Changing Clocks

Thursday. 10.55 a.m. I've been to Asda. I wanted some coloured markers, because I'm editing some of my written work, and it seemed a good way to show what I am going to cut, rather than merely scrubbing it out in black ink, so I can't read it anymore. They seem to have a fairly good stationary department. I haven't been there in a while, and when I went there last time, I was surprised by how it's changed. I think because it is under new ownership. No longer owned by the American company Walmart.

Saturday. 11.20 a.m. Well, it's sunny and bright as I write this, but it was quite nippy when I went out with Alfie around 5 a.m.

That water feature I mentioned in my last blog post (being polite calling it that.) has come into its own, (ie: some sort of use instead of being a weird shaped thing stuck in the centre of the community garden) by being a place for birds to drink and have a splash. I saw a large crow on it earlier when I was standing washing up in my kitchen. 

Sunday. 7.35 a.m. The clocks have changed. 'Spring forward', as someone has said, so you remember to set your clocks an hour forward. It was on Friday that I realized that the clocks changed. My FitBit and computers (iPad and MacBook and I suppose iPhone.) change automatically, thank goodness. I just found altering my digital watch really difficult and the date was not accurate, merely because I couldn't change it.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a film through Amazon Video, 'The Good Liar', which stars Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen. I have to say I'm something of a fan of Ian McKellen and admire his acting. He's very versatile and goes from playing such Shakespearean characters as Richard 111 through to Gandalf in 'The Lord of The Rings' trilogy to 'X Men', from sitcom in 'Vicious', to appearing in 'Coronation Street', Widow Twankey in pantomime and then Harold Pinter and then a character who has a dark and sinister past in this low key thriller. Amazing. I can say I have actually been in the same space as Ian McKellen. In the early 1970s I was an A.S.M. at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester. As part of the wide mix of plays that were staged, not just what I'd term 'Main House', or part of the normal season, they did late-night productions. Ian McKellen came to direct a production of Tom Stoppard's hilarious one-act play 'The Real Inspector Hound', which had two other great actors in it, Derek Jacobi and Edward Hardwick, who went on to play Watson in the Granada Television series 'Sherlock Holmes.'

It was somewhat foggy when I took Alfie out at around 6.30 this morning, which was something of a surprise.

Quite a few people at church have covid, so, as a result of this, it was decided to have the morning service on Zoom today. I'm not sure I could see how it worked, having around 27 people all peering at one another on a laptop screen. I attempted to have Zoom on my Portal TV which is set up on my Hitachi HD television set, but for some reason, I couldn't get the video to work, so I transferred to my MacBook, and it worked well.

Sojourn To The North-East

Daniel, my step-son (Carol's eldest son) is currently at Newcastle University doing a degree course in computing. (I'm not exactly sure of the name of the course, but it's to do with gaming.) His current tenancy of his flat was about to expire and he had found another flat in Newcastle and needed to move his belongings this weekend, so we were asked if we could drive up to help him move his things in the car. Obviously we couldn't not help. We were originally going to go on the Friday and do the move with him and then drive back that evening, but as it's at least a 5-hour journey there it would have meant another 5-hour drive back and it didn't seem such a good idea to do it in one day, so we asked our neighbours, Michelle and Gary if they would mind keeping an eye on our dogs, Alfie and Poppy, coming in and feeding them and letting them out a couple of times a day. Just one of the disadvantages of having pets, I suppose. They agreed, so that put our minds at rest, and meant that we could spend a night in Daniel's flat once we'd done the shifting of the belongings.

