And finally

from the Gaskell Society Conference -  a few pictures of the place we stayed.

 

It's called Cober Hill and it's in a small village called Cloughton near Scarborough. It was weird. Sort of like  a cross between a Youth Hostel, a not very luxurious hotel and a WEA institute. Built by a well meaning Victorian for workers to go and get rested and refreshed and educated all at the same time, it's now run as a centre for group holidays and so on, and some of the original ethos lingers on sadly.

 

The reception staff all need to go on a course called 'How to greet guests and make them feel welcome 101' together with a supplementary lecture entitled 'These people are customers and pay your wages, they are not a total nuisance sent to interrupt your cosy chat'. Equally the night manager might well take notice of the fact that tips will not be forthcoming if he is not in evidence, except behind a glass window that is firmly shut and has a Closed sign on it, at the relatively early hour of 9.00 pm. every evening and only comes forth to enquire if everything is going smoothly on the morning of departure.

 

Also a word to the Catering Department on Restaurant Management wouldn't go amiss. For the Conference Dinner, which obviously really is meant to be the highlight of the weekend, certainly food wise, I was sitting at a table where several people didn't get their choice of first course because 'it had run out'. The same thing happened with the main course. The really unlucky ones didn't get their choice of either course. Is it really beyond the wit of man to circulate the choices the day before so that demand can be gauged? Or is it just too much trouble?

The grounds were lovely though and offered a view to the sea - also a walk to it, had we had time.

 

 

 

 

Finally  a very happy memory of Saturday night's entertainment. Two retired consultants, one a gynaecologist/obstetrician and one an anaesthetist giving us their cabaret. The obs/gynae man had been a speaker in the morning, talking about C19 improvements in medicine in general and obs and gynae in particular ( interesting, but one of those hours where you do a lot of clenching IYKWIM!) Their act, honed over many years, was brilliant. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much, we sat in rows with tears of laughter rolling down our cheeks. So good. So funny.

How about...?

a couple of posts to finish off the Gaskell Society Conference report. Her are some photos of the trip to Whitby.

First off some 'exterior decor' snaps, taken up one of the many little 'yards' off the man street.

 

This is the sort of thing I'd love to do on my wall but it would just look stupid or cack-handed. I would choose the wrong shape or size of plant pot and then put the wrong plants in them, after which the plants would die and I wouldn't get around to clearing them out for ages. They'd be nothing but a horrible mess for 11 months out of 12. How great do these look though?

 

Ditto really for plants and tubs. We do have some pots, but they aren't as colourful as these. One year I may get myself sorted, especially as there's a man sorting out a little patio for us even as we speak. Or write and read, as it were.

 

The plaque on the house where Elizabeth Gaskell stayed with one of her daughters while she was doing some research for 'Sylvia's Lovers', and the house itself. Both house and plaque have seen better days but at least the plaque is now threre.  Only thanks to the efforts of  Dr J Billington, who was herself researching the Gaskell stay and was incensed to discover that a) there was no plaque and b) there was a plaque commemorating the visit of one Charles Dodgson Esq (aka Lewis Carroll) just round the corner. She says herself she's not sure if the Tourist Office quite knew what hit them the day she marched in and demanded to know why that should be so.  

 

For some reason nthat escapes me I didn't take pictures of the truly delightful tea shop where my Gaskell friend Kate and I had tea. She had some angel cake, I think on the grounds that she can't be bothered to make it herself, and I had chocolate cake, as they had run out of scones. It was an amazing place, quite Tardis like in its dimensions, very old, quite dark, and full of bookcases and unexpected sets of steps. Great fun, and if I'm ever back in Whitby I shall attempt to find it again. Possibly before they run out of their quota of scones for the day.

Feeling Harassed

I am feeling ever so slightly on edge, mainly because for the second time in two weeks I have had problems trying to do something very basic which is buy a computer game. It's from a site that I have used before without problem but suddenly it seems not to be working properly. The first time it happened I was assured that it was 'just one of those things that happen' which wasn't exactly a proper explanation but it was obviously all I was going to get. And glitches do occur on the web, I know that. So today I thought I would try again, with much the same (non) result.

 

So I have sent off yet another e-mail to customer support and we'll see what happens. Probably not much.

 

Meanwhile it put me in such a bad mood that I looked up the Facebook page of a well known coach tour operator here in the UK and left a complaint about two of their coach drivers. We got stuck behind them, along with a dozen other cars, for the whole trip to Kirkwall yesterday, approximately 15 miles, during which they resolutely drove at 30 mph, except when they went past the distillery at which point they slowed down which I wouldn't have thought was even possible for them to do without stalling, and showed no inclination to pull into one of the many places where they could have stopped for a few moments to let us all past. It was annoying and frustrating and one of the worst examples of discourteous thoughtless driving I have seen in a long while. Not to mention that it made us late for where we were going. So as I was feeling sour after my tussle with the website I made my feelings known. Facebook makes it so much easier to complain - almost too easy really. Although it will be interesting to see if I get a response.

Do blondes have more fun?

I went blonde over the summer. This wasn't the result of a fright, or even a conscious decision, it came about because of a misunderstanding with a hairdresser, obviously not my usual one who is  the lovely Kay at Verdandi in Kirkwall.

No, this was a Welsh hairdresser, although I doubt that her nationality had anything to do with things, except that it alerts readers to the fact that this must have happened while I was in Cardiff, right at the beginning of my almost 6 week trip away from Orkney and sort of explains why, once it had happened, I wasn't in much of a position to do anything about it for quite some time.

