Car trouble... and catching up with friends

A few weeks ago I'd arranged an evening's golf at Hindley Hall Golf Club, not far from work, with some work colleagues. With the planned date looming next Tuesday, I'd hoped to have the chance to practice my swing at the driving range before making a fool of myself on the course. However, these plans were scuppered when, as Carole backed her car off the drive, the car began making a strange squealing sound and promptly dropped what looked like a horseshoe on the drive. Being due for a hair appointment, Carole took the big car instead and left me with the problem of working out what had fallen off and what to do about it - and no time for golf or the means to get there.

After some intensive research (ie phoning Dad), we established that it must be part of the suspension which had collapsed, so I rang the local Ford main dealer to arrange for them to collect the car and fix it. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hello, can you help please, my car's suspension has just collapsed as we tried to move it just now. Can I arrange for you to fix it for me?"

Ford Garage: "Certainly, sir, we can fit you in next Tuesday, but if you'd like to bring it down now you can leave it with us now."

Me: "No, I don't think you understand; it's not driveable at the moment - you'll need to collect it on your recovery vehicle."

Ford Garage: "Are you a member of the AA sir, or the RAC?"

Me: "Why are you asking me that?"

Ford Garage: "Well, we don't have a recovery vehicle any more, so if you're in the AA, they will bring it here for you!"

Me: "Are you seriously telling me that the local main Ford dealership doesn't have a recovery vehicle?

Ford Garage: "As I say, are you in the AA?"

Needless to say, they didn't get our business; instead I rang a local independant garage, who, when he found out that we live just round the corner from his own house, suggested we put the keys through his letterbox so that he could collect the car from our driveway without us needing to be there. Guess who'll be getting our business when the car next needs a service?

Anyway, by the evening, we'd arranged to visit Gail and Barry, who made us a fantastic chinese meal (all home made), and we caught up with Ruth as well for the first time this year. An excellent evening to round off a frustrating day.

Fathers' Day

Happy Fathers' Day to Brian and Kevan - there was plenty of laughs along the way as they enjoyed their day!



PS - I've finally managed to catch up and write a blog covering Beryl and Terry's 40th Anniversary celebration.

Painting for charity

Today was a day of work with a difference - rather than a day at the office, I joined several of my colleagues to spend the day helping the Manchester-based charity NEARIS paint two rooms in their centre on Swan Street.

NEARIS was established 1992 to provide education, resettlement and rehabilitation services for adults experiencing problems with drugs, alcohol, mental ill-health, homelessness and / or offending behaviour. Their centre in Manchester is also known by the acronym MERC (Manchester Educational Resettlement Centre), which previously existed as an educational project in its own right going back to 1977.

This was the second time we'd supplied a team of volunteers to help NEARIS brighten up their training and educational rooms, and today's challenge was to re-paint their training room / kitchen area and their art room. I was part of the team concentrating on the art room, a large, airy, bright space ideally suited for teaching art.

We achieved more than we expected to; not only repainting the walls but also painting the skirting boards, doors and door frames too - to the delight of the regular staff and volunteers.

For me the day was not only motivating, uplifting and perhaps a little humbling, but also sad and a little anguished too. I reflected about past times, good and bad, with my late cousin Ian, before alcohol and drugs took over his world and eventually, after a long and painful decline, and despite the best efforts of his family, led to his death at just 35. Maybe had he sought help from NEARIS he could have turned things round, so if they can change the lives of others faced with similar turmoil then I for one applaud them.

4x4xExcess at Wibs' stag weekend

The head has finally cleared and the body has eventually recovered following a weekend of excess at Wibble's stag do in Leeds. Of course I have a duty to keep silence over the weekend's events although its good to know some of us did our bit for the Australian economy.

One event that can be reported on was a visit to Thirsk on the Friday where we tested our skills at off-road Land Rover driving. None of us had done this before and so even though we all left with our heads held high, there were a few moments along the way where things didn't go according to plan: Wibs had difficulty finding the gears, I managed to find reverse when forward would have been a better option and Craig couldn't understand the difference between first and third which isn't much fun when you're going down a near vertical slope and there's a tree at the bottom.

