Watching the cricket in Scarborough and Culture!

More catching up of backlog.

Friday July 3rd to Sunday July 26th Inclusive.

THE MAJOR EVENT - On Friday July 10th the student webpage at Uni went live with the end of semester results. A certain Miss Laura Thomas, of a distant Parish in Cumbria, who was reading Pure & Applied Mathematics gained a First Class Degree in that aforementioned subject. Why is this important? It means she will be doing a two year, part-time, Master's Degree in Mathematics (or at least a very specific branch of it). It also means she will continue to be part time at XXX & Y solicitors in the city, where I also have my part time job. Laura's hours there will increase to about 20 per week which will also give her a commensurate rise in salary. My hours are still 15 per week depending on my negotiations with the powers that be at Uni in September.

Musical events over the period: The 16 performing the Flight of Angels Choral Pilgrimage 2015 at the Cathedral in Carlisle. Works exclusively by Guerrero and Lobo. Absolutely sublime.

Things theatrical:

The Mousetrap at the Lyceum, Sheffield. I will not reveal the twist ending even though you can find it out on line. I had already seen the play, in London, with Mum when I was younger so I already knew and I challenged Laura to spot the culprit. She didn't!

The Woman In Black. This is its spiritual home, with the adaptation and first ever production performed here in the old Stephen Joseph theatre before it moved into the old cinema opposite the railway station. We saw this touring production in Sheffield (also at the Lyceum, as it happens) last year. It is still as scary. Yet again Mum and I saw this in London at the Fortune Theatre when I was about 14. I screamed at that performance, I am ashamed to admit. It scared the beejesus out of the whole school party who went to see it with Mum and I few weeks later, too!

Confusions. Also at the SJT. I had not seen this before and was very impressed and amused. The theatre is putting on a series of shows which are relevant to its 60th anniversary. This was part of that series.

Travel:

We saw the last two shows in Scarborough. We went up on Friday 17th and returned home last Tuesday evening, the 21st. Our real reason for the trip was to watch Yorkshire County Cricket Club's four day match at North Marine Road. They played Worcestershire and won! We saw the first three days only, having taken two days leave for the event. It was the first time Laura has been to a four day match. I have taken her to one dayers (usually disappointing form Yorkshire's point of view) and two T20s (extremely disappointing from Yorkshire's point of view). Last year I cam up for two days by myself, whilst Laura was visiting her folks but this year she said she'd like to come and see why I was so entranced by the game.

The fact Yorkshire were in the brown and smelly very early on, but fought back enough to post a total which meant when Worcestershire collapsed and had to follow on meant Laura watched some very enthralling and nail biting cricket. I did a sort of commentary for her on the first day, much to the amusement of the people sat around us. One old guy, who was obviously a bit of a wag, asked if I had ever thought of applying to test match special? Cheeky bugger!

She said she had enjoyed the experience, the proof will be if she agrees to come to another fixture in Scarborough next year. The weather on the whole was good. We didn't get wall to wall sunshine and blue skies but we did have weather conducive to good cricket. We sat in the North stand by the radio commentary box, right high up, which meant we were almost in line with the wicket. We snagged the same spot for each of the three days and by the end of the third day we had made a heap of new friends in the group sat close by, who also sat in the same places for those three days.

The 'wag' had been coming to the Yorkshire matches at Scarborough for years and years. He'd been through some of the 'Festival' Games too and recounted with pleasure how he had watched the West Indian players performing in a Calypso Band during a lunch interval way back in the 1990's. He distinctly remembered Ritchie Richardson playing bass guitar! 

Other points of interest:

Mum looked after Callie during our sojourn to Scarborough and even brought her back to my house and had a meal ready for when we arrived back on Tuesday evening. How good was that?

I bought tickets for the niece and nephew to see the Horrible Histories touring show in Sheffield, I gave them to my brother and wife and he thoroughly enjoyed it too. Maybe there is hope for him yet? I was sad to have missed seeing it but we had a clash of fixtures, as they say. I got two very nice hand made thank you cards from Peter and Angela afterwards which was a lovely surprise - you can guess that wouldn't have been Phil's idea!

Physical side: I haven't counted the number of lengths of the pool we've swum since my last entry, I could work it out but that would be even sadder, wouldn't it? We did some great climbing near Higger Tor again when the rain wasn't beating down on us as though we were getting another Flood to purge the world of the sinners!

Dad and Louisa (and baby Chloé) have headed up the caravan on Arran. We are all set to take over from them on the weekend of August 8th. We will share that weekend together and then Dad and Louisa head home, prior to a trip to Germany to show Chloé off to our rellies in Magdeburg, Saalfeld and Cochem. They are planning on being away three to four weeks. Luckily they have booked a DFDS crossing to Hamburg, which will avoid all the crap that's been happening at Calais for the last few weeks. The dogs are being looked after by Dad's friend Gilbert.

That's about it really. I have signed lots of petitions protesting about the Nasty things the Nasty Party are doing to the country now they have come to power. I have even posted something on Twitter! Steady the buffs, old gal!

Laura and I have indulged our passion with vigour and invention. She refused to make love in the grounds of Scarborough castle last week. Bloody good job, as the safe and secluded location I'd selected was overrun with a Brownie pack minutes after I had tried to inveigle my fingers into her undies! Phew, that was a lucky escape! She made up for her reluctance with interest later that night though. I imagine it would have been quite traumatic for a whole load of under 10 year old girls encountering two women having sex. God knows what it would have done to their little psyches? I know what it would have done to mine! I used to die of embarrassment at zoos and the like where animals were bonking, when I was a child. Funny how it didn't put me off trying it out for myself when I could find a safe guy to do it with, though. [I digress!]