Alsager

Invited for lunch by our old friends Tony and Penny in Alsager yesterday so we drove over for eleven and sat in their lovely flower filled garden and had some tea and "sand" biscuits. I accompanied Tony to the local tip to deposit some cardboard and plastic bottles he had bought all the way from his aunties house in Essex! We pondered on the carbon footprint they had already aquired. The tip was very like all tips these days and seperated into bays for wood, metal, cloth, garden rubbish, paper etc. Sadly you don't get to rummage in other folks rubbish anymore like the good old days. It made me think of the times in Brentwod when we lived quite close to a local tip that was suurounded by woods and when all the council workers had gone home all the scavengers lurched out of the trees and began pick over the days dumpings. I used to find all kinds of treats among the fould smelling debris. Amazing that I never ever cut myself our caught anything nasty! A wooden monkey from a fairground I found there still hangs in our hall to this day. One evening I found a big sack of unopened letters complete with SAE's to the BBC for some programme or other - those stamps came in very handy being on the dole at the time and very skint. Now I am content to sort through other peoples in charity shops and boots sales!

We went for a nice meal at an old Marsdens pub at Whobblyston? nearby. It was packed full of pensioners all having hot pots and crusty rolls. We plumped for the cheesy pancakes and beans. The pint of strong bitter made me very light headed and sleepy - I should have stuck to orange juice. It made a nice change to go out for lunch which we seldom do and good to see old chums and have a chat too.
We got back just as all the kids were coming out of school and wandering shambolic in the road like a plague of zombies. Archie was showing off with his guitar so thankfully arrived a bit later. He was miffed he'd missed out on a pub lunch.
Hazel opened the late birthday present from T &P and the very heavy package turned out to be a DIY box made from planks the Swedish design gurus call a Snack!