Friday 23rd Jan.
Owing to the inclement weather we decided to buy a week’s
‘megarider’ ticket for the Tram and for £4 extra I got parking for the week
too! This has proved a great idea as we have been able to avoid the tedium of
skidding and crashed vehicles; slushy footpaths and wet boots. Today was a case
in point, we used it twice. Once for getting to Uni and back [after our dog
walk, swimming and breakfast etc] and once for getting to the City Hall for the
first Halle concert of 2015.
The day at Uni was as per usual for me. Laura has been
given some contacts for positions after graduation [her second lot, she was
given some at the start of the first semester as well] which she is going to
contact, as a back-up, for if her part time MA falls through. She spent an age
looking at each company on the interweb, using my library cubicle for the task.
If the university authorities are seriously monitoring our internet usage I
could get a few interrogatory questions about why I was looking at jobs in the
financial sector, instead of focusing on things historical this morning. Is big
brother watching us? There has been a lot of fuss recently (on campus) about
software which flags up what the ‘powers that be’ deem as suspicious web
activity. There is a huge number of staff employed by the Uni and the vast
majority have been totally against any kind of restrictions being imposed upon
them. Quite right too.
Back to the Halle. The programme tonight was just two
items: the Schumann Piano Concerto and Elgar’s 2nd Symphony. Both
veritable crowd pleasers and both delivered their pleasing effect very well. I
have three versions of the Schumann and this version was as good as any of the
three. The soloist, Martin Stadfeld, seemed to have a very deft touch but with
expression, drama and exuberance when the piece needs it. It didn’t come close
to beating my favourite version, which is an ancient recording my Moura Lympany
(coupled with the Greig, naturally) where she plays with an empathy that
Stadfeld seemed to sacrifice for technical brilliance.
The Elgar belies his bellicose reputation being almost
Mahler like in places. He did say he had written his soul into the music, when
discussing it after its first performance in 1911 and you can see what he
meant. Yes, it has the usual Elgar tricks of repetition and tunefulness but it
also sways and sighs and meanders, especially in the slow 2nd
movement - which some people have taken as a lament for Edward VII. (Maybe it
was, although he began writing it in 1903 after the death of a friend, which
sort of belies the Royal Connection.) It is a good piece but probably not the
one to introduce Elgar to a novice listener. Luckily I had forearmed Laura with
all five P & C Marches, Plus Cockaigne Overture and Enigma Variations, so
she was ready for the piece.
We whizzed back home after the concert on the Tram again
and settled for a snug evening avoiding the nastiness outside. Callie’s final
walk was another romp around the back field rather than anything more demanding,
in deference to the weather.
Saturday 24th Jan.
No more white stuff has fallen from the sky but plenty of
it is still lying about on the ground and lots of the side roads we passed on
our drive to the pool still look like death traps for the unwary or novice
motorist. Laura, my novice motorist, is not happy at driving in this foul
weather and I don’t blame her. Unless you have had training or experience then
it is better to forget all about it. That is probably why there have been so
many minor collisions across the city – people are either over confident in
their abilities or totally inexperienced. Even the farmers’ bloody milk wagon
crashed in Mum’s village on Wednesday morning! Now there you’d have thought
that the driver might have had more nonce about driving in terrible conditions,
being out at all hours and in all weathers collecting milk from the dwindling
number of dairy farms around but no! He
crashed.
100 lengths achieved this morning, so we celebrated with
drinking chocolate all round from the vending machine and a longer gossip with
Sarah (who was the all-round person) about the snow and stupid driving. I was
castigated for doing handbrake turns on the car park. (I did this the other
morning.) I suppose, to be honest, I did deserve it. I was just setting a bad
example. This led her to ask if I was a tomboy when growing up?
Laura supplied the embarrassing answer that, yes I was.
She has seen the undeniable photographic evidence. She launched into finely
detailed descriptions of me doing ‘un-girly’ things she had gleaned from
viewing both Mum’s, Gran’s and Susannah’s photo albums. For some reason Dad’s
pictures of me are always of me living out his fantasy of me being his little
princess. Perhaps he has a selective memory or he wasn’t in a position to take
pictures of me doing many un-girly things as he’d be the one encouraging me and
leading me on, and therefore unable to use his camera. He has a couple of
pictures of me on his desk at work [which I think is quite sweet of him], one
in a flouncy, purple party dress looking defiantly at the photographer as
though I am about to walk across and rip his head from his torso and one on a
beach in the Kimberley area, Western Australia, holding a wriggling fish we had
rescued from a lagoon and were trying to put back into the sea. (I suppose that
could be considered tomboyish, really.)
Back home we had a Skypeathon with Mum, then Suze, then
Phil. Dad and Louisa had set off safely and were probably over Europe as we
spoke. I phoned Simon to make sure he was collecting Dad and after one of his
typically un-hilarious jokes (pretending to have forgotten all about it) he
assured me he was primed and ready to go; planning on getting to Glasgow at
plane touching down time. I thought this might be cutting it a bit fine, but I
kept schtum. Mum told me she had e-mailed some pictures of the snow in
Holmesfield on Wednesday, she has sent them to an account I hardly ever use, no
wonder I hadn’t found them.
