Book Review: Slaughterhouse 5

This month’s book for Chorlton Chapters is one of Kurt Vonnegut’s best known works. I finished it in two sessions (mainly), the second being on the train down to London last Thursday. That second session being about two-thirds of the book, it lasted the whole two-and-a-half hour journey. I literally read the last paragraph just after the train had stopped at Euston.

We chose this book for October based on the fact that it was the third time it had been selected for the vote, and it seemed (to me at least) that the damn’ thing would keep being brought back until we accepted it. And personally, having heard the title bandied about for years, I wanted to read it. I was intrigued.

I hated it. I don’t remember reading any of Vonnegut’s other work, but I must have come across him before even if only in short story form. This, I hated. From the irritating mantra “so it goes” every time anyone, or anything, is killed or dies, to the idiosyncratic, almost stream-of-consciousness prose of the narrator, to the minutiae of the boring life of Billy Pilgrim, I really could not see what all the fuss is about. And there is fuss, believe me. Read the glowing reviews on Amazon, or find study notes for the book that wibble on about Vonnegut's genius. One American college teacher states: "It is part of Vonnegut's genius that he is able to both poke fun at our mortality (I cannot recall how many times 'so it goes' is used, but it's so frequent that it becomes darkly funny) but also to remind us of, sadly, of what 'blips' we all are on this planet."

Well, thanks, but personally I didn't need to be reminded of that, and far from finding it "darkly funny" it struck me as predictable and annoying. Maybe I'm the only one out of step here, but it seems to me there's an element of the Emperor's new clothes about this novel - everyone agrees with everyone else what a work of genius it is, when really it's nothing of the kind.

I think it probably suffers from being a book of its time. Maybe back then the themes were fresh and new (although I doubt it – it was first published (in the UK) in 1970 by which time the other masters: Asimov; Heinlein; Bradbury; Clarke; Niven; Herbert … were all well into their stride) but now the writing seems amateurish and feeble. The themes of alien abduction, temporal dislocation, social dysfunction, have all been done before, or since, better. As a historical record of the privations of life in a prison camp, or the bombing of Dresden, the details are too sketchy to satisfy and the plot too thin to hold the attention. Did I say plot? The book reads like a French film – meandering along observing the actions and reactions of Pilgrim without a goal in sight and then ends with as big a whimper as it began.

Score up another one in the “I wouldn’t have read this unless I had to” category. Nothing in the synopsis, the flyleaf, or the first few pages would have induced me to pick up this bollocks unless I’d had the incentive of the book club, and even then I resent the fact that I could have more profitably used the time spent reading it.

The Foodie Weekend

It's no wonder I can never lose any weight when we have days like this!

Yesterday was the Northwest Fine Foods Festival at Tatton Park and after a general tidy round so the house was in a decent state for later(see below) we set off for Tatton around 12.30. Unlike Blenheim, this event was housed in a single massive marquee, which we were grateful for as it was threatening rain when we arrived and followed through on the threat with a fine drizzle as we were leaving. In between we stayed (relatively) warm and dry and comprehensively boggled by the array of foods and drink on display.

As we meandered a figure-of-eight around the islands of stalls we passed a wonderful variety cheeses, pickled garlic, massive pickled olives, handmade chocolates (some of the most original shown here on the right), original liqueurs, sloe/ blackberry/ raspberry gin/vodka, cakes, Christmas cake, the lightest Christmas pudding I've ever tasted (virtually every stall offered samples), hand-reared pork, beef and goat (yuk! the only thing I tasted all day that I didn't like), organic vegetables by the trug-load, sweets, licorice, and many more delights to satisfy the most selective gourmet palate.

I was surprised, when we left, to find we'd spent less than two hours there, but it was two hours packed with ever more amazed expressions of delight as taste after taste exploded on our tongues. We were loaded down with bags containing small samples (my favourite of which was the highland whisky and orange liqueur) and with stomachs that, although they'd only enjoyed small samples at each stall were nevertheless strangely full!


Back home we had just enough time for everyone to shower and change before we set off on the first leg of the Mexican night organised by our neighbours on the street. The starting point was the house around the corner whose garden backs on to ours. Over the years by virtue of having held over-the-fence conversations with many of the neighbours on our side of the road they've become "honorary members" of the street scene. Here we enjoyed tequila shots and dips before moving on back around the corner to the first of the street stops where our neighbours had prepared fritatas with marinated shrimps and Mexican wine.

Next stop was our place. In her inimitable way, Nikki had researched some fabulous Mexican food online and cooked up a brilliant Mexican vegetable pasta bake together with a seven-layer dip, while I did the honours making Tequila sunrises for everyone (or San Miguel for those of a non-cocktail bent). We'd worked out we needed to stick to a schedule of around 45 minutes per house to get around everybody, but as the tequila, beer and wine flowed the schedule gradually slipped unnoticed out of the window.

Then it was on to number 19 where the boys had prepared some delicious enchiladas (both meat and non-meat varieties) and pitchers of Caipirinha (strictly speaking a Brazilian drink, but at least they were on the right continent!).

Across the road next and as we were becoming somewhat stuffed by this time we were grateful that only small portions of a delicious spicy Mexican rice dish were on offer here, together with more beer and wine. Finally we ended up at the house directly opposite us, site of the famous summer street party and where the Mexican drink theme landed on familiar territory with Margaritas (even if our hostess did have a rather unique way of making them - chuck whole limes in a blender and bung in a bottle of tequila. The result, although somewhat lumpy with chunks of pith, was extremely limey!) and large bowls of fruit salad.

At this point the hectic pace of the evening slowed down. We watched a DVD of the summer barbeque, chatted, drank some more, and finally came home around 2.30am which, with the benefit of the changing clocks, suddenly became 1.30!

Friday Five

It was one of those days yesterday.

Despite very creatively steering my afternoon meeting to the point where, 45 minutes in, we had only one agenda item left, and thinking therefore, perfectly reasonably in my view, that with an hour to go we could realistically hope to get away at 3pm, rather than 4pm as the room booking and original scheduled meeting time would suppose, I had reckoned without the determination of my fellow attendees. Determined, they were, to spin the meeting out to its allotted time. Indeed even that was not sufficient as we hung back at the end of the meeting continuing a debate that I'd been trying to shut down for half an hour.

