Yesterday I picked up my old mate Bert and we went out for lunch at "The Hardy Pick" which is a "Hungry Horse" chain pub. He hadn't drunk any beer since the last time I took him out.
Bert always orders fish, chips and peas because of his ill-fitting false teeth. It's a meal he can chew and swallow with confidence. It was nice to watch him clearing his plate and he drank three pints of "John Smith's" bitter brewed here in Yorkshire.
He is steadily approaching his eighty seventh birthday but he remains cheerful, upbeat and keenly interested in the state of British politics. He despises the Tories and what they stand for, saving much of his venom for Johnson and his legacy. We both wonder how this great nation could be hoodwinked by such a duplicitous blaggard.
Little Phoebe is currently sleeping upstairs. We have looked after her all day and it's the same tomorrow. Her mum is down in London effectively waving goodbye to the job she had for six years down there.
She joined a start-up company that serviced the recruitment industry with imaginative and effective software. It thrived and grew to a point where it was bought out for almost a hundred million pounds by an American company working in the same field. Fortunately, Frances took out a share option in her first year and has been handsomely rewarded. Joining them in the first place was equally fortuitous as so many start-ups fail. She was the fourth member of staff but at the end there were sixty people on the pay roll. Her job involved Human Relations - not the technical stuff.
It seems that there's a pattern when it comes to business takeovers. Very often the staff of the business taken over will be heavily pared down within months of the takeover happening.
Anyway, she's about to become redundant as she approaches the birth of her second child. On that front, everything is going well and it's the same down in London where Ian's girlfriend's pregnancy is proceeding nicely. The two grandbabies are due within four days each other towards the end of October. It's an exciting but slightly nerve-racking time for all of us.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/gRaWy7F