I spent the rest of the morning and first part of the
arvo on two major activities: viz – making a huge tureen of vegetable soup.
This is designed to be cooked slowly all day today, in the oven, and then left
as a simmer pot on the cooker top for an extra hot course during the week. It
contains as many different ingredients as we had in the fridge and pantry.
(Including a tin of black-eyed beans that neither of us can remember buying!)
If we crank up the stove in the lounge it can sit on that all day.
The second part was giving the house a mega clean. We had
been away for over a month and there were dust piles and cobwebs (OK, maybe
microscopic ones, but I knew they were there!) all over the house. So I spent
the time getting it so clean it glowed. There is something really satisfying
about having a spotless home. Laura kept having to move out of the way as I
worked my way through the rooms. When I had finished I had another shower,
which she said was mad, as I had just cleaned the bathroom, but how could I
shower before?
Tonight’s concert was at the Crucible but was Ensemble
360, a locally based, ad hoc collection of musicians (we have seen them several
times before, at different venues across the city) so we knew there’d be no
trouble with them getting to the venue. We used the tram’s ‘megarider’ tickets
so we arrived wrapped up like Eskimos from Nanook of the North! Good job
there’s a cloakroom service at the theatre.
Instead of our usual glasses of wine we went for a pot of
tea as our pre-performance drink, much to the surprise of Mrs B who arrived
just as we had started sipping. I had ordered interval wine so that was OK,
then.
If last night’s Halle was a crowd pleaser of a
performance, tonight’s was even more so:
MOZART Don Giovanni Overture
ADÈS Catch for piano, violin, clarinet and piano
STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders! Franz
Hasenhorl arrangement
RAVEL Tzigane for violin and piano
JS BACH Andante from Viola de Gamba Sonata in D BWV1028
for double bass and piano
LIGETI Musica ricercata/Six Bagatelles for piano and wind
quintet
SMETANA The Bartered Bride Overture
See what I mean?
Mrs Briggs loved the Strauss. This pared down arrangement
is not one you usually hear and I thought it was a bit of a treat too. I am
always amazed by this lot, [Ensemble 360, that is] by how so few musicians can
manage to produce such a full sound. They are a wonderful little well-kept
Sheffield secret, that’s for sure.
In the collection for what you wanted to pay, we both put
in £15 which is what we have paid to see E360 at both the Firth Hall and
Montgomery Hall. Mrs Briggs has never been to an event like this before, though
I have experienced it in Norwich, Cambridge and London – usually accompanied by
mother.
Mum didn’t come to the event tonight, she did have an
alternative arrangement scheduled but she wouldn’t tell me what it was when I
questioned her again this morning. I bet it is man related. She goes all clam
like when I get too nosy about her putative relationships. If it is man
related, then good for her, say I. Why should she be single when she doesn’t
have to be?
Dad found another woman in whom to hide his sausage
almost as soon as the divorce papers’ ink was dry. I remember a steady
succession of thoroughly unsuitable girlfriends being paraded out for my
inspection as a teenage girl. You can probably tell I wasn’t impressed by any
of them. Louisa is different, though. For a start she is a fair bit older than
his previous ‘women’ and he did end up marrying her! She never tried to be the
‘all girls together’ bit with me when we met. She also gives Dad a good earful
from time to time if he is being pompous, pretentious or just a prat. [In that
she is a bit like Mum used to be.] He can be the three ‘P’s quite often if you
let him get away with it.
We had yet another tram journey back to Middlewood after
the concert and a second evening of romping in the back field for Callie.
Actually, I think she just enjoys being in the snow. To watch her charging
around and sending up showers of the stuff make you think it’s a puppy in the
field not a seven year old dog! This time I put my wellies on and threw
snowballs for her to catch or chase – this is quite tricky in the dark, with
only a torch for your light source, but the silly girl simply loved it. If a
dog can look disappointed, I am sure that Callie did when we came back in.
Anthropomorphic of me I know, but she does behave in a human way from time to
time.
Sunday 25th Jan.
I am pretty sure we had no snow overnight, or at least
our little village didn’t. The weather was cold, clear and crisp this morning,
so Callie was rewarded for her patience in only going in the back field for her
final walk by a long stroll up the lane to Hill Top Woods and back through
Onesacre. The Onesacre road seemed to have been gritted too this morning so
after a bacon butty breakfast, courtesy of the blonde bombshell who shares my
bed, we decided to drive over the hill to High Bradfield and walk the Agden
Reservoir Circuit. We were getting our gear together when Mum phoned and asked
us what our plans were for the day. We explained about the walk round Agden and
she asked if we wouldn’t mind waiting and she would join us.
