In a land far, far away

FLOW  came home with a packet of Christmas themed face masks yesterday, and it go me wondering which ten items I would put in a 2020 time capsule  for discovery by aliens in 100 years time. So, in no particular order, with some personal and some pandemic wide:

• Christmas themed face mask
• Deliveroo backpack
• Ventilator
• Zoom user guide
• COVID test kit
• Ordnance Survey map of Wirral
• Golf Ball
• Hands, Face, Space publicity poster
• Home schooling guide
• Bat soup recipe

 That should keep them busy trying to work out what on Earth happened all those years ago.

We just need to ensure that the 2021 capsule includes a vaccine phial  and a plane ticket to a sunny destination, fingers crossed.

 

 

Viewers and watchers

 The second round of lockdown is quite interesting here on the Wirral. At the beginning of October we had over 300 cases per 100,000 when the average in England was 23. We entered stage 3 with the rest of the City of Liverpool conurbation where the figure was almost 600 in parts, and at least enjoyed golf and having a beer, albeit one to a table.

Boris then saw fit to introduce the national lockdown but sweetened the pill in Liverpool by using the City to dry run the mass testing initative. It has been restricted to just the Liverpool City Centre but their figure has halved to less than 300 cases now, and Wirral is down to about 180. The National average is now over 200. Quite what will happen in a couple of weeks is anybody's guess but at least we can see some progress 'Op North'. If that means we can return to stage 3 and some people can get out and about more easily, then all well and good.

My golf is now restricted to the back garden ( don't you mean front garden...ed) and I was having a thrash with my SkyTrak when I became aware that Stewart Golf have launched a new remote controlled golf buggy. Bit on the pricey side I thought but on examining my SkyTrak usage I noticed that while I was playing golf I was less inclined to use the simulator so it was sitting there doing nothing for most of the time. When I got it for lockdown 1, I convinced myself that I would sell it on afterwards as they seem to keep thier value pretty well. 

So it was a matter of selling one to buy the other and research showed me that the Sky Trak  factory has sold out and there are no new orders until January, E-Bay here I come.

First basic error I made was not waiting until a special Black Friday selling offer was announced by E-Bay, but that turned out not to be too much of a problem as bids flew at me from all sides, most of which were to buy before the auction finished. I don't tend to do that, and with over 1000 people viewing and over 100 watching,  letting the auction run it's course was the honourable thing to do. All people have their price though, and when somebody made me a very generous offer and said they would pick it up next day, I weakened and closed the deal.

So, Mr Stewart Golf is coming to Wallasey next month subject to lockdown being lifted and I get a personal demo of their new machine. If it fits the bill and copes with Wallasey's lunar landscape then it will be utilised much more than the SkyTrak, and in the months ahead, who knows, the SkyTrak market may depress and I can buy another one.

So a bit of wheeler dealing even Del Boy would have been proud of. Cushty Cushty Rodders.

Captain obvious

I started this blog in 1997 and now enter the 14th year of spewing out trivia concerning me,  my family and friends. I started it to try to outline the trials and tribulations of selling a house in London with a view to moving full time to the Wirral. I was still working at the time and the house move, sporting events and work experiences meant I was able to blog more than once a week on average. More recently though the variety in my life has reduced and consequently my blog entries have dropped to below one a week.

I get the feeling that the trend is about to reverse,

Yesterday I was formally announced as the 2020-21 captain-elect for Wallasey Golf Club with a start date as Captain for March. I am finding it hard to put into words how big an honour this is. Wallasey is recognised as a seriuosly good course and is ranked in the top 100 courses in England. It's a senior member club within the  Society of Liverpool Golf Clubs, and as Captain I join that elite band. I immediately get 27 new chums and SWMBO becomes part of the ladies section. My diary less than 24 hours after the announcement is already starting to fill with events and competitions to which I have been invited. It's going to be a busy year.

When I moved to the Wirral, I knew almost nobody except SWMBO's extended family and some of her friends. Their husbands were really my only drinking partners. I took a punt by applying to join Wallasey golf club and they very kindly popped me on the wait list for about 15 months before inviting me to interview. The process I went through to arrive at Wallasey as my preferred destination is documented somewhere in the blog around 2009, but what a great decision it was.

The golf club welcomed me with open arms, no heirs and graces were evident, and there was me expecting a South of England elitist attitude. Many of the members live locally in the Wallasey and New Brighton area and the Club has a comfortable feel to it. It was certainly my rock on which our whole Wirral life was built. I have little doubt it was the main reason I managed to stay and thrive op North, and now that they have given me the ultimate badge of acceptance, I will be able to pay them back for their faith in the coming months and years to come.

 There will be stories and tales to fill the pages of my blog for weeks to come, and ,as one ex-Captain said, 'It's the present which keeps on giving'. Happy Chistmas to me!!

Magical Mystery Tour

I agreed to see a friend for a few beers yesterday. We decided to meet at The Farmer's Arms in Wallasey Village in the hope that they had Fullers London Pride on draught. My friend, Steve, is a fellow exile from dan South and we play golf at the same club. The Farmer's Arms has a good range of real ale, but on this occasion the Pride was replaced by Timothy Taylor's Landlord, so we drank that....no hardship there.

