Sally-Part 87.SEATON DELAVAL HALL . ENGLAND IN OLD -FASHIONED AUTUMN GLORY ! THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO FELIX WHO AMAZINGLY READ ALL MY BLOGS IN ONE SITTING AND LOVES FLOWERS !

Of course New England in it's autumnal splendour is magnificent but huge ! So why not try Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland on a sunny afternoon for a brief stroll around it's wilder parts before visiting it's three beautiful gardens which are such a treat and only a five minute drive from my house where you are all welcome to pop in for a cup of English tea and a selection of muffins, crumpets and fruit scones with lashings of  butter, double cream, strawberry jam and home-made ginger beer and lemonade all served in our huge Edwardian conservatory !

NOT !

THE VANBURGH MASTERPIECE !

HAVE YOU READ 'THE SECRET GARDEN' ?

IMPOSSIBLY BEAUTIFUL !

WOW !

GORGEOUS !

PURE VELVET !

CRYSTAL CLEAR IN THE AFTERNOON SUN !

WHAT FANTASTIC LIGHT

STUNNING !

QUICK ! BEFORE WINTER SETS IN !

The truth about England in autumn is that you can find beauty everywhere without having to pay for it but The National Trust owns and maintains such places as this and Cragside at Rothbury and Wallington Hall and they are all marvellous
to visit and I'm not only addressing foreign visitors but all the locals who wouldn't dream of going !

Sally-Part 86. THE WONDERFUL KARINE POLWART...EVENTUALLY !

HOW THE MORNING NORMALLY LOOKS FROM OUR SCOTTISH VERANDA !

I awoke late to a boringly grey, overcast day which promised nothing but grimness ! Yesterday's bright sun, dramatic cloud formations and scything rain were now just a memory ! My nose froze last night as it poke out of the quilt .

I came through to the lounge dressed for the first time ever wearing the dressing gown my children had bought me for Christmas, presumably, as I was getting older, for going into hospital with ! I wasn't due to go into hospital and have only ever been after I had an incident when a dustbin lorry mechanism accidently  lifted me up when I was throwing in a box of rubbish and  I got something rather private crushed !

I think that you're supposed to wear a dressing gown over your pyjamas but as I don't own a pair, I got fully dressed first before putting mine on over my clothes and then standing beside Shirley dressed in hers, stared at the reflection in the mirror which displayed in truth, a pair of slightly malodorous looking, mis-matched and tousle-haired lesbians rather than the sartorially elegant great author, musician and raconteur Noel Coward and his fashionably fabulous wife which I had expected to see as we moved into position .

One of Karine Polwart's albums was playing and I suddenly felt all flustered as the memory of my own arrogance came back to me ! Karine Polwart had once actually sat next to me !At the time I didn't have a clue who she was or how much I would admire her ! Actually 'admire' doesn't do justice to the feeling of sitting in and audience listening to her !

About twenty years ago we were flying back from Spain and the couple sat next to us said that they were going to fly out to somewhere else the next day because life was too short not to and there were bargains to be had !

Envy set in. We loved hot beaches and could lie and sunbathe all day without too much suncream and with no thought of the effect on our skin that the ravages of time would one day display.

But actually, we never did follow their example because once the children had all left home we discovered that we could rent a place on the Hebridean Island of Colonsay for a month at a time and that out of season, the price dropped to become a bargain.
                                                                               
So that's what we did for a few years.

POST-GOLF WITH MY ELDEST . WHERE ELSE BUT COLONSAY ?

April and September became our 'months' on Colonsay in various houses until only Glebe would do !

GLEBE . NOW YOU CAN SEE WHY WE ONLY WANTED TO RENT HERE !

In September 2007 and coinciding with our stay, Colonsay held it's first Music Festival of Scottish Folk Music. At fifteen pounds a ticket for three days solid entertainment featuring half a dozen groups and individuals, pub sessions and tutorials and a Ceilidh, with those capable, able to drink all night as all the musicians carried on playing through 'til dawn, I sort of looked forward to it with some reservations as early-life experiences of  English bearded, finger-in-the-ear nasal nightmares had put me off 'folk' music for ever !

I'm a Tchaikovsky man so the thought of wailing, wild-hairerd nutters didn't appeal to my utterly unjustified bigotry ! I couldn't have been more wrong ! I was in the early and very tedious stages of teaching myself to play the classical guitar and all the doors between Shirley and I had ( and five years later still have ) to be solidly shut before I was ( and am ) allowed to take up my cheap and awful-sounding instrument! I had reached the level where even a child scratching away on a violin still made a more musical sound than I could and five years later nothing has changed !

