This 'n' That

Well! it's seven days since the "Great Disaster" and I've managed to input around 70 CD's and the information that goes with them, back on to the CD catalogue file. It's pretty slow and boring work, but my two finger typing is speeding up rapidly, and also becoming far more accurate as well!

I've just been on Wife in the North's Blog, and I was delighted to see that she has allowed (nay, encouraged!) her three children to take part in a mini "Great North Run." Rod and Pat phoned us up after they returned from their efforts in the run.They hope to have raised £1,000 for Cancer Support!

I've also had a look at Whitestuff and see that the White family have returned from their exciting excursion to Butlins at Skegness. Reading between the lines it seems that little has changed - it's still Hi de Hi campers and all the redcoats wearing permanent smiles. Maybe the sites are a little more upmarket, but from what they used to be it would be nearly impossible to go downmarket!!

Not long now before we de-camp to the Isle of Arran and also just north of Bamburgh for a holiday. In previous years we have usually got away for the last two complete weeks in September, but this year we have had to hold fire, as I have had so many weddings to play for. Don't let anybody tell you that weddings are going out of fashion. By the end of the year I will have played for approximately 47 of them!

A Warning to Those Who Don't Back Up!

I (obviously) have a computer - indeed I have had one for approximately sixteen years, and during that time I have never managed to lose any information from it.



But yesterday BIG TIME DISASTER.



I was in my CD Catalogue File, and for some reason lots of the fields had overprinted the space where information was stored whilst I was in Form View, making it difficult to read. No problem I thought. I have had this happen before. Simply go into form design and erase the overprinted fields. This I duly did, but somewhere along the lines about a thousand pieces of information were lost on 1,000 CD's. I had hit the "accept change" and inadvertantly it had erased all the aforementuioned records.



The annoying thing is that I have an 8GB pen drive, which did have all this information on it. Note I say DID HAVE. I had taken the lot off the pen drive to copy some photographs so that I could have them processed onto A3 sheets for my Bride's Father's Speech!



I now know what I will be doing over the long, dark, winter evenings - replacing all this information and making sure that I back it up!!!

Record Breaking Bride

During my time as an organist I have played for hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of weddings.

Early on in my organists career I remember when if you got married before April 6th you could claim a vast amount of tax back, consequently the Saturday before 6th April was a very popular time for weddings!

I recall one such Saturday when I had five weddings to play for, each one on the hour, commencing with the first wedding at 11.00 am. The vicar who had arranged all the weddings met each of the couples, and stressed how important it was that each wedding (and more particularly each Bride) was on time. He knew that one of the couples getting married were Jamaican's, and time to them seemed to be unimportant, so he said, If you are more than 30 minutes late you will have to wait until the last wedding is concluded before I will be able to marry you!

Their wedding was scheduled for 1.00pm, and the bride failed to arrive until 1.35! so, true to his word, the vicar told them that they would have to wait until all the other couples had been married, explaining that it was impossible to conduct a wedding service in 25 minutes flat!

The couple, and all their guests sat through the two following weddings, happily joining in the singing of the hymns, and were duly married at around 4.00pm!

This little story (which happens to be true) is a rather long winded way of getting round to what happened to me with two weddings I had to play for on Saturday last.

The first wedding was scheduled for 11.00 am and the following wedding for 1.00 pm. The first Bride didn't arrive in church until 11.56 am, (a record for lateness for all the weddings I have ever played) and because she was so late the wedding service was cut to an absolute minimum. One hymn was completely omitted, all the introductory sentences were omitted and there was no sermon or prayers. All in all the service took a record breaking 21 minutes! Before the service ended people were trying to get into church for the second wedding. The arrival time for the bride at this wedding was only marginally better - she was 34 minutes late!

In both cases there had been no hold up with traffic, or any particular reason for the lateness of the brides!

Back to School Week

It has been "Back to School Week" for many of the school children around here. Tom started a few days earlier than Mollie. To the non involved person it is more than obvious that the chidren are back at school. You only have to look at the sudden increase in traffic between 7.30 - 9.00 to know that the schools are open again!

The Aire valley becomes clogged with parents and children hurtling lemming like, towards their respective schools. A journey which took minutes suddenly seems to take hours! Impatient motorists hurtle around the area like maniacs.

With the start of school comes the return to the normal everday events in my life. Monday saw the re start of practices for Eldwick & Gilstead Male Voice Choir, Tuesday I was "back in school" playing the piano for singing, Wednesday I would normally have been up at the TIC, but other events got priority, Thursday church choir practices resumed, and fortunately Friday was reltively quiet.

In and amongst all this I had a funeral to play for on Thursday, and another funeral to play for on Friday, as well as two weddings to play for today.

