Happy Places

My cycling on Monday leaves me so wrecked that I have to skip my gym session on Tuesday. I know, any old excuse but my knee is painful and I’m worried about fainting in the gym.

It’s the anniversary of my Mum passing away, so in the evening we head over Elvaston Castle to scatter my Mum’s ashes with my Dad and my Brother’s family. Our second set of ashes scattering in three days. Elvaston Castle was one of her happy places. We go for something to eat afterwards in the New Inn at Shardlow which is one of my Dad’s happy places.

L has now officially completed her office move, across the corridor. With all that lugging around of stuff she probably needn't have bothered with the gym today but I know she will diligently go anyway. Unlike me.

Daughter has been doing a police driving course since last week where they are teaching her to drive like a maniac. It’s soon clear that it’s not really to her liking. She says she's more than happy to drive at 30mph. Not that I’ve never seen her drive at 30mph…

Next door, who are on disability benefits but clearly have other additional income take delivery of a massive pool. We look it up online and they are selling for £480 which is a lot but actually a lot less than I thought it would cost.

I have the last of my block of four physio sessions and at the end he gives me an assessment and asks me to run for three minutes on the treadmill. This goes better than I expected so parkrun’s looking possible for Saturday. I then sign up for another four sessions.

L has been contacting people who claim to fix washing machines to come and have a look at our leaking machine but has failed to get any interest from any of them. Defeated L ask if we can order a new washer. I’m happy to oblige.

Wednesday is Dog Training and then on Thursday I meet my ex-colleague for lunch, as usual, in the Brunswick while L has day off but is also in Derby for lunch with her Mum, so I drop her off.

My Dad finally get his optician’s appointment and tells me all about it when I take him out later. They appear to have convinced him to give up his current five pairs of glasses of varying quality (from bad to really bad) and have two new pairs instead. Result.

(Thursday 29^th June)

All Systems Failure

Having asked for rain to refresh the grass at Locko Park for our dog show we are now getting it in bucket loads which makes for some damp morning walks.

I fit in an evil gym session on Tuesday between my evil cycling session on Monday and my evil physio\PT session on Wednesday. I’m loving my sport at the moment.

L’s boss skips work on Wednesday. His car won't lock. I am yet again impressed by what is yet another very original excuse from her boss. In the evening we take my Dad swimming again.

My Dad thinks he’s got an optician’s appointment for Thursday but it turns out to be next Thursday as he found out when he went but he still enjoyed himself. He came back with four bags of shopping and now looks forward to another trip out next week.

There are reports of a fire at Morley Hayes golf club where my Dad and Brother were at the weekend. My Dad was minding the golf buggy as a Father’s Day treat. The two events don’t seem to be related. At first I think at least they got a game in there while they could but then on second look it was just an outbuilding that held all their green keeping facilities that burnt down. They have lost their fleet of lawnmowers but are again open as normal.

Thursday sees the new football fixtures released so planning for the rest of the year can now commence! In the evening I have a committee meeting and it’s also our first Civil Partnership anniversary, which criminally isn’t something I even have in my diary. Yet this is just one year among twenty-seven equally glorious ones.

The Lad leaps the gate again to help the postman who is pushing a parcel through the letter box, which turns out to be a new parkrun top for L. It’s a good job I’m here to let him back through.

On Friday I have the car in for a service and uniquely they don’t find anything extra to charge me to fix. I have my fingers crossed all day that the ‘all systems failure’ it comes up with every few days doesn’t materialise. This ‘failure’ is that all driving aids such as parking sensors etc have failed. I don’t miss any of these when they’re not working so I don’t particularly want to pay to have it fixed.

A lot of the weekend is spent try to keep up with Glastonbury on TV, as again they wouldn’t let us have a ticket, through the BBC’s very hit and miss coverage.

