A Fathers Love

Saw this on twitter and just had to share it with you, beautiful, moving, touching.  An elderly father and his grown up son, sitting in a garden .....

It reminds us that patience and love are two of the core essences of our being, or at least it is for some!  Personally, I hated my father and was glad when he died and there is not a forgiving bone in my body towards him, I still do not miss him today.

For me, it is a reminder that some dads can be loving and thoughtful and still have patience when their kids get a bit grumpy, like we all do from time to time.  And I hope that my kids think of me in that way even although I recognise that at times I was not the best father in the world......

Another Dream

Just woke up with a pounding headache it's 3:50 AM

I wonder if it was the weird dream I was having? It was about Mollie and I. Mollie our 11 year old and eldest granddaughter, you know the one, the tiny little package of beauty and intelligence with the most gorgeously sweet and arm twisting smiling eyes that it has ever been a grand dad's misfortune to look upon, purely from the perspective of that she just has to glance up at me with those almond eyes and I would walk through hell where no demon could lay a hand upon me until I reached her, standing outside on the other side of it, as she wouldn't actually be in there!

So, it's just Mollie and me. We are in Spain, no idea where in Spain, no idea where her sisters or Mom and dad are or Ishbel is for that matter. But Mollie is attending an English School and is getting ready for a great event. She has a boyfriend, not Ewan, English too, attending the same school, I don't take to him at all. During the course of the preparations we need to attend two different places in the local town and need to get the bus there. Because of the argument Mollie decides to go to one place on her own and I am told to go to the other place.

Her 'boyfriend' is also going to the other place and so he accompanies me there on the bus, he translating for me, still didn't like him. I don't know where we were supposed to be going, or for what but I'm sure it wasn't the place where we ended up.

It was an old building with many floors on it, it had once been an elegant very large home with wide stairs and many reception rooms, it was very bohemian and there was preparation under way for a large social gathering with tables being laid with all sorts of wonderful food and people arriving all the time. William Hurt was there, as was William Shatner, Martin Balsam was also there and many other famous faces too.  As you moved from one room to the other, deep discussions were going on on all sorts of subjects, and there was music and poetry.

I was on my own as Mollies 'boyfriend' had abandoned me. I was approached by a woman who sat me down on a window ledge, it was one of those deep ledges where you could comfortably sit on and gaze out of the window or back into the large room. She asked me when I was going to die, before I could reply she got up and left!

I bumped into Mr Hurt on the stairs and asked him to have a photo taken with me. I have no idea why I did this as I have met many famous people in my life and never once asked them for a photograph or an autograph! As the woman accompanying him started to take the photo I started doing back flips of the stairs, we were going down them at the time.

I kept going down the stairs and found myself in an outdoor swimming/leisure area with pools and slides and water rings and fountains and I saw Mollies 'boyfriend' here .....

I woke with a pounding headache .....  and now I'm going back to bed at 4:35 AM.

Hope you are having a better night than I xxxxxx

I had to share - A Dream

"I just woke up from a nap about being lost in South Ockendon. You lived at a house at the top of an enormous hill which required traipsing up a bajillion steps to reach you. After being lost for hours, I'd finally reached these steps and knew I was close. I then had to battle an intricate arrangement by one of your psychotic neighbours:
In order to pass their house, you had to squeeze between a wall and a cemented-down wire fence, behind which their 2 enormous rabid hounds prowled. To make your way through the dogs you had to delicately reach (without losing your arm to aforementioned mutts) and trip a system which automatically shot hedgehog prickles at them, dropping them instantly like elephant tranquillisers. I was in the middle of manoeuvring this last task when I woke up"

One of our beautiful gorgeous nieces had this dream,  Iv'e no idea why she was finding it so hard to get to our house for gods sake ever since my impending death was announced EVERY BLOODY PERSON ON THE PLANET WE KNOW HAS BEEN VISITING AND I'M NOT BEING ALLOWED TO DIE IN GOD-DAMN PEACE ......... ;))))

And doesn't she have a fine turn of prose? In fact this was her latest Face book entry and all I will say is, if you are tempted to comment on this post, beware of the warning .....

Lesley Scott

3 hrs · 

Please. Everyone. Just...learn to fucking spell.

TGI Fridays - it was pretty average

Having already had our 'main' anniversary present to ourselves, dinner and the ballet we decided to just pop into TGI Fridays for a meal on our 'special day' but only because we couldn't get across the Dartford Bridge as we were heading to a French restaurant at Blue Water, best laid plans and all that...

It's been a while since we were in this restaurant, 11 years, as our eldest grandchild Mollie, hadn't arrived, so we thought not getting where we wanted to go, it was time to re-visit.

As it was just pre evening getting a table was easy enough and we had a very attentive waitress, apologies as her name has slipped my mind! After 11 years I had forgotten just how loud the music is in a TGI's!  I do like my music and I do like it loud, but really in a bar/ restaurant it really does need to be turned down a tad.  Again, after 11 years it looks as if the restaurant hasn't seen a deep clean or a paintbrush since our last visit, possibly since it was built, very tired and shabby looking as were the gent's toilets with the walls full of holes where the hand drier had been moved around on what looked like at least 4 or 5 occasions!

The food:  We had mozzarella sticks with a chilli dip and strips of chicken with a sour cream dip, both delicious although Ishbel wasn't to keen on the sour cream dip.

For mains: Ishbel had salmon fillet, couscous and vegetables and was impressed, the salmon looked a bit dry to me.

I had the 7 oz fillet steak, medium rare with Jack Daniels glaze, crispy fries and an apple coleslaw.

The steak was cooked to perfection tasted delicious and it melted in the mouth.  The fries were limp and the apple coleslaw was absolutely rank and should not even be fed to the the inhabitants of the local piggery, it really was the quality of the steak that saved it for me.