a weekend in Lincoln

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For Morris teams in the East of the country, the Lincoln Morris Festival is one of the key dates in the calendar, and Rackaback were pleased to be invited to perform once more. Pete and I booked a family room in a B&B. and our daughter Clare brought our grandson Harry up to watch his granny dancing, and his GrandPete playing.

A splendid time was had by all concerned, including dancing, sightseeing, 10 minutes of Doctor Who (“don’t want to watch any more thank you”), Lincoln Castle, a huge hot chocolate with marshmallows (for the boy), and more besides. Somewhere on Sunday morning I lost my nice black cardigan, but never mind.

My Doc Martens and, more importantly, my feet, held out fine on their first all day joint appearance, Rackaback acquitted ourselves splendidly, and I hope we all get invited again!

That marks three weekends away in a row, so we have decided to give next weekend’s camping a miss, so we have time to draw breath, not least as here is a *big* site launch looming next week.

gouging of the insurance variety

We changed our car this week – the GermanBarge sailed through its MOT without a murmur, and we thought it a good time to get something new.  The Merc, though solid, had a bizarre footbrake arrangement that I couldn’t master; fine around the flatlands of Hull, but hopeless for me if I encountered a hill start, and also I found the driving position very uncomfortable.

So we went car hunting, and whenever we saw something promising I went to confused.com and got a rough estimation of insurance costs. We settled on a 1999 Saab estate (one whole year younger than Das Barge!), and i organised a temporary cover note at iniquitous expense while we sold the Merc. And when it was gone, yesterday, I phoned Budget Insurance to swap the cover.

I took the insurance out in February, at a cost of £335.89. And the premium for the Saab was to be – wait for it – £778.98. Plus a £30 admin charge. This seemed odd, as I had fed the registration number into Confused at the weekend, and got quotes of between £250 and £350. I asked for a price for cancelling, and was given £75. I said I’d call back.

I went back to Confused – on there, Budget (my insurers) were quoting me £259.70 (WTF?). I settled on another company, bit more expensive but lower excess plus recovery services. I phoned Budget back and asked why they felt it was OK to charge me three times as much to upgrade. The girl said it was because the site assumed I was a new customer. I told her I was now an EX customer, and we went through all the details again for me to cancel.

At the end of the conversation, I said to her that I realised that this was in no way her fault, and that I was more than happy with the way she personally had handled my calls, but I would like her to pass up to her superiors that I felt that their gouging of existing customers was iniquitous, and that nothing on God’s earth would ever induce me to deal with Budget again. She said she would, with what sounded like a muffled snigger in her voice 🙂

All joking aside, it really is revolting the way insurance companies deal with this sort of thing, don’t you think?

Freaks in the … Moors

We took ourselves off to Howarth on Friday, for another Freaks in the Peaks weekend, and utterly splendid it was too. The journey there, however, less so, as the radiator died in the roadworks on the M62. The heroic RAC man found a garage who would replace it, and towed us in. We arrived at 4.45, and were away again by about 5.45, so we really couldn’t grumble, but the bill of £245 was a bit of a horror, especially as the car is being MOT’d on Friday, and we have no idea what other horrors may ensue. Ho hum.

We went from the garage to Keighley to pick up Ken – we had planned to drop Jamie in Howarth first, but there was no time, so poor Ken had to be squodged in with his accordion, snare drum and luggage, but we managed. Booked in at the B&B, then off to the pub for smoked haddock fishcakes (for me) and a few [ahem] glasses of wine.

Saturday morning was rehearsing, then dancing in three or four places in the afternoon. Communal cooking in the hall in the evening (we were on chopping duties), then dinner and a lot more dancing. My skeleton was a bit battered by Sunday morning, so we took a drive over to Hebden Bridge and found a lovely food market, then came home right across the top of the moors – beautiful. More dancing then ensued at the Wuthering Heights* pub in Stanbury, before we broke up around 4 and went out separate ways.

We came home via Doncaster (as you do), as Ken wouldn’t have to change trains from there (he has very poor sight), dropped Jamie off, unpacked and slumped with tea, bread and cheese from the market, then had a very early night!

*Everything around there has Bronte names.And did you know that Heathcliffe Mews?

Quick reminder to self: surgery appt this morning. No changes at all, which is good, but thyroid test shows very slightly increased (or decreased or something) so that’ll be retested in three months. Now back on six monthly checks for the diabetes, which is good.

so that was Easter …

We did a bit of desultory work on Good Friday (heathens that we are), went to Beverley on Saturday to collect new! pasta! dishes! (as one of our beloved and venerable ones broke last week), and a few other places for chores. I photographed loads of stuff for eBay and got it listed during the free listing weekend.

We picked up a nice piece of lamb in Morrisons, rolled with gremolata, so had that on Sunday with roast veg – quite delicious. Other than that we did absolutely nothing, apart from trundling down to the Minerva in the rain on Monday afternoon, in an attempt to do some dancing out with Rackaback. It really was remarkably wet, but we gave it a go when the torrents eased off a bit. After that, we came home to home made sossidge rolls, and an utterly appalling Nick Cage movie, Knowing. It was so dire, we turned it off after about half an hour.

