It’s just past the longest day of the year, it’s midsummer and what’s the weather doing, raining that’s what, especially in East Yorkshire. But its not ordinary rain this is a deluge as anyone living in the UK will have seen on the news. There are floods all over with roads looking like rivers and houses full of water and people being evacuated and on top of that it’s cold enough for any self respecting Bahamian to be wearing a hat, scarf, gloves and anorak.


Of course the Bahamas and now Barcelona are the last two places our family have lived and where we have spent many months since our retirement. So why are we here and not in Barcelona? It does seem strange that Alex and the grandkids have come over here for a few weeks into what seems a nightmare when back home the weather is gorgeous and the beach is two minutes away from their house and the swimming pool is in the garden. But it is good to have them here. I am sure this is character building for the kids except at the moment they both have heavy colds as a result of constantly getting wet and being cold.


But that’s not really the point of this article. The point is that yesterday’s rain caused the main sewers in Tickton to fill up and overflow with the result that a torrent of sewage water poured into my garden flooding Christine’s ‘outside room’ that had been dressed especially for Alex coming home. Plants, flowers and ornaments disappeared as the water rose higher, “do something” says Christine “it's getting near to coming in the house”. Do something! The rain is torrential and the water is above ankle level and at the moment I am just settling down with a sandwich and coffee to watch Wimbledon on the TV, I am retired you know! But I have to do something!


I look around at all the new floor tiles, the oak woodwork in the garden room, the new kitchen and the Armoire and Welsh Dresser in the breakfast room and suddenly the thought of trekking around the shops with Christine to replace everything seems more than I can cope with. It’s easier to do something.


So in the pouring rain I am down the builders merchant buying bags of sand which I transfer into sacks back at the house and place at the back door. The water is repelled and we spend the rest of the afternoon anxiously watching the level to see if it comes over the sand bags. Of course it doesn’t, I don’t think it would even have come in without the sandbags but we leave them there until this morning just to be safe. This morning I am out cleaning sewage of the drive, paths and garden. Nice job! Only takes three hours and just as I finish Yorkshire Water ring to say they can come to clean up the garden, I tell them I have already done it and they seem quite pleased.


But still we have not really reached the point of this article. It’s all about how work expands to fill available time. Parkinson’s Law I think.


This is not the first time this flooding has happened, it is a regular event in the rainy season. The last time I was still at work, working very hard as usual having dinner with Richard in a Turkish restaurant somewhere in Putney I think when the mobile rings and it’s Christine telling me we are having a flood. Now I am hundreds of miles away and my kebabs are getting cold and my is beer getting warm and she is telling me about how high the water is. What am I supposed to do? I ring Yorkshire Water who tell me they are overstretched and cannot do anything until the morning so I ring Christine to let her know and tell her to put towels against the back door and go to bed. As we are all on one level at home I also suggest that she puts a pair of Wellington Boots next to the bed just in case we do have a problem during the night. She didn’t seem to appreciate the comment.


The next morning I am wondering about ringing home but if it was bad news it would probably spoil my breakfast. So first it’s off to the restaurant for a poached egg on toast with a little bacon and maybe a sausage on the side followed by toast and marmalade and a cup of tea, no wallpaper paste in those days and then I ring home. Of course the water hadn’t come in, it had now all gone away and Yorkshire Water had rung to say they would be there later that day to clean up, which they did. Problem solved.



So you see the issue, because I had time I got some sandbags, got very wet putting then against the back door, worried all day about water levels and then cleaned up the resulting mess. Parkinson’s Law you see, when I didn’t have the time because I was at work Christine worried about the levels and Yorkshire Water cleaned everything up and I had an excellent Turkish meal and a few beers. There is a lot to be said for staying at work.

So here we are back home again needing to lose a few pounds following too many Menu Del Dia lunches and too many beers down the bodega whilst in Barcelona. “No problem” says Christine as she gets out her pink “black book” and starts listing meals and menus.


