Season's Greetings

Snatchems

HIGH TIME I posted again, I think – readers, if I still have any, will think I’ve been kidnapped by Martians or something…

I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with My Good Lady’s health scares – including having to ring for ambulances a couple of times, and her four-day stay in the local hospital; and that is on top of the various GP sessions I’ve had to take her to. It’s all been a little worrying.

She’s doing a little better now, I’m relieved to say, although she’s still got more scans to attend – we’ve still no real idea of what the problem is.

Aside from this what’s new? Well I suppose one of the main issues is that we’re now no longer going the Geriatrics’ Corner of the Pub. So many of our friends have either passed away, or just drifted away, that making the eight-mile round trip seems pointless. It appears that the happy, golden, Camelot years there are well and truly over.

Instead we’ve been visiting a local landmark pub: Snatchems, more properly known as the Golden Ball Inn. Sitting right on the river, as it does, the road to it floods twice a day, cutting the old place off from the outside world.

The original pub dates back to about 1710, but the new owner has spent a fortune restoring the place, adding an upstairs wing which looks out across the river towards Lancaster and the open Pennine fells beyond.

MGL and I come to spend an agreeable hour here, watching the birds on the water – herons, geese, gulls and the like – and occasionally meeting up with some other refugees from the Geriatrics’ Corner.

The pub’s nickname comes from the fact that the River Lune is navigable at this point, and ships setting off from Lancaster Quay which were undermanned would put in here and shanghai any drunks who happened to be about!

I’m told the practice is now discouraged!

Rediscovering Ambler

A CHANCE find at our local public library has brought me to the company of a favourite old author.

I’m talking about the spy/thriller writer Eric Ambler. Sadly, most of his work seems to have been out of print for quite a long time now – I haven’t seen any of the books for years, at least twenty…

So, if you haven’t heard of him it’s hardly a surprise. But re-reading Ambler now, in a new Penguin Modern Classics edition, I’m enchanted all over again by the quality of his prose.

It’s the kind of writing I would have liked to have done myself. Indeed, I once had a bash at writing thrillers, but discovered my imagination simply didn’t run in that direction.

Which is a pity, since I do enjoy reading this genre of fiction, especially when it’s of such a high order.

Okay, yes, it’s a little dated, written and set, as it is, in the pre-World War Two years of the thirties. But the wonderful sweep of the storytelling, the realism of the setting, the truthfulness of  psychology of his characters, the pristine quality of the literary style all make for sheer reading joy.

No need to take my word for it, though. When the likes of Graham Greene, John Le Carré and Alfred Hitchcock all praise him as one of the best thriller writers of all time, then you just know you’re onto someone really special.

I commend him to your attention.

Still rolling along

THOUGHT it about time I posted another of my once-in-a-blue-moon blogs.

I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with life, health, weather and miscellaneous other issues – to the point, indeed, of finding myself somewhat at a loss for words, not to mention time and enthusiasm.

So, then, what have I been up to lately?

Well, not a lot really. When asked how I am, I tell people I’m like the wagon still rolling along, if only on three wheels (and two of those are wonky!).

We had a rather nasty blow a few weeks ago – torrential rains and high winds – and as a result some of my raised beds look as if they’ve been trampled on by an elephant. The metal frame of one the beds has sheered right off, while another has got so badly bent I’ve had to use sticky tape to hold it together.

I almost gave up on having any crops at all this year – my tomato plants looked utterly wrecked, and the green beans and peas seemed crushed. Only my spuds seemed to thrive on all this rain.

And yet, amazingly, little green globes have appeared on my Black Russians and we’ve already enjoyed some of my sugar snap peas and french beans. Truly, nature can be wonderful.

On the health front, I’ve been fitted up with aids to help sharpen up my loss of hearing – but I find they become irksome after a few hours and on the whole not a great deal of help. If anything, too, I suspect they are making my tinnitus worse.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken my punishment for a speeding offence by attending a four hour long awareness day in lieu of having my licence docked; to be honest I found the afternoon tedious and tiring, with my concentration badly flagging long before the end.

So that’s about it. Oh yes, I’ve had various other health-related anxieties especially with regard to My Good Lady, but she’s already written about those herself.

Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t worry – I’ll still be rolling along.