This morning, I had a diabetic review at the surgery; I was expecting a lecture, as I have been far from well-behaved, lifestyle-wise, over the winter, but my levels are down to 7%, I have put on only a kg, and everything else is tickety boo. Next blood test is July, when they’ll test for thyroid as well, as I am suffering occasional night sweats, and I am so far past menopause that it cannot possibly be that. So all in all, quite pleased with that.

more Morrising

these boots were made for Morrising

I don’t know why I’m not writing much here any  more – lots of posts in my head, but actually putting fingers to keyboard seems beyond me right now.

Yesterday, we (as in Rackaback) did our first proper dance out of the year, down by the Minerva pub in Hull. It’s a nice space, on the old docks, and there were a few people around. I rattled the bucket and people actually paid us (possibly to stop), and we had lots of compliments too. It was an ideal time to test out my purple suede boots – sheepskin insoles and two pairs of socks, and they were dead comfy. But they do make me look like Nanny Ogg

Last weekend (not yesterday, but the one before), we took ourselves off to the badlands of North Lincolnshire. An all to brief stop in Louth, which is a lovely town, but they hide the long term parking, and then down to Mablethorpe for fish and chips by the seaside, and a long walk along the prom. Beautiful day, and it was most enjoyable.

And that’s it, for now.

uninspired …

I have a couple of posts I want to write, but haven’t got round to them yet.

But I did want to note something, to save me having to look it up elsewhere. I stopped smoking.

On 2nd November 2005 🙂

shiny!

Just testing the iPhone WordPress app – thought I would show you the shoes I bought in Leeds yesterday. There is an actual Dr Martens shop there, and whilst in there I happened to remark that I wished they did a shoe in the shiny red patent. And they used to, and they had some stock. They were so helpful, it would have been rude not to buy them. Do I did.

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eating Italian

Time ran away with us a bit last night, and before we knew where we were, it was time to leave for Morris practice before we’d managed to eat supper; and, of course, it was a night that not only could we not be late, we had to be early, as I had the hall keys. So we each consumed a mini pork pie on the run as we left, and decided to grab something on Princes Ave when we got home.

We have more eateries than you can shake a stick at at the top of our road – Malaysian, Morroccan, Chinese (although it looks as though the Giant Panda has shut down), Thai, Indian, Italian, another Indian, plus an assortment of cafe bars; of the top of my head, The Laundry, Garbutts, Mustard, Pave, Lounge, Fudge and a new one whose name I can’t remember*. Oh, and a chippy and a (very poor) kebab house.  The latter keeps going until god knows when, but having tried it once, never again [shudder]. However, it seems that pretty much all of them stop taking orders at 9, which is a bit anti social when it’s 9.20 p.m. and I want something to eat. All except Da Gianni, who were happy to seat us.

Their menu, together with their Specials board, offered many different dishes, but almost all of them were in a “tomato and basil sauce”.  As we feared, my salmon pasta and Pete’s Italian sausage pasta were pretty much identical except for the last minute addition of – yes, salmon and Italian sausage to the relevant plate; and, when the waiter brought the bowl of parmesan, he actually wouldn’t let me have some as it would “spoil the dish”. There was olive oil on the table, but no bread offered.

So, adequate but hardly inspiring – we shan’t bother again.  Good Morris practice though – coming together nicely!

*Interestingly, while Googling for it, I came across restaurants.co.uk, whose Google entry claims “If it can’t be found on Restaurants.co.uk it’s not there”. Interestingly, they don’t find a single entry for our postcode, which seems a bit of a fail given the above 🙂

Freaking in the Peaks

Freaks in the Peaks Jan 2012
Freaks in the Peaks Jan 2012

I didn’t get round to writing the post about our trip to Derbyshire at the end of January, because I was waiting for Pete to put his photos on Flickr, but he hasn’t, so I’ve stolen this one from his Facebook feed. That’s me on the far right bedecked in purple and yellow ribbons.

Anyway, so … off we all went to Freaks in the Peaks, a sort of travelling Morris collective/workshop; about ten of us from Rackaback went, in a sort of works outing, and we rented a pair of cottages in Eyam to accommodate us. We all drove down on the Friday afternoon – we got there first, in daylight, and I was glad we did, as big fat snowflakes fell from the sky in the early evening, and then the ice came, and it was bloody treacherous. But the cottages were snug and warm and so that was OK.  Pete and I stopped in Matlock Bridge on the way down, where the rain came down sideways and it was freezing, and the village was closed anyway due to winter, and then for a cream tea at Chatsworth, so we were well fed.

The Saturday morning was practising in the Mechanics Institute in Eyam, which was good fun, and I learned a couple of new dances. Then lunch, then dancing out firstly outside the Miners Arms, then up at the Craft place. I didn’t dance up there because it was on gravel, and my knees wouldn’t have liked it, but I did manage to get over my fear of not being picked for the netball team in the earlier part of the day. In the evening, most of us went and had a good meal at the Miners, then up to the Ceilidh for rest of the night, which was enormous fun. Much wine was consumed, many instruments were played, and some of us learned a dance called Lorenzo’s Butterfly which, had we been sober, we’d never have managed, given it involves hurling sticks through the air *and* catching them again. We performed it flawlessly, which just goes to show how much wine we’d had. The video at the bottom is not us 🙂

So that was it, really – we had toast and jam in the little tea room for Sunday breakfast, and packed up the cottage.  Some Freakers were walking up the hills to the next village, but we decided we’d drive up there, and we had a nice walk for a couple of miles, although it was a tad on the chilly side. A lovely weekend, all told, and we will be doing the next Freaks in April in Tideswell in Derbyshire.