Licence to kill... I almost wish I had one

Am blogging very late tonight. The Man and I have just come home from watching the latest Bond movie, Skyfall. Now up until now I wasn't really a fan of the new man who is Bond. Well I am a died in the wool Sean Connery fan. And I still am. But notice that I said 'up until now'. No I'm not relinquishing my long time membership to the Sean Connery fan club, but I think I might I have just become a member of the Daniel Craig fan club.

OK so it wasn't the most sophisticated movie I've ever seen, but it had all the components of a good Bondie. Action, pretty girls, fast cars, action, more pretty girls, more action. What more could I want ?

Oh and it was good to see an acknowledgement to past gadgetry.

On another note, we have just spent a very frustrating half an hour trying to log into the UK Border agency site to get an appointment. And did we get one? We did not.

Not much choice left but for is to complain about it, which we have. By email.

Will keep you posted

a bit of a laugh ...

I was a tad disconcerted this morning on the train this morning. Why?

Well, you would be too; if on an underground train you could smell a hot electrical smell. When I looked around no one appeared to be bothered by it, but I can tell you I was very pleased to get off.

At work we are in the midst of the flu vaccination season. If you’re on this side of the world, have you had yours yet? I had mine yesterday, and I gave The Man his too. Any side effects? Nope, just a slightly tender arm

We’ve had a locum in to help with things, and she got herself a little snowed under this morning with the queue of clients waiting to have their vaccinations. So in-between the clients I was seeing I did some too.  I have the talk off pat now, and hopefully I won’t be saying it in my sleep. 

Had to have a bit of a laugh at myself today too. Picture this.

I’ve just taken an unwell ‘walk in’ client into one of our spare rooms to lie down.

Give a couple more flu vaccinations.

Then go out to get my next client. Nothing funny in that. Give me time and I’ll get to the funny bit. Well I thought it was funny.

Wanting to check on my client who was laying down I send my new client, who I thought was for a medical, to the loo to do me a sample.

Check on the unwell lady and get back to my room to take the sample from h chap and check it with a dip stick. All OK there.

So how long is it since you had your eyes tested I ask him.

Not for a long time he says, but what’s that got to do with my travel vaccinations.

What I say, aren’t you here for a medical?

No, he says, I’m travelling and I want to know what vaccinations I need.

We both had a good laugh.

Nothing like a bit of humour to make the afternoon go by.

Normality has been restored, well almost

hey ho, hey ho its off to work we go. Ah how quickly normality restores itself after a holiday.

I've been writing about the difficulty The Man has been having with the immigration service here. Well following the instructions of the none too friendly bloke behind the counter at the Croydon office, which was to go online at midnight and the next batch of appointments will be released.

So what did we do last night?

Set the alarm clock for a few minutes to midnight, and go online to book an appointment, right.

Wrong

.The first part, go online went OK, then it came to logging into the site and, hello, it didn't accept the user-name and password. Try again, and again, and again. Now I know that I was keying in the right ones, but the site kept on telling me it was wrong. How annoying is that. So guess what we will be trying again tonight.

Had to have a bit of a chuckle to myself at work today. Young woman comes into my office and I noticed from her file that her name had change. Married or unmarried I ask her. Well you never can tell these days can you.

Married she says with a grin, six weeks ago. Well I say congratulations. Thanks she says, with a giggle, now I feel all grown up.

I know how she feels. There are times when I think that one day someone will come along and say to me. 'You're not really a nurse, you know' and take back my registration. I guess that is one of life's little mysteries that we all have some irrational fears. A few years ago when we were on holiday with a daughter, her husband and the six month old granddaughter, one of the attractions we visited was Sea world. There was a part where we could walk over and a shark tank. The walls on either side were a good five feet hight,. Even so, daughter needed to have her daughter in the buggy so that none of us would throw her over the wall into the tank.

Chilly Sunday...

