Tarrant & Andrews Family Diary

Theatre Tickets

Cindy & I had organised this term’s worth of big deal tickets. I decided that I didn’t want to go without her, so I’ve given them away to family and friends.

Sam and Steve went to see Twelfth Night (review).

Mary and her sister Anne went to see My Mother Said I Never Should (Anne said it was interesting!).

Judy and Keith are going to see Jerusalem.

And Jo and Bill are going to see Dead Funny.

Photos of Mandy’s Birthday

I’ve put up some photos from Mandy’s birthday weekend here in York. There are several of Cindy.

There are also more photos added to the Photos of Cindy gallery.

I’ve had a busy day doing forms for probate, inheritance tax and Cindy’s pension. I also had to go to the supermarket and I met John Rack for coffee this afternoon.

The children are tired, particularly Rose, after her weekend away.

I’m tired too.

Practical Day

Kate Hodge our MacMillan nurse came round today, to chat about practical things. She’s sorted out some extra painkillers for Cindy. Cindy wanted to have some available, because she’s worried about things getting worse at the weekends when everyone who knows her is unavailable. Kate is also going to sort out a care plan for other weekend eventualities, so Cindy doesn’t end up in hospital unnecessarily.

We also wanted to talk to Kate about what benefits I should be claiming, now that I’ve finally finished being ill at Cawood. It seems it’s a good thing we spent all our savings on the kitchen! I’m going to claim for income support and carer’s allowance. Income support is based on Cindy’s income too, so we’ll see what we get!

This evening I went to a Year 6 parents’ evening for John’s class. We were filled in on plans for the year, what and when the tests are, and lots of info about Sex Education (growing up) and PSHCE – which sounds fun. John seems to have settled in really well and has decided he likes Mrs McClure following a chat about Malorie Blackman, whose books John is really enjoying at the moment.

Computer Out of Action!

No entries recently as the computer hasn’t been working properly.

To catch up:

Wales – rock climbing;excellent walk just E & Will – I nearly slid down the mountain; Ffestiniog Railway; home.

Toby to Ilam Hall for week with YHA watersports activity holiday. He had a very good time indeed.

Mandy and David to visit – C&E stayed at Marriott Hotel with them to celebrate Mandy’s birthday, Amy looked after J&R. Also went with them to La Piazza.

At the moment James, Emma, Jacob, Sam and Hannah are staying with us. We’ve been to the beach today. It was blowy and coldish, but fun.

Weekend at Home

We got back to York in time for lunch, unpacked and started on the mammoth washing pile! We ran out of washing powder before it was finished.

In the evening we went to a party at Matthew and Clare’s. Fantastic food, lots of salads (didn’t have enough of those while we were away), olives, bread and smoked salmon. Thomas and Joseph have grown loads since we last saw them, Thomas is off to school in September and Joseph is running around chatting.

On Sunday morning John, Rose and I went swimming. We had to go via Tesco’s because I couldn’t find my swimming trunks. Ended up with some horrible green and yellow shorts, disliked by one and all, but they were only £2.50. Good swim – and I booked myself onto a “Swim for Fitness” course in the autumn. I’ve always wanted to have a relaxed, efficient looking front crawl and have finally decided to do something about it. The classes are from 9:20 till 10:00 on Wednesday evenings, so that’ll be tiring.

Later on we went to Chrissie and Jonathon’s for a BBQ. Nice to get together with them.

Lake District

We had a fantastic week in the Lake District, staying in Keswick.

Some of the highlights included:

Scrambling up a waterfall to the ridge on the west of Derwentwater, and running for half an hour from the top of Cat Bell to make sure we got the boat.

Go Ape – high ropes through trees followed by mountain biking all afternoon.

Tea at Bryson’s in Keswick! Yum yum.

Swimming and playing in Toby’s new inflatable dinghy in the Lake.

Card games on a rainy afternoon.

Fish and chips – more food.

A good time was had by all.

A Child of Our Time – Proms

Last night the first Prom of the year was Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.

It’s a piece I know quite well, having sung the spirituals as a treble and the whole thing as a bass, and I’ve always found it moving.

Last night though, it was wonderfully emotional. It seemed very appropriate timing, with lots of resonances with the London bombing – particularly the mother’s plea for peace – “How many mothers’ hearts shall be maimed?”.

The last ten minutes or so of the piece turns from a mood of sorrow and despair, to one of consolation and hope. As it ended with “Deep River”, one of the spirtuals, I was in tears, as I expect a lot of the audience were.

Fantastic Trip to London

We’ve just got back from a two night trip to London – more scorching hot weather!

We went down by train on Tuesday morning and were met at Kings Cross by David. Because of the bombing last week, bits of the tube are still not working, so we took the bus to the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square, where we were joined by Helen. David is great on journeys, because he can give a running commentary of detail on all the buildings and places of interest.

