Madeira cake

Hey, Wal hope you read this one....

Just back from a golf tour with the Twickenham lads. We do two UK tours followed by an overseas trip and this weekend it was away to Madiera, 8 of us go and that gives us four football matches for the Dom something or other trophy.
Wally and Gino were victorious with Adam snatching the individual in dank and misty conditions on the last day.

The first night was a Sangria sesh with mega pizza and silly drinking games. Somehow I became Original for the evening based on some resemblance to a famous brand of toffee. Others had cricket based nicknames like Freddie and Beefy. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur.

Day one golf was up the top of a mountain. This is not unusually for Madiera as it's volcanic and has limited flat bits. The evening was fancy dress with a nautical theme. I went as a shark and felt a bit underdressed compared with Nelson, Hagar the horrible, Blackbeard and Roger the cabin boy. Seamen Staines also came along.

Day two golf was also up a mountain and was a prelude to cocktail night.
I can remember Majita's, Capeira's, Aperol Spritz and possibly a Jasmine. Campari was defo involved somewhere.
The evening then moved more into my comfort zone with Brandy Alexander and Irish coffee before finishing with Gin and tonic.
I have never drunk G & T and can't quite work out how it is a cocktail.Fines were involved so I just got on with it.

Last day was up the same mountain as day two and was spoilt a bit by low cloud cover, rain and a temperature drop. Still it did not stop the trophies being decided, a bit of scoff being consumed and then an interesting flight home with hurricane Othelia blowing us back quicker than expected.

All in all a great three days but I get home to find SWMBO has disappeared off to Tanzania to see if the rumour are true. Is dental charity work a bridge too far?

Mutiny on the booty

As my geologist friend Stu points out Barbados is just a mudbank scrapped off the Atlantic plate as it dives down underneath the Caribbean plate. As I understand it that makes it the Caribbean equivalent of a hairgrip dropped down a sink. It collects all the detritus until it forms a mass big enough to be noticed.

Consequently the island is lush. It now boasts five golf courses where once were sugar plantations, it has tropical gardens and botanical species rarely found elsewhere and azure blue waters and palm fringed beaches. It is also home to the toosh, or beer bottom!

Now the significance of the lady bottom has not been lost on me, but it was only when SWMBO returned from her last trip to Tanzania that I learnt that the locals rate the lady bottom from 1 to 10 based on the protrude factor. An eight rating is apparently the best even when ranked against a 10, so Bo Derrick was not all she was cracked up to be.

So we are now viewing the locals here in   a new light, but as long as I can rest me pint on it, an eight is fine by me!!!

Home alone

SWMBO and her family are entering the second week of their Clampitts holiday in Egypt. Apart from some tourist tummy trouble, all seems to be going well. The kids in particular are enjoying the water park and chocolate parties.

I, in the meantime, am left fending for myself which has been a welcome reintroduction to peace and quiet. The main benefit has been the ability to get on with jobs round the house without having to worry whether an ankle biter will get hold of a chisel or fall over a power lead.

One challenge I have though is that a couple of tiles have slipped during the storms so I am waiting for the insurance go ahead to get the work done. The loss assessor said he thought the door would cost £50 labour and £1500 for scaffolding. Gone are the days when a bloke and his ladders turned up and did it. It's all 'ealth and safety now.

I am all set up with my new tablet computer now as well. I got the latest ZenPad with some vouchers the bank gave me, and it's good to be mobile again. I now have films on tap via Kodi, an X-Box simulator, and sport available via a Ace Player feed. There are a few wires across the floor at the moment but I will work out how to loose those in the next day or so. Luckily the rugby world cup is on ITV so that will be routine.

SWMBO looks like she is off to Tanzania again in November with her dental health charity and she also has a day trip to Dublin for some stand management at a dental conference. Maybe a job opportunity will come up as a result otherwise she will be secret shopping with me.

I am still trying to earn a few bob via e-bay, a couple of pictures and some riding crops from a recent auction seem to be interesting people but the box of Hudl covers I got  have no takers. You win some, you lose some.

It will be disappointing to miss the Bampton raft race this year but I suspect it has run its course as far as I am concerned. Next year I will become an onlooker with 'off the record' Dick. I look forward to meeting up with the S Club in Gloucester for the Tonga v Georgia match as our own RWC mini tour gets under way.

Looks like time for an all day breakfast......excellent!

Old Year reflections

SWMBO and I reverted to our traditional date night in for New Years Eve. I get the privilege of cooking, and we reminisce the year past. My speciality this time was weeping lamb with boulangere potatoes with French onion soup to start, and it was all yummy.

So what did we see as the years highs and lows?

