Once Suggested, Never Unsuggested

I hadn't suggested to my Dad that he could come watch me cycle at the velodrome on a Monday because once suggested this cannot be unsuggested. Now it's out there he is almost as excited as he was about going into town on Saturday.

Afterwards he fancies a pint, so we go to Notsa. Where he tells me he’d like to ride the track on a tandem. I think we'll park that thought for now.

He's also delighted with his new milk deliveries that have successfully started. I’ve set him up on Milk & More like we are for milk, bread and juice.

All of this makes for a fun evening but it’s lengthened my night out from getting back about 8:30 to getting back about 10:30. Not to mention having to skip out of work early to pick him up.

Daughter returns to find we haven’t trashed the house in her absence.

The day when she should get her deposit back from her old flat crawls closer. I thought having an independent company holding the deposit was supposed to make this an easier and fairer process but having done everything by the book online they still won’t release the money. The landlord has not engaged with the process at all so now Daughter has to submit a form saying she thinks she’s entitled to her own money back but it must be witnessed by a solicitor. Which could end up costing more than what the deposit is. Thankfully she knows someone she can ask. Many won’t be so fortunate.

I’m out with my old school friend in Derby on Tuesday. 

Then on Thursday and Friday work gives us a couple of days to play around with new technology namely AI in something they call the Hackathon. It’s all a bit beyond me but I have a go while managing a slightly longer than usual trip to the medieval torture chamber for a workout and proposing possible holidays to L. I present her with a menu of options and she plumps for ‘Bath by train if they’re not on strike’. She says it sounds pretty amazing; I think she means it looks cheap. I start looking at hotels, it isn’t cheap. 

Meanwhile L’s sister has got Covid. There’s a lot of it about apparently but most people think it’s just a bit of hay fever given how mild it can now be.

While L’s brother is moving to Columbia which is causing a few family ructions. He puts his house up for auction for a quick sale and then gets an even quicker sale as someone instantly makes him a good offer. They plan to turn it into an Airbnb. In Alvaston? 

Tina Turner dies.

Then it’s Bacon Sandwich Friday which means L’s been for a swim and in the afternoon I take my Dad to another of the coffee afternoons for the Golden Oldies at Derby County. He dresses up in his new threads and then we win a heavily rigged version of Play Your Cards Right (nobody seemed to know the required tactics for it). We come home with a box of Coronation Biscuits

Saturday is again Parkrun at Alvaston and then for L there's another exhausting Intu trip (her words and it’s actually not Intu anymore) but not with my Dad and me this time. I’m still recovering from last week.

On Sunday we are there for the Colwick swim again. The Lad and I take a longer walk with an orienteering map to see how many we can find.

In evening we go over to Leamington for a pleasant night with Son and his missus in what I am reliably told is called the Squiggly Squid but turns out to be the Giggling Squid. Which I should have known as I’ve been before. It’s a Thai restaurant and apparently there’s even one in Nottingham. 

(Sunday 28^th May)

A Kid In A Sweet Shop

A Monday that isn’t a bank holiday. How strange. We also both have heartburn from the last night’s curry at Kayal. I did say that we were not impressed. Dr Google says that a ripe banana eases this and Dr Google turns out to be right.

Derby Velodrome’s online booking system is down so I ring them up to book my cycling session where they confirm that ‘yes it is down and can I try again later’. It is down for them too. Their prediction that it will be up ‘within the hour’ turns out to be true. It might have been better if it wasn’t as I take a bit of a tumble when I’m there.

The new bird bath seems to be getting plenty of use but I just hope the birds aren’t thirsty or wanting a bath as a dog seems to keep emptying it. In fact it’s carnage in the bird garden this morning. Everything I put out this morning has gone and someone has thrown the feeder on the lawn. I think it’s one of the big crows and not the Lad but he’s benefiting from it as he does like the suet treats.

