I really need to try harder when it comes to thinking of titles.

How’s about “The Little Mower That Thought It Could…”

No, seriously, I mean it.  I’ve had an interesting sort of day.  I don’t know whether anyone has noticed, but the weather has been a bit poor lately.  The odd spot of rain and all that?  Yes, that’s what I mean.

Anyway, one of the practical upshots of our soggy April was that I never really got the chance to get out in the garden and mow the lawn.

There’s a lot of lawn.

And this is the time of year when it really starts to get the bit between its teeth (metaphorically speaking) and gets down to some serious growing.

It was getting rather long.  There’s an old joke about an overgrown garden being so bad that you find an old Japanese soldier living in there who doesn’t know that World War II has finished.  In our case, we were way past that point – one corner was like Jurassic Park, while I’m sure I caught a brief glimpse of a Predator in another one and that there was a small colony of N’avi over by the conifers. Even with a self-propelled, petrol-powered mower, it took a few hours. Even with the mower set to its longest cut, I kept having to stop to clean all the grass cuttings out from the side vent and under the deck.  In the longer patches, I was even reduced to a method of mowing that consisted of moving forward about three or four feet, at which point the engine would start to die owing to all the grass clogging up the cutting deck, so I would then lift the mower slightly and move back a couple of feet to allow the deck to clear itself so that I could take another run at it.

Having started this seemingly Sisyphean task around mid-morning, there really were times when I thought I wouldn’t have it finished until sundown.  As it was, I finally cut the last bit and put the mower away sometime between four and five o’clock.  Although, to be fair, there was a short lunch-break and a short mid-afternoon pause for a cuppa along the way.

Still, at least it’s done now.  Unfortunately, the way that the stuff in our garden grows, I’m probably going to have to do it all over again within the next week or so.  Mind you, at least I should be able to set the mower to a shorter cut next time and give myself more breathing space in the future.  That’s always assuming, of course, that the poor little mower has survived the experience – I’m half expecting to find it dead and defunct the next time I go to use it.  I think today might just have been a bit too much for it.  It nearly was for me…!

Well, I’m still here and have been meaning to give the old keyboard an airing for the last week or so, but I’ve just been too busy running around doing other things.  In no particular order, we have:

Helping to take care of Glenda.  (Followers of her blog will know that she has been a little poorly of late, although it’s good to report that she’s beginning to feel a little better now.)

Keeping things all ship-shape, Bristol-fashion and running smoothly at Chocolate Baroque, even in the absence of the aforementioned Glenda.  (A not inconsiderable task, but one in which I am skilfully aided and abetted by one or two folks along the way, without whom I would be in the unenviable, and probably quantum-mechanical, position of actually being up several different creeks simultaneously, but without the requisite number of paddles to manage all of them.)

Dealing with horrible, piddly-widdly, dribbly, soaking wet, pouring rainy, damnably awful weather.  Yes folks, our recent bout of meteorological cussedness resulted in one or two unfortunate incidents, such as the roof at Choc Baroque HQ springing a small leak (now fixed) and myself having to drive through several not-insignificant bits of flooded road on my way hither and yon during the course of my normal day-to-day activities.  The driving through floods thing wouldn’t be so bad normally, as I drive one of those hideous, gas-guzzling, environment-devouring 4×4 beasties.  Now, yes,  I know that such vehicles are often frowned upon nowadays, but for all its lack of green credentials, it does still have something going for it when you live out in the countryside in an area that sees a good few feet of snow at some point during most winters.  Not to mention if you also have to carry lots of big and heavy things back and forth on a fairly regular basis, sometimes have to cross fields or muddy tracks here and there and, as already mentioned, may need to navigate various bits of flooded roadway whenever the English weather decides to drop an extra load of raindrops on your head. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that one of the flooded patches decided to wreak its revenge on me by ripping most of the assorted plastic protective panels from the underbody of my dear old tank, things with it would be spiffing at the mo.  However, having now found out that replacing these delightfully feeble bits of plastic junk may cost me something around six hundred quid, while the assorted car parts that they are supposed to protect tend to be made out of fairly huge chunks of iron and steel, etc. and are, to my thinking, much less likely to come to any serious harm than the stupid panels that supposedly “protect” them, I do find myself pondering somewhat on the mentality of car designers and the shady business practices associated with putting expensive bits of frangible plastic in places where they may become thoroughly and irreparably franged.  So to speak.

