When I was at work, in the days before I retired and got really busy, my day was filled with important decisions. Policy had to be set, timetables worked out and budgets fixed. I couldn’t just turn up at the canteen at 10 o’clock and decide if it was to be a sausage sandwich or bacon that would not be time effective, far better to know in advance what the policy is for this week.
How many meetings could I schedule for lunchtime to qualify for a free buffet and could I get and ‘A’ buffet or did it have to be a cheapo ‘D’ one. The quality depended on who was invited, outside people carried more weight so therefore qualifying for a better buffet, of course if they had to cry off at the last minute I couldn’t be blamed and the buffet was ready anyway so we may as well have it......
I have already said about the major issues I had with living away from home in hotels all week and having to make decisions on evening meals and drinks etc so I won’t go into them again but enough to say that my days were full of obviously high powered decisions. But now after retirement all those decisions have gone away and small things like the morning post become something to look forward to. And that is usually junk mail or catalogues for Christine, not much difference there, it’s all junk mail except for a Thursday when, mid morning comes the local free paper and we both make a dash to get it first. Not that either of us ever look at the paper. We simply want the flyer from Netto.
Why would we get excited about a flyer for Netto’s? Well as I have said before on our return from Barcelona last time we decided to change our shopping habits and look for bargains and quality rather than simply throw our money away on ‘gone off’ food from Tescos, so one of our major decisions now is where to buy the wine from. In the Netto flyer is the next week’s offers which always includes wine, and because lots of other people must be doing the same, if we aren’t there early it’s all gone. But this rush for bargains has a down side and does not always prove to be cost effective.
Being pensioners we naturally have to watch the budget and the bottles of Pino Grigio at ?2.99 look a bargain so we start with them and it’s ok, good everyday wine. But then we notice after a couple of weeks that they do 3litre cartons for around ?10 so quickly out comes the calculator and I establish that these are even better value so we switch to them. Our normal routine is that we open a bottle at tea time have a couple of glasses each and if there is any left put it back in the fridge for tomorrow. Now that’s OK for bottles but what happens when you have a carton ‘on tap’? I'll tell you what, you get a top up every time you go in the fridge that’s what. And with me opening the fridge every time I pass these cartons soon disappear. The first one lasted from Saturday to Tuesday.
So Christine comes up with a way of making the wine last longer. An easy way would be to stop drinking it but that’s not her plan, she changes the glasses to smaller wine glasses. Now spot the fault in this plan. Correct! We drink twice as many glasses and the cartons still only last four day’s, I suppose on the plus side we get fitter because we have to walk to the fridge more often to top up our glasses.
We could try the ‘no drink during the week’ rule but that’s not easy as we always need a bottle or two in the fridge in case any of our friends pop round, none of them do tea or coffee only booze.
So we have now switched back to the bottles but instigated a rule that we never start before the school bus goes by, that’s on their way home from school not going in a morning, although maybe..........! No. Of course on non school days the rule doesn’t apply.
Yesterday we decided to have a day out. To put down the paint brushes, put away the garden spade, forget the new patio at the back of the house, leave the fence posts that need renewing and have a day out. Christine also decided she needed a break from her difficult tasks of ‘room dressings’ and plant potting in her greenhouse. So we sit down over early morning breakfast, wall paper paste of course, to decide where to go.
Maybe a trip up to the Dales have lunch at the Sandpiper Inn in Leyburn followed by a short walk, fish and chips on the way home and a pint down the village pub to finish off or maybe a trip to Castle Howard< , or Burton Constable Hall or even Burton Agnes Hall and spend some time wandering around the gardens. But I can tell none of these are fitting the bill as far as Christine is concerned until I say the magic words John Lewis.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise to regular readers that Christine likes shopping and John Lewis is the ultimate shopping experience for her, for one thing we don’t have one anywhere near us so visits to John Lewis are few and far between. Very quickly we agree on a trip to the Trafford Centre in Manchester and Christine is now hurriedly finishing her breakfast like a cat that got the cream. The new Pink (Black) Book is on the table and plans are being made and measurements checked, fabric for curtains is listed as are curtain poles and mirrors not to mention additions to the wardrobe required for our next trip to Barcelona.
I do ask the question again of why more outfits are required for Barcelona this summer when we spent five months of last year in the Bahamas obviously with the right clothes for hot weather. “Different culture” Christine says again as if it answers the question and carries on with her lists in the Black Book. She is obviously excited so I let it pass and carry on with my wallpaper paste.
