The Oxcliffe Vixen

As you may realise, the Fox had a frustrating time of it last night. First thing this morning I got onto the phone. I sometimes find talking to a person more effective. Europcar phone system is equally frustrating. The phone rings, for you to be greeted by "Press One if you want to know about availability of cars or to make reservations. Press Two if you want to amend an existing reservation or to speak to Customer Services." I press two. 

The automated voice moves on to the next options. "Press One if you want to amend an existing reservation. Press Two if you wish to speak to someone from Customer Services." I press one.

 And, lo & behold, I'm back to the first set of options. Second time round I press two for customer services - a person might at least be able to pass me on to the right place. This they did.

 I am staggered when the first quote is an extra £70 for one day. We only paid £301 for the 14 days we've already booked. I refuse, too much I say. They manage to bring the price down to £45. I've not booked it as I want to check with the holiday company. If they're paying I'll happily go ahead, but, to my mind, £70 would pay for a lot of taxis. The hotel we've been booked into is only 5-6kms from the airport. It's in the centre of the city so I'm sure we will be quite happy to spend the day just exploring on foot (or wheels in my case). I'm now waiting till the lass in the travel company starts work today & see what they say.

I have to confess, after all the upset of the flight back from Canada, for which we've still not received so much as a proper apology, it is reassuring that the travel company does seem to be doing its best to mitigate the problem. They've booked the changed flight & the hotel, all paid for at no extra cost to us. This is what I call service. And we're not even going first class!

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We sit eating our evening meal.  The skies have emptied out yet again, accompanied this time by thunder & lightning. The rain has finally stopped. The sky still looks threatening. Heavy dirty grey clouds glower. Below, an intense grey/blue band of sky. All the colours of the garden are intensified. The limey green shoots of this year's growth on the evergreen trees are more an irridescent apple green. The underside of the eucalyptus & the apple tree shine a silvery green colour. Under the leylandia, the orange crocosmia blazes out. The hawthorn tree next door is truly golden yellow. The wind is getting up. We sit and wait for the next deluge to begin, eating our fishcakes.

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As I booted up, I noticed there was a section on the AOL homepage, listing the 10 best views in the world. I was surprised by the choices. Most of them I've never seen, nor am ever likely to, but a couple I had. One was in Glencoe, Scotland, the other Sydney Harbour. I will admit Sydney Harbour is breathtaking. Photographs don't prepare you for the reality. Glencoe I loved, though I would have picked the 3 Sisters mountains rather than Buachaille Etive Mor, the one they reommended. But would I have placed that view above the 3 Sisters in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia?  For that matter, they showed a view of a lake scene surrounded by mountains. I remember early one morning being stunned by the view across Loch Sunart from

the B&B we were staying in in Strontian. Then of course there's all those fabulous lake views around the Lake District. Or Lake Louise in Canada. May be what I'm really saying is that there is just so much beauty in this world, it's impossible to name just 10 that are superior to all others. And often the time of day & your mood can make such a difference to your appreciation of the view before you. The very angle you look at something can change your mind.

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We're back. We had a good, if exhausting, weekend away. We used to be rather blase about the Lake District. We both lived & worked there. We could have named you every hotel & B&B in the South Lakes. At last, we can go back & see the area with fresh eyes. It was wonderful to see the swallows & martins collecting together on the telephone wires, ready for their long journey back to Africa. They always used to amass on the telephone lines outside our bedroom window where we used to live. We also had some martins who nested every year under the eaves just outside the window. A right racket the babies made at feeding times! But since we moved more into town these sights are rare.

The highlight of our weekend was undoubtedly the Ben Nicholson exhibition at the Abbot Hall, Kendal. We didn't really know his work before, though we knew the name. His early work, his "primitive" paintings, didn't do much for either of us. Our interest arose as we moved into the 1930s and his more abstract works. One pair of pictures were similar. One was bigger than the other, but design & colour varied slightly. I found myself being fascinated by how the small changes affected the feel of the completed work. With others, I got waylaid into differing textures, or the difference between sharp lines and soft blurred edges. Ultimately, though, I have to admit that I feel there are greater exponents of this style of work eg Modrian or Rothko. I also feel so much of the work was an intellectual exercise rather than an emotional experience, or even saying very much. But, for all that, it was a worthwhile trip.

