Week 12 - Greg + Clare
I was staying with my sister Clare and her family so decided to coerce her into a Greg Plus One. My intention is to eventually work my way through all of the Hockleys and Clare is my first victim.
Clare is three years younger than me, almost exactly to the day (I like to think that this is because my parents only become amorous once a year (at most)). Clare and I are pretty close and one of the reasons I moved to Manchester was to be near her and her family who live on the Wirral, as do my parents, who moved north to be nearer the grandchildren.
When we were growing up I wasn’t always particularly kind to Clare and would often play pranks on her. One of my favourites was to place an alarm clock under her bed and set in to an ungodly hour, say 3am. If you pushed it far enough underneath, then retrieving it would become challenging, especially when you’ve just been woken from a deep sleep.
The Hockley children were always encouraged to go to bed no later than 10pm, even when we were technically adults, and it took me several years after leaving home to realise that it’s best to head to bed when you’re tired, rather than at an arbitrary time. That said, there is still something nice about an early night.
We decided to grab a couple of drinks before dinner and Clare regaled me with the latest goings on with her kids’ football. Both my niece and nephew participate with local teams and there’s always some drama to catch up on. Needless to say this never involves the children themselves, but the adults, be they parents or coaches. I remember attending one of my nephew’s matches with Clare’s wife, Sally, and witnessing a father dress down his 9-year-old son on the side of the pitch for a good 10 minutes for his perceived poor performance. I’m not one to argue that kids shouldn’t be encouraged to be competitive, but you do have to wonder whose egos some of the adults are attempting to bolster, their children’s or their own. The two things I took away from Open, Andre Agassi’s autobiography, it that he (famously) hates tennis and that his father applied almost inhumane amounts of pressure on him to succeed, perhaps because he had once been a professional tennis player himself and not made it as far up the rankings as he might have hoped. I don’t have children, but it strikes me that sometimes you have to take a breath and consider whether the encouragement you’re giving for them to excel at something is really just undue pressure so you can live vicariously via their achievements.
The bar in which we were having our pre-dinner drinks is owned by a phonophile and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s greatest hits was spinning on the turntable. I had forgotten just how many great songs they produced in their very limited career. Even the cover versions are excellent.
Clare is a volunteer for the RNLI and we got onto the subject of charities. When we were kids, my father would generously donate £50 to Comic Relief each year on the condition that we switch the TV over to another channel, definitely an approach I can empathise with. There was of course not much else to watch, although we were lucky enough to have Sky TV from fairly soon after its conception. My parents and two older brothers had lived in the States in the 70s before Clare and I were born so were used to more channels than we had in the UK. I remember our first Amstrad set top box which had 16 individual buttons (one for each channel) and no remote control. It was accompanied by a separate decoder box that was required to descramble the signal for some channels.
I recalled to Clare that I once met a Big Issue outreach worker at friend’s house party who told me that they had quite strict rules for their vendors, including that they weren’t allowed to sit on the job and that they should display identification at all times. He also told me never to buy a Big Issue from someone who only had one copy in a plastic wallet as they probably aren’t an official vendor. Apparently they buy a copy from an official vendor and then tell you it’s their last copy when you go to purchase it. You’d have to be pretty mean to end the transaction at that point so the odds are you will give them the money and they will keep the magazine.
Clare told me she had recently discovered that the “pit” in a pitted olive isn’t in fact another word for the olive stone, but actually refers to the void that is left when the stone has been removed. I must confess that I had also always assumed that something that been pitted had had its pit removed so this revelation came as something of a surprise to me too. Of course it makes complete sense when you have to type it!
The talk of food led us to discuss my sister’s wife, Sally, who is somewhat obsessive when it comes to not wasting food. This is of course commendable and we could all do with throwing less away. It does however have its limits. On one occasion, Clare threw away a couple of bags of Kale that were past their best before date. Sally discovered them lurking in the bin and decided, given that they were heading off on holiday the next morning, the only option was to fry the kale in butter and eat it all immediately. I’m not sure eating two whole bags of fresh kale would do anyone any favours, so you can only imagine the consequences of eating the same quantity of kale that’s past its prime.
We proceeded to Chaat in West Kirby for our dinner and ordered the following:
Papadom Chaat: mini papadoms, coated in tangy spicy sauce & topped with fresh herbs
Coconut Chicken: chicken tikka coated in a mildy spiced mango coconut chutney
Cheesy Keema Paratha: ground curried beef topped with crumbly cheese, served on a flaky paratha
House Black Dhal: red & brown lentils & kidney beans simmered with garlic, cream & butter
Highway Chicken: A rustic curry preped with whole spices, chilli & browned in a slow cooked curry
Yellow rice
Garlic naan
Upon ordering, the waiter asked whether we had any allergies, which reminded me of Italy, where even the most modest of restaurants will include numbers after every item on the menu indicating any allergens it contains. This is presumably a legal requirement and I’d imagine quite helpful if you suffer from allergies (unless of course you can’t read Italian in which case it’s Russian Roulette).
Talk of allergies caused Clare to mention the milk ladder, a concept that I hadn’t come across before. Apparently it’s a way to introduce milk products to children at a young age, particularly if they have been allergic to dairy in the past. Clare and I tend to give allergies short shrift, probably because we’re lucky enough not to suffer from any. Or perhaps I should say we claim we don’t suffer from any. Clare is definitely allergic to crab and also suffers from hay fever, not that she would ever admit the latter - once while suffering a bad flare up at work, she passed a doctor in the corridor who said something along the lines of “God Clare, your hay fever’s really playing up today”. Her response was “I. DO. NOT. HAVE. HAY. FEVER!”.
Clare and I are both fiercely independent and like to do as much as we can ourselves around the house, whether it’s DIY, decorating, or re-pressurising the boiler. I learnt most of my DIY skills from my father who wasn’t adverse to popping in an RSJ so he could knock down a structural wall, or installing an entire central heating system from scratch. He is now 85, but still likes to do as much as he can himself, including for Clare who he lives just around the corner from. My mother will often offer his services, even if it involves scaling a 20 foot ladder. Clare has become adept at determining which tasks it might be wiser for her to perform herself or delegate to a professional.
We concluded the evening by wandering back to Clare and Sal’s and having a cup of tea prior to heading to bed. I had neglected to remember that the clocks were going forward by an hour and that I would therefore lose an hour’s sleep.
Another great Greg Plus One, thanks sis!
