Pre Travel Stress

My head was whirring away full pelt and my eyes wide open not even thinking of sleep as Steve lay beside me breathing deeply having dropped off an hour ago. There is always so much to do before going off to a race and I haven’t even finished the washing let alone ironing, folding and packing. Both of our transition backs are checked off and packed though…. Days ago. That is the direction of our priorities. 

As I sat propped up trying to make myself and order of ‘To Do’ jobs in my notebook, I glanced now and then at the simple little glass Angel that has hung from the wall light by the side of my bed for at least ten years, since a friend who visited me when I was suffering a bout of Labyrinthitis. She brought it with a get well note as a token that she was thinking of me. 

My eyes went back to that little angel time after time until I turned to page of my notebook and started to write.

 

Glass Angel 

A little angel just a few inches high

Given by a friend years ago

Tiny gold wings suggest she can fly

Hangs by my bed so very near by

Barely attached a hovering halo

Finger tips touch in a prayerful sigh 

Palest pink gown seems gently to drift

Floating choir like down an aisle

Raised dots lent texture to her shift

A skirt of glass too heavy to lift

Peacefully for me she prays a while

Simple image helps my thoughts to sift 

Most pure of form so plain of design

Kind gesture in a low moment for me

Complications levelled airily divine

Clarity to charity to warm and align

Things not always as we might see

Mysterious contentment in comfort fine 

Fairy like angel of see thru’ style

Catches light rays starting to glisten

Can she hear my heat once in a while

 My minute hopes ease her lips a smile

Draw my needs in through glass to listen

Offer my message o’er heavenly styles 

Does my little angel hear me as I pray

Envelope a private missive to pass along

Who can dismiss such ideals or display

Most clear believe in many a day

Translate dreamy hopes wisped into song

Keep me on my journey along the way

 

 

 

That Pretty Young Girl

That Pretty Young Girl 

So much of my life holds memories warm

They are pleasing for me to look back

Yet harsh recollections flash to form

Hinting what I in my character lack 

Each day I grow older too late for sighs

I gaze in a glass at the image I see

Outward appearance that may look wise

Yet inside my head I hope she’s still me 

There is no need for regretful head shake

Picture frame of a face hair all a-curl

Tried to be kind and give more than take

Still my heart see’s that pretty young girl 

Not only in dreams are we ever the same

So pleasing to see a backward glance

One identical thing is our given name

We hear music and our feet love to dance 

We had our moments of joy she and I

They are pleasing for us to look back

We neither question the reason why

Dreams and fact share the same track  

Now only in dreams are we ever the same

Life is not always simply by chance

Play each day without laying blame

Our spirits share and smiles enhance 

Everything there from heaven was sent

Space for both sadness and loving whirl

Tears and happiness need no consent

Still my heart see’s that pretty young girl

 

 

Life as a Tiger

As I prepare for another sports holiday journey, one thing that will be done is to empty all the money boxes. One is a metal money box where we pop the odd sheet of paper money when we are on a good week. This is a tin with a slot at the top so you can’t take a knife to it to go shopping. The other store is a large bottle that we place every £2 coin that arrives in our purse or pockets by whatever means. The tin generally helps with some of the hotel bills and the bottle will usually buy us a few meals whilst we are away. 

We are not wealthy people but we look forward to our holidays that we look at as a chance to think how glad we are to be alive and happy. Most of our trips involve going to compete in a triathlon somewhere. This time it will be Gdynia in Poland. It’s an Ironman 70.3.  My husband and I both love maps and are always dreaming about different places and we are mostly agreed on the kind places we hope to see. Neither of us has ever been to Poland, so that will be completely new. Gdynia was occupied by the Germans during the war with horrendous consequences. We are going to drive there; it will be a full two day journey and we are looking forward to it tremendously.  

We have a five night stay in Gdynia itself and hope to learn a little about the city and Gdansk since the cities are close, almost like Brighton and Hove. We are both looking forward to swimming in the Baltic Sea for the first time during our event and seeing some of what we have been told is very pretty countryside on the bike ride and running through the old town to get to the finish line and the end of another triathlon adventure. 

We are breaking the trip with a two night stop in Dresden that was also scarred by WWII but by the British bombing raids. The city centre of Dresden has been on the bucket list quite a while, it has been totally rebuilt using the old plans. Actually we only have one whole day to check out the city, because we will arrive on the first evening and leave early after the two night of the stopover. We will work hard to squeeze as much in as possible can in that time. On our return journey we want to take a quick look at Berlin. 

My husband Steve and I are also best friends and have a lot of things in common. A major attitude is voiced in a well known motivational quote that has several variations but the base line is that ‘It is better to live one year as a Tiger than a 100 years as a Sheep.’  Steve and I both have very good reasons for feeling that you should live everyday as if it is your last. 

 

My best friend from my post school teenage years and I had great fun when we were young. That was in the early days of Rock & Roll and we would jive for hours on end, even in our kitchen’s at home, where both sets of parents were happy that we were happy to enjoy ourselves indoors and for free. We went to the movies every week sometimes twice, and were both nuts about the young Elvis Presley. We would regularly ride our bikes (Paid for on a weekly scheme out of our low wages)  the ten miles to Brighton on our days off work, just to play the juke box or hang around the stage door of the Hippodrome to collect autographs of the stars playing there that week. 

