Getting ready to hand over

Today we eschewed the Premier Inn breakfast in favour of Café Northcote's excellent £6.95 Lancashire breakfast at the Cathedral, visible over the sedum roof outside our first floor room. It was a grand start to the day and a bargain, bearing in mind Northcote's insistence on quality produce. We have been eating at Nigel and Craig's establishments since 1984 and they have been rightly obsessive about this.

Beneath the sedum roof outside our room is Turtle Bay, the latest in a Caribbean-themed bar and restaurant chain owned by a Bristolian Sri Lankan, Ajith Jayawickrema, whose initial fortune came from founding the Las Iguanas chain.  He also sits on the board of Tampopo, the pan-Asian restaurant started in Manchester by Nick Jeffrey and David Fox in 1997. There are not so many modern places to eat and drink in Blackburn and around seven this evening Turtle Bay was pretty busy. It opens until 1:30 and since maintaining any night life business in Blackburn is difficult, perhaps it may prosper, however bogus such themed ventures may be. 

Today we grasped the nettle of being conscious of having kept back more stuff than we can fit in the car, as a result of the hasty removal. We loaded the car and some things will have to go to the tip but not too many. Nonetheless we will pay a fuel penalty for carting about more than we needed to.  Then cleaning the garage, rubbing down and painting the back door panels that I fitted yesterday to cover the void where the cat flap was and a score of cleaning and touching up tasks. Cath had outstanding success with reviving carpets suffering deep furniture indenting. 

Just after 4:00 I met Russ for a couple of pints at The Millstone, opposite our two houses and had more conversation than in the several years he has been living next door. Not enough effort on my part, I fear, and a reminder to engage more and better. We had a good chat and I discovered that his brother is an anaesthetist in Newcastle. And so to the Shajan on Longsight Road for a farewell curry, Cath much bucked by having had her first reasonable night's sleep for a week, such has been the bouleversement of this truncated packing up period. Never again.