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Teenagers have a way with words. When my cousin, Ella, was about 15, her father, a single parent of three, sent her to stay with Mum so that he could take a bit of a break. The Isle of Wight has been a popular summer resort since the Victorian times and generations of children have enjoyed summers synonymous with grazed knees, banana sandwiches, shrimping nets, sandy underpants, skinny-dipping, first dances, first kisses, first … Ah, halcyon days!

However , as foreign travel became affordable to the masses, the mild climate and holiday atmosphere spawned a rash of old people’s homes. While the families still descend from London in August, the Island has attracted the nickname of “God’s Waiting Room” for the rest of the year. And, unfortunately, a seaside town out of season is never going to cut it with a bored teen.

Not all the old folk here are anonymous inmates of residential care homes. In common with many of her contemporaries, Mum herself chose to ‘retire’ to the Isle of Wight after my father died. Our family have strong links with the Island. I was spending my summer holidays here, racing keelboats from the local sailing club and, to Mum, it seemed the most natural thing to do. However, when she announced her plans, my grandmother told her, “You’ll live till you’re 100 and go mad. Everyone does.”

Sitting down to lunch in the Club dining room, Ella surveyed Mum’s lame, deaf and toothless friends. “Ugh, me-no-paus-al …”, she huffed, “do we really HAVE to eat in Jurassic Park!”

That was twenty years ago. But the name seemed so apt, it stuck. We had lunch there today. Not much has changed. Only now, sadly, it is Mum and her contemporaries who are the fossils.

Founded in 1886, the sailing club is the oldest on the Island. It boasts three competitive classes for adult sailors and a growing reputation as a centre of excellence for sail training for youngsters from age 8 and up. Progress indeed, since I was a child, when under-18’s were not allowed to cross the gravel in front of the clubhouse (a pre-fab wooden cricket pavilion, constructed by Boulter and Paul of Norwich circa 1896), let alone set foot in the dining room! Until the 70’s, we were confined to the Dinghy Club (started in 1925 by David Niven and a friend), and just barely tolerated on the basis that we were neither seen nor heard by the senior members. Any accidental trespass into the adults’ territory was invariably met with a severe rebuke from any one of a dozen purple-faced moustaches lining the bar room balcony. But that was then.

Nowadays, throughout the winter (except when the footie is on Sky at the Village Inn), the Club is the focus of our social circle. Summer too, though the landscape changes a bit after Easter with the arrival of the London set, keen to secure places for their children on Cadet Week. These people are generally my contemporaries, though I am always slightly shocked to see how we have all aged. Terrifyingly, their children are now of an age to be organising Dinghy Club events themselves.

As the weather warms up, the older year-round residents take refuge in their gardens, reliquishing their Scrabble and bridge evenings in favour of more nautically-inspired events for the under-60’s, “the young”! Even so, there are moments when one could be forgiven for mistaking the Club dining room for some sort of posh retirement home.

“Do you want pudding, Mr Hamilton?”, asks a young waitress.
What is it?”, comes the reply.
“Rhubarb Crumble or Chocolate Torte”.
“Chocolate sauce, eh? Yes, I’ll think I’ll have vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.”
“Err, we can do vanilla ice cream, but we don’t have chocolate sauce, I’m afraid.”
“No chocolate sauce? Then why did you offer it? I’ll just have vanilla ice cream, thank you.” Then, in a stage whisper, “Really, I don’t know where they find these waitresses … ”
I don’t know either, but I swear they are some of the most patient teenagers you will find anywhere. Our waitress moves on.
“Pudding, Mrs Pilchard?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Would you like desert, Mrs Pilchard?”
“Oooh yes! What is it?”
“Rhubard Crumble or Chocolate Torte”.
“With custard? I do like home-made custard, don’t you? What did you say the choices were …?”

