Wednesday 1 June
Busy busy holiday weekend. We had three different sets of guests staying on Sunday night.
First, there was Laura, the Spanish au pair who has been taking refuge with us since her employer threw her out in the middle of April. Laura went off to Dublin to stay with friends there for a couple of weeks, but she came back to us last Thursday. She has been earning her keep by doing a lot of work around the house. She and Mary have fallen for each other in a big way, and Mary has taken her on as a surrogate daughter.
A few days ago an old friend of Mary's, Eileen, called to say that she would like to come and spend the weekend, bringing her friend Gill with her. Mary and Eileen used to work in the same office in Manchester in the 1970s and they have kept in touch ever since. Every couple of years or so, Eileen comes to stay here for a few days, and occasionally we go to visit her in Manchester. Since Laura was installed in Liz's room, we had to ask Eileen and Gill to share the double bed in Steve's room but they didn't mind that.
They turned up on Friday evening in time for dinner. As we were eating, the phone rang and it was another friend of Mary's, also called Gill, asking if she could stay with us on Sunday night. Gill used to live near us but now lives in London. She had to come up to Leeds to see a friend of hers who is very ill, and she needed a bed for the night. With guests in both the spare rooms, we couldn't offer her a proper bedroom, but we have a spare mattress which she slept on in the sitting room. It's a long time since we have had so many people staying here.
The weather was fine and warm all weekend, for just about the first time this year. On Sunday we made a picnic lunch and spent the day at Lotherton Hall, a place we have never been to before although it's only a few miles from our house. That's one of the pleasures of having visitors – they give you the incentive to go to places you would never bother to visit otherwise. On Bank Holiday Monday we all went for a very good lunch at one of our favourite local pubs, the Bingley Arms at Bardsey, after which Eileen and the two Gills went their separate ways. Next day, Laura also left, to spend a few days in London before flying home to Gran Canaria.
So now there's just the two of us again, in a large empty house with an even emptier larder. The guests had eaten just about every morsel of food in the house, and we had to go on a large scale shopping expedition this morning.
Sunday 5 June
Laura (the au pair girl who came to stay with us in April when she had to escape from her deranged employer) has finally left to go back to Gran Canaria. She was an ideal house guest, helpful and appreciative, but very naive and clueless. We are relieved that she has made it safely back home.
From the way she behaves you would never guess that she is in her mid-twenties – she looks and acts about half that age. She has had a totally sheltered upbringing and is also completely scatterbrained. She flew over to Dublin for a couple of weeks last month to stay with a friend, and realised when she got back here that she had left her mobile phone and the memory card for her camera in Ireland. Okay, we all forget things at times, but that was just typical of what she does all the time. When she packed her case to come back from Dublin she carefully locked it with several padlocks, having previously packed all the padlock keys in the case. I had to saw through one of the locks so that she could retrieve the keys.
We knew that she was planning to spend the last few days of her time in England staying with a friend in London, and she was very excited and also apprehensive about seeing all the sights of the great city. But last weekend, when we had a houseful of other guests staying with us and we all asked her about her plans, it gradually emerged that the person she was proposing to stay with in London isn't exactly a friend at all. In fact, it's someone she has never met, the sister of a Nigerian friend of hers, let's call him Bemi. After further questioning, Laura admitted that Bemi isn't exactly a friend either, but just a friend of a friend. She didn't actually know anything much about him, not even his surname, address or telephone number. She had met him a couple of times at the petrol station where he works. They had an arrangement that Laura would meet Bemi at the Leeds bus station on Tuesday, and he would take her to his sister's house and then spend the next few days showing her round London. Laura said that she had once spoken to the sister on the phone, but she admitted that she had no way of knowing whether the person she spoke to really was Bemi's sister.
We were all extremely dubious about this set-up, especially our friend Gill, who has lived in West Africa, She said that it was a normal part of the culture there that the boy would expect Laura to sleep with him in such a situation. In fact, she was so worried that she suggested to us that Laura should stay with her instead (Gill lives in Highgate, close to central London).