The end result was that I had to catch the 5.05 and arrived in Manchester mere minutes too late to put up the posters on my way home, before the play started. I had to wait an hour until the interval and then make a special trip over there. Pah!

That wasn't the worst though. On the train journey home I sat across the aisle from an older guy (looked to be in his early sixties) and a younger woman (mid thirties?) who’d clearly been on a business trip for the day. For the first hour and a half of the journey, while he was regaling her with tales of family holidays and whatnot she sat turned towards him in rapt attention going “yeah…yeah…yeah” constantly (I mean at the rate of one yeah every 5-10 seconds), interspersed with nervous forced giggles. I tell you, it did my head in. What he was telling her sounded about as funny as boils, so God knows what the hell she was laughing at, and why she found it necessary to keep up the constant stream of “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” after literally every fourth or fifth word the guy spoke. Did someone tell her it’s what good listeners do? Does she realise it makes her sound like some kind of vacuous bovine moron? God.


And so to the business at hand...

1. What makes you feel exposed?
Being asked a question that I'm "supposed" to know the answer to, or to provide an explanation for something I should understand, but which I haven't been keeping tabs on and therefore don't know/understand. Years ago the threat of being in that situation would have spurred me on to read more, learn more, do more. But it's a growing problem as my increasing lack of enthusiasm for my job and it's massively expanded scope and complexity have conspired to rob me of any chance of keeping up.

2. What do you have to force yourself to do?
Get up on a cold morning. Do the household budgeting. Tidy up. Gardening (although I usually enjoy that once I get started).

3. Where do you like to spend your time outdoors?
Anywhere by the sea, or where there are trees.

4. What surprises you?
How stupid people can be.
How wonderful people can be.

5. Friday fill-in:
Late at night I'm ____.
Assembling Chorlton Players photographs into posters! (This week only lol)

While The Lights Were Out

Regular readers will know I’m the resident photographer for the Chorlton Players. You can see some examples of my work here (they're not all mine). I turn up to all the dress rehearsals (or at least, as many as work allows – and I do try to manage my calendar to avoid disappointment) and spend the evening between 7.30pm and ~11pm snapping happily away from the floor of the hall, walking to and fro to get various angles on the stage, sometimes taking extreme close-ups, sometimes shots of the whole stage, sometimes with flash, sometimes without.

Generally I prefer not to use the flash. The colours are more natural and there’s no red-eye problem. But many of the plays involve lots of movement and subdued lighting, which leads to a high percentage of wasted shots, blurred from the actors’ sudden movements or out of focus because the dim light combined with use of maximum zoom has defeated the autofocus. The “waste” isn’t a problem of course: it’s a digital camera. It just means time wasted taking shots I can’t use, plus more time lost filtering through the pics back at home, throwing them in the recycle bin.

So usually I have to resort to flash. It’s a swings-and-roundabouts situation though; the close-ups inevitably mean more time spent fixing the red eyes once I get home.

For once last night’s dress, for the latest production While The Lights Were Out, had almost no problems with sudden movement. A traditional whodunit farce-type-thing in the style of Agatha Christie (although actually written by Jack Sharkey), the play has a single set where all three acts take place. This meant I ran the risk of the pics being a little samey and meant I had to keep changing my viewpoint to maximise the variety. The play involves a lot of standing around while the cast engage in vast amounts of exposition about what happened and why. The result was that although I took my usual 300+ shots in total, there were far fewer that needed throwing away (after the first pass I was left with 280 usable shots) and many more that fell into the “best” category (after the second pass I had 144 in my “Best” folder compared to an average of 50 for other productions).

After doing all the post-processing of the pics and then assembling some of the very best shots into my traditional six A4 posters for the hall doors, it was 2:15am. Time to grab 4 hours sleep before jumping the 7:15 to Euston in the morning.

Attention please!

It never fails to amaze me how unobservant people are. Mostly this occurs to me as they're hovering in front of me in the supermarket, looking this way and that completely oblivious to the fact that I'm behind them and would like to get past, as would 1,700 other people.

The best one though, is when I go to London and travel in one of the many lifts in the building I visit most often.

The number of the current floor is, as it quite usual, displayed on a fetching blue digital panel in the lift.

On arrival at the fourth floor, as well as displaying the number 4 inside the lift, a voice declares loudly "fourth floor."

The doors open and there, on the wall, is a large sign consisting mainly of the number 4.

And almost as sure as night follows day there'll be a passenger who turns to you and asks: "Is this the fourth floor?"

Give me strength.

A road less travelled

If you knew what I was about to tell you, and you knew what it meant, you’d be sitting down in preparation for the shock. The bridge at J7 of the M56 is being mended.

Doesn’t sound like much does it? But this bridge has been a designated “weak bridge” for the whole of living memory, or so it seems. In fact I’ll have to do some Internet research on it(*), because I simply can’t remember when it was first covered in cones, or subject to some sort of weight restriction. Let me put it this way, I’ve been assigned to my current “project” since November 2001 and the bridge has certainly been restricted to a single lane for the whole of that time. Prior to that in reverse chronological order it has been variously coned off to close the left-hand lane; coned off to close the right-hand lane; painted with cross-hatching to ensure traffic only travelled a single track along the centre of the bridge; had warning signs in place; and at various times for varying lengths of time it’s been closed altogether while the engineers do structural tests, measuring and monitoring.

I reckon it must be at least ten years.

When I drove to Solihull last Friday, men were hard at work and had dug up half the width of the bridge down to the main framework. At last! What the flippin’ ’eck has taken so long?

(*)Hmph! Nothing interesting at all apart from some Lymm residents moaning in 2005. It's been going on a lot longer than that.

It's Curtains!

After Friday night’s relatively late finish and having spent most of yesterday out at the bank/optician/shops all we felt like doing today was vegging out in front of the PCs. By early afternoon we both began to wish that I’d had chance to put up the study curtains we’d bought from John Lewis. It was another brilliant crystal clear day today and as the sun shone down from the azure sky it bounced glaringly off our puter screens and made puting almost impossible for a few hours. But I was working to a deadline on the lyrics for next year’s panto, and had to finish the final two songs today, so it was a case of squint and get on with it!