My friend married a sailor and they had two children. She discovered later that she had Cancer of the womb and her husband responded to that news by taking her back to her mother, like a discarded toy, saying he could not look after her. He divorced her while she lay dying at her parent’s home. She was 27. 

Early in our married life, a friend and business partner of my husband was murdered by his wife’s lover. He was I think 29. He had always talked about working hard and retiring early and would often grumble about Steve’s much easier going attitude to work and life, and not losing the one within the other. It mad him so mad when Steve would take an afternoon off to go water skiing. 

Another friend and business associate of about the same age drank himself to death before he was 30 years old. He was such a funny bloke and always claimed to have something wrong with him, something he joked about until he did have something wrong that he had brought upon himself which was so  hard to watch. He would often say that he wanted his headstone in the graveyard to read ‘I Told You I Was ill.’ He left his wife and a pretty little girl without their young, handsome, witty husband and Daddy. 

These events, all happening in a quite close time frame left a lasting mark upon us both. We think about our friends every day, the pain never leaves you. 

Every day when I wake up, I think how fortunate I am to have survived so long in this world that we see today, full of hate instead of love. So hand in hand with my best friend/husband/coach, we will step forward and embrace each new day and each new experience. Spending more that we should of course, pushing on into old age. We are still having great fun doing our sport of triathlon that gives us both such pleasure. Even though it needs stamina and strength both of which are fading with age, but it is a mental challenge too, actually it can be pretty spiritual pushing on, as you move out of your comfort zone and into and area where it is just sheer force of will and the shouts of the crowd that keep you going when your body it totally whacked.

 

All the photos today show how much we both enjoyed my celebration of living to 75 by doing 75 mini triathlons from June 1st to my birthday on August 14th 2014

 

 

 

 

 

His and Her Jobs: Manners Episode II

Quite often I find that when my husband does a household job that is next on the list that he always requires me to act has his assistant. My jobs must be managed solo. The job in question today was getting a wire to pass through a small hole that he drilled a couple of days ago. The wire needs to be threaded through a covered space underneath a fitted desk, so there is not any visual on it. It then needs to go through another small hole to exit into the kneehole area of the desk. So far this little operation has taken two hours.  

He told me that lay the other side (the kneehole side) with a torch. After a while he decided that we should change ends, which was when I realised that the holes were not even closely aligned. I told him this. He came to look and agreed then took credit for that discovery. 

He asked me to go and get him a wire coat hanger. I laughed at that, because as I reminded him; they are something that he has a serious dislike of, and sends every one that may come back from the cleaners, to the tip if any dare to find their way into our home. He insists that there must be one somewhere. I am polite enough to have a quick search but know full well that no such item is permitted under our roof. 

He asks for a spare shoe lace. “What like the ones I asked you about and you put in the dustbin last week?” He asks for a piece of wire. I remind him that wire, screws, hammers, screw driver’s etc. all belonged to him and would be where he placed them, wherever he keeps them neatly put away somewhere where he can instantly find them. He gets up off the floor and goes downstairs and out into the garage returning quite quickly with a length of wire. He asks for some string, I offer thread since this is not only the office and my personal writing space (Something I have politely negotiated) and it is also my sewing room. I get up this time and select a firm length of thread. Now that the piece of wire has finally given in, after a long period of twiddling to pass through the second hole, I am then instructed to gently pull the wire that is tied to the thread that is tied to the electric wire that is what the job it all about, through the knee hole end of the desk.  

I pulled the wire very gently through and it ends at a small eye the he has made with the pliers. The thread is tied to that. I am instructed to carry on easing it bit by bit through between the two holes. I pull the thread along very gently until it stops where I can see the offending electrical wire tied to the thread when I peer into the hole. At this point we change ends again which is a bit of relief because it means changing the shoulder you are lying on too.  

Finally it is through. The purpose of the entire operation is so that there are not wires all over the place so that the desk looks neater. This is a good thing because, I had claimed this space for myself and now he has moved in a little at a time. I am still making it firmly but gently clear, that the window end of the room and the next eight feet of room space in this room are mine all mine. This is my own little piece of space, my quiet space, my thinking space, my peaceful place. I have been quietly insisting that he can; now that he has fitted his computer from our work office here, in this spare room, work there, when I am not doing my pesky writing thing.  

I will work together with him business wise, first thing office hours in the morning and then middle to late afternoon. I need that private space time whilst I am not tired and can still think. Just a two or three hours a day. I don’t think that is unreasonable and he agrees, but it’s like trying to train a pet, or handle a teenager, he keeps pushing the boundaries. However, I am very good at pet training. 

I feel that this is well and peacefully concluded where others might have killed each other. Neither of us raised our voices or made faces or performed deep sighs. It can be done people.

 

A Step in the Right Direction

Yes, Yes, I know, I am old enough to be your grandmother and I see in your eyes that you think I am a little old fashioned, but I am going to say this anyway. This is getting to be a very rude, ill mannered world and no good will come of it. It is not any good pretending to agree with me either, because that will not change to world and it is moving at increasing speed to a time when everybody just says exactly what they think in any daily situation.  