The highlight of the week was a viewing of Hannah and Ben's "Official Wedding Photographs" - some 500+ of them. Matt & his assistant Sarah had done a superb job, and making a choice from 500+ is going to be very difficult. I don't think they produce Wedding Albums large enough to hold 500 photographs!

Three weeks today we should be on the Isle of Arran, staying at our usual Studio Flat in Lamlash, then the week after we should be in Waren Mill, just north of Bamburgh, again staying at Cove Cottage. I must say that the holidays can not come fast enough. I seem to have spent more time at church this last year than I have ever done. (There will have been seven weddings this month and I will have played for about 44 by the end of the year!)

Mollie & Tom's Sleepover

On Saturday evening we had Mollie and Tom sleeping over at our house. Rachel & Gary were going out to friends and were not expecting to get back home until the early hours of the next morning!

Rachel assured us that Mollie would be able to assist in cleaning, polishing or whatever. Tom took himself off into the lounge and got himself involved in"Connect Four" and various other games.

Meanwhile Mollie was anxious to show us her prowess in the kitchen, and volunteered to cook some ham and cheese omlettes for tea.

Ruby kept a watchful eye on the proceedings, in the hope that she might get some of the food that was being prepared!

Tea was very tasty, and Ruby managed to beg the odd bit of food as well!

Wind Down from the Wedding

For a couple of weeks, up to Saturday 14th August life had become very hectic and exciting. Time seemed to implode, and instead of having hours to do things in it felt like we only had minutes. As the Big Day drew nearer time also seemed to speed up, so that the things we had planned to do, and which we felt we had plenty of time to do them in suddenly seemed to require more time!

Suffice it to say that the great day dawned with no major hiccups, but, as most people who have had to arrange a wedding will tell you, the time immediately after a wedding leaves you feeling somewhat deflated.

It was for this reason that I suggested to the Lady of the Manor that we should go off for a couple of days, and we spent two very enjoyable days in Masham.

Today we got round to returning the underskirt which Lulu Brown's Bridal Shop in Clitheroe had lent for the wedding. We could have posted it back, but the weather being so fine all week we used it as an excuse to take a trip to Clitheroe.

After having a meal in Molly's, and looking round the local shops, we decided to move on to the little village of Sabden. The route from Clitheroe to Sabden takes you over some moors, and before you drop down into the village there are some lovely walks on the moors. Having taken Ruby with us, it only seemed fair that she had a walk there. So here are a few photos of Ruby and Dot on Sabden Moor.

Sabden Moor - the village is just off to the right in a valley

The tiny white dot in the centre is Dot!

Getting nearer!

Nearly back

Having a breather.

It's My Third Birthday Today!

Hello there all you fellow bloggers! It's Ruby here with a reminder. It's my third birthday today!! The picture below is one my Lord and master took of me relaxing in the garden.

In the three years I've been with the family I've grown quite a bit and I've made lots of friends. That's a photo of me [below] with two of my best friends, Macy and Pixie.


Just in case you have forgotten I really do enjoy birthdays, because I get a lot of fuss made of me. The photo below is of me on my first birthday. How do you like my Princess Tiara?

I've included the photo below to show you just how much I've grown up. I was only about 6 months old in this photo and was beginning to settle in with the family.

Lots of Love - Ruby!

A Day out with the Grandchildren

Followers of my blog may well remember that this time last year we visited Newby Hall and Gardens, and on the way there we called in to the village of Ripley, to purchase their delicious ice cream. It was as we entered the village we discovered that we were there on the weekend they have their scarecrow festival, but it is a scarecrow festival with a difference. All the scarecrows featured have pigs heads, and they all have some allusion to ham, trotters, boar, pig, bacon etc. in their titles.

This is because, many years ago, when the King of England was out hunting with the then members of the Ingleby family, he was attacked by a wild boar, and the Lord of the Manor, Thomas de Ingleby saved his life. In appreciation of this he was knighted by Edward III, and a boars head now appears in the family crest of the Ingleby family!

This is rather a long winded way of getting round to the fact that we attended the festival again this year, and of course, the first place we visited was the world famous Ripley Ices Shop!


Each day there are two or three different flavours of ice cream available. Whatever the flavours on offer they are all delicious!

Enjoying the Ripley Ice Cream!

Lucrecia Boargia

Pig Clegg & David Hameron

Pigstop

After viewing, and trying to match the names of the scarecrows to the scarecrows themselves, we then went on to Pateley Bridge. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, and Ruby enjoyed watching the bowling match that was taking place in the park.

Meanwhile the rest of the family were tucking into a picnic!

Pateley was in all its floral glory. This flower bedecked light was on the bridge over the River Nidd.

This was a view at the bottom of the village from the River Nidd Bridge.

It then began to spot with rain, (which had been forecast) so we moved on. We had not planned to go anywhere else, but we had promised the grandchildren that we would take them out for a meal, and as it was only about an hour and a half after we had eaten, we decided to drive up to.........guess where.........