Enough grumbling about car manufacturers though.  The other major activity that has kept me far from my blogging responsibilities has been the airing of my other keyboards – specifically, the ones that I use when carrying out my musical duties with The Blind Boys of Richmond and TS Junction.  By some strange alignment of the stars, I found myself with a four week period (from the last week of March, through until the weekend before last) during which I was playing no less than three gigs (one with the Blind Boys and two with TSJ), plus the associated rehearsals with each band in the meantime.  This hectic bit of the rock ‘n’ roll life culminated in a spell of twelve or so days during which, between rehearsals and gigs, I actually found myself playing on six different afternoons or evenings.  After that, I really did need to have a bit of a lie-down in a darkened room for a while.  I’m only just recovering now…

And that, m’lud, is why I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks.  When I’m fully recovered, I’ll let you know how the gigs went and even post some photos of the flooding, I promise.

Let me tell you about Monday…

Monday was a funny sort of day.  I didn’t feel too well for most of the first half of it to be honest and, although I would like to say that it was all self-inflicted following a weekend of frenetic partying and wild living, nothing could be further from the truth.  I’ve reached that stage where the only “wild living” that I do tends to be the occasional moments of rock ‘n’ roll excess when playing a gig.  And, even then, the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll excess” is just a massively overstated way of saying “perhaps a pint of Thrutchmettles Old Furtler or Snozzlingtons Fiery Weasel or something during the first half”.

Anyhoo…  Having started the day feeling under the weather and, as a result, staying resolutely under the duvet for as long as unreasonably possible, it finally reached the point where I had to raise myself from my intermittent slumbers and face the world.  This was partly because I had to pop down the office to do a bit of power and network recabling (following our slight relocation and rearrangement of various things on Friday) but mainly because I had to be at a TSJ rehearsal on Monday night.

So, cables duly cabled, power duly powed and network duly nettled, I returned home, loaded my assorted musical accoutrements into the car and headed for the rehearsal rooms in Stockton where we practise strutting our stuff.  Overall, it was a pretty good session, even allowing for the fact that our drummer couldn’t make it that night, so we were playing without the usual assortment of beautifully executed booms, thuds, crashes and tinkles that he normally provides.  A fair bit of fun was had by all along the way and 10 p.m. or thereabouts saw me climbing back into the car and heading for home.  So far so good.

When I got back, I found Glenda still up and about watching a film, so I made myself a sandwich, grabbed a cup of tea and settled down to do a bit of web-surfing and assorted email checking before bed.  This seemed like a good and sensible plan and I was already thinking fond thoughts of climbing back under the duvet once again and trying to recapture some of the more bizarre and peculiar dreams from my nice long lie-in earlier in the day.

Then Trillian arrived.  Which is not such a big deal under normal circumstances, aside from introducing some extra furry, squee-ing cuteness into the room.  However, on this occasion, she did not arrive on her own.  She arrived, with a bit of a run, a dash, a bang and a bash, accompanied by a new friend in the shape of a live mouse that she had caught out in the garden somewhere and decided to introduce to the rest of the family.  This, in itself, would not have been so bad had she kept a closer eye on her new little buddy.  But that wasn’t to be and, before we knew it, the mouse was on the run, closely followed by Trillian, who was closely followed by Glenda.  Meanwhile, I stood there in the middle of the room saying “Huh?  Eh?  What?  Oh bugger!”

The next couple of hours were an interesting frenzied time of furniture moving and dashing back and forth, all the while trying to keep an eye on the small, brown blur that was belting hither and yon across the room, hiding under dressers and bookcases, climbing curtains and generally causing a degree of hurly-burly and generalised chaos far in excess of its diminutive stature.  Trillian, meanwhile, having provided the ball and blown the whistle for the start of the whole game (so to speak) obviously felt that she had done her bit to prevent our lives becoming too boring and was spending most of the time sitting under the table watching the hilarious floor show.  Once or twice, she did trot over and join in for a short while, but in each case our little visitor managed to escape her clutches relatively unscathed.  He (or she) also escaped Glenda’s clutches relatively unscathed since, although Glenda did just about manage to grab the mouse on two separate occasions, in both cases the dratted thing got away at the last minute.

I say “relatively unscathed” there because, by around 1:25 a.m. (yes, twenty-five past one in the morning folks) we finally admitted defeat and accepted that we weren’t likely to catch the little blighter.  In fact, we were no longer even sure where the aforementioned little blighter had gone since we’d lost sight of it about a quarter of an hour earlier.  So, working on the assumption (or, at least, the hope) that it was still in the living room somewhere, we sealed the room off as best we could and called it a night.