If you catch an infection, you go and have it treated, and that during that illness and the slow recovery you have to do as person treating you advises and slowly the problem starts to heal. Without addressing a problem and simply accepting it, germs spread and can become contagious diseases. 

In my opinion we are we are standing back and watching a modern plague develop. The reason children have poor manners, is because their parents have not taught them to be polite. They have not explained that if you want grow up to be a happy person, then you have to try to make those around you happy. That you have to be nice to people that you hope will be your friends and then they will respond to you and your smile and your politeness and your kindness. You have to treat people the way you would like to be treated. 

Last weekend I walked into Arundel Railway station and went to the little window. At the other side of the office a man was sitting at the table texting. He took absolutely no notice of me standing there waiting to be helped. I gave it a moment and then smiled and said “Excuse me, could you help me please”. He looked up at me, I broadened the smile, “Can you tell me how I…… He did come over, and abruptly answered a few questions and did sell me a two day parking ticket. I took the ticket and as a very infrequent train traveller I said, “Do I take it with me and put it in the machine when I get back or do I leave it in the window”. Now it may sound like a stupid question, but I think employees are in place to help customers. He exhaled like a ham actor and grunted “Course you do” and turned away rudely. 

Two days ago we went to Curry’s in Littlehampton to buy a new keyboard and mouse for the computer. My husband and I walked up to the counter where a young woman was texting. My husband said “Excuse me.” She gave him an exasperated look and said “Yes.”  As she moved away to serve him I said to my husband, “I think the young lady meant, ‘Good afternoon sir, welcome to Curry's, how may I help you’.”  Now, this is not the girls fault. This is firstly the fault of the company, who have not trained the manager of the shop to train the shop staff correctly, and possibly also her mum and her dad are a bit to blame, and the system that makes people think that they should not be thankful that they have a job at all. 

On Saturday evening at the swimming pool there is generally, because it is such a great parent saving service, a children’s party in the little pool and then in a party room. Of course children get excited at a party who would want anything less; but there are a few who are totally unruly and are not corrected when they start yelling at the tops of their voices and running about on a wet floor, which is dangerous. A while back at a moment like this, I popped my head out of a cubicle, putting my finger to my lips and said “SSSHHHH”.

It did stop the child in its tracks, but she then turned her dripping naked tummy around to face me and said “I Ain’t Shushin’!”  I responded with “No?..... But it would be so nice if you did.” The mother said nothing, not to her little girl of about six and not to me either. 

We have to try to change this and we start by putting a smile on our faces instead of a scowl, lowering the tone of our voices, and being polite to each other. Let’s give it a try. Take a deep breath. And move forward politely.

 

Past the Point of No Return 

The point of no return

Half way there

And half way back

Half way there

Or, half way back

Past the point of no return

No turning from there

No second thought

Too late to consider

What danger you court

Crossing the mark

That should depend

On both the person

Crossing the line

And the person

Marking the line

Or not

Stepping over the mark

There are different ideas

Moving the goal posts

How does that relate

Is that the same thing

Or totally different

As stretching your limits

Pushing the bounderies

The pendulum swing

Though that seems

Like a good thing

Go the way you know

Stop and cling

Fight the current

Or go with the flow

Against all odds

Battling on

 

All behaviour is learnt

Then again

If you learn

How to behave

From a parent

Or a teacher

They are only passing on

What they were told

Or should you be

A forward reacher

Second thoughts

Admit your mistakes

Acknowledge them

Could do better

We all could

Back to square one

 

Or should we have

Passed the point of no return

 

Analysis of a Training Programme

This is me at the finish of Ironman 70.3 World Championships at Clearwater, Florida 

Name: Daphne Belt

Female

AG 75-79  

Well, quite a lot of the weekend went in putting in some useful training time for my big event for this year which is Ironman 70.3 in Gdynia, Poland. This is a distance that I have not taken on for, shall we say a number of years. I don’t want to scare myself by looking up exactly the figure that is the real number. Add to that the horrid truth that I have no where near done an acceptable amount of training for it either.  

My husband/coach/best friend has put in the hours. He has been out on the road on his bike at 5am to catch the first light and get a hard but short bike ride in before coming back home to go out again with me for a another bike ride. Then for us to go swimming first and then a bike ride, or to go swimming and then a run. He has just been reminding me regularly if I show any sign of fretting, that it was my idea to enter a half and that is true, I did fancy taking a shot at that distance again. It was always my favourite kind of race and I suppose it’s me asking a question really; can I still get through it? We will see won’t we? 

For more years than is sensible we have both been convinced that what ever distance you can add together in a week, you can still get through that distance when it is needed all in one go. So then, I have been swimming at least 1900 metres in all four of my weekly swim sessions so that is done and dusted. The race venue of Gdynia is on the Baltic Sea that if you look at a big map, or Google maps backed off so that you can run your finger between two points you will see that it is about level with Yorkshire. Shouldn’t be too hot then which would suit me, I am not good in very hot places. I am not at all worried by a sea swim, I love the sea. 

I have not been biking 56 miles. I have not biked anything like 56 miles in one go but have easily put that in during the space of a week. In fact I don’t think I have done any longer distance than 30 miles or so. I have not ridden much in the way of hills but I am sure I can knock out that bike ride when push comes to shove and so is Steve. 

