A weekend in Leeds

Leeds - the Knightsbridge of the north. We went straight to Harvey Nichols to check out the food. I have to say I was a little disappointed in the New Zealand section - 3 Whittaker's peanut slabs. Oh well - I guess they are at least made in NZ unlike that great british institution Cadburys...sold out to Kraft, shame. We left without purchasing anything.

Leeds was lovely, the art gallery stunning (especially the cafe). Some excellent gritty northern drawings, the required number of Henry Moore's scattered about and a weird installation of drawings in the Henry Moore Institute.

Chester

Our Easter weekend was spent in Chester. Marita, Leanne, Maisie, Alex, Chess and Rachel. Erika is back in hospital so we had the whole house to ourselves, handy for visiting her.

We had glorious weather which allowed various walks on the wall, a paddle boat on the river Dee, and a visit to the marvellous Cathedral.

Alex and Maisie surprisingly soon bored of walking around the wall, apparently there was too much history involved. The paddle boats beckoned. I'd hoped they would go off into the boat by themselves, but my presence was requested. Looking forward to being paddled around the river, the boy who took our money informed us there was quite a current and it was harder work than usual. Maisie quickly volunteered to be in the back (the part without the pedals).

Alex and I set off with great enthusiasm, narrowly missing such obstacles as ducks and motor boats (why didn't we get one of those) , it was fun...then, after 5 minutes of furiously pedalling, we had gone about 50 meters upstream, and I was ready for oxygen. Leanne, Marita and Chess were following our (lack of) progress with enthusiasm, so we had the bright idea of picking up a passenger, dubiously Marita climbed aboard. This did not make pedalling any easier! After pedalling around aimlessly, for a while longer, legs had turned to jelly, Maisie volunteered to pedal, I was delighted - yay, time for me to sit in the back and command we go look at something, somehow, whilst I was still in fantasy land, Alex and Maisie had swopped seats and I was still expected to pedal - they don't make youth like they used to.

Time to return the boat, we somehow negotiated to the bank, a nice young man helped me onto the bank on my knees - not so bad except that Chester is particularly touristy, and on Easter Sunday, in the absence of a band in the bandstand, I was it as far as entertainment went!

The Cathedral was far more leisurely the next day, and impressive. The audio tour made it interesting enough for Maisie and Alex, and the promise of lunch at the old refectory helped.

I was disappointed that my lunch was not cooked or served by monks, but it was very satisfying eating in the refectory. Weirdly there was an older lady playing the piano in the background, we managed to sit right by the piano - not really that weird, except her choice of music…show tunes! I had 'somewhere over the rainbow' stuck in my head the the rest of the afternoon.

Girl Guide Jumble Sale

The scout hut was packed to the top with jumble, we were briefed on not selling the scout stuff or each others coats, there was an air of anticipation, the crowds outside were getting tetchy. (some had been there since 9.30am for a 10.30 start!) The woman on the door was ready with the old margarine pot for the 20p admission and we were off.....
Some bloke came straight in and bought the model elephant for 50p, I suspect he'd been peeking through the door. There were dealers pretending to be old dears, but we were wise to them, starting high with prices, sometimes even £5, we wouldn't be taken for mugs (which were incidently 5 for £1)
We were queens of the bric-a-brack, high pressure selling to ensure as much stuff got out the door as possible, free carrier bags with every purchase (while stocks lasted) , towards the end things were a bit desparate, there was still piles of stuff on the table, we didn't care, we just slipped the extra plate or cd into the bags...bonus gifts to be discovered later!

We scored 2 plates, a glass bowl, a coat (fairly sure it didn't belong to anyone on staff), a piggy bank, a frisbee, and a bag, more than we donated I suspect, but a good cause, £260 raised in total for the guides.

Happy as a pig in ....

One of Maisie's favourite things when we visited last time, was going to Chatsworth farm adventure playground. Last weekend was the first weekend it was open for the season, so despite the rain, along we went. The pigs were very cute, the chickens were a bit damp, as was everything else.

Oink oink

Before, during and after

We did it! We ran a whole mile! Well, almost, small stop for an asthma attack (Alex), fixed by our support team (Leanne found and old inhaler at the bottom of her handbag). It was quite good fun actually, and a relief to realise I’d over trained, I only needed to run for around 12 minutes, not the 20 I’d built up to - what a waste of time that was, I could have been eating chocolate.

Even the dog joined in. He wore his medal with pride.

We had an ice cream and a nice sit down to celebrate, then it was off to collect Maisie from Ripley who had been participating in a Rolls Royce design challenge. A couple of teams from her school had entered the annual design competition. This year they had to design ship lifts. Sounded really difficult to me, but they had done an amazing job of making models of their designs, including lights!

Rising to the challenge

Well, it’s been a long week - according to Maisie at least. She’s been Guiding, having extra classes, and a visit to the South Yorkshire Air Museum as part of their science week. She now knows all there is to know about aircraft. She came home with a model airplane, a balloon helicopter, and showed us how to make a hovercraft from an old CD, bluetac, a bottle top, and a balloon. Impressive stuff.

Leanne has been looking into Open University courses. Whilst I have spent the week looking for a job, making linocuts, and jogging. The jogging is going well, I managed to keep going for 20 minutes without stopping, I wasn’t going fast, but I was going, I think I’m mile ready for Sunday. Sport relief is mad on the TV, with every celebrity you can think of cycling, or running up and down the country to support it. So far £29,323,818 has been raised! Pretty amazing, and appears to be doing some important work.

Running a mile

I had a eccentric moment and decided to do a sponsored run for sport relief: sport relief , training has been going....

Well, I've been for a run five times now and it seems to be getting harder, can that be right? It maybe because of all the mud that has collected on my once pristine trainers.

I've been running with the dog by the river, which is very lovely, we have to stop for a pee every 3 minutes (the dog not me). I down loaded a pedometer for my phone, but I suspect it's not that accurate, I ran for 10 minutes and it said I'd done 6 steps. How many miles does that translate to - not enough no doubt. I think I'll down load Eye of the Tiger next week and have it on a loop whilst I'm running.

I had a rest day for Mothering Sunday, and ate loads of chocolate, that will help no doubt. We went to Chester this weekend (grandmother out of hospital) then Colwyn Bay to see my Dad, them back to Chester, four mothers in one house, poor Maisie.

When we told Nana Gran Erika it was mother's day she said "I've never heard of it!" she managed to eat half a cheese cake to make up for 2 weeks of hospital food. Go Nana!