Last night, perhaps because I was in a strange bed, I got up in the middle of the night and accessed some photos on my phone that I did not realise that I had as well as sending a couple of interesting health (diet) articles found on Huffpost to my son who could well be interested in these sorts of things. The room I have got at ‘The Crown’ at a very good price is excellent for my needs because besides the bed there is quite a large desk on which it is easy to put my laptop, Before today, I have tried balancing laptops on a wobbly suitcase and other improvised arrangements but my current setup is excellent. I am glad I brought an extension lead with me because I can also have uninterrupted bedside lights and kettles available to me as well. I slept fairly well in a strange bed, as it were, but I was up for a period in the middle of the night and looked at some photos I had forgotten I had which were stored on my phone. Yesterday was planned to be an interesting day because the husband of my niece was due to collect me at about 10.30 and then we are going to visit various places in Harrogate, not least the ‘Harlow Carr Gardens Show.’ famed throughout Harrogate and Yorkshire where we will almost certainly lunch before visiting my sister in the afternoon. I was contemplating the fact that I left Harrogate in 1963 when my mother, sister and I moved to Leeds (although it is fair to say that the population tends to move in the opposite directionI. I have decided not to have breakfast here in the hotel to keep my carb count down but when I enter the huge dining room I always have a rather a strange sensation because I am pretty convinced that after the hotel was requisitioned by the RAF and used as a kind of operational and planning headquarters, my mother probably worked there as a period and probably worked in the very room which is now the hotel’s dining room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I had breakfasted in my room, I popped over the road and acquired a newspaper in exchange for my voucher and then bought a small bag of clementines. Then, I enjoyed the morning sunshine until my nieces’s husband came at the appointed time and we made our way slowly to Harlow Carr gardens, made famous in the past as the natural habitat of the gardener, Geoffrey Smith. We enjoyed a very pleasant stroll through the gardens talking over family matters and finally stopping by for a coffee. Then it was time for a leisurely drive to Knaresborough where I came along to see my sister in her residential home. The home was very well appointed and had a pretty homely atmosphere and whilst no doubt being expensive, the whole home was evidently in a superior category. I was left along with my sister for about an hour and then we were joined by the wife of another nephew who just popped in to see us all. After I had discussed all aspects of Meg’s funeral with my elder sister, we arranged to meet again the following day. I had been given instructions how I could find the home again from the railway station and so I will visit again in the morning. Then I asked to be dropped off next to a little cafe that Meg and I used to frequent. When I got there, it was deserted but it is run by a Chinese family who will cook whatever you want for you during the day. Meg and I enjoyed this cade because although the furnishings and appearance seem somewhat basic, the food is of an excellent quality and I discovered from the staff that they had been operating there for about 30 years which is quite a long time these days. I had a king prawn ‘Foo Yung’ with some fried rice and iced tea and the quality was absolutely excellent with some of the best prawns (sweet and tasty) that I had had for a very long time. It was a simple walk down the hill to my hotel where I allowed myself a little rest on the bed. On the way down the hill, I could not resist buying a book on the Illustrated History of Cricket so I bought this for my nieces’s husband as, although he is family, I am sure that with his cricketing connections he would enjoy the book and it would give him hours of pleasure. I told him the story of how when I worked in the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, I served Fred Truman the famous English fast bowler with some beer and he had his left arm round a blonde and his right arm round a brunette. I am not sure to this day whether the sex in which he may have participated put him off his cricket or whether the cricket put him off his sex (although, of course, the two are not mutually exclusive) Later in the evening, my niece came round and we popped across the road to have a drink of the magnificent dark ale which is locally brewed. Naturally, we discussed a lot of family matters but a principal source of concern was how to maintain our health with judicious combinations of lifestyle, diet and exercise. Now that this generation of the family have reached a certain age i.e. our 50’s than some health issues are besetting all of us so we are trying, without being excessively neurotic about it, to do what we can to maintain our health whilst we can. Whilst in the pub, I received a phone call from a distant relative on Meg’s side of the family who expressed condolences and we promised to meet again as soon as practicable. The new few days are to be quite busy because in the morning I am going to catch the train to Knaresborough to see my sister again and in the evening am having a meal out with another nephew. On Thursday, I am to see another niece in the middle of the day and will dine out with another nephew in the evening. But in the course of my stay, I will have managed extensive conversations with each one of my sister’s four children which was, after all, the aim of my trip up to Yorkshire. On Friday, when I depart I am going to breakfast with the first niece and husband and then they are going to run me to the station where no doubt I can return home exhausted but happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday, 18th June, 22025 [Day 1920] Last night, perhaps because I was in a strange bed, I got up in the middle of the night and accessed some photos on my phone that I did not realise that I had as well as sending a couple of interesting health (diet) articles found on Huffpost to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7462,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7461\/revisions\/7462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}