We got back home yesterday to be saddened by the sight of just one coloured dove sitting, all lonesome, on the trellis. It looks as though the murder victim was one of the lovebirds of the summer.

On a cheerier note we found presents awaiting us. A book, a novel, had arrived in the post from our finanacial adviser. And on the fence hung a bag of free range eggs from Mrs Bean's ladies. How kind some people can be.

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Today we're off for our weekend in the Lakes, to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary.The holiday spirit arrived early. Yesterday, in fact. By the time we'd been to the Farmers' Market & armed ourselves with home-made pies, fresh fish, saltmarsh beef as well as salt marsh lamb, we decided to adjourn to the local pub & have some lunch. Fortified with pea & ham soup & a sandwich each, we then headed home & an afternoon nap. We reluctantly got up nearly 6ish, cooked dinner, a quick look at "Numbers" for an hour & I, at least, was back to bed just after 9pm to arise after 8 this morning. I've clearly started my chill out already.

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I've just been out on a blackberry hunt in the garden. I picked our first apples & pears,  a thankyou to Mrs Bean for her kindnesses over the year. Then I strolled on round the garden to find a very sad sight. One of our collared doves has met its end at the hands of some cat or bird of prey. It's body lies on the path by the rockery. It's clearly been there for a while. It's been so wet of late I've not been out in the garden for ages. I contemplated moving the body until I saw how alive it was. Maggots everywhere. It always saddens me to see such beauty destroyed by such violence. I tell myself it's all part of life's rich tapestry. Come to think of it, a cat is the more likely perpetrator. A bird of prey would have had the decency to eat its victim, whereas this bird looked whole except where the maggots were attacking it.

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It's Farmers' Market day today. We didn't bother going last month which makes this month's one all the more exciting. It's great to see high quality meat & to chat with the local farmers. I could wish our local market had a better fruit & veg stall, but I have to admit that this is, on the whole, a meat producing area, & that's reflected in the stalls. Yesterday we were at the local butchers buying some excellent Cumbrian chicken. I noticed some nice looking sirloin & would have contemplated buying it. But I knew the market was on today and any beef would be almost black from much longer hanging, & therefore so much tenderer & tastier. 

I've been continuing to read on about Borneo for our potential holiday. Brunei, where I was born & so particularly want to visit, is a Muslim country. As a result alcohol is illegal. They have made some provision for foreigners in that you can take into the country 2litres of wine or spirits & 12 cans of beer, to be drunk out of sight of other people. I gather at a few tourist hotels you can get alcohol, often in little teapots as "special tea". Although I don't think either of us are alcoholics, it doesn't alter the fact we do appreciate a bottle of wine with a meal & sometimes just by itself. (You may have guessed that from our blogs!!) In tropical countries we generally prefer more juice & water than alcohol. But somehow, being told you can't have something, instantly makes it more attractive. I'm telling myself, if they don't sell alcohol, they probably make some wonderful non-alcoholic cocktails. But it doesn't stop the niggle at the restriction, the denial of choice. Maybe we'll just spend a few days in Brunei, enough to have satisfied my curiosity, then move on to the Malaysian part of Borneo, where pubs exist. Or perhaps Singapore, a fascinating city which we've never properly explored, despite a couple of stopovers on the way to Australia. Or somewhere like Penang, an island just off mainland Malaya, where my parents married & spent their honeymoon. The possibilities are endless & we could end up having a geat oriental experience.

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Talking of old friends, we were pleased to bump into Tony, the power station worker at the Pub yesterday. He used to be a regular, when his shift pattern allowed. Then he got charged with drinking and driving & had his licence taken off him for a year. Since then he's spent a lot of time making up to his wife for all the extra driving she's had to do -when you have two teenage children & live in a fairly rural area that can add up to a lot of taxi driving time. Even now, he's very nervous of drinking & driving and doesn't stay long. Still it was a pleasure to see him again & catch up on the news.

