Only one line item left on the jobslist. Hanging a picture in the kitchen. Then we can nip to Waitrose for a few choice morsels to accompany tonight’s pulled pork. A bottle of red wine stands patiently on the worktop.
Later…
Jobs all done. Beautiful day for a walk into the Bailgate.
Anne is away. At her mums. Fair play. Got to get the old dear to the shops for a bit of retail every now and again. Stock up. Knowworramean.
These occasions where us lads are left to fend for ourselves, are not exactly looked forward to but we do try and make the most of the opportunity. Lunch is procured from Waitrose where there is no real limit on what may be put in the shopping trolley. A bit of a treat to make up for the fact that mum is not on the scene.
The jobslist becomes a more detailed affair. On one side sits the day to day mundane stuff. Fix drawer, clear up wood left by back door. Stuff like that. Opposite is a schedule for what the kids are doing/need in place. Bus fares required with sum of money identified for each offspring, lift from music exam, pick up from basketball after school and so on.
Some of the normal smooth running of the house temporarily disappears. This morning I realised that no one had put the (full) dishwasher on before going to bed. Normally it happens by itself, seemingly. Text messages are exchanged across the Pennines (Anne’s mum lives in Bromborough on the Wirrall). “Where do we keep the envelopes?”, “where are my hockey shin pads?”. You get the drift. We always find them, usually where the have always been or where we left them.
We do nowadays make an effort to keep the house tidy when Anne is away. It’s all relative. When she comes home the house gets another tidy up but hey, we do try.
This morning, Sunday morning I was lying in bed without a cup of tea. I don’t normally have a cup of tea in bed when Anne is away. That isn’t because she always gets up to make it. I make a point of doing my fair share of tea making in the morning. It’s just that there seems to be less incentive to make the tea if I’m just making it for myself.
This downside is offset slightly by the fact that I can keep my own time in the mornings when she is not around. If I want the radio on at 6.30am on a Sunday to listen to On Your Farm or whatever it’s called I can. It’s one of my fave progs but I rarely get to hear it because 6.30am doesn’t normally exist on a Sunday.
This morning was one such day. I drifted in and out of sleep during the farming, a programme about a fish farm somewhere, and then the Sunday service which when I realised was on got switched off. Not my thang. During one of my periods of awakeness came a sudden realisation. “Slow cooked pulled pork!”. I was meant to get the joint ready and stick it in the slow cooker. It was 8.30am. I still had time.
The light came on along with my dressing gown and slippers and down to the kitchen I went. The garlic and onions were chopped, cumin and cinnamon ground – I couldn’t find any already ground stuff – dark brown sugar mixed with chili powder although I kept the latter to a minimum. I didn’t trust the quantities in the American recipe. The pork was smeared with the chilli/sugar/cinnamon/cumin mix and shoved in the slow cooker on top of the garlic and onion together with a soupcon of chichen stock (Anne as you know comes from Merseyside where there is no letter “k” in chicken).
The slow cooker slowly in action I cleared up the mess (yes) and turned my thoughts to breakfast. This is when I realised that the dishwasher was full and hadn’t been switched on. Breakfast could wait. I switched on the dishwasher and treated myself to the luxury of writing this piece for Philosopherontap.
As I write there are signs of life. Only from kid4 who didn’t go out last night. Kid3 is in a band and he had a gig last night. Someone’s 21st birthday party at the Tower Bar at Lincoln University Students Union. As kid4 strolled into the kitchen looking for sustenance my attention was drawn to five cans of lager on the kitchen table in front of me. Obviously a good night. Musicians need time to unwind after the adrenaline of the gig. Phil the bassist is crashed in our spare room. Must have been his beer ;).
The cans are featured in the photo that accompanies this post. Note the low winter sun streaming through the south facing kitchen window. That’ll do for now. Catch ya later…
More art of a culinary nature. It has since been destroyed. Artistic vandalism with its own artistic merit.
It is winter. The chicken is in the oven, stuffed with breadcrumbs, herbs, bacon and dried apricot. The potatoes are par boiling before accompanying the fowl and the parsnips, French beans, carrots and sprouts are all prepared and ready for cooking.
The piece de la resistance is the apple and blackberry pie. The fruits of our autumnal efforts now coming out of deep storage to round off the Sunday lunch.
Randomly deposited pair of shoes. I used the word deposited in preference to discarded because their owner intends to return and wear them again. That isn’t to say they will be where he left them as his mother will have tidied them up.
There are aspects of this photograph that may be considered worthy of analysis. The bottom right of the photo has a lighter patch of flooring suggesting that the shoes are in a hallway in front of a glazed door.
The shoes also point in different directions inconsistent with the positioning of a normal person’s feet. Because of this one might consider that the shoes belong to a ballet dancer. This would be incorrect. The orientation of the shoes is entirely random and a result of the kicking of feet as they came in the front door.
