Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Having talked about things while we were in New York, A and I decided that we were going to spend Saturday afternoon in Sidmouth. We arrived and discovered the weather wasn't very good; it was a typical Devon drizzle which, while not quite cold, was unpleasant and enough to get you saturated in next to no time, especially given the strong wind. Without discussing things, we had lunch at the Mocha restaurant on the front, where the food is cafe-style and excellent, and watched various frazzled families come and go, in various states of wet misery.

After lunch, we wandered through the town and looked in a few shop windows, including that of AJ Mountstephen, where we'd admired a few tasteful sapphires on previous visits. This time, the moment having come, we went in and A tried on a few things to see what she liked and what suited. Fortunately, with one exception, everything fitted and she opted for something that was extremely nice and which lacked the showly tastelessness of some of the more American things we'd seen on holiday.

With that done, we walked back along the beach and coast path towards Jacob's Ladder. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake because by this point the wind had strengthened and the rain was coming down in earnest. We ducked into one of the little caves under the cliff. There, sheltering from the rain, I asked A to marry me. And she said yes. It was the easiest question I've every asked.

After enjoying the moment for as long as the weather allowed us, we started walking back to the car. Half way there, we were struck by a problem: how do you tell people you've just got engaged? How do you tell your parents? How do you tell your fiancee's parents? (Because I wasn't traditional enough to ask C's permission first — I can well imagine what he'd have said if I had!)

Eventually, we settled for stopping for tea at Dart's Farm to give C time to return from a regimental reunion, and, once we thought we'd waited long enough, we returned via the supermarket, where we bought a bottle of good champagne, and returned to the homestead.

On arrival, we found J frantically searching for a CD with photos for her parents' 60th wedding anniversary calendar and C not yet returned. There then followed a series of almost farsical scenes with A going upstairs in search of a jumper that she could pull down over her hands, while I assisted with the hunt and tried not to give too much away. Fortunately, C returned shortly after and, during a break in the search, A came downstairs and said, "You need to stop searching and put this in the fridge..." holding out a bottle of Bollinger. There was a brief pause, J said, "Does this mean..." and checked A's hand and squeaked, and suddenly everyone was hugging and the dogs were excited and barking.

Under some pressure from A — I'd suggested waiting until Sunday morning — I phoned my parents and told them the good news. My dad was as unflappable as ever. When I said I'd asked A to marry me, he asked, "Did she say yes?" And when I confirmed it, he said, "Did she hesitate for a very long time?" My mother, on the other hand, was far more excited, although enthusiasm was somewhat undercut by her getting my name wrong — she used my nephew's name, probably because he was in the room with her at the time. My nephew was also very pleased and said, "It's about time! It took you long enough..."

And for the record, A found the CD with the photos on it exactly where she expected to find it: in the in-tray on the desk in the study, where her mother had seen it and discounted it because it wasn't in a yellow Snappy Snaps envelope!

Having checked the route to the theatre in the morning before the tour of Central Park, we knew exactly where we had to be and how long it was going to take. Despite this, A and I still managed to cut things down to the wire, arriving in the hotel lobby just as the clock was striking quarter-past.



We arrived in the queue for the theatre with time to spare and, standing in Shubert Alley, I was struck by an odd feeling: everyone in the queue was quite a bit shorter than me and I was able to see clear over their heads to the doors and across the street. Given that I am of average height, it's not something that happens very often. Clearly, the majority of the people waiting to go in must have been on the short side!

When we got in, we found ourselves with excellent seats — in the middle of the dress circle — and the temperature was truly civilised, given the New York weather.

Having gone in completely cold, knowing nothing of the story and having not seen the film version, I didn't quite know what to expect, but it was completely delightful: very funny, excellent singing and dancing throughout — the chorus, expecially, were absolutely superb — and I enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish. Bette Midler was, of course, first rate, and her back-and-forth with David Hyde Pierce was excellent — he managed to corpse her in middle of the scene where Horace and Dolly have dinner at the Harmonia Gardens — and everyone really looked like they were really enjoying themselves, as might be expected with the end of the run in sight.