On reflection (haha!) it would probably have been more productive to spend the 30 minutes putting the curtain pole back up and hanging at least one curtain, since that would have allowed me to type with both hands instead of having to sit with one hand above my head to shield the screen, but I plead mitigation: it was a late decision to put the original Ikea curtain poles back up since they don’t match the new décor very well and Nikki wanted some posh Jacobean-y looking ones instead. It was only when we were both blinded that we realised it might be sensible to make do for now!

Oh well – a job for next weekend!

Old friends, good company

A few weeks ago a surprise email landed in my box from an ex-colleague I hadn’t seen for at least 6 years. I thought it was longer, but apparently Nick was at the very last ICL Engineering Conference. Unfortunately that Conference is all too easily remembered, since it was interrupted by the breaking news of “9/11”, but though the conference itself is therefore memorable, neither of us specifically remembers seeing the other there. He’d found my entry on Friends Reunited, followed the link to my website and got in touch.

We exchanged a few catch-up emails and after some debate arranged to meet up for a curry, with partners, in Rusholme. Since he lives in Crewe and no longer works for the old firm, he rarely gets chance to sample the delights of Manchester’s curry mile, so we elected to visit our favourite – the Royal Naz. As a bonus, his wife Pat (who coincidentally still works in the same building as me, albeit on a different floor) offered to drive for the evening, so the scene was set and the event took place last night.

They say time flies when you’re enjoying yourself and if I tell you that the first time I looked at a clock after leaving the house at around 7pm was when we were sat back in our lounge at the end of the evening and I caught sight of the time on the PVR, you’ll have some idea how much fun the evening was. It was a quarter to midnight.

Nick & I worked together in the strategy unit in the “old VME days,” so we have a wealth of shared history and common contacts. Pat still works in VME and is in touch with those who are still around. On top of that the last 7 years have seen a lot of changes for all four of us, we had the traditional 50c tour of the house to get through, incorporating details of all the work we’ve done, and what with one thing and another the conversation never stopped the whole night whether it was 4-way or 2x2.

One slight disappointment was that the Royal Naz is no longer the Royal Naz. It is now the Gogi, and a quick check online reveals that it's been taken over by the guy who ran Shere Khan. This alone is enough to explain why the meal was not as nice as I remember the Naz being, and I think it's safe to say we won't be going back there even though everyone else was complimentary about the food. With so many other good curry houses, especially in Chorlton, it was a shame we chose that one, but it only goes to prove you can never assume that your favourite eatery will always be there for you.

In the end though, this was a minor issue – the evening was a great success and we’ve already been invited down to Crewe for a rematch. I always love spending time with friends, but somehow there’s an extra enjoyment in catching up with friends you haven’t seen for ages, especially when they both love curry!

Friday Five

1. What's your personal hell?
Trekking around a city centre on a hot summer's Saturday afternoon for hours doing any kind of shopping, but clothes shopping the worst, and shoe shopping the absolute pit of Hades.

2. Do you prefer brightly lit rooms or dim spaces?
Dim spaces every time for me. If I'm watching TV, no matter what the programme, I prefer the room to be subdued. I was always the last to turn the lights on if I was sat reading as the evening drew in, and I often walk into a room without turning the light on unless I'm going in there to look for something.

3. What's the weather like today?
It's a beautiful clear crisp autumn day. The sun is shining and is very warm if you're behind glass, but when out in the fresh air there's a definite bite to it. Perfect.

4. Is it easy to be you?
Pretty much. I'd like to lose 70lbs but it doesn't really bother me enough to do anything about it. I'm in a much better place with myself now than I was ten years ago.

5. Friday fill-in:
My heaven is ____.
Friday evening with the weekend stretching ahead, in the lounge, with Nikki and the girls, lights down low, candles burning, a plate of comfort food in my lap, a long tall gin & tonic at my left hand and a good movie on the telly.

The day dawns dark #2

...and the second way you know that autumn is here (and that winter is coming) is the first morning you go out to the car and there's some ice to scrape off the windscreen. Now admittedly it WAS 5am when I got out there this morning which is a little earlier than I usually emerge, but today was that day.

Such a shame that the beauty of a crystal clear blue afternoon sky and sharp fresh autumnal air on the way home from work one day must lead inevitably to frost the next. Nature's own swings and roundabouts.

You don't get that long for murder

Forty years ago today, as a cheeky ten-year-old, I spent the day horsing around and generally making a pest of myself at my cousin's wedding. This is the cousin with whom, of all my family apart from parents and my own children, I've maintained the closest links over the years, enjoyed the company of the most, and who came to my rescue in my darkest hour and offered me a place to live when I thought I had nowhere.

With the invite to her Ruby Wedding anniversary celebrations today came a strict instruction: no presents. "It's not about presents," she said firmly. "It's about getting together (something we do all too infrequently) and having a drink and a chat, and generally enjoying the company."

Well, I've never been one for doing as I'm told, but it was clear that Trish wouldn't appreciate having a lot of money spent. The solution was obvious, and something I've been thinking of doing for quite some time.

A couple of years ago my Mum asked me if it was possible to have Super-8 cine film transferred to video tape. She had hundreds of feet of film that her and my Dad had shot over many years. Family holidays, summer days in the garden, and...the weddings of my two cousins. As a young teenager I'd been the one to do all the editing and splicing of these home movies, combining the individual 50-foot reels into 400-feet chunks - six of which had spent the last 35 years in a box under the bed. Mum wanted to see them again, not least because its almost 14 years since my Dad died and this was her main photographic record of him.

After a brief web search I chose the VT group to perform the conversion. Their website tells a convincing tale of professionalism, top quality equipment, attention to detail and personal care of your memories. For once, their service proved as good as their marketing, and pretty soon the movie reels were back, accompanied by a VHS tape for Mum and a two DVDs for us.