Next day, we put this idea to Laura, thinking that she would be worried about offending Bemi. But she jumped at the idea of staying with Gill, and admitted that she had also been a bit worried about the arrangement with Bemi's sister. She walked down to the petrol station (her only means of contacting Bemi) and apparently he was also happy about the change of plans.
On Tuesday we drove Laura to the bus station, where Bemi was waiting for her. I thought he seemed a very nice lad (good looking too). He told me that he is a graduate student in Sheffield, living with friends in Leeds and working at the petrol station to put himself through college. He helped Laura on to the bus with her (ridiculous amount of) luggage, and we said goodbye to them.
Next day, Gill phoned us with reports of further drama. When Laura and Bemi reached Victoria station he showed her how to buy a ticket for the underground and warned her not to flash her purse around as she was doing. But she was flustered, and had nowhere to put the purse, so she stuck it in his pocket while she struggled with her vast amounts of luggage. She then said goodbye to him and got on the tube for Highgate, forgetting that he still had the purse.
Of course, Laura still had no idea how to contact Bemi, except that they had arranged to meet at Victoria the following day to go sightseeing. We wondered whether the purse contained just money, or whether she had also given away her passport, plane tickets or whatever.
But all turned out well. Next day, the purse was returned and Laura and Bemi had a great time seeing the sights. The previous week, when Laura was discussing with us a list of places to visit in London, she said that one area she really wanted to see was what she called "Nothing Hill". Mary was much amused at this. "But why Nothing Hill?" she asked, "There's nothing there!" Probably Laura was hoping to see Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts wandering the streets. But Laura and Bemi did go to Notting Hill and enjoyed looking round the Portobello market. On Friday evening Laura went to have dinner at Bemi's sister's house, and on Saturday Gill drove her to Gatwick airport for the flight back to Las Palmas.
So everything turned out happily, and our fears were quite unjustified. Bemi was genuinely friendly and completely honourable. But we breathed a sigh of relief when Laura left the country and ceased being our responsibility.
Saturday 11 June
Even in the north of England it occasionally gets warm and sunny. But spells of fine weather hardly ever last for more than two or three days, which makes it a bit dicey to organise outdoor events.
One of Mary's duties as this year's President of the University's Ladies' Club is to host a garden party for the club members (mostly elderly ladies). The date originally fixed for this event was 1 June, but Mary thought that this was too soon after the previous meeting, and she got the committee to agree to put it back one week, to 8 June. Just as well, because it rained hard all day on 1 June. The forecast for 8 June was much better, and it looked as though we were going to be lucky with the weather. The members of the committee were supposed to be doing all the preparations for the party, and Mary and I should have had nothing to do but welcome the guests. But then the secretary of the club went down with pneumonia, and we had to take over some of the work. Last weekend we took delivery of a couple of a couple of structures to erect in the garden, loaned to us by one of the club members. These are described by the manufacturers as 'pavilions', a grandiose term for what are essentially tents with removable sides, but quite large, 3 metres square and 2.4 metres high. The instructions in the box said that they would require at least four people to assemble them. But there was nobody else around on Tuesday, and I was rather proud to find that I was able to assemble them unaided in just over an hour.
Wednesday dawned bright, sunny and warm, easily the best day of the year so far. The committee members turned up soon after lunch to prepare the food, and the rest of the members arrived mid-afternoon. Mary has done a lot of work on the garden this year and I have to say it was looking really great. All the old dears seemed to enjoy themselves. There were not quite as many people there as we had expected, because of a couple of clashing events elsewhere. But we had about 35 people in the garden and they all congratulated Mary on a very successful occasion.
We are having another group of people here for lunch on Monday, and the owner of the pavilions said that we could keep them until then. But of course it was too much to hope that the good weather would last until then. The forecast for Monday is for light rain and a high of 11°C (or 52°F). There seems no point in thinking of an alfresco lunch. So this afternoon I decided to dismantle the pavilions while they are still dry, and managed to get them all neatly packed away in their boxes (singlehanded, naturally!) in less than an hour. It seems that summer here is over almost before it has begun.
Taking tea in the shade of the pavilions.
A garden full of ladies.
Mary (on the left) chatting up some of her visitors.