So at 8.00am we are on the road, off to the Trafford Centre, Terry Wogan is on the radio and we are sat in a traffic queue on the motorway. I suddenly get a flash back, all I need now is a coffee ‘to go’ from a service station, a sausage roll and 80 miles an hour in the middle lane and I could be back at work. But of course sausage rolls are a thing of the past, only healthy food now with Christine in charge of recipes At 10.00am we arrive at John Lewis.
Morning coffee comes and goes as does lunch but at six o’clock in the evening Christine is still going strong in John Lewis. She has made very quick ventures to M&S and Selfridges but virtually all day has been in John Lewis. When we finally get back together I am surprised she has no bags to show for her day out but I very quickly realise that all her purchases have been sent to the customer ‘collect by car’ point, so our bank balance is now a few pounds lighter but we have some more ‘room dressings’ to say nothing of the necessary new outfits.
So that’s it we can go home now eight hours in the same shop must be enough for anyone but no, there is one problem they didn’t have everything we apparently needed but they have been reserved for us at the John Lewis shop in Cheadle. We are now sitting on another motorway in another queue looking for the Cheadle Royal Shopping Centre. When we find the store Christine is very excited as this is even bigger that the last John Lewis so not only do we collect the reserved items we spend the next hour looking around this store at the same things as we looked at in the other store only there are more of them in here.
We finally get home at 10 o’clock at night, that’s fourteen hours after we left this morning. Christine has had a brilliant day and is now shopped out and in need of rest. As I pore myself a gin and tonic I wonder if staying at home and painting wouldn’t have been more restful. But, as Christine reminds me often, she deserves a few treats for having to live with Victor Meldrew. I pore myself another gin and turn on the TV to watch the highlights of England losing another World Cup Cricket match.
I notice that Tescos have announced £2.6b annual profit this morning. That is a lot of profit and they still sell fruit and vegetables that if it hasn't gone off before you manage to get it through the understaffed tills they will have done before you have had them a couple of days. It is only a matter of time until they rule the world or at least the UK and there will be no need for any other shop at all.
So in an attempt to ruin their profit forecasts for next year Christine and I have established a different shopping routine. We buy locally produced products from locally run shops. We buy fruit and vegetables from the Saturday Market in Beverley which lasts from one week to the next with no waste, we buy fish from Pecks fish shop and meat from the Springdale Farm Shop in Crofts Garden Centre along with our bread and definitely the best meat pies and gravy any where in the world. Those are for me of course Christine has the grilled fish.
The down side of this is of course that it takes a long time so that shopping in this manner can only be for those people with sufficient spare time, namely pensioners like us although naturally Christine would point out that you aren’t a pensioner at 51.
So we normally start off in Beverley Market getting the fruit and veg and then it’s time for coffee, usually Nero’s, nice coffee, nice apricot croissant. I would naturally prefer a bacon sandwich from the market caravan with a plastic coffee sat at one of their garden tables but Christine of course doesn’t do caravan food so it’s Nero’s.
So there we were last Saturday having our coffee and I’m grumbling because Christine who said she didn’t want a croissant is now trying to help herself to a piece of mine and it just happens to be the piece with most of the apricot on when in walks Pam and Keith a couple of friends from up the village. The ones we went to the Village Hall Theatre with last week. They pull up a couple of chairs and Keith goes off to get their coffees, two coffees and a biscuit thing that is promptly broke in half and they have half each, they are sharing a scone.
I don’t get this sharing thing. Christine wants half my croissant, Pam and Keith are sharing a scone, I look around and no one else is sharing their food, everyone has their own plate in front of them with their own food on it. It has to be a pensioner thing and I wonder at what age the change comes from full scone to half a scone. I just look down to check if Pam or Keith still have their slippers but no, even though they are older than us, much older of course than Christine’s 51, they don’t seem to have slipped into full Togdom just yet.
Then it’s onto Crofts for some meat and a perhaps a couple of Box Hedge plants to fill a gap in the garden. And this is where the problem starts, I know I said we had plenty of time but........!
On the table in the garden centre there must be about fifty Box plants in rows, five deep by ten across and we want two plants, so we pick up two from the front row and off we go! No we don’t, we pick up the third from the left on the fourth row and the second from the right on the second row but aren’t sure about these two so we pick up another two to compare and then another two. They are all the same! The next two get selected and two more and eventually we finish up with two off the front row. They are all the same! And when she has finished none of the plants go back in the holes they came out of and it looks like a vandal with an ASBO has attacked the table. But we have two plants and we aren’t rushed for time so it’s now off to the meat counter.