The following morning, we let Trillian into the room first and, although she did the whole “alert cat” bit and dashed off to one or two different points in the room, there was still no sign of the mouse.  We sealed the room again during the day while we were at work and resumed our mouse-hunting activities last night, all to no avail.  Our new resident had either found some convenient exit point and scarpered at the first opportunity or he/she had disappeared off into the house somewhere.  Or possibly, following all the excitement and one or two swipes from the fine assortment of paring knives that Trillian keeps secreted in her paws, the poor little thing had found a quiet corner in which to give up the ghost and expire in peace.  We may never know.

One thing is for sure though – I’ll never be able to think of the line “There’s a moose loose aboot this hoose!” in quite the same way ever again.

Today has been a relatively easy sort of day, with Sunday lunch at a local pub followed by a three or four mile walk home over the fields and country lanes.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while and today was the day to try it.  Our friends Lesley and David came over and the four of us piled in the car and drove over to the pub.  After lunch Glenda and Lesley drove home, while David and I put on our coats and walking boots and headed off on foot.  It was a nice little hike, partly following public footpaths over fields and through woods and partly walking along minor roads and single-track country lanes – including one particular lane that now seems to be disused and is slowly becoming overgrown with grass, nettles, thistles and a huge number of rabbit warrens.

The only slight blots on the walking landscape were the little uphill stretch along the side of one field that left me realising just how unfit I have become in recent years and the rather unpleasant driving, drizzly rain that decided to grace us with its presence for about ten or fifteen minutes, just as we came out onto a nice exposed ridge of land where it could really smack us right in the face and punish us for our temerity in wanting to go for a walk in the country.  Still, if you fancy walking around in the UK at just about any time of year, you’ve got to be ready to take a bit of rough with the smooth, so I can’t really complain too much.

So I’m now feeling smug on two counts – managed the blogging challenge thing and also managed to fit in a bit of exercise to help walk off a rather nice Sunday lunch.  Who’s a lucky boy then?

Regular visitors to Glenda’s blog will know that this ball of tri-coloured furry delightfulness:

is Trillian.

A few weeks ago, we discovered one of her little secrets.  Now, to provide a bit of background to the tale, it needs to be said that Glenda is quite fond of cherries.  I can’t stand them myself, but Glenda likes them and, on occasion, will have a small bowl of them sitting around in the kitchen or living room somewhere to provide a suitably cherrytastic snack as and when required.

Just such a bowl was sitting on the coffee table in our living room a while ago.  As is often the case, it contained several cherries (and one or two discarded cherry stones too, but we’ll ignore those for the moment).  One morning, I came downstairs to find the following:

Item: one cherry.  Location: on the floor just beside the coffee table.

I also noticed this:

Item: Another cherry.  Location: on the floor next to my laptop, about three or four feet from the coffee table.

As if that weren’t enough, I also found this:

Item: Yet another cherry.  Location: in the hall, just outside the door to my music room, approximate distance from coffee table about 15 yards (through a doorway and up a couple of small steps).

There were others, for which I sadly have no photographic evidence to hand.  One on the rug in front of the fireplace (about six feet from the coffee table), another one in the living room doorway (about ten feet from the coffee table), one over by one of the bookcases (about seven feet from the coffee table) and even, as we discovered later when moving the furniture around a bit, two under the sofa.

Meanwhile, back in the bowl on the coffee table, was a cherry.  Just one.  A solitary, lonely little globule of cherryness.  (Oh, and the cherry stones that I mentioned earlier.)

Obviously, these are not just cherries.  These are fun-filled, fully-tested, certified and Trillian-approved cat toys.

We have since seen her steal a cherry from another bowl and make off with it, carrying it delicately by holding the tip of its stalk between her teeth and letting the fruit dangle and bumble around in front of her as she trots away.  We’ve even seen her holding a cherry like that and taking playful swipes at it with her paws at the same time.  It’s cute.  In fact, it’s very cute.  In LOLspeak, it might even be described as “kyoot!”.  Or possibly even “head-asplodingly kyooooooooooot!!!!!  Splort!”

(If you haven’t yet encountered icanhascheezburger.com, just humour me – smile and nod graciously while moving away slightly and waiting for the men in white coats once again.)

Fortunately for me, although I don’t like cherries, Trillian has had the kindness to ensure that I don’t feel all left out of her games.  I’ve seen her doing something similar with grapes too and I love those.

Bank Holidays, such as Christmas or Easter, have been a time to do all the little jobs at work that you can’t do during normal working weeks.  Like rearranging warehouse shelves or installing new computers or moving assorted bits of furniture from A to B via C, D, E, F and Q.

Last year, for the first time in ages, we didn’t spend Christmas doing any of those things.  We went home just before the big day and didn’t return to the office until the New Year was a few days old.  And it was delightful and wonderful not to spend our Christmas hols working on some project or other.