After the theatre, walking on air, we stopped at a Brazilian bar and, around half-past eleven, decided that we were hungry and headed back to a pizza place that promised gluten-free pies. After ascertaining that they didn't do GF by the slice, J and I ordered a couple of slices for ourselves and a whole pizza for C and A. While we were waiting A and her dad had a bet with each other: C reckoned the pizza was only going to be the size of a dinner plate; A thought it was going to be larger. I, having been to a New York pizza place with RCP back in 1999 where the waiter advised us not to order two but to get two toppings on one, was absolutely confident it was going to be large, and so it proved!

Caught the bus that runs along 34th street and eventually gets to the East River. There we bought ferry tickets and wandered around Midtown East, waiting for the next boat. We encountered a film crew while we were doing so — they were all dressed as doctors, so they may have been filming a commercial — and took photos of the United Nations building, which remains as iconic as it was in the days of the Man from UNCLE.



The ferry made its way from East 34th via Williamsburg down to Fulton Street, where we got off to explore parts of Brooklyn. After a bit of a wander, we stopped in Dumbo for a rather eccletic lunch. We ordered almond tea bread, ginger beer, and fries; what we got was an almond croissant, two cans of very odd craft beer, and, a lone success, an order of fries. After tasting the very suspicious contents of the cans, neither C nor I were keen to carry on but, being a braver man, C drank his despite the fact that as coeliac, he's not allowed to eat anything containing wheat. Fortunately, by some miracle, he wasn't affected and he lived to fight another day.



We braved the heat and humidity to walk back across Brooklyn Bridge; this more than lived up to expectations, with dramatic views and a pleasant breeze coming off the river.



The walk wasn't too strenuous and put us back close enough to downtown Manhattan that we walked to the 9/11 Memorial and the World Trade Centre site.



The 9/11 Memorial is beautifully done and very touching: pools of water falling into holes in the ground, with the names of the dead engraved into the surrounding metal. Talking to A afterwards, I said how struck I was by the Manhattan skyline and how different it looked without the twin towers; she said she couldn't remember it being any different because she hadn't seen it before 2001.



On the way home, we stopped for frozen yoghurt — a necessary restorative! — although I think it's pretty easy to tell whose pot is whose...



That evening, we went out for an evening on our own. We went up the Empire State Building just as the sun was setting, to take in the sites of New York by day and night, then, when we came down, we went for dinner at I Trulli on East 27th. The food was excellent: we both had superb mozzarella and tomato salad to start, cavatelli and a stake to follow, with a lovely cheese cake and GF fruit salad to finish. The bread was good — I enjoyed it, even if A couldn't eat it — while the ricotta that accompanied it was truly divine.

We had a really lovely evening. It was nice to be able to get dressed up in smart clothes, see the sites of New York, dine at a really good restaurant, and enjoy being on a highly sophisticated, grown-up date.

Up just after midnight for the night time drive to Heathrow. The roads were clear and C made such good progress that we made it to Reading services with an hour and more to spare before we had drop off the car. Despite sleeping on the drive down, I was still tired and by the time we got to the departure lounge, it was all I could do to stay awake. As soon as we were all aboard — A got on early after being randomly selected for extra screening — I fell alseep, sleeping through the safety briefing, take-off, and the drinks round, only waking up up when the cabin crew asked me whether I'd ordered a vegetarian meal.

The food was pretty good, for plane food. I got a slightly odd mix of things for supper, including a gluten-free chocolate ganache, whereas the two coeliacs got a fruit salad — who knows why. A and I then went back to sleep for the rest of the flight, missing the round when the crew came round with magnums, but catching the last meal before landing.

Arriving around midday local time, we picked up our taxi and made our way from JFK to the hotel on the east side of Manhattan. The journey was as slow as journeys across New York normally are, but compounded by a number of streets being closed for a cycling event. We got to the hotel at around half-one and discovered that a tour of the high line park was due to depart at two — fortunately, it had been raining in the morning and the trip had been rescheduled — so we dropped our backs and returned to the lobby.

