Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

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.

Via my parents, the news that I have a new great nephew. According to my father, the hospital initially got the conversion from kilograms wrong and told my niece that his birth weight was 10lbs 10oz but they later revised this to a more plausible but still pretty substantial 9lbs 10oz.

Got up early, despite the late finish, and spent the morning catching up with my mum. My dad who'd, having stayed up to ensure he was at the airport to pick me up, decided he was too tired to go on his Sunday bike ride and stayed in bed late instead.

I took full advantage of the facilities and put all my dirty laundry through the machine. This was partly practical — I'd only taken just enough clothes to see me through the Turkish part of the holiday — and partly protective — I wanted to ensure that if I had brought the stomach bug back with me, all my clothes had at least gone through the washing machine at a reasonable temperature to minimise the chances of it being passed on.

The rest of the time was spent taking it easy, cooking, and catching up on the news about my sister's new job — she'd aced the interview I'd helped her prepare for last week — and her subsequent decision to work this week, instead of taking it off to look after the kids over half-term.

We had my mum's vegetable spaghetti for supper and although the sauce was excellent, the pasta was less than good. None of us were quite sure why, but there was definitely something wrong with it: either the texture or the density were wrong and it had a bland, less than pleasant quality we weren't quite able to identify. But we probably shouldn't have been all that surprised: my sister had bought two lots of the same stuff and her family had rejected it when they'd tried it, so she'd palmed it off on my parents...

My dad standing on top of a rocky outcrop on Dartmoor, silhouetted against the sky.

Up reasonably early but not so early as to hit Exeter's rush-hour traffic. The journey down to the South Hams was pretty smooth until we reached Loddiswell, where we got caught behind a tractor towing a JCB on a trailer. Fortunately they turned off after ten minutes and the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful. We made it to South Sands by around 10:30 and parked in the National Trust car park up.

We set out on a walk that my dad called "unfinished business" — a walk that he'd failed to finish a few years ago before his hip was replaced.

My mum walking the cliff path above Starehole Bay.

The route followed the familiar pattern of the cliff path round to Starehole Bay and then on towards Soar Mill Cove.

Starehole Bay on a turbulent spring day, with the shadows of the clouds clealry visible on the water. Starehole is famous as the last resting place of the barque Cecilie which struck the rocks off the South Hams in 1936.

Once we reached the top, my dad took the opportunity to consult the map on his iPad...

Long-time readers may notice that the natty fleece he is wearing looks familiar, if so, they might notice that it sports the slogan "NUG VXII, May 2005, Exeter UK" For a conference freebee, it's certainly gone the distance.

...while my mum used the same bench to fish out her bottle of water.

A very characteristic photo of my parents: my dad consulting yet another map; my mum offering either food or drink; and both of them slightly off-kilter!

Rather than go all the way to the Soar Mill, we turned inland at the admiralty signal tower, walked along the road to Higher Rew — where we used to camp every summer we came to Salcombe when I was a child. The road ran parallel to the village of Malborough, high on a hill with its extremely distinctive church spire visible from miles away.

Malborough with the sunlit uplands of Dartmoor in the far distance.

Taking the footpath that leads up through the back of the Higher Rew camping field, we reached Bolt Head air field — once an RAF station and once a regional seat of government, should a nuclear war wipe out the rest of the country. Walking the perimeter, we reached the new — to us — National Trust East Soar car park and followed the path it recommended round the southern edge of the airstrip and then through the woods to reach the back of Overbecks.

A spectacular view of both the gardens of Overbecks, with its magnolia tree in full blossom, and the houses and beaches of Salcombe in the distance.

The gates of Overbecks House, complete with palm trees — something I remember from my earliest visits both to Salcombe and to the National Trust house.


We had lunch in the South Sands Hotel for old times sake before jumping on the sea tractor to catch the ferry to Salcombe itself. My parents were slightly surprised when the ferry went to the new jetty rather than the Ferry Inn steps and more surprised when the ferryman told them the destination had changed 15 years ago!

Salcombe was very much as it ever was: busy with people, although not quite a mid-summer levels, and full of very on-trend fashion shops. There were some survivors from way back when and I was amused to see that the Victoria Inn was not just dog friendly but even went so far as to offer a full-on canine menu, featuring such delights as pig's ears and roast bones! Once we'd done a bit of shopping — more precisely, once my mum had bought a pair of boat shoes and my dad had picked up a free sailing magazine — we walked back along Cliff Road, first to North Sands, and then to South Sands and the car.

We returned to Malborough and found our B&B, which proved to be a large house with a huge kitchen, games room, terrace, several suites of empty rooms, and, if my parents are to be believed, a limited number of working lightbulbs! We went out to try and get food in the village, failed utterly, and went to the Crabshell Inn in Kingsbridge. After a good supper — mum & I had pizza while my dad had soup and a burger — we returned to the B&B, still completely unoccupied, and went to bed, tired but happy.

