Shandy's Blog

On Monday night and the following 2 nights we had arranged to stop with some friends from Ripley (where our house is): Nigel & Maureen. It is Maureen's daughter Rebecca, who is renting our house out whilst we are in Sri Lanka. Nigel & Maureen have taken over the running of the King William, at Millford, since we left the UK. Mick & Jill, the landlord & lady from our local pub, The Prince Of Wales, in Ripley, turned up. Sampled a good many of Nigel's beer although a number of them (like the cider at over 7%) were too strong for me. We had a chinese delivered from Belper and hit the sack some time in the early hours ...

Quite disgracefully we didn't wake up until around 15:00 in the afternoon. Guess the jetlag had just been dormant for a week. The beer had nothing to do with it. Honest. Anyway we popped up to our house in Ripley, just to check everything was OK. A piece of missing guttering and a broken window pane were the only problems other than the fact that Cloud, one of our cats, had gone missing yesterday. Very unusual as she rarely ventures out of the garden. Picked up 7 months worth of post. A small mountain and around 18:00 we went to the Thorn Tree to see Mick & Jill's new pub and I had a pint of Bombadier. Truely excellent. Then back down to The King Billy for a quiet evening chatting to a few of the locals.

I had arranged to pop into the UK head office today to catch up on things in the office, see my boss for the first time in 10 months and also see the Crystal IT team. Martin Emprex had recently been taken over by Crystal, a chinese company. Caught up with all the office gossip and went out for a couple of beers, at the Boundary in South Normanton, with the rest of the IT department in the evening. Helen picked me up around 20:00 and we made it back to The King William for the quiz. As usual we were crap, although the quizmaster was excellent and we had a good laugh.

We drove up to our house to find that Cloud was still missing and despite spending an hour or so checking the neighbourhood around the house she was nowhere to be found. My wife was distraught but ever the optimist I still had expectations of her turning up. Anyway we set off from Ripley, calling in to see Maggie & David, some friends of ours who Helen used to work for, for a cup of tea and a chat. They run a company called <a href="http://www.dct.co.uk/>DCT</a> in Measham in Leicstershire. From there we drove down to Earl Shilton, stopping off for a swift half of Banks bitter as we were early, honest, for stopping off at our friend's Dan & Rachel. We went out for an Indian at their local and I have to say it was a damn sight better than any curry I have had since I was over in Sri Lanka. Mind you it cost around 10 times as much ;-)

Good news as Cloud has been found at a vets in Belper. It pays to chip your pets :-) How she got there we are still unsure about but Maureen has promised to pick her up later on. We set off relatively early for us, around 10:30, as we had a long drive to Ivybridge in Devon. My Grandfather, who is 94, is in a nursing home down there and it had been about 4 years since I had last seen him. We stopped off at Wotton Under Edge for lunch and arrived down in Ivybridge around 17:30. We stopped for a swift half in the Sportsman and then spent about an hour or so chatting to my gandfather and his new wife Joan - They married 3 years ago! Then off to The Abbey at Buckfast, an old favorite of ours which we discovered on honeymoon.

After the usual excellent breakfast at the Abbey we had another early start (for us at least) at around 10:00 as we had to drive up to Dunstable, where we were staying with Richard, the best man at our wedding. Arriving early than we expected, around 14:30, Richard offered to drive us out to the Golden Rule at Dagenall. A truely great British pub where the Caledonian IPA is to die for and which is one of the few pubs I know still to have a bar billiards table. The old magic was definitely not there any more and I only managed a best score of around 300 but did at least win a couple of games. Ollie another long standing friend along with Anna, one of Richard's polish lodgers, joined us for a traditional English evening of a few beers down the local, The Victoria, a takeway curry and a few videos. Tradition demands that on these occasions I pass out at some stage in the proceedings. It is usually before I get around to eating my curry but this evening I managed to down the curry and stay awake until about half way through the first video :-)

Richard cooked us an excellent full English breakfast and despite much talk about going for a nice long walk we ended up watching the other videos we bought, drinking a lot of tea and finishing off with Scones & Cream before leaving Richard's around 14:00. Tonight we had planned on staying at the George Inn in Eccleshall, another old favorite that we had stayed at a couple of times before. The George is a 17th century coaching Inn with its own brewey, Slaters. The food is also excellent and the Steak & Kidney Pie I had went down a treat with a few pints of Slater's finest. Sadly by 20:30 we were shattered so we retired to bed and watched Midsommer Murders. Truely disappointing. One body. Usually you have to weave round them in Midsommer.

