TATTOO: Lewis Point (Daventry)

Cora at Lewis Point made a great job of Rose's Nightwish tattoo, and after a little detour to a guy in Northampton who failed to keep an appointment, she decided (with a little prompting from me) to go back and have her Vic refreshed. Cora made a pretty good job of it again too. 

MEAL OUT: The Lord Nelson (Oakham)

Another new place, and our first 'Oakham' meal out. Saturday night is very busy and as you can't book it's a case of grab a table if you can. Unfortunately our table was a bit on the cramped side, and the menu is a bit odd (no burger, no steak, no chips). I had a pie which was quite nice, but Rose was left with pizza as the only thing she really liked the look of. Downstairs in the week I imagine this would be a lot better, as it was it was cramped, noisy and hot... so not great. 

SHOPPING: Meadowhall (Sheffield)

My prime objective for this visit was to try on the TAG Heuer Carrera 01 again, having seen it in shop windows I had worried myself into thinking it was too big for my wrist and needed to assuage my fears. Fortunately I found it in Beaverbrooks and had a nice chat with a lovely lady who knew a fair bit about watches (makes a change!). 

I was tempted by her offer of 4 years interest free credit, but held my nerve and left with my finances intact. I will definitely be having this watch sooner or later though, it certainly isn't too big and it looks awesome on the wrist.

Down the way in Goldsmiths I also noticed a rather tasty Breitling Superocean M2000 with a black and blue strap. I think it was about £3200, which struck me as a decent kind of price for something that looked pretty cool.

Cool, but not cool enough to tempt me away from the Carrera 01 though, that's for damned sure!

Also in Meadowhall I managed to get some shorts in Next and Rose got a top in Fat Face, we had originally planned to go to Coal, but neither of us were hungry enough after having quite a substantial breakfast so after a few hours we decided to head home. We called in at Ikea on the way home and bought a storage box, inevitably we should have bought two. 

HOLIDAY: Doubletree by Hilton (Sheffield)

I believe the Sheffield Doubletree hasn't been a Hilton very long, so it may be that it is in the process of being 'upgraded'. The room we had was fine, but having stayed in other Doubletrees it's definitely not in the same league. The public areas however, are very nice. The bar and dining room were both very nicely presented, but the swimming pool is minute. You would be forgiven for thinking it was a toddlers pool, but sadly not, that is the pool.

Still I went for a swim and did about 120 lengths in 30mins, all the while negotiating a bunch of children, most of whom were fine it must be said. Alas there was one potentially 'special' little bastard who wanted to be in every part of the pool at once and seemed to think the most important thing was to smack his hands into the water and create splashes. Chiefly aimed at annoying me I shouldn't wonder. Oh and as if the pool wasn't small enough, a lane was roped off so that another little shit could learn to swim! FFS.

Searching for pictures for this I thought I had found a photo of a bigger pool, which I thought might explain the odd looks I got from one of the parents. But that turned out to be in the Sheffield Hilton, so it seems that the odd looks were not because I was swimming in the toddlers pool like some sort of aquatic paedophile, but, well I don't know then...

While I was swimming Rose went to the gym. We went back to the room for a bit and then had showers and headed to the bar (where we decided to eat). The bar was really nice and the staff friendly and efficient. We had a few drinks and then both ordered a chicken burger and fries.

The meal was quite nice, though the roll was slightly strange. As usual we forget to ask for no dressing on the salad, but I ate what I could. I have to say it wasn't as nice as the salad at lunchtime. We stayed in the bar for several hours and then finished off the night with a cocktail. Rose had a Tequila Sunrise and I had a Long Island Ice Tea, which was okay but very strong. In future I will steer clear of anything with Tequila in, I much prefer the fruity cocktails, but even Rose's fruity cocktail was somewhat overwhelmed by the Tequila.

When we got back to the room we took some hilarious photos...

I had planned to go for another swim the next morning, but woke up a bit too late to beat the crowds and so decided against it. We had a decent breakfast, with a substantial croissant, and then headed off to Meadowhall Shopping Centre for some retail therapy.

HOLIDAY: Eyam - The Plague Village

For a village, Eyam seems to sprawl rather a great deal. And so once we found a free car park (bizarrely next to the pay and display one, which was empty, obviously) we found ourselves right outside the museum. However, we could see that there was a queue of children long enough to strike fear into the hearts of any rational person, and so decided to walk down the hill into the village instead. It didn't take us long to find a second hand bookshop, where Rose bought two books (and overpaid for them), apparently the woman in charge hadn't got any change, which smacks of a) unprofessionalism and b) bullshit, but as it was a charity she was inclined to let it go.

Not having brought a bag we decided to take the books back to the car, and then decided to chance our arm in the museum. Well it wasn't so much tedious... it was more tedium infinitum. There were a few nuggets of information to be gleaned, and the odd chuckle raised at some of the suggestions of ways to ward off the plague (excessive lechery and consumption of alcohol being two) but mostly it was a very simple story, a story which could perhaps be told on one side of an A4 sheet of paper, being strung out with various contrivances.