However, we obviously must have felt that we had missed out on something by having our proper Christmas hols.  We’ve just spent most of today down at the office rearranging furniture, moving shelves and shifting printers and computers around.

We’ve already made an arrangement with the men in white coats.  They’re coming to pick us up later.

A mere two days ago, I was rather amazed and taken aback to be stuck in the middle of a monstrous snowstorm while on my way to a band rehearsal, this being just 48 hours or so after I had been out and about enjoying glorious sunshine at the weekend.

This afternoon, as I sauntered across to the sorting office with today’s postbags, I was equally amazed and taken aback to be once again enjoying utterly glorious sunshine.  Not only that, but the sky was a beautiful blue and, from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t even a single cloud.

Right about now, I really can’t help but wonder what tomorrow will bring.  I’m hoping for a short, sharp shower of Easter eggs I suppose, but that’s probably too much of a long shot even for this week…

No, sorry, that was completely automatic and my fingers did it without the involvement of my higher brain functions.  Which aren’t all that high at the best of times to be honest, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, yes, er, where was I?

Oh yes, music.

Observant readers will have noticed in yesterday’s little missive from yours truly that I mentioned a band rehearsal taking place.  Moreover, that this band rehearsal was the first time that we had played together for a few months.

The budding detectives amongst you would then probably have thought “Hang on a moment, didn’t he just play a gig the weekend before last?  There’s something fishy going on here – first he’s playing a gig, then he says that the band haven’t played together for a few months?  I smell a rat!  Or possibly a fish?!”

Well, as Holmes would so eloquently put it “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”  The only way to square the seemingly impossible circle of my assorted band activities would be to work on the basis that there are, in fact, two completely different bands.  And you’d be right.  Elsewhere in this very blog I made a passing mention of the fact that I had decided to drag my keyboards out of my music room once again and join another band last summer, having left my previous one a few years ago.  It’s a long and complicated story involving a trip to the Zetland estate just outside Richmond to discuss commercial properties and finding a man there with a rather nice Yamaha drum kit in his office.  Although the commercial property thing didn’t work out, a few weeks later saw me becoming the fifth member of The Blind Boys of Richmond, a merry band of troubadours who do a pretty good line in good old-fashioned blues and rock ‘n’ roll.  Even if I do say so myself.

Last night was a Blind Boys rehearsal and it was the first time that the whole band has met up since we played a gig at The Talbot in Richmond at the end of October last year.  In spite of that, we managed to cover about two-thirds of our usual set-list in the space of a couple of hours and most of it was sounding pretty good under the circumstances.  We’ve got another couple of rehearsals over the next couple of weeks and then you can catch us live and up close at The Castle (again in Richmond) on Saturday April 21st.

Meanwhile, we need to talk about Scott.  Well, not about Scott as such, although he does necessarily come into the musical picture here.  Scott and I have been friends for about 12 years or so, having first met when working for the same company in Middlesbrough.  Like me, he’s a keen music-fiend, both in terms of listening to all manner of good stuff and also being a musician himself – although, in his case, his main instrument is guitar.  (Scott is also the man for whom the surprise birthday party was organised earlier this year – again recounted elsewhere in this blog.)

Anyway, for some time Scott has also been playing in a band and trying to persuade me to drag myself along and join in.  It’s slightly trickier in this case, since Scott himself lives rather further afield, as do the other band members, so it’s a bit more of a struggle to get to rehearsals, etc.  However, since I was once again thoroughly enjoying the live music scene, it didn’t take all that much arm-twisting before I gave in and signed on as the fifth member of TS Junction (or TSJ for short).  Like the Blind Boys, TSJ play a smattering of bluesy and classic rock numbers, however the repertoire then extends further afield, covering all manner of interesting stopping-off points from the seventies through to the noughties.  Where else can you find things like “Waterloo Sunset” (The Kinks) alongside “Man on the Moon” (REM) with a side-order of Chili Peppers (Red Hot, of course – “Under the Bridge”) and accompanied by some “Rattlesnakes” (Lloyd Cole).  All served by a “Fluorescent Adolescent” (Arctic Monkeys) who is off to attend the “Blitzkrieg Bop” (Ramones) later.

OK, OK, I’m sorry.  Enough of the heavily laboured utterly dreadful song-title puns.  Suffice to say that it was a TSJ gig the weekend before last over at The Ship Inn in Guisborough (a great pub for live music in general, by the way).   And great fun it was too.  We’re playing again at The Queen’s Head in Stokesley on April 14th, so if you’re in the area and want to catch a good gig and say “Hi there!” to yours truly, that’s the place to be.  (And, funnily enough, I already know that I’m likely to be returning to the Castle Tavern in Richmond to play there once again on June 16th, but this time with TSJ rather than the Blind Boys.  So that should thoroughly confuse the regulars.)