We missed breakfast by a good hour but just managed to leave by 11:00. We called in at my Aunty Pauline and Uncle Rons (Pauline is my mum's younger sister) at Stoke-On-Trent and had cottage pie and apple pie for lunch :-D Then we pressed onto Colwyn Bay via Bridgemere Garden Centre . The trip from there to Colwyn Bay was almost surreal with getting stuck behind lorries, horse boxes, tractors and then hitting the shambolic roadworks at Queensferry. It must have taken a good 3 hours to get to Colwyn Bay when usually an hour and a half is sufficient. My father cooked Steak & Kidney Pudding for tea to end our wonderous tour of English cuisine. The food is England is seriously under rated. Maybe we just know where go in England but I haven't had a bad meal since I got back.

Up at 08:00 and, after finding the plane was delayed 30 minutes until 14:30, I had time to have what may be a last walk around the home I had spent almost a third of my life in as my father is currently looking to sell it. Around 09:30 we left for the airport in what was a beautiful autumn day. Until we approached Manchster that is. Then the rain came down. Spent a couple of hours in the airport lounge with my wife, bought 3 books to take back to Sri Lanka.

Was pants. I got a window seat with no window, the service was poor & they cut off North By North West just as the hero drove up to Mount Rushmore. At least the food was good, The Faltese Falcon was shown all the way through & the flight got into Dubai on time. In Dubai I met up with Kevin, another of the Martin-Emprex ex-pats out in Sri Lanka. On the flight back to Colombo I again got a window seat and this time with a window! Whilst watching Spiderman II (Well it was on but I gave up watching it due to boredom after 10 minutes) I managed to finish Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. An interesting read.

I was planning on trying to upload an item to my blog every few days but we ended up being so busy over the holiday I never got around to it so here is the first part of my two part holiday diary ;-)

I left the apartment around 11:15 and arrived at the airport at Katunayake around middnight. My flight was due to leave at 03:15 but when I checked in I was offered an earlier flight at 00:45, due to over booking on the later flight. The 00:45 flight went via the Maldives so it still got into Dubai (where I needed to transfer to a Manchester flight) at around the same time as the later flight. With a choice between spending over 2 hours sitting around the airport (Remembering Sri Lanka airport is, how can I put this kindly, a rather small airport with limited facilities) or sitting on a airplane with free food & drink I jumped at the offer of the earlier flight and can at least say I have been to Mali in the Maldives, even if it was just to sit on a plane on the runway for an hour! It also meant I got a window seat right at the front of the economy class where you get extra leg room, as the flight was practically empty.

I arrived at Dubai around 05:30 local time (07:30 SL time) and so had a couple of hours to kill before my connection to Manchester departed. Dubai is a huge airport with loads of shops, coffee bars etc. I had a look around the shops for 30 minutes or so and then sat and had a coffee and typed up some of my blog. It felt a bit odd paying for a single coffee by credit card but I had no idea what the local currency was and had only SL rupees in cash.

I had a window seat again on the Manchester leg of the journey and the flight was only around 30 minutes late setting off. It is worth mentioning that Emirates have a sykwards club whic you can join. On the web site it allows you to specify whether you prefer window or aisle seats and also if you have special dietry requirements or preferences. My wfie, Helen, had already told me if you register a preference you get your meal served first. Something worth considering as on a flight to Bangkok, earlier in the year, they ran out of food on the plane :( Suffice to say I got both my meals early and they were both very nice. The emirates flights now have TVs in the back of the seat in front which offer film channels, games, radio channels as well as external camera views on the plane and BBC world service headlines. However, I still prefer to watch the scenery out of the window and was fortunate in that there was little cloud cover and the exceedingly annoying practice of forcing you to close the shutter over the window was not enforced on this flight. We arrived into Manchester around 20 minutes later than scheduled (around 12:40) but the bonus was that despite low cloud cover there was no rain.