Added to this there was a very annoying man, reading out every single information board to his children. I had visions of Rose venting her spleen at him and him apologising profusely, explaining that his wife was blind or something (truly an Inbetweeners moment in the making). But thankfully after a while he pissed off upstairs and left us in peace.

After the museum we set off in search of the famous 'courgette and lime cake serving' cake shop (which is NOT Eyam Tea Rooms, that's over the road). We went to order a sandwich from the menu only to be told we were looking at the wrong menu and the eat in menu was twice the price. To be fair, the eat in menu included a lovely salad and crisps and coleslaw and was all round pretty awesome as egg sandwiches go. 

We were pretty full after that, but felt as we had gone to so much trouble to find this cake shop, and as we were somewhat unlikely to pass this way again any time soon, we really ought to try a piece of cake. So we had a huge piece of carrot cake, which I thought was nice, but Rose thought was indifferent. It was definitely served too cold, and that didn't help. It was a 4/5 piece of cake as far as I was concerned but Rose rated it 2-3 (which was harsh in my opinion, but there you are).

Presented with a bill for two sandwiches and a bottle of coke (but no cake) we took our leave calmly, but swiftly, and returned to the car. On driving up out of the village we found the road blocked by a landslip (we suspected a ruse by the cake shop owner, eager to extract payment before we left) and had to drive an awful long way around about trying to find a different route to our hotel.

On the way in we had seen houses built right under cliffs that must have been 100ft high. Nets had been erected to catch small pieces of rock that fall, but in the case of a landslip these peoples' houses would be well and truly crushed to dust.

MEAL OUT: The Grey Goose (Gilmorton)

We had planned to go to the White Lion for Rose's birthday meal, but arrived to find it closed. At a bit of a loss as to where else to go we headed off to the Grey Goose. The food was delicious as always, but the choice was steak or steak for us really, which makes it a bit tedious to go there over and over. Too full for a pudding so we left it at that.

MEAL OUT: Brampton Holt (Northampton)

After a long morning visiting Car Shop to test drive a Hyundai i10, we stopped off at Brampton Holt before heading out to Daventry to call at the tattoo studio. Last time I came here it was with Rich and I had a very nice burger. This time was not so impressive. Rose made a good call having scampi, the chips were kind of okay but all heat and little flavour. My chicken burger was pretty unexciting I must say, at least it was cheap.

GIG: Overkill (Birmingham)

A new (and rather splendid) venue, just down the road from the Custard Factory (and a long walk from the Bullring - thankfully we parked in the street). We arrived to see Vader half way through their set (I'm guessing) and to be honest, they were pretty tedious. A one trick pony of a band who have made some decent albums but who do little to excite live. This was the first time we'd seen them since 2002, I remember them as being better to be honest.
Since my back was hurting (and because the place was teeming with tall people) we decided to avail ourselves of the rather excellent balcony. This offered us an excellent view of the stage, without us feeling too detached from the proceedings below. It was a fairly low balcony, only a little higher than the one at the 02 in Bristol. Almost more like a split level floor.
Well the set list was fine by me, consisting as it did of a huge chunk each from Feel the Fire and Horrorscope, with a few other tracks for a bit of variety. Notably only two tracks were from the last 25 years though, and while this didn't bother me as such this rather underlined the whole mixed emotions we are currently feeling towards the metal scene.
Blitz was chugging oxygen between verses (there was a paramedic backstage) and you really have to wonder if this wasn't the last time we'll see Overkill on these shores. In a way I admire the bloke, but on the other hand, I can't help thinking maybe he should think of his health.

SHOPPING: Bicester Village

Another trip to Bicester, and it's a sad day to report that Lulu Guinness has packed up shop. Still, Swarovski provided several much needed birthday presents for Rose and Ted Baker also supplied a skirt for the big event in a couple of weeks time. Elsewhere, we visited Kate Spade, Radley, Prada, and of course TAG Heuer.
I tried a couple of watches on in the TAG shop, a SLR and also a Nismo special edition. I was also very surprised to see an Aquagraph for sale. Which is pretty bizarre considering I bought mine two years ago and it was discontinued then!

MEAL OUT: The Red Lion (Stratton Audley)

For once, we had the stunning idea of checking out a place to eat before we went out for a morning shopping. And a jolly good job it was, because this place was off the beaten track and we would never have found it, but it was well worth the trouble and judging from the people piling in as we left a bit of a local hotspot.

After a hard morning bargain hunting at Biceter Village, this place was a welcome stop-off before the journey home. Trip Advisor scores it 5 stars, and while that's perhaps a little generous (it could be a little bit improved with a bit of decorating here and there) the food was excellent. I had a lovely scampi and chips and Rose had a huge beef-burger in a toasted ciabatta roll. Unfortunately we weren't able to manage a pudding, which is a shame because there was of plenty of options, and the portions would probably have been generous!