Hmph. Summer has really gone. Not only has the temperature taken a nose dive, it was one to only one degree at 0700 this morning and the clocks have gone back too. So here I am at just after 1800 and it is quite dark outside. Never mind,  it’s only about six weeks to the shortest day.

There was quite a pretty sunrise when I got up today, too pretty to resist taking pictures, which I didn’t. Resist that is. Then as it was still early I crawled back into the warm bed and had another snooze.

We spent this morning in the warm of the flat. Both of us head down in books. The man was not reading for pleasure though. He’s been studying hard.

Before we came over here I had to sit an English language exam. No really I am not kidding. There I am with English as my first language and having to prove that I can speak it. That’s because of this  EU thing that Britain subscribes to. Never mind the immigrants from EU countries who don’t have English as their mother tongue, and do they have to have a good grasp of the language that is spoken in the country. No they do not. Do you sense a bit of disparity there?  What I am getting at here is that now that The Man is going to apply for permanent residency, he too has to sit an exam to show that he is familiar with life in the UK. Nothing wrong with that I hear you say. Well that is true I suppose and I would have agreed with you. That was before I read some of the questions in the test.

Here are some of the questions

·         How many people live in the countries of the UK?

·         What is the census and how is census data collected and used?

• How many people belong to an ethnic minority and which are the largest minority groups?
• Where are there large ethnic communities?
• How many people in the UK own their own home?  
• What services are available to pregnant women? Which organisations offer information on maternity and ante-natal services?
• What responsibilities do self-employed people have?

So how well would you do answering questions about you own country?

After lunch we had a nice walk round the park here at Crystal Palace 

Ghouls and fireworks...

Halloween is upon us again. As I write this there are fireworks going off all over the place.  One of the ladies on the tour we were on said something about how awful it was that this ‘American’ tradition has taken root here in the UK. She was surprised when I said that actually it is a religious celebration. OK, I do agree with her that is has become very American and therefore commercial. The shops are full of Halloween paraphernalia, masks and pumpkins to be carved, ghosts and goblins outfits. Special candies and cakes decorated with ghoulish themes. 

Talk about commercialism. In the supermarket this afternoon The Man overheard a chap, who was obviously shop management, say to one of his underlings. ‘We did well with that product; we bought them for fifty-five pence. The Price the items were being sold for was £5. How’s that for profiteering

Halloween has its origins in the pagan Celtic festival of the dead called Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’) which took place on the 1^st November and marked the end of the “season of the sun” (Summer) and the beginning of “the season of darkness and cold” (Winter).

The Celts believed that that evil spirits came with the long hours of winter darkness and so 31^st October became known as the night when witches, ghosts and fairies became active and crossed over from the spirit world to roam the earth.

The church took this ancient pagan festival over for itself somewhere around the 16^th century Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallows Eve, which is the night before All Hallows Day (also known as All Saints Day) which also takes place on 1^st November. All Hallows Day is a traditional Christian feast day to remember and honour saints throughout history and worshippers would prepare themselves on Halloween with prayers and fasting before the celebrations began the following day.

Now we celebrate Halloween with jack-o-lanterns, apple bobbing, trick or treat, Halloween costumes and bonfire parties.

Home again...

t will be a short read for you tonight,

What is it with the Brits and Bingo? That's what last nights entertainment was. Again even. So after dinner we sat in the lounge with a glass of red, before retiring.

Neither of us slept particularly well and both of us were pleased when the alarm beep beeped at a quarter to seven.

Breakfast was as usual very nice thank you. Bacon, eggs, tomato and mushies. Better make the most of it cos it will be the last one, at lest until The Man works his magic in the kitchen.

The coach was fully loaded and ready to go by about 0900, and as had happened on other days the two Indian women sitting behind us started their very loud conversation. That was until The Man turned and asked them to keep the volume down. He did it so nicely that they didn't take offence and it was nice to be able to hear ourselves think.

At our first rest stop, which was only an hour down the road, the driver announced that there would be a bit of musical chairs at the next rest stop.