The bit about the glazed front door is correct.
Windy out. The remnants of Hurricane Nora or a low crossing the Atlantic or some such meteorological event. Significant at the time but soon forgotten in a cloud of meteorological events.
The house is calm. John making his own breakfast. The full monty without sausages. I had the last of those! Anne busying herself. Joe still in bed. Teenage wont.
There is a jobslist. Not urgent. Looking out of the front window the bare tree branches and the tops of the hedge are agitated. Hedge needs a trim. Manana. Will have to get Anne to stick it on the jobslist.
The daffs and crocii are starting to peek through. A good sign. Hope. I quite like these winter weekends, at least when I can relax and potter about a little. I don’t mind a moderate jobslist. One I can barrel through quite quickly once I’ve set my mind on it. Although January and February are the most depressing months of the year there are compensations. Fire blazing away in the grate. Warm and welcoming pub at early doors. Snuggle on the settee with Anne. Maybe even one of the ids too – they’re never too old to do that.
This week I booked a couple of Paris trips. One with Hannah at the beginning of February to go flat hunting and get her settled in to her 6 months stint with Air France. The other to go and see her at Easter. We have booked a nice 3 bedroom apartment in Montmartre. Zut alors.
I quite like the idea of chillin around Montmartre for a bit. Un cafe. Une biere, ou deux. We are going to celebrate Han’s 21st birthday. Han believes in pushing the boat out for these things unlike her brother Tom who passed the mark with little fuss.
There will be bacon downstairs. Mushrooms and tomatoes too. Not sure about sausages. Hopefully yes. Maybe beans. Glass of milk. OJ. Toast. Breakfast beckons.
It’s a crisp Sunday afternoon in January. They don’t come better in winter time. The fire is blazing away in the grate whilst outside the low sun makes a poor attempt to warm the cockles. However, sun there is, a rarity for this time of year. It’s an in your face, just above the hedgerow sun that only really serves to warn you about how cold it is going to get once darkness quickly arrives.
Later we headed for Sincil Bank to watch Lincoln City play host to top of the table Barnet. We beat them 4 – 1. A fitting finish to the holiday season. Back home to slow cooked pork casserole, leeks and carrots and swede followed by apple and blackberry crumble with custard. Perfect.
Now in front of the fire again. The chimney is drawing well. I’m tempted to slow it down a little by shutting the flap at the back but it’s never been done and there is no obvious hook for me to pull on. Best left alone.
I have a cup of green tea and a book for company. The others are elsewhere in the house and the place is quiet.
The featured image is of Lincoln Cathedral taken from Langworthgate on 3rd January just as it was getting dark. I was on my way to the Morning Star. The cathedral looks great at this time of day and I periodically take a picture of it from this spot when I’m on my way out for a beer. The photos never turn out as good as the original sight though.
On this occasion the pic came out with a lovely depth of light to the buildings which aren’t quite in darkness. The sun still lights the sky to the West adding a nice contrast to night time already almost in place in Langworthgate.
W11 Washingborough contains a Methodist Church at the bottom of the aptly named Church Hill. Took a look on google street view. Was kind of expecting an old fashioned C of E edifice at the end of Church Hill tbh but hey it doesn’t matter.
They have funerals in churches. I’d like us all to observe a minute’s silence in memory of the deceased please.
I’ve always associated Branston with Branston Pickle though I have absolutely no evidence to suggests that there is a real link between the two. Maybe there is a small shed at the bottom of someone’s garden that opens into an enormous Tardis like pickle making factory. Don’t knock it. Could be true.
I’ve always been a fan of Branston pickle although since I discovered Delia Smiths Spicy Plum Chutney recipe we hardly ever buy the commercial product. It’s a fact that you discover over the years that whilst something shop bought might taste good it is rarely as good as the stuff you can make yourself at home. With the Davies’ this applies to pasta and even recently, yoghurt which when made at home are vastly superior to anything you can buy.
The chutney was our first discovery along these lines. Having made my first batch I tasted it and it was pretty yucky. I then left if for a few months and wow! Fantastic. Pasta had the same result. We bought a pasta making machine. It didn’t make the dough but it rolled it out like a mangle and then had fittings that shaped the sheets into tagliatelli, angel hair etc. Serious result.
Only this week my wife Anne made her first yoghurt. Sounds very alternative doesn’t it? The resultant yoghurt is great though. Tastes a lot more natural than anything you get in the shops. When you think of it all there is is milk and a bit of fruit chucked in. No sugar, stabilisers, thickeners, preservatives etc. I added some freshly picked raspberries from the garden and hey presto I had a healthy breakfast.
I digress. I only have two memories of Branston, neither of which are particularly clear. I once went to a wedding reception at Branston Hall Hotel. The very nature of these evenings are that you remember very little about them. I think a good time must have been had. Not been back since.