Return to grouchyness now that the party's over

SO FINALLY, all the Royal brouhaha is over, and we can get back to our normal, everyday concerns and troubles.

Ours appear to be growing faster than my seed potatoes!

Thing is, I damaged the rental car whilst on holiday – not too badly, just a bit of paintwork nicked.

A quick spray over and the job is done; I was in half a mind to do it myself before I took the vehicle back.

Now I’m sent a bill – and not just for costly repair job (taking up to four days)  but for a further two weeks’ rental which I’ve already paid in full.

I’ve dispatched emails to both the rental company and the car hire site I used to locate the vehicle.

Neither seems to be able – or willing – to help, and they keep passing the buck from one to the other.

And since I’m unable to pin anybody down I find myself dangling, impotently, at the mercy of the wretched internet.

Another problem, a bank transfer has gone agley on us – a rather hefty sum of money has left one account but hasn’t arrived at the other end and over a week has now elapsed. Again, a flurry of emails has produced no satisfactory solution, just another buck-passing situation.

Then there are all our health concerns, with medical appointments unable to be made or visits arranged.

And in the midst of all this we have a four day Royal jamboree when everything seems to grind to a halt and nobody is available to do anything!

If I sound grouchy, it’s because I'm being frustrated at every turn.

A drench of French rain!

SO, FINALLY, here I am again, recovered from our travels (please see The Oxcliffe Vixen's recent postings) and my rather rushed gardening efforts – I’m now suitably aching in my back, my upper thighs and even my glutes!

As My Good Lady has already explained, we had a lot of rain this holiday! As a result we didn’t get about, perhaps, as much as we should have liked.

However, we have brought back a few happy memories, perhaps the best being our visit to the mediaeval town of Sarlat:

 not least because it was on one of our few really warm, sunny days!

We also visited a couple of chateaux, a truffle museum (where I contemplated buying some of these much revered fungi until I discovered the price! no wonder they call them Perigord’s black gold!), and a museum of medicine (which made me thank god I wasn’t born in earlier centuries!).

The weather also put a damper on our dining out experiences. MGL treated me to a rather interesting restaurant meal for my birthday, including a remarkably delicious starter of foie gras on an apple tart, followed by some of the best veal either of us has ever tasted!

But I have to admit, I haven’t come back from this holiday as refreshed as I would normally expect. Maybe because of all that rain, maybe because of our horrendous journey home.

Would I visit this part of France again? Probably not. Certainly, there are other regions I’d sooner visit, or revisit, than this area of the Dordogne.

Ah well, roll on our next vacation!

March in one shot

HERE’S March in one fell swoop!

• Begun revising my French for upcoming trip – on an Aussie online course! If my accent doesn’t confuse our Gallic acquaintances I’ll eat my chapeau!
• We buy a new set of saucepans, lightweight aluminium ones, ’cause our old cast iron ones are a bit too heavy for me to lift with confidence (the stroke, you know). Almost the first thing I do is knock over the frying pan with two eggs in it, and they land on the carpet, sunny side down. The new pan is now blessed with a great dint along one side.
• Couple of really lively sessions at the Pub. Rob, the manager/chef, assures me that when I die he’ll name our regular table after me. I tell him that that honour ought to go to PD – who, after all, spends far more money here than I do. “Oh no,” says Rob, “I’ll have him stuffed and mounted!”
• Al, our gardener, makes his first appearance of the season and gives our still sodden lawn a first tentative trim. Meanwhile I take delivery of a new raised bed and some extra large potato planting bags – I’m determined to rediscover my green fingers again this year.
• Discover I don’t really like sea bass – to me it has an excessively tough, scaly skin and virtually no flavour – which is perhaps why it’s so fashionable, something fish haters can eat without the worry of tasting anything.
• Still on food: I do us a couple of interesting slow-cook dishes, a beef stew in a peanut butter sauce (I know, sounds ghastly, but it turns out quite good) and a chicken cooked in Riesling wine.
• I finally manage to lock down a hire car for our French holiday – it’s amazing how difficult it is to find an automatic car in Europe, almost as bad as trying to find a manual one in the States and Canada.
• My Good Lady is beginning to feel the benefits of the longer daylight hours and the milder, sunnier weather – always a relief to me when we put our thick coats and winter woollies away. We’ve survived another winter – hip, hip, hooray!