Masham!

Dot and I had stayed there the week before for a couple of days, and enjoy this part of the world, so it was a good excuse to revisit it! We ended up at the Smiths Arms in Beckwithshaw with the grandchildren.

A Walk Along the Canal Towpath

We had planned on taking the three grandchildren to Newby Hall & Gardens today, but due to the heavy rain last night, and this morning, the trip was called off. However by early afternoon the weather had taken a turn for the better, so we hastily arranged a walk on the canal side from Kildwick to Skipton. Olivia wasn't able to join us as she had made other arrangements, but Mollie and Tom were able to come.

We had only just got out of the car after parking it by the canalside when I noticed the name on this boat - Mollie!


Within minutes another boat had appeared from the Skipton direction, and the swing bridge was swung open to give it access on its journey towards Keighley.

We noticed that this Swan was quite tame, and on closer inspection we discovered that the reason was that the boat owner was feeding it from the open window!

Even the ducks along the towpath were fairly trusting and friendly. Unfortunately we didn't have any bread to feed them with!

Mollie, Tom, Dot and Ruby set off walking towards Skipton, whilst I stayed in the car, awaiting for a phone call to summon me. About an hour later it came through to say that they were passing where the old Craven Forge used to be, and would I collect them at Snaygill? As the weather was looking a little threatening I decided to drive on to Bradley, which is the next place where there is access to the towpath. Whilst I was waiting for them to arrive another boat passed through the swing bridge.

Once again there were plenty of ducks just waiting to be fed!

Unknown to the intrepid walkers I took this shot of them from across the canal.

Then called them. We moved on to the Bay Horse at Snaygill, where Tom,

and Mollie enjoyed tucking into a meal.

The walk had certainly sharpened their appetites!

An Escape to North Yorkshire

After all the hustle and bustle and excitment of Ben & Hannah's Wedding, we decided it would be nice to have a couple of days of relative peace and quiet, so we headed up to Masham - to the King's Head, where we have stayed for a few days after the Christmas Holidays. The first thing to catch our attention was another "Pink Peril" - not Hannah's Smart Car this time, but the vehicle pictured below, which was parked outside the hotel in the market square.





Masham Market has very ancient foundations, as can be seen from the plaque on one of the flower troughs. There are weekly markets held here each Wednesday and Saturday. Needless to say, Dot and I patronised the Wednesday market, Dot purchasing some flowers and plants, whilst I purchased some DVD's.

One of the delights (for Dot) is visiting "Joneva" which is a sweet shop specialising in all those sweets you remember from your childhood, as well as some local delicacies.

Dot waiting for Jonevea to open!

As usual we stayed at the King's Head, which overlooks the market place. The difference this time was that we stayed in the original stable block conversion - in The Coach House, which has a hall, with chaise long, wardrobe, desk and bookcase, as well as an en suite downstairs, whilst the bedroom is upstairs on a mezzanine floor. We took Ruby with us this time, as the hotel is "Doggie Friendly" and she immediately made herself at home by sprawling full length on the chaise long, until she was forcibly ejected from it! She spent the night sleeping on the floor next to me in the bedroom part of the Coach House!

Wednesday morning we went for a run and on our journey we came across these ducks and ducklings. Unfortunately we didn't have anything to feed them with!

On the way to Aysgarth I remembered seeing one of the original AA Boxes, so this year I made sure I had my camera at the ready, and stopped off to take a photo of it.

We visited Bedale, Leyburn, Hawes, and then over the Buttertubs pass to Muker, where we stopped for lunch at the Farmers Arms. If you are in the area and in need of a meal, do make it in your way to call here. Everything is home made, and delicious too!

Hannah & Ben's Wedding in Pictures

Preparations get under way for the Main Event!

Hannah hard at work in church decorating the Rood Screen

Flowers in the Church Porch


Hannah's Flower display on the base of the font

Sarah at work creating a display in the bowl of the old font

The finished decorations on the Rood Screen

Detail of the flowers

Wicker heart with bow and butterfly on one of the pew ends


Preparations begin on the day of the Wedding....

Hannah hard at work on Georgia's Hair, with Mollie waiting her turn

The mother of the Bride having her hair done

All dressed up and waiting excitedly for the taxi to arrive

Pretty as a picture

The Bridal Bouquet

Big Sister and the three bridemaids

The new Mr & Mrs Martin walking down the aisle

Thier pets Pixie and Macy get in on the act!

The Brides Father, Nana, Bride, Brides Mother and Bridegroom

The first toast in champagne

Ready to set off for the reception at Cavendish Pavilion

Off to the reception

Hannah & Ben with Olivia, Georgia and Mollie, in the grounds of the Cavendish Pavilion.

Another toast ,this time with Pimms!

The Wedding Cake

Mr & Mrs Martin prepare to cut their wedding cake.