On the first night, Pedie MacNeill, one of the organisers and one of the world's greatest unknown and self-effacing singers, song-writers and funny men opened the proceedings with his fellow Islanders and quite honestly had me applauding as loudly as I've ever done at any classical concert or opera !

Shirley hadn't been there, saying that why waste the money on two tickets when wasting it on one would be bad enough but Oh was she wrong ?

I staggered home stunned by what I'd seen and heard and quite forgetting my place in the pecking order, dared to wake her from one of her ever-worsening night's sleep and raved with enthusiasm about Pedie and Jen and Morna and Keir and Anna !

The next morning on my way to play golf on my own as usual, I called into the Hotel to watch someone called Stephen Polwart give a guitar lesson to a group of Island children ! I sat on a settee listening, not daring to admit to myself that they were so much more advanced than I was as they plinked and plonked away !

And then a woman sat next to me and in a moment of quiet I said patronisingly, " Hello. Do you play at all ? " She replied, " A little and if you're going to the concert tonight you'll see me playing with my trio. " Not yet feeling totally stupid, I asked her what her name was and she said " Karine, Karine Polwart. "

"And what sort of music do you play Karine, folk ?"

Shirley's right ! Someone SHOULD heat a spear in a furnace to white-hot and stick it somewhere painful ! That evening and perhaps not for the first time , I learnt that I was not worthy !

How dare I stand within spitting distance of a woman who is, to put it simply, fantastic in every sense of the word ?

Her writing, her playing, her beautiful, haunting voice and I dare to say her soul all combine to make her awesome and recognised by all the great professionals if not the entire musical world as being right at the top of her craft ! I had no idea that she had had awards heaped on her ! And Stephen, her brother, is equally marvellous and Inge Thomson, the third member is a master of many instruments and her voice is also hauntingly perfect and she  has produced her own brilliant album !

If you get the chance, go and see them in concert and buy her and Inge's albums and play them over and over again and then send me a note of thanks !

Sally-Part 85. DON'T TRY DRIVING ROUND PARIS'S PERIPHERIQUE IN A FIAT 500 !

DON'T GO ANYWHERE IN A FIAT 500 !

Have you ever been to Paris in a FIAT 500 ?

If not, don't !

Driving around The Peripherique which is an eight lane super-highway ring-road, was an act of death-defying stupidity !

It was crammed with juggernauts hell-bent on terrifying us as their huge wheels, which stood higher than our roof, boxed us in and shut out all daylight !

If, like us, you drive around this road in the most pathetic excuse for a car ever built you too will deserve to die !

A tin of corned beef glued onto Lego wheels would have felt safer and more solid !

I even gazed up with jealous awe at the majestic sight of 2CV's as they hurtled past !

The scene in the FIAT was thus : A three month pregnant lady , already showing small signs of impatience with the potential to grow larger ( the impatience and the belly ! ) with the passage of time, and with dreadful morning sickness, laid out across the back seats and the reversed upside down front seat and surrounded by a tent and camping accoutrements to last a week before she was back teaching, shrieking in terror at her new husband as the vehicle, caught in violent vortices of slipstreamed air currents lurched uncontrollably from side to side to within inches of thirty tonners !

The other occupant was a silent bearded twit, gripping the steering wheel tighter than a woman's throat and thinking  panic-stricken thoughts as he stared straight ahead, so terrified by his driving experience that being crushed beneath some behemoth seemed to offer peace !

And if you think that driving ON The Peripherique is difficult, try looking out for the correct exit sign, written inconsiderately in a foreign language, whilst jammed between wagons and then manage to manoeuvre OFF it !

Whose idea was driving to the South Of France anyway ?

My father's actually !

Of course I took the wrong exit and we ended up in the middle of nowhere, attempting to sleep in the car on our second night of marriage !

Tempers started to fray a bit when we bit into a ridiculously overpriced quiche which had liquified in the baker's sun-drenched shop window !

Expensive beyond our means, yet still the cheapest thing in the shop, I knew that Shirley's remaining money wasn't going to stretch far !

I kept going the following day and managed to reach Lyon with oil cascading from somewhere, the clutch operating bolt continuously loosening, the passenger door window stuck open and a starter motor that had failed!

This meant that if we did stop, it had to be on a slope so that Shirley could push-start me, or not turn the engine off which resulted in choking fumes filling the car through the most pathetic excuse for a ventilation system ever installed in a vehicle !

Exhausted and a little rattled we decided not to camp but to rent a small cabin for the night.

As we entered we saw a miasma of fleas hovering over the bare mattress and walked out !