At two, Tina the tour guide set off, taking us on the metro down to the 14th and 8th Avenue, where we walked to the start of the park. The weather was sweltering — fortunately, we paused for cold drinks and ice cream halfway along — and the park was really amazing. Tina was excellent, full of interesting history, and she managed to keep us all together, despite the crowds and our best attempts to wander off.





We finished the tour in Hudson Yards — a hive of development — and then walked the ten or so blocks north to the hotel. After a quick pause to get showered and changed — painfully necessary, what with the high temperatures and oppressive humidity — and met up in the lobby for the hotel's social hour. We had a nice chat with the other guests and after asking the helpful staff for advice, decided to venture out for supper. After a couple of failures to find somewhere with a broad enough GF menu, we happened on Rancho Tequileria on the corner of West 50th and 9th, where they had a range of things on the menu.

After an long, tiring, but extremely enjoyable day, we returned to hotel and went to bed, hours and thousands of kilometres away from where we'd woken up at midnight.

First sea swim of the year and the water was much warmer than the last one at Exmouth in December. After work, A and a I drove down to Salcombe Regis — a completely different place to Salcombe in the West Hams — and walked a couple of kilometres down to the beach.



After sorting out our stuff, we got changed and, slightly reluctantly, dove into the water. It wasn't too bad once we were in and I soon realised that actually swimming rather than merely paddling was the secret to not getting cold. Fortunately, the bottom shelved quite quickly and we had to tread water almost immediately, which kept us warm.



We spent enough time in the water to satisfy the demands of honour, at which point we got out and had our picnic supper. Most of the stuff was left over from yesterday — roasted veg, potato salad, baby spinach — with various extras, including a tomato and mozzarella salad, and a spare cake A had cooked when she realised she had spare mixture after making something for work.



Once we were dry and fed, we lounged around on the beach until the sun began to fade. We walked as far east as the rocks, all the time debating whether the next village round the headland was Branscombe or Beer — spoiler alert: it's the former.



We then picked up the car and drove to the Norman Lockyer Observatory, parked across the road in the National Trust car park, and walked the headland path to the point above the steep path down to the beech at Salcombe Mouth where we'd just been.

Fed up with the lack of water, we decided to relocate ourselves from my place to Alice's house down by the river where the electrics might be in an uncertain state but at least we wouldn't have to keep melting snow to flush the loo.

Walking through town, we found the main roads still closed but there were quite a lot of people wandering around on foot. Much to our good fortune, Marks and Spenser in town was open, enabling us to stock up. Possibly unsurprisingly, there was no great shortage of stock; rather, the staff were going through, frantically stickering perishable items that were clearly about to hit there sell-by dates. As a result, we picked up a lot of stuff — including a big pile of sandwiches for lunch for the next few days and a number of meal-deals — for almost nothing.

Arriving at the riverside, we found the house in a good state, with relatively little disruption from the re-wiring work. The damage to the plaster seems to have been limited to a series of discrete holes — mostly around lightswitches and plugs — with most things working as expected. C&J joined us, both of them having been in to work as normal, and we got the fire going and had a really lovely evening enjoying the intermittantly falling snow...

Waking up to a light dusting of snow this morning, I immediately took a photo of it and dashed in to the bedroom to show it to A, who'd been lamenting Exeter's lack of snow for quite some time. We were both excited by it, but my reaction was somewhat dampened when I noticed that, once again, our water pressure was low, suggesting that the building inlet had frozen. We had a slightly leisurely breakfast watching the snow coming down in swirls and I went in to the office where I discovered only DJM was in and was about to leave before conditions became too severe.

During the morning, there were a series of announcements about the impending snowpocalypse and the closing times for the various eateries at work were updated. I had a meeting with a colleague, rescheduled from the day before, and ate lunch early before returning to my desk. At around 1320Z, we were all asked to leave and told not to come in tomorrow. I took a few photos, caught the last bus into town, and took a few more pictures of Exeter in the snow. By this point, the blizzard had started in earnest and id din't really let up until the end of the day.