We have a minor crisis at L can’t get any hot cross buns as they've taken them off the shelves at Lidl and also at Co-Op too. Is Easter over now then? Christmas is never over this quick. But there is hope as my Dad has them all year round thanks to Asda and it seems Sainsbury’s still have them too.

Having been impressed last week L signs up to the open water swim club at Colwick and even downloads their app. She goes there again on Thursday evening saying that open water swimming is the prefect de-stress after a fraught day where ‘someone’ has driven over his own hearing aids. Ah, I think that may be her boss. ‘Someone’ I knew did the same thing once but I’m not sure open water swimming was my de-stress method of choice.

We go along with her for the walk. Wollaton Park is great but it’s fun exploring somewhere we don’t really know that well.

I don’t think the Lad is angling for a swim. They don’t allow dogs at Colwick but they do elsewhere but it would probably be a waste of time, we'd never get him in the water.

On Friday our Lodger\Daughter flies out to Geneva for weekend away. Let off the leash the OFDs have a house party, just the three of us. The place is bouncing. Sex, drugs and rock n roll.

On Saturday L Parkruns at Alvaston and then heads into town. I take the Lad home then collect my Dad to take him into town too to meet L and her Mum. On the way to meet them he binges £200 on new clothes in M&S. It’s good to be out in town he says. A kid in a sweet shop springs to mind.

We then have not one but two coffee stops with L and her Mum. Afterwards we go home via Nottingham to fetch the Lad and then to Aston to cut his lawn. You could call it a busy day.

L books another swim session on her new App and we go again on Sunday where it’s the organiser’s dog’s birthday. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to the like the Lad, so we can’t wish him many happy returns.

After her swim and our lap of the lake on terra firma walking, given the amount of time it takes to get served at Wired, we go for our bacon sandwich and coffee at Daleside Café instead.

The OFD’s are out again later sitting outside in the sun at both the Good Fellow George and the Organ Grinder.

(Sunday 21^st May)

Disposable

Monday is a second consecutive Bank Holiday, this time for L’s birthday obviously. Nothing to do with King Charlie. It’s not the first time they’ve done this because she had one in 2020 as well or that may have had something to do with VE Day.

On Tuesday I go down for a blood test on Exchange Walk in Nottingham as I’ve agreed to join the Our Future Health project. I do love a good health project and we’re already in the one from Biobank. L wasn’t keen to join until she saw that I got a cholesterol test as part of it. Then she books her own. Mine wasn’t great - 6.3.

It’s Eurovision this week and we watch one of the Semi Finals on Tuesday and then the final on Saturday. Finland is the public’s favourite but Sweden win.

My Dad gets paid the very generous sum of £5800 for his car which to everyone’s delight, apart from his, they’ve written off.

On Saturday we (by which I mean just L) do another new parkrun this time at Ashbourne Recreation Ground. It’s good parkrun but the very inattentive woman in the Café can’t cope with our reusable mugs and makes our first coffee in a disposable cup before then tipping it into our reusable one and then binning the disposable one. I point out her error and she apologies before doing exactly the same thing for our second drink using a fresh disposable cup. The planet is basically fucked with people like that around.

We collect a stone birdbath from L’s Mum for our ever growing bird garden. The Lad loves his new drinking bowl.

On Sunday L swims at Colwick and I walk the Lad there where they have now tarmacked almost the entire parkrun course possibly making it one of the fastest around. We have a bacon butty and coffee at the Wired on Wheels van afterwards.

Then us Old Fuddy Duddies are out again. We go back to Brewdog where sadly the Mars Bar beer is now more and then we have a meal at Kayal. Which we’ve been meaning to return to for some time but this time frankly we’re not that impressed.

(Sunday 14^th May)

Old Fuddy Duddies

Monday is a bank holiday, the first of three in May, so there is no cycling which is good for knee recovery but L goes out for a bank holiday run, feeling like a womble but pleased with herself and a superstar. So says he who can’t run.