I trumped the idea by saying if she made it to ours by
about 10.30 we’d arrive back at Bradfield in time for Sunday lunch at the Old
Horns. She was here by 10.15. The roads
in the city were pretty clear and there was hardly any traffic at all. We piled
into our car so as not to mess up Mum’s posh Audi (A3) and headed gingerly up
the hill and down into Bradfield Village. Several people must have had the same
idea as there were cars parked everywhere but we found a convenient space on
the road to the church.
The route actually takes us through the church yard
(there was a service on, you could hear the singing) and then out down the
slope of the old Motte & Bailey castle (it is so overgrown, if you didn’t
know it was there, you’d never recognise it). Passing out of the woods you walk
under the shadow of Rocher Edge [although this is a metaphorical shadow, as the
edge is to the north of the footpath]. Along here you walk through a ruined
farmhouse and buildings. These have been left to decay for ages, according to
Steve in the village. If I had a huge lotto win, I would buy them up and
rebuild on the site. It would be a wonderful place for a house; sheltered by
Rocher Edge to the North with views all the way across to Stanage Edge in the
southern distance. I am sure you could see Stanage Pole on the horizon, but
Loll said I was imagining it.
It would take a fortune to rebuild and to make the
driveway passable (it’s half a mile of undulating track at the moment). I can
but dream, can’t I? At the end of the track we cross two roads in what is one
of the best bilberrying spots in South Yorkshire (or is it North Derbyshire
here?) The path from Agden Side Road goes roughly flat along the edge of the
hillside until it reaches the wood (some of which has been felled). There is a
bench halfway along where Loll and I have sat and snogged in the summer. We
didn’t today, though, and not just because Mum was with us; it was bloody cold
and windy!
The paths falls away following the wood edge down to the
brook which feed the reservoir. Here you have a choice, you can follow the
brook and end up on the bottom of the lane you crossed earlier or you can walk
over the footbridge and join the road that ends up in Low Bradfield. We did the
former as this is the nicer route, allowing you to walk right by the water’s
side for quite a way. It was quite a struggle to keep Callie out of the
reservoir, but she did as she was told and stayed dry. By the dam wall there is
a steepish footpath opposite which leads straight back up the hill to Bradfield
Churchyard. It was on this path a few years ago Callie disturbed a wasps nest
and I got stung to death [almost]. It was July, I was in my shorts, and my legs
became an easy target for the wasps. I was crying my eyes out when I arrived at
the Old Horns. The barman there gave me some vinegar to put on the swellings. I
must have smelled dreadful but the vinegar did the trick. There were no wasps
today, thank goodness. Actually, thank Bradfield Council because I rang their
pest control department and they came and moved the nest to a place that wasn’t
so public. (Or that’s what they told me.)
From the bench on the hillside I had phoned the pub to
see if I needed to book for lunch. The girl who answered said I would need to
but I did anyway. We arrived to a fairly full pub and it suddenly seemed a good
idea to have phoned ahead. An unexpected walking party had turned up so without
our booked table we’d have been unable to dine. Phew!
I am psychic. Mum was out with a man last night. He is
called Tony and he is a cabinet maker/joiner. He has been doing a small job at
Mum’s house and he asked her out for a meal. Pretty terrible weather to go out
but he lives in Dore, which is not too far from Holmesfield so they went to a
local hostelry in Grindleford for a meal. She thinks they hit it off fairly
well.
He is divorced and has two children, one of each, who are
both in their late thirties or early forties. He is 65 and reasonably slim and
fit looking (that is physically fit, not Phwoar type fit). They had an
enjoyable night and he claims to like some of the things Mum likes, although I
bet he isn’t all that keen on Feminist Literature!
To see how really he likes Classical Music she has asked
him if he’d like to come to the City Hall on Feb 7th, we are seeing
the English Chamber Orchestra. He agreed. So that will be my first opportunity
to inspect the goods, as it were. Mum has expressly forbidden me to ask him if
he likes string quartets. If the answer is yes, I follow up with “What do you
think about the Haydn Quartets?” (Note the Capital letters.) Usually, if they
are bluffing, they will blather on about the Emperor Quartet or something,
completely missing the point. The Haydn Quartets are by Mozart! I told Mum it
is a perfectly respectable question but she doesn’t want him being caught in a
lie so soon.
After lunch, Mum whizzed off back to Holmesfield rather
than stopping at ours for a cuppa and a bun. I joked that she was going to see
about some joining she needed doing, and Laura said she couldn’t imagine what
it would be like having sex in our sixties. I said it would probably be similar
but with more wrinkles.
We decided to remind ourselves what unwrinkled sex was
like for quite a while. Will she still love me when my tits have gone saggy and
my belly is all wrinkles? (You could ask the same question in reverse. It is a
frightening thought and one which I am not going to dwell on again. The very
thought gives me the shudders!)
I can say this with absolute certainty; a tight, toned
and slender body is absolutely beautiful. Especially when she shares it with
me!
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