Farewells and 9 hour meals,

August has held some fantastic times for us, regrettably not all of them were captured on photos so I'll just have to make a note for our recollection file. I'll start by saying our mates Jon and Kylie took redundancy from Alliance and are heading home.  It was necessary for us therefore to see them off in good style.  We started with a 9 hour lunch at Brasserie 101 in Manchester on the 3rd as we were over there for a seminar.  Great restaurant, understanding staff and we met up after the seminar again for a sloppy chinese meal to aid in regaining sobriety.

August 13. The END OF AN ERA party.
Jon and Kylie hosted a farewell from Alliance party for all their work friends that they will not see again,  now that their work has finished and Adelaide is calling.

We started off at their flat at about noon then joined the others at a local Didsbury pub, initially outdoors and here you see Sean, Kirsty, Greg, Kylie, Rachel, Cora and Karen and Dawn all enjoying the fine weather, chat and drinks.  The wether didn't hold and we retreated

inside where conversations continued , here we find Graham, Ann and Chris deeply discussing.

And Rachel, Amy, Jenny and Kirsty enjoying .....

Kylie and Cora posing ......

 Sharon, Jon and Sean interrupted while Shohnagh observes.

 The other intent of the night was to provide enough consumers to finish off the remaining cocktail ingredients back at Jon and Kylies flat.  Jon does like to make a good cocktail and having lived here for 7 years has collected quite a lot of ingredients.  There was lots to get through.  We did pretty well, hence not many photos got taken by us,

There are others by others, I may find them and load them later.  The one I did take in the flat was of an event in the night where Jon and Trish stopped the music and explained that when they both came over from Canada for Alliance jobs 7 years ago they bought cheap bottles of  fizz to drink when they became flatmates. Trish kept one and they agreed they would break it open when the UK adventure was over. This was the moment and they shared it with us all.  The wine had gone well and truly off and ended up down the sink, but it was a moment.

Anyway, the night had many other moments but as I said Jon makes great cocktails and we left about 2:30 am to retire to a nearby hotel leaving the kids to it. Thankfully. Things were getting less pretty by the minute. A fantastic day though and even those who endured past our 14+ hour effort were content the next day, or was that comotose.....  Most had recovered by the Tuesday.  or was that Thursday.....

The very next August weekend provided us a chance to pay David and Caroline back for their Scotland hospitality last month and we had them over for a few wines, a rissotto and what turned out to be another 9 hour meal and chat.  Again no photos.

The 22nd was a day worth comment, I was annointed as a member of the Wetherby Lions, a charity group which serves the local community by raising funds and providing activities and entertainment.  http://www.wetherbylions.com/wp/  I quite like the idea of putting something back into the local community as Wetherby provides Gail and me with a very contented way of life.  The members of the club are very earnest and enjoy a good time so I am hopefull, after the 2 months it has taken to be vetted and accepted, that I will enjoy the tasks, make some more friends and be able to contribute a little bit to what makes Wetherby the town it is.  

Many of you may be aware of group buying sites on the web.  Gail has signed on to one called Groupon and she gets drowned with offers and discounts for things we don't need, but occasionally there are discount coupons for restaurants.  Brasserie Forty 4 in Leeds http://www.brasserie44.com/ was one and we visited them on the Friday of the last August weekend for lunch by the river.  Fantastic food, beter service and a stunning wine list. Leeds offers so much for a small city and we enjoyed the walk around before and after, Gail bought a stunning dress for very little and we travelled in and home on the top storey of the bus, a treat for Gail who drives everywhere and a tedium for me who uses buses far more frequently than I like. Having said that, the bus trip into Leeds through the countryside is rather nice.

The last weekend in August is a holiday Monday and the Sunday by happenstance provided us the opportunity to have another 9 hour meal with our Wetherby based friends Rob and Angela.  Angela works at Leeds Uni  and Rob for N.Power.  Gail laid on a fine vegitarian spread and the afternoon/night sort of got away from us,  again no pictures, sorry about that.

For domestic news, after me saying they were stupid every time she saw one in a shop, and that I had plenty of good knives, Gail snuck a stabbed abo into our kitchen having found it cheap on the web.

Not my idea of tastefull.

 Oh, and the dishwasher that we sort of inherited with the old kitchen in the original layout fnally ceased to function.  It had lost it's springs in the door about a year ago and needed care to open it. We kept using it as the door repair cost would have exceeded its worth, if, that is, the parts were available which they were not.  Not pointing any fingers but Gail dropped the door , smashed it into the floor and ripped it off its hinges.  So we had to buy a new one.

I pulled it out and prepared the plumbing for the new one while Gail scoured the web for the best unit at the lowest price. 

 She selected a model that rated well in user surveys, found it at a significant discount  on a national retailer's site and hey presto I have a dishwasher to install.  Had the usual fitting problems but all is well and we both feel we have achieved.

