Almost fully recovered

Well, Nicktor managed to survive the week following his strange episode last Tuesday. He visited the doctor, had blood tests, ECG and almost an x-ray and it all looks fine. He’s supposed to see the doctor tomorrow to maybe find out why he had the episode and what caused it but, as we all know, doctors guess as much as they know…so we shall see.

But, putting aside this week’s Nicktor Night for a bit…a few weeks ago, we planted a couple of Alstroemerias in the hot border. We were a bit concerned that they may just prove to be a delicious dinner for the slugs and snails but, contrary to suspicions, we have our first flowers.

Alstroemeria ‘Indian summer’

They look lovely and bright with the promise of more blooms to come. So far so good, I’d say.

Anyway, back to Nicktor.

He turned up tonight and we decided to try for a pub dinner again. Rather than going to the 6 Bells again (I really thought their food wasn’t very good last week) we decided to try the Albion. This is a pub about the same distance but in the opposite direction. Sadly, the beer garden is actually a small triangular space in front of the pub and bordered by two very busy roads. They’ve tried to make it very inviting but, unless you were deaf and had no sense of smell, it’s very similar to sitting in a car park.

Inside the pub, however, it’s lovely. It was done up a while ago and the floors are all polished oak and the walls and bar look new and welcoming. As was the barmaid. (This was also something that put us off last week at the 6 Bells.) We ordered a couple of lovely pints of Guzzler, a beer from York (I visited the brewery years ago with the Weasels) and ham, egg and chips.

And it was lovely. The food, the beer, the ambience. This may become our local, I reckon.

Eventually, we made our way back to the house (with Nicktor still hobbling slightly but not mysteriously fainting) and sat back to enjoy the delights of a film we’ve had in the pile for some little while. The film is called The Task and is a horror. I mean the genre rather than a review.

The oddest thing about the movie was the strange combination of nationalities. Virtually all the production crew were Schumanians, most of the cast were British (including a particularly awful Victor Mcguire) and it was supposed to be in America. There were two characters playing Brits, the rest of them were supposed to be American (with pretty bad accents) and it was filmed somewhere in Russia. Very odd.

The film itself was okay. A few scares and the suspense was maintained quite well. Nice twist at the end, as well. The biggest shock came in the last 30 seconds. Almost everyone is dead, the music is reaching a peak, the screen goes black and the phone rang. It was Mirinda saying good night. The room was in darkness, I couldn’t find the pause button on the remote or the phone. I grabbed for the light, paused the DVD (it was frozen on the image of a bloodied arm reaching up a chainlink fence) and answered the phone.

It was very funny…sort of. Eventually we returned to the action…which lasted about ten seconds.

Following this dark and evil film, we decided to watch some more Alas Smith and Jones to remember poor Mel Smith who died earlier in the week. This had us in fits. Then, just because we both remembered it from our childhoods as something we enjoyed, we watched the first episode of The Banana Splits. The less said about that, the better.

As usual, we had a lovely Nicktor Night with the added bonus of Nicktor not drifting off to another planet.

Oh, I really should add that Nicktor has decided to join the 21st century and get a smartphone. It’s very funny watching him use it. He’ll get there. I recommended he get an iPhone because the technology is very simple…like him.