SHIRLEY AND OUR LUXURIOUS HONEYMOON SUITE !

I got back in the car whilst Shirley, muttering something quite uncomplimentary, push-started me !

AND ME WITH THE WORST CAR IN THE WORLD ! GREAT BODYWORK ! AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE CAR !

Once again we spent an uncomfortable night not snuggled up to one another and not doing what other newlyweds everywhere else were doing !

"MARRY ME AND I'LL TAKE YOU TO MY YACHT IN ST. TROPEZ !"  I'VE ALWAYS HAD A WAY WITH WORDS  AND WOMEN HAVE FALLEN FOR THEM EVERY TIME !

We eventually arrived in Nice where Shirley collapsed with something to do with being pregnant and we moved in with my parents where my mother immediately started to drive her mad by not shutting up for one second !

Sally-Part 84. ARDWELL HOUSE GARDENS ! A TRULY WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE ! AND THEN ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS GETS IT IN THE NECK !

Reflections in the pond!

Today I discovered the most wonderful garden in the world !

And for once I'm not joking !

It's called ARDWELL HOUSE and it's at the far end of Dumfries and Galloway on the peninsula leading down to The Mull Of Galloway Lighthouse.

The two hundred year old walled garden, dazzling in the late-morning sun and washed by the mild air of the Gulf Stream, was magnificent in it's late summer splendour and it completely captivated the two of us !

Just beautiful !

We walked on it's perfect lawns, ankle deep in peachy softness and loved every plant, flower, apple and butterfly !

If that wasn't enough, there were ponds and lakes in the grounds that simply added to the experience and feeling that we had discovered an absolute jewel !

Old fashioned and perfect !

But perhaps the thing that made it so brilliant is that it wasn't highly groomed and the array of potting sheds and greenhouses, plants for sale, great swollen bunches of black grapes, packets of seeds lying on benches, trowels, compost and loads of bits and pieces all over the place were all part of something that hit something deep inside!

I found one on the ground and it fell into my pocket !

I think that I rediscovered the magic of Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men from my babyhood !

We both kept saying, " Have you seen this ? "

There was one young woman working like a Trojan and one man cutting the lawns in the grounds.

I'm going back next week with my proper camera to get some more pics !

If only these two have managed to produce and maintain this masterpiece then they should receive the highest accolades that the gardening world has to offer !

Now in complete and total contrast to this, we then visited a local Royal Botanic Garden which is regarded as one of the top gardens in the land and found it manicured to death and boring and frankly couldn't wait to get out, especially as the lunch we ate there was so typically mediocre that the eighteen pounds it cost for Parsnip and Apple soup ( Yuk ! ) and a cheese slice toasted to death in a commercial slab wrecked the day !

They enticed us in with an advert for 'Delicious Home-Baked Food' and we fell for it again !

Actually, the soup and cheese toastie was Shirley's choice !

MY original choice was a ham toastie served with onion pickle and a coleslaw salad and which I got one small nibble out of before Shirley thought that I would prefer hers !

Apparently I agreed and so I walked around the garden with a hard-to-digest concrete lump pressing uncomfortably on the top of my large intestine, not helped by most of a lemon meringue pie with double cream that Shirley had set her heart on but which was thankfully too sweet for her !

As we drove home after visiting the stunningly positioned lighthouse standing three hundred feet above the ocean with views over to Ireland and The Isle Of Man, I wondered who had had the great idea of building it there !

That's how thick I am !

What a day, made even better by playing Rufus Wainwright loudly and then, unfortunately, Antony and the Johnsons.

I love Rufus and women love Antony as well, though to tell the truth I don't !

I had to say, because it was true and thankfully Shirley laughed, that much of his falsetto wailing reminded me of the sound I made on the Island of Gomera, South of Tenerife, last January when after treating our friends to a posh buffet in the best hotel on the Island, I retired to bed feeling stuffed and a little queasy.

I awoke suddenly an hour later, in agony and I bet you all know the feeling, only to spend the rest of the night dying in the bathroom, making sounds from both ends only ever heard emanating from the throat of the devil in Hammer Horror Films.

I twice begged my friend Mike, a doctor, to help me but apart from listening to my intestines by resting his ear on my naked abdomen with his head turned towards my feet which made Shirley vomit when she finally woke suddenly and thought an act of gross indecency was taking place between two men on HER bed, he was less than useless as was my wife and every other guest on the complex who as a group pushed a card through the door in the morning congratulating the lady of the apartment on the birth of her child !

And that's what Antony And The Johnsons sounded like to me this evening !

Me on the toilet with severe food poisoning ! 