On Friday evening I propose skipping a night on the ‘cans’ and we walk to the local Willoughby pub where we have a very pleasant couple of drinks in the sun and just the two drinks. Then we overdo it by having an extra one or two when we get back.

Saturday is parkrun at Alvaston and then another trip into town with my Dad where L and her Mum are now struggling to come up with new cafes for us to try.

Sunday is again swimming and orienteering at Colwick Park. Then in the afternoon we do a joint gym session.

They say that working out of course increases your dopamine and testosterone levels. For me this means that when you get home, you just want to throw your gym buddy on the bed and ravish her but then you realise that you’re now too old for that sort of thing, that the lodger will be in and that you’ve got to go to scatter your dog’s ashes on the park.

That’s MD of course, who died just over a year ago. We scatter them with Daughter which is a great way for her to spend her 30^th birthday. Then we take her to Miller & Carter for a proper celebration. 

(Sunday 25^th June)

There’s Always Golf

L utters three words that she often utters ‘Bloody Daily Mail’ but this time it’s nothing political. Apparently the Daily Mail, in conjunction with B&Q who ran an advertisement feature in the paper, have persuaded her Mum to buy copious amounts of compost that L will now have to spread on her garden. This was, in theory, a nice little money spinner for B&Q but one that failed badly because L’s Mum bought it, as she does most things, from Amazon.

Monday is my cycling session which seems to score my lungs every week and leave me unable to digest any food afterwards but, I think, I’m getting better at minimising this. Eating more before a session helps.

On Tuesday we wake up to the news that three are dead and three are in hospital in Nottingham after a man went on a rampage with a knife and then with a van taken from a man he knifed. It all started on Ilkeston Road near us where two students were stabbed and then moved to Daughter’s old area of Magdala Road. All shocking and dreadful.

I make it to the gym at lunchtime but that was as far as I was allowed to go along Ilkeston Road where they have the road closed and where they have raided a house. There were press everywhere as Nottingham lead all the news bulletins even bumped that idiot Boris Johnson down the news.

Wednesday morning’s walk involves the Lad and I having to escape across the golf course to avoid the deer.

L hits the gym proclaiming she has a dress to get into. That’s the spirit. Although it may be a metaphorical dress as I think the one I bought is going back. Meanwhile I’m at my Physio, who clearly sees himself as more of a personal trainer than just a physio and, yes, he is definitely trying to kill me. He increased all my weights again.

L brings home a posh Nespresso coffee maker, the type that you put the little capsules in, that they don't want at work. We think my Dad would love it but first I best check it works. Unfortunately it doesn’t, at least not very well. It takes me half an hour to make a double expresso as the water flow seems to be blocked. I know baristas can be slow but that’s ridiculous. We daren’t even unpack the milk-frothier. Who knew such things existed.

L goes to Magdala Road to take flowers on our behalf which must have been quite difficult. It’s emotional enough looking at all the flowers on Ilkeston Road. The two students have got all the publicity what with them being young with their whole lives head of them etc and he’s sadly been forgotten a bit.

Some emails you dread and, for me, one’s about playing tennis come into that category. My opponent offers me a game but my physio has told me not to attempt to run until the end of the month. So that got me out of that. Depending on how my iron pumping goes we might manage a game in July. If he hasn’t killed me by then.

Then he suggests the ‘other thing’. That there is always golf. The thought has crossed my mind. When there is nowhere else left to go there’s always golf.

Saturday is parkrun at Alvaston and then I go to see my Dad. We leave L and her Mum in peace and don’t join them in town.

On Sunday L swims at Colwick while the Lad and I orienteer. We find most of the controls we look for but as the course is now very old some are probably long gone or buried in the undergrowth. Later we do the gym together. Well not ‘together’ together but we’re in the same building.

We stay in all this week, on the canned beer but with a bit more moderation and many thunderstorms. 

