There’s still a moment in the morning when I wake up and wonder where I am. And still a momentary flash of disappointment when I remember that we’re back home, but away from the midges. Itchy legs and arms still and I even have a bindi where one of those little blighters bit me while in the Highlands. We are glad to be away from those microdots of torture. No other animal bites you and leaves a mark a thousand times larger than its own body size. I bet they miss me though: I’m quite tasty, they didn’t go for Liesel at all.
Wythenshawe Park looked nice and tidy, freshly mown, and I even had the place pretty much to myself. Sneezes erupted and followed me around and I realised I couldn’t carry on much longer without taking some anti-histamines. My hay fever really is much worse here at home than it was in Scotland, but then maybe my immune system was concentrating on attacks from those nasty little black beasties.
In our flat, when we leave the windows open, we get visits from flies the size of small humming birds. They can find a way in, but we have to open all the windows wide before they find their way out again. I say ‘they’, but it might be the same one coming back every day.
Welcome to our first exciting day out out since we returned from the extreme north. We’ve wanted to visit Tatton Park, a National Trust property, for a long time and today was the start of The Foodies’ Festival. Neither of us were particularly interested in the Foodie side of the Festival, oh no, we went primarily to see some live music.
We wandered around the gardens, yes, still socially distant from other visitors. So it was a bit strange seeing a large group, maybe a coach party, having a guided tour all in close proximity, some with masks, some without.
It was relaxing hearing the birds singing, but the peace of the Japanese Garden was disturbed by the noise from the robot lawn mower. They have modern tech like this, but one of the gardeners was trimming the edge of the lawn with shears that really needed sharpening. Or replacing!
We didn’t see as much wildlife as we would have liked in Scotland, so to see some today was, well, wild. Some deer way over there in the distance and this little chap:
He is a very small frog, barely bigger than my thumb nail.
This is a very pretty flower, we had some in our garden in Chessington. I never knew what it was. [Thanks to Stella, we now know this is St John’s Wort. No wonder I didn’t recognise it, the last time I saw St John’s Wort, it was in the form of little off-white tablets in a bottle.]
There’s a big kitchen garden here at Tatton too, which must take some looking after, but all the indoor venues were closed. As midday approached, we wandered over towards The Foodies’ Festival. The queue was quite long already and Liesel and I were both bemoaning the fact that our poor old backs needed a rest. We knew we were in the right place when we heard the strains of Texas Angel wafting across the fields.
Jessica and Chris were playing the music to welcome all the guest to the Festival. ‘Ah, you must be Mick’, said Jessica from the stage and I thought, where? It was good to see them live and in the flesh: usually I see them on YouTube each Tuesday night playing for an hour or so. Jessica’s cousin David and Viv also watch the online shows, and this was the first time of course that we’d met them in real life. Jessica and Chris performing songs without buffering issues: priceless!
They sung a mix of their own songs and covers such as Big Yellow Taxi and You’re So Vain.
We sang and clapped along of course. Sang or sung? The more you think about it, the more wrong both words seem to be. Most people just walked on by, paying no attention to the music. Looking around the stage, it was interesting to see that all the nearby stalls were offering alcohol: prosecco, gin, Kent cider (I took some home), Pimms, beer on an old London bus. Really? Yes, really!
We properly met Jessica and Chris after their first set, before wandering off for a coffee and a sit-down. A sit-down in the marquee where the cookery demonstrations were taking place. Before the second set, we bought some cheese and some desserts that we wouldn’t normally look at. There was even a CostCo stall, bizarrely, which I thought out of place amongst all the local produce on offer. What a nice day for wandering around a field and then sitting down to watch more music. I feel bad about not staying for the other musicicans, including the intriguingly named Maybe Gaga, but I had a radio show to do later on.
It was fun to watch this little girl dancing in front of the stage and, in the end, sitting down for a rest. Of course it made us think about taking Martha and William to a performance like this one day.
And yes, of course, afterwards, I asked for a selfie with the stars of the show.
The radio show this week was a Postcard from Scotland. Some Scottish singers plus plenty of other great tunes, including, of course, one from JLM. I started at 4pm this week rather than 2pm, the idea being that, like today, if we go out on a Friday, we don’t have to rush back: I have to allow a good half hour for the PC to boot up and for me to run all the necessary software.
The Tour de France continues to entertain. Spoilers coming up. Today, Mark Cavendish won his fourth stage this year, making a total of 34: this equals the record achieved by Eddy Merckx, probably the greatest male cyclist ever, in 1975.
This morning we went over to Didsbury, Liesel had things to do, while I walked home, the long way. I was pole-axed on reading the news that Jono Coleman, top radio presenter here in the UK and in Australia, had died. I had to sit down and recuperate in Fletcher Moss Park, with a coffee and a fried egg barm.
While I was walking back along the river, there was a downpour in Northenden. I could tell by the wet pavements, plus, it was confirmed by Liesel. I stayed dry though, chatting with the duck family who couldn’t swim away from me fast enough.
Yep: another photo of animal rear-ends. I think my phone emits a signal that warns them that I’m about to take a picture.
Liesel told me there were three crates of empty milk bottles in front of the neighbour’s car, in our communal car park. When I looked out, I could see no crates, so I told her they’d gone. A little while later, Liesel told me the crates were still there, in front of the car. I looked out but still couldn’t see them. Was I even looking at the correct vehicle? Yes I was. The car is parked facing the fence. The crates were between the front of the car and the fence. So, in front of the car. But to me, in front of the car would place the crates between me and the offending vehicle. Liesel maintains that this would be behind the car, as the crates are closer to the back of the vehicle. We tried to come to some agreement, but basically, the English language is a bit fluid and ambiguous. Imagine the car was, say, a sphere, without a front or a back. Where are the crates now? I still think, between the ball and the fence, they’re behind the object. From our point of view in our second floor luxury apartment, if the crates were in the neighbour’s garden, are they behind the fence or in front of the fence? You might think it doesn’t matter. But if we were trying to direct someone to defuse an unexploded bomb, she would need to go straight to the device, she wouldn’t want to be wasting time climbing over fences looking for it, just because we can’t agree on what’s in front and what’s behind. So from now on, we’re going to use absolute terms to describe locations. Something will be north, east, south or west of something else, or some combination thereof. I hope that’s clear.
It’s a bit of a joke these days that when some thing goes wrong, the advice is to turn it off and back on again. There was an item on radio recently which agreed that, because most things are basically just computers now, this will work. It’s a way of clearing the temporary memory in the device. In the old days of computers, you’d get a message such as ‘Stack Overflow’, which meant you’d run out of memory. Not, you, the computer. So today, when my phone wouldn’t pair with the portable keyboard via bluetooth, I resorted to turning both items off and on again. They still didn’t want to acknowledge each others’ existence. I pulled out some of my hair, not that I have much to start with, and wondered what else I could try. I know the keyboard likes to be top of the list of bluetooth devices that pair with my phone, so I made sure the others were all (both) turned off. So, just the phone and the keyboard now. Will they shake hands and play nice? Nope. Then, in a flash, the thought occurred: batteries. The phone was 85% charged. I changed the two AAA batteries in the keyboard, et voilà, we have lift-off. This is the first time I’ve had to change these batteries, so I’m glad that was the only problem. Here’s a tip: ‘turn it off and on again and check the batteries’ should be the more complete advice when something stops working properly.
Mick and Liesel's Antics 