Our next surprise came at Morrisons. You know you've arrived in your new home when you start bumping into friends in the supermarket. This time it was Gaz, the Pub owner & manager, & his girlfriend, Becks. It's the first time he's introduced us to her. They're just back from a family wedding in New York. Throughout the shop, we kept bumping into each other. Poor Gaz looked almost more asleep than anything else - they'd arrived back in England that morning. Whenever he did wake up, a great grin broke out on his face as he realised Becks was with him. Young love is a wondrous thing! We've never seen them at the supermarket before. They seem very new at the game. I was surprised to see they were still slowly going round the shelves as we left. We, old-handers, have learnt how to get the shopping done & get out quick. Maybe it's just we regard food shopping as a chore rather than a pleasure! 

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I didn't need to look out of the window to realise it was going to be yet another wet day. It was waking up at 6 in the morning with terrible pains in my knees that told me. A physiotherapist once told me that the boffins reckon that the change in air pressure can have that effect if you suffer with inflamed joints. Whatever the reason, my knees usually tell me & this morning was one such occasion with a vengeance.

However, that's enough of me being sorry for myself. After a night like last night I feel I have little to grumble about. As much as anything else these last-Monday-of-the-month meals are an affirmation of friendship. It's always an evening of much merriment, lively conversation & plenty of hearty laughter. Mrs B, the retired headmistress, had to admit she'd been feeling a bit low before she came out but such feelings quickly dissolved in our company. Altogether it makes you realise just how important friends are. Over the years we've all had our problems - deaths & illnesses. But one thing you can guarantee is that the others are thinking of you, at the end of the telephone if you're not able to get out. Their well wishes & general loving good humour are a cushion against any of life's trials. It's great to have them all, true friends indeed.

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We're off out for our last-Monday-of-the-month meal tonight. This time we're dining at the Pub. We've not eaten there for a while & ultimately it is our home base. Den & Fran are giving us a lift so the Fox will be able to drink as much as he fancies without worrying about the drive home.

This, of course, means I'm footloose & fancy free this morning. No meal to prepare. I'm once more trying to decide what to do with that salmon, though I suspect we'll have to do the big food shop on Tuesday, so the salmon may well just stay in the freezer a little longer.

I'm also turning my mind to our potential holiday in Brunei. The Fox is not too excited by the prospect though he can appreciate I would maybe want to see the land of my birth. So I'm looking for somewhere to make the holiday a two centre one without putting too much extra flying on the journey. I had contemplated going on to New Zealand, a country that has long appealed to me, or to Australia again. But maybe the solution is to make it an Asian holiday and stop somewhere like India or Thailand. Those countries are at least on the way home again. More investigation is needed.

Then, perhaps I'll go to Paris with a jigsaw. There's more than one way to travel!

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So it is, on Friday, we rummage around the veg drawer of the fridge, looking for some peppers to put in the fajitas & discover a huge mushroom. It had been in the fridge so long we'd forgotten we even had it, ie since before I went down with my coughs & splutters. Forget the salmon for yesterday's meal. It magically transformed into a mushroom pizza. Home made of course.

The Pub has decided on a whole range of special meals coming up soon. Another gourmet evening, an end of season BBQ & some event including paella (I've not seen the details of this one). I'm not sure if we're going to any of them. The Fox isn't very keen on paella which is why he only reluctantly told me of that event. The BBQ they say fashions on a Caribbean/tropical theme obligatory. If they expect that, they'll have to put some heating on as far as I'm concerned. If they think I'm going to survive an evening in light summery clothing without a cardigan at the end of September, even if we're eating indoors, they have got to be joking. I've hardly taken my woollies off all summer this year! As for the gourmet evening, it's just before we're off to France for our hols.

I personally have nothing against going to any of the meals, but I can't help thinking we're already eating out a fair bit at the moment. We're off to France early October, but before that we've got a weekend away in the Lakes booked & a couple of Geriatric Corner's last Monday-of-the-month meals. On the whole we enjoy both the cooking & the eating at home, indeed we generally prefer it. If friends are going, we might be more tempted, more for the pleasure of their company than anything else. We'll see.

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