We'd opted for a straight transfer, so the DVDs still contained all the "flashes" between shots where the old Super-8 camera overexposed the film as it sped up at the beginning of the shot and slowed down at the end, all the interminable panoramas from holiday where my Mum had taken the advice of panning slowly a little too much to heart, and so on. So I knew some radical editing was required and added it to my growing to do list. But there were two specific areas I knew I wanted to concentrate on.

One was the holiday footage from the 1960s when our family would holiday in Mablethorpe with my Mum's best friend Eileen, her husband and their daughter Julie. Julie is now grown up (of course!) with family of her own, and her Mum & Dad have since died. She probably hasn't seen this footage in forty years or more and I thought it would be nice to cut a DVD just of the shots where they are included so she can see them again.

The second area was the coverage of both my cousins' weddings. Here, we'd gone to town a little bit. Not surprising as they were both big family events. As well as their own camera M&D borrowed a second, so we had two sets of film from each wedding. This had been spliced together sequentially, with the result that we have always watched guests arriving at the wedding, followed by the photos outside the church, followed by a second set of arrivals and a second set of photos. Finally I had the chance to slice and dice the shots so they followed a natural sequence, as well as doing all the cleaning up of the film. Now with Trisha's impending anniversary I not only had a chance; I had a deadline.

It was lucky I was on holiday this week, with some time to spare between ferrying Neil from papers to bookies to pub, because the whole process took several days. Cleaning the shots, editing them into order, adding wipes between the significant chunks and new digital titles to complement the filmed titles that my Mum, Dad and I had painstakingly shot in the days after the weddings using a variety of home-grown techniques and stop motion video. Then there was all the DVD mastering to get to grips with, as well as taking screen grabs for the cover, and designing the rest of the cover and the sticker for the disc, always using a red theme. It was, after all, a ruby wedding present.

The burning process was a little frustrating. The first two attempts refused to play at all, but the third attempt seemed fine and played through OK on our XBox and on my computer.

DVDs wrapped and bowed (I'd made a second copy for Jacqueline and Paul), we set of this afternoon for the do. It was a low-key affair with only the "young" family attending - our respective parents, those that remain alive, are too old to travel long distances now especially for short periods of time and where a return journey the same day is required - but that only added to the party atmosphere. It was great to catch up with all the news, meet my "third cousin" Thomas for the first time (is that the right relationship? I always get confused with cousinhood. He's my cousin's grandson, so I reckon that makes him my third cousin. Gawd knows how many times "removed" he is. Two probably. Who knows. He's a cracker anyway. Says "hello" a lot and always seems to have a cheery smile except when he's trying to steal your cake.) and partake of Trisha's excellent hospitality once more.

The DVDs proved welcome gifts, and for exactly the same reason as I wanted to make them - everyone was tired of seeing two of everything! Unfortunately the public viewing didn't go all that well. On their player, while the first wedding played through OK, the second one started sticking, jumping, pixellating and eventually stopped altogether in freeze-frame. Robin blamed the player but I suspect the burning software isn't correctly compensating for the extra speed of rotation as the head gets farther from the centre. I'll have to try again when I can find a moment.

We left around 7pm. Blythe had homework to finish and Nat had lab reports to write up, and we had at least 90 minutes travelling, so we made our excuses and left. We'd had a lovely relaxing conversational afternoon and evening and a perfect end to our week's holiday, but I will admit to a small twinge of jealousy that Paul is now retired, whereas I have to return to work tomorrow!

A Year of Living Uncomfortably

Well maybe not the whole year, but as today marks the one-year anniversary of moving in I thought I'd look back on what we've done to the house in that first year. Most of it wasn't at all uncomfortable of course, but for some of the time we were covered in dust, or shuffling around displaced furniture, or working stupid hours at evenings and weekends to get that last coat of paint on. Future years will almost certainly see slower progress, since our refurbishment fund is spent and any further significant work (like fixing the rest of the sash windows, replacing the roof, replacing the stairs, completing the other half of the loft conversion, ...) now depends on good bonuses or other such windfalls. But money well spent is soon forgotten in the face of the benefit it brings, as I'm reminded every time I take a shower.

Lounge
The walls of this house, pretty much without exception, had been plastered either by someone who didn't know what he was doing, or who had been asked to leave a "rough" effect. Whether or not it was done with Artex we were never quite sure, but as neither of us fancied living in what looked like an 80s nightclub (or a cave, in the case of the bathroom), we had to decide what to do about it. Of the three options available a simple coat of paint was the quickest and cheapest, the theory being that a single neutral colour would hide a lot of the imperfections in the walls.

It worked quite well, but the lesson here was: never use cheap paint. It took four coats to completely hide the flame-coloured rag rolling.

Still to do:
Compared to later finishes, the painting hasn't really worked. The wall lights tend to highlight the lumps and bumps, we haven't decorated above the picture rail so the badly-filled cable channels where previous owners fitted them are still visible, and the ceiling is in pretty bad shape. I'm sure we'll end up having this room skimmed, but that will probably have to wait until we fit a new fireplace. We still can't really decide whether to keep the wooden floor in here, or carpet it.

Small bedroom
The second option for dealing with uneven walls: heavy duty lining paper and a coat of paint. That's what we opted for in here. The results, while better than the simplistic approach taken in the lounge, are still not perfect. But for a spare room, they'll do for now. The first room to be carpeted, it's quite cosy now that the sash window has been renovated and draught-proofed, although it still needs some pictures hanging to relieve the bareness, and could probably use a headboard. It was finished off in May with the delivery of a set of small bedroom furniture.

Bathroom
It's not hard to remember how uncomfortable it was living with a small draughty bathroom and no shower, but it does seem like a distant nightmare. By far the most expensive refurb to date, we set a budget for this room, revised it upwards during the design process, and still blew it. It was worth it.

Still to do:
Fix the leak in the shower before the kitchen ceiling descends; give the walls another coat of paint (the fitters only did one coat and the coverage is not the best); fit some shelves to take bathroom ornaments and plants.

Study
The final project of the year, and almost certainly the most successful. For the walls and ceiling in here we decided to go for the replastering option and while it is the most expensive, the results are superb. Well worth the few hundred quid outlay and the weeks/months of mess. This is two rooms knocked into one and hence the largest room in the house, so the length of the project can't be taken as a guide to other rooms - everything took, more-or-less, twice as long.