On to the half marathon run then, let’s look at that. My regular weekend run is 10 km, it is a hard10 km, quite a lot of it is off road and quite hilly. I have done a couple of other shorter runs per week that takes the total to more or less the 13 miles+ I will face in the event in Poland. 

I have had a tweeky knee. It started after, not during, the Olympic distance event at Windsor in mid June. I did a good time there, for me, better than several of the previous years for that event. What is happening is that the right knee is clicking. The day after the Windsor race is was swollen slightly but that has now gone down almost completely. I did back off the running for a week or so and it has not been so troublesome, it does still click but only with a sideways movement. It has not troubled me on the bike for instance, as when locked into cleats there is no sideways movement.  

Steve has been testing a new theory into my run training for a while now. On my longest run…. Only 10km…. he has set his watch for 30 seconds run and 30 seconds walk over the gradual uphill route that amounts to well over half the run and once having hit the high point of the South Downs, where there is a trig point, its all downhill back to the car. It keeps the heart rate down and does not play the knee up. I have always loved running downhill, whereas Steve finds that harder. The only problem with that system, that both knew about, was that I am a bit of a deaf old bat and I have never heard his watch at all! He had started and stopped me verbally. 

A few weeks ago, he tried having me count how many strides of my right foot fitted in with his watch beeps and then tested me counting myself in and out. That worked well on the run sections but not so well on the walk bits because one of us starts looking at birds and trees and flowers. So this last weekend he tried desperation measures and took the strap off the watch and pinned it on to a cap just behind my best ear. His cunning plan worked brilliantly and not only that but it ended up being my fastest time over that run in three years. Result. I will sew the watch on the hat for my 70.3 and hope for the best. 

The race is now much closer that the horizon and far too late to start worrying, so I will look forward to the trip, calling it a holiday which is what it is after all. We will be driving, or at least Steve will be driving. Two audio books should get us there and back. Stop over en route; Dresden. 

 

 

Happy 25^th Birthday

Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club

 

 

 

 

Last evening Steve and I were honoured to have been invited to join all the current members of Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club to celebrate the 25^th birthday of this thriving Littlehampton based club. We were on the guest list because we are the founders of the club way back in 1991 when the membership list started with the two of us and a much younger and faster friend, James Clarke, because even though we had competed in a few events independently; we wanted to enter an event that gave triathletes a chance try to qualify for the World Championships in Muskoka, Canada. It was possible to do the event without belonging to a registered club but you could not get a qualifying slot with out being: A. A member of a registered club and B. Without being a member of the British Triathlon Association as it was known in those days. The event was Swindon Triathlon that was part of the 220 Magazine series that year. Steve and James were a few events up on me because they had both raced their first triathlon in 1990. I was just the one with the camera and the loud voice at those races and didn’t even learn to do front crawl until the end of the 1990 summer season. I spent the autumn of that year learning crawl. I was a Breast/Back stroker before that whereas both of the guys had been competitive swimmers when they were still at school. My first event and about the fifth or sixth for the guys was a Swim/Run called the Damp-Dash in January 1991, it was 800mtrs pool swim (yes, front crawl) then 10km run in the snow. Then a pool based triathlon, where we met to already famous teenage Spencer Smith. That was at Ringwood in the New Forest. Then came the important event at Swindon, (my first open water swim) where all three of us got slots to go to the Worlds in Canada.  

Our little club grew a bit during that period and the only member from those early days who is still with TFTC is our dear friend, swim training mate and holiday companion, Anthony Towers and after that gradually a few people started to turn up at Littlehampton Swimming and Sports Centre on Sunday night at 9.30 pm in the early days when we took a regular time for a club swim training session. It was the only time they would give us; a quite dreadful time for recruiting purposes because most people were asleep on the settee by then. 

The club did thrive though and later we had an outdoor swim set at Arundel Lido in the summer and added a 6 am session at the Aquarena in Worthing by which time Steve and I had both taken the first official BTA Triathlon coaching courses. We put on our first event called The Tuff Fitty Tuff Ten in August 1992 it was a hard, hilly 10 mile off road running event. Our first Track session was at Angmering School, and the first Club Championships were held within the Knepp Castle Olympic distance triathlon in July 1993. Two months later September 26^th 1993, we put on a new event the first club Swim-Run event that we called the L.A. Current Run; it was a 1000 metre sea swim followed by a 10km run along the Promenade. 

Our most successful club kit and a wild leopard skin pattern edged with a goldie yellow colour that you could see from a mile back! We had great fun and did loads of events, they were cheap as chips to enter back then, great value for money in the days when people put on events to promote the sport rather than any get rich scheme. A few of us tested ourselves with longer events and soon drifted into the trap of the Ironman events. A surprisingly big group club went to Lanzarote for the First Ironman race there. 3800 swim 112 miles bike and a marathon was not for the feint hearted. Over the years training schedules changed, goals changed, and the club changed with some wanting to just stay with family local events and a stronger and more serious band wanting to get to grips with Ironman. 

