Madeira

A little earlier in the year, Beryl & Ian Niven, some friends from Scotland who we had met on a previous holiday, invited us to stay in their apartment in Madeira. We jumped at the chance because it is an island that I have always wanted to visit and so, on the 26 August we flew out from Bristol to Funchal for a week. Very early on I found that my camera would not work and so I bought a 35mm disposable to try and record our stay. The results were not very good and so I apologise for the standard reproduced for this post.

Hotel Regency Palace Pool

Hotel Regency Palace from the Pool

We spent quite a lot of time around the pool, relaxing and chatting and in the evenings went out and ate in different cafes/restaurants, some good, some not, some quick and one, very very slow.
I was not feeling very well one day so the others went off to Funchal to have a look around, but we did manage another trip on which I was present. During this visit, we managed a coffee in a floating restaurant as shown.

On the Sunday that we were there, we hired a taxi and went on a seven hour tour of the west of the island. This was a very instructive trip after we had stopped looking at the inside of churches! As most people know, Madeira is very mountainous and the cliffs rise almost vertically as shown in the photograph below.

Towards the top of the mountains sits the famous Madeira mist, which provides the island with its water supply. It is very difficult to photograph but the accompanying photo might give some idea.

The mist is the very white patch above Ian & Maria's heads.

We toured the North West of the island and visited a couple of very pleasant villages, in one of which we had some lunch. We then headed back via that part of the North coast where there are loads of waterfalls that must be almost a thousand feet in height in places.

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole of our visit and think that we would like to go again and do some more touring. Only time will tell.

Hall for Cornwall

In the last couple of months, Maria, Annette and I have been out to see two shows at the Hall for Cornwall. The first was to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat", starring Craig Chalmers who was one of the finalists in the BBC show, "Any Dream Will Do", that chose Lee Mead to star in the West End version of the show. We had booked some time ago and managed to get seats in the second row on Wednesday but, as the due date came closer, I remembered that we had also managed to book a holiday in Madeira, of which more later, and we were due to fly from Bristol on the same Wednesday. Oh bother!! Now, the only date that we could actually get to the show was on the Tuesday, which happened to be opening night. Well we did manage to get seats on the second row, but this time they were second row from the back! Never mind, the show was excellent and we had a splendid evening.
The second show was to see the Central Band of the Royal Air Force in concert in aid of the Royal Air Force Association (RAFA) "Wings Week". This time we were fourth row from the front so a very good view and once again we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Service Bands are not to everyone's taste but they do play a wide range of music including film scores, marches and some popular classical. In this concert there were two pieces composed by one of the band members based on Cornish legends, which were very well received. There were also a couple of pieces for violin although more like traditional Irish Music than classical violin. The finale included bagpipes and, all in all, it was very enjoyable evening.

Light Bulb

Crumbs, nearly 3 months since I wrote anything so here goes.

I thought that I would start with a story concerning a light bulb. On a recent visit to see my Pop in Bradford, he asked me to fix the ceiling light in his living room because one of the three bulbs wasn't working. Up on the largest of his step ladders (Oakroyd has very high ceilings downstairs), I soon came across a problem. As soon as I touched the wiring, it fell apart; I guess it must be about 40 years old at least. So, I thought, remove the complete fitting from the ceiling rose and see if is fixable. Having duly unscrewed the two fixing screws, I was surprised to find that the fixture did not come away from the ceiling! It soon became evident that it was secured from above in Pop's bedroom and underneath his bed just to make life awkward. I went up the stairs and moved the bed to find that a new carpet had been fitted since the light fitting - oh joy; now I had to cut a hole in the carpet but no Stanley Knife in the house. Off I went to the local hardware shop in the village and purchased a Knife, came back to the house and, after carefully measuring everything twice, I took the bull by the horns and cut an X in the place that I believed would give me access to the appropriate floorboards. When I folded back the carpet, guess what? One of the exposed floorboards had writing on it, "Lights". Bingo. The floorboards came up easily exposing the top of the lamp, which was quite easy to undo and disconnect electrically. There was just one problem, how to disconnect it and then get downstairs in time to catch it before it hit the floor? In the end, with the lampshade and all three bulbs removed, I just let it go and it landed fairly softly on one of the chairs. Having carefully checked the wiring, I had two options, either replace the complete unit or rewire the old one. I chose to try and rewire but, of course, there was no appropriate electrical cable in the house so back up to the hardware shop where I was lucky enough to get something which would do the job. I spent about an hour rewiring and then had the problem of pushing the fitting back through the ceiling and getting upstairs to reconnect it. As luck would have it, a friend of Pop's, Brenda, was visiting and she volunteered to climb up the stepladder and hold the fitting in place until I could reach the other end. After that it was quite easy to reconnect, put the floorboards back, refit the carpet, move the bed back into place, refit the light bulbs and the shade and then test it. Quite satisfactorily, it all worked. After all that, all I can say is that if you are ever asked to replace a light bulb in an old house, remember the Scout's motto and Be Prepared.