Extreme Days Out for the Middle Aged

Hi Everyone

I read this week about a lady who is attempting to visit 50 cities before she

reaches the age of fifty. That does not sound too wild, except that each visit is a day trip. This particular lady is up to forty three cities at the moment, and of course, most of the cities are out of the UK. If you Google Extreme Days Out, there are currently sixty nine locations on offer from our nearest airport - Manchester, with the cheapest return fare of £29. There are something like 200,000 people on their Facebook site. This lady's first trip was to Lucca in Italy which is less than twenty miles from Pisa airport. She spends about eight hours in each location before returning home. To date her favourite city is Oslo, the capital of Norway, where she spent over seven hours seeing the sights of the city, the Fjords, a couple of museums and sampling the street food. Now this sounds great for independent travellers like the Main Contractor and me, but it would take us at least an hour to get to the airport, pay £5-25 to park the car if you book in advance or £63 if you just turn up for the day. Add in the ten minutes holding up your trousers after removing your belt to go through security, not forgetting that I have a pacemaker, up to £4 for a cup of coffee or £3 for the privilege of taking a bottle of water on board, while also taking into account the unlikely event that the aircraft will depart on time, and you can see that it was not quite the Extreme Day Out that we envisaged. While I hope that the lady achieves her fifty day trips before she reaches fifty, as we approach middle age we will continue with our Extreme Days Out to Longton Park - 3 miles where the coffee is £1-80 and the parking and water free, Stone -6 miles with unlimited coffee at Weatherspoons for £1-60 and Leek - 10 miles if you can avoid the potholes and roadworks. I did suggest to the Main Contractor that we could go to live near the airport but, on reflection, I realised that the rattling of the Bedroom window as a jet flew overhead would disturb her from her nightmare. The answer, of course, is visiting the city on YouTube while preparing the street food in the air fryer and holding hands on the settee. Happy days.

Every Wednesday in Parliament they have Prime Minister's Question Time when the current Prime Minister spends forty minutes expertly avoiding answering the questions from the opposition parties and promising us all so many things that they cannot achieve. This week our Chancellor of the Exchequer, who sat next to the PM, spent most of the time with tears rolling down her cheeks. She carefully explained that it was a private matter and offered no further explanation. The PM apparently did not notice her distress. What various PM’s have failed to notice is that we are sitting at home watching this weekly pantomime with tears rolling down our cheeks, mostly in laughter rather than distress. 

I lived at the Fruit, Vegetable……… shop for over twenty years in complete safety. This week, a lady made an impassioned plea on social media to clean up the area now plagued with drug addicts, homeless people and antisocial behaviour. Many said that it was not a safe place to be and particularly after dark. Now, a local councillor is planning a petition to send to the city council. I really hope that some progress can be made, but sadly, this situation can probably be repeated in a number of places in this city alone. Don’t forget that the last government promised to end homelessness by 2025. 

Just a Thought:

My favourite childhood memory is the Senior Partner having to pay for my holidays.

Travel because money returns, time doesn’t. 

Saw a man slumped over his lawn mower crying his eyes out. He said he’d be fine, he was going through a rough patch.

Brian