self-confident and happy within his skin. He is so soft spoken at first I thought he may have had a sore throat but it seems that is his natural delivery. This is the strangest thing about him, on first acquaintance. I suppose it is strange to me because all the people I know have to use their voice to address rooms full of people and so they have a much louder natural speaking voice and use a variety of vocal tricks and techniques to make their conversations sound interesting and animated. Tony only ever speaks to his customers on a one to one basis and therefore has no finesse in his delivery. It could be easy to mistake his quiet monotone for a lack of intelligence but you would be surprised by his wit and sharpness, once you have spent some time in his company.

We met in the Circle Bar at about ten to seven so we could be properly introduced and get to know each other before the concert started. His seat was on the same row as ours but about six or seven away, which may have proved awkward but Mum told him they would wait until the final bell had been rung before going in and if there were two seats together somewhere they’d snaffle those instead.

I asked if he was interested in classical music and did he have a favourite composer. It seems he is a dabbler rather than an expert and I am afraid to say he is a Classic FM listener. He did say something which made my face colour and want to slap my Mum: (paraphrased) “I don’t know a great deal, that’s for sure. However, I do know what I like and I know that Mozart wrote the ‘Haydn Quartets’…” If it had been said in a smug, aren’t I clever sort of way we would instantly have become deadly foes but he was so charming with it and he said it with a self-deprecatory smile that my annoyance was quashed before it had a chance to appear. I did try giving Mum a Paddington style Hard Stare, but she just smiled at me in that infuriating supercilious way she has when she knows she’s put one over on me.

He did say he was looking forward to the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez, which, he claimed, was one of the reasons he had agreed to come along this evening, another was the Mozart symphony (the Prague) but he couldn’t recall ever hearing  “The Lark Ascending “ or the de Falla piece. He also said he accepted so he could meet Mum’s often talked about daughter. You could tell he wasn’t being sarcastic, which can be the default setting for some people (erm… that could be me, BTW).

He asked me about my interest in Classical Music and wasn’t it unusual for someone so young to be eschewing the contemporary for the archaic? I don’t know why but I found myself explaining to him that I had started listening as a way of rebelling against Mum & Dad’s loud guitar driven rock music which was played all the time at home. Our home in Norwich had speakers wired in the lounge, kitchen and even Dad’s study/office. So when something was being played there was no escaping it at all!

He asked Laura the same thing and her explanation centred around the fact her home in West Cumbria was a bit of a cultural desert and she had taken to my choice of music as a way of widening her knowledge. How I was her mentor, pointing out things I thought she would like but never trying to guide or define her taste. She admitted she had begun by liking the pieces I liked but was beginning to find her own choices and preferences. She said I was like her water wings at first but she had long since discarded them and was now swimming unaided. I gave her a swift peck on the cheek at that rounding endorsement and he took our interaction without a blink. Another plus point in his favour.

The only time he became more animated was when he started talking about his wood-working. He began to describe his love of the wood and how he took enormous pride in the pieces he created for people. You could tell by the passion in his tone and delivery that this was something he sincerely cared about and was quite probably more of an expert in, than I was about Classical Music.

He spoke about his two children, but not all that much and not in the sort of detail you get from Mum when she is going on about her brood. He did say he was a grandfather and that he loved the role even though his son and daughter lived a fair distance away he tried to see them and their children as often as he could. He has three grandkids, they are all girls! The oldest is fourteen, then one is ten and the other six. The fourteen year old and six year old are sisters. He did tell us their names and showed us pictures on his mobile phone. It is hard to tell a personality from a photograph but they all looked sweet. [I didn’t commit their names to memory, but they were nothing weird or unusual as far as I can recall, no Charlenes, Chelseas or anything equally as chavvy.]

The little job at Mum’s turns out to be replacing her kitchen cupboard doors with real wood ones. She had a contemporary looking kitchen when she moved in and always said she would like to get rid of the shiny door fronts sometime. Well, she has. Tony has installed solid oak doors from a reclaimed source, which makes them very enviro-friendly. She’s chosen a pale oak colour and was disappointed she hadn’t taken a picture of them to show us. Tony had, though – also on his phone – they look lovely.

Mrs B arrived just as the first bell was rung, so we didn’t have time for anything more than a swift hello and a introductions all round before she fled to the interval drinks ordering ( we did ours as we bought the ones we were sipping). We arranged a meet up during the interval. Giving Mum & Tony a breather we wandered into the auditorium and waited to see if she would be forced to come and sit beside us in her seat. She didn’t. I looked round just before the conductor arrived on the stage to see her and Tony way up on the left hand side, she saw me and waved.  