September will see us on a flight to France, Jon and Kylie will stay with us for a few days before leaving and I presume there will be even more news for the September blog entry. We will try to take more pictures, and yes, I know there is no August furry animal shot.

August reply to Kathy

Hi Hi Hi Kathy,
Thanks for your little note. I am amazed that of all the world news you get, you choose to send me an Aussie insurance claim and a comment on the riots in Vancouver. But I see the link.


As for the Aussie public servant claiming workers comp for injuries. I note that they were incurred by a Motel's light fitting falling on her as she was having sex one night, but while on a work assignment interstate,,,, well what can I say, you have to admire her enterprise and knowledge of the worker's compensation act..  I am only disappointed that the court decided to protect her anonymity, I'd like a look at her facebook page.  


The UK facebook riots are happily in the past now that the police have been given back some authority to keep the peace.  Last time the police had to quell unrest here they killed a pensioner who got in the way.  The public outcry against police brutality and over-the-top enthusiasm resulted in the coppers not being willing to respond in the manner needed this time.  It took a couple of days of burnt buildings and rising anarchy for the powers that be to allow the police to police.  The courts have been dolling out severe penalty to the miscreants, not all kids by any means, and wouldn't you know it, now there is a public hue and cry the sentences are too heavy.  I just love the media driven political debate in this country.  One minute the system is too lax and allows the country to fall into the grip of gangs and louts, the next day almost, the system is too tough on first time offenders.  You may well recall the difference zero tolerance policing made to the streets of New York and I for one am all for the strictest punishment possible for petty crime.  I mean, its hardly a unique position for the courts of England to issue overly severe penalties.  If that had not been the case Australia would never have been populated would it?  The amorous Aussie lass would not have a work assignment interstate and I wouldn't have had a good chuckle.
That's the link isn't it?


But , as you also asked, no, Gail and I were well away from any of the effects of the riots in Manchester . Our Yorkshire oasis remained spared of any uprising of frustrated social payment recipients.

We keep happy and well as these pages testify but alas the BBQ culture is thwarted by the frequent wet weekends here, cooler climes than what we are used to, and frankly, other things to be doing.  We have had one BBq but as it was in a hibashi and under the cherry blossoms last spring , it was really an ohanna mi party rather than a bbq. 
Take care and enjoy your sojourn Westward !

best July ever - 2011 Arty Stuff, Scotland, Rocks Antrim, Liverpool, Manchester

Ahhhhh, July and fine weather.

We have had such a busy month which has allowed us to recover from the stress of  Gail's redundancy scare.  There was a long planned for holiday to Scotland with Carolyn and David which included a day trip to Antrim Nthn. Ireland.  I'll tell you a bit about that first as it was a great day. We took the car  on the ferry across and marvelled at how cheap and empty it was.  It pays to do some deep research sometimes as the Tuesday we chose to go to Northern Ireland was the Tuesday that all the orangemen march through all the catholic streets and there is tensions and troubles and picnics and parties and drinking and fights and singing and rock and petrol bomb throwing and general merriment that only the Northern Irish know how to do....  So we had a ball.  First stop after escaping Belfast with no incident was Ballygally castle for lunch.

 It was open, Northern Ireland closes on march day. Another little known fact we discovered. The castle was more of your theme wedding pub but more than acceptable and we enjoyed hamming it up.

 Next stop was Bushmills Eyerish Whisky brewery which Carolyn had really, really wanted to visit and do the tour of.  It was closed too.

 The giant's causeway was open and we crawled all over it and took thousands of shots which I won't put here, just enough to prove we went.  I was not all that impressed to be honest, and I know something about tessellated basalt.  We walked over some more impressive ones on the south east coast of Tasmania but that could just be me being parochial.

 Then there was Carrick-a-rede suspension bridge thing that everyone raves about.  Now that was worth the trip to Nthn Ireland on it's own.  We got a great bit of weather, almost no one else there, did I tell you it was marching and rioting day?  I can only recommend it for this venue.  No words for the following photos as they say it all.

I will bring you back to our Scotland holiday but I just found these shots of me doing the recording for "The Menace at Middleton" this month and thought I'd best record the event so I don't forget.  The Leeds Savage group has a writing group which I sort of control once a fortnight, Pete Etheringham, a Leeds lad and founding savage,  wrote a radio script about some moles possessed by the souls of dead Polish miners that take over Leeds by turning all the civic statues into living..... oh, never mind. Anyway we went to the studio to record the six episodes along with sound effects of angry moles and these shots give a bit of an insight into the sessions. 

Keeping to the artistic theme, and in the same photo file I found the shots of Rob Bailey, a Manchester professional artist we discovered at a Leeds exhibition.  We bought an artist's proof of his latest series of popular dogs(he hasn't done more than one of them yet but has now got photos of our Great Danes) .  We used to have an Alsatian-cross years ago, so this initial work appealed to us.  It now hangs at the entry to our kitchen.  These shots are of Rob in his studio and at the Leeds show. 