Now as much as I am impressed by her planning and the use of the “black book” I can’t see the point as everything we ever eat at home is healthy. She has some sort of radar system that locates every sausage roll or pork pie I smuggle into the house and immediately disposes of them in the dustbin. No more butifarra in the fridge to pick at, no more serrano ham to taste each time I open the fridge door and no more paella and locally baked warm bread. No more ‘put me ons’ at 5.00pm to last until our evening meal. Instead it’s back to the wallpaper paste for breakfast, cardboard crackers for lunch and lots of vegetables on an evening.


Christine naturally points out that the four pounds I have lost in just over a week since we came home is down to her and the meals she has planned in the black book.





She seems to have discounted the fact that I moved thirty square metres of York Stone by wheel barrow from a friend’s house to the bottom of our garden for the new patio. That’s something like fifty barrow loads, now all I have to do is to lay them. I guess I may be losing a further few pounds this week but it will of course be due to Christine’s healthy food and not the hard work.


When I retired I thought I was going to have a lot of ‘I’ days. We both agreed that we didn’t need to do everything together and that we needed some time to ourselves. The problem is that since Christine has got the hang of planning her time and the work load using the black book method she is having all the ‘I’ days and I am busy doing jobs from the Book.


Last night, there we are having a glass of wine in the garden room, the school bus had passed so it is OK when I noticed Christine writing measurements in her pink black book. She is wandering around with a tape measure and then writing more things in the book. So today she is out doing one of her favourite things, shopping, with her friend Mo. Full day out including lunch and what am I doing, laying York Stone paving stones that’s what.


Last Friday was lunch with Gwen that lasted all day but only for Christine, I was busy barrowing the York Stone to our garden. Tonight she is off to yoga and the only reason she is not meeting Vivien tomorrow is that Vivien is on holiday. I in the meantime will be busy building a York stone wall and laying some more of the patio. So in a way I am having ‘I’ days they are just not quite what I anticipated.


But it’s not all hard work it was the ex companies golf day last week and it was good to catch up with people I hadn’t seen since retirement. It was also a good excuse for bacon sandwiches, Mars bars while playing and roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes not to mention apple pie and custard and a couple or so wines, bottles that is. Of course that was interpreted to Christine as crackers for lunch and roast beef and vegetables for dinner. All in all a good day, even the golf went quite well.


When I wrote about last years golf day I mentioned that I was in the middle of laying York stone paving and here we are again a year later laying more stone. There must come a time when Christine cannot think of anything else to put in the black book. I am beginning to wish I had never introduced her to it at all. In fact there is a lot to be said for staying at work. The school bus has passed - I’ll just open another bottle!

As I mentioned in my last article our flight back from Barcelona last week end was delayed due to a rainstorm but that was only part of the story, it was further delayed by Fred and Alice. That’s them with the combined age of well over a hundred and fifty and who happen to be sitting on the seats in front of Christine and myself.


We board the already late plane and we store away our bags in the overhead lockers and finally sit down, we are in a row of three with the outside seat empty. Well it is certainly empty of people but has a pink bag on it which isn’t mine or Christine’s. I ask around and no one seems to have lost a pink bag.


So here I am, sitting in a plane next to an unidentified bag. I know that Barcelona to Leeds is an unlikely place for a terrorist attack but in this day and age when we are constantly warned that unidentified bags will be removed I am a little concerned. It looks an innocent sort of pink bag, just canvass with handles but then again I don’t suppose a bag with a bomb in it says ‘beware bomb’ on the outside.


So I bring it to the attention of a stewardess who asks around if anyone has lost a pink bag but no one owns up to the bag. She then calls over the head stewardess to see if it can be moved. I am now thinking more about should Christine and I be moved, straight off the plane, I know we are already delayed but I don’t fancy sitting with this bag almost on my knee.


Does security need to be called, do we need listening devices to see if it ticks, do bombs actually tick or is that only on the TV programs, I have no idea. Can it be moved or will that make it unstable and cause an explosion, I’ve seen that happen on TV, haven’t I? I actually suggest, perhaps because I am sat next to this pink bag, that we evacuate the plane, I think I may have watched too many Bruce Willis films but it is a little concerning.