Still to do:
Find and hang two sets of curtains. Refit the door. Build shelves in the (closed) fireplace at Nikki's end. Find and fit two light fittings (and rewire the switch to be the intuitive way round!). Hang pictures. Install a sofa bed. Tile the main fire place (with the wood-burning stove). Find a couple of easy chairs and maybe an occasional table.

Longer term we want to hire a joiner to build an arched open shelf unit between the two rooms.

What's next?
With very little budget remaining we're severely limited to what we can do in the next year, but we have already bought the paint for the kitchen. We're taking a simplistic approach here - knocking off the bumps and filling the hollows. A newly invented fourth approach to uneven walls, if you like. We're not investing in reskimming here until we can afford to have the whole room refitted, at which time there'll probably be some lights to move and what have you.

Sticking with painting projects, all the stripped doors in the house, which are the original panelled doors, need varying degrees of repair (filling and sanding), painting and replacement locks, latches and handles. We'd like them all to match (they're an eclectic mix at the moment: two original Edwardian brass jobbies, both a bit banged up, some bakelite monstrosities from the 40s/50s and two awful, cheap aluminium specimens from the 70s. We've found some really nice rim latches online that should fit the bill, at least for the upstairs where a total of five doors need doing.

Having experienced the luxury of carpet in the new study I know Nikki is really keen to have our bedroom carpeted, but that will obviously have to wait until it's been decorated and may therefore mean a compromise on the walls - to skim or not to skim. Current plan is to skim the ceiling only and use heavy duty wallpaper, but we may end up replastering the lot - why go through the mess twice, right?

Friday Five and the end of the Outlaws

After the events of the week, the outlaws' visit finished up like every other: with us sitting round on Friday morning drinking coffee and whiling away the hours until it was time to take them to the airport. This year's flights have been at much more civilised times than usual and today we only had to be at the airport by 11am. With hugs, kisses, and promises to do it all again next year (well, not quite all of it, we hope!) they disappeared behind the doors of the departure hall, leaving us to go shopping and return to normal mundanity.

The rest of the day was taken up with laundry, changing the bed, helping a neighbour fix up their new PC and picking Blythe up for the weekend. And after a week of high living it was good to get back to the simplicity of cheesy tea and an early evening DVD (Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer!)


1. What's your favorite cereal?
Porridge. There was a time when I had a bowl of porridge every day for almost two years. Winter and summer. I also like those little round nutty clusters that you don't see very often here but are common in the US. I used to think they were granola, but I know now that's different.

2. What is too gross to eat in the morning?
Kippers. Never understood that as a breakfast food.

3. What time do you go to bed?
About 10.30 to 11pm in the week, but if we've been watching TV beforehand I may well already have had an hour's sleep on the sofa by then! Weekends tends to be a little later. Very occasionally I'll stop up 'til 1am or so if I'm working on something like the book club website or the photos for the Chorlton Players.

4. Where do you put your keys?
Coat pocket.

5. What vegetables do you love?
Roast parsnips and any kind of potato. Onions. Celery. Red cabbage. Fresh peas straight from the pod, eaten raw.

The Outlaws #6 - Passport to Toronto?

Another day, another train journey to London. This holiday seems more like work every day.

In one respect, today's was a more relaxed start than yesterday. Since the only requirement was to get to Canada House before it closed, Nikki and her Mum could take the latest possible train: the 10.15am, arriving at Euston at 12.26.

That was pretty much the only respect in which this day was less stressful. When we set off from home we didn't know whether or not the passport was even available to collect, but Nikki reasoned we should get to the station and then make the call, rather than try and rush over there at the last minute. CH doesn't open until 9.30 anyway, so we would be cutting it fine whatever we did.

We arrived at Piccadilly Station around 9.30 and the girls bought reading material for the train before Nikki made the first call. There was no reply. Just to add to the stress, Nikki's phone which had started off with a full three pips of charge, plummeted to a single pip as soon as she made that first call. She called again and this time left a message. I reckoned no matter how unlikely, there was just a chance CH had some telephony integration that would flash up an alert on the woman's PC screen if a message was left. It might even be converted into an email for her.

There was still no reply, and Nikki tried again a couple of times with no luck. Around ten minutes to ten, we started to reevaluate what we meant by "latest possible" train. Would the 10.45 be an option? Arriving at 13.02 it would be cutting it very fine, but the tube might be fairly empty at that time. There was just a chance... Or should they just get on the train anyway and chance it? Chance that they'd end up making a 5-hour round trip and spending £238 on rail fares only to have to do it all again tomorrow or Monday?

10am struck, with still no word. It was decision time. Virgin close their doors two minutes before the trains leave for safety reasons and we still hadn't bought the tickets. Then, at 10.05 exactly, ten minutes before the train was due to leave, Nikki's phone burst into life. She answered. The woman wasted precious seconds explaining why she hadn't been able to take the call earlier, or return the call sooner, or something, but then Nikki's eyes popped out of her head as the woman told her Shirley's passport was ready for collection. She grinned and nodded madly and I took this as my cue to rush to the ticket machines while Nikki ushered her Mum towards platform 4. With literally two or three minutes to spare I thrust the tickets into Nikki's hand as she ran down the platform.

As I strolled slowly back to the car trying to collect my jangling nerves, I reflected on the impact of a lost passport. Shirley and Neil only came for 7 days and fully 4 of those days have been affected one way or another by that single, simple, unlucky happenstance. A day searching for it, trying to find out what to do about it, and reporting it lost (which meant we couldn't go to Bakewell); a day at the photo place (admittedly not entirely wasted since there was some additional shopping done) and two days spent travelling to and from London. What a palaver.

And here I was, looking after Neil again. When I returned home he was still sat quietly in the lounge. No-one had told him his papers were already on the dining table waiting for form to be studied and betting strategies calculated. Still, if that's all he had to worry about, he should consider himself lucky, eh? I dropped him off at the bookies around noon and returned home to spend the day chilling out.

