Lucy

The weekend just past signalled the beginning of my diamond birthday celebrations. Well if the Queen can have a couple of birthday's why not I?

Twenty of us attended the England v France rugby at Twickenham in a lads and dads day out. A couple of the attendees I had known since we were ten and at school together, and a few were people I had been introduced to, by them, over the years. One chap was an old friend from my working days and several I had met while playing rugby for Twickenham RFC. Indeed one of those used to chase the same girls as me when we were in our early thirties!! All together they were an eclectic group who got on famously.

The match kicked off at 5pm on the Saturday which is not our favourite time to attend, but on this occasion it did give us a chance to visit a local Richmond restaurant, Rock and Rose, for some pre-match tucker , and very good it was too. So with suitable ballast on board, we boarded the bus and sang our way to the ground as we have done for more years than I can remember.

One of my old school friends, Stu, and I have been attending games at Twickenham since early in 1972. We first saw John Dawes Welsh side play. We stood on the old West terrace watching as they beat us comfortably. The only thing that made it bearable was the fact we were in the company of a young Welsh girl from Plymouth,  with whom I had plans later.  Sadly even that went pear shaped as she had already arranged to meet a lad who was a session musician and singer, elsewhere on the manor.

Some years later when I moved from Croydon to Kingston and started playing for Twickenham RFC, it transpired she married said musician, and he was playing second row at the same Club. We are all still good friends. The subsequent forty years following England around Europe have continued to illustrate just how small the World is, made even smaller by the rugby playing community.

I have played in a few World Golden Oldies rugby festivals over time, and should I do so again, I will be able to wear red shorts. This will mean I can only be caught and held, and not tackled. When I reach 65 I would then be able to wear gold shorts, cannot be touched or tackled and can subsequently run for 15 metres unopposed. That might be worth a go!!!

The celebrations continue in a few days with a family Sunday lunch, after which, like the Queen, I will start to tour some of our colonies. I think I will start with Scotland!!

4077 M*A*S*H

I am not a great social networking user. Facebook and Twitter don't really add to my day to day routine. The only one I do register with is LinkedIn. The main reason for this is to keep abreast of any changes people may make to their e-mail contacts, or other aspects of their life I may be interested in.

Today I have just been doing a bit of tweaking to my profile, and have added a link which will hopefully allow people to see the film which inspired the IBM living legend comments.

It's called 'Doggin Around' from 1994,  and stars Elliott Gould as a beaten up American jazz pianist who comes back to England to do the Northern club circuit. The support cast is a who's who of British character actors and it is a good view if you get the time.

Elliott Gould utters the immortal words which inspired my by-line, when asked by a young lady whether he was one of those American musical old timers, to which he replied, " Where I come from mam, we like to call them living legend"

I had cause to use it face-to face in IBM when a female colleague similarly enquired of me in a derogatory tone. I was in the company of my business director when the exchange occurred and he too adopted the retort,  particularly when summing up individuals careers  at retirement parties.

It ranks up there with the wonderful line from the film, 'The Likely Lads' which charted the holiday adventures of Bob and Terry one particularly wet week in Scarborough. "Eh",  said Terry, "lets go to Boots, there's always women in Boots"

Lord Lucan next?

It is interesting that the race horse, Shergar, who was a Derby winner and up there with the best, was kidnapped  in Ireland 30 years ago this month. It was alleged that the IRA performed the deed hoping for a large ransom. It never materialised and Shergar was lost forever, with her ultimate demise often open to conjecture, but never ratified.

That is until this week. Clearly we have not just started to find horse meat in our pies, pasties and lasagne. This practise must have been going on for years, maybe even pre-dating the disappearance of the racehorse. Horses which die, albeit family pets, competing horses or recreational animals,  have always been assumed to end up in France, where a bit of cheval has always gone down well.

I have been to Paris many times and ordered steak. I am sure they have seen 'les rosbifs' coming and plonked a couple of prime horse burgers in front of us. It always tastes fine and the only side effect seems to be the need for a nosebag every now and then!

Let's just hope we don't move to the Soylent Green scenario in which case we will never find Lord Lucan!

Gardeners World

The frustration alluded to in my last post seems to be slowly easing away. I have just spend a pleasant couple of hours in the garden clearing the debris, and the Helleborus look a picture now with the flowers well in view. Sadly the three new ones I planted did not survive the snow and slugs so I will need to deploy a new strategy next Autumn. The bin, as expected, is nearly full and I still have one more patch to clear. That can wait until tomorrow.

I am deploying the 'stop when it hurts' philosophy towards my knee, having got the all clear from the consultant's registrar last week. I have now had two sessions in the gym on the static bike and the weight machines, so the gardening today went well for as long as I wanted it to. Next week I will start to do some treadmill work and hit a few golf balls. I am looking to restart competitive golf on 2nd March all being well

I have just booked a couple of weeks in Torquay, or is that Turkey?, for some warm weather training, although I think it's only low 70's there when we go.....OK for golf but not so bright for sunning oneself.

I was in London for the rugger last weekend, but will not be travelling to Dublin today, as would normally be the case, as the anti-social kick-off time, 3pm on a Sunday, is just not spectator friendly. With England on a relatively long unbeaten run (two games)  I think it could be a cracker.

Other than that activities seem to be gearing up nicely towards the big six o in a couple of weeks. More on that as the time approaches.