I got a bit bored with the duck theme and thought the site could do with a bit of a makeover. I’ve gone back to the original theme, but let me know if you want your duck back. LOL. I felt we’d got a bit stale, so I thought I’d start this year’s riding season with a blog entry. But don’t feel obliged to follow suit. Some ride reports would be nice, but feel free to keep things going with the odd joke, or anything else really …

After a couple of months of nursing and housekeeping for mum, I was, in John’s words, becoming a “right moody bint”! I certainly felt overdue for some “me” time, so John and I caught an early ferry over to the mainland and went for a bike ride. The excuse, as if I needed one, was that we needed to flick the duster over our London house and collect the post. John generally goes up once a week, but our joint absence gave Mum the opportunity to “manage” on her own for the day for the first time in nine months. Anyway, I had booked a test ride …

Since our last American trip, John has been on about buying a Triumph Thunderbird for the next one. The Thunderbird does nothing for me, and John knows it. But he is determined to “buy British” and I suppose I ought to salute his patriotism – even if it does mean another trip punctuated with detours to uncooperative Triumph dealers. Talking to Willie over Skype a few weeks back, I said if John went ahead and bought a Triumph cruiser, I would be tempted to buy a well-known American marque.  I could then be sure of finding a dealer when I (inevitably) needed one and it would, after all these years, make sense of all those T-shirts! Willie didn’t take me seriously and, to be fair, I was half joking. But, as luck would have it, a couple of days later my copy of Bike Magazine dropped through the letter box … with a full page ad encouraging folks to test ride a Harley. Must be fate, me thinks. So I entered my vital statistics(!) on the Harley site and let it choose a suitable bike for me. And that, my friends, is how I ended up riding a Road King Classic … amongst other things.

The dealer is located in Guildford, so we were close to both highway and some really lovely country roads … and the weather was gorgeous. I only had the Road King for an hour, but I discovered plenty that I wouldn’t have guessed by looking at it – not all of it, I have to say, good. The bike got some admiring glances out on the A3 … and I got some bemused ones. Luckily, at 80mph (I didn’t know Harleys went that fast LOL), I didn’t have time to explain that the bike wasn’t mine. Like the Queen, simply smile and wave, smile and wave … Then again, if I’d thought about all those leafy lanes and picturesque Surrey villages, I probably wouldn’t have booked the ride at all. The first junction we came across was a mini-roundabout. Eek! Mercifully, the bike turned out to be a lot nimbler than the supertanker I had feared it might be. Suffice to say, I delivered the bike back to the dealer unblemished, with a numb butt and a very big grin on my face. May be, just may be …

Talking about our plans back at the showroom, John mentioned the Thunderbird (he couldn’t be tempted to try the Road King). All credit to him, the nerdy salesman (much more interested in promoting his own custom bikes than selling a stock model) directed us down the road to Bramley, where there is a very amenable Triumph dealer. And that, my friends, is how I ended up riding a 2300cc (140 in³) Rocket III!

I’m glad I pushed John into riding the Thunderbird. It was such a nice day and we were having fun. We rocked up at the Triumph dealer on spec and asked if he happened to have a Thunderbird demo that we could test.

He did, and we could.

Parked next to the Thunderbird, there was a Rocket III. “Now that’s a cool bike”, I said, “why not go for one of those.” “Too big”, said John, “and for France we would have to detune it to 106 bhp.” “Shame”, says I, “sounds plenty to me.” Seeing that John wasn’t interested in the Rocket, the salesman asked if I’d like to take it out. Is the Pope a catholic?! (On second thoughts, please don’t answer that. But you know what I mean.)

In the end, I rode both the Rocket and the Thunderbird, but I’ll stick with my opinion that the Rocket is a better bike. Mad, of course. But better. The (non-stock) gel seat and riding position were more comfortable for me than the Road King. My only quibble was that it felt heavy on the roundabouts (we have lots of “circles” in England), which seemed odd for something so powerful. Surprisingly, the Road King handled better. I wondered whether the tyre pressures weren’t a little low. The only thing I could compare the Rocket with was Doug’s Valkyrie, and there really isn’t much similarity. I remember the Honda as being much lighter and easier to ride. Even so, I think John may be a convert. We both agreed that, while the Thunderbird was more stable at slow speeds, it seemed a bit light at the front end. Odd. Skittish almost.

