How Big is Scotland?

Last month, we had a Jigsaw frenzy. We were ploughing through them, in case they went out of fashion. They might become banned on account of their severely addictive characteristics or similar Health and Safety reason.

We completed a fiendish 1,000 piece jigsaw of the U.S., followed by a 500 piece, called the “Corner Shop”, courtesy of Kathy, and then a 1,000 piece map of Great Britain. These were all done on our Grand Piano, a natural place on which to complete a jigsaw. Those of you, who have ever tried this, will realise that.

Back to the jigsaw of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland, for those of you not sure about the constituent parts of the United Kingdom). We pick up a piece with “Dover” on it. Easy enough. Here’s “Watford”, “Manchester”, so far so good. “Cornwall” O.K. “Blackpool”, Hmmmm. That’s a bit harder. That’s on the left somewhere, in the far North, I think.

Dundee…? Where’s that, precisely? North or South of Aberdeen? Up at the top somewhere….and the Orkneys. Are they further north to the Shetland Islands or south….somewhere near the Isle of Man…approximately. Oh Dear, Hawker – bottom of the class.

You can tell that I am the poor product of a classic English education. I can still decline the Latin verb “amo, amas, amat..etc”, but have no idea whether the Orkneys are north of the Shetlands or south. I know that Henry V won the battle of Agincourt in 1415, (although I am still not sure exactly what he was doing there), but had no idea of the distance between the North and South of mainland Scotland. I gave up geography at the age of 14 (or geography gave up on me). As is evident from this blog entry, this was not my best subject.

Looking at the completed Jigsaw, I noticed that North Yorkshire is only just half way up the whole jigsaw. This results in a huge mental readjustment on my part. I thought that as you drive past Newcastle, the motorway ends, followed by a sheer drop, protected by fire, dragons and Hadrian’s Wall and the ghosts of Roman Soldiers. (I have flown to Edinburgh three times, but I have always thought I was moving into an alternative universe, somewhere near Father Christmas)

And it gets worse…for me, at least. At the very top was a large green part called “The Highlands”. This was a hard section of the jigsaw as many of pieces have no towns or names on them, and they were all coloured green.

A review of the circulation list of my Blog showed that the Scots are under represented. In fact, there is only one, and she would be appalled, but not surprised by my ignorance. There needs to be a positive campaign to have greater diversity on my blog list, and an initiative to educate Grumpy in his own Geography, complete with an action plan and government imposed targets. Is there no limit to the ignorance of the English about the geography of Great Britain?

By the way, Shetlands are north of the Orkneys, Aberdeen is north of Dundee, North to South of mainland Scotland is approximately 350 miles and the real reason that Henry V was at Agincourt was because he wanted to go to Aberdeen, but went to the same school as I did.

Giving Lessons in being Grandad (by Bradley -16 months)

This is Bradley.

Grandad and I have just had a boy’s morning, complete with taking Duplo out of the box and then putting it back again……then taking it out and ….you get the picture. It’s awesome fun. Even if Grandad was a bit slow on the uptake, he seemed to get the hang of it eventually

My mum went shopping with Nanna, leaving yours truly in charge. After the mandatory 2 seconds of crying, we get down to the serious business of teaching Grandad how to do his job. We have covered Duplo. Next was knocking wooden pegs on a workbench. Fantastic fun. Grandad was good at this, but he doesn’t hit the pegs with enough force, so I had to show him how to give the peg a good whack. You should have seen him get his fingers out of the way.

Next was jumping on the sofa. Now, he is not supposed to let me do this, but I won’t tell on him. We did this for a couple of minutes, but I thought that I should show him what he should do if I want forty winks. I picked up my blanket, and had to insist that he brought my white bear. He wanted me to pick it up, but I insisted. You’ve got to be insistent on these things. No point in pussy footing around.

Then I showed him how to put me in the cot, switch on the musical sea-horse, and pass me my blanket. Ten seconds of that and then it’s jumping up time, and back to the lounge, for some reading.

Grandad isn’t very good at reading. He keeps trying to turn over the pages and doesn’t understand that the first page should be read over and over again, so I have to keep turning the pages back. Silly Grandad.

Then it’s time for Grandad to have a snooze in the chair, so I settle him down in the corner of the sofa until Mummy gets back. I made him switch on the musical sea-horse, because I think that will settle him down quicker. He looks very tired poor thing and he doesn’t get much of a doze because Mummy comes back.

Overall he was pretty well behaved, so I think that I will look after him again.

Leicester City Fans roll out the Christmas Choir

I have been complaining about the lack of sun over the past four weeks. That’s because I like to complain and secondly because there has not been much sun over the past four weeks. I’m glad that we have got that clear. We have now reached Ipswich in our pre-Christmas sojourn to visit family and friends and the grey clouds are heavy over England, as well as Switzerland.

For reasons which now escape me, I thought that it might be a “nice” idea to go the Ipswich Town football match against Leicester City on the Saturday before Christmas. I secretly hoped that everyone would have reason not to come. I said to Ed: “It doesn’t kick off until 5.20 pm, so it’s a bit late”. “GREAT IDEA”, he replied. Ben was sure to have Christmas Shopping to do: “TERRIFIC”. Kevin would have to travel from Norwich “Dicey timetable; There’ll be works on the line”. “GREAT; Timetable will be fine”.

In the face of such overwhelming support, on the morning of the game, I saw one hopeful possibility. At minus 7 C, the game was bound to be called off. Not a bit of it. The game was on, and we met near the ground, suitably dressed for minus a lot, and the beginning of a serious snow storm. In my case, dressing suitably included two pairs of socks, heavy Swiss hiking boots, long johns, two pullovers and a skiing jacket, two pairs of gloves, two woolly hats and a blanket.

And what an evening’s entertainment we had. I know that you will say it was just because Ipswich Town won, but frankly, when you are an Ipswich Supporter, you don’t go expecting to win. You just want to see if your team can break some record for the most number of consecutive defeats and get into the Guinness Book of records.

The Stands were completely empty behind us, which meant we could stand up and stamp our feet to keep warm, instead of having to sit in seats designed for people who are less than 5 foot tall. We were sheltered from the storm, for reasons I do not understand and never felt cold. The players did a seriously good job of playing entertaining football in a couple of inches of snow, where injury must have been a serious possibility and the referee and linesman (or whatever they are called these days) must have had serious difficulties in seeing the lines and the centre circle. How you would have known if a foul was committed inside or outside the box would have been anyone’s guess.

After nearly sixty minutes, I nearly had my way, when the referee took the players off “To consider the position” and then much to everyone’s surprise, came back to finish the game.

However, the highlight must have been the Leicester City fans, who had travelled all that way, in the cold and kept up a constant refrain of loud, musical and frequently witty songs. This enthusiastic and good humoured choir kept up the volume, even when they were losing, with such improvisations as:

“You only win when it’s snowing” and “we’re going home in a tractor” (both to the tune of “You only sing when you’re winning”)
“Let’s do the snowman” (whatever that is)
“Call it off; call it off; call it off” and “where’s the pitch, where’s the pitch, where’s the pitch”; (sung to “Here we go; Here we go; Here we go)

I don’t know when they find the time to do the choir practice.

We went back to Hazel’s mum and were met by Sara and Anthony. They had risked life and limb in driving to join us in the best fish and chips that we have had for years (i.e. they had fish in it).

I hope that the Leicester City fans had a good journey home. They deserved it. They made the atmosphere special. If it is not snowing on Boxing Day, please could they come back again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/9283579.stm