The English Chamber Orchestra was very good. They played the Mozart with the gusto it requires; Xuefei Yang played the Rodrigo so well. She was quite tiny and the guitar looked a bit outsized in hands. Her fingers danced along the fret board and I was really impressed by the feeling she managed to evoke from the piece. Laura, who hasn’t seen a classical guitar player in concert before, was intrigued by the block on the stage before Xuefei came out. I suppose it isn’t something you think about when the only people you have seen playing guitars before have done so standing up! She looked quite young but Mrs B informed me, during the interval, that she was actually 37! That’s 10 years older than me!

Mrs B and Tony seemed to get on quite well. She and Mum are old hands together now and she does tend to be a bit like a second Mum to me at times. She did tell Tony that he mustn’t let me brow-beat him with my extensive knowledge of music and that he had to not take all that I said at face value. [Erm thanks a lot Mrs B] To compound the offence Mum joined in the character assassination telling him I was also dreadfully sarcastic and that was one of the things I had inherited from my father.

What really made me like this guy was the way he came in to my defence, claiming I couldn’t be all they claimed as what he had seen so far belied their description. OK, he was totally wrong, but it is nice to have a stranger fight your corner for you. Laura started giggling when he began defending me. She explained she found it funny that yet another person had sprung to my team, apparently I get a lot of people on myside (usually males) without even knowing I was doing it. Mum and Mrs B then proceeded to list the men who had succumbed to my charms without me even realising it. I was shocked. Amused by their comments but shocked just the same. Could they be right or were they just teasing?

In the second half I asked Loll if it was true and she said that in a way it was. I seemed to attract men like bees to a honey pot but the charming thing was I had no idea it was happening. I just carried on the way I do, oblivious to the attention I appeared to be getting. Well she’s right about one thing, if it isn’t an elaborate joke on their part, I am oblivious to any of what they said.  I can’t be that insensitive, can I? Really?

The second half was just as good as the first. The Lark Ascending was good too. I have seen the soloist, Stefanie Gonley, play the Vivaldi Four Seasons so I knew how good a player she is. She is the opposite in appearance to Xuefei being tall with a tousled mass of curly hair. She also was very expressive in her movement about the stage whereas Xuefei had to remain seated during her performance.

I had not heard the piece by de Falla before but I will have another listen on Youtube, it was lovely.

We had a brief chat with Mum & Tony in the foyer before they went off to who knows where and the Lollster and I headed back home to a dog walk and a welcoming mug of drinking chocolate before bedtime.

Obviously you can’t tell what makes a relationship succeed by looking at the outside, but if Mum & Tony do become a serious item I, for one, will be pleased for her. He seemed very nice. In fact I would go so far as to say he seemed a very fanciable chap for his age. This sort of got me wondering why there wasn’t another woman in the picture and why Mum? Maybe I am being over cautious. She deserves to have someone to share her life with again rather than just being the “Mother” all the time.

Sunday 8^th February

It is our considered opinion that on first meeting Tony passed muster. He seemed nice, polite, amusing in a quiet way and wasn’t a pervert or anything. Maybe our opinions will change or be reinforced over time; whether there will be any time is Mum’s decision to make. I would certainly have loved to have been a fly on the wall after the concert. Not in any prurient way, but just to see if what we saw was really what we were going to get. The key thing, though, was that he made Mum seem happy and anyone who does that has to get the brownie points, don’t they?

We had a bit of lie in and then I walked the dog on a shortish walk whilst Loll cooked up a full English breakfast. Rah, rah, rah. On the way back in I was accosted by Steve who gave me two carrier bags. They were our venison joints. I was able to whizz them down to the cellar and the freezer without them being spotted as Laura wasn’t in the kitchen.

Coming out of the cellar I made Laura scream as she hadn’t heard me pottering about down there and I gave her a surprise and shock. After picking up the dishcloth, which hit me fair and square in the face when she threw it at me, she asked what the hell I was doing. I explained that Steve had given me two carrier bags of spare venison which he got from a shoot and which were too much for him, so he’d asked me if I wanted them. I told her that I’d agreed and now the meat was freezing in our cellar.

She wanted to know all about the meat and I was able to honestly say the deer had been killed before last weekend and the meat had been butchered by a licenced game butcher. All of which was true, even if the truth was slightly elasticated. She seemed fine with my explanation. Phew!

We took a stroll along Rivelin after breakfast, which may have been a mistake as there seemed to be everyone and their father out along the riverside. We went as far up as the Wyming Brook trail end and the road to the reservoir, then we turned round and headed back to the car park. It is a very popular walk it appears, on a Sunday, I wonder how busy it is in the week. When the nights get lighter it could be worth a revisit to see.

