View From The Window

It is not promising, there has been some rain during the night and a slight dampness is showing on the pavements and road, the view is fine but as usual it shows that that wind is still there and it is a cool wind which is spoiling any chance of enjoying whatever heat does turn up. Oh wait, there is the rain!

Washington House is now empty as the old lady has had to go into care and up until recently the missus was popping over to feed the cat, someone else has now taken up that job, I suspect the place will be up for sale at some point in the near future and it will cost a fortune. Only slightly for the historical significance, but you know estate agents they will work that one, but it is a large house with a garage and a fair sized garden, there are a lot of big gardens in Warton but not many garages, especially on Main Street. The other house has still not sold, in fact I have not even seen any visitors.

One of the nicest houses in the village, a beautiful big Georgian place in its own grounds, was taken from a drugs dealer, he hit on the idea of making pills which only had a very small amount of drugs in them and flooding the market. Not the cleverest of moves and of course he was caught and the house confiscated.

I don't know if the Sports Day went without a hitch as I had to attend a dance show in which my granddaughter was performing, it was certainly a better day here than in Northumberland when I left. You know how miserable I can be but there is something uplifting watching those kids, from three years old up dancing their hearts out, they work extremely hard to put the show on and it has been a resounding success for the two years I have attended.

I am not a great dancer, in fact like most people I just get up and move bits of me around on the spot, now once I reach a certain level of alcohol that changes, I am certain at that point I could audition for Footloose and give Kevin Bacon a run for his money. I do my trademark Twist, the one where I can almost reach the floor and get back up again, not sure how much longer that will last, I also have a move where I dance past my partner and turn on the spot, cool eh? All this to clarion calls of praise like "who let the old guy in?" Every time I wake up after such a night I promise myself to act with more decorum next time, but I never learn.

I tried learning the guitar at one point, this time I wanted to be Chuck Berry, not Kevin. My son who can play Berry, amongst others has a beautiful, expensive Gretsch here and I thought I would learn to play and surprise him, bang out some Buddy Holly or Eddie Cochrane, how hard could it be? Well it is bloody hard, I got cramp just learning to hold the thing, the ends of my fingers were cut to ribbons by the strings and I realised there was going to be no rock'n'roll jams for a long time. After a couple of months Graham turned up, he played some stuff for his mum, a loyal fan, and then I asked him if he knew ...... Freight Train! I took the guitar in a flourish and nailed it. Well that's how I remember it, it wasn't as seamless as it should have been granted and I made a rod for my own back as now, whenever a guitar pops up at an Anderson gathering there are shouts of "Geez Freight Train old yin" ha ha.

I took the missus for lunch into Morecambe last week, a place we usually stay clear of as its heyday has long since passed, but it has a decent if uninspiring Chinese restaurant we like. I noticed as we later strolled in the sunlight with our ice creams that nearly every third shop was selling mobility scooters, there were hundreds of them. By sheer coincidence I watched a documentary on scooters on BBC iPlayer and like many I am appalled that there are so many available in the UK (300,000 at the last count), usually free gratis compliments of the taxpayer, me in other words. Obviously there are some people who require these machines for quality of life, no problem there, but now it would seem if you have eaten yourself to the size of a No9 bus and can't be bothered to walk or are unable to you can get a scooter on benefits. Surely what these people need is the incentive to walk off the weight, not to be able get around at the flick of their wrist. You can also get one if you have never driven anything before, are half blind or losing your mind, there is no test for your competence, you do not even need to insure it against running a pedestrian down, also if you get the one which trundles along at 8mph you can also inconvenience real drivers by going on the road! Believe it or not you can also hire these things for the day if you feel you cannot trust your legs to get you to the next McDonalds or Subway.

On the subject of ice-creams have I missed something, is there a shortage of ice-cream and it is now a luxury item? In Italy I got ripped off nineteen euros for two, in Morecambe it cost £3.98 for two small cones and last night at the show it was £4.50 for two small tubs, and they spout these prices as if it is the most natural thing in the world and you have money to burn, of course I have I am buying ice-cream.

Now this is how to play a guitar ......... hit it!