Having started on a knife-edge, the day finished as a bit of an anti-climax. Nikki reported back at lunchtime to say they had spent all of 5 minutes in Canada House ("here it is," "thank you very much") and since they had standard single tickets, had caught the next available train back. The 14.05, arriving in Manchester at 16.30. That left me with just enough time to meet Neil for a pint before collecting the girls from the station and returning with them for another. I had to drive everyone home, of course, so neither of them were particularly relaxing pints. Indeed from the knots in my shoulders I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever relax again. I think I need a holiday!

The Outlaws #5 - Passport to Pimlico

With the alarm set for 5.30am, it was just like a normal working day for me as I crawled bleary-eyed out of my pit to use the bathroom and make way for Nikki and Shirley. After a quick cup of coffee, I ran them to Piccadilly Station, retrieved their tickets from the FastTicket machine and made sure they knew which platform to use for the 7.05 to Euston. That will get them in at around 9.20am and then they have to make their way to Trafalgar Square.

I advised the tube to Charing Cross but Nikki didn't fancy the crush, preferring instead the option of a taxi despite my warning that at that time of day the queues would be massive.

My job for the day was looking after Neil. This is not so very different from the running order established at the beginning of the week, except that I have sole responsibility for making sure he takes his pills, doesn't get lost anywhere and doesn't spend too long in the pub. I returned home and waited for him to join the rest of us in bidding hello to Wednesday, took him out to buy his papers and made his breakfast.

Around 11am I had a call from Nikki to say they'd arrived at Canada House after queuing for more than half an hour for the taxi. Overall the journey from Euston to Trafalgar Square (four stops on the tube) had taken them an hour. I dropped Neil at the bookies in time to place his first bet and returned home to investigate the cost of using a courier to pick up the passport - assuming it will be ready tomorrow and that this would prove a cheaper option than going back again on the train.

One of the problems is that, even though they had already pulled all of Shirley's details from the records and were therefore sitting there with her photo in front of them before she ever walked in the room, the completed application still has to be checked and verified in Ottawa before the UK embassy can issue a replacement. Thank God for the time difference, but even allowing for that there is no guarantee they can turn this round in a day, and absolutely no chance of it being achieved while you wait.

The problem with the courier option is that if someone else picks it up on your behalf, they must be carrying a signed letter of authorisation from the person in whose name the passport is issued. An original, not a photocopy or fax. So the courier would have to start at Manchester, pick up the letter, drive to London (to arrive before the closing time of 1.30pm), collect the passport and return to Manchester. The first firm I tried estimated this cost to be £208+VAT, the second said vaguely that it would be "about £300."

Suddenly a second train journey was looking like the most attractive option.

Nikki even started to think about sending her Mum back and staying overnight herself to collect the passport, but with no guarantee it would be there tomorrow (the staff member they spoke to even said it might take "two or three days") this just seemed like a step too far.

I picked Neil up from the bookies and took him for a cheese and paté lunch at the Royal Oak. With not knowing how long the processing would take at Canada House, we'd booked Nikki and her Mum on a fairly late train coming back. Luckily Virgin took pity on them and let them on an earlier train - the 15.05 - so after another spell in the bookies and a pint at the Southern we went to meet the train just before 6 and headed off for dinner at Deckers.

Conversation at dinner, naturally, centred on the stupidity of a process that forced already stressed citizens to perform two round trips of 400 miles in as many days, and then strayed into the likelihood of the paperwork being turned round in Ottawa overnight in time for collection tomorrow. If it isn't, then Shirley and Neil's tickets for their flight on Friday will be worthless and they'll have to renegotiate another flight on Air Transat (who only fly twice a week) or go for the much more expensive Air Canada option - who at least fly every day.

That is, thankfully, a bridge we don't need to cross just yet. A problem for another day. Tomorrow's problem.

The Outlaws #4 - Mug Shot

So the saga of the missing passport trundles on, and today we were finally able to get through to someone at Canada House and find out what the score is. The only recourse is to fill in a passport application form and take it, in person, to Canada House (Trafalgar Square, London) along with the requisite fee and the right sort of passport photo.

I well remember the kind of stringent requirements the Canadian Government places on passport photos. Unlike most of the rest of the world (I guess) it's not enough for them that you walk into one of those automated photo booths and spend a couple of quid sitting on a stool and posing while the machine flashes and churns and grinds away and eventually spits out four photos on a strip of foul chemical-smelling photo paper that bear a passing resemblance to you on a bad day. Oh, no.

For Canada the photos have to be an exact size. The background has to be a particular colour. The border has to be exactly x millimeters. Your eyes have to be exactly at "this" position on the Y dimension of the photo. And so it goes on. You thought the EU was anal? Try dealing with the Canadian Government.

So Nikki took Shirley into town, to the only photographer who is authorised to take Canadian Government Photographs, while I busied myself trying to find some cheap rail tickets to London for tomorrow. I did find some, but we'd agreed that it was pointless booking them until we were certain they could get the photos done, by which time the booking threshold had passed and we had to buy regular tickets at great expense. The trouble is, Canada House is only open for passport applications between 9.30 and 1.30, and we have no idea how busy they'll be. Shirley and Nikki need to be there at opening time, which means travelling down on a "peak time" service. Even then, there's no guarantee they'll be seen before 1.30.

Stress levels today were mighty high, I have to tell you. Never have I been more glad to sink a couple of pints in the Southern before coming home for dinner. And never have I been so incredulous at the poor support for citizens provided by the embassy of one of the world's largest countries.

The Outlaws #3 - Ticket to Ride

Saturday evening had been marred by the discovery that, sometime during the day, Shirley had mislaid her passport. By the time she realised it was too late to do anything about it apart from the obvious search of the house, and yesterday we were fully engaged with the family reunion, so today we swung into action. The first part of the day was taken up with phone calls - retracing the steps of their walk into Chorlton on Saturday. We called the bank and the bus company to discover whether the missing passport had been handed in. It was a "no" at the bank, when we finally got to talk to the branch, and the story was the same with the bus (if a little more tortuous in the route to the right person, given that we started off with the wrong bus company, who didn't admit until we were on the third phone call that they didn't run a #22 service).

