Well, it’s done and dusted and please don’t read any further if you haven’t watched the final episode of Celebrity Traitors.  Spoiler alert:  I might mention at the end who won.  Then again, I might not….

All is revealed….

Thursday nights are usually blog nights, for me anyway and far too often to be healthy they’re so late they move in to the next morning.  That was the case last week because although the words were almost all written in good time – though not quite all – there was an unexpected glitch:  the sister and her husband were coming for a couple of nights and the house was in the process of being tidied.

In other words, it was a tip.  So I had to izzy-whizzy, switch in to overdrive and make the place habitable for visitors.  It was an autumn clean rather than a spring clean and it was a great relief to make inroads.  However, it did mean that my sleep pattern was disrupted even more than usual; and I had a busy weekend ahead.  Aaaaaagh….

The next morning I missed my snooker lesson because I still had the shower and the loos to clean but I made it to bridge in time and don’t think I made any more miscalculations than usual.  The brain cell had woken up enough to make the odd correct call.

Then it was off to London to meet up with a member of the Irish branch of the Spurs supporters’ club in preparation for the big match the next evening and the stadium tour in the morning.  Our leader had also organised a trip to Frameless, an immersive art experience that is receiving rave reviews and is well worth a visit.  No need to rush, it’s on for another three years.

Nice and calm, immersed in Venice.

Just one word of warning:  sometimes the floor seems to move – and the ceiling and the walls – and if you’re tired or have had a drink or two too many, it’s not an easy watch.  In fact, the first two rooms reminded me of a rather unpleasant experience on the Scillonian, leaving Penzance on an even keel and staggering off on St Mary’s (Isles of Scilly) with everything all over the place.  Dizzying was the word for it.

Vesuvius erupting:  scary and spectacular but not so bad if you’re sitting down.

I know that Christmas is not that far away – my hairdresser always knows the exact number of days  – but it came early for a couple of Tottenham tragics when we had a match day tour of our swanky new(ish) stadium.  All we lacked was a legend leading us around but the two young men in charge of our group were very good and well informed and managed to keep us ahead – just – of the hundreds of people coming in to start work (including some of the first-team coaches, who descended on the dressing room as we, the last tour on the list, were leaving).

The kit all ready for the team of the day. Nice colour for the goalies.  They didn’t let us see the names.

Two ridiculously happy Totspurs, yours truly, dressed for the occasion,  with Denise (left) who organised the whole thing.

The match wasn’t until half past five (on a Saturday), yet another of those random kick-off times designed to suit the telly channels; the fans will pitch up wherever, whenever and pay whatever…Maybe aye and maybe och aye.  Take us for granted at your peril.

Denise, our organiser par excellence, had sussed out a very congenial pub (home fans only) not too far from the ground and we had something to eat (and a drink or two) in  good company, full of hope that we’d beat Chelsea, not something we seem to find easy.  We even found a group of lads from Cavan, fans of Leona Maguire, to take a pic of us full of hope and expectation.

Ready for the match, full of hope: Gemma, in the middle, was about to watch her first premier league game. Thanks to the Cavan lads for the photo.

I couldn’t fault the build up to the game but for some reason our boys didn’t turn up and went missing the moment the whistle went; they/we were dire, no other word for it.  Chelsea won 1-nil but it should have been more and we never looked like sneaking an equaliser.  They really do have the hex over us and their fans were jubilant, rubbing it in with justifiable glee as we headed unhappily into the night.

Oh no! They’ve done it again. Away fans and team enjoying their trip to Tottenham.

To make matters worse, we got to a pub near our hotel in time to watch Ireland lose to the All Blacks in Chicago.  At least the boys in green led for a good while before succumbing and the craic could hardly have been better.  Sometimes it’s not the result that matters most.

I won’t mention who won Traitors, just in case you still haven’t heard – and I know there are some of you out there who couldn’t care less.  Wish I felt the same about Spurs.

Now, why on earth would that be?….

Something wonderful happened to me the other morning and it had already started well with a sociable, if chilly, dog walk with Sue and Alice.  We bumped in to friends with their dogs, then, wishing I’d already rooted out the winter gloves, I went to the bakery to stock up with sourdough muffins – have I mentioned that they freeze well?  Then I warmed up with a latte in one of Lichfield’s many caffs.  So far, so good.

Then, on the way home, a bit of a miracle happened:  two people asked me for the best way to get to the cathedral, which was easily visible from where we were standing.  Hallelujah, a directions question that I could answer with complete confidence!  (I’d just spent a few days in Germany shrugging and apologising:  “Ich habe keine Ahnung; ich spreche nicht Deutsch; entschuldigung….”  Just enough German to confuse the questioner utterly.)

