Visit to York

I took a few days out this weekend to visit my good friends in York. Susan, Tom, Dylan and baby Alice invited me over for a few days and we had a great time.

I know I am biased but these two children are simply beautiful and fantastically well-developed for their respective ages (2 years 10 months and 4 months 1 week). Remarkably like Alex and Joel, Isaac and Rosa, Rebecca, Rhys and Ellice, Joseph and Alice, Connor, Sonny and other wonderful children of my aquaintance, they are in fact geniuses in the making and future winners of a multitude of awards in all sorts of areas.

It is truly amazing how I am surrounded by wonderful children, no, honestly, really, it is. I am not being ironic.

Children are our future, as some naff pop star once said, and I cannot help thinking that if that is true, which it clearly is, then our world will be in safe hands.

We had a lovely trip to Beningbrough Hall and Gardens, where Dylan ran around, played in the wilderness play area, asked questions about fruit growing on fruit trees and enjoyed seeing the horses and cows on the estate. I quite liked the NT shop, and as usual on such trips, had to come away with a few purchases. We had a lovely lunch too, and because it was during the school holidays, we had no fears about our two children making a lot of noise or crying, as every table contained at least one breast-feeding woman with a partner and several other kids trying to work out how far you could throw a piece of pastry crust or an apple core across the restuarant and hit an innocent diner.

Susan and I took a few hours out on Monday evening to visit a lovely bistro for a meal, called Meltons Too

I can recommend the special of the day which was chicken, chorizo and fennel.

You just cannot beat the chance to get away, catch up, gossip, share secrets, news and concerns. And when we got back, Alice had not even woken up. Amazing!

Susan and Tom have asked me to step up to the proverbial child-supporting plate again and stand-up for Alice as her "special person" at her naming ceremony, next Spring, at York Register Office. I was surprised to be asked as I already fulfill this role for Dylan, but she explained that as it is a civic responsibility, rather than a religious one, there is no limit to the number of times I can do this.

I am of course THRILLED to be allowed to support both of these wonderful children through their young lives.

And I do mean it when I say that Alice is gorgeous, I am sure I bored her as much as I began to bore myself, telling her this, over and over again. She is placid, given to smiles, has a beautiful face, didn't once cry in the 48 hours I was there, and looked very fetching in her little outfits. I could have eaten her all up!

I hope Susan will send me some of the photos she took so that I can share them with you.

Dylan and I spent some time together watching the Lympics but then he got a bit fed-up - the synchronised diving held his attention for about fifteen minutes but I sensed he was starting to flag, so I read the latest Sizzles book to him (from Charlie and Lola - and if you don't know, don't ask) as a reviver and we pushed onwards.

Tom, as befits a proper bloke, prepared a BBQ for my first evening, but it was no run-of-the-mill "have a beefburger" meal, we had marinated steak (with a T not a D), Jerk Chicken, Spare Ribs and Sausages with a sexy salad from a cook-book.

It has been about (counts on her fingers....) 6 years since I had a fella who could cook, and I had forgotten how great it is. Well done Tom!

I left them to drive back to Liverpool, with my newly acquired coccyx cushion (Susan has been there before) and they went off to a little holiday in Northumberland.

I hope it goes as well as my trip to York went.




(and if I see a single parody of this entry on a LibDem blog then I shall take steps to sue this time, your behaviour last time was beyond the pale, a second offence will be tantamount to war. You have been warned).