"I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" LIVE.

Friday 6^th March

What a week. It has been quite a roller coaster of emotion and tiring events. My yesterday’s lecture was good, according to the students who spoke to me this morning. Dad is still knackered and I assume Louisa is too, however, Dad’s all-encompassing egotism didn’t tell me about Louisa but about himself. I had to ask about Louisa before she was mentioned! Chloe was described again and again and is still wonderful. My brother has been more ingratiating and less obnoxious, which is a revelation; I think he may have been nobbled by someone – probably by Jane. She is the person who humanises my brother so many times. Mum has veered from being initially very antagonistic when the pregnancy was announced to much more conciliatory now that Chloe is here – she phoned Louisa on one of the days that Dad was at work (Wednesday I think) and had a really long chat with her, which has probably brought about the Damascene conversion. She was even happy for me to be ‘the child’s’ godmother when we spoke today.

I am not sure exactly why Mum has been so ‘anti’ really, as Louisa wasn’t a contributory factor in their divorce, she and Dad met years later. It could be the fact they have had a child together which has knocked Mum’s equilibrium into the long grass! However, she is fine and now and raring to head down to Nottingham tomorrow to see I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue on tour.

Loll and I bit the bullet after work and, with Felice in tow, went to Dominic’s for a meal. This was the first time we’ve been this year. He treated us like long lost family members and refused to accept our order but told us what he would cook for our meal instead. I suppose he has got to know us quite well during the time Laura worked there. I definitely would not have chosen squid as my main course but it was absolutely delicious, tender and succulent and nothing like the horrible squid I had in Sicily once, which put me off for life! He made it with tagliatelle and a rich creamy sauce and it just blew me away. We went through two bottle of delicious Pinot Grigio with the main and then a bottle of Marsala with the dessert which, of course, was Zabaglione. Yummy in our Tummy.

Dom has only met Felice once or twice and of course her Gallic charms worked their spell on him, so much so that we were given a free liqueur coffee afterwards, which I had to refuse as I hate coffee. (I don’t like the taste.) Dom said I could choose a liqueur by itself instead and had a Kummel. We wandered up the hill to my house very, very slowly.

Felice was kipping over and persuaded us that we needed a night cap after I had let Callie out in to the back field for her final stroll of the day. If a dog can do disgruntled Callie did when she realised she wasn’t going for a proper walk. Our night cap ended up being a bottle of Hilmar’s Lieblich Dornfelder which was sublime. (It always is.)

Felice was definitely over the limit and got very lovey dovey with both of us, so much so that I had a terrible thought that she might try and join us in our bed for a three way lesbian orgy. She didn’t. She actually walked into the second bedroom, shouted, “Goodnight!” And just fell on to the bed. Next morning I found her lying there, fully clothed, on top of the bed fast asleep. Well – I didn’t, Callie did, as Feli hadn’t closed the door properly and Callie wandered in to see who was invading her space!

Saturday 7^th March.

After walking the aforementioned woofie, my girl and I drove down to the pool and swam our 100 lengths despite being a little fragile. We sat in the Jacuzzi afterwards as a special treat and then headed back to see if the girl from D’Arcachon had roused herself from her slumbers. She hadn’t.

She put in a bleary eyed and shell shocked appearance at about 10 am, when I began to hoover the lounge carpet after giving everywhere a quick dust through. The noise of the Dyson roused her from her sleep and she was ravenous and thirsty. Luckily for her I do have a jar of instant coffee on the shelf and she had two mugs before she was able to embark on a brunch (well, it was way too late for breakfast). She was able to drive herself back to Crosspool and home after she had downed a bacon and egg buttie. Laura still thinks that she is amusing and asked what we would have done if she’d got into bed with us. I said we should have had sex with her and scared her silly because she is as much a lesbian as I am an astronaut. {Every person she has slept with since I have known her has been the owner of a penis!}

Mum came round at about 4pm and we had an early meal and then hit the motorway for our drive down to Nottingham. I know this route quite well, as I used the Ikea on the junction for Nottingham when I was furnishing my little house in 2011. I must have been there about seven times in two months to collect stuff.

When we went into the auditorium for I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue we found there were kazoos for each of us, which was quite a surprise. We also found pretty quickly that Tony Hawks was standing in for an unwell Graham Garden, which was a major pity as GG is worth ten TH’s in my comedic Top Trumps.

We had a warm up from the producer and a then were off. There was a very smutty and innuendo ridden explanation about why Samantha wasn’t present and we were show the amazing laser score board.

It lasted quite a lot longer than we were expecting and Jack Dee was marvellous as the compare. It was also quite a considerable amount ruder than it is on the radio. They explained that is just as rude on the radio but they do re-takes and edit it all out! They played Mornington Crescent; preceeded by a hilarious explanation of tonight’s variant being played because of our location. My favourite round, the Alternative Definitions, was included and Laura found this a hoot, because I do it all the time at home.

