A day off and our anniversary

I’m writing this entry on my morning commute. It’s a regular day – up at 5am, let the dogs out (Holly is always jumping around the kitchen with glee, Gravel looks up sleepily from his basket but generally has a trot outside if it’s not raining); then make a cup of tea (fill the kettle through the spout because taking the lid off makes Holly bark loudly); take the tea and dogs upstairs to wake Margaret, Margaret yells at Holly (dirty paws, jumping on her face, licking her face, or all three), then I sit in bed and drink my tea, shower, get dressed and leave at 6.20 or 6.25am to catch the 6.53 train which gets me into King’s Cross at 8am. From there, it’s generally Victoria line to Victoria and into work for 8.20am, but sometimes I’ll walk (which takes an hour) and sometimes I get off at Green Park and walk through the park past Buckingham Palace. This morning it will be straight on the tube, we’re so busy at work that I can’t afford any wasted time and I don’t like to stay later than 5.30pm. Coming home, I leave at 5.30pm, walk to Pimlico or Victoria (depending on whether I’m out at 5.30 or 5.40) and tube to King’s Cross for the 6.10 First Capital Connect to Peterborough, which arrives at 7.20pm. Margaret picks me up and, with luck; I’m home at 7.45pm.

So I leave the house at 6.20am and get back at 7.45pm, bed at 9pm otherwise it’s just too hard to get up in the morning.

Well, it was our 37^th wedding anniversary yesterday and I had the day off so my daily commuter grind was happily absent.

It has been a remarkably mild autumn, one of the warmest Octobers on record and very dry in the east, as it has been all year. In April, no rain at all fell in Cambridgeshire and we had quite a dry summer, although temperatures were not particularly high. In October, I think we had one day’s rain all month. It’s been a real east/west split, there have been floods in the west and it has been a wet summer. Good to live in the east, although they are talking of water restrictions if we don’t get a wet winter to replenish aquifers.

It was mild and sunny 37 years ago on our wedding day and for the following week when we were on honeymoon in London (at the Henry VIII hotel near Lancaster Gate). We didn’t have lots of money, so spent quite a lot of time walking in the parks, which were carpeted with crunchy leaves from the London Planes and still had lots of autumn colour.

Yesterday morning, it was warm enough to have breakfast on the decking in front of the summerhouse, although you have to be careful that a falling leaf doesn’t land in your porridge! Of course, I didn’t get up at 5am and had the luxury of a 6.15 lie-in and a cup of tea from Margaret.

After breakfast, we’d planned a shopping trip to get some ingredients for our evening meal (pasta) and to buy Margaret some walking shoes, as she’s been having trouble with a sore heel and Achilles tendon. We thought some shoes with decent cushioning and foot support would help her recovery. However, I had lost the recipe I had photocopied from a newspaper, so we decided on fish and chips from Crowland.

We went to Peterborough Garden Park and managed to get a pair of shoes from Cotswold, the walking shop, for £65. Margaret seemed to think they would help, but said later that her feet were killing her, although she’d then walked for quite a long way. We were going to have a coffee in Van Hage, the garden centre (which sells all kinds of things as well as plants) and I had a good nosey round for the first time (Margaret goes quite often). We bought some fat balls for the birds and a candle, but I couldn’t face the coffee shop – it was full (as was the whole garden centre) with old people. Barbara, our neighbour who is around 70, had been to Southwold for the weekend and had told Margaret that it was nice but there were a lot of old people there. She hadn’t seen the irony. Well Van Hage is like Southwold. Old people are all very well (I’m almost old myself) but when they get into a coffee shop or café, it brings out the worst in them. They fuss about getting a table, they moan about how dear things are and they stand at the coffee counter getting all confused – what’s a mocha again? They all look very anxious and don’t seem to relax and enjoy the experience, but they can’t wait to come back for another treat at Van Hage. I think the place is a magnet for all the old people in Peterborough who can still drive and face the terrors of the ring road.

Anyway, I couldn’t face queuing and eating with that lot, so we headed home with our candle and fat balls and I had a cup of tea and slice of Bara Brith on the decking. It was now genuinely warm.

I took the dogs for a walk around Toneham and had gone up the avenue and along the top to the farm when Gravel emerged from the ditch particularly filthy. Rather than have to bath him at home, I turned back so he could have a swim in the Thorney River and clean up a bit. Holly, who is normally brilliant off the lead, then picked up the scent of a pheasant and put one up in the upper field, which is planted with oilseed rape. No sooner had she started chasing that, than another was put up and a new chase started. She’d put three up when I lost sight of her over the brow. It’s the first time I’ve seen her get Springer syndrome (where the nose takes over from all other senses, particularly hearing) and when she did emerge back into sight, she was at the wrong end of the field, could see me and set off to got through the farm (the way we’d been going). Some frantic shouting and waving got her attention and she caught up with me halfway along the path, panting like a steam train. I made sure they had a good swim and when I got home, Margaret had bought a paper, so it was back to the summerhouse for a read. The wind had picked up and it was a bit blowy on the decking. We had planned to have a gin martini outside, but a good glug of strong martini is not recommended before a drive to Crowland (or anywhere else for that matter) so another cup of tea was all I had.

Margaret had bought us some gin as a joint anniversary present – she said it was the recurring theme of our summer (gin and tonic on the patio/decking/summerhouse). It was called London Gin and was 46%. There are lots of so-called artisan distilleries springing up and I though this was another she’d found. Earlier in the week, Tom had been talking about seeing some gin made in Highgate, so I had a look at the label on this to see if it was, by slim chance, Highgate gin. It was actually made in Holland, a country with a fine reputation for gin, but not where you’d expect a bottle labelled London Gin to come from.

Anyway, our day tailed off into fish and chips (far too big a portion) and instead of leaving some, I ate it all and felt so full I couldn’t move for an hour. I did manage to get up to make us a G&T (not a martini) and the gin was very good, but I was nodding off in the middle of a very good documentary by Frank Skinner on George Formby Jnr. Bed at 9pm and asleep at 9.30 after checking e-mails on my Blackberry. Another few items to add to my list the next day.