There are the three spires of Lichfield Cathedral, perhaps not quite in all their glory.  Charles and Camilla, fresh from their visit to Rome, will be here next Monday.

I suggested the most direct route, which would mean they’d hit the cathedral full frontal, so off they went and I headed home, smiling broadly, inordinately pleased with myself.  It really is the little things in life, the teensy-weensy, titchy-witchy, tiny triumphs that give the most pleasure.

My republican friends aren’t too happy but there’s a royal visit scheduled for Lichfield at the beginning of next week.  I’m not quite sure what the occasion is but it’s a big deal, although probably not quite as big as the visit to Rome this week, featuring prayers with the Pope in the Sistine Chapel, I believe.  Lucky old Charles and Camilla.  Mo and I paid a lot of money for our tour of the Vatican a couple of years ago and got 30 seconds max to admire Michelangelo’s artistry.

Ah well, rank always has had its privileges.

I was in Germany on a course that had been a very long time in the making.  I can’t remember when I first came across Esther Gokhale (Go-Clay) and her book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, written with Susan Adams but a lot of years ago, I was within a few metres of a weekend course with Esther herself when I got a call to say it was cancelled.  She had been turned back at Heathrow – no work visa I believe – and the only benefit was that I made a few quid on the rate of exchange when I got my refund.

The square in Öhringen, with the statue of Olaf Hohenlohe, about whom, shamefully, I know nothing.

Four years ago Mo and I went on a weekend course with Clare, the only active Gokhale teacher in the UK.  In Bristol.  It was unbelievably tiring but inspiring and I signed up for the daily Gokhale online classes.  They’re great and you get to know the other participants, wherever in the world they are.  The classes operate on US west coast time because Esther is based in California but, it’s like golf:  you can’t learn it all from a distance, from a book or from Zoom.  So, I went to Germany.

Julie, one of Gokhale’s top team, lives in Öhringen and that’s where eight of us relative novices pitched up, from various places, by various means, to spend six sessions of a couple of hours each working with Esther, Julie and Karin and Doris, two trainee teachers from Austria.  We came from the UK (me and Angela),  Austria (Gillian and Herbert), Berlin (Di and Martin), Italy (Linda) and just round the corner (Hans-Christian).

The Gokhale group, Esther is third from left.  I’m the one in the understated top, with my chin in the wrong place – as usual!  A work in progress.

Essentially, to put it simply, the Gokhale Method is all about posture, about stacking yourself in the right position and it’s blooming hard after decades of slumping and coping with bunions because your feet have been asked to work from the wrong end – toes taking the brunt instead of the tougher heel.  I ended every day knackered and now that I’m home I’m still knackered!

There’s nothing like hands-on teaching – literally in this case, with my permission of course.  And our teachers sounded a lot less fierce than the woman taking the kiddie-winks ballet class in the next room; for a start they didn’t shout at us!  They were insistent that we got the positions right but they were encouraging and understood that most of us were trying to change the habits of a lifetime.

Waiting patiently at Stuttgart station. Not Alice and not with me: I’d go off the rails if I had to handle a dog and luggage!

Now that I’m home, recovering from lugging my luggage from train to train and happily filling in time at the airport by rearranging my weighty hand baggage (see the pic at the top), I’m starting to panic that I’ll forget everything.  It all seemed to make such sense face to face.  Hey ho, I just have to accept it’s the work of the rest of my life.

The new edition of the book, hot of the presses. It should make a lot more sense to me now.

Finally, never having watched anything of the Traitors, trailers apart because I thought it was a nasty, hideous concept, bringing out the worst in people, I’ve become addicted to Celebrity Traitors and am binge watching – not a good idea when you’re trying to write a blog at the same time.  Apologies if it doesn’t make any sense.

Addictive….

On the way home from Amble the other week, we were stopped at a motorway service station, having a stretch and a drink – water – while our driver was sorting out a possible scam on her mobile.  I went to chuck something in the nearest rubbish bin and there was a bloke changing the ad in one of those big display doofers.

We fell in to chat.  “I don’t usually look at them,” I said.  “Neither do I,” sez he.  “They’re just trying to get you to spend money.”

Well, I suppose that’s the purpose of most ads and I did notice that recycling wasn’t part of his brief because he just stuffed the two big old posters (it was a two-sided display) in to my rubbish bin.

