A lucky man

Those of you who follow this blog regularly may be wondering why there have been no posts for the last two weeks. That is because we visited England where we were invited to two birthday parties on consecutive weekends.

The first was Andrew's 18th birthday party. Andrew ,who is the son of our very good friends and ex neighbours Angela and Hugh, has been having adult parties for his birthday since he was born. Sadly this one may be the last because hopefully he will be going to University later this year to study law.

For the first time the party had to be held inside the house, not because it was raining but because the lawn was too wet to walk on. Still it didn't dampen the atmosphere.


The second party was for Dave who is the boyfriend of our youngest daughter Laura. Laura and Dave live in a flat in Sale so the party was held at his friend Liam's mother's house. A kind break in the gloomy weather provided us with warm sunshine all day.

Many thanks to Jane for inviting us and hosting the party in the first place.



In between partying we did a bit of retail therapy at the Trafford Centre, the Outlook Village and in Manchester.


I also furthered my knowledge of English beers courtesy of Dave who kindly introduced me to Dizzy Blond at the Railway and reacquainted me with Robinson's at the Volunteer.

I also sampled Bombadier at the J.P Joule (the man who gave his name to the unit of electricity). We also visited The Waterside in Sale for a pint (or two) of Tetley's. The highlight though was Sam Smiths Tadcaster brewed best bitter at Sinclair's Oyster Bar in the heart of Manchester. Dave's father apparently used to go there before every United home game for a pre match drink. I could see why. It had to be both my favourite pub in the area and my favourite beer of the trip.


We also popped over to the Wirral to check on Pam's father and whilst we were there met up with my good friends Dave and Pete Brooks who I used to work with. It was great to chew over old times and to catch up on their news.



Of course the main purpose of our visit was to see our daughters Jemma and Laura. We are lucky to have such wonderful daughters who look after us so well when we visit. We miss them a lot and look forward to seeing them both here in Spain and on our trips to England.

We'd like to thank all those people who made our stay so enjoyable especially Dave and Laura who put up with us in their flat. We were sorry that we couldn't see more people - maybe another time.