ROGER & FRANS PAGES

MY WEEK
 

KEBB at Cleve    Young talent on stage

Another really hectic week which involved driving to Solihull on Monday and several forays up to the wilds of North Buckinghamshire to visit a new customer at Milton Keynes.  I got to do one of these (on Thursday) via our Stevenage office, and was therefore able to call in for a quick cup of coffee with my Mum en route.  Traffic has been really bad this week and getting worse.  Friday afternoon the M25 was gridlocked and, even using the country lanes to avoid the motorway, it took me almost three hours to get the thirty miles from Watford to Slough. Thursday evening Fran was home late, and we decided that instead of cooking we would go out to eat.  We chose a new Cafe Rouge which has just opened in Wokingham, and although the food was OK, we were sort of disappointed.  All Cafe Rouge restaurants have a common theme, but all seem to have a little sparkle of their own.  This one somehow didn't achieve that - it seemed somehow to be an "inferior" copy.  Perhaps we're just getting harder to please in our old age? The saga of my right arm has developed a bit.  Elna did quite a lot of work during the week which has loosened the tight muscles and unjangled the nerves -  Undoubtedly my dexterity is improving, although I still cannot raise my arm to even shoulder height. However, as the impact pains have died away another more persistent ache has become apparent, right where I thought I'd broken my arm when I originally fell !   Clearly it isn't a clean fracture or else I'd be able to wiggle it about and hear the crepitus (and faint with pain);  but my GP is now reviewing the x-rays to check whether or not I might have sustained a hairline fracture in the bottom quarter of my right humerus - and Elna the physioterrorist is treating me as if it was cracked. I'd had a long telephone conversation with Colin Earl on Thursday evening and discovered that - for no good reason at all - we hadn't got the annual Cleve School picnic gig listed on the bands websites or my own giglist - and it was tomorrow!. No excuse, this annual event is very predictable, always being the Friday before July 4th.   The gig is on the playing field of The Cleve School at Weybridge, and as well as being the PTA summer evening picnic, it is an opportunity for the musically orientated kids to showcase their talent and get a bit of coaching from some professional musicians.

So on Friday night Fran and I drove over to Weybridge with a hastily constructed picnic and set up camp in the Cleve School playing field.  This year had a subtly different feel - the school is being rebuilt and the stage was a little more exposed and windy than usual. Also, the sound system was not the usual robust outdoor one; Colin Pattenden usually does the sound, but was away on holiday. The music sounded OK close to the stage, but got muddy at about 50 yards and lost altogether200 yards out.  Luckily all the picnicking audience were within this envelope. There were also less gazebos and tables than usual - perhaps a sign that the weather could be relied on this year! It was a warm dry summer evening - just right for music and wine. Unfortunately, as designated driver, I was drinking redcurrant and grape juice (which looks like red wine, but doesn't taste half as good). It was good to meet up with The King Earl Boogie Band again, they haven't played publicly for ages and haven't got anything else booked until the end of July.  Colin Earl was bouncing about very pleased with himself - his new CD with Foghat is racing up the American radio play charts.  Number forty last week, number seventeen this week.  He is flying out to America next week for a promotional tour.  The rest of the band were in good form as well. Dave Peabody is a natural children's entertainer and although there were about two hundred adults there, there were also three or four hundred children aged six to eleven running around.  John Coghlan and Les Calvert were evidently enjoying themselves, and Gordon Vaughan is now settled in nicely as a great lead guitar and starting to make his own mark on the repertoire and presentation.  A nice evening out. On Saturday morning we were up reasonably early because we had some workmen coming to give us some quotes for a house makeover project we are planning, then we set off to drive to Hitchin to collect Jenn and Suj and go on to my old school.  The event was Mike and Shirley's tenth wedding anniversary - and they had hired the school to host a summer outdoor lunch on the quadrangle.  It was great to catch up with Mike and Shirley, and to re-engage with many of Shirley's relations (Shirley's first husband was Fran's cousin so we have known all her sisters and brothers since we were kids.)   There were over a hundred of us invited to lunch, sitting in the Quadrangle at Hitchin Boys Grammar School - a treat in itself, we were never allowed to walk on the Quad when I was at school.  It was a proper lunch with loads of courses - but was made more enjoyable by visitors from (or visiting to) other tables between courses, and the odd impromptu speeches - each heralded by a fanfare on a trumpet somebody had brought along.

partying on the Quad English lunch on the lawns

Suj and Roger

For me it was also a trip down memory lane.  I was at the school from 1960 until 1967 and although lots of peripheral buildings have been added since then, the "Quad" at the heart of the school is relatively unchanged.  The wisteria has grown a lot in the last forty three years; someone has put wrought iron gates into the archways to cut off public access; and there is a railing fence around the Quad itself - which I suppose reflects that teachers  nowadays can no longer deter kids from walking across the grass by threat of corporal punishment.   It would have been great to have some old friends like Dalzell around to help reminisce. (is that really how you spell it? Spellchecker is cool about it.) Mike used to be deputy Headmaster at the school (after my time) and he knew some of my teachers, who were retiring at the time he joined.  He introduced me to a couple of the current teachers, and then to "Colin" - I didn't catch his surname - who had been at the school from 1947 to 1954.  Way before my time, but we had a lot of teachers in common and spent a happy couple of hours reminiscing our misspent youths and finding that we had a lot of common memories of the ambience of the school in those post war days. Unfortunately the school was locked up, so we couldn't roam the corridors to stir up yet more memories, but I was intrigued to learn that the small room which used to be used for "The Radio Club" in the fifties and sixties, had for a long time been Mike's private study when he was deputy head.  Of course, "radio" in the sixties was much more fun - all valves and coils - nobody had heard of solid state electronics in those days - a good grounding both for the development of the Computer business - which has been my career since - and for playing with sound systems with my musical friends in later life.

It was a great afternoon but we had to tear ourselves away and after a quick cup of tea at Jenn & Suj's (where we met Barry Palfreman - not seen for years) we set off for home.   We got back quite late and spent the rest of the evening falling asleep in front of the TV. Sunday was a quiet day with no real plans.  I spent a couple of hours at work during the morning generating a presentation for next week, followed by a frenzied packing of bags and things when I remembered that I am scheduled to be away on a conference on Monday and Tuesday, and will have to leave at 06:30am tomorrow.  When I was packed I turned my attention to cutting the lawn and getting the sprinklers going to see whether or not I could revive the dead looking grass.  Fran and I also reviewed our "makeover plans", which involve cutting down trees, digging up driveways and generally disrupting the neighbourhood.  Still need to sort out forestry permission to fell the tress (all of Bracknell Forest is a general tree conservation area) and get all the quotes aligned and sorted out.  The makeover is phase one of a longer term project to carry us over into retirement .   Planning of phase two starts next weekend at The Hampton Court Flower Show; but while the current phase is starting to become a reality, and phase two feels generally feasible, the third and final phases is still a pipedream. We finished the day with an alfresco dinner - with champagne of course - in the garden.  A nice ending to a nice week.

Roger. Natalie, Ben, Jenn, Suj, Shirley. Mike and Fran