Lost Keys and Leonardo

The great thing about early morning alarms is that I always wake up five minutes before they go off. Perhaps that is just a crippling adjunct of the burden of responsibility that an oldest child always carries. In any event, I am awake this morning by twenty five minutes past six. It is still dark outside and Norman is gently snoring in his basket, which I move into my bedroom every night. Otherwise he wakes up in the small hours, wonders where I am and starts to whimper at the door. This morning I am taking Louis to school, hence the early start, and later, this afternoon. I am ferrying, Felicity, Hanne and Rosemary to a lecture on Leonardo Da Vinci, at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. I breakfast on smoked salmon with cream cheese on rye toast, Normy has to settle for dry dog food, and then I shower, dress and drive to Sarah's house to collect Louis. It is a dry morning, high pressure dominating the weather, and as so often in winter, producing a hazy grey mist, that the sun may, or may not, burn off. We walk down North Bar, Louis, Norman and I, and onto New Walk, which is a continuation of North Bar, but marked by a boulevard of trees separating the road from the pavement and thus making it a much nicer place to walk. We find a Spider-Man glove placed upon a wall, I suspect it is one that Louis has lost, but he says not and is delighted to wear it on his right hand, pretending to shoot out spider webs, all the way to school. After delivering him safely to Saint Mary's Primary School, Norman and I retrace our steps back to the car. When we get there, I flourish my keys before opening the car to retrieve my walking boots, and the spare key, for Pip's Micra, comes loose and bounces off the pavement. After picking it up and clipping it back on my key ring, I don my boots, drive to Cherry Burton and collect Dolly and Teddy for their walk on the Westwood. Because they will not be left off the lead again until Monday, I ensure they have a good walk today. Yesterday's travails with other bitches is not repeated today, perhaps because there are fewer dogs about at this earlier time. It is cool but not cold, with insufficient wind to stir the flags on the golf tees, but such wind as there is, is cold to the skin. The wet spring and summer has resulted in the most spectacular Autumn display of leaves that I can ever remember, they won't last much longer, but while they do, the scenery in the woods is wonderful. The leaves are lying three inches deep in Newbegin Pits and Norman runs through them and then rolls on his back and wriggles with the sheer joy of being alive, even though he is ninety in dog years. We stay out for two hours again today, before returning the terriers back to Two Riggs and driving home to Tickton. When we get there, my house keys are gone, and I realise, with horror, that they must have dropped off when I lost the Micra keys earlier. Fortunately there are two hours before I am due to collect the others for the Da Vinci exhibition and lecture, but I can't help speculating about alternative strategies, in case my keys are permanently lost. Fortunately, they are lying on the cobbles outside Sarah's house, where they must have lain since nine o' clock, and in the end, I have only wasted half an hour. Once we are safely back in the house, I switch on the oven and take some frozen haddock fillets, oven chips and garden peas out of the freezer and prepare lunch. While it is cooking I log on to the Jet2 website and book a return flight to Amsterdam for two weeks time and then e-mail my brother, Graham, to let him know my arrangements. Lunch is simple, tasty but effective, Norman has half a fillet of fish and a couple of chips and there is just time to finish my tea, before driving to Albert Terrace to collect Felicity and her friends. We set off by a quarter to two and I deliver them to the door of the Ferens, before driving round the corner, past my old headquarters in Telephone House, to the car park in Osborne Street. From here I walk back and arrive a few minutes before the lecture begins. The lecturer, is Michael Clayton, the senior curator of prints and drawings at the Royal Collection, from which the exhibits at the Ferens have been selected. He talks for an hour and it is obvious that he is not only an expert on Leonardo Da Vinci, but the whole social, political and historical milieu, in which Leonardo existed. The talk was interesting, informative and amusing and one came away with a sense that Da Vinci was a Polymath Genius, who hardly finished anything he started, and whose art seemed like a way of funding his mainly anatomical and scientific interests. After the lecture there were a few lobotomised questions, from people who mainly wanted to announce that they were there, rather than raise anything of interest. Afterwards, viewing the exhibits, a young woman with a magnifying glass who was examining a drawing very closely, collapses to the floor in front of me, she lands in a recovery position, she is breathing and her pulse is steady, after a few moments her eyes open, but she is not fully conscious and doesn't respond when spoken to. The gallery staff call an ambulance, and the audience, once the novelty of the situation wears off, resume their viewing. Paramedics arrive after five minutes or so and the woman is taken to hospital, it looks like a petit mal epilepsy, but could be something much more serious. I hope not. The drawings seem suddenly less important, in the light of this experience, but Da Vinci and renaissance Italy are endlessly fascinating. I collect the car from the multi storey car park, pick up my passengers and then drive back to Beverley through the Friday evening traffic, arriving back at Albert Terrace at five fifteen. Radio Humberside announces the results of the police commissioner election, John Prescott lost on second preferences to the conservative candidate. My guy came a narrow third. Norman is ready for his tea when I arrive home, he has a tin of dog food and then I walk him round the village, before the rain that is forecast to arrive by seven, comes down. Later I make Parma Ham and smoked cheese sandwiches, and have just finished these, when my Niece, Rachel, phones. She confirms that she has been made redundant and is considering taking the firm to a tribunal, as the process was opaque and almost certainly unfair. She has worked there for less than a year, so I advise against this, as she needs to focus on the future, rather than settle scores against past injustices. Even if she wins, the payout is likely to be minimal and the process likely to impinge significantly on her well being. I hope she listens to me, and remind her to send me her CV and her "linked in" profile. As soon as she rings off, Felicity phones, to thank me for the chauffeuring duties, and we chat and laugh for five minutes and agree to meet at the Poppy Seed in the morning. I try to play the "in our time podcast", but the BT broadband is too stretched, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. To bed at ten.