Tuesday evening, we went for a lovely meal at Jane’s. She’s a friend of Cindy’s
who used to go running with Cindy when they lived near each other in London. Haven’t seen her properly for ages, so it was really good to catch up.

On Wednesday, we went to Eltham Palace, which is absolutely beautiful – a Tudor great hall with amazing Art Deco house attached.

Unfortunately, during the day Cindy began to feel unwell, with a bit of a chest infection. So we went to H+D’s doctor and got some antibiotics. We had a good evening with H+D and C went to bed relatively early.

She woke up today feeling ok, still a bit fragile, but not worse. We had been intending to go to the V&A to see an Arts and Crafts exhibition, but after a leisurely morning, we met Jane and Andy for lunch (sushi – first time – yum) and got a train home at 3 o’clock. We arrived home to interrupt the children having tea with Mary and Lance, who had made the whole trip possible by looking after them.

The Tasting Room

Lunch today at The Tasting Room York. Here is Edward and my restaurant review. Tucked away in the ‘Latin Quater’ or behind Browns or near the expensive knicker shop – nice bustiier in the window this week!

Wine fabulous Dona Isidora Reisling 2003 very chilled light dry and not fruity something else that escapes my vocabulary, could have drunk another bottle!

We ordered a seared tuna salad and a pancetta with yorkshire blue salad. Both very respactable and delicious. Tuna by far the best buy; substantial and warm. Very generous on the olives and the feta cheese with the tuna worked really well. tuna moist and cooked beautifully. Croutons poor, too big and the bread too stale. The pancetta and yorkshire blue was a bit mean on both these ingredients which were both delicious and left you wanting more. The sweet potato was passed off as a garnish not appropriate given the lusty moorish nature of this lovely vegetable and one of the key ingredients listed in the menu description and so leading you to believe that it would feature quite prominantly. Salad leaves gorgeous and a good variety only hope they don’t come out of one of those bags held together by a plethora of gases and chemicals. E and I swapped our plates half way; I think he was reluctant to part with the seared tuna!!

The sweet menu was expensive and I could spot nothing that I hadn’t seen before so we gave that a miss. Coffee was excellent. E ordered a second cup that took ages to come, but then she didn’t charge him for it so fair doos. Tap water no problem and the waiteress was attentive to notice when we neede more.

Service was excellent and the waitresses very attractive (E’s comment !!!!) Have to say our waitress was wearing a beautiful dress that was certainly a cut above the average waitress garb. Does this kind of thing enhance the whole meal experience?

Decor; very expensive nicely done, but I couldn’t work out what all the coat hooks were for (not really positioned for coats) Wall paper particlarly good (although not matching at the corners can I believe I’m writing this particularly given how awful I proved to be on my one and only wall paper hanging experience).

Conclusion: really nice and will definitely give their evening menu a go.

Lovely Day Out

Today we drove to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which is near Wakefield. It was a glorious day – hot and sunny. We walked around parts of the park, saw some Henry Moores, Barbara Hepworths and a William Turnbull retrospective, part of which was in the new underground gallery. Read the paper in the sunshine, had a nice lunch in the cafe and then came home.

Fantastic.

The 39 Steps

We’ve just got home from the last of our “Big Deal” tickets at the WYP. It was an adaptation of The 39 Steps by John Buchan.

Acted by only 4 actors (and an extra arm at a crucial plot point!), it was very fast, funny, melodramatic and all round excellent entertainment. Definitely the best thing we’ve seen in the season. Highly recommended.

I got given the next season’s “Big Deal” for my birthday, so more to look forward to in the Autumn.

Saturday

John went to dance this morning, Rose was picked up from her sleepover at 11:30 – absolutely exhausted, very little sleep I think. In the afternoon we went down to the park, played hide and seek in the waist high cow parsley – absolutely impossible to find anyone. Later on in the afternoon, John went to a party at water world, and Rose and I went to see Anna in hospital (she’s got pneumonia, poor thing, but seemed much better today.)

Keith and Judy came round for a meal in the evening. We had fantastic steak with chinese spices, noodles and pak choi. Biggest pieces of meat I have cooked for ages, ever perhaps 8oz steak each! Too much really, could have half as much meat, twice as much veg. Absolutely delicious though.

Non Contact Time

We went to the West Yorkshire Playhouse to see the third of the plays that we’re seeing on the big deal. It was Non Contact Time, a play written by a primary teacher about life in a primary school. It had some very funny, well observed moments, such as a chorus of “Pens down. 5 4 3 2 1. Let’s see who’s ready. Well done, well done, well done. Who’s letting us down?” Lots of laughter of recognition from an audience that must have been mostly teachers! The story, particularly at the end seemed over dramatic and tacked on.