All new, all singing, all dancing, lovingly unrolled by hand…

We were the first – at this particular service station anyway – to learn that the card ‘tide’, whatever it does, existed and, even better, we discovered that there is such a thing as a ‘Digital Media Technician’.  Who knew that there was such a job?

“It sounds better than it pays,” our man said, a touch mournfully, then he perked up:  “The digital bit’s more fun, like big boys’ Lego.”  He proceeded to point out the big display screen (which we hadn’t noticed) at the entrance to the shops/loos/etc and explained how it could be operated remotely from headquarters if necessary.  Apparently it had been blank earlier and he’d alerted hq, who’d reactivated everything.  There was more technical stuff before he was distracted by Alice and rooted out his phone to show us pictures of his dog – and his father’s dog.

You just never know what you’ll learn if you fall in to chat.

The next time I saw him he was on his way in to the women’s loos, to change the posters in there.  Don’t be alarmed, girls.  He’s only doing his job.  Wonder how many people hear about this option from their school careers adviser…

I forgot to mention that we made the obligatory visit to Barter Books in Alnwick, described somewhere as “the largest and best bookshop in Northumberland”.  I think that does it a disservice, limiting it to one county, surely it’s famous worldwide?  Anyway, you can’t go to Alnwick, which has numerous treasures on offer, without setting foot in BB.  Admittedly, it’s dangerous because you can spend hours there browsing happily, drinking tea/coffee and eating delicious cakes, the time just disappears.  And, of course, I bought something.

Amazingly, it was only one item this time, a virtually pristine copy of Pat Murphy’s lovely, loving book “BBC Sports Report”.  It’s sub-titled “a celebration of the world’s longest-running sports radio programme” and I just had to have it.  It reminded me of happy days in the BBC radio sports department where I was on the fringes (that’s a tale for another time) but got to know lots of the luminaries Pat mentions.  I was in awe of all of them but I learned a lot and remain devoted to radio.

Written by the inimitable, indefatigable Pat Murphy, this is a great book for all sports nuts.

One of the embarrassing things about my time there was that my language was far worse than anybody else’s.  I’ve always blamed this on sharing an office with Davie O, a very talented art editor, a Scot with a penchant for swearing.  My contention was that it was a case of leave or learn and my coping mechanism obviously involved absorbing too many swear words…I’ve spent 40-odd years trying to swear less, with a marked lack of success.

Dave also had the distinction of coming up with my best, most appropriate nickname ever.  Dai, who was meant to be the wordsmith, was so furious that he hadn’t thought of it, that it was the bloody art editor who’d come up with it – sheer genius really – that he refused to use it, otherwise I’d never have been known as anything else.

At the BBC, they thought Patricia too much of a mouthful, which it is, so they wanted something shorter.  Pat was out because I was never called Pat growing up and there were a few of those about anyway, so they settled for Trish, Tricia or some variation thereof.  That came about because when they asked me what they’d called me at my last job, I didn’t have the nerve to tell them, not in my first week.

”They used to call me Muddle…”

Moving swiftly on, there’s just time for a bit of golf and congratulations to Marco Penge on winning the Open de España (presented by Madrid 2025)  at Club de Campo Villa de Madrid.  (I feel obliged to put all the official wording in, so I can use the DP World Tour’s very nice pic of him and his latest trophy.)  It was his third victory of the season – he managed to hold off Dan Brown with a birdie at the first extra hole – and qualified him automatically for the Masters and the Open even before his new world ranking took him well inside the top 50.  I hope he takes time to absorb the names that he’s joined on the roll of honour:  Arnie, Seve, Max Faulkner, Nick Faldo (before he was knighted), the Peters Thomson and Alliss, to name but a few.  The Spanish Open has a long and distinguished history.

Who wouldn’t look happy after joining some of the greats. [Stuart Franklin/Getty Images]

Alice digging madly. The unusual colouring is purely a trick of the light…

It was off to Northumberland last week, to Amble, three intrepid women and one laidback lab in a van, in the pouring rain, heading up to meet Storm Amy.  It wasn’t a particularly pleasant drive but Chris is the Mrs Kipling of motorists – an exceedingly good driver – so we were in the best of hands and arrived at our destination without alarms (that was to come later!).

Posing before the off:  Chris in her orange waterproof and Sue and Alice lurking in the background (the dog bed is behind Chris).

The packing was a bit of a masterclass, given that we hadn’t gone for the minimalist option, with waterproofs, woollies, boots of various sorts, even umbrellas and folding chairs for the beach included, along with numerous tins of dog food and some adult beverages.  I even stuffed in my dressing gown – and made sure I wore it a few times.