Having learned from the emergency line to the embassy in Ottawa (all other lines being closed for Canadian thanksgiving!) that we needed a police report to engage the next part of the process, we headed off to the police station, where I spent a happy half-hour twiddling my thumbs and rueing the fact that I didn't think to bring a newspaper or the latest book club book with which to while away the minutes. I entertained myself cleaning the gunk from around the lenses on my glasses, moving the car around the car park (there were no free spaces when we arrived, then the single disabled space became free, so I parked in it temporarily until the space beside it was vacated), and reading the map book for the best route to Bakewell (there are three!) followed by an aerial examination of the roads around Westminster. I was saved from moving on to plucking ear hairs by the reappearance of Nikki and her Mum, who had been the last in the queue behind a bail signee and a couple of others.

By this time it was 12.30 and Nikki declared she wanted to be back from Bakewell by 3pm to make sure her step-Dad was still within his bounded universe. I pointed out that this would give them about enough time in Bakewell to draw breath, maybe two, and so they abandoned the idea and went to the Trafford Centre instead.

I met up with them in the pub later and engaged in a riveting conversation with one of the locals about how you couldn't get anything but Irish music played in the pub nowadays and that if he decided to set up an English themed pub in Dublin and play nothing but Cliff Richard and the Stones they'd tell him to "feck off." About halfway through his seventh retelling of this yarn I was rescued by his sudden need to get up and walk over to the next table, presumably to explain to the people sitting there how you couldn't get anything but Irish music played in the pub nowadays and that if...

Anyway it was at that point that Shirley showed me her copy of the lost property report the police had filled in. The first item on the form was marked "Full name of Loser:"

You have to laugh.

The Outlaws #2.1 - Welcome to the 21st century

Something I forgot to mention about the meal at the Huntsman was a lovely little vignette between Nikki's cousin Phil and his youngest daughter. She must be about 8 or 9 and we were all sat around gazing lovingly at the dessert menu when her uncle decided to order crême caramel. She turned to her Dad: "What's crême caramel?" she asked. I chipped in helpfully, confident of my expertise in putting things in terms an 8-year-old would understand: "it's like blancmange."

She looked at me quizzically. OK, it's an 8-year-old who's never had blancmange. I tried again. "It's like milk jelly." Another puzzled look. "You know, when you make jelly with milk instead of water?" No, it was no good.

Then her Dad had an idea. "It's like pannacotta," he said. Her face lit up instantly. "Oooooh pannacotta!!" she enthused, "yum."

The Outlaws #2 - Meet the Gang

Today was one of the highlights of the trip - the annual get-together of Nikki's family on her Mum's side. Her Auntie Sue having died almost two years ago, this shindig now consists of her Uncle John, his three kids and their wives/partners and their kids, together with the four of us.

We drove down to Dunchurch to meet up with everyone at the Dun Cow for a welcoming drink and then hot-footed it across the road to the Huntsman Carvery. In previous years we have been a bit nomadic in our choice of eatery but having eaten here last year everyone agreed we should return as the quality of food is second to none.

Fairly unimposing from the outside, inside the restaurant is familiar and welcoming, and dominated by the excellent purpose-built carvery station. The four kids were very excited to be given a table to themselves, while the eleven adults were even more excited to be able to eat in peace. The menu is a delight. Regular readers will know of my love for curry, but there is rarely a chance for me to indulge in this passion while Nikki's folks are here. They won't touch it, hating even the smell. So I was very pleased to be able to start with Huntsman Chicken Madras - chopped breast of chicken in a creamy madras sauce served on a bed of lettuce. Then it was off to the carvery, where I was disappointed this year to find only a small piece of rather well-done rib of beef remaining.

I asked if it were possible to have the beef a little more on the pink side. To my horror the chef told me they didn't do rare beef any more as no-one ever asked for it! He then went on to say that they would do it if I called beforehand to give them some notice. And finally, seeing the disappointment on my face, he relented, fetched another roast out of the oven and said "let's see how this is doing - although it's only been in two hours so I shouldn't really be serving it."

Could that be the reason they don't serve rare beef any more? Some horrendous attack by the health and safety crew? He agreed with me that really it's the way beef should be served, and when he cut into the joint, it was perfect. Surprisingly, in view of the fact that "no-one ever asks for it," the entire queue behind me piped up with "I'll have some of that" - even the kids! So I ended up with 4 slices of beef, 4 of turkey, a dollop of mashed potato, a dollop of mashed swede, five large roast potatoes, a large spoonful of baby sprouts, a portion of stuffing and a helping of both home-made horseradish sauce and cranberry. It was like two meals in one really. Fabulous. The only downside was that Nikki, being further back in the queue than me, reached the carvery after he'd cut the pink beef so far into the middle that it was coming close to being raw and he had to put it back in the oven.

Normally after a main course that size I wouldn't have had a dessert but as it's included, most of the diners forced themselves to order one, even if only to take away. I opted for a banana split, which arrived with several inches of whipped cream on one split, several inches of whipped vanilla ice-cream on the other split and covered in nuts and chocolate sauce. I really thought my sides would split. The food was excellent, but oh! the pain!

We staggered back across the road for a farewell drink. The conversation had flowed at my end of the table and since one of John's sons and his family live in Stockport, we'd agreed that next year we should host the family meal in the Manchester area. It's only fair - we've been travelling down to Coventry for the last six years - but it'll be a challenge to find anywhere up to the standard of the Huntsman. Still, we've a year to experiment!

The Outlaws #1 - The Pattern of Our Days

Nikki's folks arrived safely yesterday around 11.30. This is the fourth time they've visited and their first stay in the new house (their visit last year coincided with our move - they spent a week surrounded by packing cases and our movers arrived about two hours after we'd taken them to the airport) so Neil hadn't seen the house at all, and Shirley had only had a brief tour.

Normally their flights arrive earlier and there's time for a refreshing nap to readjust the body clock, but this year things were a little different and Neil was keen to get his first bet on at William Hill's.

This establishes the pattern of activity for the week, barring those few days when we go sightseeing or family reunioning:

• Have breakfast
• Take Neil to the paper shop and leave him studying the day's form for an hour or so
• Take Neil to the bookies and make sure he knows where the pub is
• Nikki and Shirley go off to do girly stuff
• I come home and entertain myself for a few hours
• We all meet up in the pub and have a couple of early evening drinks
• Back home for dinner

This arrangement worked extremely well in the old house, which was walking distance from the paper shop, the bookies AND the pub. Here it's not so good, as we don't have any of those things within walking distance, so it's a drive to and from the newsagents, pause, drive to and from the bookies, pause, drive to and from the pub.

