Meals By Torchlight

I’d liked to have got a cycle in today but the forecast wasn’t pleasant and for once it turns out to be correct. It would have been quite exciting on the bike I guess, in a wet and windy sort of way.

L is at home with the boys today and fills her morning by upsetting Daughter by sending her fifteen emails all containing links to jobs. Daughter prefers to do her own job hunting.

Although it just goes to show that there are plenty of jobs out there now that other students are finishing their courses and heading off to other pastures. So snap them up if you’re in Sheffield and looking for part time work because I’m sure they won’t be available for long. In fact they’ve probably gone already.

Daughter is actually coming home today and we’re all meeting L’s folks in Derby for a meal. I book her on the 12:05 train but at 2:30 she’s about to get in the shower... students.

So it ends up with L meeting her straight off the train and hot footing it over to Derby with her luggage, which they have to do on the slow bus because we’re poor and we’re not paying the Red Arrow's inflated prices just because they won’t honour the all day tickets at rush hour. Actually they originally get the wrong slow bus, but in the right direction, and do a seamless change at Beeston Bus Station.

Meanwhile there’s me twiddling my thumbs waiting for them in Derby. I opt to kill a bit of time by staying later at work and then amble round town a bit rather than go straight to the pub. I end up there eventually and have a pint of Liverpool Stout in the Silk Mill, which has a touch of River Mersey about it.

Just before they arrive, I move up to the Royal Standard where their Stout is much more my style, liquid tarmac.

We then get another bus over to the Mallard Beefeater, which wouldn’t have been our choice for a meal out but the menu doesn’t actually look too bad. That is when we were able to see it. By the time we ask to order a second drink, it is done by torchlight and when I visit the Gents, it is by kind courtesy of the chap at the urinal next to me and the glow from his mobile phone. Cosy.

You see the power failed on them and after several frantic calls to whomever, they eventually admitted defeat. It’s Friday night of course, so the whole department of whomever would have been down the pub in ‘not our problem Guv’ mode anyway.

So we leave after getting all our drinks complimentary and L’s brother chauffeurs us all up to another pub, the Argosy. Which is a real step down in class from somewhere that wasn't even half way up the staircase in the first place.

The menu is a struggle, as there was really nothing on it that I thought was safe to risk, except perhaps the lasagne so I had that. You can't go far wrong with lasagne. Can you?

It arrived looking like they’d had a real battle to get it out of the plastic microwavable tray and the lasagne had lost, badly. It’s not often you go in a ‘restaurant’ and feel sorry for the food.

Anyhow, it was a pleasant enough evening of socialisation, if you forget about the food, and we did also get a lift back to the bus station, which made the journey home one bus easier. 

(Friday 24^th May)

One For The Price Of Three

I take the car in for one new tyre to replace the one that I had to change and come away with three. Only it wasn’t a ‘three for the price of one’ deal of course. Isn’t that always the case with garages? I had little choice, with the car due for an MOT next month, it was pay now or pay later.

No squash again, so instead L and I end up at B&Q. How quaint. What a couple-y sort of thing to do. It's also deathly quiet. All those people who come for the day out on a weekend are absent and even the burger van is shut or perhaps that’s the reason it's quiet.

Then as we’re out tomorrow, we have Friday night tonight instead. 

 (Thursday 23^rd May)

#BloodyEverything

Today I am one of those #BloodyCyclists but put it this way, you are a cars length further up that queue than you would have been if I’d been sat in my car in front of you.

It’s not actually a great day to be a #BloodyCyclist either. No blonde female trainee accountants have a pop at me but somehow in between cycling in this morning and tonight, some b*st*rd has managed to stonechip a two miles stretch of road around Borrowash.

#BloodyLooseChippings are very little fun on a bike and I’ll now try to avoid this stretch of road for a month or so until they’ve been dispersed somewhat. Even then, after the cars have scattered most of the loose stuff, it will still be loitering at the side of the road to reduce grip for cyclists. A few warning signs that they were going to do this would have been nice. The road didn’t even need doing. We have some roads with huge craters yet they resurface ones like this that are in good shape.

Things didn’t get much better when I hit the end of the queue to get into Nottingham, which was in Bramcote. Having already had to embarrassingly use the pavement to avoid the worst of the chippings, now I have to use it again to avoid the gridlock.

Oh well, things can only get better, unless at the pool they’ve got half of it closed for swimming lessons and it’s six to a lane in the remaining half again. Which it duly is. #BloodyCityCouncil. Cue some very pissed off customers, some who only stay for five minutes before abandoning their swims. I manage fifteen minutes. They really do know how to minimise revenue.

Finally a park session with the dogs, which oddly is the least stressful part of the evening. I’m shattered after all that and I’m relieved when L offers to cook, even after her manic run with Sweatshop for which she was hugely nervous. She does get incredible adrenaline problems when she thinks its going to be fast. I knew she’d be fine. She was fine.

(Wednesday 22^nd May)

#BloodyCyclists

Daughter is on her way to the passport office in Liverpool, chauffeured by her father who is perhaps over worried that they won’t let her back in the country when she goes to France with him next week because her passport has only six months to run on it. Why worry, extra holiday isn’t it?

It’s all over the internet about some young girl who seemingly got away with knocking a cyclist off his bike because he wasn’t going to tell anyone in case his girlfriend found out. Sensible chap.

That was until the girl tweeted about it, which was a really bright thing to do wasn’t it. She’s clearly far too intelligent to be working at the accountancy firm where she’s a trainee... or was, as she’s now been suspended.

That tweet went viral on the internet and even though she subsequently cancelled her Twitter account it was too late because people had already screenshoted it complete with her name and photo, found her Facebook account, where she works etc etc. With the internet there is no escape and of course not stopping at the scene of an accident is a serious offence. Oh dear #InTheSh*t as they say on Twitter.

She’s also clearly far too intelligent to know that there’s no such thing as Road Tax, which was her excuse for knocking him off because he didn’t pay any. Yet of course, like most cyclists, he also owns a car for which he pays his Vehicle Excise Duty (not Road Tax) which is based on his vehicle’s level of exhaust emissions. It’s there to encourage people to drive smaller cars or bikes even. I’m sure he’d happily pay it for his bike too, with its emission level of zero.

Hope she doesn’t end up doing anyone’s accounts in the near future.

I’m not on my bike today, instead I put in a training run and a rather slow nine miles but nine mines is nine miles. Job done.

(Tuesday 21^st May)

I Need One Of These

I need one of these.

The wetsuit, not the girl, I already have one of those. I try on L’s, which is a bit too small for me, which means I’m going to have to purchase one.

L gets physio on her wonky knees and a pile of exercises to do. I wonder if they’ll benefit my knees too. Problem is that such frivolity always freaks the dogs out.

Son invites us to his Graduation. L immediately says yes and vows to start looking at new dresses, but... Isn’t this tempting fate a touch, at the start of the week when he takes his final exams? Of course we’ll be there, fingers crossed.

L’s not allowed to sob. She’s very maudlin at the moment as it is, watching the children move on in life. Of course it’s all supposed to come crashing down around their ears and they’re supposed to move back in with us until they’re well into their 30’s but hopefully not...We can always change the locks.

I offer to get her puppy, of which there’s one being flaunted at tonight’s dog training. Then again we have enough to cope with the 11 and 5 year old puppies we already have.

(Monday 20^th May)