Obviously nothing happens over the long weekend as regards my Dad’s car so it has spent the bank holiday at the pub. When I finally get through to his insurance company on Tuesday they quickly arrange collection and I head over to supervise. They then take it to Pentagon garage with everyone apart from my Dad having their fingers crossed that it's a write off.

L tells me the gym was really good on Wednesday morning but by the time I get there its turned evil. Such is life. It’s also seriously hot in there.

Thursday is local election day. I always vote but skip the razzmatazz of going down to our local community centre to do it 20^th Century style but L does and sends me a photo of herself with coffee and cake. They should advertise this perk. It would get many more people to vote. If they accepted dogs I’d pop in myself after our walk even though they’ve already had my piece of paper.

At lunch time I go for a run and the Lad knows it from the pissed off look he gives me. I manage 2.6k. Ta da. That is basically the shortest loop of the park possible e.g. in our nearest gate then out the second nearest gate. My knee was sore at first but seemed to go numb after a while which was good as it didn’t do that last time at Christmas. 

L says that I was very sensible. I think she means just doing 2.6k and not going straight into a half marathon. I did consider go round again but I thought she’d shout at me.

Enthused I do the same route again the next day. L says that wasn’t very sensible of me. She was right. I can barely walk now.

L’s boss has recommended a film although he isn’t the most reliable source for recommendations. He says we must watch ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ so we go down to Broadway to see it because as  L says we need a night out because we're becoming a right pair of Old Fuddy Duddies. Which is true but we’ll be out way past cocoa and slippers time. Given that the food and drink options at Broadway are still the same, e.g. not very good, cocoa does have some appeal.

As it happens Jim Broadbent plays an Old Fuddy Duddie in the film and he might be one himself but I couldn’t possibly comment.

The film is pleasant and well-intended affair but it takes plausibility to new heights but then I suppose we were pre-warned by the word ‘unlikely’ in the title.

Harold (Jim Broadbent) and Maureen (Penelope Wilton) are a retired pair of OFDs living a life of boredom down in Devon. When, out of the blue, Harold receives a letter from an old colleague called Queenie to say that she is now having palliative care in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

He pops out to post a sympathetic note to Queenie but doesn’t return as he suddenly decides to deliver it by hand. He starts to walk all the way to Berwick, some 500 odd miles. So we are asked to believe that this ill equipped elderly man can do that without any kind of map or other form of navigation. He just wings it but never seems to get lost and because he’s posted his wallet home he is also sleeping rough.

Along the way the sad reason why Harold has effectively run away from his life is revealed as is the reason he thinks he owes this pilgrimage to Queenie.

Then there are all the hangers-on and media who just appear as they would but then they disappear just as quickly as they wouldn’t. You’d expect them to have staked out the hospice but when he arrives it’s just him.

Us OFDs are out raving again on Friday with some friends for a meal at Mowgli in Nottingham. Which has been a place we’ve fancied for a while but couldn’t get in as they only used to allow walks up but now you can book in advance. Something Covid brought up on them and they’ve stuck with it. It is a decent meal and then afterwards L and I also go to Brewdog where they have a Mars Bar flavoured beer. Who needs cocoa eh?

Saturday is Parkrun at Wollaton Hall and then it’s Charlie’s Coronation which I watch but L is out in Derby with her Mum and on the Coronation Chicken Sandwiches instead.

On Sunday we go to the Sinfin 5 race which is now back home in Sinfin starting from Sinfin Moor Park after what seemed a very long residency at Elvaston Castle. L runs it and my Dad has a great time joining us to support L in what she says is her last ever race. There’s a coffee shop on site with a great view for us spectators, so if L does another last one can it be this one again.

It’s also the last match of the season for Derby at Sheffield Wednesday, so we head back to my Dad’s to watch it although L escapes home obviously. Derby need to win to make the play offs. They don’t. Not that they would have won the play offs anyway but another losing trip to Wembley would have been a nice day out for my Dad. 

(Sunday 7^th May)