Helen, my wife, was there to meet me and from the airport I drove to my father's house at Colwyn Bay on the North Wales coast, via the Pen-Y-Bryn public house. A pint of Twaithes Bitter was the pick of an excellent range of beers and by god it was good to taste some decent beer again :-D It was also nice to sit by an open fire. Fish & Chips were the order of the day for tea. It was great to see my father and his wife Anne again and catch up all the news. By a supreme effort I managed to stay awake until after 21:00 (02:00 SL time) in the hope that I would be so tired I would sleep right through until around 09:00 the next morning and recover from the jet lag ASAP.

I awoke around 09:30 (14:30 SL time) so my cunning plan to recover from jet lay appeared to have worked. After breakfast we had a look around Colwyn Bay as it had been a few years since I had had chance to look around the town I lived in for more than 12 years. I called in on the parents of one of my old school friends, Alan, but found from Bill that Vi was in hospital having had a hip replacement. However Bill said she was over the worst so hopefully when we are next back we will be able to see them both. We then had a drive over to Llanwrst to shake off some of the cobwebs off my MR2. Tea was Beans, Bangers & Mash. As you can probably tell my holiday is rapidly beginning to revolve about what food and drink I am having :-D

Inspired by the book I am currently reading, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, we drove up to Haworth, West Yorkshire, where the Bronte sisters lived. We visited the vicarage museum and had a general walk around and vowed to come back again for a weekend as it was a very interesting village in a good location to tour other places of interest from. From Haworth we drove to Bingley where I met up with an old college friend, Martin, who we followed back to his house in Hull. In the evening we visited Hull Fair leaving laden down with Candy Floss & Brandy Snaps. I managed one of the rides but have reached an age where fairground rides no longer hold tthe appeal they once did :( Helen & Martin entered into the spirit of the evening though my wife was to regret this over the next few days. We, naturally, included a visit to a local hostelry called the Old Zooalogical, where we had a pint of Marston's Pedigree, on the way home.

Saturday started with a drive from Hull to Malvern, with Helen leaving us at the M18/M1 junction to do some shopping at Meadowhall, whilst Martin & myself continued on to Malvern to visit another old College friend, Garf and his wife to be Jess, who had offered to put us up for the night. We abandonned the car at their house and took to the train with another friend Shaun for Worcester. There we visited a long standing friend, The Dragon Inn, which supplied us with a number of extremely fine beers (This, Black Pearl, Dark Destroyer to name a few, the other's names now forgotten). There we put the world to rights and then moved onto Ashley's Balti House where, as usual, we ordered way more than we were capable of eating. The evening ended with a taxi drive back to Malvern.

On Sunday Garf & Jess provided us with an excellent breakfast: beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, bread, sausage, bubble & squeak. Martin then dropped me off in Derby on his way back to Hull. The Flowerpot was my rendevous point with Helen and I managed a swift half before she arrived and then half a dozen other beers before we left. The Flowerpot is one of my favorite pubs. It generally has around a dozen beers on and also is known for its live music. I noticed Wishbone Ash (remember them?) were due to play in the next week or so (at least one member of the band originated from North Wales where I started my holiday). Sunday night we were staying with Leila, a friend of Helens (who she used to work with and had visited us out in Sri Lanka earlier in the year). Mercifully, as I had a suitcase, my laptop and a rucksack to carry, the house where she lodges is only a short walk from the Flowerpot. Some good news was that Helen had managed to get our digital camera replaced as the week before I was due back in the UK it had died on me. Fortunately Boots couldn't provide us with a like for like replacement so we got the next model up :-)

One thing I am realising is that I am not missing Sri Lanka at all. So far we have been extremely lucky with the weather. Most days have been mild and sunny. The pins and needles I had been suffering from in my left hand have also disappeared (after a couple of months suffering them) and I am also catching up on my sleep. Waking up at 05:15 in Sri Lanka is not my idea of a good start to the day. Also having my own car again and having the freedom to travel when and where I want adds tremendously to the quality of life as far as I am concerned.