It is all rather academic anyway as, until we sell our London house, we can’t afford to buy anything. The dealers didn’t seem to mind, though we conveniently forgot to tell them that we would likely buy our next bikes in the States.

St. Paddy’s Day is long gone.

 Where is everyone? Did anyone do anything nice over the long weekend?

The observatory on the summit of the Pic du Midi, 60k to the west of Montréjeau, is clearly silhouetted against a clear blue sky. It’s going to be a great day for skiing. Sunshine, snow, faux filet and frites for lunch, a pichet of vin rouge and may be a chocolat chaud or two (adding a shot of quelque choses from a hip flask when the waiter isn’t looking) …

I’m dreaming. Something heavy lands on my ankles and I open my eyes to find a 6kg tabby pressing his nose into my face, demanding breakfast. It’s 6.45am. The sun is streaming through a chink in the curtains, but we’re not in the Pyrenees. The cat is now stomping about on John’s legs. His brother is wailing by the bedroom door. John shows no sign of wanting to greet the day. He turns over and the cat lands on the floor with an unceremonious thud. Resistance is futile. I drag on my dressing gown and go and find them some food before they wake my mother.

My cousin and my great-aunt are coming to lunch today and I need to get up anyway. It’s John’s birthday and lunch is as close as he will get to a birthday party. If I had asked him in advance who he would most have liked to invite, I doubt he would have thought of Leslie. It doesn’t matter. Leslie and Roz have, of course, come to see Mum, not John, but they have the great advantages of being good company and enjoying their food.

Leslie is my mother’s accountant. He is also a member of the British Long Distance Swimming Association and the (rather eccentric) Serpentine Swimming Club in Hyde Park. Readers in the UK may have seen Leslie in a recent advertising campaign by The Times: a swimmer in Speedo trunks and a black swimming cap, diving into the Serpentine on a cold winter’s day. You can’t see Leslie’s face in the photo, but knowing his reputation as a trencherman, there was no mistaking the slightly rotund midriff. John and Leslie get on well. Indeed, they had, very nearly, been business partners.

 

When John retired from the Met Police in 2001, he had the idea of setting up an IT consultancy. It didn’t seem such a bad idea. We both had backgrounds in computing. Hell, we met on a computer course, after all! John spent the last few years of his service rolling out a London-wide crime reporting system and was pretty handy when it came to pulling computers apart. I built databases. My first lesson in hands-on computer maintenance came in 1994, when John took the lid off our brand new desktop and stuck the end of the vacuum cleaner in it. We nearly had a “domestic”! But two days later, when our receptionist’s computer packed up, I won a lot of Brownie points by whipping off the lid and swapping her hard drive with another from a similar machine. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. By 2001, I was working as a Network Administrator for a medical communications company.

 

Anyway, all this is by the by. Where was I? Ah yes, our brief foray into IT consultancy …

 

Our first potential client was referred to us by a friend. Mr Prakash was a plastic surgeon. He was interested in installing a network in his office and, specifically, needed a database to store digital photographs. We needed someone with an expert knowledge of computer networks. And that’s where Leslie fits in.

 

John and Leslie duly agreed to meet Mr Prakash at his very swish Harley Street consulting rooms. The door was answered by an extremely shapely pair of bristols, the owner of which promptly announced that she was one of Mr Prakash’s most grateful patients. In case you hadn’t guessed, Mr Prakash specialised in breast enhancement.