There was another bus, oops there I go again,I mean coach, from the same company doing the same tour and the drivers must have been chatting about the different pick ups and drop off points and so to made sense to combine the two coachloads and then divide them up again according to destination.

The coach trip was the easy part of getting back to Crystal Palace.

Once we were back in the public transport system it seemed to take forever to get back from the drop off point. It was Friday after all, and the beginning of the rush hours.

So here we are back in our little flat, all unpacked and fed.

Settle and Skipton

I was sooo disappointed with last nights dinner.

Why so? Well, on the menu it said apple crumble for dessert, and I love a good apple crumble. But by the time we got to dessert time, it was all gone. Never mind.

And the entertainment last night was bingo again, so we spent the evening chatting with out mates again.

So there we were on the bus, oops I mean coach, again at . 0930, bright eyed and bushy tailed. On the way to our first stop of the day we drove through several small country villages called Rimmington and Gisburn, and no I haven't spelled it incorrectly, it really is Gisburn. Past fields populated with black faced sheep, shades of the kids animated programme called Shaun the Sheep. We also spotted some highland cattle all orange and shaggy.

The country town of Settle was our first stop, and a bit chilly it was too. We were well rugged up though, and enjoyed our walk around. First heading for the church we had seen on the way in. The blackened exterior hid a modern makeover, and though I do think things need to move with the times, we do prefer our churches untouched. With only an hour in this little town, and feeling bit chilly around the ears, we ended our visit here in the Singing Kettle teashop with a Latte and a piece of fruitcake.

The run through more rolling countryside through towns like Giggleswick, Hellifeild, Thoby, Earby, Fouridge and Ramsbottom had us wondering about the origin of the names. Unfortunately the answer will have to wait until we get back to London and so, called normality.

Next stop was Skipton, another town built out of the grey local stone which with today overcast sky made it appear rather monochromatic, but not as cold as is was earlier but then it wasn't as windy either. As usual we made for the closest church, but the doors were locked. The Churchyard had been cleared of stones, which had been arranged around the perimeter wall. We walked around them reading the names and dates. So many of them with several children in the same family, dieting at different times. It must have been terribly hard to lose just one child, let alone three or four or even five.

Somewhere in town we'd heard that there was a castle, but we knew there was a canal running through Skipton and it didn't take us long to locate it and begin our walk along the banks.

 It is a fully functioning canal and there were quite a lot of colourfully decorated longboats moored along the banks. These old waterways operated like our modern motorways and it is amazing to think that they were dug by basic manpower, just muscle and shovel. The autumn-clad canal sides made for a very pretty walk that we both enjoyed, and it was good to stretch the legs after sitting in the coach. 

As the coach was manoeuvrings its way through the tiny streets to where it was parked I'd spotted a sign pointing to the Craven Museum. Now this is the family name one of my cousins who has fairly recectly begun to search her family tree. What I didn't realise is that Craven is the name of an area, not a family name. 

However that didn't deter us from visiting. It was exciting, well for me at least (The Man thought it was a bit ho-hum) that on display in the museum is one of the very few Shakespearian First Folios on public display. I wont bore you with any details, but if you are interested I'm sure Mr Google will be able to help you out.

After all that we just had time to call into a local store and buy ourselves a sandwich to eat on the drive back tot eh hotel.

The journey has been nice and quiet because one of the pair of Indian ladies behind us decided not to come on the excursion today.

Tomorrow we have to be up a tad earlier than we have been as the driver wants all the cases loaded by 0830.

Lake Windemere and Beatrix Potter

We were looking forward to a bit of light entertainment last night, but it was bingo night. So instead we sat in the bar, where else, and had a pleasant evening chatting to our new friends.

This morning the bus was waiting for us at 0930, so after a very nice cooked brekky, we could get used to that, we boarded our coach and the drive took us northwards.

We drove past signs that pointed towards Liverpool and almost opposite that was pretty large and odd shaped building that we realised once we got level with it was an indoor ski slope.

