April flowers

Ooops a bit behind here as it will soon be time for May Be. Still quite a lot to get through.

 With Easter week always comes the Port Sunlight beer festival, a four day extravaganza sponsored by oe of the big real ale pubs in Liverpool. I always plan to go on the first day, a Thursday, and meet up with fellow golfers and some of their mates.This year was particularly good for me as the selection of Amber bitter was extensive and most of them were very drinkable.

Sociability seemed the theme during the month as there was the first Red Jacket event of the year at the golf club followed by  another very enjoyable lunch with my ex-work colleagues in the Wreck Bistro. That was followed by another trip to the Institution Club which you will have read about during February. The Liverpool Society of Golf Club Captains then had their annual dinner at which 300 Red Jacket clad individuals dine out and listen to the Captain of the R & A, and England golf .

I am not really allowed to say this, but the Captains of the R & A can be fairly dull, although this year he was quite amusing.  In previous years we have had a sheep farmer from North Wales and a low land sheep farmer from Fife, neither entertained the audience with amusing and risqué stories of sheep and Wellington boots if you get my drift. Within the Society however we have several rectal oncologists who think of nothing better than to tell a few 'stories' of their own professions if you know what I mean. Everyone to their own.

 The month was rounded off with a day trip to London to see the oldest member of  The S Club, namely Stanley, who we had not seen for ages. Seamus travelled from Huddersfield and 'off the record' Dick from Nether Wallop. we visited Soho and ate in L' Escargot  which was an excellent choice.

So a very sociable month all round, however, two major events also occurred in April and they deserve their own entry so stay tuned.  

Back to the Future

10th May 2007 to be precise, the day I made my first venture into the world of Blog, and the topic?

Well I had just put Silver Crescent on the market and planned to use the social media platform to chart my progress to completion. Little did I know that almost 19 years to the day I would be publishing the same story.

Yes we are looking to down size and have started to look at possible homes to move into. We will not however put Weathers Towers on the market until we are confident we have somewhere we like to move into.

There are some scary parallels. The house next door is for sale as was the case in 2007, but they have a buyer, only trouble is they have sold for considerably less than we would expect to ask .  19 years ago  there was a financial crash which affected real estate prices in the same way as the Ukrainian and Middle |East conflicts are doing so now. Add the fact that every time Kier Starmer opens his mouth it somehow costs me money, and there could be a bumpy road ahead.

So lets see what sort of journey we embark on. Initial impressions indicate there is low stock available as people bide their time, and the houses which SWMBO does like tend to be in areas we would not wish to live. So we search the perfect (or 80%) property and then lets see who wants ours.

On that front, the pool has sprung a leek so we need to fix that first, it never rains but it pours!!   

How far?

26 miles and a few yards actually, yes, as alluded to during March, No 2 son was running the London Marathon, so SWMBO and I went down to the smoke to support him.

We went down the Saturday afternoon and caught up with some old rugby friends before a reasonably early night in Lensbury. It was under refurbishment so a bit disappointing that we had not been told, but hopefully it will be finished when we next go down and stay. 

Never mind that, we were off bright and early  on the Sunday to hopefully catch up with him three or four times during the race. It all started so well with parking purchased near Gunnersbury station and a short 30 minute tube ride to Westminster. As it turned out this was my only chance to sit down all day!!

A couple of stops later we were at the 8 mile mark and managed to catch him there but hen our plans all went out of the window, stations were closed due to volume of people, there were extensive queue's and standing only on rush hour packed tubes and DLR trains,

So, we were lucky to catch him again after about 17miles and then headed to the finish to meet up with him. What a joke that was as everybody was piling off at St James to meet up near Pall Mall, only to find there was no way of crossing the track into the park. Big logistical error by the marathon organisation team as it took an hour to walk around the park up to Piccadilly and back to Pall Mall, only to then get bounced from the building he was supposedly meeting us in.

Anyway all ended well as we met up, he showed off his medal and did a respectable time of just under 4 hours. Longer than his target but it was very hot and most people were below their PB when they finished

.

All except the elite winners that is who broke the World record.

The escape from London worked well though as from Gunnersbury we were on the motorway home in 5 minutes and another adventure got ticked off.