What an absolutely super time we have had. The drive down was fine and we only encountered heavy traffic on The North Circular. It was fun to encounter Staples Corner again after a gap of 20+ years. Google maps took us to The Richmond Gate Hotel by the route I semi-remembered and, apart from the odd tower block and new apartment, landmarks kept appearing. As usual these days, I find that if I stop every 45 or so miles, even if I only circumnavigate the car, it eases my legs considerably. We were well equipt with an industrial size Thermos of coffee, plus sandwiches, kit-kats etc., - it isn't that we are mingy about service-area coffee, but we prefer sitting in the car with our own and people-watching, crossword doing, radio and tape listening and so on. Don Willams got us down to London and Andrea Bocelli got us back.Picture 1 is the view from our bedroom. The room was not large but we were fine in it. We slept well both nights, even better than we do at home I suspect. Y coped with the snoring, grunting, and other things which afflict elderly gentlemen and apart from a little photo-downloading, my lappy stayed off. Good DAB radio signals and we both had plenty to read. Breakfasts were good although Sunday's was tepid at best.
The Golden Anniversary party food was marvellous and the whole event went off smoothly, and had been very well organised.Picture 2 was from my wide-angle on self-timer with the camera left on a convenient flat bar - I didn't intend the trays of celebratory cakes to be so prominent but the snap conveys the general feel. We felt honoured to be seated at the table on the left with the happy couple. And they were happy too !
Roland is a real romantic at heart and spoke very movingly.
The next picture needed a little 'photoshoppery' - albeit fairly innocuous and not intended to mislead. The 'Happy 50th Anniversary banner' was well offstage right and not visible where they were standing. So, I've moved it ! All in the interests of a record shot of the occasion.
He had organised - 'all by himself' - as Jill put it, the Daily Telegraph announcement as pictured on the right
And now, if I can organise it all on the same line, I'll insert a picture of them both.Comments...... Necessarily my comments on comments are to be brief today because I don't want to fill my 'post' with too many extraneous bits.
AnonymousRob.... thanks for the 'cheese' poetry stuff. And I had previously heard of its sexual connotations.
Your offer of YouTube links is welcome because they aren't difficult to blog, as I hope the above Don Williams and Andre Bocelli links will demonstrate.
You should have received a link to The Lion Hotel under separate cover. If not, todays link is the 'beer by tram' one. Sounds like a good idea.
Bungus..... You are right about the laptop being verboten but a break is no bad thing. Especially when the Richmond Gate Wi-fi was £6 per hour ! Anyway I had given Y an undertaking and I certainly wasn't going to renege.
Your 'if you talk about something' you go on to see several instances of it in the near future phenomenon, is well known and appears in the dark recesses of 'Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance' but please don't wade through it. Just take my word for it. If nothing else, it is a nice conversation-stopper if you ever need one.
AnonymousReg...... I will e-mail you with Bungus's e-mail and send your to him.
No quotation. Just a reminder:-
Blog reading advice - New readers ...... Pleased to learn of some new readers and the following notes may be helpful.
- Left click on a picture and an enlarged version will appear in a new window. After viewing click the green 'back' arrow, top left of page , and you will be returned to the body of the blog.
- Anything in orange and underlined will be a live link. If you left click it you will be whisked away to an appropriate website/page. To return to the blog follow the same procedure as for pictures.
- n.b. I publish no 'links' that haven't been given a 'virus free' health check by McAfee.
- If you want to leave a 'comment' (and they are always welcome) you need to scroll down the post, right to the bottom and click on the word 'comments' - again in orange and very insignificant looking.
- When you have the 'comments' window open scroll down to the comments box at the bottom of the page. Click the Anonymous button and write your comment in the rectangular box. It is much appreciated if you put a brief name or identifier (needn't even be truthful) at the bottom of your comment. Otherwise I become confused.
Hope to catch you tomorrow when things should be back to normal .
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2 comments:
Pleased you obviously enjoyed your laptop free weekend.
Even the travelling sems to have been relatively stress free and you appear to have managed to forget your aches and pains.
Thanks for The Lion at Basford link.
Although I cannot find in your link anything that relates to the 'never seen that before, whoops, here it comes again, and again, thing', Festinger is interesting. I think I suffer from 'dissonance' (The Belief-Disconfirmation Paradigm)
about 'Twelve Angry Men'; although I know Henry Fonda starred I still cannot believe that it wasn't Glen Ford.
Thanks for passing on email address to AnonReg.
Thanks for the good write-up! We really enjoyed ourselves too, and am very pleased to hear that all the travelling didn't mean you had to spend a couple of days in bed to get over it.
Mind you, although we didn't actually stay in bed we spent the next two days just pottering, sorting things out etc, and I lost my voice by Sunday night, being on the phone quite a lot....
I enjoyed 'The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency' - it just fitted my mood on Sunday, sat back and let it all wash over me. R watched 'He kills Coppers' which he recorded, I watched it Monday and it really was excellent.
Big shop at Waitrose today - they had sold out of breadcrumbs - the Delia effect? They have never stocked Auntie Bessie's frozen mash - and aren't intending to do so, I was informed. E-mail from Amazon - no mini-chopper for another three weeks.
I thought this week's Delia was poor - we have surely all been using frozen fish for some years? And I get cross when she covers it in some very pungent sauce which would completely mask any taste of the fish.
Waitrose have started a line of fresh (never been frozen) fish, egg and bread-crumbed ready to cook - we had plaice fillets and they were lovely tonight. Now that's a cheat meal....
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