Further on and we passed a septic tank cleaning truck with the 'Serious *****k ' emblazoned across the back. Well it made us chuckle.

In the seat behind us are two Indian ladies who, apart from when they are snoozing, keep up a constant barrage of loud chatter. I think one of them must be helping the other with her English as they were talking about words beginning with 'ch'. Chemist and chiropodist and church and choir. I wanted to turn around and suggest another to them. Chatterbox!

Soon though we were at Haverthwaite and boarding the steam train that took us through the lovely Leven valley and to where we embarked for a cruise on lake Windermere to Browness Bay. Golds and greens and reds clad the hillside, right down to the water line. In a few places we could see farmers fields and then as we got closer to our destination houses began to appear and then grand hotels. Just before the boat pulled into its mooring there was an announcement that this was the area where Arthur J Ransom set his children's books 'Swallows and Amazons'. I tried reading these many years ago and was never able to get into them. Now perhaps I might give them another go'

so we all piled of the boat and wandered into the little township, then up the hill to the Beatrix Potter attraction. Apparently she loved the Lake District and bought a farm here somewhere and spent many happy years there .

The Man was very patient with me oo-ing and ah-ing over the fictional characters almost made real. OK so it wasn't my most favourite book, but I do have fond memories of listening to the story of Peter Rabbit on the National radio Story time on Sunday mornings when I was kid.

We had time for a nice stroll down through the town, stopping off to buy a Peter Rabbit souvenir, well I couldn't leave without one now could I, and some chockies of course, before arriving back at where the bus was due to bring us back.

I think we both must have had a snooze on the way as it seemed to be no time at all before the coach was pulling into the hotel car park

We even had time for a walk along the river before tea. The Man had spotted a weir and wanted to investigate and we were rewarded with some very nice reflections of an old, but disused pub. We came back on the other side of the river and past a kids play area that had a statue of a heron, very nicely done too.

So it is that time of the evening again and we are about to go down to dinner and to add this post to the blog.

Buxton and Bakewell

Dinner last night was very nice thank you and we spent a very pleasant evening with our new found friends. We gave the entertainment a miss, might see what is on offer tonight.

We both slept pretty well for a first night in a strange bed, possibly due to a double nightcap of drambuie.

Last night the coach driver, yay got it right, told us that he would be parked outside waiting for us this morning at 0930, and he was. Breakfast was the full English version which lasted us all day.

So where have we been today, are you sitting comfortably? Yes, OK I'll begin.

Unfortunately the pretty hill country views we were hoping to see on our drive over to Buxton remained hidden in the very low cloud. At what we thought was the top was peak View Tearooms, not a lot of point stopping there today. The road was quite winding and by the end of it I was feeling just a tad off. The feeling quickly vanished as we came out of the cloud and drove through several small country towns. Lots of the paddocks we drove past were littered with molehills, interestingly enough, well we thought so, they appeared to be in straight lines. We were also struck by the dry stone walls that divided the fields, often into reasonably sizeable field too. We speculated about where the stones might have come from. Even if it was only off the fields it would have been a huge task to collect them up. A job that would probably have fallen to the farm workers wives and children. We even saw one of the dry stone walls being repaired, a dying art in anyone's book.

I don't now that I would call the grey looking town of Buxton pretty, its more picturesque than pretty. With two hours in hand we set off to explore. Unlike the other passengers The Man and I turned away from the High Street and crossed the road to have a wander through the little park we had spotted opposite the parking area.

 A good move as we soon found ourselves strolling under autumn coloured trees. We walked the circular path around the park before following our coach mates

down the High Street. Plenty of charity shops here so no prizes for guessing which establishments attracted my attention. At the other end of the High Street we climbed up to look at the war memorial , not only commemorating WWI and WWII but more recent conflicts including Afghanistan.