(Sunday 18^th June)

Underestimated

Wednesday has now been restructured and redefined as ‘physio day’ and the chap who seemed so nice last week has turned in to an evil torturer who is trying to kill me. He’s tripled all the weights that he gave me last week. He says he has underestimated me. I’ve underestimated him and I think I may have revealed my hand too soon.

In the evening L and I take my Dad to the new pool at Derby Moorways. The public session is squeezed into about a quarter of the 50m length although it is full width. It is also packed. We both find it very stifling and almost impossible to swim in but my Dad loves it, this being his first time back in a pool for years.

Afterwards we pop to the Harrington pub in Thulston for the obligatory pint. My Dad can’t do anything without having a pint afterwards which is obviously where I inherited the same trait from. It’s all in my genes.

L is in London unwillingly on Thursday for work. Unwilling but essential as the last time her boss went on his own he lost vital documents. The Lad and I pick her up in the evening from the station.

One up side of being in London is that she comes home proclaiming ‘I really need a dress. Everyone is wearing dresses and trainers. Absolutely everyone.’

I could, at this point, point out (and of course I did) that I have offered to buy her a dress about three hundred times of the last twenty seven years and been turned down about 99% of the time. I recall a successful purchase somewhere in the dim and distant past. I may also have mentioned that wearing a dress with trainers was a thing and that you don’t need to wear boots\heels etc but have been dismissed. She says she may take a look for one at the weekend.

On Friday I skive off work for an hour to do a site visit to Locko Park where our dog show is being held next month. We find that a previous show has left the ground very bare in places and I hate to say this but we’re going to need a fair bit of rain for it to recover.

On Saturday L requests an adventurous parkrun and I deliver Bestwood which is not particularly adventurous until you try to run it but we haven’t been there for ages.

Then I take my Dad into Derby where we meet L and her Mum again. Lo and behold L tells me that I have bought herself a dress. She says I hope I like it. I love it already even before I’ve seen it. After shopping we drop off L’s Mum and collect the Lad before taking my Dad home where I do the garden and helpful L mops the kitchen floor.

Unfortunately, when she gets home to try it on, L doesn’t love the dress as it doesn’t fit and that upsets her. Then we probably both drown our sorrows after also having a night's drinking on Wednesday, on Thursday and on Friday too. That’s excessive and I don’t even enjoy drinking canned beer at home. 

We're a bad combination on this. L often kicks off the week's drinking but then it's me who powers it on through the weekend. So a night out in Stapleford on proper beer on Sunday at my insistence is blessed relief from the cans but a terrible idea really after the four days that preceded it.

Sunday also sees Daughter joining us for a swim at Colwick and helpful L going over to do some gardening for her Mum.

 (Sunday 11^th June)

The March Violets

Tonight I am at the Rescue Rooms to see the March Violets for the first time in 37 years and I really haven’t been to anything this goth in probably the last 30 of those years. I’m talking mainly about the crowd here.

First up tonight is Kristeen Young who is mostly doing a Karaoke set with a load of hidden musicians although she does dabble at a keyboard. She pleasant enough and talks well, telling an interesting story about a D-Day veteran and her own then 18 year old mother while singing like Kate Bush in her operatic days. Overall Young, who gets 45 minutes, is a strange but satisfying experience.

Then on stage are Vision Video from Athens, Georgia and who also get 45 minutes for their punk goth or whatever you want to call it. Singer Dusty Gannon is an Afghan war veteran with a few stories of his own to tell. Both he, but particularly his colleague Emily Freedock, come in outfits that I thought were now banned or perhaps this is empowerment. They are also very chatty, interesting and do a cover of Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’.

 Now clear away the drum kit, it’s the March Violets.

This is only the second time I’ve seen them with the first time being in 1986 at the Nottingham Palais. At the time they were going through a pop phase and were led by Cleo Murray. They had a minor hit called ‘Turn To The Sky’ which I imagine is getting nowhere near the set list tonight because that phase is not regards as real Violets.