 

Now I have no objection to playing with my hair colour. In the normal way of things I get it coloured two or maybe three times a year. It keeps me from turning an unflattering pepper and salt colour as my hair succumbs to the passage of time and does its best to turn grey. Or possibly silver, which would be preferable, but as I don't generally let it get to the stage where you can make that sort of subtle differentiation, who knows?

 

So I go a bit redder in the winter when things need cheering up, and a bit fairer in the summer or when I'm going to Australia. I do not go guinea bright blonde. I don't suit it; not with my complexion not with my figure, not with my personality, so I stay away from it. Sadly it seemed to be the only colour the Welsh hairdresser knew how to apply -  or possibly the only colour she had. It was certainly the colour she had on her own hair.

 

I was, to put it mildly, startled by how it looked. I was even more startled by the way in which it turned my extremely pale foundation into something that looked like it had come straight off an Essex sunbed. Startled and a little bit cross.

 

But there was nothing to be done except live with it so I soldiered on through the summer, trying my best to convince myself that every time I washed it, it got a little bit less bright. And then I went to a conference in Stirling.

 

Now I am not a stranger to the academic conference. I could not in all honesty say that I have been to more academic conferences than I've had hot dinners: but if I changed the phrase to  more than I've had hot dinners that I have cooked myself, we might not be so far off the mark. And never, in all the years I have been attending these things,  never have I had so many middle aged men come up to me, introduce themselves and engage me in conversation. And since it can't have been for my outstanding academic contribution, as I was attending as an observer, not a participant, it must all be down to the newly blonde hair.

 

So do  blondes have more fun? It all depends on where you stand, doesn't it? From my experience I'd say  they probably just get more hassle! but if I were younger who knows what my take on it would be?

Project 60 - Number 11 - Afternoon Tea

This was a  while ago and something that I shared with my sister while I was staying with her back in June.

Obviously it wasn't just any afternoon tea, or it would hardly qualify. It's not as though I'm a stranger to the concept of going out for afternoon tea. No, what made this special was the location. 

Many years ago, when I was 'untimely ripp'd' from the place of my birth and the whole family decamped to Gloucestershire from County Durham we had a stream of family visitors and soon established a sort of Best of the Cotswolds Tour Versions 1 and 2 which they were all taken on.

 

Very early on, when we were visiting the beautiful, of somewhat touristy, village of Broadway we went past The Lygon Arms, where a board advertised afternoon tea at £5 a head. (Bear in mind that this was in the late 1960s). My mother was horrified. Where someone else might think 'That must be really special, I wonder how good it is?' her reaction was 'Who in their right mind would pay £5 for afternoon tea?' and it has to be said that in those days £5 was a lot of money.

 

For a long time now I've wondered how much The Lygon Arms was currently charging for afternoon tea and how good it would be, so when I made my plans to spend some time with my sister, who still lives nearby, a trip to try it out was popped onto the Project 60 list.

 

We had a lovely afternoon wandering round Broadway and rootling in some of the extremely nice shops that are to be found there before repairing to The Lygon Arms for tea. The answers to my questions turned out to be £20 and not as good as all that.

 

The building itself is old and quaint and lovely, although we were rather startled by the fact that water started to drip down loudly into the fireplace from three separate spots while we were eating. I was surprised that the only choice we were given regarding what we drank was tea or coffee; I'd anticipated being given a choice of various teas. One of my sandwiches still retained some of the crust and they were made from ordinary sliced loaves. But the scones were nice and as you can see above there was plenty of choice when it came to the cakes.

 

Overall then,  I was slightly underwhelmed. But it was never the case that everything on the list had to be brilliant. And this wasn't, but I'm still glad we did it.

A Sad Day, and an Odd Resolution.

 

 

 

 

Monday was the day we buried my friend Margaret. The funeral was in Lancashire and it's a long way from Orkney but she had been a friend for over twenty years and we couldn't not go. It was a rather more upsetting experience than I had bargained for to be honest, but I was still pleased I went.

 

All the way through the service I could smell something beautiful, without knowing what it was, but when I turned around at the last, I saw this vase of sweet peas right behind me and realised it must have been them.

 

Difficult though the day was it would have been much worse without the support of others in the same situation. Here's a picture of the small group of friends, of which Margaret was such an integral part, minus one who sadly couldn't attend We're putting on smiles because we're altogether and who knows when that will happen again, but we were all conscious of the fact that one of us has gone and is never coming back.

 

 

As for the resolution, it's not to be buried in a wicker coffin. Margaret had one, which is all of a piece with the sort of caring thoughtful person that she was. I'd never actually seen one before Monday, and thought they were a good idea until then. I'm afraid they look rather too much like picnic baskets for me to be comfortable about ending up in one. I know I'll end up as food for worms, but I feel I don't actually have to be delivered up to  them in  a hamper. 

People say the strangest things

I know this fact cannot come as a surprise to anyone who walks around with even one ear open but still....here's the latest one I heard.

The OH and I are hooked on an Australian cooking show called My Kitchen Rules, which is shown in the UK on Sky Living. The new series has just started and that's always quite interesting as you size up the contestants, for both personality and cooking ability. Obviously most of them have a persona which they want to come across on the small screen and sometimes that can lead to them looking a bit odd.

 

Of the current crop one insisted on how she was 'a little bit creative, a little bit quirky', and it's a funny thing but I reckon that anyone who has to proclaim from the rooftops that they are quirky is generally no such thing.

 

I still don't think this girl is quirky, but it did stop me in my tracks when she said 'Pink's sort of a bit of a hobby for me'.

 

What? Say that again? Pink is 'a bit of a hobby'? What's green then - sort of a job?

 

People. Definitely odd.