My parents have had an eventful week. Leading a ride for his cycle group, my dad was going round a right-hand bend when he discovered a car in his path. Swerving to avoid it, he hit the kerb, came off his bike, and collided with a tree. His helmet took the brunt of the impact but he seems to have hit his shoulder going down. His bike had survived unscathed, so he hopped back on and finished the ride. Despite a slightly tender shoulder, he went another ride with no apparent ill-effects.

Then, late at night, he was woken by a pain in his now-very-tender shoulder. My mum was a loss for what do when sudden the shoulder popped and the pain went away; clearly he'd managed to dislocate it while he was asleep and managed to put it back into place after waking up. The next morning, they went to A&E where X-rays revealed that he'd sheered off part of his glenoid cavity — the socket that joins the humerus to the scapula — in the accident, presumably triggering the later dislocation.

The consultant who examined him has decided on an extremely conservative wait-and-see course of treatment: he has to keep his arm in a sling, avoiding any activities like cycling that might jostle his shoulder, and they will check in two weeks to see how it is progressing. They told him that if he'd been younger and didn't have complicating medical conditions, they'd've considered surgery; but in his case it just wasn't worth the risk...

The BBC's cunning strategy of announcing the identity of the Doctor's new companion during Match of the Day has paid off: my dad, generally more interested in football than SF, phoned with the exciting news that Pearl has got the part!

A very gentle last full day in Coventry, finishing up in the same way I've spent most of my holiday: with a spot of cooking. This time it was Allegra McEvedy's beetroot and bramley soup; a favourite of H's which she'd asked me to make for her when I saw her last week.

My parents finally accepted that there was no way their trip to London could go ahead in its planned form: my sister, still ill with flu, couldn't be allowed near our 93 year-old grandmother; and with my sister and her youngest out of the running, it was expecting a bit much of my brother-in-law to drive his step-daugher, her boyfriend, and her son down there and back again in day.

Eventually sanity prevailed and they decided to take my middle nephew down on the train, as they'd always intended; to go on a boat trip on the Thames; and to stay with my uncle overnight before returning on Friday.

The day of the party dawned earlier than it should have done: I was woken at quater to five in the morning by the sounds of vegetables being chopped in the kitchen below. Unable to get back to sleep with my mother pottering around and stressing out of the preparations, I spent the next few hours reading until it was time to get up.

Presenting myself downstairs at a reasonable hour, I discovered we were still trying to decide whether to postpone pending my sister's recovery from what is now very obviously flu, whether to continue without her, or whether to abandon entirely. Eventually my parents managed to persuade themselves to go ahead without my sister — they were very keen to ensure that neither their friends nor my niece's two week old baby were exposed to the disease.

The birthday cake in its natural state...

I spent the morning in the kitchen, preparing the veg — my main contribution being the cauliflower cheese — keeping an eye on the cooking times, and helping out with anything that needed it. Obviously I didn't do everything: I drew the line at handling the beef; fortunately I found someone else who was only too willing to do that bit:

Some people have to make their own birthday lunches!

We had a brief pause mid-morning when my brother-in-law and one of my nephews came by to help my dad open his birthday presents.

( Presents! )

While my dad was occupied elsewhere, my mum and my nephew used the opportunity to dress the cake with a few suitable objects: a small bike, some piratical candles, and edible writing:

The cake, now wearing its party clothes...

Thanks to the good offices of my brother-in-law, we were able to dress the dining room with an appropriate set of helium balloons:

( Balloons! )

My niece arrived around midday with her son in tow. Here she is with her baby and her younger — but not youngest — brother:



Lunch was excellent and it wasn't a bad thing my sister wasn't there: there was barely enough food left to make up a plate for her. My cauli cheese was singled out for particular praise and S's merengues were, as ever, superb.

( The baby slept through lunch... )

The cake — a two layer chocolate one, filled with cappuccino cream, and topped with chocolate icing — was particularly fine and got to make a fairly spectacular entrance between courses:

( Happy Birthday! )

Everyone had a good time and we ended the day happy. Even the birthday boy enjoyed himself:

My dad in his rocking chair...

A terrifying story from H when she came by today.

One day last week, she'd been about to get in the bath when the phone rang. She answered it. It rang again. She answered it again. She decided to make a phone call before she got in the bath. While she was on the phone there was a huge bang. So loud she thought someone had broken in. She went up stairs. There was glass everywhere. She went into the bathroom. The glass light shade had exploded. If she'd been in the bath, she'd been horribly injured. She might even have been killed.

As she said: the light has been there for years. It could've happened at any time. Weirdly, the bulb was still whole and the light fitting still worked.