Saturday 18 June
I've been in London for the past couple of days. There was a math soc meeting there yesterday dinner, with three lectures in the afternoon followed by a dinner in the evening, and the idea was that Mary and I would take the opportunity to spend some time in the capital, including a performance of The Winter's Tale at the Globe Theatre.
It didn't work out quite that way. We had everything organised, but at the last minute Mary felt that she was too ill to go. She has been overdoing things recently, what with all the preparations for last week's garden party, and she was starting to feel the symptoms of her ME, which has been in remission for the past four years. She didn't want to risk a relapse of that, so she decided to stay at home and take things easy.
So I went to London on Thursday on my own. This has certain advantages, for example I travel much lighter than Mary so I only needed a small canvas bag rather than toting a large suitcase. But it's not the same being on your own, and I missed her company most of the time. The performance of The Winter's Tale was very good, and she would have enjoyed it. But the Globe isn't exactly comfortable, being a faithful re-creation of the theatre as it was in Shakespeare's day. The seats are hard wooden benches (though you can rent a cushion for £1), and there's no roof. On a cold June afternoon it was decidedly chilly sitting there. Mary would not have enjoyed that.
Until about a year ago I used to have to go to London at least once a month, and I often found time for a visit to Chariots sauna. I thought that this would be one of the things that I missed most when I retired. But in fact I haven't missed it at all. I went back there on Thursday evening and just didn't feel that this was something I needed in my life any more. In any case, I think Chariots is not what it was. For my money, the best gay sauna in London these days is the Pleasuredrome.
Yesterday morning, having nothing particular to do, I walked over to Lincoln's Inn Fields, a part of London I have never explored. It was very much warmer than the previous day, and the London parks were looking their best. I spent a couple of hours in the Sir John Soane museum, an amazing treasure trove of archaeological bric-a-brac. Soane was the architect who designed the Bank of England among other buildings, and the museum is his own home which he completely rebuilt in order to house all his acquisitions.
This morning, if Mary had been in London with me, we were planning to see the Royal Academy's summer exhibition. But it was so warm and humid that I couldn't face any more sightseeing so I took an early train home and spent the afternoon lazing in the garden with Mary, who is feeling much better after a few days' rest.
Tuesday 21 June
Sunday was warm (30°C) and sunny, but humid. Just the day for lazing on a shady patio doing nothing but reading the papers. So how did I spend one of the longest and hottest days of the year? Answer: unblocking the drains.
I don't know why, but our house drains have a tendency to get silted up with, er, organic matter, until they are completely blocked. The heat and the close atmosphere on Sunday made the smell impossible to ignore, and I had to spend the whole afternoon doing something about it. Seeing that this problem occurs every two years or so, I really ought to invest in a set of drain rods. Not having any, my only equipment for dealing with the problem is the garden hose, which I push along the drain pipes until the jet of water eventually clears the blockage. I don't think you'll want any more detail than that, but it's a horrible messy job and I needed a long shower when I had finished it.
Monday was also fine and warm, but not so hot and humid, in fact another ideal day for lazing in the garden. I mowed the lawn in the morning but then spent the whole of the rest of the day indoors wrestling with a computer problem.
A couple of months ago I noticed that our broadband supplier was offering a deal on an Actiontec wireless router. I forked out £99.99 for this gadget and it has been an excellent investment. It means that Mary can use her laptop anywhere in the house at the same time as I'm using the Mac in my study. But recently the connection to the laptop has been really erratic. It works for a few minutes and then flashes up an error message to say that the connection has been lost. I had an idea that Laura the Spanish au pair might have been responsible for the problem. She used to spend half the night with the laptop, using MS Messenger to chat with her friends. I uninstalled Messenger and did everything else I could think of to sort out the problem, with no success. If it had been the Mac that was misbehaving I would have felt confident that I could work out what was going wrong, but since I have never used a Windows PC I felt totally helpless, and in the end I gave up and phoned the Actiontec helpline.
The call was routed through to a helpdesk in Arizona (I think) where I spoke to a helpful young American who must have thought he was dealing with a complete imbecile. He told me to start up the laptop, and I warned him that I was a Mac person and knew nothing about PCs. "Okay," he said, "I'll talk you through it step by step. Press the Start button."