I skyped Suze when we got in (pre-arranged) and gave her the low down on Tony. Annabelle and Jill were really interested too. I have been tasked with getting a picture of him to wing across to Australia as soon as possible. Dad called after I had finished talking to Susannah, Louisa is off in to hospital on Monday to check everything is OK. It is just an out-patient’s visit. I did toy with telling Dad about Tony but decided to hang fire, in case there is nothing more to report. He’s all set for our visit on Friday night and is amused by the way my big mouth has got us driving up via Newcastle Theatre Royal and a ballet performance. He isn’t going to the concert on Saturday which isn’t the Halle as I have been previously saying; it’s the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. The Halle play the Sands centre later in the year. It’s an easy mistake to make.

I was going to phone Mum but decided against doing so. I will let her call me and tell her all about the rest of her evening, if she wants. I don’t want to appear nosy – although I am just itching to know the details!

We watched the recording I’d made of the film Hugo this evening, again. It was still really good. It grows better with repeated viewing I feel - as do most films.

As a footnote Laura has now joined me in our mother nature’s prank. We are yet to synchronise to the same day but it is pretty spooky how we have aligned our times of the month so readily. I wonder if this is common amongst female lovers?

Laura takes the lead! Mmmmmm............

Monday February 2^nd.

 We were still fired up by our London trip this morning and after our swim we spent an age chatting with Sarah about it. Once again she was amazed by the things we get up to, although, we do seem to concentrate most of our efforts on the weekend, as our weekdays nights have become somewhat snarled with our teaching commitments. Sarah asked if we could give the address of the East Coast Trains website so she could book tickets for cheapo trips to the Capital. She was caught up in our enthusiasm for the Mummies exhibition and you could see we had a convert to the Brit. Mu. Whether she actually goes through with anything remains to be seen, obviously.

 Most of the snow seems to be confined to the places where the sun doesn’t shine. No, stop it! I don’t mean that place. That’s just being naughty! We still had a day left on our Mega-Rider Tram tickets so we used those this morning but it does seem to slow us down in our commute. All of the dedicated parking spaces have been cleared at work, so we’ll probably drive all the way in tomorrow to see if my impression about the time it takes is wrong. I timed the journey from our front door to arriving at my broom cupboard and I will do the same tomorrow using the car. I have a feeling that, although I think it takes longer using the tram, it is actually about the same.

 Work, both at Uni and ‘Triple X and Why’ went as normal. Nothing surprising or unusual. I am starting the next series of lectures on Thursday so I did a lot of prep for that, mainly getting my Powerpoint ready and checking the learning objectives match the criteria I have been given.

 At Triple X I told Mrs Briggs about Mum’s new beau. She was quite sensible about the whole thing and is looking forward to casting her appraising eye over him on Saturday too – she’ll be at the same concert and we usually meet up in the circle bar for drinks at the interval. I did toy with the idea of playing a trick on the unsuspecting Tony, and pretending that Mrs Briggs was my partner and Laura was her daughter. I decided against it as that would be so unkind to do to someone when you first meet them, wouldn’t it? Laura gave my wrist a slap when I told her of my silly idea. She told me it was a wicked thing to do and would give this Tony person the completely wrong impression of what I was really like.

 I don’t deserve to be in love with someone this sensible, do I? She often is the voice of reason arguing against my stupid excesses. She is usually absolutely right too! When I got Callie I told my Scottish Gran I was expecting the patter of tiny feet in our house. Phew, was that an error of judgement? She didn’t speak to me for nearly a year afterwards and hung up on me whenever I called her. I actually undertook a pilgrimage to Hawick, in person, with Callie in tow to grovel at her door. I thought she was going to slam the door in my face when she saw who it was but luckily she didn’t. She did blame my Dad for my warped sense of humour and I am afraid to say I agreed with her and heaped the disapprobrium on his shoulders. Technically, she was right; he and I do share a similar anarchic (possibly self-destructive) streak in what we find funny.

 The visit of Trevor didn’t produce the same enthusiasm for the British Museum’s Mummy exhibition which it did in Sarah this morning. I put it down to his being a mathematician and therefore not into the finer things in life. I got another slap for that too. I hastily back-peddled and likened him to my brother instead. He and Trevor do share the same blinkered outlook on life. I just couldn’t believe that our obvious delight in what we’d seen wouldn’t have been as infectious in him as it was in Sarah. Life lesson learned there though, in spades! I had upset my beloved and remembered a truth I’d forgotten – people are different.