Sally-Part 83. ANOTHER WOMAN MARRIES AN IDIOT ! PART 1. A REALLY CLAPPED OUT CAR, OUR WEDDING AND THE START OF OUR HONEYMOON !

SHIRLEY AT TWENTY ONE. STRUTH LADS ! LOOK AT THAT SMILE !

WELL! WELL! WELL! SHIRLEY HAS INSISTED ON THE UNEXPURGATED VERSION ! TAKEN AFTER A FOUR MILE WALK TO SANDWOOD BAY WHICH LIES JUST BELOW CAPE WRATH AT THE TOP OF SCOTLAND !

September the twentieth and suddenly it's dark at quarter to eight!

So with gales and rain lashing down and Josh Groban's  2007 AWAKE TOUR dvd blasting out in stereo with Shirley singing  and dancing along with an almost exclusively female audience of twenty thousand plus, I've sat down in an overwhelming riot of sound to compose my thoughts to tell you about my wedding and honeymoon !

And that has made me wonder who I've spent months writing for.

Well, apart from a forty year quest to make my wife laugh and I've succeeded with that, I wanted to make my children laugh as well and I've succeeded partially with that !

I wanted to make my brothers laugh too and instead created a monster of mistrust and loathing !

Still, two out of three's not bad !

But mostly I wanted to leave my grandchildren and later generations a glimpse into another time and leave them wishing that I was still here or that they'd known me, just the way I now wish I'd known about my grandparents and earlier generations.

All I have from the past is a heartreaking letter from my grandmother's first husband who, knowing he was dying and leaving two young children, poured his soul out to  her and frankly, I've only been able read it once ! You can now read it in Part 92.

Mainly I've written for my ridiculously smug ego which thinks it's found a home inside a genius and I agree with it !

ONE SMUG EGO AND IT'S GENIUS OWNER !

Before I get back to my tale, the News keeps telling the world about a lady who has just given birth to a thirty five week baby without knowing she was pregnant!

All I can say to anyone who believes her is.... REALLY ? Are you THAT gullible !

Then how come I've seen women interviewed who know the moment that they've conceived ?

My daughter Gemma's one of them and she not only knew THE MOMENT but phoned her mum, regardless of the time to let her know as well and I really mean THE MOMENT, not three months after nursing her secret !

In fact Gemma would phone all of her many girlfriends immediately that 'Congress' had finished to tell them that she MIGHT be pregnant !

And listening to them talk even recently, I think that they probably ALL still phone each other after all such events occur, which for the young and desperate-to-be-pregnant probably happens many, many times a day !

And judging from the ridiculous number of times her mobile's tone of a steam train hooting goes off, they must all be at it like rabbits, despite her insisting that it's 'work' contacting her !

YEH ! YEH !

And we'd have to go round, even though it was three in the morning with Champagne to toast the just-divided egg, trying not to waken her knackered husband who was laid out in the St. John's Ambulance Text Book's recovery position, snoring his head off and drooling saliva over his pillow !

None of this seems to be remotely about my honeymoon but the truth is, shock and horror, Shirley was three months pregnant when we got married and set off in a rubbish left-hand-drive FIAT 500 to drive a thousand miles to the South of France !

FIFTY OF SHIRLEY'S HARD EARNED POUNDS BOUGHT ME ONE OF THESE PILES OF RUST ! IT NEARLY MADE SHIRLEY REALISE WHAT A MISTAKE SHE'D MADE ! NO ! NOT WITH THE CAR ! WITH ME !

Many of our newly emancipated generation were less than romantic and I certainly lacked any sense of grand gestures. This also seemed Shirley's way and in complete contrast to today's total wedding overkill we settled on a few friends at a registry office and a small party at my parents house.

I'VE SAID IT BEFORE AND I'LL SAY IT AGAIN...ONE LUCKY WOMAN !

All to be got through quickly and with as little fuss as possible !

In fact, I was barely out of childhood and had no sense of responsibility, which I think was fairly reflected in my mother's advice to Shirley on the night before our wedding, " Don't do it darling ! He'll never support you ! "

Charming ! My own mother !

WHAT ON EARTH DID SHE THINK SHE WAS DOING ?..... MARRYING CATWEASEL!

My father drove a brand new four litre ( That's BIG ladies and gays ! ) Jaguar and must have looked on in horror as Shirley leant me fifty pounds to buy the FIAT from a family friend who must have known I was buying a heap of trouble!

I got her to buy it by forcing her to believe that I could teach her to drive, a task beyond impossible and proven so when years later a professional driving instructor refused to turn up for a second lesson !

