ROGER & FRANS PAGES

MY WEEK
 

Fawsley Hall

Wow - neither Dalzell nor Mr Pettengell have pointed out the glaring mistake on last weeks blog!  Well I've fixed it now so it doesn't matter any more.  Dalzell has been in contact though - arranging dates for June 2011 !  Strategic planning? Lots of late nights and alcohol this week.  I started the week in Solihull where after the days work a gang of us had a business meeting scheduled over dinner at a local Italian restaurant.  It was a very useful and productive meeting, but the reason for the venue was that it was mutually inconvenient for most of us (who were coming from all over Britain), with the result that all except one of the party discovered that we were all staying overnight at the local Ramada Hotel. Consequently the meeting sort of kept on going in the bar at this august hotel opposite the wonderful old St Alphege's church, until just after half past one in the morning - lubricated by quite a lot of wine.    On the Tuesday I worked a few hours in Solihull before setting off to find my way across country to Fawsley Hall somewhere just South of Daventry.  I have been driving all over Britain for the last forty years, but for some reason I had never before visited this tiny enclave of Northamptonshire.  It is beautiful.  Among the flattish bits of Britain's Southern midlands is this sudden outcrop of low rounded sandstone hills, incredibly rural and with a lot of old parkland.  Many of the fields still have strip lynchett markings (meaning that they haven't been deep ploughed for around a thousand years).  Access to the hotel is along several miles of single track road and the views are stunningly beautiful.  The hotel; itself is very plush - some of it dates back to the late 1400's with additions in 1500's 1600's and even a spa wing in the1900's.

Tuesday afternoon and evening was a business conference for a group of about thirty of us to review progress against our corporate plan and ensure that we were all joined up in our thinking and focussed on the right objectives..  Although the venue was a bit Over The Top, the conference was very worthwhile and the dinner in the evening was not only excellent 5 star cuisine, but the networking and discussion predictably moved in to the hotel bar and ran on into the night.  I gave up about 1am, but I was awoken by others returning to their rooms at 4am !   My room was in one of the oldest (haunted?) parts of the establishment - Tudor timbering in the walls and a huge bed. When I fell into this in the early hours of the morning it was like being swallowed by a gigantic feathery marshmallow - it was incredibly comfortable, but I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get out again! (Perhaps the Rioja helped reinforce those feelings?)  Anyway, apart from a brief awakening around 4am when my colleagues gave up - I slept like a log all night. On reflection the conference was very motivating and I realised that although 'd started the year a bit disgruntled with the new management, I am now quite proud to be a significant part of the team. Wednesday morning saw a lot of bleary eyed people fumbling their way into breakfast - but coffee soon had us all bouncing again.  I had managed to get myself together and back to our Bracknell office by 11am, and because I had a lot of document checking to do I soon decided to decamp to home and spent the afternoon working from there.  After two days of boozing, late nights and strange beds I was quite pleased to get to my own bed, early on Wednesday night - and when the alarm woke me at 5:15am on Thursday I felt quite refreshed for my usual early commute into London.   My visit to London was fast and efficient and I was back outside the M25 ring by 11am.  In the afternoon I visited my friendly neighbourhood knee specialist.  Three years ago he reamed out the last of the cartilage behind my kneecap and told me that next time it hurt a lot would be a signal for the dreaded artificial knee.

The Right Knee

A water feature at the Flower Show

Luckily, although it aches a lot, he gazed at the x-rays and thought that it was still too early for surgery. Instead he has booked me an MRI scan for next week (just to assure himself that surgery isn't needed) and written to Elna the terrorist telling her to hurt my knee back into healthiness - this to run in parallel with the current torture she is regularly applying to my shoulder.   On Thursday evening I went to visit Elna and told her the good news. She gave me some special KGB inspired treatment for my shoulder and sent me home quickly as she (allegedly) doesn't like to watch grown men cry. Friday was the hottest day so far this year, with temperatures in the thirties. On Friday night Fran and I drove over to Chobham to meet up with Geoff & Corrine and Colin & Jacky at The Sun - a lovely old pub on the High Street.  After a load of chat and wine we adjourned over the road to The Four Seasons Restaurant - a lovely half timbered building dating from late sixteenth century or maybe earlier. It has traded as a high class restaurant run by the same family for over forty years, and amazingly we had never visited it before.  It wasn't cheap, but the ambience was great;  the attention and service absolutely faultless; and the food excellent.  If you like that sort of attention it was good value for money.  For lots of reasons we hadn't all been together for months, so it was good to catch up and to drink too much wine (again). Overnight the temperatures stayed high, in the low twenties, so we had a restless night, but were up early on Saturday.  This was because we had a lot of preparation to do for Sunday.   At around eleven we set off to meet up with Colin & Jacky again in Chertsey, and then went on to Hampton, where we had tickets for the annual Hampton Court Flower Show.  I had never visited this show before, and was really impressed by it.  We parked up in Molesey on the South shore of the Thames and caught a ferry to the Thames gate of the show.  It was extremely hot - over thirty degrees - and the place was packed. Eventually we got to the bandstand, where Colin and I decided that it must be Pimms time.  The girls decided to go foraging for plants armed only with credit cards and huge wads of cash, leaving us to "wait for us here" for a couple of hours.  So Colin and I sat in the shade and watched The Steve Simpson Band playing blues from the bandstand.