The stewardess then lets everyone know over the speaker system that a pink bag has been found at the back of the plane and can everyone ensure they have all their hand luggage with them. People get up and check the overhead lockers and no one on the plane has a missing bag. I am now more sure than ever that I don’t need this bag sitting next to me.


The stewardess repeats the message in case anyone missed it and now the entire plane is concerned about this pink bag, well everyone except Fred and Alice apparently.


After a lot of discussion and a close inspection no wires are located or ticking detected, it looks like a bag left from the last flight. It is decided that the bag can be moved and should be removed from the plane and left with the ground staff. To my relief when the pink bag is picked up nothing happens, no bang or flash or flames in fact not a bit like a Bruce Willis film, all that is heard is Fred saying “Eh, were you taking my bag”.


The stewardess, not to mention the rest of us is a little surprised and asks him to confirm it is his bag. “Of course it is” says Fred “I put it on the seat behind because I couldn’t open the overhead locker”.


Very politely, which is more than I could have been, the stewardess asks Fred if he hadn’t heard the request for the bag owner to come forward. “You said you’d found a pink bag, I haven’t got a pink one, that’s red” says Fred and puts the bag on his knee and continues reading his paper unaware that he has caused a further half hour delay.


But we get home eventually and people can be seen helping Fred and Alice and their RED bag up the stairs at the Arrivals Hall at Leeds. They are still unaware of the confusion they caused before take off. I did check and I’ll swear that they each still have their slippers on. Pensioners! What can you say?

Well we are home from Barcelona and the insurance company can relax there are no claims this time. We have had an excellent time with Alex, Dave and the grandkids and now it’s time to cut down on the alcohol and cut out the three course Menu el Dia lunches and look to losing a few pounds. Surprisingly even with all the beach walking I have done I have still managed to put on an extra pound or three.


The journey home was not the best and because like all pensioners I like a grumble I have slipped into my Victor Meldrew mode in the hope that Barcelona Airport, Jet2.com and Leeds Bradford Airport may come to realise that a customers is someone to please not simply to endure.


It all starts in Barcelona naturally with the usual expected delay on the flight which raises a couple of issues, if the flight is always delayed why not set a different flight time and then we would all get to the airport later instead of sitting around for an extra hour. But more importantly, when they know the flight is going to be delayed tell us why don’t simply put up an electronic notice saying “DELAYED” we know that as we are all still sitting here wondering what is happening when we should be half way to Leeds by now.


We are only the customers, no need to keep us informed.


Eventually we get on the plane and the pilot explains that a heavy rainstorm somewhere had caused the delay and we take off. Twenty minutes into the flight the stewardess announces the toilets are out of order and the drinks trolley will be coming along any minute. I look round the plane and assess the numbers of let’s say older people and quickly come to the conclusions that no toilets and a drinks trolley is not a good idea but it happens anyway. A little further on the flight with a lot of people now fidgeting and sipping their drinks very slowly a flap in the ceiling of the plane has become loose and the stewardess presses in back into place, five minutes later it falls on a passengers head. Couple this with arm rests that have broken and seats that recline even without pressing the buttons and you begin to wonder how old these planes are and if ‘low cost’ means low maintenance.


We are only the customers, no need to make us comfortable.


And while on the subject of low cost what really annoys me is the way the airline advertises its prices. £5 there and £15 back the web site says so that's £40 for two of us, wrong, the total cost is over one hundred pounds when taxes are added. How can they advertise a flight for £5 when I can’t take that flight for less than £30. It’s like the £160 Habitat table that can’t be bought for less than £200 or the £179 car service from Dixon’s Motors that cannot be bought for less than £189. How can they all get away with it.


We are only the customers, no need to tell us the true cost.


Eventually we land at Leeds and a bus takes us to the arrivals hall, the first thing that strikes you is that you have to climb a rather long staircase, there is a down escalator but only stairs to go up, I would like to meet the architect who thought that was a good idea. We are now all struggling up the stairs behind Fred and Alice who must have a combined age of well over 150 and who are desperately in need of the loo. We then all pile down a corridor to the passport control desks having to file through one side of a set of double doors as the other side is locked but we are nearly there now and I know from our last trip that there are four passport desks so we should get through quickly. How wrong can I be!