But hey! I'm on holiday. It's a nice change from the pressure of work, the pressure of decorating, and pretty much any other pressure you can think of. My afternoon reverie (well, I say "reverie." Actually I was unpacking the grocery shopping that I'd just brought home, having delivered Nikki and Shirley to the bookies) was disturbed somewhat yesterday by an unexpected call:
"Hello, this is the florists."
"Err...yes?"
"We've got a gentleman here called Neil, who says he's something to do with you."
"Err, yes."
"Can you come and pick him up please? He's a little bit lost."
"I'll be right there."

It's an easy mistake to make when you're not familiar with the territory - a single wrong turn and you by-pass the pub and end up at the florist's. I picked him up, dropped him at the pub, and went home to finish putting away the leeks.

Friday Five

1. Do you dance?
Dad dancing, yeah. I do the hand jive a lot too.

2. Would you consider yourself religious?
Spiritual rather than religious. Religious has all sorts of negative connotations of being forced to "worship" in churches that hoard gold and fine trappings at the expense of their pauper parishes, provide a sanctuary for paedophiles and make war on people who don't believe their particular brand of claptrap. Don't get me started.

3. Do you talk about politics?
Only when there's nothing better to talk about ;o) That winds me up almost as much as religion. Promise much, deliver little, protect your own interests at the expense of others, ride the gravy train. Don't get me started (again).

4. When is the last time you asked for forgiveness?
That's another question with religious overtones. I say sorry a lot for minor things (like missing a bit of the washing up, or accidentally treading on the cat's paw) but I don't really think that's what you're after is it, question 4? So the answer really is "whenever my thoughts turn to those big mistakes I've made in my life."

5. Friday fill-in:
I’m holding out for ___.
when the decorating's finished!

A time warp in Westminster

I travelled down to London again yesterday. At Euston, as it has been the last four or five times I've arrived there, the escalator down to the Underground was boxed off and ornamented by a sign saying that the escalator refurbishment would be going on until December, with only one escalator in operation at any time. Passengers going down are expected to walk - some of them dragging heavy suitcases behind them; some of them making heavy weather of the climb due to infirmity.

At the ticket office level, a further escalator - to the Victoria and Northern lines - is closed for routine maintenance which is, apparently, going to take six weeks.

Arriving at Westminster and walking past the seat of government, I couldn't help noticing that the alterations to the roadway immediately outside Parliament have been completed in record time. On my trip the time before last they hadn't started; last time they were in full flow, with the entire road including halfway down Millbank cordoned off and the roadway excavated; now (only a week later) the works are complete, the barriers are being removed and the road is paved in shiny new blocks.

The message is, it's important not to inconvenience those important civil servants and MPs as they hurry about their job of running the country. The average citizen can be forced to endure months of inconvenience because they don't matter.

A Day in Westminster

Spotted another number plate this morning while I was walking through Westminster: NOT 2B.

It was on a Bentley this time. Very posh. Very Shakespearean. Still, they're all loaded round there. Wouldn't surprise me if he had another one in the garage plated up with "2B", for those days when he wakes up in a more positive frame of mind.

I had this mental image of him finishing his breakfast of lightly poached kippers and wandering out to the lobby to be greeted by the chauffeur:
"2B or NOT 2B today, sir?"
"Ah. That, Jeeves, is the question!"

Book Review: To Kill A Mockingbird

I'm a little reluctant to write a review of this classic by Harper Lee. Our book club choice for September, when I was looking for a snappy synopsis for the club website I discovered Amazon has something like 1670 reviews of it. I haven't checked, but I expect I'd find many other sites with multiple reviews, or dissections by learned students of literature. What can I write that they haven't? And yet, I've started a trend on here of giving my own opinion on the club's choices, mainly because it's so hard to make notes on our discussions when we meet to discuss whatever we've been reading, and of late, due to lack of time rather than any waning enthusiasm, my notes for the club site have been somewhat sparse.

So: I liked it. A lot. In fact it's the only book we've read so far for the club (there have been 18 to date) that I've felt compelled to give a score of 10. The attendees score the books out of ten, and I work out the average to give the book a Chorlton Chapters ranking. TKAM came away as the runaway winner, its average being more than half a point higher than the nearest rival. When scoring books previously I'd often given a 9, and wondered what a book would have to do to merit a score of 10. I decided months ago that it wasn't fair to score a book purely on enjoyment. If I did that, I would be artificially narrowing the field of books that I could give a 10. There must, I reasoned, be many books that deserve a mark of 10, irrespective of whether I enjoyed reading them. That a book should score ten only if it's a book that you can't imagine being better in any respect: characterisation; plot; description; pace; moral.

That's why TKAM got my 10. I read it, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I couldn't imagine it being any better, or even any different.

Several things endeared it to me. The evocative description of childhood play was poignantly reminiscent of my own childhood, even though the book is set in America. The fear of passing a certain place (ours was the "witch's house" that had a twitchel running along the side of it); the long hot summer days of school holiday; the observations of adult behaviour and conversation - all beautifully described.

The expert way the story is told through the eyes of 5-year-old Scout (who grows to be eight) without ever needing to step outside her experience to explain adult themes, or things she wouldn't have understood. The subtle messages of bigotry and prejudice that underlie the conversations of the schoolmistress and the ladies at tea. The calming, rock-steady presence of Atticus and the clever way he teaches the children that all is not always as it seems by forcing them to help Mrs. Dubose.

But above all, the moral that even though you know something is wrong, sometimes all you can do is open people's eyes to the wrong. You can't stop it, people will die, but you've sown a seed in their minds and hearts that, though it may take generations to germinate and grow, will eventually make the world a better place. That you must take your chance to do that, no matter the personal cost, simply because it is the right thing to do. It gives others the chance to do the right thing, but whether they do or not is up to them and beyond your power to control, but even knowing that, you still have to do it.