Arriving home, I was greeted by a curiously lovely smell in the hallway. It was stronger in the flat and, when I went through into the kitchen, I realised what it was: A had baked a lemon drizzle cake! Sadly we were still without water — A had had a number of conversations with the neighbour from the basement — but we had some big bottles of water from Tuesday and we put on some big saucepans of snow to flush the loo.

After tea and cake, we went for a walk in Belmont Park, where the entire community had turned out to enjoy the snow. We were particularly impressed by an enterprising group of students who were attempting to sledge using a large ABS suitcase — we felt they'd've been more successful had they opened it up and used the two halves together rather than leaving it closed. We walked back the long way round and went round by the dry ski slope — very much covered in snow — and put down footsteps in the pristine snow.

Another late start to the day, getting up some time after my father had headed out for his usual Sunday bike ride. We pottered around in the morning and went for a walk in the park, sans crutches, doing mostly the same route as yesterday, out to the war memorial and back. Afterwards, we tucked into a lunch of bread and cheese and the soup from Friday before my mother ran us to the station in good time to catch our train to Birmingham.

Despite having booked seats all the way through, we separated for the first part of the journey because it seemed easier than turfing people out of their seats. Changing at New Street, we had time to make it to M&S to pick up a train picnic before the second leg of the journey. We arrived in Exeter on schedule and found A's parents waiting to pick us up.

After some indecision, we decided not to go to the quiz. We're down two core memebers and the others needed to prepare and pack, ready to move out for a week or two while the house is rewired, with A moving to my place and her parents moving round the corner to house-sit at D&P's while they are in Spain.

Day off to travel to Coventry ahead of tomorrow's family lunch to mark my sister's fortieth birthday. I'd packed yesterday, but A spent a busy hour sorting out what she wanted to take and worrying that she hadn't got enough — or possibly the right sort of — clothes. We got away on time, taking a taxi to the station in deference to A's still reduced mobility. Slightly annoyingly, we didn't get either a confirmatory text or a message that the driver was waiting by looking out of the front windows and, when we got in, he confirmed that their alert system had been down for days!

The train journey was smooth and we travelled on our Two Together railcard for the first time. The discount on the tickets was more than enough both to cover the cost of the card and to provide us with a healthy saving to boot. We got to Birmingham with about 20 minutes to spare, successfully navigated the vaguaries of New Street with both a person on crutches and various bags and found our seats on the Coventry train.

We got to Coventry just after two and had lunch — spinach and lentil soup with bread and cheese &mdsah; with my parents and one of my nephews. When my dad went to pick up my youngest nephew from nursery, we went the first of many walks in the Memorial Park, returning just as my dad returned with child in tow. We then pottered for the rest of the day and went to bed early to prepare for tomorrow.

Up around six in the morning to give A time for a last shower and left the house well before seven to allow A to drop me off at the bus stop for work, before heading to the hospital.

Despite going through the usual pre-op early — during which the anaesthetist recognised her from her last operation — she didn't go into theatre until 13:15. She came out after a couple of hours and then spent a few more in recovery, fighting off the effects of the anaesthetic, until she was well enough to be moved up to the ward around 18:45. By this time, we were waiting in the hospital reception and we went through once we got the all-clear from the nurses.

A looked terrible when we arrived: bundled in blankets and with a towel around her head because she felt cold, even as the rest of us were stripping off layers of clothing to deal with the sweltering heat. But she started to perk up after 30 minutes and by 20:00 when visiting hours were over, she was well enough to roll her eyes and argue with her mother about her menu choices, and order me and her father to do tomorrow's parkrun.

The whole thing was pretty tough to start with and I was emotional and wobbly enough that I didn't entirely trust myself to speak, but things got better both as A improved and I got a grip and realised that it was a bit self-indulgent to be teary when I was just standing by a bedside.