My father knew that we planned to meet him and my mother at their rented flat near Nice and advised me to have the car serviced by Fiat before we left.

So I booked it in and waited for over two weeks to get it back !

Like Main Agents everywhere, an incompetent mechanic did something wrong and the engine had to be sent away for urgent and expensive surgey which cost me all Shirley's honeymoon spending money !

Well I didn't have any !

Worse were the broken promises of the date I'd get the car back.

Service Reception staff are hired from a pool of exceptionally good liars and mine were from the top level as they reassured me with days to go that my car was virtually ready !

I eventually got it TWO HOURS before my wedding and so, crying because Shirley was now skint and I couldn't think how to tell my about-to-be wife and sweating buckets in my panic to appear calm I set out for a quick shower and my wedding !

Not one hundred yards down the road from the FIAT garage and I really wish I could write FIAT bigger and warn people never to trust an Italian, my car broke down with petrol pouring out the newly restored carburettor !

I think that the writers of the instalment of Fawlty Towers where Basil physically attacked his broken-down car must have been driving past me and got the idea when watching me beat mine whilst screaming expletives at the unmoving pile of rubbish !

I can't believe that the same models are now hugely expensive motoring icons, revered by motoring geeks the world over !

Just as I was about to collapse in a heap of helpless uselessness one of my brothers drove past on the way to MY wedding !

He got me home and after washing off the worst of the fuel and oil but still reeking of them I calmly met my fiance at the church altar ! ( Well OK, registry-office desk !)

I said nothing to her about the crisis and whilst wedding guests forced FIAT to fix the car and returned it to us for our drive to Dover for the morning ferry all of my parents' life-long friends, who actually made up the bulk of the guests at the party motioned at me and shook their heads in disbelief and offered Shirley their sincerest wishes that a miracle might happen and that I would get a job !

Shirley had quite a few friends there but I, truly friendless had no-one !

My father's closest friend had summoned us to his house to receive his largesse and whilst his wife slept, opened a specially bought cheap plonk which he didn't touch and handed me a lightweight envelope which I frankly hoped and thought probably contained a cheque for a couple of hundred pounds, as he was very wealthy and had promised my sister-in-law half his estate when the time came !

I know that 'Pride Comes Before A Fall !'

Add to that 'Greed' because when I opened it out slipped ten pounds !

And that's why, in contrast, I'm now reasonably generous with my gifts to newlyweds !

So off we went on what should have been the happiest day of our lives, only to have to stop every ten miles for me to tighten up various bolts that threatened to come undone !

Eventually, with me filthy and exhausted, we arrived at our motel in Dover where I spent 'til 2am with an AA man whilst my beautiful new wife lay alone, weeping quietly with unconsummated frustration !

Oh No I forgot ! She was already pregnant !

OK ! .....my beautiful new wife lay thankfully fast asleep, dreading the randy beast's return !

ACTUALLY I MARRIED HER NOT ONLY FOR HER BEAUTY BUT ALSO FOR HER COOKING, WHICH WAS A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER THAN MY MOTHER'S !

Sally-Part 82. DO GO TO NEWBIGGIN ANYTIME !

I WANT TO LIVE IN A HOUSE ON THE SEAFRONT AT NEWBIGGIN !

Huge rain drops smashed against the windows, driven by storm force winds and the horizon disappeared behind malevolent scudding clouds which had been smashed to pieces by nature's colossal forces as I sat down for the first time in two weeks to garner my thoughts for this Blog .

 " Oh ! The tap's doing that thing again! ", Shirley mentioned, expecting me to know what 'that thing' was!

 And although part of the reality of life, it was not what I wanted to hear at that  precise moment !

I re-focused only to be slightly disturbed again by the sound of a salad dressing being over-whisked; by my standards of whisking anyway !

Then as what Shirley calls my 'camp' fingers hovered over the keys I was asked, being nearly two feet taller than her, which means she is unfortunately not tall enough to reach the microwave which sits on a shelf five feet high whether, if I hadn't started writing, I could get up and reposition the rotating baseplate !

I keep my face and breathing very calm at such times, unlike some men or women who I think would explode with uncontrolled fury !

Life's to short for impatience to play a part and I'm only too happy to be asked to help around the house at any time or to have my grandchildren unannounced for eight hours whilst Gemma gets her 'Brazilian' trimmed or a loose eyelash reattached !

Finally, just as I was composing my usual dramatic opening, my words were scuppered by the sound of a duet as Ronan Keating and Shirley performed 'Life Is A Roller Coaster' !

But being presented with two slices of thickly buttered, well, thickly margarined sticky toffee cake did help restore my concentration !