 I made it up to Laura after I walked Callie. She was impressed by my cunning linguistic skill! I have made a mental vow not to say anything without thinking if it will make her upset. My mouth just gets carried away with me at times. (This time you can take that the wrong way, if you wish!)

Tuesday Feb 3^rd.

It is official. The journey to work is 5 minutes quicker using the tram. I didn’t believe it. I am going to time each day and produce an average time, instead. Laura said that is like asking for the best of three to become the best of five when you lose in a game of chance. She is right of course. Again.

 Spoke with Steve this morning on returning with Callie from our walk. He jumped out of his doorway as though he’d been waiting for me. (He had, as it happens.) It appears his mate will need to hang the muntjac for a bit longer before doing the necessary with his knives, as it was so fresh. (When I found it, the poor thing was still warm to the touch.) He will hang it until Friday, exsanguinate it and then cut it into joints. I am wondering what Laura’s reaction will be. She knows Steve and I went to move it, but she doesn’t know about the other stuff. Perhaps I should have told her there and then?  She eats the pheasant I shoot and the rabbits. She thought the pigeon pies I have made were wonderful so theoretically she should be OK with eating the deer. I can’t help feeling I have been stupid again.

 The full day at Uni passed with no alarms or worries. Felice and the science guy are being silly with each other again. It does my head in, all her pecadilloes but, again, that could be me being hypocritical. When I was an Undergraduate my sexual behaviour was much worse. I had a whole term of f*cking anything in trousers, after a few drinks. That would have been equally as distressing, I suppose, although I didn’t broadcast the facts among my peers with such abandon, the way Felice does. In fact the only people who knew I had opened my legs were the guys who, unexpectedly, found themselves between them. The male jungle telegraph seemed to work pretty quickly, however, which was one of the reasons I stopped “putting it about”.

 I suppose most people will have episodes in their past of which they are totally ashamed. Although, having known Laura for as long as I have (I have known her since she was about 8) I don’t believe her wardrobe has any skeletons at all. Mine is a pretty ‘rattley’ one to say the least.

 Olivia, tonight, was fired up by the descriptions of the Mummies and our reaction to them. Hoorah. She is still a 16 year old and so perhaps less cynical than Trevor. She has just started dating a guy called Ben which could be a distraction coming up to her GCSEs. Her Mum seemed fine with the idea, though, and called Ben a really nice boy. Oh heck. That would have been the kiss of death for me, if Mum had said that about any of my Boyfriends when I was at school.  She only knew about a few, fortunately, and she didn’t know what depraved things I used to get up to with them, which would have given her apoplexy – no doubt. With that playing in the back of my head, I broached the subject of contraception with Olivia when we’d finished our work for the night. She pretended to be shocked and then was really quite sensible. She hadn’t thought about ‘letting him yet’ (her words) but she had bought some condoms to keep in reserve. Sensible girl, I thought.

 They have only snogged so far but she had noticed he gets quite aroused when they do that. She doesn’t want to do anything about it though. I almost told her about me and Ian when we were 15 but decided that would be a step too far. I ended up spouting platitudes at her but that could be more than she has heard from her mother?

 Logic dictated I didn’t tell Laura about this. She reminded me of the conversations I have had with my niece Jill in Australia who is about the same age as Olivia and going through the same anxieties.

Wednesday Feb 4^th

 100 lengths of the pool do get easier and easier once you are back into the swing of things. We seemed to be out of the water in no time and busy showering away. Back in the changing area Laura grabbed my arm and told me to get in the cubicle and stand on the bench. I was a bit surprised so I did what she said. She then proceeded to eat my important little place until I had to bite my towel to stop myself yelling out. I was all set to return the favour but she said, “Not here, back home!” Not used to being ordered about so peremptorily I did as I was told. We dried and dressed in Olympic record time and inside 10 minutes I was inside my love at home. Between licks and nibbles, I asked her what was going on and she said she’d had this sudden and overwhelming desire to have sex and she was gauging my reaction if she acted on her impulse.

 After we had both enjoyed each other’s treasures we chatted about the idea of just having sex when we felt like it, wherever we were. I am up for that or what? It seems she is too. So we have agreed that we will act on our impulses more often in the future. I have put a small vibrator in my tampon bag in my handbag so I can surprise her the next time we get the uncontrollable urge. Richard and I used to do this all the time, which has led to us almost being caught in flagrante a few times. I used to give him blow jobs and swallow the evidence (which is the one heterosexual thing I sort of miss). He used to love it and be scared of being caught in almost equal measure. I mean it was OK for me, I was still fully clothed and looking decorous, it was he who would have been apprehended with his penis on full view.