So there we have it.  The Mysterious Case of the Keyboard Player in the Nighttime laid out in minute detail and solved for your delight and delectation.  Complete with pictures and hand-drawn illustrations.

(OK, OK, I fibbed about the pictures and stuff.)

I’m currently finding it hard to believe that, just over 48 hours ago, I was sitting here at home enjoying a beautiful sunset at the end of a day that had included a trip to Acorn Bank, where Glenda and I and our friend Nick had spent a very pleasant few hours wandering around the garden and woodland in rather glorious sunshine.  And yet, at around two or three o’clock this afternoon, I opened the door down at the Choc Baroque workshop in Barnard Castle to find that it had started snowing.  Not a huge amount, but more than enough.  And mostly arriving at a fairly shallow angle thanks to the wind that had been huffing and puffing around the building earlier, knocking small twigs and bits and pieces off the nearby trees.

By the time I left this evening to attend a band rehearsal, the conditions were even worse with heavier snow hurtling through the air and plastering every windward surface with a layer of soft white coldness.  The drive down to our drummer’s place was interesting and fun, with snow on the verges and some of it beginning to lie on the road surface itself.  Unloading my keyboards and other gear from the car probably looked like something from an Antarctic expedition.

It was a good rehearsal though, with us doing pretty well considering that we hadn’t played together for a few months.  And, before I knew it, it was time to call it a night and for me to head home.  So it was out into the icy blast of horizontal snow once again, loading everything back up into the car and driving back along the snowy country lanes while trying to work out where I was going – there was so much light from my headlights reflecting back off all the snow in the air that it all got a bit iffy at times.  But I made it safe and sound and don’t intend to set foot out of the door again until the morning.  At which point I’m pretty much expecting the world outside to look like Narnia and our dear little puss-cat, Trillian, to be standing at the door giving me a highly disgruntled look and asking in no uncertain terms what the merry hoo-hah I think I’m doing allowing weather like this to happen when she wants to go outside and play.

Oh well, at least this week is giving me enough to ramble about.  Although I’m sure I could ramble just as well about lovely warm Spring days and more glorious sunshine if I were given the chance.

Meanwhile, at the risk of this blog becoming like some kind of horrendous variant of the bucket list or dead pool, the only thing I have to report today is a long journey down to Ipswich and back in order to attend the funeral of one of my aunts (my Mum’s sister).  Although I haven’t seen my aunt and uncle for many years (possibly not since Glenda and I got married if I remember rightly), she was a lovely lady and it was the least that I could do to make the effort to attend today and pay my respects.  Particularly since my Mum’s condition ruled out any possibility of her being there herself.

So this morning saw me climbing out of my bed at daft o’clock and hitting the road.  The drive down wasn’t too bad, being pretty clear all the way down and, although the weather here at home looked a little grey and overcast, the weather when I got to Ipswich was absolutely glorious.  Since I figured that I would probably stop somewhere on the way down to grab a bite of breakfast, Glenda suggested that I didn’t wear my proper shirt, tie and jacket for the drive, but left them hanging in the back of the car and changed into them later.   This was a brilliant idea, although it did lead to some slightly odd looks when I sauntered into a Little Chef somewhere on the A14 wearing a pair of dark pinstripe suit trousers along with a sagey-green polo shirt.  Taking such precautions did, however, ensure that I didn’t spill any of my breakfast on myself – I can just about guarantee that, had I worn my shirt and tie for the journey, I would then have arrived at the far end in a nicely laundered shirt that had just been covered in tomato, baked beans and/or HP sauce stains.

Anyway, suitably breakfasted, I spent a couple of minutes standing in the Little Chef car park changing out of my polo shirt and into my proper shirt and tie at the back of the car (no doubt leading to one or two folks thinking “Oh, they must be making another one of those Transporter films – I say, that Jason Statham’s let himself go a bit hasn’t he?”)  And onwards to the service, which was very nice and more than a little moving, with a good turnout of my aunt and uncle’s many friends.  I did pop back to the house for a short while after the funeral, but couldn’t stay too long since I had another long drive ahead of me.  So this afternoon saw me repeating the morning’s travels in reverse – luckily getting a fairly clear run of it again so I was actually home again just before 7 p.m.

Now I’m just hoping that that is the last of the funerals for a while – we’ve had enough of them in the last two years and I think I could do with a break.

And I promise to report something lighter and more fun tomorrow…