 

Having admired the secretary’s assets, our dynamic duo went on to view the offices and discuss the relative merits of Novell and Windows NT. Mr Prakash then came to the subject of the storage of his photos and choice of a digital camera, and pulled out a large album of “before and after” photos of his work. Reading between the lines, things went steadily downhill from there …

 

Sadly, “Rynne Associates” never did get that contract and, as it happened, we were both offered other jobs shortly after. Nevertheless, as far as John and Leslie were concerned, the abortive venture served to cement a lasting friendship.

To: The Edmunds, the Rooneys, the O’Rynnes, and the O’Sanfilippos

From: O’Stoughton

 A little Irish humor:

 Murphy told Quinn that his wife was driving him to drink. Quinn thinks he’s very lucky because his own wife makes him walk.

Reilly went to trial for armed robbery. The jury foreman came out and announced, “Not guilty.” “That’s grand!” shouted Reilly. “Does that mean I can keep the money?”

Mrs. Feeney shouted from the kitchen, “Is that you I hear spittin’ in the vase on the mantle piece?” “No,” said himself, “but I’m gettin’ closer all the time.”

Slaney phoned the maternity ward at the hospital. “Quick!” He said. “Send an ambulance, my wife is goin’ to have a baby!” “Tell me, is this her first baby?” the intern asked. “No, this is her husband, Kevin, speakin’.”

“O’Ryan,” asked the druggist, “did that mudpack I gave you improve your wife’s appearance?” “It did surely,” replied O’Ryan, “but it keeps fallin’ off!”

How do you recognise a Dubliner on an oil rig?
He’s the one throwing crusts of bread to the helicopters…

And finally:

A Texan walks into a pub in Ireland and clears his voice to the crowd of drinkers. He says, “I hear you Irish are a bunch of hard drinkers. I’ll give $500 American dollars to anybody in here who can drink 10 pints of Guinness back-to-back.”

The room is quiet, and no one takes up the Texan’s offer. One man even leaves.

Thirty minutes later the same gentleman who left shows back up and taps the Texan on the shoulder. “Is your bet still good?” asks the Irishman.

The Texan says yes and asks the bartender to line up 10 pints of Guinness. Immediately the Irishman tears into all 10 of the pint glasses, drinking them all back-to-back.

The other pub patrons cheer as the Texan sits in amazement. The Texan gives the Irishman the $500 and says, “If ya don’t mind me askin’, where did you go for that 30 minutes you were gone?”

The Irishman replies, “Oh… I had to go to the pub down the street to see if I could do it first.”

 

A little 10-year-old girl was walking home, alone, from school one day, when a big man on a black motorcycle pulls up beside her.

After following along for a while, turns to her and asks: “Hey there, do you want to go for a ride?”

“NO!” says the little girl as she keeps on walking.

The motorcyclist again pulls up beside her and asks, ” I will give you a big bag of candy if you hop on the back.”

“NO!” says the little girl as she hurries down the street.

The motorcyclist pulls up beside the little girl again and says: “Okay, I’m feeling generous today! I’ll give you a big bag of candy AND a handful of quarters and if you will just hop on the back of my bike and go for a ride with me.”

The little girl stopped and turned to face him and loudly and sternly tells him, “Look Dad, You’re the one who bought the Honda instead of the Harley! So ride it by yourself!”

I am feeling a bit sorry for myself today. I have shingles … again. It is unattractive and uncomfortable and I have been given a five-a-day course of anti-viral horse pills that may, or may not, stop it spreading and have already upset my stomach. Shingles and an upset stomach. Outstanding.

 

On the other hand, having a potentially contagious disease does give me an excuse to avoid hugging people. Specifically, it presents me with a water-tight cop out this weekend when my sister comes to stay. One of the many criticisms Sarah has levelled at me over the years is that I don’t show enough affection, ergo I don’t hug her. She is probably right. As a family, I don’t think we were great huggers, and I particularly detest being hugged by bossomy old ladies with more facial hair than Bill Oddie, or trying to ‘hug’ the boney thorax of my skeletal sister without actually breaking anything. When greeting friends or relatives of either sex, the social air kiss is just soooo much less embarrassing. Mwah darhling! And now, of course, having spent so much time in France, John and I habitually greet friends with a kiss on alternate cheeks, which takes some of our non-Francophile friends by surprise and can be hazardous. Right side first. Ooops!

