Bromsgrove housesitting

Birmingham's bull in fancy dress! With Alex and Rob

We’ve had a busy time, the joys of sitting locally.

Solihull mountaineering club had a BBQ so we went along, it was very well attended but B had also invited various old members, so we actually spent more time catching up with Mike R and Danielle than many of the current crew, but we did have a lovely time. This then led to going over to see Jo and have a nosy in her new camper van, which is very cute. They are away for the first time this weekend, hope they are having a lovely time!

We also made plans with Rob to go round when Alex was back from her

We had a few GnT's on the rooftop bar!

training course in Austria, so that was Wednesday evening. As ever we had to have a look round at building progress. Opened the front room door to find all the plaster from the walls and ceiling on the floor! Bending is not as easy for Rob as it is for us, plus his hip has been giving him gip for a few months, and he’d hurt his shoulder getting the stuff off! “We are coming in to town on Friday, we’ll come in a bit earlier and clear that then” Very dusty, but not a bad job, and definitely easier for us! Meant we’d earned our curry with Helen, Ian, Bev and Iain anyway! That was a lovely evening, though relatively restrained, we all had plans on Saturday.

A little snippet of the wonderful Lions of Punjab

Castaway by Highly Sprung on the gyroscopic flying machine

Saturday was B’s birthday and a Bank Holiday weekend, there must be something on, and indeed there was. The ‘Birmingham Weekender’ lots of free dance and performance sessions, at four or five different venues, all very close together near the Bull Ring. We got the train in for about lunchtime, managed to catch the three things I’d earmarked that I wanted to see, and another few I hadn’t, one of which was fabulous. We had a 10 minute session by deaf dancers, called Vibrations by D-Sign Dance which was lovely, this was followed by half an hour of 4 men, ‘2Faced Dance’ doing something called Last Orders. Very clever, you could see the interactions that

Las Adelitas - Mariachi

happen when a few beers have been sunk! Nipped outside to a second venue and caught the end of a Turkish band? Maybe, probably wouldn’t have wanted much more of that though it was a very happy sound! Back inside to get seats for the ‘Lions of Punjab’ a male Bollywood group who were part of the CWG closing ceremony. We both wanted to see that and it was fabulous, though very loud! I had mentioned to Alex this was our plan as they too were going into town, and suddenly, there they were! We had a lovely couple of hours with them before they headed off to the cinema. Next on my list was Castaway by Highly Sprung, three women, one of whom was in a

Rob, Alex and Jackie at the Big Splash start

gyroscopic flying machine, powered by a man, look at the pictures, it’ll make more sense! Very clever again, and with a very strong message about the pollution of the oceans. In passing we then caught the end of Las Adelitas, four piece female mariachi band, who seemed to be standing in a doorway, walked past the Relaxerette, a big wheel of hammocks with children all wearing headphones, and the Big Splash, a very long soapy water slide which, mostly, but not solely, kids threw themselves down on little inflatable rings. Just as well it wasn’t cold!

There goes someone down the slippery, soapy slide - it's a long way down there!

And very soapy at the end!

I’d had my turn then, Alex wanted to go to Poli Nation in Victoria Square, it’s why they’d come in, it’s finishing on Friday! Actually it doesn’t start till Friday, so we are really looking forward to going to see that when we meet Denise and Paul in town from Fiona’s next week! Had to then go and see Ozzy the bull from the CWG, would be rude not to! Ok so cake? Tea? Ice cream? Beer? I threw a few words out. We headed to the Edwardian tearoom in the Art Gallery, poo, it shut 5 minutes ago. Oh well, look, there’s a bar there (Theatrix), rooftop bar even. Up we went, no view, but a lovely space, and just time for a couple of GnT’s before A&R ran off to see their movie. We sauntered back through Grand Central to the station, stopping for a delicious bowl of Vietnamese Pho, before the train and home for a movie with Millie. Brilliant day out.

And, of course, no trip to Birmingham would be complete at the moment without a trip to see the amazing Commonwealth Games bull, here in Centenary Square until the end of September

Avoncroft Museum in Bromsgrove

Last weekend was also busy. Friday we walked to the Avoncroft Museum, a space where buildings have been rescued and rebuilt, some very interesting history there. Have a look at our short video with photos of our walk round: click here. Saturday we were at Fiona’s again, 8 birthdays in August and very early September, including an 18th, a 40th, a 65th and a 70th. Brian’s 67th only made it into the second round of singing! Great BBQ, lots of food and drink and family chat. Sunday we headed south to Jonathan and Lucy, as a late breaking decision they too had had a family gathering. Jonathan had come to get mum on Thursday, so we went to bring her back. We had a good day with J&L and Charles, briefly seeing Caroline before she and Sylvia headed off to a family party of Sylvia’s.

