Evening all, I’ve filtered the shit out of these photos today, because it’s my blog and I want to make my life seem overly exciting and the places I visit seem much better than anybody else. This weekend, with daughter away in China, we had good friend around, I’ll call him Mr S for anonymity’s sake, and his young daughter who I’ll call Ms S. My son and Mrs T (my wife) decided with the weather as it is to head over to Ludlow to look at the castle and trudge around the castle grounds buying over priced drinks and having to steer the kids through the gift shop without too much collateral damage to the wallet. I can’t believe that it’s only down the road, about 45 minutes in the car, and supposedly Ludlow is one of the places to go for foodies in the UK, theres certainly no shortage of amazing delis and restaurants on offer, not to mention a craft market selling all manner of over priced crafty stuff, specially commissioned hand carved chairs, mugs with Hares on and really over priced records, everything on the stall was £30 and I have many of the records myself, so did not nor was I tempted to buy any, but I did compliment the bearded record seller on his exquisite hand writing on the price tags. But honestly, Meddle for £30? You’re having a great big belly laugh at us all, plus he only had around 20 records. 

Problem I have is; if I get hot, and need hydration, and things aren’t going quite to plan, then I get slightly impatient and so after a good old wander around for an hour or so in the baking sunlight, climbing up and down spiralled stone stairs to dead ends and to the top of ruined towers, I was reaching critical mass and I felt myself having little time for procrastinations or time wasters. My son fell into both of these categories by requesting pizza express for lunch. In England Pizza Express used to be seen as the more upmarket, man about town pizzeria, and for quite a few years now I have had  to bow down to children’s requests for dough balls and sloppy margaritas, this in turn means I have to order something and invariably end up ordering a spicy pizza and a bottle of Peroni, which does break the bank and always leaves me feeling full and like I’ve been spanked by the time the bill comes. So this time I was having none of it, he will have to go without, and we shall sort this hunger situation out elsewhere, maybe with some breaded chicken strips and chips from a pub.

Check out the faces in things photo above; to coin a badly misjudged now infamous celebrity phrase,

“Can you tell what it is yet?”

It’s a frog, clearly, and if you can not see that then look again and tell your friends then they can see what a crock of shit they could receive to their e-mails on a daily basis, wry self deprecation is the name of the game playmates. I’ ve got some more photos too and feel that this is dangerously close to becoming a travelogue, diary blog, which I am trying to steer away from, but in the spirit of fair play and with a nod to Judith Chalmers a visit to Ludlow is just the tonic, but maybe bring a packed lunch. As it happened a trip to a beautiful riverside pub and the wrong flavour crisps didn’t go down particularly well with his lordship and so alternative plans were made which involved leaving the beautiful bustling market town for Tenbury Wells, 15 minutes down the road, towards home, where we would get assorted meats and accompanying buns, salad bits and some local ales to wash it all down with when we got home. As a marvellous surprise I went to the local Pizza takeaway at 4pm (an ungodly hour to eat pizza, specially a take away) and purchased 3 small doughy pizzas which we ate on some steps over looking the River Teme in Tesco’s car park. Don’t laugh, it was far more satisfying that you could imagine, and once digested and the boxes disposed of all of us perked up in a way that only food can do to you.

I blame the hot weather, we’re not used to it; its been all over the place for weeks now and I’m sure it makes me less tolerant. Could be that or maybe its just my age; theres an outside chance I maybe becoming slightly more grumpy as the weeks, months  and years flow by, like the chocolatey water rushing past Tescos in the River Teme at 4pm on that Saturday afternoon while we gorged ourselves on pizzas.

We stopped by at my friends juicer (pub) on the way home, in a kind of roundabout way. The White Pheasant is also next to the River Teme, but without a frozen foods section which you may find within Tescos. This time next week my brother will have had his 40th birthday bash, at the White Pheasant and I very much doubt anything I write in 1 weeks time will be in any way coherent, I think i’ll stick to photos and maybe a song or two. So the trip on Saturday was purely for research purposes and to say hello to Mr and Mrs S, he the saviour of the Fuggles Hops as mentioned in the Times and Private Eye. They’ve got a beautiful working cocker spaniel pup named Fuggles, she’s insane!

Its all been about Ludlow today and I’ve hope you’ve enjoyed looking at the photos, please don’t take me the wrong way, I love you all really.