Wibs heads down one of the severe slopes on the course (at least he's in the right gear, Craig).

Fortunately we all survived to enjoy the rest of the weekend, despite becoming much poorer as a result. Thanks guys for a great weekend!

I'm still here!

Life has been hectic over the past few weeks which has meant the blogs have had to take a back seat for a while. There's still been plenty of opportunities for photos though, just no time to process and publish them!

In the meantime I managed to squeeze in a birthday, and here's a picture to celebrate:



I hope to post some more updates shortly,
Iain

Time for home

After an enjoyable weekend, with some sunbathing and lots of doing, well, nothing really, it was getting closer to time to pack and prepare for home.

The weather hadn't been as good as when we came here previously, but nevertheless we'd stayed dry all week and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. All that was left was to take one last photo for the album on the balcony of our hotel room.

The Principality of the Pontinha - the world's smallest state?

Looking down from the hotel towards the harbour, the new harbour wall can be seen to join with an outcrop of rock, where steps climb to a viewpoint at the top. By lunchtime the sunshine of morning had been lost to cloud, so after a bite to eat we decided to take a stroll down the hill to take a look.

At the bottom of the staircase, two locals were guarding the entrance, charging one euro admission to walk to the top. For my shiny euro coin, I was given a leaflet explaining that I had just met His Excellency Prince D. Renato Barros, sovereign leader of the historic island of Pontinha, which had been ceded from Portugal in December 2007. Right.

The rock had been landed on in July 1419 by two captains belonging to a sea expedition by Prince Henry the Navigator, one of the great Portuguese explorers of the fifteenth century. A fort called Sao Jose was built on the rock, which was separated from the main island of Madeira at that time, but over the years as Madeira and Funchal developed, the rock and fort simply became part of the harbour wall.

In 1903, King D. Carlos I of Portugal supposedly signed a Regal Letter stating the territory of the Principality of the Pontinha shall be sovereign. The original letter is apparently kept in the Tower of London (it wasn't on display when we visited the Tower a couple of years ago, but then again we weren't exactly looking for it), and this forms the basis of the claims of the current Prince (who also claims to be a descendant of the King who signed the letter).

The rock is less than 200 sq m in area, and if recognised by the United Nations would be the smallest sovereign state in the world.

Whether you believe all this or not, it's a great story and for imagination alone is well worth the euro coin I paid towards its maintenance. Co-incidentally, whilst looking out to sea from the viewpoint, a replica ship from Henry the Navigator's day, taking tourists back from a morning sail, was heading back towards Funchal and the harbour.

Passing time...

Today we finally spent the day doing exactly what we came here for - basically nothing but relaxing in the warm sunshine!

The Casino Park hotel and casino were designed in the late sixties by the legendary architect Oscar Neimeyer, who at the time had fled his native Brazil in exile and was living in Paris. Niemeyer was responsible for many great buildings throughout the world and specialised in modern designs, using curves rather than straight lines wherever possible and maximising open spaces in the interiors. The hotel and casino are both great examples of both these traits and I'll post more about Niemeyer, who has recently celebrated his 101st birthday, shortly.

Before the hotel was built, the land it sits on was previously occupied by a grand villa with a history: the Empress of Austria, Elisabeth of Bavaria, came here in the 1860s and again in the 1890s for extended stays on health grounds. Today, Sissi's statue stands in front of the hotel as a reminder of the history of the site and the enduring popularity of the island.

The hotel gardens overlook Funchal harbour, and many of the guests left their sunloungers to watch a large cruise ship moor up in the harbour. Funchal is a regular stop for many cruise ships, and whilst today's ship, the Valletta-registered Atlantic Star wasn't the biggest in these parts, it was still intriguing to watch it manoeuvre towards the dockside.

Having returned with my camera, I also took the opportunity to snap the American frigate which has been anchored in the harbour all week. There doesn't appear to have been a great deal of activity on board, so I guess there's no immediate crisis to worry about in this part of the world.

