An Eventful Week

About a month ago I had been approached and asked if I could play for a wedding in Rudding Park Chapel. The chapel and the huge house next door was part of a private estate owned by the Ratcliffe Family, but in the early 70's it had been bought, and the house converted into a very upper class hotel.

Rudding Park Chapel

The hotel, which is famous for its Clock Tower Restaurant, now caters for the top end of the market. The grounds boast a first class golf course, holiday homes and all the usual amnities one associates with such a property. As can be seen from the picture below, the chapel (on the right) is only road width away from the hotel. So the bride and groom should have no problems in getting from the hotel to the chapel - that is as long as it isn't very windy. The main door to the chapel is at the West End of the building (furthest away from the end nearest you in this photograph). The day I went to play for the wedding (Friday 4th February) was extremely windy, and fortunately Dot had decided to go along too. She spent the whole of the service, along with a female employee of Rudding Park trying to hold the two huge west doors shut!

After the service we went along to the lounge of the hotel and had coffee and biscuits with the vicar who had taken the service.

On Monday our tumble dryer decided to "give up the ghost", and part way through a drying cycle the drum stopped rotating and there was the most pungent burning smell.

A phone call to the insurance firm we have it insured with entailed a ten minute wait with numerous messages about "Your call is important to us", what seemed like hours of piped music, and "we are experiencing very busy lines at the moment" etc., etc. When I eventually spoke to a real live person, they were unable to tell me if they would be coming in the morning or the afternoon of the day they had arranged, which didn't exactly delight me. After some time I managed to get a phone number I could ring on the day of their call so I would know, within a two hour slot, when they would arrive.

The Hotpoint tumble dryer

On Wednesday I spoke to a group of over 50's at Crossflatts Community Centre, and my talk was on My Kind of Music(als) - Rodgers & Hammerstein. It went down well with them, and for most of the musical examples they were joining in and singing along!

Thursday duly arrived, and amazingly the tumble dryer service man arrived at 9.30 and within a short time had sorted out the problems with the tumble dryer, which meant that our original plans of going off for the day were still possible.

We packed all the necessities for Ruby - food, water, dog lead etc, and set off for Settle, where we dined at the Naked Man Cafe in the village square. The meal consisted of two bowls of carrot and coriander soup, with brown bread plaits, Dot had a cauliflower cheese dish and I had the pork and vegetable with dumplings and chips.

The Naked Man Cafe in the market square in Settle.

If you look very closely you will see a figure to the left of the fourth upstairs window. This is the Naked Man.

Some weeks ago, I was working in Skipton Tourist Information Centre, when the Naked Man Cafe came up in conversation, and nobody had any idea how it got its name. A search on the internet didn't reveal any clues (and we have had queries from time to time about how did the cafe get its name) so, taking the bull by the horns, I rang the cafe and asked, "How did your cafe get its name?"

It seems that in the late 17th century the building was an undertakers, and the figure of the naked man is actually a body of a man in a coffin!

The Naked Man

Whilst we were in Settle Dot took herself off in one direction and I took myself off to have a look round the two charity shops. S.C.A.D. is the Skipton Charity Association for the Disabled, and their shop is next door to the Naked Man (It's the building on the right hand side of my photograph of the Naked Man Cafe.) I then walked round the side of the Town Hall to the Age Concern shop, and whilst I was browsing their CD's I came across a Pam Ayres double CD called Ancient and Modern, which contains some of her earlier poems and also some of her more recent ones too. On the second CD she tells a very funny (and supposedly true) story of getting a new dog from a dog's charity and the fun and games they had training it.

Pam Ayres with her two dogs

We then went on to Austwick, where Dot took Ruby on a long walk from Austwick to the tiny hamlet of Wharfe, then back to Austwick.

The signpost in the centre of Austwick

Much to the chagrin of my good lady I have finallly succumbed and joined Facebook. This came about as a result of Sally, one of Hannah & Ben's Wedding Photographers posting her photos on Facebook, and the only way I could get to them was to join Facebook!