… and yet even so, I had an alarm set this morning. It may well have been set to 07:30 this morning but that is 12:30 in real money and that’s plenty late enough to be in bed, Sunday or no Sunday, even if in real terms it was actually about 03:00 when I crawled into bed.
And even if I was unfortunately alone in bed last night. Cujo the Killer Cat decided that she would stay elsewhere, presumably in her laundry basket. It’s quite strange really. There are three cats here in this house and each one has its favourite place in the house where you would be sure to find it.
Consequently there was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone and so after I had arisen from the dead and in the absence of anyone else moving around, I transcribed the notes. We’d been doing some stuff with some new type of London double-decker bus. We’d had to go back and pick up another one from the makers but it wasn’t ready. They didn’t know when it was going to be ready so this girl and I had to hang around for a while to receive some further information. There were other people coming and going in this building. She said to the man whom we’d seen that there was something called “Wall of Silence” that he had to attend that was on the weekend of 18th/19th December. I was trying to work out what this was. I didn’t really have a clue. It sounded strange to me but this person had obviously heard it because as soon as this girl said that it was €42 for 2 tickets the guy coughed up quite willingly. I made some remark. She said that the group that was appearing was called Pink Floyd. Then I suddenly realised what it was – that it was a tour to re-promote the album “The Wall”. The guy asked where it was taking place. The girl replied “it’s at Calveley near the old airfield”. They started talking about the airfield. The girl said that it wasn’t actually on the airfield. That’s going to be used for over-parking, excess parking. The next thing was that we were actually out there having a look around. There was a woman with a little girl with very long red hair who were walking around somewhere on the main Chester road not too far away from where we were.
Later on there were two people, one discussing hiring a housemaid from the other. They were talking about her in the most disparaging terms. The conversation drifted from there to other things that she was able to do which I thought was extremely out of order, this kind of discussion.
I was then in Canada with someone whom I knew from Crewe in the old days. There was something about some kind of antiques fair in Palo Alto in California. He wanted me to take him there. We had to work out a route, where we were going to drive past, where we’d stay etc. It turned out that as well as the two of us there were several other people, a couple of women with their daughters who he wanted to bring along as well. It ended up that we would be seven people in Caliburn which I thought was way too many but we started to go ahead and plan this particular route and trip.
I was then walking through Sandbach. For some unknown reason I had a goalkeeper’s jersey with me that I’d just washed and was looking for a place to hang it. I was wandering around the back streets around the Third Avenue area and came across the rear wall to Sandbach Ramblers football ground. We talked about the club and ground for a bit saying that it’s now the Corporation’s lorry park. Then we walked back. There was a place to hang the football shirt on a wire that was coming off a telegraph pole or something but I couldn’t get it on there. A little further down there was someone else’s goalkeeping shirt that had been presumably thrown by a couple of kids and had caught on a wire way above the ground. It was impossible to reach it. You’d need a big pole or an enormous ladder to get to it. I wondered what on earth that was doing there. What was the story behind that particular goalkeeping shirt.
Finally, we were living in Gainsborough Road. There were a load of people around answering the phone and working on the radio etc. They had left the place really untidy, these kids, when they had gone. Nerina had gone to do a taxi job so I started to clean up. I found some awful stains on the floor by the sofa so I became quite angry about that. No-one else volunteered to clean it so I had to clean it and there was a great deal about that. I put away the cleaning stuff and then had to go and make some tea. We didn’t have many tea-bags, we had very little milk so I was outside making the tea. Nerina came back. She got out of the car and started to talk to a few people. My hands were full so I was bringing back the stuff in 2 or 3 trips. I mentioned that we needed some new camping equipment. She said that she knew about that and someone was organising it. I was trying to tell her about these stains in the living room but for some unknown reason she didn’t want to listen. I had some papers in my hand. I dropped one. I thought “should I pick it up and make the place look tidy or just leave it because my hands were full?
Eventually everyone collected in the living room so we set off for Woodstock. And it was pretty crowded in the Golf because by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong. Zoe and Chris, her partner, had already arrived and so we all went for breakfast. And it was my turn to pay as well.
On the way back we stopped off at Sobey’s for a few groceries and then came back. While Darren went off to reassemble a back axle, Rachel and I attacked a pile of squashes. We microwaved them for a short while, peeled and diced them and then put them for freezing.
This is an agricultural area famous for corn and for potatoes. In fact, this is where all of your McCain frozen potatoes come from and the factory in Florenceville was at one time the largest food-processing plant in the world. And there’s a huge movement here amongst the locals to go “back to the land” and Darren and Rachel are quite committed to it. There are tons of veg around this house and several large freezers that are quite full.
That took most of the afternoon and then it was time for tea. I had some vegan sausages baked in onions, garlic and tomato and we made piles of veg along with some baked potatoes. Right now I’m totally stuffed.
Just walking around the kitchen with the squash and then doing the washing-up, I ran up over 3 kilometres on the fitbit and right now I’m exhausted so even though it’s early I’m going for a lie down and that’s going to be that. Setting the alarm and leaving the bed early is all well and good and I can do more than I otherwise might, but it takes it out of me at the end of the day.
, good buddy.
, which will forever be associated in my brain with late, dark, cold nights on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in the High Arctic, and that is exactly what I’m trying to put out of my mind.