We packed up our things to take with us, not much as it would be just the one night, and set off at 5.30 a.m. on Friday. We were expecting to drive up the M1 to the North East, but when we drove to the Milton Keynes entrance at Junction 14. Having driven all the way there we then found that it was closed off. We later discovered that there had been a major accident on the motorway and it was closed off up until the next Junction due to 'exploratory work.' So we didn't know exactly what to do as we didn't want to drive up to the Northampton Junction in an attempt to get on the M1 there only to find that the Motorway was closed further north there, so we came to the decision that we would have to travel north on the A1 and drive across to the Black Cat roundabout. This is the roundabout on the A1 between the A1 and A421 (formerly A428) just south of St Neots. We had to cut across Milton Keynes and head towards Bedford and the by-pass. We had to waste a good hour or so in the process, but at least it meant we were travelling north towards Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. We stopped after about a further hour's driving and had breakfast in one of the many service areas and then proceeded with our journey, arriving eventually in Newcastle at around noon.

The next problem was that we didn't have Daniel's address. Neither did we have a street map. Instead we rang his mobile and he directed us to his flat via him speaking through the speakerphone and we eventually found the flat after some convoluted directions. It was then that the real problems began, because as we were about to drive away from his flat to go to the agency for him to pay his deposit for the flat Carol said there was something wrong with the car. She wasn't sure what, but she was having difficulties shifting the gear leaver or something. We thought at first it might have been due to the extra weight of having Daniel sitting in the back of the car. We drove into the centre of Newcastle as at first Daniel needed to go to his bank to withdraw the cash for the deposit on the flat. We parked in the most peculiar carpark which was like a spiral and it made me for one feel really giddy as we kept driving up and up and round and round and eventually found a place to park. It was after we'd parked than Carol again said that there was definitely something wrong with the car.

We drove to the new flat, which is in an area of Newcastle with an odd name. Spiral Tongues. I stayed behind in the flat as Carol and Daniel were going to the old flat to get some of his things in the car and it meant that, without me, they would have more space to transport stuff.

It was at least three hours later that Carol and Daniel reappeared, along eh Lauren, Daniel's girlfriend who had caught up with them in the city centre.  They had come back, having got a cab as the car had broken down. I had imagined as I waited for them that perhaps they had gone to a garage as Daniel had mentioned that there was a Kwit-Fit auto centre not far away and we should take the car there. It turned out that the car had eventually broken down in the centre of Newcastle and they'd ended up at a garage some way out of the city centre where it was left to be repaired, as it was the clutch which had caused all the problems. It was going to cost in excess of £300 and it wouldn't be ready until the next morning, Saturday. We walked into the city centre, a good distance, through the university campus and saw a great many interesting sculptures and managed to arrive at a Wetherspoon's pub called the "Five Swans" where we had dinner. Having walked all that way we got a taxi cab back to the new flat, and Daniel went back to his old flat to sleep. We had to make do as best we could at the flat, without much kitchen equipment or food. Next morning we walked into the city centre and found a Tesco's open near the  St James' Park football stadium and bought some food which we ended up eating as we sat in the rather picturesque Leazes Park where we heard the most pleasant flute music which turned out to be played by a young man near the lake where there were a lot of geese and ducks. It looks as if this park is currently being restored which is good because it is in something of a poor state of repair. A great shame to let such delightful places become so dilapidated.

It wouldn't be until around midday before we eventually get a call via mobile phone to say that the car had been repaired and was ready for collection, so we ordered another taxi cab and went to the garage where we paid for the repair work and drove away, back to Daniel's old flat where we loaded some of his belongings into the car and drove to the new flat and unloaded it.

By now we had realised that the work of ferrying Daniel's belongings to the new flat was going to take longer than we had originally intended, due in most part because of not having the car for over 24 hours, so Carol and I decided that we would need to stay a day longer to get the work done and so would have to return home on Sunday and trusted that Gary, our neighbour, would have realised something had happened to delay our return and would continue to keep and eye on our two dogs. Daniel had to go to work at 6 o'clock at the near-by Holiday Inn and wouldn't be ready to continue with the move until around 8.30 on Sunday morning (his shift at the hotel finished at 2 a.m.)

On Saturday evening we went to get chicken and chips from a near-by chip shop to Daniel's new flat in Spital Tongues and we slept the night at the flat.

