Month: February 2016

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A Perfect Valentines Day Northern Style

This just popped up on my timeline today. I wrote this three years ago and it seems like yesterday, its a pity it didn’t arrive in time for this years Valentines Day.

Valentine's Day

A friend of mine decided to make valentines day something special this year. After years of a house full of Kids, dogs, assorted friends and acquaintances he decided that this year was going to be different.

With the kids away at university he had decided it was time for some well deserved time together with his wife to try and capture some of the magic of when they first met, he decided to arrange as the americans call it a date night.

So he arrived home from work, armed with a bunch of roses and a reservation for a very nice restaurant. Now like most women married to Northern blokes this came as quite a shock, but took it in her stride and spent the next two hours getting ready for a romantic evening which she had thought was beyond her husbands limited romantic experience.

What she didn’t know was that he had enlisted the help of her sister and his daughters to find out what would be the ideal evening out and duly carried out to the letter the list which had been carefully constructed for him.

He had a  limo booked for seven to take them to the restaurant were upon arrival they had champagne cocktails waiting before being taken to the table in the corner were thirty years earlier he had asked her to marry him.

The meal was incredible, the wine flowed and all was going great. At the end of the meal the limo picked them up and took them to the Cinema were he had booked a private box for a showing of Les Misérables. Throughout the film they made use of the waiter service extensively.

All was going really well and after the film the limo came to pick them home which up to this point had been the perfect evening. He had carried out the list to the letter and his wife told him this was the best valentines day she had ever had.

By now it was well passed midnight and he decided that he would try to finish the night off with a suggestion of reliving another romantic episode from their past. He suggested that they could take advantage of the fact that they had the house to themselves so what about  making love in front of the fire like they used to in the years before the kids arrived and made it difficult to be so adventurous.

So with a glint in his wife’s eye he was amazed that she actually thought it was a great idea. He could not believe his luck and whilst she was getting the cushions ready he had a thought that after all the beer and wine he needed the bathroom.

He made his excuses and said he wouldn’t be long and his wife proceeded to make herself more comfortable making herself naked in front of the fire!

What happened next he cannot understand but after his visit to the bathroom he then inexplicably got in bed and went to sleep, only to be woken twenty minutes later by a naked furious wife throwing her clothes at him, before she left to sleep in the back bedroom.

Its now been a week since that night out and they are still not speaking, which goes to show men are rubbish at romance when left to there own devices!

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Hey I was an Artist and Forgot!

The Diggle Hotel August 1983
The Diggle Hotel August 1983

Its strange how the older I get the less time I have to do things I want to do. Many of my friends have now retired and the first thing they tell me is that they don’t know how they found time to work.

Thats very reassuring to know, I will be sure to remember that the next time I am steaming towards another almost impossible deadline at work.

I am on holiday this week for four days  and we decided to have a bit of a de-clutter, Now if your home is anything like ours it is normally Ann who does the de-cluttering which means I normally lose about fifty percent of my treasured items.

This time though we are looking at emptying cupboards and drawers of all the things we think will come in handy one day but in reality we will never need or use. It was while I was looking in the back of my wardrobe (I call it my wardrobe but in reality Ann’s stuff takes up at least half of it) I found a box of old family photographs which stopped me dead in my tracks and we lost a couple of hours looking back at what is essentially my family history.

Its quite emotional and uplifting at the same time. I was reminded that my parents were young once, what my grandparents looked like and I never looked as cool as I thought I was. It is always a good idea to do this even if it’s only to remind you of long lost times and to see were you came from and were your roots lie.

I am at that age were once I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw my father looking back at me, after looking at these photographs I realise I need to rethink that proposition and realise it is now my grandfather. I also forgot what I looked like with a full head of brown hair rather than the grey remnants of my hairline that exist today.

In the bottom of the box I found a Pen and Ink drawing that I did when we first moved into the village, a pastime I used to enjoy and would spend hours doing. Its strange I forgot how much I used to enjoy doing this because in the interceding thirty years it slipped out of my memory totally.

So now our house is a little less cluttered, but I cant tell because I couldn’t see any of it in the first place but more importantly I found evidence of all the important things that my parents thought were milestones in their children’s lives, because I found most of mine.

My first birthday, my pram, my first school uniform, my first bicycle, the arrival of my brother and so it goes. Most in black and white and some in colour all found in a brown cardboard box taken from my parents home after they died over thirty years ago.

Today I got up and thought to myself how families have changed over the years. We are no longer the tight knit groups of people who lived around the corner from each other. and often we only meet up at weddings and funerals. It’s not that we are any less close but time flies by and before you know it you haven’t seen each other for more years that you care to remember and in some cases its too late.

So my mission this year is to catch up with some of the people on the photographs and make a point of meeting up with them (obviously the living ones, I can catch up with the rest later on) . Its given me something to think about other than work and according to Ann thats got to be a good thing.

You never know I may start drawing again that is if Ann doesn’t find me another load of jobs for the rest of the holiday.

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My New Year Rebooted

 

snow

Its Friday night, 11.20 to be precise. I have good news folks the maudlin posts from the past couple of weeks have passed. We are now in the world of the rebooted 2016 and my New Year’s Eve from now on will be the 1st of February (only because this January was so lousy).

Living in the United Kingdom we are used to change on an epic scale, take the weather for example. Saturday last week I left Towcester in the midlands and the sun was cracking the pavements, blue skies and short sleeves were the order of the day.

One and a half hours up the motorway it was like being at the North-pole and snowing.

But that didn’t dampen my spirits and it didn’t take long to look a lot rosier either, Donald Trump managed to come third in a two horse race in the lead up to the American elections which made my day.

Now Donald and myself are about seven of years apart on the age scale (he is obviously older) and I have no doubt that he is far better at business than I am but  when it comes to being president of one of the world most powerful countries in the world I have to admit he scares the living daylights out of me.

I was brought up by my parents to believe that you should treat people the way you would want to be treated yourself unfortunately Donald didn’t listen to his parents at all.

How politicians treat people is despicable and the old adage that people who yearn for power are the people who shouldn’t be given any holds very true even in this day and age.

I live in Oldham as you are aware which has had is fair share of bad press, the posh folk who live in our village prefer to say they live in Saddleworth and there are even some when on holiday say they come from Manchester and that really makes my blood boil.

You should be proud of were you come from, that is part of who you are.

There are a lot of great people in Oldham who don’t make a fuss or shout from the rooftops about what they do and they really need to start otherwise we will be forgotten.

Our latest MP Jim McMahon I hope is going to restore my faith in the political classes. He is a local bloke and as council leader achieved great things for everyone in the town. He even managed to restore some of our civic pride in recent times which after the riots was non existent.

I only hope he is not seduced by the Westminster machine that is hell bent on maintaining the status quo in the southeast of England.

I am sure he won’t but you never can tell.

So one month into the New Year and I have lost three heroes from my youth and one very close friend and although I am feeling quite vulnerable I am still trying to look forward with my cup half full outlook intact.

So after my usual Friday night which culminates in my semi drunken blogging I wish you all well, have a good nights sleep and may your God go with you.