 My final prep for the next set of lectures is complete. I have probably over prepared like I did last time. I had so much stuff to present I ended up having to rapidly edit as I went along each week. I suppose that is better than having not enough material. I put a load of stuff on the Intranet for the students to access and download of they wish, always a good idea, I find.

 When Bobbi came tonight, Laura asked her if she’d be OK moving her night to Tuesday on a permanent basis. She agreed quite willingly. This is to free up a night in the week to go to the cinema, instead of relying on Fridays. Next week we are planning to see “Into the Woods” now that Bobbi agreed to the swap. We’ve already got tickets to see the 4pm showing of “Paddington” again on Friday evening. We liked it so much when we first saw it.

Bobbi’s reaction to the Mummy story was just the same as Olivia and Sarah’s so I am beginning to think it may be a man thing. Thinking of Mummies, I called Mum and we skyped for about an hour. She is really nervous about us meeting with Tony on Saturday. She sounded almost like a schoolgirl not a 60 something mother of three who should be able to take all this in her stride. I think she is worrying unnecessarily, TBH. I am not going to do anything to sabotage her happiness and I told her so. That seemed to make her visibly relax. She then spent ages wondering which outfit she should wear. She does have a lot to choose from. She is still a petite thing and has kept her figure really well. I am much more of a hefty person in comparison, taking my physique more from Dad than her. Suze is a half-pint too. Whilst Philip has taken Dad’s body shape and run with it. He is a good four inches taller than Dad, who at just over six foot himself is no midget.

I did wonder whether Mum’s worry was more about sex than clothes. There was no way on earth I was going ask her that, though. Not while she was still sober at least! Does a 62 year old still have sex? I know Dad does – how else would he be about to be a father once again? But does Mum? It is a gruesome thought and I am not going to dwell on it.

Thursday Feb 5^th

Yet more evidence this morning that the tram is quicker than the car. It took us ten minutes more time than it did on Tuesday. Laura just laughed and said that had put paid a quick bonk in my broom cupboard. I asked why should it? So we hastened up and carefully shifted the desk to behind the door so that people just couldn’t walk straight in. The benefits of wearing skirts in a situation like this are pretty obvious and quite soon we were intimately involved with each other until there was a half knock at the door followed by a swift attempted opening of the same. This was accompanied by an “Ooof!” noise as the person trying to enter encountered the desk. I yelled out I was trying a new layout in the room. Felice’s voice came wafting through saying something too quickly in French for me to catch but which may have been, “Quelle connerie!”

Laura slipped her knickers back on and I stuffed mine into my handbag and then attempted to shift the desk round to the side wall allowing the door to open. Laura started giggling and said, “That’s where we put it the first time!”

Felice bounced into the room and saw the chairs stacked and the bookcase twisted round and I think she fell for the idea that I was attempting to gain more space in a 9’ x 7’ room. I pretended that I was fed up with the whole idea and that we should put it all back the way it was before we started. Feli helped and within a few minutes the room was back how it had been, and a bit more dusty, than before. She plopped herself down on to one of the unstacked stacking chairs and told me she had come to see if I was ready for eleven o’clock. I waved my folder at her and my memory stick and told her that I would bloody hope so with only a couple of hours to go. She smiled in that smug, gallic way of hers which is either charming or as annoying as hell depending on your mood, and told me that she wasn’t as organised as all that.

Laura gave me a swift peck on the cheek and whispered, “I need an orgasm…” before she left for her tutorial. Feli gave me the documents she was carrying and we poured over the copies of last week’s translations from the casket. We got so engrossed in dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s it rolled round to 10.40 before I knew it. My phone alarm reminded me and I wandered off in the direction of the room I was using.

Once again the butterflies disappeared as soon as I started talking. The students seemed attentive and they laughed in the places I hoped they would and a couple of times I hadn’t expected, which was a bit disconcerting. None of them fell asleep, or sneaked out when I wasn’t looking. The Q & A was as lively as before. I do get asked some odd questions though; which seem to have no relevance whatsoever to the topic of the lecture. Perhaps it is a kind of undergraduate game played against the tutors without their knowledge or comprehension. We used to do something similar when I was an undergrad. Perhaps I am making them seem smarter than they are?

At lunch Laura reappeared with a couple of sandwiches and a selection of crisps. I flicked my door sign to ‘out’. Locking the door, we resumed our intimacy where we had been interrupted by our mad French woman friend. After the owed orgasms were duly delivered I made a pot of tea, unlocked the door and we scoffed our lunch. We don’t usually do this at work, it was a deliciously different change to our routine.