Now that I have a free travel pass I decided to go there by bus. Big challenge! The Wirral bus network is very difficult to understand and is designed and run by people who , in their infancy, must have been limited to playing with train sets and buses in the confines of a very small bedroom. They must have also been tucked up very early at night.

Wirral buses seem to run in very small circles and start and end at the most obscure and inconvenient times. Take my journey last night. I needed to take two buses, the first of which conveniently stops out side the house. I needed to be at Wallasey for about 7pm, so decided to get the 6:15pm bus to Liscard where I would change.

Unbeknown to me, the 6:15 bus was actually the last bus on this route that night, but it got me to my change stop by about 6:35. I then had ten minutes to wait before my second bus arrived. This turned out to be the first bus of the day which arrived at 6:48pm and dropped me right outside the pub.

All sounds easy, until you work out that I could not get home by the same means, at a very reasonable 9:30pm. So I had to get the train back to Birkenhead and hop in a cab, so defeating the object of avoiding transport costs.

Further research indicated that the first bus was primarily a peak time bus for commuters and school children so it actually does not run after 10:00am or before 3pm. The second bus starts when the Wallasey loop bus finishes. While the loop bus runs all day, it stops at 6pm.

The ,majority of Wirral buses run in and out of the Birkenhead bus depot, either at Laird Street or Conway Park, and also call into Arrowe Park hospital. So if you are going shopping or are ill it's great. If you need to get from A to B particularly at night, its a nightmare.

We have a new bus which runs from our door to Liverpool, but guess what? The last bus back is 6:30pm, so no good if you plan a night out. The other popular bus to West Kirby (Cougarland as it's locally known) only runs every hour, so you have to be spot on to get there and back.

So it is no wonder I am having to drive much more than I used to, and when I study the bus map and find I can get to my destination, I then have to check that I can actually get back as well. Couple that with the fact the drivers are not exactly local, and I begin to realise where The Beatles got their inspiration from.

The Police are looking for a motive

The housing market seems to have ground to a halt here in Chiswick during August, and it got my cousin and I thinking of the estate agent speak for such an event. There is in fact an estate agents calendar.

• January - market is slow sir, no money about after Christmas
• February - too cold, not many people looking
• March - a lot of people away what with Easter and the skiing season
• April - good time to put the house on the market, it should pick up with the weather
• May - not a good time to be buying, would have to move in August during the holidays
• June- a window of opportunity
• July - people saving for their holidays
• August - people on their holidays
• September - back from their holidays and start of a new school year, not a good time to look
• October - evenings getting darker so people less keen to view
• November - saving up for Christmas
• December - Christmas

They also have aspect speak,

• South facing garden, full sun
• West facing garden, nearly South facing , sun in the evening
• East facing garden, sun in the morning
• North facing garden, beautiful views

We have seen a few properties with a view to buy but I am reluctant to put a bid in until our place is under offer. The prices continue to amaze though. Emma,our youngest daughter, has just offered on a one bed flat on the Wirral for less than £70,000. A two bed in Chis is hard to find for five times that.

Anyway, we press on and hope for a change in fortune shortly.....at least the inflation rate reduction looks like it might delay a further interest rise for a while......lets just hope the financial markets don't go into meltdown on the back of the USA mortgage crisis.

"I think you've had enough old son......."

I am off to Wembley tonight for the England v Brazil game, and this, together with some incidents over the weekend, got me thinking about why football followers seem to be so much more aggressive than those of other sports.

At the family barbecue I referred to, there were a mixture of young people. Some from Liverpool had gone to school with Kieran at St Mary's, a Christian Brothers school, some who had gone to Merchant Taylors, next door . Others where at Uni (or Poly ;-)) in Liverpool and had come from other parts of the country, and some were work colleagues of Kieran from the Wirral and around. They all mixed extremely well, and people commented on how well mannered they were.

One poor girl had had a hell of a few weeks with boyfriend problems, and she got absolutely trashed. Rather than leave her to fall about the furnishings and smash the ornaments, two of her flat mates took her home, put her to bed and returned later to the party.

Sometime after that one of the St Mary's lads got some abuse from another of the boys there, and the St Mary's lads closed ranks and suggested to one of the rogues friends that it was time he helped him home, which he did. This passed off unnoticed by most people at the party.

It reminded me of my own experiences as an 'old fart' who regularly attends rugby internationals at Twickenham, in Dublin and in Paris. There are usually six of us, and we do like a drink. It is fair to say though, that in the 25 years we have been acting the fool, we have at worst made bus travel between Twickenham and Richmond noisy, and the ride out of Dublin on the Dart a joyous singing occasion. Any activity likely to provoke violence, either physical or verbal, is quickly stamped on by the group, and the offender parked in a corner and told to behave.

Why then is it not the case at football matches that there is not this same self policing? The tribal nature of the supporters seems to add an 'edge' to the whole atmosphere. It can't be associated purely with the Public school, grammar school, secondary school differential outlined yesterday, as many of the perpetrators are from good stock?

Personally I blame the lager, as we all know London Pride has no alcohol in it!!!