ROGER & FRANS PAGES

MY WEEK
 

Wisteria taking over the bathroom!

Not too much driving this week, one round trip to Milton Keynes returning via Stevenage and another to Stevenage and home via Milton Keynes - and all achieved at times when the M25 wasn't particularly bad.  I did visit the local office a couple of times, but mainly I worked from home, which is very comfortable and convenient provided I can avoid procrastinating.   Fran and I sorted out most of the details about our next major project and spent one evening driving around Bracknell and Binfield looking at other peoples paved drives.  We eventually made a decision about which pavers looked best and which company seemed to produce the best quality results,  so we are now ready to place an order as soon as we have council permission to remove a tree in our front garden. The whole town is a conservation area for trees and many of them - hopefully not this one - have tree preservation orders on them.  This is very good for the town, but irritating when you want to play with trees that you actually own.   During our tour of driveways we drove, very slowly, down a road called Jocks Lane - a rural hedge and tree lined lane, which is a throwback to Old Bracknell.  A little strip of countryside through the middle of two housing estates. Although we have lived in Bracknell for twenty six years now, neither of us had actually been down this cul-de-sac road before and we were surprised not only at the rustic feel, but as we rolled along the deserted lane we spotted a bunch of fox cubs playing in the evening sunshine in the middle of the road.  Sadly I didn't have a camera or phone with me.  There were four or five young foxes sitting sunning themselves, as our car rolled quietly and slowly toward them they got up one by one and slunk away into the bramble hedge beside the lane until there was just one left.  He was nearest to us and evidently hadn't noticed that his brethren had slipped away. He looked pleased to see us coming to meet him until evidently he was called from the hedge, and reluctantly backed away into the hedge and melted into the shadows. Wednesday evening I enjoyed a meeting of The Pay Day Curry Club.  This time the curry was spiced up with a fiendishly difficult quotations quiz set by Mandy, which the rest of us teamed up to answer.  Even with the help of a "wordle" (a matrix of names of famous people which included the right answers - a sort of not too obvious multiple choice solution) we didn't guess some of the quotations.  Her quiz didn't include my favourite quotation, which is from Doctor Who:  "First things first, but not necessarily in that order".

On Thursday I spent much of the afternoon undergoing an MRI scan on my right knee.  I had forgotten how tedious these scans can be - hours of waiting around and 35 minutes of lying still.  That evening I went for a double dose of physio, half an hour on my shoulder (rotator cuff injury) and half an hour on my knee (zero cartilage discomfort).  Always an enjoyable session, Elna, my personal persecutor, is a great conversationalist, regaling me with stories of her youth on a farm in South Africa while causing me to cry with pain.   When I got home Fran had taken a bottle of champagne and gone with a heap of works colleagues to her friend Tina's for a girlie evening in the hot tub.   I did my own version, and had a hot deep bubbly bath with a puzzle book, a plate of cheese and biscuits, and a big glass of red wine.  A totally relaxed evening. Friday morning I had a surprise in the bathroom. During the recent hot weather spell we have left the window ajar all day and all night, and for a couple of days a wispy bit of wisteria has been nosing through the gap.  When I got into the bathroom on Friday morning the wisteria had grabbed my toothbrush (see picture above). As I had used the brush to clean my teeth at about 10pm the night before, the rampant plant must have grown at least an inch and a half overnight!  The weather for the second half of this week - while still warm - was a bit windy with occasional bits of rain. However, by Friday evening it had settled back into blue skies and a comfortable "not -too-hot-not-too-cold" temperature - so we had our dinner in the garden and shared ideas for the longer term phase of our home makeover, which at the most enthusiastic points included knocking down half the house and rebuilding it!  Luckily the project some years off as it relies on my retirement lump sum for funding!