This did after a number of years cause a rift for a while and the ones who had become slaves to long distance broke away to form a new club. We called that Trinity and all you TFTC members know that we did not move that far because our session is now in the one hour earlier slot to yours and thank heaven we are all friends and at peace again and you know that you are welcome in our session and we now swim together and turbo train together much of the winter thanks to your friendly brave fire officer group. Now TFTC has loads of athletes doing long distance event and one of your best Craig Hunter is going to the Ironman Hawaii World Championships for the second time having done a scorching 9.09 in Ironman Frankfurt.

 

So thank you all for letting us share you fun, watch your great birthday swim-run last night and eat your yummy bar-b-que food and cake last night at Arundel Lido. Happy Birthday Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club, we are proud to number you amongst our ‘Besties!’ Long may you all Swim, Bike and Run your great hearts out of your gasping chests.

 

 

 

Weekend in London, at a Walk

A Walk Around London

 

Last Saturday Steve and I took an early-ish train to London. We got on at Arundel station that is just a couple of miles from our home in Littlehampton, West Sussex.

We had pre-booked the tickets so they were not too expensive just £10 each retuning the next day. The journey to London Victoria is about 1 hour 35 minutes and is pretty for the most part, until it gets close to London’s hub. 

A lot of people take the tube to wherever they want to get to in town and that is also cheap enough but you see nothing at all. Taxis are expensive, but at least you see some of the sights as you go. When we are doing our tourist thing instead of driving a truck through our Capital City, we wear casual clothes and our most comfortable trainers with nice soft socks and walk everywhere. This is the very best way to see this fabulous city. My husband’s most often engaged complaint to me is in the form of a question: “Do you have to walk so fast?” So last weekend I tried to hold my normal pace back so that we would both enjoy our day equally. We strode off from Victoria Station toward Buckingham Palace and that is less than a mile. Our first stop was a strike off the bucket list; I cannot believe that I have never found the time to fit this into my busy life before. We went in to The Royal Mews, where all the carriages that you see on state occasions are kept and maintained to the highest standards. The tour information is utterly fascinating even if you are not a horsey person and the carriages themselves are jaw dropping in their splendour and all the stories about them fascinating. Again the entry is not too pricey and worth every single penny. 

 

 

From there, it is just a couple of hundred strides on, toward the formal façade of Buckingham Palace. We were lucky enough to join what is always a huge body of tourists just waiting to catch the famous Changing of the Guard. This is a daily freebee for visitors and is so impressive no matter how many times you have seen it all before, Guards in scarlet jackets and Busby’s marching behind a marching band brass instruments sparkling in the sunshine. That day there were loads more groups, some mounted and some on foot like the British Legion that we saw that day, along with a very large group from Belgium. Splendid, eyeball popping, colourful and free. 

We walked on past Horse Guard’s Parade where there was also a parade and toward Trafalgar Square, fountains, lions Admiral Lord Nelson perched atop the mighty column and lots of pigeons. Having crossed the square and walked on way beyond the National Gallery, into Leicester Square and slipped into Soho that is teeming with café’s, restaurants, bars, clubs and atmosphere.  

We searched at home for an eatery that we had never been to before, that was not part of a national chain and had agreed to book lunch at Bob-Bob Richard. The décor is all in, to my eye anyway, super soft contrasting but toning shades of teal and taupe for the walls and benches and only broken by the staff uniform of pink waistcoats and ties. The restaurant had been a bank in the past and still had a formal shape with an abundance of brass framing. Do take a look at their website to see how smart and yet still pretty it is. The seating is entirely to booths and the smile cannot be kept from your face, when you see that every booth has a little brass button that reads ‘Press For Champagne!’ We didn’t. But a group close to us did and just a hint on envy escaped in a green flash from my eyes on seeing them served a pretty bottle of Laurent Perrier Rose, until I remembered how much that would cost and that (The cost) would give me a nasty case of indigestion. Steve is a non drinker and I just had a tumbler cocktail with a fancy name. The food is quite original and is a Russian-British very tasteful mix. We had two courses each that were beautifully presented and a joy to the taste buds. Not cheap, but not horrendous either.  

Yesterday I reviewed our evening at the London Palladium and the Courthouse Hotel that we left on Sunday morning and walked to The Wallace Collection that was just 10-15 minutes from our hotel. Passing the London Palladium again, where there was a homeless man sleeping on the marble steps of the entrance where he was lying on and covered with cardboard. Thank your stars that you are not he. 

 

 

This was another long promised visit that we were so pleased to have finally fitted in. I had signed up for a newsletter and so the need to visit grew and grew until it was squeezed in to one of our too rare trips to town. The Wallace Collection is a treasure house in the fullest sense and I urge any and everybody to find time to visit. What you see in there will amaze you; it may even knock your hot socks right off your tired feet. Treasures I tell you, treasures galore, paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds, blah, blah, blah. There is furniture that belonged to Marie Antoinette. Clocks and clocks and more clocks, all dripping gold leaf, everything dripping gold leaf. Cabinets full of pretty little crystal and diamond boxes and miniature paintings. Every room would be a stunning showpiece even empty, all had silk and satin walls with delicate brass trim everywhere. And the armoury… OMG unbelievable and there is a spot where you can try out some chain mail to see how heavy it is, and put an armoured tunic over the top to see if you can still stand. AND it’s free! Entry is free.  