In between sunbathing and swimming, I took the camera up to the top floor of the hotel to take some shots, and the result is this panorama looking out across Funchal and the harbour, with the unique hyperbolic shape of the casino in the foreground. The casino was where we were heading in the evening - we'd booked to see the show 'Viva la diva' together with a four-course meal, and a fantastic time was had by all.

Relaxation - inside and out

At breakfast this morning the heavens opened and we watched the rain bounce down around the swimming pool whilst we engorged ourselves on the wonderful selection of food provided by our hotel. We had hoped to enjoy a week's relaxation by the pool but the weather has had other ideas so far and we were beginning to feel frustrated.

We decided to seek out the hotel's indoor facilities and found they were superb - a large pool with jacuzzi, a steam room, sauna, ice room (we weren't convinced about this one) and beauty salon. Carole was keen to try out a back and shoulder massage and as I was on holiday too, I booked one too as I didn't want to be left out!

After a couple of hours of relaxation, we checked out the weather and was pleasantly surprised to find that the rain had gone and the sun was out - at last! Finally we were able to claim some sunloungers by the outdoor pool and sunbathe, as well as having a proper swim.

The pool area and gardens look great in the warm sunshine and everyone was suddenly in a much better mood.

In the evening we returned to our newly discovered street round the corner from the hotel where we enjoyed a great Italian meal - we've certainly not gone hungry during this holiday!

Cable cars, gardens and toboggans

Another day and more cloud. Our bad run of holiday weather looks set to continue for at least another day, although there is hope that the sunshine might be along tomorrow. Having explored the centre of Funchal yesterday, we were keen today to visit the gardens high up on the outskirts of town. But we needed a head for heights...

Several years ago whilst in Vienna, we did what many tourists do and visited the big wheel made famous in the novel The Third Man. The pods were little more than wooden sheds which swayed erratically and then stopped altogether for 10 minutes part-way round and Carole was petrified.

Ever since then she has steadfastly refused to leave solid ground (except by plane), so I was taken aback when she said she'd risk the 15 minute journey to the gardens at Monte via the cable car.

It's fair to say that our journey up to the gardens wasn't full of conversation, and the colour had drained from her face by the time we got to the top. And having reached the top, we would eventually have to make the reverse journey down again (unless we took the toboggan ride, which will be explained later).

Having recovered sufficiently from our journey uphill, we walked up the road to the gardens entrance and then inside. Maybe it was the threat of rain, but the gardens, whilst very pleasant, didn't live up to their billing in the brochures. The paths had become slippy in the drizzle and the slope of the land made exploring hard work, but more than this there simply wasn't very many flowers to see - just lots of trees and foliage.

The gardens had a strong east asian feel, with an impressive array of Chinese terracotta soliders near the entrance and a pergola set in a Japanese garden complete with coi carp.

On the way back uphill we explored the main lake in the garden, where the water cascades down impressively over a walkway. Whilst there we encountered a bride and groom, who were being photographed in a number of settings throughout the gardens.









On leaving the gardens, we walked a little further to visit the church at Monte, famous these days for being the starting point of the Monte toboggan ride downhill into Funchal. We'd been watching tourists hurtling down the streets bordering the gardens earlier and weren't inspired to give this a go - the two guys 'steering' the toboggan at the back didn't look at all in control and it made the cable car feel like a much better option!

Whilst descending back to Funchal via the cable car, the clouds were starting to lift and the sun finally began to shine. With the improved weather to spur us on, we headed straight for the open-topped bus nearby and took the tour around the city. The tour took us through the old and new city, past the historic Blandy's wine shop and the harbour, then up out to the west of the city to a wonderful viewpoint at Pico Dos Barcelos, not far from the sea yet over 1000ft high.


At night, after enjoying cocktails in the hotel bar, we headed out but away from the town centre and in less than 100yds from the hotel, found a number of excellent restaurants to choose from. We opted for a chinese banquet in keeping with the oriental theme from the gardens earlier and enjoyed an excellent meal to round off the day.