Johnblog

Back to the Locomotive pub in Wellingborough for an evening with Bob, Richard Lovett, me and the spouses, Julie, Sarah and Jan. I get a bit of ribbing for wearing a lavender-coloured linen shirt to the pub, but that’s the price you have to pay for being fashion-forward like what I am. I decided not to wear my alice band on my hair. I notice some of the local drinkers staring at my shirt approvingly. After a few pints – Summer Lightning, Vicar’s Downfall, Bishop’s Finger and stuff like that – we have a game of skittles. Northamptonshire skittles is played on a table about a metre off the ground with a padded surround. There are nine pins in a diamond pattern on the table and you throw three round chunks of wood (called cheeses) from a distance of about  three metres. Led by Richard, who appears to remember the rules, we play a game called ‘killer’ where all the names are chalked on a board with three lives marked beside each one. The top of the list throws first and everyone then has to match the score of the previous player or lose a life. Lots of fun and bouncing cheeses. The skittling skills learned in my pub-crawling misspent youth return to me in a miraculous fashion and I thrash everyone else. Well, that’s the way I remember the evening. Later we turn to bar billiards and knock over a few mushrooms (nothing to do with mind-altering fungus).

Tuesday. The Mill House, West Deeping, Lincolnshire. We are staying with our friends, Steve and Ginny Cook, in this wonderful place. They have some marvellous open fields that would have made a brilliant airstrip, but they have chosen to put horses everywhere. Ginny is a keen dressage rider. We have some golf practice on Steve’s new golf practice mat in the indoor dressage arena. Steve has very special balls – they feel just like real ones but don’t go too far when you hit them. The river runs under the house and around it in some lovely pools with swans on them. Then we go up the River Welland in Steve’s little two-person plastic boat (a Bic!) with a 12 volt outboard motor. What an exciting adventure. The motor keeps bogging down as the propeller gets tangled in the weeds and we have to row. But the weeds get caught around the oars, so then we have to paddle it like a big canoe. Then we get near the weir – the water is rushing over it at a frantic rate, we could die if we get caught in the strong current and go over the top! Luckily, the combination of our 12-volt motor and some serious paddling gets us through the danger zone and into the quiet waters beyond. Phew! English weather is being kind, only a little rain today. Steve did beef in Guinness last night, tonight is barbecued rainbow trout. Yum!