We had to phone and text Daniel after 8 o'clock to make sure he was awake and ready to continue with the moving of his stuff to the new flat and we eventually arrived outside at 8.45, taking some time to rouse Daniel who wasn't feeling very well, unfortunately.

After several further loads of belongings, including his iMac computer and a load of other related items including the carcase of a four-drawer chest of drawers.

By the time we'd completed the move it was time to depart Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and drove back to Milton Keynes and got back at around 4.30, having stopped twice, once at Ferrybridge and the second, near Leicester.

Cars I've Owned- Part 2

That little Ford Anglia lasted around three years. I drove all the way to Liverpool in it when I got the job as A.S.M. This was before the opening of what has been called 'Spaghetti Junction' which joined the various bits of motorway together so that when you drove north you went from the M1 and then onto the M6. But in those days the only way you could get from the M1 to the M6 was by driving through the middle of Birmingham.

One evening me and one of my brothers went to the cinema in Bedford. I have an idea it might have been to see '2001: A Space Odessy" so it gives you some sort of idea when it was, possibly about 1971. On taking one of my cousins home in my car, seeing how it was late and dark I couldn't see to reverse and put on a reversing light which turned on from a switch inside the car. Some previous owner of the car had installed it and, thinking about it now, it was quite a good idea to have an extra light to see by when you reverse. Unfortunately there was an almighty flash and 'pop' (not exactly a bang, but quite dramatic, nevertheless.) I think the car ran perfectly well for a while then it stopped dead. Apparently the 'flash bang' had burnt out something do with the car's electric circuits and it had to be repaired. I drove the car to several more of the places I worked, Colchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, until it died as all ancient cars do.

I bought a car from my brother James. A Triumph Herald. It was green, had a sort of leather-effect on it's roof. I drove it up and down the Motorway when I worked at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester. When I went to work at Century Theatre in Keswick I had a problem with the driver's side door which wouldn't shut properly. I used a piece of string which I tied to the inside door handle and the other end to the steering wheel column. As I drived up the M1, the door kept swinging open and this got worse when I drove off the motorway and had to negotiate roundabouts, so the string-method of preventing it opening of it's own accord was come up with to keep it closed. I can't believe it did this and I got away with it. I could easily have fallen out onto the road, but fortunately I didn't. On another occasion I was on my way to work when one of the windscreen wipers flew off when it was raining. A rather strange occurrence, worthy of a few smiles, but probably not so amusing at the time, as it can be difficult to see where you are going if you can't keep the windscreen free of rain which is running down the glass and obscuring the view.

I worked for DaSilva's puppets during the early 1970's. I went on tour with them with their production of "Snowhite." We had a week of performances somewhere in the North of England. I think it was Burnley or Blackburn, but I'm not so sure as my memory isn't as good as it should have been. Most of the company went off in the Landcover, which towed the large trailer which had the entire show in, but I went off with someone else in my car. Unfortunately I took a wrong turning on the M1 and landed up almost in Yorkshire. I think I was supposed to take the left turn onto the M6 which meant we didn't catch up with the Land Rover as we were supposed to. We did get onto the M6 eventually, but then we hit a really thick bank of fog, so thick in fact you could barely see a few yards in front of you and the police had to use lighted beacons along the side of the Motorway and traffic had to leave because it was so bad. We must have come off the Motorway near Preston or Accrington or somewhere. We decided that we'd have to find somewhere at the side of the road and spend the night there. I pulled off the road and we settled down for the night and could see a vehicle in the lay-by ahead of us. Amazingly, it was the rest of the crew from DaSilva's and they had done what we had and were settling down to spend the night at the side of the road. It was not easy trying to sleep in the Triumph Herald and it was quite cold as the heater wasn't particularly efficient. I must say, I don't think I've seen such thick fog and I never have liked having to drive in fog.

