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Friday 23 January 2009

An encounter with a warrior and some chilly chlli.

Last Saturday I went for a walk in the Nottingham’s gorgeous Wollaton Hall's grounds. I got the Indigo bus up to the Queen’s Medical Centre and then set off walking down Derby Road past the University grounds and slipped into the Wollaton Park grounds through the back gate entrance. It was a bracing day with bright sunshine and I was in the mood for walking and planned to call in on the relatively new Café in the Yard for a bite to eat en route.

I like this park for its lake and expansive grounds where one can sometimes experience the local deer population grazing on the golf course. Just had a mental image of the golf balls being caught in the curved antlers of the deer and them deliberately flicking the balls between them, Pelota style whilst perplexed golfers look on.

Pelota is a game played in France and Spain with curved bats and they hurl the balls against a wall at very high speed. My humour goes off at odd tangents sometimes! lol

Well this day I saw no deer or Pelota players but did bump into a student who was going about dressed as a warrior. I stopped to chat and he told me that he was part of a group from the nearby Nottingham University and he had come to the park to do some training with his warrior mates. I have called him a ‘warrior’ because I wasn’t sure which era he was dressed from – Norman perhaps. Maybe he was Norman the Norman!

Away from that terrible joke we move on up the avenue of oaks and to the top of the rise by the main hall and industrial museum. The Café in the Yard was very busy with families and I queued patiently inside. It was chilly outside and as I was in the mood for playing with words I went for the chilli at £5.00 a bowl and a coffee. I had to sit outside as indoors was the parking lot for pushchairs and hassled families. So I carried my dish outside after climbing over several muddy wheeled pushchairs and sat amongst the folk there with my bowl of chilli steaming in the cold air. It was really nice and great for making one’s nose run. You didn’t want to know that did you?

It didn’t take me long to polish that off and I carried on with my walk around the park and strolled further on to Wollaton Village where I discovered a house on the main street that had named itself The Thirty Nine Steps. I whipped out my camera to take a picture of the sign – like you do-and suddenly an angry Mr Richard Hannay called out from across the road and asked me to go away. Alas not in those words! Tut tut, what would John Buchan have said? And, where are those Norman warriors when you need them!?

Next time we have a brief visit to the dance of the chavs at the town centre Café Hockley.

3 comments:

Janette said...

Do you know why it's called The Thirty Nine Steps, because it's exactly 39 steps from his house to the pub - we sold him that house when I was at the Halifax. The bloke who bought it was lovely and used to bring us chocolate hobnobs for our mid morning snack!!

Phil Lowe said...

Well blow me! Maybe it wasn't Mr Richard Hannay but a darned imposter. He certainly didn't have any free chocky hobnobs!

Unknown said...

I know that bloke too - he's my dad! And he is indeed lovely. I suspect it may have been a darned imposter who shouted at you as Mr 39 steps himself would have loved you to take a photo! Right about the 39 steps to the pub, but if you want the actual stats - it's 34 steps to the pub door and 5 more to the bar!