I have by this time wondered off to the coffee shop to get a coffee and to see if I can fit in a full scone before Christine finds me. I think I preferred it when Christine did all the shopping at Tesco’s while I sat in the Garden Room and watched the world go by.
Whilst out in Barcelona last trip Christine and I took to borrowing the kids’ bikes and going for rides along the promenade next to Alex’s house. The promenade is probably seven or eight miles long which takes you to the next town, Castelldefels, and after that another promenade for a few miles to Port Ginesta and up into the mountains. We probably cycled about an hour and a half or so in each direction which for two old folks, oops I mean one old folk and a 51 year old Christine, who haven’t been on a bike in forty years I don’t think we did too bad.
Maybe the odd ache in a couple of joints but nothing serious except for the seats. Why do they make mountain bikes with such uncomfortable seats, we were just riding along a concrete path and it was uncomfortable so what it must be like on a mountain I have no idea. Or is it just me, as we get older maybe our bums get more bony but I don’t think I’ll go any further on that line.
Anyway on returning home Christine decides that we should keep up the cycling and bike into Beverley a couple of times a week to help keep fit and to offset the wine we now seem to be drinking every night. So I start to look at what bikes cost to buy and I can’t believe it, I could buy a car for less than some of these bikes. Now I know the real expensive ones are top of the range bikes for serious cyclists and I know we will never become serious cyclists but I also know Christine and her shopping habits. I know that if I loose her in a shop I only need to find the part that sells the most expensive of whatever it is the shop sells and Christine will be there.
So off we go to the bike warehouse and I try to steer her towards the bikes that cost around about £100 but these are apparently not what she wants so she moves up the line past the £150 towards the £200 plus and I begin to get worried. Eventually whilst looking at a bike that costs upwards of £300 she says “these are not the type of bike I want, I want an old second hand Miss Marple bike with a basket on the front”. Second Hand! I’ve never known her do second hand, but if that’s what she wants, who am I to object.
We are now at the second bike shop in Beverley and there appears to be just the thing, ‘sit-up-and-beg’ handlebars, big seat with springs for a comfortable ride, three gears, wire basket on the front and a chain guard to protect her trousers and just to make things better it has a sticker saying £60 on it. After some hard negotiation with the bike man we go away with this bike for £50, a good result or what.
Well I thought it was a good deal until a couple of days later when she arrives back home with a tin of Farrow and Ball green paint saying she needs to customise her bike to create an authentic vintage look. Apparently the colour of the bike clashes with the colour we have painted the outside brickwork on the cottage the Farrow and Ball green is a far better match. But most importantly it seems the new green colour matches the cycling outfit coming from ‘Bikes You Like’ website that has mysteriously appeared on My Favourites on the laptop. She has just finished explaining how much she has saved by buying the paint rather than getting a brand new bike when I notice a new wicker basket with leather straps waiting to replace the wire one..
I once again go through the routine of trying to explain that we haven’t actually saved any money at all we have in fact just spent another £30 so the bike has now cost up £80 and the good deal seems not so good now. I must have a look in her pink Black Book and see whose name is next to the job of ‘paint bike’.
But never-the-less she has her ‘Miss Marple’ bike and she seems quite happy with it so who am I to grumble. Of course that left me needing a bike because, Christine reminded me, we like doing ‘we’ things and going of for rides together was what we needed to do. I just happened to mention this to my brother-in-law Howie and he brings a brand new mountain bike out of his shed. “Only ridden it twice” he says “sticking to the car in future, you can have this one”.
I am now the owner of a lightweight, eighteen gear bike with suspension forks and whatever else mountain bikes have and I notice that Christine is looking a bit like she has come out second best. I have a brand new bike and she has a second hand one in need of a re-paint. Mind you the large seat with springs on her Miss Marple bike soon convinces her that she has the right bike. I think I need to customise my bike as well, I need to change the seat.
Alex just sent me this link and I just had to put it up the Blog.
Think of the pensioners I have described over the past hundred and forty odd sessions and you come up with old folk who always start each conversation with "I'm 84 next year you know" or "I have just come out of hospital you know" and then try to show you their scars. Or maybe they are just walking down to the paper shop still wearing their slippers or queuing outside the post office for their pensions if they can remember which day it is.
Well take a look at this crowd they may look like all the pensioners I have met but how good is this. I'm just a youngster compared to most of these but what an opportunity they have grasped. The lead singer is 90 and even he is young to some of the others. They will without doubt have a number one hit record shortly after this is released on 21st May.