Back on the coach, the driver soon had us at our next stop of Bakewell. Yes that is where the world famous tart and pudding is from. We had a short walk into the town, over a short bridge where the eagle eyed man spotted several trout, including a couple of reasonably big ones. The river flowed out from a weir where kids were having a ball feeding he ducks and seagulls. I saw an almost adult cygnet, but didn't see any parental swans.

We'd seen a church spire on the way in and this where we headed first. Reading the old headstones in the churchyard marking the graves of previous town residents, close to the building was what I thought might have been an old Celtic monument, was a cross shaft. Dated around 750 – 1000. In the porch of All Saints Church were more pieces of old stone monuments, recovered from the churchyard at various items. The interior of the church was in places quite dark, but at the rear a better lit and more modern looking chapel we came across the oldest grave, that of Sir Thomas Wendesley who died in 1403!

Back in the town we wandered around some very old shops, impressed by the dates of a couple of them with 1783. And what did we buy here in Bakewell? Well what else but Bakewell tart, the pastry based and almond flavoured pie. 

 

One of the cutesy towns we drove through on our way back to the hotel was Dove Hole, I kid you not, it really is a place called that .

Time for The Man and I to go down to dinner. I wonder what it will be tonight?

On the road again...

Did it pique your curiosity enough to come after reading yesterdays blog ending? Never mind if you didn't read what I wrote yesterday, I just ended by saying that The Man and I were off again.

And so we are .This package holiday lark really hard work. We got up a bit later than our usual time, dawdled over breakfast and then down tot he station to get the Southern to West Croydon. Hopped on a tram for one stop then had a five minute walk to the bus, oops sorry, coach pick up stop, No stress there, hardest thing about it was deciding which to have a the local café, hot chocolate or coffee.

The morning started off very foggy and the TV traffic report warned of 'major' delays to traveller airports were closed by it, but 'major' delays seemed a bit too strong a description for our bus, oops there I go again, coach being about five minutes late.

The coach, hah got it right that time, had a couple more pick ups to do before striking out onto the motorway in a northerly direction. First rest stop was only about half an hour after the last pick up. It did seem a bit soon until the driver announced that some folks had already been on the bus for almost five hours. A coffee and one of Mr Maccas apple pies each and we were back on the road.

The trees are slowly changing out of their summer green and donning the muted autmnal cloaks. Some daring decidui forwent the drab for bright gold and even red.

We amused ourselves by spotting interesting things along the motorway.

Look at that little station wagon. Written boldly across the sides and back windows was the sign announcing that it was a Lost Pet Rescue Service. And not long after that The man spotted our first Eddie Stobbart truck in its distinctive green and whiter livery. Eddie Stobbart, pronouncing the 'Stob' like the word stop, is a very big carrying,,,oops logistics company over here in the UK. And it has its own spotters club too. I kid you not, there are dedicated spotters out there who travel the length of the country at the roll out of a new fleet of these vehicles. It is a huge company that includes a rail network and an airport. By the end of the day us casual spotters had seen more than 20 of them.

Our Last pick up was at a place called Stoke Mandeville, Mandeville being the name of the mascot of the paralympics. Where's the connection I hear you ask. Well Stoke Mandeville hospital is, I believe, a huge rehab hospital. Possibly a bit Ike Burwood is in NZ.

The next interesting motorway sign pointed to an exit towards Banbury. Hmm I wonder if that is where the nursery rhyme is from. You know the one, Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross, or is that Bambury Cross?

Then we saw an enormous paddock with little huts all over it, there must have been a couple number of large fat of hundred of them and at least than number of huge pink porkers. Breeding stock The Man said not eating stock.

One more service area stop, where we ate our packed lunch and got to know the couple who are sitting in front of us on the Bus, bother did it again, mean coach. Brian and Debbie.

Back on the road again and the roadside scenery is very rural. It is a nice change from the monotonous red brick cities.

And now here we are at our hotel, in Manchester. Once I've finished writing we will wander down to dinner and possible partake of the nights entertainment. Hard work this holiday lark