We had to join in with our kazoos on the last round which was a musical one and we merrily kazooed away to “We’ll meet again” which we all agreed was a brilliant way to end the show. Mum was overwhelmed by seeing the thing being done in the flesh as she has been a listener for as long as she can remember. She also reminisced (in the bar) about something called “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” which promoted a long and animated conversation with a couple who had travelled up from Grantham to see the show. This was a sort of radio version of Monty Python type sketches which has passed me by entirely. The Grantham couple, Sandy and Howard, told me there are tapes (I assume they meant CDs) available of some of the shows. I will look them out.

Mum stayed over in the same room that Felice used last night although she didn’t just collapse on the bed after having threatened to join us for a night of hot sex! Phew. {Yes, I changed the bedding, what kind of host do you think I am?}

Sunday March 8^th.

Mum wandered off before we got busy Skyping with Dad this morning. He has applied for his allotted Paternity leave which will take him right up to the spring break. When they restart in April he and Louisa and Chloe are going to spend the week days together in the flat in Lancaster and just go back to Tallentire for the weekends. This seems a much more sensible idea that 180 miles a day round trip, by car!

Jane called and asked if we were going to buy new dresses for the christening. I said I hadn’t thought about it but she said that Angela had been pestering her so they were thinking of coming down to Meadow Hell next weekend and did we want to join them in a dress hunt? I agreed, after a swift consultation with my slimmer, sexier, younger partner.

I couldn’t help wondering if this was Jane’s way at getting back at Phil for being such a pillock about Laura and me being Godparents. Is that me being cynical? I hope not. We arranged that they’d arrive after breakfast and then we’d go into Meadow Hell on the tram to avoid traffic. If there was nothing in MH which took our fancy we could always try several clothes shops in the town centre. We have a concert on the Saturday evening where Nicola Benedetti will be playing so I could christen my new dress before the christening, if you see what I mean?

As the weather was nicer than we could have hoped for we decided head out into the Peak and do some bouldering at Alport Castles. This would be a secondary activity as we planned on parking up at the plantation by the foot of Derwent Dam wall and walking over the top to Alport. So the walk would be the primary focus with some bouldering thrown in for good measure. I packed a rucksack with some climbing gear and Laura packed our snap.

The plantation car park was packed by the time we arrived but we managed to squeeze into a space and then set out following the side of Derwent Reservoir until we reached Ouzelden Clough and just yomped up the valley side until we arrived at Alport. This is my favourite way of getting here, unlike a couple of years ago when we did the route from Crookhill Farm and were charged by a herd of cows which cause mild panic among the Scampi Tails who walked with us. That route takes forever really. The Ouzelden Clough route has the benefit of reaching the target directly and I am all for that.

Another benefit of Alport Castles is the plateau section which has a liberal sprinkling of depressions across its surface. I knew Laura had packed a ground sheet in the rucksack and the plan was to find a hollow, and have sex in there. The hollows are not that deep and grass lined but the best thing about them is they are sheltered from most of the weather. She was able to lay on the ground sheet exposed to the March sunshine whilst I attacked her exposed pudenda with my mouth. She returned the favour once she had recovered. It is the excitement of possibly being discovered which makes it so much more interesting. At one point while she was eating me we heard voices getting closer but they then faded away again, Laura hissed, “Stop moaning so loudly.” I replied though clenched teeth, “I can’t help it, you are driving me wild.”

Once our blood pressure had returned to normal and our heart rates down into double figures again we discovered that, although the day was gloriously sunny, the temperature made climbing a bit risky. It was just too cold for our fingers to work properly. As if to reinforce this Laura somehow managed to wedge her wrist in between two millstone grit slabs and come away with her hand dripping blood. She hadn’t noticed it at first but I could see the redness gushing out from between her finger and thumb. When she did spot it the colour drained from her face and I thought she was going to faint. I rummaged in my sack for a packet of tissues which she caught in her right hand (it was her left that was bleeding). I think the action of catching stopped her succumbing to a faint.

I found my climbing towel and wrapped it round her thumb, which was where the cut was. It slowed the bleeding but didn’t stop it. We packed up our stuff and headed over the ridge back down to Ouzelden. At the brook we dunked Laura’s hand in the water until the bleeding stopped – this took quite a while and once the flow had ceased we could see the cut was quite long and relatively deep. The flap of skin was sliced laterally and hanging off her thumb like a cut of ham from a bone but she could push it back in place and hold it there with her wad of tissues.

We whizzed down the Clough and I drove as quickly as possible to the Northern General were we had a major wait to be seen (about two and a half hours). The nurse dressed the cut and agreed it needed stitches. The doctor (I assumed) arrived and put eight along the length of the cut. He told her that she could get the stitches removed either at out-patients or at our own GP’s surgery in the village, in about 10 days.

I drove us back home and Loll did the dying swan impression in the passenger seat. As the injury was caused in the rough and dangerous wilds she’d been given a tetanus jab and was more upset about that than her thumb. Apparently it stung like hell.

Back home I treated her like delicate porcelain and she played along like a pro!

She woke me up in the night to complain that her thumb was throbbing, so I went and fetched some ibuprofen to see if it would help. I had the mad recollection that Rick used to wake me in the night and tell me it was throbbing, too. That wasn’t his thumb though, and it didn’t need ibuprofen to put it right again!