The play was only 90 minutes long, so we were home nice and early. Jean had been babysitting, and only John was home. Rose was out at a sleep over and Toby is away for the weekend on his D of E expedition training.

Nitin Sawhney

Yesterday evening, Cindy and I went to Gateshead to see Nitin Sawhney play at the Sage.

It’s a fantastic building and a brilliant concert hall. It is very comfortable and has fantastic acoustics, but it was a slightly strange venue for a “pop” concert.

Because it was all seating, everyone was sitting down most of the time and listening very reverently with clapping after the end of each song – a concert rather than a gig.

The music was brilliant with 5 fantastic vocalists. They played some tracks off the new album, Philtre, and some older ones too.

We came home on the train after the concert and collapsed into bed at about 1am.

Supper at Mark and Michelle’s

On Saturday evening we went to Michelle and Mark’s for a fantastic meal, with Jo and Bill. After a week of eating in a very cramped backroom, it was lovely to have someone cook a proper meal and it on a table with a table cloth!

Stayed up too late and drank too much!

A Doll’s House

Very good. Felt long and lots of talking, but the main actor – Tanya Moodie – who was on stage for almost all the play was absolutely spellbinding. I really found it difficult to look at anyone else. At the end of the play she suddenly appeared behind the scenery in a snowstorm – very bleak ending. The play is all about the position of women in 19^th/20^th century society and coincidently we’ve just been listening to A Room with a View in the car and it has lots of the same themes – independence, thinking for one’s self…

There’s a Guardian review of A Doll’s House here.

Kitchen

The kitchen ripping out is really getting close now. We’ve got the new units in Lance and Mary’s cellar, the floor digging up people (damp) are booked, and a plumber is booked to move the gas for the new hob. Dave knows what we want and is coming up next week to start!!

We’ve still got to order new oven and hob, but I think we’ve decided what we want and it only has a week or so delivery time, so we’re waiting a little bit still.

What we have got to do is empty the kitchen of all its stuff – and most of the backroom too, so it doesn’t get too filthy.

Surprise for Cindy

As it is getting close to time for me to go back to school, I thought that Cindy and I should try and have a night away together. I arranged with mum for child care for a night, and set about booking somewhere.

On Monday night I told Cindy that we would be going out the next day to the Star Inn, in Harome near Helmsley. Initially, she thought that we would be going for an evening meal, but I was able to tell her that we were staying the night as well.

I decided to tell her that evening, rather than the next morning as I had planned, because she kept saying she had a sore throat, or a bit of a cough and she might be going down with something. I was starting to wonder who we could give the room to, as I would have to pay for it anyway!! Anyway, this bit of news seemed to give her some more energy, and determination not to get ill quite yet!

We went to the Star for lunch once last summer and had an absolutely superb meal – with the best summer pudding I’ve ever had, made even better by being served with a generous glass of home-made raspberry vodka. So our hopes were very high for an evening meal and B&B. I had had to reserve the largest room in the place, as I booked so late that that was the only one left, so we were expecting that to be quite nice as well.

We had a lovely morning in York doing some shopping – Cindy had bought a skirt (50p) and shoes (£3) in Age Concern at the weekend and wanted a blouse to go with them (£27 – not such a bargain). She was able to wander around all morning, which is a huge improvement on a few months ago. We went home for lunch, made a list of evening activities for my parents and set off.

When we arrived, after discovering that the accommodation was just over the road from the pub, behind the village shop (also owned by the Star, and selling lots of their goodies), we were shown to our room. It was huge, with an enormous bed, pool table, lovely bathroom with double size bath, home-made chocolate cookies and a view out over fields with huge-horned highland cattle in them. The stereo even had speakers in the bathroom, so you could put a CD on (luckily we had some of our own in the car) and listen to it in the bath.

We went downstairs to the sitting area, which had a raging open fire, super comfortable armchairs and sofas, lovely olives and nuts and a write your own bill honesty bar and drank sherry, read the paper and tried to do the crossword.

We went over to the pub at about 6:30, had more drinks while reading the menu, ordered and were taken into the restaurant. The bar is like an English country pub out of a film – just like the stereotype, except for the huge wine list and enormous bowl of olives out on the bar. The restaurant uncrowded, lovely old wooden tables and interesting cutlery.

The meal was superb. Cindy had wild mushrooms on bruschetta, followed by woodcock; and I had pheasant risotto and then beef steak. There was plenty to eat, so much in fact that neither of us had any room for dessert, much to my disappointment.

We had coffee upstairs in the loft, another charming space with lots of arm chairs, noise from the bar coming up, but seclusion from the bar. Up there, there was cheese and biscuits and grapes out on the side, nuts, raisins and other bits to pick at. This was one of the things that really struck me – things that you might expect to pay extra for, were just around for you to take – it seemed extremely jealous.

