ROGER & FRANS PAGES

MY WEEKS
 

Heather, Sue and Fran at Virginia Water Cascade   Fran's new knee - under test

A really busy week at work with loads of mileage - I visited London, Solihull, Northampton, Lewes and Stevenage and saw petrol prices ranging from 106.9p per litre to 116.9p per litre.  It's about time we had another petrol price war.    On Tuesday I was in deepest Sussex at Lewes for most of the day - a mere 14 miles from Eastbourne ; so I couldn't come home without nipping across to see Eddie & Beryl.  I took some cake and flowers and we had a jolly hour looking at pictures of our recent trip to Colorado and trading family news before I set off homewards. I was too late getting home that evening to see Eggheads on BBC2.  The programme is not a regular favourite because the outcome is always the same, but on Tuesday my pal Dave McDowell was on the team.  For my foreign stalkers, this is a TV quiz programme where a resident team of nauseatingly clever people always beats the visiting team of amateurs.  However, missing the programme was not a problem because we live in the twenty-first century, so through the magic of the BBC i-Player I did managed to watch it just before midnight that evening.  The team which Dave was a member of acquitted themselves very commendably, in fact they very nearly won - leading the resident clever-clogs team to a real cliff-hanger at the end.   Dave answered all his questions well and managed to use the word zeitgeist in context as well as making it clear that he knew that Dostoevsky's first name was Fyodor. The whole team were impressive, but Dave was particularly polished. After work on Wednesday I drove over to Slough, collecting Amanda-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed on the way.  It was a much deferred gathering of The Pay Day Curry Club.  Andrew wasn't there - not surprisingly because we'd forgotten to invite him - but Mandy, Stephen and I were there to bask in the reflected glory of Dave's TV appearance the previous evening (even though it had been recorded last July!) The meeting was a concatenation of at least two deferred gatherings, so although it was March, we had our "Secret Santa" event and another home made quiz.  The restaurant was unusually crowded, but they found us a table. Mandy was the holder of Santa's Bulging Sack and she performed the "Delve and Proffer" process for the distribution of Secret Santa gifts, and I came away quite happily with a couple of arty DVD's - Amelie (which I have seen before and like); and Amores Perros (which I'd never heard of, but shall find out about soon).

Another feature of the PDC is "The Quiz".  Sometimes we meet at a real pub quiz, but other times we bring our own questions. We still act as a team - and that way we are guaranteed to be the winning team!   This was one such occasion and we had each bought ten questions for the PDC quiz - except that I brought seventeen and Dave brought twenty.  It was all good fun anyway.  Amanda got the nerd prize for the most difficult questions, and she demonstrated her teacher skills by delivering some excellently patronising positive reinforcements for each incorrect answer!   The curry wasn't bad either. Friday was fun. I was at Stevenage very early, but also managed to get home again by early afternoon.  Soon after Fran got in from work the doorbell rang and Sue Day and Heather Elliott arrived. They had come down from North Hertfordshire for the evenings Nashville Teens gig, and were to stay with us overnight.  The band were playing at our local-ish pub - The Royal Oak.  It's about a mile to walk, so "local" is a generous description - but at least it's not like trekking to bloody Skegness, which for me is a more frequent Teens experience.

Simon, Ken, Ray, Spud and Colin The Nashville Teens

Beautiful Birch Bark Windsor Great Park

Actually it wasn't quite as easy as walking up the road anyway because I had to drive all the way to Chertsey and back to collect Ray Phillips. and deliver him to the gig (luckily Jacky Pattenden gave him a lift home afterwards).  When Ray and I arrived, Colin Pattenden was already at the gig because he had brought all the sound equipment over earlier in the afternoon.  Simon was also there early, while Ken and Spud - who both live in Bracknell - had been there earlier, but had gone home for tea !  I also returned home, not for tea, but to find Fran, Sue and Heather - so that Fran could drive us all down the road to the pub.  Because The Royal Oak not only has a reputation for great live music, but is also Spud the drummers local, we had a full turnout of local old friends and many of Spuds family - the place was packed.  The band played two sets and considering it is eight or nine weeks since the last gig, they were incredibly tight.  The audience loved them - which always helps the vibe and makes them perform better.   Ray's rendition of Put A Spell On Me was brilliant - his voice was on top form.   The pub went wild when Tobacco Road was delivered, and the encore - Born To Be Wild - even had the landlord dancing. The only negative bit of the evening was that between the bands sets the landlord had piped music at such a volume that it prevented conversation and severely distorted the music.  We all had to keep going outside to be able to talk to each other.  The noise limiter in the pub was consistently in the red but clearly wasn't connected to the source of the music.  Perhaps he's deaf? Fran took Sue and Heather home while I stayed to help Colin pack up the equipment. He dropped me at home at half past midnight. Saturday morning I was up early and took the car over to Sonning Common for it's first MOT - which it passed with flying colours.  I was home by 10am in time for a full English breakfast with the girls in the conservatory.  It was a lovely blue skied day with fluffy bits drifting about - but very cold.  For the first time since the snows went you could really see what a mess the garden was in.

After breakfast we piled into our cars and convoyed over to Virginia Water where we planned to test Fran's new knees.  The sky was blue with a little scudding clouds - and the sun was shining, but it was fairly cold. We set off round the South side of the lake, pausing to admire the Cascade and the Roman Temple from Leptis Magna.  We ambled rather than walked, and took almost two hours to circle round as far as The Totem Pole, which was not very accessible because "they" (the Queen I think) were rebuilding the paving around it's base.  From there it is only about half a mile back to the car park where we declared ourselves pleased with the four and a half mile adventure and proud of Fran's new knees.  Sue and Heather departed North up the A30, aiming to follow their Satnav back to Hertfordshire - while Fran and I departed South and West, returning home. Once home, Fran went to soak her knees in the bath, while I raked leaves and trimmed naughty bits out of the hedge in the front garden.  I managed to totally fill the garden rubbish recycle bin but the grass still seems to be full of dead leaves despite the raking.  In the early evening we drove over to Addlestone to collect Ray Phillips again, and took him on to Colin & Jacky's house at Chertsey.  We had a fine meal of Tuna Steak à la Pattenden, and managed to drink loads of pink champagne and several bottles of very good red wine.  A relaxing evening with good friends. Sunday morning was also crisp and blue skied - we were up reasonably early and cleared the living room a bit ready for Rich & Liz to visit with "the boys".  Baby David has started to crawl, so I removed the coffee table and other obvious headbutt hazards. They arrived and we had a great time playing with a new "hot wheels" car racing set I had felt compelled to buy a few weeks ago.  Fran cooked us a huge roast dinner which we followed up with a dessert of ice cream and chocolate drops (I like it when the grand kids come). After lunch the boys had a fine time sword fighting each other on Grandma's Wii before we all went over to the park up the road to sample the swings and play with my rocket.  I had a bag full of rocket motors, but the body of the rocket is starting to reach it's sell by date and the parachute failed to deploy a couple of times - so we limited ourselves to three launches.  The rocket shoots up to about 1000 feet.  Sunday was a bit windy so the parachute failure probably helped recovery by preventing the thing being blown away into the woods!  After a lot of running about and hiding from each other in the woods we returned home to hot cross buns and cups of tea.  All too soon the afternoon was coming to an end and we had to let Rich & Liz take the boys back to Didcot. Sunday evening was very much a "couch potato" time for Fran and I to get over the busy weekend. We sat through all the episodes of QI which we had missed while we were in America in January and February.  How exciting?  I wonder what excitement awaits us next week?

Virginia Water, Saturday     Rich, James and Rocket