My younger brother, Sandy, was always messing around with cars. He had several vehicles when he'd first got his driving licence. One he had was a Messerschmitt. I believe it was a kKR-175. It was very basic, to say the least. Actually no more than a sort of three-wheeled motorbike. It had a very small engine, not much more than a lawnmower engine in a sort of motor bike with a sidecar or some sort of bubble car. I was taken out in it for a ride, and you had to sit directly behind the driver, rather like riding pillion on a motor bike. It had a lid which lifted up so you could get in and when you were moving you were extremely low to the ground. So much so that, if you were following a large vehicle, such as a H.G.V (Heavy Goods Vehicle) you were so low to the ground, I swear the thing would fit underneath the lorry. Not a nice feeling, I can tell you. It tended to break down frequently and on one occasion it broke down on the road between Ampthill and Woburn. My mother or father had to go and collect him and the vehicle was manhandled into the horse box my mother had which was towed by the Land Rover. I suppose because it was so small it could be put inside the horse box. He later had a Morris Minor, and it was in something of a rough state. If you sat in the front passenger seat, which I did occasionally, and lifted the piece of matting from beneath your feet, there were a hole which meant you could see the road moving past as you drove along.

Trip to Leicester

On Saturday Carol and I decided to go out for the day. It wasn't a really bad day, on the weather-front, when it started, but as it progressed it became really damp and miserable, but we were determined that it wasn't going to spoil things. We weren't exactly sure where we were going, as we drove up the MI. At one point we were going to Lincoln, but then we decided to head for Leicester. This is the area of the country Carol came from, or more precisely she came from a village near Leicester called Thornton. Also, I worked as an A.S.M. at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in the early '70's, and the main reason for going was that they have opened a brand new theatre there last year called The Curve, and I'd read quite a lot about it and was interested to pay it a visit. We got to the Park and Ride car park on the outskirts of Leicester and parked the car and caught the bus into the centre of Leicester. We have become quite adept at Park and Rides, as we have used these at several towns and cities that we have visited in England, particularly Cambridge, Oxford, Scarborough, Bath and York. We certainly get around, and it makes life a good deal easier and far more stress-free to use these facilities, to drive somewhere and not have to worry about where to park when you get there. They are generally cheap, and certainly much cheaper than parking costs in the centre of most towns.

Well, I'll be honest and say that I really don't remember much about Leicester, so I didn't recognise anything! It was some 40 years since I worked there, after all. The area we got off the bus looked as if it had been completely rebuilt recently, with a large new shopping centre, very shiny new cinema complex (literally shiny, as it was covered in what looked like mirror tiles) and a branch of John Lewis department store. We then went into a brand new shopping area, which had a lot of what I can only describe as designer shops in it, but not actually somewhere we'd shop as everything is really expensive and over-priced. We had coffee and something to relieve our hunger in a rather nice branch of Carluccio's, and then attempted to find The Curve. I will say, for a multi-million pound theatre complex, they really ought to spend some money and effort with signposts to this theare, as we didn't know exactly where it was, although we had managed to pick up a town centre map which showed it's location, but it wasn't until we got into the older part of the city that we came across a signpost that directed us to it. We eventually found The Curve.

I have to say that at first sight I wasn't exactly over-impressed by the building. The outside has the appearance of some sort of over-sized grill for a heating system. It doesn't exactly fit into the surrounding streetscape and rather over-dominates it, but I have to say that it is a rather impressive structure. We decided to give it a go and go inside to have a look round. The entrance door is automatic and there are acres and acres of space in the foyer, if that's what you call it. You can see the streets outside through large windows which make it seem as if the outside has merged with the interior. The theatre has been designed so that the public can see the workings of the place, unlike other theatres, where these parts of the building are kept hidden. You can see into the workshop through a window, and we could see sets and props for the next production being build. You can actually see onto the backstage areas of the main audiatorium when they raise special doors onto the stage, and at the time we were there you could see the lighting rig being set up.From the street you can see a good deal of what is going on inside and you'd even be able to see the actors preparing for a show, and from overhead gantrys look down on the stage.