As  promised, now I'll take you back toScotland again , still doing arty stuff tho. 
A while ago I saw a bloke artistically and impossibly standing rocks on a coast-themed TV show here.  I wondered how the hell he did it and given that Monreith is a surf less, cold, rocky beach I thought it a good chance to try my hand.  It turns out it is just about finding the balance point.  Quite a bit of fun and again there were far more photos and stood up rocks but these give the idea.

Start small

Don't be bloody ambitious

And that neatly brings me back to the Monreith holiday.  We spent a week doing nothing but reading, walking on the beach, drinking wine and eating and enjoying each other's company and the friendship of David and Carolyn.  This was our second visit here with D&C and we had no agenda or places to be so while we did take lots of shots they resemble the ones of monreith already on the blog so these here are just nice memories of this time.

Our holiday cottage, Gail's mini and David's Audi parked outside.  The cottage is actually two old mill worker's cottages joined together and comprises three bedrooms a lounge, kitchen/diner, bathroom and a couple of storage rooms.  Very clean and comfortable in a beachcomber's paradise sort of way.

Just down the road a bit is the town of PortWilliam and this waiting man is a sculpture that watches the sea. I think the photo is good (seagull) but the sculpture is really lovely and evokes many thoughts and ideas.

We had a nice lunch here at the Clansman in PortWilliam.

 And another nice lunch in this white pub on the way home to Wetherby on our last day in Scotland.  We chose to take the coast road winding around the peninsulas and stopped first at Kipford which is a charming little port with lovely folk, a little bit posh, a little bit scruffy and rough. A gem of a place.

 Further around the coast there is a place called Rockcliff and a ancient iron age ruin called the Mote of Mark from the top of which, after an easy climb, we rolled off some more photos as we walked around.

 We called the hotel below our Faulty Tower.  We walked there for afternoon tea and found it run by a Basil-esque sort of a bloke.  When we asked if he could do us a couple of pots of tea and a cake of some sort he scowled at us and disappeared calling back "I'll see what I can do".  As you can see it's a big place, lots of rooms, an art gallery, big dining room, splendid entrance, all just a little bit tired.  You know.  But lovely and quaint.  We stood waiting while he checked in other guests to their room walking them up and returning, seeing us, apologising and disappearing again.  We did get some tea and ginger cake and shortbreads but it was just the way of it, made us laugh.

As the day had sort of got away from us we decided we would find a hotel and stay a night by the Solway Firth.  We eventually found Powfoot golf hotel and enjoyed a great meal, lovely bottle of wine, superb views and a curiosity.

 In the photo above you can see a round thing, sort of theta shaped, in the sand on the edge of the river outside the hotel.  The hotel used to be a Victorian-era mansion and the round thing is the foundation of a modesty bathing shelter for the women of the household who used it to take to the waters without being observed. Quirky huh?

Scotland done for another year we returned home and as Gail still had a few days of holiday left I decided we would head over to Liverpool to visit the Tate at Albert Docks and take in the Rene Magritte exhibition which was really really really good,  The Tate at Liverpool is a world wise display of current and past masters, all the works would fall into the confronting or challenging category but the general walk through  the free galleries will not ever be boring.  It was worth the trip and we got to catch up with Karen, first for some great chat over drinks in our hotel and then a purely disgusting meal at Liverpool One' s Wagamama

The waterfront Mersey Side is changing very quickly, the Liver building and other graces are being joined by some spectacular new buildings housing offices and apartments, 

 Of course Albert Docks was the first re-development and while historic I don't think it works all that well, but you have to do with what you've got, and although windy and chill the day was sunny and clear, makes the day out so much more enjoyable.

 The Liverpool museum and

 The Beatles museum both make the walk along the shore front a must do Liverpool thing now.  The Leeds Liverpool canal now links into the Docks and then the Mersey which is a tempting thought for our next canal adventure I think.

 I don't know if I have mentioned in this blog my growing disquiet about the preponderance of penguin promotions used for advertising in the UK, I am quite over it and may have become just a bit sensitive to persistent penguin proliferation.  I guess it is because they don't have penguins in their seas..... and they think they are cute or something.... gees, get over it already.  I may be forced to start an anti penguin site.

So that is that for July I guess, there were other things ,

like our new neighbours Graeme and Kate came to visit and bought Bentley, their GREAT DANE BOY PUPPY!!!!! with them. 
Big sigh. 
Nice people lovely dane.  We will no doubt see more of them all and I'll remember to take a picture.  Bentley is a fawn just like Symbol and Bosco. 
Big sigh. 

But as there are no great dane pics, here are the furry animal shots you have to have.  The cows are at Gretna Green, the baby calves somewhere near Southerness Scotland.

And I will finish with this last shot Gail took , just because I like the way it speaks of interaction between people, sculpture and scenery.