Gr33n Onions

It's a slow news day today, for several reasons. First, my knee is mending well, but I am unable to take advantage of the sunny weather to get stuck into the garden. The Helleborus in particular, need some foliage to be trimmed away so they can get some more light. I also have a garden recycler to fill with debris from the pre-snow period. This will all have to wait another week or so. I am scheduled at the consultant next Monday and will hopefully get some more rehab exercises.
Second,  the two major DIY projects need to be put on hold for the same reason, and third, no sport.

As a result I have been doing some random web browsing, and found out that Venezuela pay 1p a litre for diesel for their cars, just how do they do that then? I have started to StumbleUpon stuff again too, but the program seems to have lost a lot of its appeal. There must be a better one out there, will just have to keep looking.

As mentioned a few posts ago, I am exploring green energy and sustainable heat sources solutions again. I notice the government has introduced another initiative for funding, the Green Deal. The upside is that you can get repayable grants for work which will help you out of the fuel poverty trap, and the grants stay with the house, not the individual. The down side though is that the government inspectors will tell you what you can have as part of a new heating or power initiative.

So, if you want a new boiler, after the government inspection, it might be the fifth item on their recommendations list, so you would need to have the first four actions completed before the new boiler would be funded. That may not be a viable approach for everybody.

In the meantime I am looking at air sourced heat pumps to see if technology has moved on enough to make that a cost efficient solution for our hot water needs. A rep just call in so I will now await the resulting quote.

With other building work scheduled for February and March it might fit in quite well.

Under the knife

Well, I had the knee butchered yesterday. It was only an arthroscopy designed to tidy up and clear out the debris and wear and tear of a life of sport, and so far, it seems to have gone well.

The consultation and operation has bridged the gap between private health care and the NHS and it was interesting to see the two parts working together ( or not).

I am not sure when the problems started with my knee, but the problem was serious enough for me to seek out some physiotherapy treatment earlier in the year. I was able to have that treatment privately, and followed the advise given by attending the local council gym and using the static bike and leg press machine. This seemed to help and allowed me to continue playing golf, although a couple of short runs did confirm to me that some surgical procedure would probably be necessary.

The next step then was to have x-rays and a chat with the local knee man, a Mr Parkinson, who operated on SWMBO a few years ago and seems to have stuck his knife into half the population of the Wirral. Anyway, the x-ray showed a fairly healthy knee space, but was inconclusive as far as surgery was concerned. We agreed to follow it up with an MRI scan.

The scan showed up two meniscus tears, one on each side of the knee, and something called a Bakers cyst behind the knee itself. This then made the need for surgery clearer and inevitable. It also concluded my involvement with the private sector, as my time at IBM was cut short by a few months. The plan had been to schedule the op in early January to allow me to travel to Portugal for the last golf event of the year. Mr Parkinson did offer to get me under the knife by 5th November, my last day, but that would have meant a cancellation of the golf trip. I, therefore, decided to put myself in the hands of the NHS.

First challenge was to get on the consultants NHS list. There is no option to transfer from private to public, one is effectively starting all over again. A visit to the GP got me in the queue for the NHS procedure, and I was soon summoned for an outpatient assessment. This was where the disconnect became most apparent as the first thing the nursing staff wanted to do was an x-ray.

I was forceful in pointing out I had had an x-ray and MRI at the local private hospital and would not have another one. Eventually, after calls to the consultants secretary, the results were e-mailed over and I got on the list.

The date for the operation came quite quickly and so I managed to meet my January objective, and yesterday I was trundled in.

The pre-operative care was fine, however, the after sales service was a bit lacking. There was no visit from the consultant, which was disappointing as there were some surgical questions I had. The physio saw me and gave me a sheet of exercises which I could have got off the internet, but there was no mention of one-to-one follow-up sessions with her. I have a session booked in two weeks with Mr Parkinson, so I am hopeful by then I will be able to start gym and golf sessions, and be driving the car again. We shall see.

On top of the world

As part of the retirement experience, I today visited a property auction. It was not a random action, but one tied in with number two son looking out for a property to buy. One of the lots was a two bed flat in a small block of three. His sister already owns one so we had the thought that eventually we could own all three and be able to sell for a higher margin than individually.

As it happens the reserve price was set above what we thought was reasonable and the flat remained unsold.

It was a particularly interesting auction. Very few lots sold, and one which went for a much higher amount  than the estimate gave me the feeling that the owner was in the room bidding up the hammer price. Not a very honourable thing to do but they appear to have pulled out at the right time to let the underbidder be successful.

The one property which did catch my eye though was  large house in Birkenhead which backed onto the Park. This property had some provenance as it was the residence in the early part of the twentieth century by Andrew 'Sandy' Irvine, the famous mountaineer.

George Mallory was a more well known  English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s. During the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition, Mallory and his climbing partner Irvine both disappeared somewhere high on the North-East ridge during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world's highest mountain. The pair's last known sighting was only about 800 feet from the summit.
Mallory's ultimate fate was unknown for 75 years, until his body was discovered on 1 May 1999 by an expedition that had set out to search for the climbers' remains. Whether or not Mallory and Irvine reached the summit before they died remains a subject of speculation and continuing research.

The house in Park Road was presumably Irvine's family home given he was only 22 when he died, and still at Oxford University. It is a huge pile, which most recently has been some sort of social or working men's club. It has a crown green bowls links in the back garden and has had a tennis court there at some stage.

The architecture on the roof alone is staggeringly impressive and is not done justice by any current photo, I fear though that many original features inside have long been removed. The next auction is at the end of February so it will be interesting to see if it comes up again. The guide price is £350,000 which was clearly too much even for the property developers.