Ah cake! The great comforter !

But why, when I'm in a restaurant or cafe and the gateau  looks so delicious, each layer swamped with chocolate cream and crowned with friuit does it have to be so dry that it sucks the saliva out of my glands, taste hideously of chemicals and cost a fortune for a sliver ?

But NOT in Newbiggin on the Northumberland coast !

GETTING THERE IS SO MUCH EASIER THESE DAYS, SINCE THE TOWN  BUILT AN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT RIGHT ON THE BEACH ! THE CAFE IS THE GLASS BUILDING BEHIND THE TAXIING JUMBO JET.

Well almost no-one knows where Newbiggin is but if they found  out and went there on a sunny afternoon and ate in the Lifeboat Station's Museum seafront cafe, they'd phone their friends and insist that they drop everything and drive  there immediately!

WHAT A SETTING ! IF CHILDREN SCREAM LOUDLY ENOUGH THEY GET AN ICE CREAM BEFORE LUNCH ! GEMMA AND SHIRLEY COULDN'T DECIDE WHICH SCRUMPTIOUS THINGS TO EAT FIRST !

That's what happened yesterday, the 17th September 2012 when I had a few hours to lose after dropping my car off for it's first service which at £194 was daylight robbery for an oil change and 'visuals' !

I took Daniel who's nearly three and who like my first grandson, Dylan,  needs a poo wherever we go, including this car dealership !

Ah! Life's little realities !

And after scooting to the local industrial estate's pond which was full of wildfowl and swans and their five grown up sygnets but not a single bench, we headed off to the seaside which sits about three miles north of Blyth and  thanks to me, my market stall signs and my blog, everyone in the world knows where Blyth is !

Anyone who has read even a few blogs has learned to expect misery from me but that's only because misery is what I experience !

Just try 'Even Fish and Chips......' Number 70 a few blogs ago if you need to realise how poor the English are at 'service'
.

GREAT CAFE ! GREAT LIFEBOAT MUSEUM ! GREAT BEACH ! GREAT PROMENADE !

But yesterday I discovered what I've been searching the world for.... on my doorstep....a fantastic venue with plate glass windows and comfortable chairs directly overlooking the beach, delicious, home-made and very reasonably priced food and lovely staff, especially the charming, smiling, helpful and very pleasent young lady serving !

You will not be disappointed.......trust me !

This lifeboat museum, like all lifeboat stations, was full of displays of utter bravery and gallantry and with old films of the village womenfolk in action, running from their homes to grab the long ropes and launch the boat by hand, was fascinating and Daniel had me going back in several times, if only for him to play with the plastic crabs and lobsters filling the heap of lobster pots whilst he wore a lifeboatman's helmet and bouyancy jacket !

And Newbiggin, still with traditional fishing boats called cobles but pronounced 'coe  bulls' lining the shore and house gardens reaching right down to the half-mile-long promenade, is a treat !

A TRADITIONAL COBLE . THIS ONE'S BEEN TREASURED FOR GENERATIONS !

The high street retains that old-fashioned feel missing almost everywhere else and the old church which has stood solidly on the headland  for generations has acted as a beacon for thousands of  fishermen and is a landmark for shipping for miles around.

ROCKPOOLING HEAVEN ! JUST MAKE SURE YOU HOLD YOUR MOTHER'S HAND TIGHTLY SO SHE DOESN'T FALL !

And over the four hours that I was there an entire coffee and walnut cake got scoffed, though not entirely by me !

POST SCRIPT: If you haven't liked my new 'PLEASANT' style of writing, don't worry, normal service will be resumed in Part 83, 'ANOTHER WOMAN MARRIES AN IDIOT ! '

Sally-Part 81.GOOGLE'S BRILLIANT DYNAMIC VIEWS ! WOW ! I'VE BECOME A WHIZZ KID !

TAKEN WHILST WAITING FOR THE QUEEN TO AWARD ME WITH MY KNIGHTHOOD FOR SERVICES TO BLOGGING !

My Blog has entered modern times with 'DYNAMIC VIEWS' . When you click on you now have the choice of seven ways to be bored out of your brains ! Just move the cursor to the top left box and click on your choice......'Magazine' is good as is 'Flip Card'. Try them all ! And thanks to my loyal readers in all the countries around the world that my stats show you're reading me.

I can actually see each of you individually through your camera whenever you read a Blog and can hear you laughing !

I know all your names and addresses and your bank account details !

And I can send a powerful electric shock to anyone foolish enough to write a critical comment !

I LOVE TECHNOLOGY !