Neither of us knew Steve, but he has a good reputation as a sort of South London version of Jackie Lynton and is evidently a good exponent of the strings - and we watched him play a variety of instruments including a mandolin (which isn't easy) and a banjo (which almost is easy) as well as handling his electric guitar really well.  Steve is a bit like Mark Knopfler in his guitar style, but his outlook is decidedly "Country". His voice is fairly mellow, and despite the Country style the music the band played was Old school R&B, blues and Rock - an interesting combination. The output was all high quality musicianship, but some of the songs were uneasy on my ear.  For instance their rendition of Let It Rock would almost certainly not be recognised by Chuck Berry, had he been passing ; while their presentation of High Heel Sneakers owed more to Status Quo than to old school Rock.   Strangest were Willie and The hand Jive and Big Boss Man, both played in definitive "Country" style.   Interesting, but not my cup of tea (or, on this occasion, glass of Pimms). As if to compensate for this unusual mix of styles, at each interval the band played Delbert McLinton through the PA - which was very much to my taste; if you gotta have Country, then have the best !.  Well done Steve, a long gig, and although not to my taste, it was very good. Eventually we found the girls again and after a cup of tea we rejoined the ferry and then drove into Weybridge, where we had an excellent dinner at La Casa Restaurant where we had managed to book a table outside on the patio overlooking the town. Colin and I felt compelled to check whether the Montepulciano on offer was up to the standard of the previous evenings Torres.  A great end to a lovely day.

locals paddling in the Thames at Hampton

Mum & Fran above - Mum & Dave below

Sunday morning we were up very very early - packed our picnic - and were on the road by 7am.  We drove up to Bedfordshire, collected my Mum, and then drove her over to Woodstock in Oxfordshire, for a visit to Blenheim Palace.  The journey was long and tortuous because the British Grand Prix was happening at Silverstone on Sunday afternoon - and the logical route would have taken us just a few miles South of Silverstone.   My diversion through country lanes was fun, but I suspect that we would have had a fairly uneventful journey that early in the morning anyway.  Although there wasn't a huge amount of traffic, we did see an almost infeasible number of small helicopters buzzing back and forth between local Country hotels and the direction of Silverstone.  You would never guess we were in an economic recession!  We made it to Blenheim Palace about twenty past ten and parked in a disabled spot (Mum is registered disabled) right in front of the main access gates.  We walked through the courtyard and up the main steps to the palace - and as we got to the top the clock struck half past ten and the main doors opened in front of us.  We were the first visitors in - we couldn't have timed it better. We took in the Winston Churchill exhibition first, and then toured the State Rooms, all lavishly decorated with huge tapestries and marvellous paintings except the main banqueting hall, which was painted throughout with a marvellous trompe de l'oeuil painted with incredible accuracy of perspective, especially around the edges of the ceiling which appeared to be held up by carved caryatids.  Wish I'd been allowed to take a photograph - a real work of art..  The guides in each room were extremely helpful - probably because we were the first visitors through that morning and they hadn't had time to get jaded! As we came out of the palace the temperature outside had reached around thirty or thirty-one - far too hot for native Britons, so we made a beeline for the gift shop and took twenty minutes for a quite expensive, but very welcome, cup of tea in a small outer courtyard.  Then we went outside and found a picnic bench overlooking the lake at the front of the palace. As I collected the picnic stuff from the car, Rich, Liz, James, Matthew and Dave arrived to surprise my Mum and join us for a picnic.  It was a good surprise, Mum doesn't get to see her great grandchildren (or indeed her grandchildren) as often as she would like, so the whole afternoon was a treat for her.  After a picnic lunch, Mum, Fran, James and Matthew got on the little train which takes visitors to the Butterfly House, Herb garden and maze.  Rich, Liz, Dave (in his buggy) and I had to walk because the train was too crowded - but we caught up with them sitting in The Lavender Garden waiting for us.  We explored the butterfly house and maze before sitting to consolidate the picnic by eating ice creams.   We all managed to get on the little train going back to the palace - it was far too hot to walk. Eventually we said out goodbyes and while the mini-Coopers set off back to Didcot;  Fran, Mum and I drove North to Bicester, then on via Buckingham, Bletchley and Bedford to get Mum home.   There we enjoyed a cup of coffee and a walk around her garden (she has quite a big garden and now that she's too old to manage it all herself she employs a gardener - which gives her something to complain about).  All too soon we had to leave to face the horrors of the M25 and get ourselves home to Bracknell. A great weekend - glorious weather, great friends and family and lots of activity.  I wonder what we'll do next week?.