We're Back...and much drier than you might imagine

Returning to work I was met with sympathetic glances as people, expecting the worst, asked "How was the weather?" before gasping in astonishment at the fact that we found it necessary, in the Lake District, in the UK, last week, to purchase sun cream. We were rained on once, for thirty minutes and had a fantastic week of wildlife and beautiful scenery on the Cumberland coast and Solway Firth, but more of that later.

Imagine my surprise to find an e-mail from the head of HR at our firm warning all 12 000 employees about the dire consequences should we, to use the popular parlance of my sons, Dis Da Company in our blogs. Heaven forbid that I should I even write about work when blogging is a sort of therapy to get over it. I can only assume that a number of people have been dishing the dirt on the notables higher up the company food chain hoping to both sue them, following their sacking, and win a major book deal like Petite Anglaise did; a bit of a risk if you ask me.

I think I'll stick to my themes of navel gazing for the ageing, bird watching and life in't North where, so far, it might be grim but is dry.

Don't be a softy Crofty

I'm not generally a wimp; but this last couple of weeks my ankle has been really sore and I've been back in work; consequently I have rested when possible, meaning a respite from physio exercises - in any case Easter Monday meant I missed a session. The pain was so bad at the end of last week I went to my GP anxious that the surgery was failing. He doubled my pain killers and told me to ask the physios for their opinion on Monday.

Limping into the Physiotherapy Department on Monday morning I anticipated sympathy, foot massage and maybe a reflexology session (perhaps from the cute physio with the auburn hair). What I got was Phil the Physio - who in his spare time, is the physio for Oldham Rugby League Club:

"Ahhh, you've just got a touch of tendonitis, it's sore but you've just got to stretch through it" Said Phil in that sort of masculine tone that says 'you won't mind a bit of character building pain now will you' and I, of course, being a man at home with my personality, self worth and not subject to gender stereotypes, acquiesced and toughed it out whilst secretly wincing inside.

So, passers by my office have been intrigued by the hourly groans of pain and relief from behind my office door as I stretch my calf and tendons five times each hour. And do you know what? It actually works: when the pain is bad, you s-t-r-e-t-c-h and get that delicious combination of pain and ecstasy - like when you have cramp: on the one hand the stretch is agony, but on the other it is blessed relief.

New Schuhs

I'm starting to get a little nervous. On Tuesday I return to work for the first time since 28th December. Last week I went into Manchester to buy a new pair of shoes. Knowing exactly what I wanted - a pair of black, smooth top Doc Marten gibsons - I headed straight for the Doc Marten shop in the trendy Triangle centre. The man in the sports shop that used to be the Doc Marten shop told me that there hadn't been a Doc Marten shop there for years, he shook his head in a gentle, sad sort of way at my shopping innocence - he recognised a shopping yokel abroad. Directed up Market St, by the kind young man, I found Schuh: a revelation. Trendy, with shoes so outré that, twenty years ago, I would have killed to wear them. The music was brilliant - Oasis, Blur et al - and I felt right at home forgetting that my youthful vigour is retained only in the (numerically decreasing) neurons of my brain. I was, in the eyes of the assistants, a middle aged man buying boring shoes and trying to look trendy by singing along to the songs: I stopped singing and stuck to conversation with the assistant instead.
"The last pair of these shoes I had lasted eighteen years" I said, enthusing about the quality and comfort of Doc Martens. She gave me a withering look and only afterwards did I realise that, in all likelihood, her job depended on people buying shoes far more often that every eighteen years or so. I paid and left hastily but happy, wistfully wishing I could wear these for work instead: