Fled to Wed in Scotland

In 1974, they changed many of the county boundaries in England and Wales. They did the same to Scotland in 1975. Sadly, many county names became defunct.

Alas, poor Westmorland! And alas, poor Cumberland! Both of these fine old English counties became part of a new and larger county named Cumbria. However, the residents of the small town of Appleby did manage to preserve their link with the past by the simple expedient of changing their town name to Appleby-in-Westmorland.

And would you believe it? For a while, all the postal addresses in the small town of Gretna (which is in Scotland) were altered to include the town name Carlisle and the new county name Cumbria (both of which are in England). However, Royal Mail did eventually see sense and removed these English place names from Gretna postal addresses, replacing them with the new Scottish county name Dumfriesshire.

But that small bit of bureaucratic nonsense didn’t stop many English teenagers from running away to get married in Gretna – sometimes with irate parents in hot pursuit. Scottish law permits young people aged 16 or 17 to marry without parental consent, whilst English law sets the bar higher at eighteen years. Gretna still conducts over 5000 marriages each year, and all of them are conducted over a blacksmith’s anvil.

Hoorah for Bonny Scotland..!

“How far, how far to Gretna? ‘Tis years and years away,
And chaise and four will nevermore fling dust across the day;
But as I ride the Carlisle road, where life and love have been,
I hear again the beating hooves go through to Gretna Green.”

Message to JW from Expat

From Expat:

JW said he would like to see my paperweights, and since I can’t post on the blogs, perhaps you could. It might give him a smile. Some of them are Scottish, from Caithness. What you see is about 2/3 of my collection.





I guess you know to click on the photos to enlarge them. They are brilliant!
:-)

Important postscript:
We've made some Pâté Sardinas de la Expat.

The first photo is a bit fuzzy.
(We are always a bit fuzzy when trying a new recipe for the first time). But you can see more if you click on the photo to enlarge.


And below is a photo of the finished sardine pâté, ready for munching whilst blogging. Thanks for the recipe, Expat!

Rugby

I never had a parent
to cheer me on from the touchline

I never had a parent to watch me play.

I never had a father
to see me trial for England.

And he never saw me play.

.

OK,
Perhaps not as well as in the link below.
But please open it and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMd7PQavavw

:-)

Freedom - at last!

.
As I approach my 69th birthday, I hear a voice declare that he is being released from shackles that have, for over half a century, chained him to a sex-maniac.

Yippee!
Happy New Year!

: -)

The New Baby

Yes, they laughed at me. Everybody laughed at me. And I dare say that you would have laughed at me too, during all those months when I remained steadfast in my forecast that the new baby would be a boy, and would be given a strong, virile, dynamic, forename like IAN.

Well, I was proved right. As you can see, Kathy’s new grandson has all the attributes of a fine wing forward - 21.3 inches tall and weighing in at over 9lb.

The proud parents had already agreed on a name for a baby girl, but they hadn’t quite settled on a name for a baby boy. And so the matter remained undecided for the next few weeks, whilst all sorts of alternative male names were successively mooted and then discarded.

And occasionally, I would chip in with my halfpennyworth: “How about a name like IAN?” I would suggest, helpfully.

So I was delighted when they settled on JACK.

You see, IAN is the Scottish for John, and a common nickname for John is JACK. Moreover, the first letters in IAN and JACK (I and J) are alphabetically consecutive, and both names share the same second letter (A).

And if we consider each letter in the alphabet to be represented by its sequence number (A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on), we find that the C plus K in JACK is equal to the N in IAN.

So the two names are virtually identical :-)

But the really exciting outcome is this: the letters J,A,C,K equate to 10,1,3,11 which multiply up to 330, and these digits sum to SIX, whilst the letters I,A,N equate to 9,1,14 which multiply up to 126, and these digits sum to NINE.

The answer is always 69.

Apart from the baby, what can possibly be more perfect than that?
: - )

Six out of Eight

Progressively, over several weeks, a great feeling of lassitude had slowly and insidiously come over me. I felt that little bit weaker by the day, and more and more disinclined to exercise or otherwise exert myself.

I spent much more time than usual reading the financial press and watching the financial crisis unfold on Television, and I became increasingly angry at the state of the world.

My angers were followed by bouts of anxiety.

Then over the weekend, while walking with my daughters around the ponds at Alexandra Palace, I twice found myself losing my balance, to the extent of nearly falling into the water.

By Sunday evening, when back at home, the events of the weekend seemed to fade and become fuzzy in my memory, and I was losing track of conversation.

And I only just made it to bed before crashing into a deep sleep.

------

Next day Kathy joked that I had "Galloping Alzheimer's". But she was very worried when she showed me the small print on the leaflet that was tucked inside the packet of pills which my doctor had prescribed for me 5 weeks beforehand.

Tell your doctor if you notice any of the following side effects:
1. Muscle weakness
2. Excitement
3. Agitation
4. ‘Spinning sensation’
5. Confusion
6. Loss of consciousness
7. Coma
8. Death.

How someone with the latter symptoms is supposed to contact their doctor is beyond me!

I’m hugely better now, because I didn’t finish the prescribed course.

But six out of eight ain’t bad, is it?

:-)

Coincidences! I love them!!

I know I’ve previously written a blog about an amazing sequence of coincidences that happened to me, but something new has happened recently that makes me write again.

I lived in Moorhouse Road up until the age of six, and at the age of eleven I went to a school that had a “House” system. I became a member of Moor House at that school. Many years afterwards, I left college to begin a six-month residential training course at a building by the name of Moor House.

Yes, I know that all this would hardly be considered as the most amazing sequence of coincidences, but please bear with me...

Two weeks ago, an old colleague of mine, David, whom I had last seen twenty years ago, made contact with me again via Skype. We’d worked together for many years as software developers for a firm of international chartered accountants. During our conversation he happened to mention that his son had followed in our footsteps and was now working as a software developer for an international bank.

That certainly sparked my interest, because my son also works as a software developer for a bank. And would you believe it - it emerged that both our sons work for the same bank, in the same building in London!

The building where our sons work is in Canary Wharf. And later in our conversation it transpired that David had recently returned from a holiday in the Canary Islands. And as you know, I live in the Canary Islands, and unbeknown to either of us, we had visited the same island, and been in the same building, at the same time last December.

I really must return that Skype telephone call soon.

You see, I’m wondering if my friend David Moorhouse and I have even more in common than we already know…
:-)