Triple X and Why this afternoon was more of the same really. (No, not having sex with Laura.) I had a search for case law to do and was helped by Sue for most of the afternoon. Mrs B was out somewhere which is quite unusual. Laura admonished me as she could tell I was still thinking about playing my trick on Tony.

 Our meal tonight was a delicious and huge toad in the hole with sausages from the butcher at Ecclesfield whom we use for a lot of our meats.

Sally and Jenny-Leigh were on time for their lessons and even they were impressed by our description of the Brit. Mu. exhibition. I think our straw poll of reactions has proved it wasn’t being a mathematician which made Trevor such a boring old fart about the Mummies it was his gender. Sally thought it was a hoot that we found his reaction such an enigma. She left us with a delicate bombshell of an idea planted in our brains, “You do know that he fancies both of you so much? It drives him mad that you are gay and he has no chance at all.” Well, thanks a lot Sally!

Rubens nudes and Mummy CATs.

Friday 30^th January

This has proved a very busy but extremely enjoyable weekend. I am surprised we are still standing after all the stuff we have done in these last three days, to be honest.

In the morning we did the usual routine of dog walking, swimming, breakfast and then work. Friday is our second full day of the week at Uni, it isn’t split between University and XXX & Y Solicitors. We seem to get not much done on Friday afternoon though! Maybe that is typical for every workplace’s Friday afternoon. I seem to remember a phrase about dodgy workmanship being called a ‘Friday Afternoon Job’ or have I just imagined that?

We saw the Regent’s Park Theatre’s production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the Lyceum. It was very good, especially Scout, Jem and Dill. In fact the children outshone the adults to some extent. I think they brought an emotional truth to the story which they could have lost and, of course, it reflects the way the novel is written too. The fact it is a novel was sort of reinforced by the cast reading from the book as they walked up to the stage, where Scout was swinging on the solitary tree on a car tyre. The girl playing Scout was just brilliant, although it wasn’t clear in the programme notes which of the girls it was playing her on the Friday night! She was me, when I was Scout, when I first read the book, if you see what I mean? The reading from the book helped narrative flow really well, especially as they read their extract and then stepped straight into the action as another character took over the reading. The most surprising element was the guitar player and the songs. This was an inspired idea and one which I thought worked really well. Laura did whisper “Why aren’t they a sort of bluesy American type song?” Which I thought was quite a salient point. Maybe there was a specific reason but I couldn’t see why. It didn’t affect the story telling in a way that, say, Death of a Salesman in English Accents may have done!

I imagine the horrible Bob Ewing character hit home quite well in our current climate of tabloid press immigrant bashing. I hope the Daily Mail reviewer saw it and passed on the details to their editor. Not that it will change the paper’s xenophobic, racist, anti-immigrant stance one jot. I suppose the anti-racist message is sort of wasted on the typical UK theatre audience, I would like to think anyone enlightened enough to visit a theatre for their entertainment would never be so narrow-minded and bigoted. [Do I need a ladder to get out of my ivory tower?]

I thought the theatre didn’t seem as full as it has been for some of the previous productions on here. Maybe, the audience in Sheffield remember having to do TKaM for their A Level English Lit. set text and wanted to avoid it. I think I may have just described the population as being far more intelligent than they actually are. LOL. I bet fewer than 2% of the city’s population did A Level English Lit. My Mum later told me that the powers that be moved Mockingbird down to a GCSE text a few years back and I am out of date. (Imagine your 61 year old mother telling you that you’re out of date!)

The power of Harper Lee’s story still is resonant today, especially in the UK, where –as I mentioned earlier- the right wing media and small minded morons in politics are trying to frighten the population with the spectre of Immigration! I am sad to report that there were hardly any Black or Asian faces noticeable in the auditorium. That has to be a worry, really.

Saturday 31^stJanuary.

We forsook our usual swimming activity this morning and went instead to London, by train. We didn’t go straight to St. Pncras though, in order to travel as early as we did (the train left at just after 7am) we had to ride across to Doncaster first, on a rickety old rattle bag of a train, where even first class was pretty tacky. At Doncaster we caught a sleek and silent East Coast Trains machine which whisked us down to London in pampered comfort.

We booked the train tickets way back in November, on a deal which got us a First Class return for £30 each! Included with the ticket was a full English breakfast on the way down and full dinner on the way back (with wine), hence the pampered comfort comment. The first class section was excellent and so less crowded than the standard class sections we had to walk past to get to our bit of the train. They were also really comfortable, a bit like the difference between economy and business on our flights to Australia.