Probably the most important item I took was the shirt I intended to wear on the Saturday afternoon for the Leeds versus Tottenham game at Elland Road.  It’s no great fashion statement but it is devoid of the Nike swoosh (they’re our current shirt sponsors, who are still feeling no pain despite my long-time boycott of their products), so I felt able to spend the dosh and use my season ticket holder’s £15 off voucher.  It’s not a great fit because most of the stuff is designed for men and not for people whose curves tend to be in different places but you can’t always have everything you desire – especially when it comes to football.

Yes, I did wear it while watching the match – in a Newcastle United pub where the punters were disinterestedly neutral.

There was a big screen showing the footie but there wasn’t a seat available, so I went round the corner of the room to watch on a smaller screen and pace anxiously, especially towards the end when we were leading 2-1.  I was so engrossed in the game that I failed to notice the rather unusual decor – until Sue and Alice came in and pointed it out…

Once seen never forgotten.

We had to share the pic with friends and the cracks came pouring in thick and fast:  Do they sell the drinks in cups?  Do they have a brasserie too?  Suppose the theme is support your local?

You get the drift.  Bra-vo.  And no, we did not have to contribute to the display to get served.

Probably the jazziest number on display – must have been when Bournemouth were up. Their nickname is The Cherries…

It was very windy and lashing with rain in Leeds and I didn’t recognise our manager Thomas Frank because his trademark hairstyle – longish, a bit of a bouffant – was plastered to his head.  “Who’s that bloke on the touchline?”  I thought.  “Has Thomas been sent off or something?”  No, he hadn’t.  His curls had just lost their bounce – but fortunately the team hadn’t.  The cynics say that Leeds, as one of the promoted teams, should be easy meat but that’s arrant nonsense and they hadn’t lost at home for a year.  Thomas, dripping wet but ecstatic, called it “A massive win.”  COYS (Come On You Spurs).

We were lucky in Amble because the rain held off but it was blowing a hooley and on Sunday the market was less crowded than usual because the weather had put people off.  We enjoyed ourselves at the shoe counter, trying on boots, slippers, anything and everything – and were told we were welcome back any time…

So, plenty of soles but sadly, no sole or any other fish.

At the beginning of the week we headed off to Brancepeth, near Durham, to have lunch with Allee, a cousin of Len, Chris’s late husband.  She was a delight, entertaining us with tales of her teaching career (maths) and giving us a tour of her wonderful garden before giving us a tour of the area on the way to eat at a place that could have featured on the Antiques Road Trip.

Sue (left), Allee, Chris and Alice doing the obligatory posing. Many thanks all.

It was packed with treasures – and junk – and as we wound our way past cabinets and china and knick-knacks of all sorts, warning Alice to keep her very waggy tail still and not break anything, the cheerful woman in charge said, “Don’t worry, just make sure it’s expensive!”

After soup, sarnies, scones, whatever, we piled in to the van – and it wouldn’t budge.  It’s fitted with some sort of immobiliser thingy and there were various flashing lights as it refused to accept Chris’s code.  She did the usual stuff:  switching off the ignition, counting to 10, 20, 100, taking deep breaths, scouring the handbook but nothing worked.  As she rang her van man, Allee contacted a former pupil, who made our hearts sink:  “Oh no,” he said, “I wouldn’t touch those alarms with a barge pole; they’re a disaster…”  Or words to that effect.

Chris’s man, who’d installed the thing, was a little more reassuring and after leaving well alone for several minutes longer than we had before, the van started.  Phew.  We couldn’t take the risk of stopping again, so Sue and I, in the back with Alice, agreed that we’d have to abort a visit to Brancepeth Castle GC, just across the road from Allee’s, to find Mo’s name on the honours board.  In 1980, she’d beaten Pam Wright, of Aboyne, in a play-off to win the British Women’s Stroke Play (more correctly, I think, the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship).

The championship no longer exists and I have to report that there’s no sign of it in the clubhouse either.  Chris and Allee insisted on driving to the club and as they waited with the engine running, I scurried in to scan the boards.  Any number of comps were there up on the walls but no sign of the British – or any other non-club competition, no matter how distinguished.  The women there looked puzzled but they pointed out the oldest member, who’d joined in 1963 and remembered the occasion well:  “I had the devil’s own job to persuade them to have it,” she said…

Ah.  Sounds only too familiar.

One of Brancepeth’s many lovely honours boards but of Mo and Pam (who went on to play in the Solheim Cup), there is no sign…