"Start button?"
"Press the Start button."
"I don't see a Start button."
"It's in the bottom left hand corner."
"No, I don't think there is one on this computer."
I could hear his eyes rolling in despair. "Look at the bottom left hand corner of the screen."
At last, the light dawned. "Oh, you mean a button on the monitor! I was looking for a key on the keyboard."
After that low point, I coped a little bit better. He led me step by baby step through various diagnostic tests. At one point I thanked him for his saint-like patience. He couldn't definitively identify the problem, but he said that it might go away if I changed the wireless channel on the router. He gave me detailed instructions on how to do this on the Mac, and told me to phone again if that didn't solve the problem. I thanked him again for his patience and went off to make the change that he had suggested.
But the new wireless channel was no better than the old one. I was beginning to think that I would have to phone the helpline again, when it occurred to me that the fault might have started at about the time when I installed the Microsoft SP2 service pack on the laptop. I checked on the installer CD for the wireless PC card and sure enough it mentioned that the installation process depended on which version of Windows XP was running. Yesterday I completely uninstalled Actiontec on the laptop and then reinstalled it using the SP2 option. Problem solved. Touch wood, the laptop now has a working connection to the internet again. What's more, all my prejudices about Microsoft are confirmed and I can blame Bill Gates for all the hassle this episode has caused me.
The forecast gives us two more days of sun before the warm spell breaks with thunderstorms on Friday. I plan to spend at least one of those two days lazing in the garden (unless some other emergency crops up).
Saturday 25 June Plans for the summer
The high point of the summer is always the week that I spend in the Scottish Highlands with a group of old friends. This year we are staying on the Knoydart peninsula, renting a cottage a mile or so outside Inverie. Inverie has the distinction of being the only town in mainland Britain that is inaccessible by road. The only way to get there is by ferry across Loch Nevis from Mallaig. Actually it's a slight exaggeration to call Inverie a town. It has one short street with a shop, a pub, a visitor centre and a few houses. But it's a great centre for walking and climbing. We stayed over on the other side of Knoydart three years ago and had a particularly wet week in which we only managed one full day's climb. Hopefully the weather won't be quite so dire this year, and we may be able to get to some of the mountains that we were unable to climb then.
The week in Knoydart starts next Saturday, but since I feel totally unfit I decided to set off a couple of days earlier, driving up to the Central Highlands on Thursday and staying at a hotel for a couple of days, so that I can go a bit of a climb on Friday to loosen up the leg muscles. I wanted to stay at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, but I left the booking a bit late and they didn't have any single rooms available. In fact, it seems that the whole of Scotland is pretty much booked up for accommodation next week, by participants and protesters for the G8 summit meeting at Gleneagles. Eventually I found a small hotel in Tyndrum with a vacancy for Thursday and Friday (and it's only half the price of the Bridge of Orchy Hotel). Since I can't take the car to Inverie I'm planning to leave it at Tyndrum for the week and take the West Highland Line to Mallaig ("one of the world's great train journeys," as it's always described).
Looking further ahead, we're going to visit the family in Spain in September. We decided to go for two weeks, but we won't stay with Steve, Jo and the boys for the whole time. We thought it's about time that we saw some of the other places in the region, so we'll probably stay for a week or so in their "new" 200-year-old house and then take off to explore some of the surrounding countryside.
Ryanair have ridiculously cheap fares to Seville, £30 per person return. What's more, the flights are at fairly civilised hours. Airport taxes have the effect of doubling the cost, but it's still pretty good value. The only catch is that Ryanair fly out of Stansted, which is about three hours' drive from here, and we'll have to pay £100 for the long term car park there. We might have done better to take a more expensive flight from Leeds to Málaga and drive from there. But it's too late to change the arrangements now.
Other than that, we'll be at home for most of the summer. The hall and family room urgently need redecorating, and there are several overgrown cypress trees in the back garden that need to be cut down, so one way and another I won't be short of things to do. But it's the ten days in Scotland that I'm really looking forward to.