We took iced tea and a slice of cake in the impressive Wallace Courtyard Café sitting with our shoes and socks off and bare feet cooling on the marble floor (How very common, I hear you think loudly, but sooo good!) That was our last treat before the final walk back to the Victoria Station. Our journey home took four hours because cancellations due to the on going rail dispute. Bit of a disappointment that, but nothing could spoil our marvellous weekend jaunt or take away our happy memories. 

London is best when you walk it and cheap if you stay out of smart restaurants and don’t buy tickets for the Palladium, unless you could not resist the star name that night, as was my downfall.

 

 

London Palladium- Ramin Karimloo Last Saturday

London Palladium 

Ramin Karimloo Saturday July 16th 2016 

As soon as a saw this show advertised I booked two tickets. It was to be on for one night only. The ticket sales opened months ago, the date on the receipt is February 10^th the booking was made through See Tickets and I would not use them again unless there was no choice because; although I had a home printed piece of paper confirming my booking the tickets did not actually arrive until three days before the show. Not good enough See Tickets. 

When I told my husband he turned his nose up and said that it would be very annoying and that you would not be able to hear your Ramin man sing because of whole bunch of women whooping and squealing and OOOing and shouting ‘We love you Ramin’. I told him that he didn’t have to come and that I had plenty of friends who would love to have that spare ticket, I didn’t want him to suffer a show he did not want to see. His response was a grudging ‘I’ll come, I want to come, but you see if I’m not right.’ 

I should add at this point that we had seen Ramin Karimloo in shows in the West End and thoroughly enjoyed his performances. He was a cracking Phantom in the Love Never Dies sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, creepy and desirable in equal measure. The next thing we heard though was that CamMac was doing a new production of Les Mis but we would not be going to Canada to see it, nor a year or so later would we go to see Ramin as Jean Val-Jean on Broadway. There are limits. 

We would go to the USA or Canada for our sport of Triathlon and had flown to Edmonton in 2014 for the World Triathlon Championships and to Chicago again for Worlds in September 2015 By which time I had all albums recorded by Ramin and his ‘Bestie’ friend/band member Hadley Fraser, who by the way, was recently su-bloody-perb as Aufidius to Tom Hiddleston’s Coriolanus. They are on my ‘Daf’s Best Boys’ playlist on my iPod. Although we do both get slightly cross with singers made famous by the musicals, then thinking that they are free to record whatever they like to sing or play; but still my boy Steve sings along to ‘Broken, broken’ and does actually like country music as much as me. All very contrary. 

 ‘Where are we staying?’ Was what came as Steve’s next question. And the first thing I did was check what restaurants were near and what else was there to do in the same area, so I booked us in to The Courthouse Hotel that is unique, in that it must be the only hotel in London not to  have a huge sign outside advertising itself. Instead there is a bronze plaque claiming it to be Great Marlborough St. Magistrates Court. The Breakfast room is a small courtroom and the bar is entered through prison doors to the Holding Cells where small groups can sip cocktails in a cell that is simply two benches and a tiled partition behind which there still is a toilet! All very interesting.  

We had a super room where for the last hour before we left for the theatre my husband would every now and then, squeal in a poor feminine impression ‘Ooooo Ramin.’ I went into the bathroom and asked what he was doing. ‘Practicing’ he said. I pointed out that I had offered to bring a friend, and that he did not have to go. He said he was looking forward to it and that he was only joking, and as I left the bathroom he squealed, ‘We Love You Ramin’! My return was with a serious look on my face. ‘We don’t LOVE Ramin but we do love to hear him sing and he sure ticks a lot of boxes.’ 

The hotel was actually overlooking the back of the London Palladium; That close. Our tickets were in the centre of the second row of the Dress Circle with a clear view of the stage. We didn’t like the warm up act, Balsamo Deighton and wondered why they would book a group of country singers, musicians who oddly, thought it proper to sit in a row at the front of the stage of the Freakin’ London Palladium as if they were in a corner of Rose and Crown singing for drinks. They looked totally unaware of the value of that spot; I was taken there as a 16th birthday treat by my boss and his wife, to see Johnny Ray (who I was in love with). Burned into my memory. 

However, once the curtain rose on the main event it was hugely enjoyable even if both Steve and I were agreed on one thing, that being, that we would have liked the balance to be closer to 50-50 in what was advertised as a Broadgrass show after all. We would prefer half the songs to be from the musicals and the other half whatever they wanted to sing which is very good and mostly very polished. However, they would have to be deaf and daft not to hear the difference in the applause. Show songs won! We liked the lady fiddle player very much and the pianist and the main accompanist Sergio Ortega, the guest singer Louise Dearman was lovely. Ramin and Hadley were utterly brilliant; we both thoroughly enjoyed the show. There was only one moment when as predicted by my husband a woman did shout out in just the right moment ‘We Love You Ramin’, that had to happen I suppose. It was an excellent show, good value for money, very long too after a half hour encore. I loved the final solo encore; a completely unaccompanied rendition of ‘And I wish all the wars were all over’. That was a perfect finish just two nights after the terror attack in Nice.

 

 

The Nice Terror Attack

 

 

This happy photo of my husband Steve and I was taken in the transition area for the World Long Distance Triathlon Championships in Nice, France. I think it was 1995. It was one, of a number of occasions that we raced there. We are standing on the Promenade des Anglais.  