 

Likewise, I was initially taken aback by the American man-hug. But there is something simultaneously comradely and affectionate about this very masculine embrace – often combined with a slap on the back between two men or a kiss on the cheek between a man and a woman. This is no perfunctory greeting reserved for the tribal elders, but a genuine recognition of brotherhood. Even between men and women, while the the potential to take advantage of physical proximity undoubtedly exists, the power and duration of the hug is generally directly proportional to the closeness of the friendship. Anyway, so natural is the gesture, that any exageration tends to be more flattering than offensive. Away from home, such a hug bestows a reassuring sense of belonging, of being part of the club and, as such, I am a fan.

 

Anyway, back to the present and my current role as my mother’s housekeeper. We’ve just seen my aunt off on the 10.55am Yarmouth ferry. Now I need to remake the guest bed for my slightly potty sister, who arrives tomorrow. The utility room already looks like a Chinese laundry, so I am faced with the dilemma of whether or not I really need to change the sheets. Auntie says not. She only stayed one night and it is, in her opinion, perfectly acceptable to ask Sarah to sleep on the unused side of the double bed. On the other hand, my sister drives us all round the bend and doesn’t always get the warmest of welcomes from our mother, so I am inclined to make a special effort for her. It worked last time. Peace and harmony are the names of the game where the two of them are concerned. This time, however, the dice are loaded against me. It is Mother’s Day on Sunday and Sarah has baked a cake …

 

In fact, Sarah has very probably baked several cakes. She is nothing if not a perfectionist. Mum’s lemon sponge birthday cake took several attempts. For weeks beforehand, Sarah’s friends, relatives and workmates were presented with beta versions. Dozens of cookery books were consulted. Recipes were chosen and modified. Advice was sought from friends. The butter was creamed, the eggs were beaten and the batter was baked. But, time and time again, the finished cake was found to be too rich, too sweet, too heavy, too sharp, too, too …

 

In the event, Sarah’s cake was a triumph: a mini masterpiece covered with a delicate white glacé icing, decorated with little gold sugar stars and a white rose from her own garden. It tasted delicious and we told her so, but the hospital had stolen her thunder. There was another cake! Or, to be more precise, as my sister arrived habitually late and well after teatime, there HAD BEEN another cake. A rather large one, actually. But all that was left now were some chocolate crumbs and a bit of squishy icing. Nevertheless, with all the hype surrounding the making of Sarah’s lemon sponge, we could hardly leave it, could we? Well, yes we could. With the best will in the world, there is only so much birthday cake one can be expected to consume in the space of two hours. There was a bit left over and Mum made the fatal error of suggesting that it be offered to the nurses. Cue frilly lips and tears before bedtime. Feel the love …

Holidays, eh? No sooner are we back in the UK, than John has been called away to deal with yet another family drama. So I thought I’d post a couple of pictures from our Guinness brewery tour to cheer us both up.

Here’s John trying to steal the famous harp.

 

And here’s me, just about to sample the perfect pint (in the sparkliest glass) in the Gravity Bar – Dublin’s highest viewpoint. Shame about the weather LOL!

One Thursday Anne says, ‘There’s this thing, when I go down on my
John, his balls are always cold.’

‘Funny you should say that’, says Mary. ‘my Franks balls are always
cold too.

‘EEAUUWWWWWWGHHHHHH’ says Nancy, ‘that’s disgusting.
How can you both do that?’

So her friends tell Nancy that the blow job is the best way
to keep her man from straying.

The following Thursday, Anne and Mary are in the restaurant waiting
for their friend to arrive. In walks Nancy with a huge black eye.

