Wild in the country

Now that spring has finally arrived and the sun is shining on us (all be it with freezing cold gale-force winds) I thought I should persuade Trump to venture out of the urban sprawl of the city and have a wander where the air is clean. It's not far to go to get to the edge of the Cheshire countryside, so we headed off to Lyme Park "Just for a wander round, nothing strenuous", I promised her.

As we got into the car to set off, I noticed that there was a touch more than a gentle breeze. Once we arrived and we opened the car doors, trying not to worry about the people wearing winter fleeces and woolly hats, we caught a blast of arctic air that said "You're not wearing the right clothes for this weather!". I found my emergency "cardie of much mirth" and thin rain coat in the boot of my car. The cardie just about kept out the freezing cold wind for me, but I felt for Trump in her t shirt and double layer of painfully thin jackets. We needed coffee before we could do anything else. I hugged a radiator in the hope that residual heat would be retained in the fibres of my cardie.

"Come on! If we walk up to The Cage, there's a deer sanctuary and a nice view, we just need to go up this hill." She looked up the hill and the mud-covered steps that we were to use to ascend it, her mood darkened, she got a face on. We walked in near silence for twenty minutes, with Trump kicking the odd stone at unsuspecting children up ahead of us. We got to the deer sanctuary, I decided we should turn back.

She always told me she didn't like the countryside, I thought she was having me on. She wasn't. Not even cute puppies could lighten her mood, which only lifted as we approached the coffee shop. But she was freezing, and she had warned me. What she DIDN'T tell me until it was too late was that she'd have liked to have gone around the stately home that sits in the park. Tsk.

Anyway, all was well once well once we returned to the land of walkers in matching fleeces and walking skewers (some even had two!), and I FINALLY got a photo that I've been thinking about for some time:

Cool eh?


Timewarp
It was a day of contrasts with our evening plans being centred around seeing the fabulous Sugababes in concert. We decided to eat out and I fancied returning to a restaurant that la famiglia Sniffy used to frequent when there was only one Italian restaurant in the whole of Manchester.

I don't know whether it was comforting or disturbing to note that Pizzeria Italia hadn't changed one tiny bit since the last time I was there thirty years ago. Everything was exactly the same, including the menu and crockery. The queue outside the door to get in was an indicator that the proprietors had found a winning formula forty years ago and they were jolly well going to stick to it. Good for them, but not quite good enough for me.


Push the button
Sugababes were ace. Enough said. Actually I'd like to add that seeing three very attractive young ladies virtually pole dancing while singing - to me - was an excellent way to spend an hour and half. Well done girls.