Mrs C makes a big fuss climbing up a modest hill
Taking advantage of some of that beautiful weather we enjoyed in November, Mrs C and I headed to a nearby village for a walk. It was Scorton, near Garstang, which not only has an incredibly good café serving an excellent ham, cheese and chutney sandwich, but has a very noteworthy famous son.
John Parkinson, born to a poor mill-working family in this remote backwater of a place just before Christmas 1861, went on, rather astonishingly, to design many of the most iconic buildings in Los Angeles.
He emigrated to the US aged 21 where he took a job as a manual labourer.
Yet by the time of his death in the 1930s, Parkinson, after holing up in Los Angeles, had designed the city’s first skyscraper, the first luxury hotel, the Homer Laughlin Building (now home to the Grand Central Market), Union Station, the Memorial Coliseum and the famous City Hall.
As much as I adore Scorton, it is slightly annoying to walk around because all the houses are so big and beautiful.
The properties in Scorton have garages larger than my entire house, though I console myself with the fact these homeowners will never experience the thrill of having to share a bedroom with a sibling or fight with a family member over whose turn it is to use the toilet next.
We were in Scorton to walk up Nicky Nook, a small but perfectlyformed hill with lovely views to Morecambe Bay and the Isle of
Man, and the Lake District.
In truth, I’d hoped to go on my own but when I informed Mrs C I was nipping out for a quick walk and would be back in about seven hours, she replied testily, ‘you’re going out and leaving me with two under-fives?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied.
This prompted an angry reaction from Mrs C, who suggested I wasn’t taking my parental duties seriously and demanded she and the kids go with me.
This was upsetting as the whole point of going walking is to get away from people you’re not keen on.
However, I realised
I was fighting a losing battle, so after a good hour of packing all the appropriate paraphernalia (nappies, snacks, wet wipes, change of clothes, more nappies), we headed out.
It’s a relatively easy walk, so I parked the car a couple of miles away to add an element of challenge.
This meant we didn’t reach the summit of Nicky Nook until a good two hours after we’d started walking, by which point Mrs C was sweating and looking an odd colour.
And then, at the top of Nicky Nook, I made a decision which, with hindsight, I regretted.
You can either turn around and walk the short distance back to the village, then pop in the aforementioned lovely café for a brew and cake. Or you can carry on, walk
It took Mrs C an hour and three slices of lemon drizzle to fully recover
down to a river and kind of loop back round.
I chose the latter.
And another two hours later, with children on our back, and with Mrs C now staggering in the manner of an under-prepared marathon runner, we finally reached the café.
It took Mrs C an hour and three slices of lemon drizzle for her to fully recover, during which period she unleashed a volley of expletives in my direction and suggested I had tried to kill her.
I gently reminded her that she’d asked, nay, demanded, to accompany me but this didn’t seem to appease her.
It was an icy atmosphere in the house that evening, where Mrs C spent the night sitting on an extrapadded cushion.
On the upside, she’ll never want to come walking with me again.