Why were we travelling? Well, we’d booked to see the ‘Rubens and his Influence’ exhibition at the Royal Academy and in the afternoon we had tickets for the ‘Ancient Lives: New Discoveries’ exhibition at the British Museum. The Rubens tickets were for 10am just as the RA opened.

 We arrived at King’s Cross at 9.30 and hopped on a 91 bus to Trafalgar Square, Oyster Cards are a great idea. I walked the Lollster through Admiralty Arch and along the Mall, cutting through, past Eddie on his horse {King Edward VII, to the hoi polloi}, to Piccadilly by the side of the Criterion Theatre and Eros. We rolled up at the Royal Academy just as the door person unlocked the entrance.  Being some of the first in we had first dibs at the cloakroom so we could dump all our gear. We’d come dressed for the Arctic as it was really cold when we left Sheffield and equally as cold in the Smoke. We took 2 and a quarter hours to view all the pictures in the exhibition. There were probably about 70 altogether, but (as the exhibition title suggests) not all by Peter Paul himself.

The revelation was how good a portrait painter Joshua Reynolds was. I have only seen horrible, ‘hack work’ portraits of his, but some we saw were vibrant and full of life. The Rubens’ Violence section was particularly horrible, especially in the antiquated way he portrayed animals as objects to be killed. The Tiger Hunt was a spectacularly upsetting picture which showed how barbaric our ancestors were. The pictures themselves were glorious but the barbarism portrayed offended these 21^st century sensibilities. What was interesting was that PP had not seen a tiger in the flesh. He’d seen lions and tiger skins and so merged the two together.

The nudes were disappointing really. I suppose there is a prurient pleasure to be had by some people looking at paintings of naked women being pawed at and manhandled but I am not one of them. Plus the shapes of the women, to my modern eyes, were rather podgy to say the least. If I look like any of the models when I am naked then you have my permission to shoot me! Naughty Laura wondered how much semen must be mixed in with oil paint, fired onto his works by PP as he painted them. I thought that a gross thought and one I didn’t wish to think about. Gross but funny!

My favourite picture in the entire exhibition was “Self Portrait with Straw Hat” by Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun. (Google it). It was beautiful. Not only was Elisabeth Louise beautiful but the picture had a lightness and delicacy which made it intimate and compelling at the same time. I said this out loud to Laura and Loll whispered that she was annoyed that I would fancy another woman; especially one who had been dead for over a century! She was joking – I think. (No, really, I know she was.)

After we had “Rubensed out” we had an attempt to turn our figures in Rubens’ women by ordering a huge cake each in Caffe Concerto just round the corner from the RA. In order to retain our sylph like physiques (ROFL) we decided to walk to the Brit. Mu., where we ate our sandwiches under the columns outside - just as it started raining.

The exhibition here is definitely the best one I have ever been to. I have been to lots. It beats Pete Marsh (Lindow Man). It knocked the King Tut one into a cocked hat. It was just amazing. I know I am guilty of overusing superlatives but here it is totally justified. What makes it so special, and the best one I have ever been to, is the use of 21^st century technology on the exhibits. It’s called Ancient Lives: New Discoveries.

The Ancient Lives are 8 mummies they have taken from the whole spectrum of Egyptian mummification up to the 8^th Century AD. They have passed them through CAT scanners and the results are displayed there to see (and interact with). If the Rubens was good, this is BRILLIANT. I defy anyone to go and no be totally overwhelmed by its sheer brilliance. The CAT scan images are breath-taking. There was one of an eight year old girl whose hair was still preserved inside the wrappings and you could make out each individual strand of her long hair. It is gob-smacking. We were inside this exhibit alone for almost two hours as well.

Even better than this, the CAT scans revealed objects wrapped up with the mummies, amulets, talismans etc, Using 3D printing they were able to reproduce, exactly, what the items were like. I thought that was astounding. There was one mummy where the brain removing tool had snapped off, leaving a large fragment of it inside the mummy’s skull. They had replicated that using the 3D printer too! This is a prime example of who to set up an exhibit and use modern technology to aid our understanding of the exhibit. I was so jealous of the people who have worked on this. They must have been beside themselves with the results and then with the means to produce such a stunning display. Is it any wonder I am a historian when history can be made so accessible to everyone?

Afterwards, we took a quick walk, east, along Great Russell Street and jumped on a 59 bus back to King’s Cross. There, we were in time for the 4.33 train back up to Sunny Sheffield (via Doncaster, again). Our meal was pork chops and vegetables, plus we had a bottle of wine with it. The steward gave us the entire bottle of white as we were the only ones having the pork. He may have been dazzled by two tousled blondes full of excitement and animation about their day, perhaps.