Granddad and Davey

Colin Pattenden chats with Jack Lynton Gordon Sellar in the background

I did some gardening on Saturday morning, and after a quick brunch Fran and I set off at 1pm to drive to Didcot and visit with Rich, Liz, James, Matthew and baby David.  Rich was moving furniture about so the rest of us gave him space by taking the boys down to the local park.  We had a great time chasing around and playing on the swings.   Fran and I eventually got back to Bracknell about 5pm, in time for a quick light dinner before we set out, first to Chertsey to collect Jackie, and then on down to Northchapel, near Petworth in Hampshire.  Some of our friends, in the guise of The BluesBlasters, were playing at The Half Moon pub in that village.   Spud Metcalf and Trish were arriving with Alec & Gill as we pulled into the car park.  Inside we found Jackie Lynton & Vanessa who had also come to see The BluesBlasters perform.   The line-up generally only ever appears at The Half Moon because that is Chris Bryant's local and these are his buddies.  On drums is Greg Terry-Short, more usually the front man of Free At Last; he is complemented by Colin Pattenden (Nashville Teens) on bass guitar to provide the power behind the band.  The second lead guitar - and some lead vocals - is Gordon Sellar (more usually seen playing bass guitar with various local bands, but an ace lead guitarist too) and the lead guitar and lead singer is of course Chris Bryant himself.   Poor Colin had been in the wars - he damaged his back while on holiday a week or so ago, and then compounded the damage lifting a bale of wiring during this week. As a result he was hardly able to walk and had to do so using a stick. He sat on a stool throughout the gig and even used an older, lighter, guitar (his usual five string Alembic weighs a ton!). However, music is a great anaesthetic and Col was transported and smiling throughout the gig

It was a great gig - Gordon sang a few numbers - he has a nice soft Scottish accent which is just right for old Rock'n'Roll numbers like Sea Cruise.  Chris's voice is great too - although more gravelly and of course his guitar work remains as extravagant as it is impeccable - he's a really class showman.  Greg sang half a dozen numbers - his voice is very raw - great for Paul Rodgers numbers - who is his hero, so that helps.  Colin's backing vocals were strong - even though delivered from a stool!   The repertoire was great - the band have been working on additional numbers, of which the most surprising was perhaps a fantastic arrangement of The Beatles Get Back. Spud Metcalf (Nashville Teens) joined in to play drums on a few numbers where Greg delivered vocals up front of the band. There is no doubt that the highlight of the evening was the drum solo - except it wasn't.  It was a drum duo!  Greg and Spud sat side by side and played a fantastic drum duo during Wipeout - while the rest of the band wandered off to the bar!  Wipeout is a pretty impressive drum routine with only one drummer - with two of them in unison it was one of the most entertaining performances I have ever seen. The audience were whooping, cheering and clapping for ages - they are going to have to build that into their regular act! Because Colin's back is shot and my right arm is still pretty useless, it took quite some time to load the gear back into Collins car, so Fran and I weren't back home and in bed until almost half past one in the morning.

The Bluesblasters Gordon; Colin; Greg and Chris.

Wolfie and Raffles on Sunday

We were up early on Sunday,  Fran went shopping and then drove to Farnham Royal to see Wolfie, while I did some gardening and then drove over to Chertsey to help Colin unload the previous nights equipment from his car.  We were both back home in the early afternoon when we shared a light lunch in the garden and talked about what we'd been doing in the morning.  Apparently Wolfie is fine, although he is suffering with flies at this time of the year.  In the evening I drove back over to Chertsey again to collect Colin; and then took him on to Sandown Park racecourse where we met up with Karl Green with his wife, daughters and a bunch of friends.  They had been go-karting to celebrate Karl's sixty third birthday,  Colin and I - being invalids - had missed the karting and instead arrived just in time for the dinner at Red Peppers Restaurant in Esher.  We haven't really seen Karl and Kay since the last New Years Eve party so it was great to catch up with them - and great to chat to their girls and to meet their boyfriends.  Greg Terry-Sort and Anne Plummer were there (hadn't seen Greg since the night before!), as was Kevin & his wife, whose name I didn't catch.  We had a nice meal and sang happy Birthday to Karl, who had to blow out candles on a huge cake his kids had organised for him. After a great evening out I ran Colin home and then returned to Bracknell to get myself ready for the forthcoming week.  An early morning tomorrow I think.