Starting on the family front, we were blessed with our fifth grandchild, Alexander, who has now maintained the continuity of the Weathers line, blending a bit of Bulgarian into the Irish and English gene pool. A welcome surprise on Monday was the news that my cousin Mike and his long suffering partner Valerie, has finally tied the knot and were officially Mr and Mrs Weathers. SWMBO's mum also got over a major health scare which we were all delighted about.
SWMBO and I both lost relations towards the end of the year. SWMBO's Uncle Kevin died after a troubled few years, in his early sixties, and my Auntie Betty passed away on Christmas Day morning after a short illness. She was 92 so had had a fair old innings.

Domestically, the years highlight was the redesign and construction of a new bedroom for SWMBO, in less than two weeks while she was in Tanzania. We had a good family barbeque and both Tim and Kieran moved into new homes in the later part of the year. Kieran's move left us rattling around on our own in Chateau Weathers. Maxine survived a full year without working!

It was good to be involved in Wally's stag 'do' in Portugal and to be visited by friends and family from London, on a regular basis, but an acrimonious holiday in Turkey meant we have lost Lou, one of SWMBO's long term work colleagues, as a friend.  They say love is blind, and in her case she is the only one to be able to see any good in her new partner, Martin. Pity.

On the sporting front, I was delighted to break 80 on the golf course for the first time. I also fired a 82 around Southport and Ainsdale which was pretty special, and I am chuffed to be Chairman elect of the Seniors section at Wallasey next year.

We saw the year as routine when we started discussing it, but as you can see a lot happened.

So now we are into 2015 and I have 23 blog entries to try to beat to allow me to reversze the downward publishing trend. what can you look forward to then?

We are off to the States for a month in March going from Las Vegas to Hawaii and back to New York. There are two trips to Ireland, one for the Causeway Classic golf festival and one to coincide with the rugby world cup. I will be attending some of the world cup games too.

I end the blog as I started, with news of grandchild number six which should arrive sometime in February. So do stay tuned it will be another exciting year.

In at the deep end

SWMBO arrived back safely in London at the weekend after her second trip to Tanzania to help train dental nurses as part of the Bridge to Aid scheme. She was based in the NorthEast on this occasion which allowed her to see some of the Serengeti as she was transported there. Zebra, monkey's and wildebeest were in evidence, but whether one of them was Alice is still unclear.

We then hot foot it to Alexander's christening where the poor soul was submerged in a bath of freezing water by the minister. He was christened at the same Russian Orthodox church as his sister, by the same minister, and it was still hard to watch as this little body was thrown about in gay abandon. Her cousin Ava was looking on and wondering if she had the same fate in store when she comes to getting baptised.

The reception was in the Hole in the Wall in Chiswick and I regaled the gathering with stories of a fireworks party I attended at the same venue, many years ago, when a helicopter firework came adrift and shot into the bar severely burning on of the lady punters. Not nice. Doom Bar was £3.95 a pint. It's £2.80 in the local in Oxton Village!

SWMBO and I then departed for Scouseland leaving the girls to go to Legoland. On arriving home SWMBO was presented with her brand new redecorated bedroom which a friend of mine, Peter, and I had totally rebuild while she was away. She seemed to like it although there does not appear to be enough space for all her clothes to fit back into it, it seems like a clearout may be in order.

Strangely enough I found a rugby shirt from the Protea's club in Zimbabwe which the Wildebeest had given me years ago. Its funny how ends tie up sometime.

Mud hut medicine

SWMBO has the sound of Swahili about it don't you think?

You may be wondering that is a strange phase with which to open a blog post, however, when you appreciate that SWMBO has just returned from two weeks in Tanzania working for the relief organisation, Bridge2Aid, you will begin to see the relevance.

Twenty two dentists and support staff left London  on a torturous journey to Mwanza via Dar Es Salaam. There they stayed in a very pleasant hotel on the banks of Lake Victoria, much like the contestants do before entering the campsite on I'm a Celebrity. The next morning it was off in a truck for three hours to Gita which was to be their home for the next ten days.

Each morning they would get bused to their place of work, and there supervise the extraction of teeth from Tanzanian residents, be they business people, Masi tribesmen or villagers, some of whom had travelled on foot, over 100 kilometres to see the white doctor.

Poverty was endemic, and with Tanzania being one of the poorest African nations, the chances of regular dental treatment rest with the Bridge2 Aid teams providing not only a service, but on the job training for the nationals. Over 800 people were treated while the team was there, all under local anesthetic, on a dining room chair in a mud hut. Some dedication.

The hotel ran out of toilet paper, the power failed regularly and the water supply was intermittent, but the job got done and the volunteers were able to face the return trip, via Kilimanjaro in good spirits knowing that treacle toffee was back on the menu in Tanzania.