The other time was during the 1980s when Lincoln Rugby Club had its players dinner there one year. My only recollection of that night was remembering seeing someone had fallen asleep in one of the toilet cubicles. Not something you want to do at a rugby club dinner. I suspect he would have been woken up by water being chucked over the top.
I’m also pretty sure that they grow spuds in the area – only because I’ve seen lorries with Branston Potatoes written on the side.
So that’s it. Branston, a place you pass through on the way to Blankney Golf Club.
Oo great. Waddington. I’ve checked and P24 definitely contains a bit of the Waddington Air Base. This is good because I’ve been to Waddington Air Base a few times. To the Summer and Winter balls at the officers mess for one. Great doos. I did find it a little odd that you could tell how important someone was just by looking at their arms but that’s just my civilian perspective.
Very cheap drinks. I think i recall a bottle of moet being £14 and two pints of lager, a G & T and an OJ being something like £2.50. Was a while ago mind. We had a friend, Brad, who worked for Boeing and was able to invite us. V good.
The Waddington Airshow is a great day out. Been twice. Got complimentary tickets because the kids were playing in the school orchestra in hangar 4. It was particularly good because in order to deliver the musicians and their instruments we had a car pass that got us right in to the base with permission to park just next to the hangar.
Great organisation. We are in good hands with the Royal Air Force.
My other memory of Waddo is of taking off and landing there a few times. Our next door neighbour in Greetwell Gate was Flight Lieutenant Al Green. Al was a great lad and very hard working. For a time he ran the multi engined graining school at RAF Cranwell. The time came for Al to return to his unit in Brize Norton and as a bit of a farewell gestured he arranged to take me up in the jump seat when he was out with a new trainee pilot. They used twin engined jetstreams for the job and I sat there with headphones on listening to the two up front doing their stuff. We flew for an hour around Lincolnshire and returned via the cathedral so that I could take some photos of or house. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great but it didn’t detract from the occasion.
Anyway for while Al took over the controls and did a few approaches, landings and takeoffs at Waddington. I think he needed to do a certain amount every month to “maintain his ticket” or whatever the word is. It was quite a privilege to be allowed along on the ride.
Al lives near Oxford now. Must catch up sometime if you’re reading Al.
So that’s Waddington, the airbase at least. There is more to it, including a chippy and a takeaway curry house but that’s as far as my knowledge stretches.
Ciao amigos
Angels at 1 o’clock, or words to that effect.
I’m a bit gutted to find that The Collection, our wonderful museum, only just touches Cb3 which is the clasketgate grid and I feel it doesn’t have enough of a presence to merit inclusion in this piece, which is a shame.
However we do have the magnificent Theatre Royal which stands squarely in the centre of the grid so we can talk about that.
As a slight aside, about 25 years ago Phil Cool and Jasper Carrott were appearing in the Theatre Royal and one day after their show they ended up at The Raj Douth in the Bail for a curry. Terry Ade and I were in there having a meat madras after a few beers at the Prince of Wales when all of a sudden there was a big commotion in the next booth to us. A camera was produced and all the waiters took it in turns to have their photos taken with the diners in the booth who were of course the aforementioned messrs cool and carrot.
We protested that we were regular customers and that they never bother with taking photos of us so the staff obliged. For the years that that restaurant stayed open they had a photo collage on the wall that contained mostly pictures of the waiters with Phil Cool and Jasper Carrott but also one in the corner of me, ade and Terry.
Now it is a little known fact that I have been in two two week runs at the Theatre Royal. Before we had kids I was in the CAODS, or the County Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society. I can’t dance for toffee but I can sing. I was in Guys and Dolls and Anything Goes.
In the former I actually opened the show. I was stood there on stage as the curtain went up, tossing a coin, looking like a gangster. That was a pretty high pressure role, even though I was just in the chorus. Tossing that coin in front of thousands of people in the audience without dropping it was not easy. Ok it was only a few hundred and not thousands but you know what I mean.
They were great times. You can see why people want to get into the acting game. The buzz you get from the audience is fantastic. The high point of the show was the “Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat” number which was a fantastic song with about 8 part harmony and it always got a terrific cheer from the crowd. So much so, and because we enjoyed singing it so much, that some nights we used to sing it twice. Hey why not?
They were great days. On other occasions we used to take the kids to the panto on Boxing Day but unfortunately that era didn’t last long and the kids soon decided it wasn’t cool to be taken there by their parents. Huh!
Seen a few good acts over the years. Humphrey Lyttleton, the great jazzman, was terrific. Basil Brush was good too fair play and child number 4 was picked to go on stage and take part in the show, as they do.
Haven’t been for a while now. Perhaps it’s time to head on down to Clasgetgate again.
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