We went back to our room and played a few games of pool, before bedtime.

The next morning we didn’t get up till about half nine – to try and give our appetites a chance to build up again after the previous day’s huge meal.

Breakfast was equally lavish – a buffet of croissants, smoked salmon, ham, melon, parma ham, fruit salad, pineapple, freshly squeezed juices ans smoothies. You could ask for porridge, kippers, or full English, or any combination! Cindy had full English (super black pudding), I had mushrooms on toast and some bacon, then smoked salmon on toast, parma ham, fruit salad… didn’t want to starve.

A bit more sitting around digesting, enjoying the comfy chairs, pay our bill (!!!) and gently back home a pretty country route.

Superb, gorgeous, can’t recommend it highly enough. Repeat visit sometime.

And a huge thank you to Lance and Mary for looking after Toby, John and Rose.

Don Giovanni

We went to the opera last night with Keith and Judy. Before it started, we went for a meal at Fruits and Shoots, a vegetarian restaurant which is just round the corner from the Grand Theatre.

I really enjoyed the opera – the costumes seemed a bit of a hotch-potch, most in sort of 30s style, and one not at all. The singing and playing though were excellent – I particularly liked Leporello’s voice.

Not particularly knowing the opera, I couldn’t see how they were going to have a second half – as they caught Don Giovanni and were just about to have their revenge, when… he escaped! The second half was a bit bizarre, with an invitation to a meal issued to the statue of a dead man – who then turned up and took Don Giovanni down to hell.

The final bit of singing, which sounds very joyful when sung in Italian, turns out to mean “All sinners will go to hell.” Odd.

I suppose you don’t particularly go to opera for the coherence of the plot.

Kitchen Started

Cindy & I went to Ikea today, and spent a load of money on kitchen units. So things are finally underway. We’ve been saving to do the kitchen for ages – since I started working really, and thinking about it for even longer. Now the units and worktops are ordered, we’ve chosen oven, hob, extractor and someone is coming to look at the damp wall and floor next week. The floor and floor are the big unknown item really, we don’t know how bad it is, or how much of the floor will need digging up.

It’s exciting starting at last.

Short entry as I’m finding it difficult to type. I cut a finger on my left hand really badly the other day (knife was too blunt when chopping carrots!)

Best Present?

Mary and Lance gave us Big Deal tickets for the West Yorkshire Playhouse as a Christmas Present. This gives you a choice of 4 out of 5 plays that are on from now until the summer. Cindy phoned and booked them all yesterday, so we’ve got dates in the diary for A Doll’s House, David Copperfield and The 39 Steps. One of the other two plays is a series of new plays by new Leeds writers, so we’ve got tickets for all three – three separate shows for £10! Because we’ve booked nice and early, we’ve got the best seats in the house each time – full price tickets are £20-£25. A fantastic present – we’ve got 6 evenings at the theatre to look forward to.

We’re also going to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe next week and Don Givovanni at Opera North the week after that!

Grown Up Evening

Last night we had Jo & Bill and Michelle & Mark round for a meal. We had a fantastic time. Lovely food Рcrostini and olives, goats cheese souffl̩, fish stew, diplomatico (an Italian chocolate pudding), cheese, coffee and chocs. Very over the top.

We also drank well, in particular the dessert wine was luscious.

The children were fantastic – watching Strictly Come Dancing to start with and then more or less putting themselves to bed. It makes things much easier now they are more grown up.

We chatted till about 1:30, with not too much concentration on house prices and school politics – although Jo did reveal that Mrs Cornhill sent Kjartan a thong following his Magic with Pants gig and Mark was proud to show off the new website he’s done for the school.

Cindy took a couple of photos – here they are.

One Touch of Venus

Cindy and I went to see this musical at The Grand, Leeds. It’s by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Ogden Nash and apparently has never had a full performance in this country, and has not had one in the states since it was first performed in 1943. It had really colourful costumes, great songs, good dancing and some slightly rude jokes. An excellent evening out.

We went on the last preview night, when tickets were half price. This meant that seats in the dress circle were affordable, instead of extortionate.

Summer Holidays

It’s been ages since we added anything, so here’s a general round up of events of the last month or so.

Cindy is off treatment and is generally feeling fine – she’s got a cold at the moment, so is rather breathless, but it should go soon.

Edward has finished at Wheldrake, to his great relief! The last few weeks dragged like anything. Now he’s starting to get ready for his new job.

The children are enjoying the start of the holiday.

In late June we had a fantastic party at Lance and Mary’s. It was on a Sunday afternoon, we had about 100 guests, Cindy had done lots of wonderful food and everyone drank quite a lot. Perhaps it should become an annual event.