Having had our look-round, Carol suggested we stay and see a show, as there was a matinee performance that afternoon, not in the main theatre, but in the smaller studio. We discovered that the show was called "Story Of A Rabbit," which on first thought didn't sound that appealing. But we are people that like to give things a try, even if they aren't immediately appealing. We like theatre, and we've seen a few shows, but generally they'd be what you would call 'mainstream' and this show was somewhat what I'd call 'experimental.' We discovered that the show had come direct from the Edinburgh Festival.

We bought our tickets at the box-office and, because it didn't start until 2.30, we had around two hours to fill. We went back out into Leicester to have another wander around. One of the places we went was the open-air market where we bought a cauliflower for our Sunday lunch and some apples. It seems a really lively market and the stuff we purchased was really good quality and cheap, certainly in comparison to what we'd buy in Tesco, Asda or Morrison's in Milton Keynes.

We began to walk back towards the theatre and got there before the time the play was due to start and had time to have a coffee in the theatre cafe. We then went into the studio theatre, handing in our tickets at the door and walking into the studio. We didn't have numbered tickets so that you could sit where you wanted. There was someone on the door welcoming us to the show, who turned out to be Hugh Hughes, who's one-man show this was. At first I thought he was just someone who was a sort of usher. There were a few people already seated, but the place was hardly packed. This actor, Hugh Hughes, was talking to the audience, welcoming people as they came in. He was saying that this show had toured and this was the penultimate performance and that it wasn't going to tour again until 20010. Also, this was a matinee, and he rarely did matinee performances. He asked someone in the audience if they wanted a cup of tea, which was strange, as you rarely go to the theatre and get asked by one of the actors on stage if you'd like a cup of tea. He made this tea using what looked like an old fashioned hot-water boiler which was on stage, and then gave the freshly-made cup of tea to a woman in the audience. This was certainly not going to be a conventional piece of theatre, by any means.

He kept asking a theatre staff member if it was time to start the show, and when it seemed that all the audience was in, he began. It was difficult to know whether the performance had actually started, or whether it was just waiting for it to begin.

There were odd items suspended from the ceiling which were used in the show, for example, a pair of Marigold rubber gloves, a collection of ties, a plastic bag full of sawdust and on the floor a large car tyre, a Trimphone telephone, the water boiler and in one corner of the stage a flip chart. Also, on one side sat a man who sat at a keyboard playing some music and to one side of him a lighting desk. He operated all the lighting for the show and provided the music at various intervals throughout the performance.

The whole show was about Hugh Hughes father dieing and also, running sort of concurrently with this 'plot' the story of his family pet rabbit dieing. It may not sound particularly interesting material for a show, but the way it was done it was funny and touching, all at the same time. There were certain poignant moments where you didn't know whether it was appropriate to laugh, it was that much of a narrow margin between comedy and tragedy, which made it seem really good theatre. There were bits near the beginning where it didn't seem as if it was actually a piece of theatre or merely a presentation, because he used the flip chart and a Powerpoint which he operated from a laptop computer.

One poor man arrived late and Hugh Hughes mentioned this. How embarrassing for the man! I don't know how I would have coped with it.

Anyway, I'm really glad we saw it and at the end we left the theatre thinking that our visit to The Curve had been worthwhile. It would have been odd to have visited and not seen a show, even though it wasn't in the main theatre.

We weren't exactly sure where we were supposed to catch the bus back to the park and ride carpark. Someone at the theatre said that it was in the Haymarket, so we walked there and waited at a bus stop, but we were there for a good 20 minutes or more but no bus came along. Eventually we caught a bus whose driver told us he wasn't going out to the park and ride carpark, but he could drop us at a stop near the BBC Radio Leicester studios, and we would eventually get a bus to where we wanted to go. This we did, but, again no sign of any bus to the carpark. Eventually some people came along and we asked them, to be told that we should go back to the centre of Leicester. We followed them and eventually, after an even longer wait, we finally got on a bus to the carpark. By now it was getting dark, the wind got up, and there was a steady rain, but we were really glad when we got back to the carpark and got in the car, leaving Leicester and heading back to the M1 and home to Milton Keynes.