Sally-Part 80. 116 COUNTRIES ? HOW CAN THIS BE TRUE ?

For those readers who have stumbled upon my Blog and wonder if they are alone in the cyber world, here are the countries I have been or am being read in since I started on February 27th 2012 !

UK..USA..RUSSIA..SPAIN..SINGAPORE..GERMANY..QATAR..IRELAND..
DENMARK..UKRAINE..CANADA..INDIA..LATVIA..PHILIPPINES..
THAILAND..AUSTRALIA..NETHERLANDS..SWITZERLAND..FRANCE..
JAPAN..ARGENTINA..CHINA..BRAZIL..TAIWAN..BOSNIA/HERZEGOVINA..
FINLAND..GHANA..ANGUILLA..ITALY..
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES..TURKEY..COLUMBIA..PAKISTAN..ETHIOPIA..
COSTA RICA..MALAYSIA..BELGIUM..SERBIA..MAURITIUS..GUYANA..
CAMBODIA..SRI LANKA..MEXICO..SOUTH KOREA..BANGLADESH..
MOROCCO..SOUTH AFRICA..NEPAL..EGYPT..PERU..HUNGARY..ISRAEL..
SWEDEN..NETHERLANDS/ANTILLES..CYPRUS..KUWAIT..PANAMA..SLOVENIA.. POLAND.. NEW ZEALAND.. MOZAMBIQUE.. GABON..CZECH REPUBLIC.. LITHUANIA.. INDONESIA.. GREECE.. SOUTH KOREA... THE MALDIVES, SAUDI ARABIA.. ROMANIA.. PARAGUAY.. AUSTRIA.. JORDAN.. VENEZUELA.. MALTA.. CHILE.. NIGERIA.. LAOS.. SERBIA.. LIBYA.. HONG KONG..IRAQ.. VIETNAM .. BELARUS.. MOLDOVA.. EL SALVADOR..TANZANIA...ALBANIA...KAZAKHSTAN... BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORIES (wherever that is)... MACAU...PUERTO RICO...JERSEY...CROATIA...YEMEN... BULGARIA...HONDURAS...KYRGYZSTAN...TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO...ANTIGUA and BARBUDA..KENYA..THE NETHERLANDS..LEBANON...UGANDA...ALGERIA...HAITI... GUERNSEY...MYANMAR (BURMA)...US VIRGIN ISLANDS...OMAN...CROATIA... TURKMENISTAN...FIJI..GUATEMALA... HONDURAS AND GEORGIA !

116 AND COUNTING !

WHICH JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN almost EVERY COUNTRY OF THE WORLD WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR !


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Sally-Part 79. DON'T GO TO ? IN NOVEMBER ! New edited version ! Now with no clue as to where I'm talking about ! So no-one can get upset !

Often enough when I'm at home, anywhere else seems a better place to be than home and then when I'm somewhere else I want to be back home again !

Strange that ! Or do you know what I mean ?

 I guess holiday destinations lure you to them with false promises of adding something to life that's missing, only to let you down when you discover over and over again that where you end up is populated by people trying to scrape a living, full of resentment for the holidaymakers who can afford to rent their properties and with absolutely no interest in answering the same question from every guest , " And how did you end up here then ? " or sharing their life histories with an interloper or listening to another boring  holidaymaker's life history...... except mine !

Being who I am and what I am, a leather bag and purse maker with a huge market stall and one of the last of the genuine makers who only sell their own work, I am often asked about my life and how I came to work in leather and where I got my sense of humour and understanding of the whole of human nature from to be able to write so many frankly brilliantly funny signs !

Poor buggers can be seen staggering away after an hour or two, deeply regretting opening their mouths in the first place ! Ha Ha Ha !

Anyway, despite my awful experiences and cynicism, the thought of another break makes me automatically say,  "Book it ! It sounds great ! " whenever Shirley calls me through to tell me about an absolute bargain that she's found after searching the internet for as short a time as a week !

