If you read this blog regularly you will know that my wife Mandy is a remarkable woman. She certainly knows how to look after me, with all my foibles. One thing I have always been impressed by is that she has stayed close to nine friends from school. At least once a year they go away together on a girls’ weekend and still get on after fifty years.
For the past few years one friend has been missing from the events. Mel and Iain went to live in Australia, which is a long way to come for a weekend. But this week they were visiting the UK, so all the girls and their partners caught up.
I can be a bit antisocial at parties, preferring to hide in a corner, or find an excuse for not coming, but it was genuinely lovely to get back together, The last time “us men” were together must have been over twenty years ago, when most of us had young children and we all went off to centerparcs.
How do the friends stay so close after all this time? I am terrible at staying in touch. There were several of my friends at our Ruby Wedding celebration that I had not seen or spoken to for many many years. I expect the answer is making the effort. Mandy says it is not hard to send a note on a birthday, or pick up the phone. I’d love to make a commitment to change and do better, but realistically I probably won’t.
So I will just admire Mandy and her friends instead. Remarkable.
When I was six, I knew what a great party required – icecream and balloons. When I was sixteen I knew what a great party required – girls and beer. When I was twenty six most parties included dancing although with my uncoordinated body I tendered to avoid.. I am sixty two now, my world has moved on, but on Saturday night we had one of the best parties of my life – for Mandy and my Ruby Wedding Anniversary.
What made this one such a great party? Well we did have balloons and icecream – with my home made brownies. And we did have beer. There was dancing, albeit a Ceilidh, which suited me, rather than a sweaty boogie. But what made it so special was the people. We had nearly a hundred friends and family from the past forty years, many of whom we had not seen for a very long time.
Everyone joined in and everyone enjoyed themselves. Our sons and their families organised the decoration and sorted the food (pie and peas because we are in Lancashire). The boys even made a beautiful speech. I got to spend at least a little time with pretty much everyone, and overall it was simply a magical occasion.
Thank you to everyone that came and helped us celebrate our very special day. It was quite a party.
You may know that I like trains. I am not a train spotter because I don’t collect numbers and don’t recognise locomotives. Instead I am very happy sitting on a train by a window just watching the world go by. For my 60th birthday I spent a month interrailing all around Europe on trains and I absolutely loved it. But until this week I had never been on 12 trains in a day.
On Tuesday I set off at 6am with my brother in law Stephen and my elder son, Robbie. Stephen and I had discovered some bargain train tickets called “Ffestiniog Round Robins” which allowed a circular trip all around North Wales, including the famous Ffestiniog narrow gauge steam railway.
First we had to get to the area, so we took a local train from Kirkham & Wesham to Preston, and then the big Avanti West Coast Inter City down to Warrington. Here we caught our first Welsh trains to Chester and then along the coast to Llandudno Junction. Llandudno itself is a pretty seaside town but the junction is a more grim, rundown area that used to house a big railway works and a Hotpoint washing machine factory. Here we found the best value cooked breakfast I have had in a very long time. For £7.99 we got goood quality sausages, bacon, egg, beans, buttered toast and a cup of coffee. Yum.
Feeling sated we hopped onto the next train, back inland through beautiful Welsh hills to Blaenau Ffestiniog. Blaenau was once home to many slate mines, and you can see the big tips of slate as you pass. These days it is much more of a tourist destination and as we arrived at the steam train we were not surprised to see many tourist coaches offloading trippers for the journey to Porthmadog. I love the smell and nostalgia of steam locomotives and knew I would enjoy this stretch, but had not expected the spectacular views. The train clings to the side of a mountain and you can see for miles across the valley floor as it winds around the contours.
Porthmadog was heaving with holidaymakers, filling the streets, the tat shops and amusement arcades. I had hoped to get fish and chips from a shop that is famous for multiple kinds of curry sauce. I am not normally allowed to eat curry at home because Mandy hates the smell, but I thought I could get away with a little chip sauce at lunchtime. But Steve and Robbie preferred the idea of a picnic, so we picked up french bread, ham, brie and salami for lunch on the next train.
The line from Porthmadog to Machynlleth is a beautiful stretch of coastline. It is peppered with static caravan parks, and the train was packed with their occupants, enjoying a traditional British holiday. The air conditioning was not working so it was a bit of a sauna, but I still loved looking out to sea. From Machynlleth the trains to Shrewsbury and then Chester were not much better, so by the time we got to Chester we really fancied a cold beer. Robbie googled a proper craft beer pub sitting amongst the victorian station architecture, but our train was late, so we grabbed some IPA cans from the pub and caught our trains to Warrington and then back to Preston.
By the time we had enjoyed the final train back to Kirkham, it was getting late, and we were peckish again, so picked up the biggest kebabs I have ever seen, from Jononi Balti. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful day. But maybe twelve trains was just too many.
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