Monday 21st September 2015

Sunday

We slept through until gone seven, when the heating switched on so the boiler firing up did wake us up, and spur the cats onto another round of persistent meowing. One of us gets up, goes down the stairs to feed the mogs and put a pot of coffee on the cooker. Life will soon be better. Not that it is bad now to be honest.

I check the interwebs for the usual things: Flickr, Faceache and the football gossip. Then I can take my coffee to the sofa to watch MOTD and watch the birds on the feeders outside. Chelski beat The Arse, but Citeh lost to Wet Sham, Leicester came back to draw with Stoke, Blunderland slumped, Watford Super Hornet Boys won at The Toon. All in all, wonderfully unpredicatable.

We have breakfast, then get ready for come community action: a beach clean up. I have been meaning for some time, OK, many years, to put something back, and what with Open House, The Heritage Weekend and Orchid Season now over with, I have no more excuses. So we were to meet down at Admiralty Pier at ten to collect tools and have a brief, before the clean up of Shakespeare Beach.

It was also a scientific thing, with all litter and flotsam being logged by size and type. Brief given, we set off and beginning picking and logging. That is was such a glorious autumn day did not make it a chore at all, nor did meeting many like-minded people.

We were to meet the family for a meal at one, so at twelve fifteen we leave and head to the ‘family pub’ outside the military school, both called The Duke of York. Now, I have nothing against cheap chains, nor cheap food, but we were bot not looking forward to this. However, the reservation was good, and being the first two to arrive, we get drinks and wait. And in time the others arrive, including Jen’s friend from Australia, who was visiting Engerlands for the first time in 18 years.

Most of us have the carvery, which was OK, but the beer. Well, Wadworth 6X is one of my favourite beers, maybe even my favourite, so I though it so lucky that had it on draught. But the beer was awful, had an odd aftertaste, and that a follow-up pint of Tetley was much better shoed how bad it was.

Most of us were looking at our watches, me most of all as City were about to kick off at Anfield, in fact I thought we kicked off at half one, so wanted to get back for the 2nd half. In the end, it was a four kick off, so no hurry, but we were home anyway, so take to the sofa.

City’s game wasn’t even on the radio, just updates, but we played OK, fell behind just after half time, but Martin levelled with a fine shot/lob on the hour, and with a couple of scares, we deserved a point.

That done we have the remains of the garlic and herb focaccia for tea, grilled with both pate and cheese on, not together, but on on each half, see what I mean? Oh well. It is very nice indeed.

But then we have to turn our attention to the wine. It has been fermenting for two weeks, well, it needed after the first batch of yeast was out of date, so now we had to rack it. But first, put the fruit in a bag and let it drain and collect the fermented juice. First we find we had ;lost; the second fermentation bucket, then the demijohns and finally the airlocks. But, we did find the demijohns, and used a large pot to collect the juice, so have to rig up a Heath-Robinson stand with an old walking stick, and would have to let gravity take its course over night.

And that was the day and weekend. I really should have arranged my hotel accommodation for Monday night in London. But, I was pooped, so what better way to end the day than with a documentary on Ava Lovelace? None indeed.