 

The last blog that I posted, was the one titled Slaughter in Nice. I wrote and posted that on June 15^th which is also the day that I remember my mother’s birthday. I always tickles me when people say of a dear departed family member; 'She would have been 107'. My mum was about the age I am now, 77, when she died because she died over thirty years ago, yet funnily enough, when I think of her, I think of her most often when she was thirty something with long wavy hair; a strong, healthy, hard working woman with a big bust a ready smile and a quick temper; not a good idea to cross my mum.
 

Seeing the TV news about the mass murder that day at 5am before I went for my usual Friday swim training session, was most shocking to me. Later when I heard that the French had declared that there would be three days national mourning for the 84 victims, I went along with that and did not post a blog for the weekend period and still did not feel like doing it until today. 

Its strange isn’t it how you feel quite guilty that your life goes on when hundreds of family members of those poor murdered souls cannot believe what has happened within their family. Life for them has ground to a halt for a while as they try to come to terms with a terror attack that has mutilated and killed their loved ones, some of whom were children.  

Don’t anybody try to tell me that is says anywhere, in anybody’s holy scriptures that you have to kill innocent people, men, women and children by driving deliberately into them with a 19 ton trunk, swerving to hit as many as you possibly can. No. No God, yours or mine would want that. No holy book tells you that. Only vile, unbelievably evil TEACHERS tell trusting but stupid people things like that. Maniacs say those things.
 

From my own feelings I felt doubly, trebly guilty because not only was my life going on, but my husband and I were going out for a big weekend in London that we had planned months ago. Last Saturday morning we watched the latest reports from Nice on several news channels before taking a bath, getting dressed and driving to Arundel Station to catch the train to carry on, not quite as usual because we had a special day ahead, but to carry on, was the intention and we would enjoy it.

 

Slaughter in Nice

The TV today has been rolling the horrendous news about the evil terrorist who killed 84 people in the South of France last night as they watched a firework display put on to celebrate the National holiday of Bastille Day. Mowing down innocent holiday makers, families with their children, using a 19 tons hire truck as a murder weapon.  Then, driving that truck into a crowd of people; intending to, and hoping to kill as many as possible. Amongst the dead are, they say, ten children, many more are on the critical list in hospital over fifty they say; between life and death according the M. Hollande.

All day long there have been complaints that the French authorities had not done enough to prevent this murderous spree. Yet it seems to me that nobody can prepare or be ready for such random attacks by lunatic extremists. There is no way an attack like this can be prepared for surely.

Nice, is a holiday destination, one of the most famous in the South of France. It is a fabulous resort that combines ancient and modern in a city that is a business centre as well as a beach resort playground.

My husband Steve and I have been to stay in Nice so many times in our roughly forty years together. The Promenade des Anglais is very familiar to us since we have stayed in the town to compete in the Nice Triathlon on at least five occasions maybe more, I haven’t checked. The run route of that event is held completely on the sea front road, where all these unsuspecting people were so wickedly targeted and murdered. This time by a man who lived and worked in the town.

We have stayed in hotels right on the sea front and in the old town. We have stayed in Saint Laurent-du-Var, where this vile killer hired the truck it seems. We have been there on work trips with American clients and even had a weekend stay in winter to watch the World Figure Skating Championships in the ice stadium there.

We have a friend, who in one of our many coffee shop chats about the world and what is right and wrong with it, claimed to believe that nobody is totally and completely evil. Every time one of these dreadful attacks occurs in the world, one of the neighbours or a family member will be interviewed on TV and say how shocked they are, because he is such a nice ordinary family man. Nice ordinary people do not plot massacres. Somebody else must either know or have an inkling of what they are under the surface; that they are a time bomb waiting for a touch to the fuse, a press of a button.

I pray for those still in a critical condition in hospital. I despair with the families of the victims whose family live is destroyed, who must find a way to carry on. I was only a child during World War II but I remember that there were notices that said ‘Careless talk costs lives; well in the modern world careless ears and eyes are costing lives now and we should all try to notice when something is not right.

Spitting Feathers

The guy who takes care of the maintenance of the business computers has taken my laptop away to work on. It has been playing up for a while, getting slow and little boxes have been popping up with all sorts of irritating messages, telling me that I cannot access this or that. So Jason has taken the offending item home to try to get to the bottom of it and/or give it a general clean or maybe he is just going to give it a good talking to and charge me the earth for doing nothing more. I am actually joking with the last bit because he has always been more than fair with us.

He told me that it wouldn’t be too painful to hand over my laptop because he would lend me another one so that I could carry on more or less as usual. Except that it has not worked as usual, and at every point, with whatever I tried to do or whatever I tried to work on or look in at, I have been asked to log in or sign in on areas where, things usually open immediately. Pass words! What a curse passwords are, what a pain it all is.

So much time is wasted with all that nonsense. I have been spitting feathers.  Outlook, asks me for the password. My blog, asks if I have forgotten my password. Facebook wants me to log in. My bank asks me for my ID code. Everything has taken four or five times longer than usual. Even writing in Word has been a pain with the text dancing around and inserting itself in other places within the piece I am bashing out. I have been tearing my hair out with frustration.