Guitarist Tom Ashton, who has been the only constant in the band over the years, was there that night but the other Violets original who is here tonight is singer Rosie Garland who left the band shortly before those gigs.

Those two got the Violets back together in 2010 along with another original member Si Denbigh when having just been a singles band they finally put together a proper album in 2014. Then sadly Denbigh suffered a stroke the following year. He can now no longer perform but now the other two have decided to return with William Faith on Bass. 

Garland says ‘If not now, then when?’ to the audience about them making another comeback with Denbigh’s absence probably in mind.

They open with ‘Crow Baby’ and rattle through other early classics such as ‘Radiant Boys’, ‘1 2 I Love You’ and ‘Grooving In Green’ along with ‘Made Glorious’ which is the title track from the 2014 album and the more obscure ‘Dress 4 U’. There were also two new songs.

Garland has great stage presence and prowls the stage while continuing to engage with the crowd between songs. She admits they are now all ‘old fuckers’ but continues the same theme of urging everyone to live life to the full as life is short and shouldn't be wasted. Get to see every band you want to see because one day it could be too late. Sound advice.

The set ended with the epic ‘Walk Into The Sun’ but they were soon back for an encore of ‘Strangehead’ followed by ‘Snake Dance’, a true goth anthem that still sounds immense.

It was a comparatively short set, just ten songs plus another two in the encore, probably due to having to give two support bands 45 minutes each to pay for it all but it was great while it lasted.

Cinderella You Shall Go To The Ball

Monday is the third bank holiday of the month and I spent most of it gardening at Aston for my Dad while L’s doing the gardening for her Mum in Mickleover. Aren't we a couple of saints. She comes over to us just as we’re finishing. We’re already heading to Notsa for a recovery drink and then an ice cream.

On Tuesday, after about three years of nagging and prodding from just about everybody and having tried and failed on the NHS route, I shell out some serious money for a private physiotherapy appointment at FXD Fitness in Bilborough. The reason that I’ve gone for it this time is that this is the place that L went to and raves about.

I don’t get her chap. Mine is very nice and I assume he knows his stuff but he’s not a runner and thinks runners are basically aliens. This doesn’t seem to dissuade him from taking my money though and having regaled him of my sports and injuries history which amazingly doesn’t take up the whole hour, he prods and pulls everything before announcing that ‘Cinderella you shall go to the ball’ or rather I will be able to take up my deferred place at this year’s Robin Hood Half at the end of September. I fall off the examining table laughing. He’s ambitious I’ll give him that. Ok let’s do this.

When I get home L says something that indicates she isn’t totally on board with the plan my new best mate and I have hatched.

Dog training is on Wednesday and on Thursday my Dad asks me to shop for him while L heads off for a swim at Colwick. She says she feels bad for abandoning me but I thought I was the one abandoning her to do my Father’s shopping.

She gives the Lad’s apologies to the dog who doesn’t like him telling him he’s probably in the pub by now with my Dad and I eating crisps. I hope he was jealous.

Saturday is Parkrun at Wollaton Hall and then L rushes off to Colwick again. Yes again. She’s becoming addicted although this one is a special event. It’s yoga and a swim.

This is not highbrow enough for my Dad and I. We are at a museum albeit a pop up one and one about Derby County put on by the Rams Heritage Trust. Ok, so not very highbrow.

After we again come over to Nottingham to collect the Lad and again go to Wollaton Park for coffee, ice cream and because my Dad insists cake as well. He’s a very bad influence. This time I take him to the other end of the park which is a completely different experience for him as it’s like being at a different park. L comes to join us. She can smell an ice cream a mile off. 

In the evening we have a rare Saturday night out and go to Stapleford.

Then on Sunday we’re at... Colwick. Where else would we be? Only not for the morning swim but for the Moonlight Swim. Not that it’s even dark when they have it at 9pm but it comes with plenty of accompanying razzmatazz and the dog who doesn’t like the Lad.

(Sunday 4^th June)