My encouragement is usually met with something like;

 "I'm not asking you to tell me to book it cos if I like it I'll book it whether you like it or not and I wasn't asking for your opinion which wouldn't sway me one way or the other anyway as I was just showing you what I'd found and I'm not finished as that's only one of the places I can get a deal on and unless you've got any better suggestions you might as well get back to work as it's you who earns the money which you never let me forget though you seem to have conveniently forgotten that I worked my fingers to the bone for two years even when I was pregnant leaving you snoring your head off and you're always saying you can't get enough work done because of the children phoning for your help or the grandchildren wanting you round and it's time you gave up golf because you're always moaning that you can't stand the men and the men can't stand you and stopped wasting your time playing the guitar because you can't play and your voice is dreadful especially when it cuts through my telly from your room and wakes me so no wonder people talk when you play in pub sessions and I'll never know how you could think anyone wanted to listen to you droning and at your age you shouldn't need to start learning sport or an instrument when you have no talent whatsoever and you waste so much time doing them and they stop you working for much longer than cutting the lawn which I only ask you to do occasionally and which is a sad excuse for a lawn anyway if you've ever bothered looking at those weeds which you wasted all that money uselessly not managing to kill with that poison I told you not to buy from the garden centre because it would be so much cheaper in Wilkinson's and it was wasn't it and I'm sick of having to lose laptop time pulling those purple things out instead of letting them overwhelm the few blades of grass pathetically gasping for light cos I daren't ask you incase you have a strop and then sulk for three days and I really wish everything didn't fall on my shoulders like finding and booking holidays when I've got better things to do with my time!"

And I'd only said, " Book it ! It sounds great ! "

So, many years ago when she found a very nice sounding flat on the waterfront at ? for a week in November, I looked forward to it in as hopeful a way as I could, considering that I knew from past experiences that there would be a certain amount of stress involved, even before having to tell the owner that I wouldn't put a dog in it for an hour, let alone a week !

For a start, catching a ferry from ? which is a long way from home, requires researching and booking the cheapest Travelodges available for both outward and return journeys on the route. This usually takes a week !

I have to phone the selected Travelodges several times during the months before we leave to make sure that they know about our booking and to check how long the corridors are. ( Another story altogether for another Blog ! )

We never buy cancellation insurance for the ferries and so every weather and shipping forecast for the whole of Europe have to be carefully watched several times every day over a period of possibly several months until departure at the same time as checking the growing network of countrywide webcams which are all now locked onto the 'favourites' bar for instant call-up in case of traffic problems which might obscurely affect our route !

Why Shirley thought ? (OK ISLAY ! NOW FORGET I WROTE THAT!) in November was a good idea I don't know and would never have asked !

Now, The Seychelles I wouldn't have minded but daren't have suggested, so a smelly and freezing flat in ? it was !

And of course, I didn't even mention the overwhelming smell of damp when I told the owners how charming their place was !

And I didn't tell  the locals how scary and unfriendly they looked or how poor they seemed or how unattractive and windswept and cold their iland was or how I couldn't wait to leave as I had no interest in drinking whisky until my nose, which is noticeably larger than most peoples' had swollen to a huge purple bulb like theirs' and that one really boring distillery visit was enough for anyone !

In fact, visiting a distillery is almost as boring as visiting a power station or watching ten-year-old repeats of ' Police, Camera, Action from Lincolnshire ' which I seem to enjoy doing !

But although cold, gloom and the smell of damp overwhelmed the visit, we did finally have a tour to gaze longingly at Colonsay which stood admonishing us only a few miles across The Sound !

 The drive ended up down a dead-end single-track road leading to a large house where uninviting gates suddenly loomed over us as we rounded a tight bend !

" David Stop !" Shirley yelled." You can't go on ! It's private ! Turn round ! We'll have to go back! Someone might have a gun ! Oh God! Only you could get us into this mess !"

" Shirley ! " I observed, " We're on a single-track road with no turning places and flanked by open fields on both sides, driving a Volvo Estate which is the longest car in Europe and although I agree that we are about to enter a private estate, I can't turn round without driving through the gates and using their wide drive ! "

" You can't drive onto their property ! " she groaned with rising panic in her voice and manner. " We'll get reported ! You'll have to drive onto the field and turn there ! "

"Who is going to 'report' us and to whom and with what consequences ? " I dared to ask! "  And if you haven't noticed, it's been raining steadily for the entire week and the land might be a little too soggy to drive on in a car that weighs close to two tons ! "

" You'll just have to try it ! " she urged. " I'm not having the embarrassment of some irate man shooting us ! Just do it !"

And so that was how I ended up sunk up to my wheel arches in a field in the middle of nowhere on ? on a freezing November afternoon !

As I stepped out about twenty old-age pensioner twitchers appeared like magic from various hides and pushed me clear, despite the lady who I'd put in the driving seat to add power to the effort to go forwards putting the car into reverse before gunning it !

The ruts I left behind looked like a major ploughing contest had taken place which probably didn't please the landowner when he stood scratching his head wondering how they had got there but I didn't care what he thought as we left ? the following day, NEVER to return !

And the mud-covered pensioners standing up to their knees in a swamp didn't look too happy as we sped away, leaving a scene of mayhem !