The beautifully restored windmill at Avoncroft. It still works

So what with getting Ted MOT’d, taking mum shopping, giving some blood for a genetics study that B has been part of for years, a walk around Bromsgrove looking at the Houseman trail, AE Houseman, the poet who wrote a Shropshire Lad, amongst other things (have a look at our short video with photos of our walk round Bromsgrove: click here), taking delivery of a hot tub for Sarah, the homeowner, and setting it up for her birthday party tomorrow and a Thai birthday meal for Brian, it’s been all go!

This is known as a Prefab and were temporary houses put up around the country after WWII to help aleviate the housing shortage. This one was donated to Avoncroft musem. This probably won't mean much to people below about 60, but I (Brian) remember them well. A small village of them were built opposite my mum and dads house in Castle Lane, Solihull and I had many friends who lived in them, so I was in and out of these as a child. Eventually they were taken down in the mid sixties to be replaced with brick built houses

The kitchen in the Prefab. I remember it well!

St Johns church in Bromsgrove, a stop-off on the Houseman Trail

Prominent gravestones in the church yard of notable local people who lost their lives during the building of the railways in the 19th century. There are more photos on the Relive video round Bromsgrove mentioned above. Click on the link to see them or click here

Sam carrying out the multiple birthday cake at Fiona and James' BBQ family party. Too many people to mention but almost all of both families were there. A great get-together and a fabulous day. The birthdays were: Fiona (my daughter), Jenny (my youngest granddaughter) 18 years old, Abbie (my eldest granddaughter), 24 years old, Steph (my niece), me, Paul (Brother-in-law) 70, James (son-in law) 40 and James' dad 65

Friday night was curry take-out night! Here's Ian, Helen, Iain, Bev, Jackie and me

And here's the special retro birthday cake Helen made for me. In the centre is a vienetta (mint flavour unfortunately as the original wasn't available) and, surrounding it are slices  of arctic roll. It was followed by a song guessing game where Helen played the intro from a 1983 record from their Spotify account. Ian was a demon at guessing them, I was useless! Helen, feeling sorry for me said she'd play some from another year for me to guess. "In what year were you 18?" she asked "1973" I replied. There were gasps around the table. "1973?!? I was 1" said Ian, "5" said Jackie etc (without giving others ages away). Oh, that's great, my birthday and I'm made to feel I should be in an  old peoples home, not with these young Spring Chickens! I did do a little better at the guessing though, but still not that good

What she failed to mention in her write-up was the running I've done on my own so, since this is the only platform I can shout about the things I've done, I'm going to list them here: I've done a couple of 5km Parkruns at Arrow Valley in Redditch on the last two Saturday mornings, I got a time of 27 minutes 43 seconds this last Saturday which I was pleased with. This photo is just before last Saturdays Parkrun with people warming up pre-race. I've also some a couple of practice 5km runs on local footpaths and then, last Wednesday, while Jackie took her mum shopping in Redditch, I hitched a lift with her to Alvechurch and then ran back to Bromsgrove, mainly along the canal, through Tardebigge lock system. It was a distance of 12km (7.2 miles) and I did it in 84 minutes. That's 7 minutes per kilometer which is not that impressive, but I was really pleased. It's the furthest I've run in a long time. If you'd like to see where it went (there are no photos as I was running), click here 

Well, we've been housesitting and, so far in this blog there hasn't been a single photo of little Millie cat who we're looking after. To put that right here's some photos of her. This is the hot-tub that's been delivered for homeowner Sarah's birthday party on her return home tomorrow. Millie finds it quite comfortable strangely!

This is Millie long cat on Jackies lap

Surely there must be comfier places? No, cats like to be up high, so the fireplace surround is the obvious place

Leave me along, I'm very tired!

What goes through a cat's mind when watching other cats on TV?

I'm asleep on the bed, I don't care that it's time to get up. And that mud wasn't me!

And this is me, looking cute!

Before we go we must put these on. Jackie mentioned in the last blog about the robot lawnmower that comes out each night and randomly scurries across the lawn to keep it short, much to the amusement of Millie cat who thinks it's there just for her to jump over and play with. This is it's house and we love the little windows and door. Someone has a sense of humour!

And there he is parked up and resting where he'd connected himself to his recharge station ready for the next nights exploits. One night, early on in the housesit Jackie looked in whilst he was out cutting the grass and found a dead, shrivelled frog inside. It must have gone in to have a look and then the mower returned home and trapped it between itself and the recharger. One would hope it had a quick death by electrocution rather than starved to death. Anyway, on that happy note we'll sign off. Until the next time...