A Weekend in Grimsby

Awoke at around 7 a.m. and made Sara a cup of tea. We were off to Grimsby today and needed to leave sometime between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. We had a breakfast of bacon and eggs/eggy bread and didn’t actually get away until a little after 11 a.m. Mary has lost her mobile phone and despite looking in all the usual places including Sara’s car – which Sara actually cleaned out – it was nowhere to be found. I hoisted the Welsh Red Dragon flag in anticipation of St. David’s Day tomorrow and it wasn’t until I was on the road that I realised that Saints were playing Cardiff this afternoon so I felt a bit disloyal. We went up to Grimsby by way of the A34/M40 where we stopped for lunch at Warwick. We resumed my normal route but instead of taking the A46 carried on towards Birmingham using the M42 up to Nottingham and then the M1/M18/M180 to Grimsby. We arrived at our hotel at Pyewipe around 4.30 p.m. and I was absolutely delighted to see the usual thick white smoke billowing out of the Huntsman Tioxide Factory (still thought of by me as the BTP or “Titan’s” factory). Although there had been redundancies and some closure, clearly the main plant was still functioning as it had since 1942. When I had returned Mum to Grimsby after her stay at Christmas with us in Wiltshire, the smoke was not pouring out – the first time ever as far as I knew. I thought the iconic chimney (and factory) was now redundant – a sign of the changing times for Grimsby. It was like an old friend seeing it working again. We watched Final Score on the TV and were delighted to learn that Southampton beat Cardiff 1-0 – a fantastic result and the second home win in a row too – and I’ve missed both! Perhaps I’m a jinx on the team and should stay away more often. Grimsby Town, by contrast, lost 2-0 at Rochdale and are now perilously close to becoming a non-league football club for the first time since 1892! We called in at Asda’s store on Ellis Way/Holles Street where Tom had his passport photo taken for the Group Passport for his forthcoming school and bought lottery tickets which proved to be unsuccessful later that evening. We arrived at Mum’s a little before 6 p.m. We had tea and hot cross buns and later Tom and I went into Cleethorpes (St. Peter’s Avenue) to buy excellent fish and chips from the Ocean Fish Bar, parking in the car park created by the demolition of the former Wesleyan Church which, as a child, I remember well with its sharp pointed tall spire in red brick. After our fish and chips we had birthday cake and Moet champagne which Mum said her and Dad had got from their M.V. Victoria cruise. We watched some TV and left about 9.40 p.m. quite tired. We went immediately to bed where I wrote up this blog.