‘What happened to you’? ask her two friends.

‘Mike hit me’ came the reply.

‘Why?’ ask the girls.

‘I don’t know’, says Nancy, ‘I was giving him the blow job like you
told me to, and all I said was, your balls aren’t cold like Frank’s
and John’s.’

As you can imagine, a lot has happened in the two months since my last post. We got Mum home, safe and sound, in time for Christmas. Though it wasn’t, perhaps, quite the merry feast that we had all hoped for. Festive food, especially those dishes whose main ingredients consisted of dried fruit and nuts, proved quite a challenge to Mum’s digestive system. There were regular bouts of painful indigestion and sickness, culminating in a blockage that required yet another surgical intervention. The good news is that the operation went well and, despite the loss of yet more weight and muscle-strength, we all believe that Mum is now well on the road to recovery. So, with our London house now finished and on the market, and Mum convalescing in The Elms, John and I put the cats in a cattery and took a bit of a break.

It was all a bit “last minute” and we are being a little secretive about our current whereabouts. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out, but John’s mother is under the impression that we are still on the Isle of Wight, and we would rather keep it that way.

Knowing what a hard winter it has been so far here, it was reasonable to assume that an uninsulated summer cottage would be a touch chilly in mid-February. Thus, having failed to identify any charity sending blankets to Haiti, we borrowed two or three from Mum’s vast, moth-ball scented collection, dragged the all-seasons duvet and pillows off our own bed, and packed our thermal undies along with a dozen bottles of wine and three quarts of comforting home-canned stew.

We were right about the cottage. Despite the turf fire and central heating, we can still see our breath indoors. A hard frost covers the road outside and dark clouds race in off the Atlantic, bringing with them hail, sleet and snow.  But things could be worse. As quickly as the clouds arrive, they are gone again. Far off, the Cliffs of Moher and O’Brien’s Tower emerge silhouetted against a narrow band of blue sky and shafts of sunlight paint the neighbouring fields bronze, copper and gold. And, if all goes to plan, this view (or one very similar) will shortly be ours to keep.

The welcome has been characteristically warm and we have already been fed to within an inch of our lives or, at the very least, to the last hole on our longest belts. Then there is the Guinness. No trip would be complete without a good drink with John’s cousins. So, on Friday evening we ate in and agreed to meet up in Inagh for a jar or two around 9.30pm.

Whether due to the recession or to the smoking ban, O’Rinn’s seemed unusually quiet. We had a couple of pints there, then adjourned across the road to Dillons, where a poker game was drawing a bit of a crowd. As, one by one, the players threw in their hands, the dimly-lit bar emptied, leaving a few die-hard drinkers and our small party. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Ollie, how are ye?”, said Marie. The owner of the hand was a thin elderly man with long white hair and a complete absence of molars. He poked a boney finger at John, “What’s wrong with your hair, Tulip? Are ye a policeman or someting?”. Then, to Theresa, “This’ll be your husband?” Theresa indicated that John was actually my husband, to which Ollie reacted with apparent disappointment, “Eh, so ye’re married to Tulip?” He backed off a little and began to sing a Republican tribute to the Falls Road Volunteers. Mercifully, the entertainment was swiftly brought to a conclusion when the landlord hit the light-switch and plunged the bar into darkness. It was time to leave.

I don’t remember anything else about the evening. It was, in fact, about 3.30am when John and I got indoors and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I have no idea if John had achieved the gallon, but was only glad that I had been drinking halves to his pints. It was still dark when John woke me, clambering about on my side of the bed. If my luck was in, my sense of humour was definitely out. “What the f*ck are you doing?”, were the most romantic words I could muster. “I need to pee and I can’t find my way out. Where’s the f*cking door gone?” came the reply from my disoriented and increasingly panic-stricken husband. I quickly turned the light on before there was an accident.

Suffice to say, I was more than slightly relieved when Jim rang on Saturday morning and put us off until tonight.