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.