Callie was overjoyed at our return after a day spent with Julie (in the morning) and in her palace in the afternoon and early evening. We both took her for her final walk of the day but quite early (10pm) we were just so whacked. Oh, the Muntjac was still there, to where I’d moved it.

Sunday 1^st Feb

I caught Steve this morning coming back from a shorter walk with Callie and after describing, in great detail, our London trip I mentioned the Muntjac. He thought it wasn’t an offence to remove road kill, if you aren’t the one who has killed it. To that end we put Callie indoors and the two of us zoomed off in his Disco (this is an old Y reg vehicle which is immaculate in the passenger space and a bombsite behind the dog guard) to pick up the deer. At the bench by the grit bin the poor creature was still there. It was probably frozen as well, it still being so cold. Steve phoned his mate and they had a brief and animated conversation about the butchering and legalities. Steve started to sound sceptical. I asked what the matter was and it turned out the friend wanted 50% for him and 25% for each of us. I snatched the phone from Steve and told him there was no way we were agreeing to that and unless he would do a proper three way split we’d leave it where it was for carrion to pick it clean.

I had a “Who the hell are you? You’re not Anne!” I explained who I was, how I’d found the deer and how if he wasn’t prepared to dived it evenly we had no deal. To my surprise he agreed. He lived in Grenoside, so we dumped the dead little deer into the Disco and whizzed up Jaw Bone Hill. The guy was a chap I have seen when I have been picking up and he recognised me, too. That sort of made it easier to agree to the split. We told him he could keep all the offal for his dogs which seemed to seal the deal. He’ll have it already by Tuesday. Rah rah rah.

Back home Mum had called and asked if we fancied lunch. As we were planning a walk, I called her back and invited her to go with us.

When she arrived we drove to Bradfield in my car and found a space on the road to the church, obviously the Sunday Service hadn’t started. We walked the glorious circuit round Agden Reservoir. It takes us under Rocher Edge, past the derelict farm buildings (a lotto win project if ever there was one!) across the bilberry fields of Agden Side Road and dropping steeply through the plantation to the dam itself. I was able to stop Callie from going into the water – she loves a swim – as it was so cold. We climbed past the site of the wasps’ nest Callie disturbed a few summers ago and which resulted in my shorts clad legs being stung almost to death. At the church the service was well underway and the lane in which we’d parked was blocked solid. We booked a table for lunch at the Old Horns pub.

Once we sat down Mum wanted to tell us about this new man she had dated. He is called Tony and he is a cabinet maker. He sounds very nice. He is 65 and, according to Mum, has the physique of a younger man. Mmmm…. It’s about time Mum found herself a new love interest. He lives in Dore, which is down the hill from Mum’s village. He’s being doing some work in her kitchen and they naturally got chatting. She kept him supplied with cups of tea and they just hit it off. He asked her for a meal, which is where they were a week ago on Saturday, just like I predicted. I should become a psychic! We will meet him next Saturday at the English Chamber Orchestra concert at the City Hall. Mum was able to get him a ticket. This could prove interesting. She has dated some drongos, weirdos and pervs in her time (I do not include my father in those descriptions BTW).

After lunch we drove back home and Mum took off for Holmesfield straight away. We spent a while trying to picture what this Tony chap will be like. I know it is a pointless exercise, but it was fun.

I spent a good hour or more Skyping Dad and Louisa. I am amazed at how much I have missed him during his sojourn to the antipodes. I am looking forward to being there in a fortnight. I explained about the ballet outing to Newcastle and he said that it was typical of me to get myself involved like that. Louisa is huge. She isn’t actually due until March (they lied about the dates) but she looked as if she would pod any minute. Maybe that is just the screen adding pounds to her.

She gets a huge number of brownie points for describing Annabelle as a mini version of me! Rah, rah, rah. She also said if she hadn’t known Suze was my sister, if they had met by chance she would never have guessed. We do look and act very differently, I suppose. She is a much more grounded and down to earth, pragmatic type whilst (according to Dad) I have always been away with the fairies! Is that a compliment or not?

Callie, despite her exertions this morning was keen as anything for her last walk, so I took her on the Hill Top Wood circuit. She spent an age at the bench where the muntjac had been. She was really reluctant to leave it alone. That is totally unlike her. Usually she is very obedient. When I got back, I couldn’t find Laura at first. She was fast asleep in the boingy Ikea chair in the bedroom. She was in her dressing gown but dead to the world. When I shook her shoulder to wake her she stirred with the words, “I was just about to clean that…” very weird.

It’s a good job next week is fairly quiet, just our students until we meet Mum’s beau. I am surprised at how tiring the weekend has been.