I needed to send some invoices out for work done in the business. When I got to my invoice file and opened a prepared ready numbered invoice to send out to a client.... there is a bare page there. What!  No invoice there, just an empty page. Then when I came to attach them to an email, that was all different too and I could not see how to get the invoice out of my invoices and on to the email as I usually do with no problem at all. Another hour lost, another hundred grey hairs sprouted. In the end with this I gave up and opted to copy and paste them in, which did at least work.

I am not twenty one, I admit that. Not a kid any more. However I do think that for an old bird, I have done rather well with learning how to use a computer. It was thanks to Mr Blair years ago, that I gathered my first computer skills. That was before he recently became the person (Wrongly in my view) suffering a free for all to insult, verbal stoning campaign, vicious stuff. When did we become such a hateful nation? Years ago, early in his days in power there was a drive to get older people to learn how to use a computer and I took advantage of every free course that was available. Thanks for that Mr Blair.

Hurry up Jason please and I’m so sorry for saying that I didn’t like you anymore. I didn’t mean it really, Just having a bad day. Cursing the Computer.

Ristorante Al Mare, in East Preston….

 A Birthday Mistake

Yesterday we needed to quietly celebrate my husband Steve’s sixty-sixth birthday. My daughter Jacqueline and her husband Martin came with us to a recently opened nearby restaurant that none of us had been to before and so thought we would give it a shot. I rang to book a table and asked if they could rustle up a little cake since it was for a birthday; I should have read the warming sings when the woman said she couldn’t do that without at least one day notice. This restaurant is no more than a hundred metres from a village store where they could have bought a ready-made cake to please new customers.

It is an Italian restaurant but only tiny. A young girl brought the menus and handed them to each of us. They were double sided and sealed in plastic film but the selection looked ok, if standard. We ordered wine for Jakki and me, a Peroni for Martin and mineral water for Steve who does not drink alcohol at all. The wine and drinks were brought and served and the wine placed in a bucket of ice on the next table. Our order was taken though we did say that we would be lucky if the young girl had got all that written down correctly.

The first course dishes were brought before the pre-dinner nibbles that we had ordered, Italian bread selection and olives. I had asked for extra lemon with my Calimari and had to ask again for that before it was brought to me. When we were half way through the starter, the bread and olives arrived at which time the table was cluttered.  At the same time another group of people were seated at the table that held our wine bucket and so that was placed carelessly on the floor between my daughter and I! The first courses were all tasty enough but nothing special.

For the main meal three of us had ordered a pasta dishes,  and Martin wanted a pizza. The pizza looked ok but the pasta dishes looked like starter size portions. My choice was Spaghetti Carbonara  and it held very little, very thin meat and what there was, was very fatty indeed; I hate fatty bacon, it makes me want to gag. The only sauce barely coated the pasta with nothing extra on the plate, it was also a little over cooked.

The acoustics were dreadful and were having to speak up to hear each other over the Spanish (?) music. The waiting staff, were untrained to say the least.

The company was good though and we still managed to enjoy ourselves. We did not order dessert but went home for Ice cream.

 

Camping in an English Summer

An email came in the last week from a company that I sometimes buy a swim suit from, or a shirt or a pair of trousers and always when there is a special offer on.This message offered up to 60% off in the end of summer sale! 

Now I know that the weather in the UK has not been that special or even a little bit summery, but the morning sunrise when I get up to go swimming, as I did yesterday, or for a bike ride this morning, is still shining in the windows on the front of our house; the two bay windows of our little mock Georgian mid terrace house. It didn’t happen for long because the clouds started to drift in but it does mean that it is still summer time in my book, since it never peeps in the front windows for a good two thirds of the year. 

I do feel sorry for families with young children and not much money for whom a camping holiday is all they can afford. Camping in bad weather can be misery. Steve and I packed camping in about twenty five years ago, when we went to Shropshire triathlon and it rained solid, sheeting rain for 99% of the weekend. We were just a soggy mess by race day. Shropshire Council’s Ellesmere Triathlon has very often been a qualifying event for World Championships and more often than not in those days is was a National Championships too. That was why we went that far to do a race in a small town like that. 

On race morning we put on our race kit and before we left the place we were camping in, we put our wetsuits on over our kit, to walk to the start. It rained for checking the bikes in transition; it rained as we joined the queue to get in the water for the swim in a small lake that was quite a muddy colour after several days of heavy rain. It rained on the bike route and it rained for nearly all the run until the last kilometre when the sun came brilliantly out not quite soon enough. Some people were taken off in the ambulance wrapped up with silver blankets around their shivering bodies. 

Some friends of ours had gone to Tenby last weekend to go a spaced out over the weekend Iron distance race. They had gale force winds as well as the rain. Making yourself cold and miserable is as my old mum so often told me ‘It’s not clever and it’s not funny.’ I am old enough now to see the folly in suffering in a tent when you don’t have to and my advice, particularly when you are facing a gruelling event is to make sure that you are warm, nicely fed with no washing up to do, and most importantly comfortable the day and the evening and the night before you absolutely have to, go out in it. Set yourself up to feel good before you start. It does help not to feel like something the cat dragged in before you start your big event. If you can afford a hotel book yourself in one, don’t turn up at a race wet and tired.