There may be four desks but there are only two people and one of them is dealing with people who don’t have an EU passport so that leaves us with one person to scan two hundred and forty odd passports of people who are increasingly needing a loo.


We are only the customers, no need to pay out for more staff we can all queue.


But eventually after queuing fifteen minutes for the first available loo we get our cases and set of on our drive home. Collect a packet of fish and chips on the way and the world seems a better place all that remains is the story of the suspect red bag but that’s for another day. We have a few weeks at home now with a lawn and flower beds to prepare at the bottom of our garden, that will be a lot of digging and heavy work for me while Christine snips and prunes and designs the way it will look.

Now never let it be said that I am tight with money. It may be suggested that I am a little careful at times but with Christine I need to be careful. Regular readers will know with her taste in designer clothes she is high maintenance in the wallet department. So it was with this in mind that Alex, Christine and I set off on an expedition from Gava Mar where the family live on an adventure down the coast to see where the day took us.


The reason why we went on the trip was obvious to me although others didn’t see why we had to go so far, but only travelling a short distance was not an option. You see we had rented this car for a few days and what I didn’t know when we rented it, is that you have to pay for a full tank of petrol and in this little Corsa that meant a lot of miles had to be driven.


So with the car due back tomorrow we had three quarters of a tank of petrol to use up. OK I could have left the engine running all night with the air conditioning cranked up to the full to use some petrol but even on the streets of a genteel neighbourhood like Gava Mar that may be a little risky, so the alternative was to drive a lot of miles. What I couldn’t bring myself to do was to take it back to the hire company full of petrol I had paid for.


So we drop the kids at school and set off, no idea where we are going, just somewhere down the coast. We go up the mountain and drop down into Sitges for morning coffee at the local yacht club where Christine is impressed with the fashion sense of the local men! The coffee and croissants are excellent and we order one each, Christine doesn’t want to share one in case the locals know all about pensioners sharing scones which would give away her age. Then it’s off down the coast.


We have a beautiful drive up in the mountains overlooking the coast, reminds us a lot of driving along the French Riviera from Cannes to Monaco. Somewhere south of Tarragona we decide it’s time for lunch.


We drop out of the mountains and suddenly we are on a seafront promenade lined with cafes but with very few people, it’s so quiet we talk in whispers. There is no one at all sitting in any of the cafes, no music, no noise at all, it’s very weird. We have no idea where we are it feels a bit like a ghost town.


We come across a queue of people outside a locked and barred building and just as I am going to ask them what they are queuing for the doors open they all go inside and the doors are again locked and barred. Did they really exist? Has dementia set in? Is it the alcohol? Is this place really here?


We finally come to a cafe where some locals are eating so we decide this is the place for lunch. This isn’t the best looking cafe we have been in and I wonder if it’s up to standard for Christine, it certainly wouldn’t have done for Sam the dog but never the less at least some other people are in here so we go ahead and order.


I start with what turns out to be the best bowl full of mussels I have ever had. Superb. Christine orders ‘Mountain Ham’ thinking this was a type of ham but is delivered a plate with a mountain of ham on it, just ham, delicious ham and a lot of it. Alex orders butifarra, the local sausage which comes with a large portion of fries, garlic mushrooms and green chillies again delicious but a lot of food. Christine has now decided she wants a side salad with her ham so orders something that turns out to be a main course tuna salad with everything. We now have a lot of food on the table to say we only stopped for tapas, and we are having beef casserole for dinner tonight.


We still manage a couple of creme catalans and a flan to finish off, all too good. Even the coffees are good, this can’t last something must go wrong, maybe it will be the bill. The waitress puts it on the table and we turn it over with trepidation. We have had four meals, three puddings, three beers, two waters, and three coffees and the bill is 35 euros, that’s less than £24 for the three of us. If we knew where we where we would come back.


Dave who stayed at home working and didn’t get the very good lunch also didn’t get his beef casserole for dinner as Alex was far too full to bother cooking. He wasn’t happy! But the real problem at the end of the drive was the Corsa still had half a tank of petrol, we will have to do this all over again tomorrow.