I mentioned last year (wow, is it a year already?!) that some friends and I meet up and camp in a field in the small Lancashire village of Pendleton every year, have a barbecue and hit the town of Clitheroe for a drunken night out. We always have a great time and I continue to be surprised how nice Clitheroe is for a night out. It’s the sort of place you see people from 18-75 having a drink in the same place and always has a nice atmosphere.

As you can see we actually had sunshine this time. Over the past couple of years it’s generally been cold, cloudy and inevitably rainy (i.e. a typical British Summer) so the sun was a pleasant surprise.

Last year we were blown away when we attended a karaoke night that seemed to be filled with very talented professional singers making our efforts look even more lame than usual. This year there was a beer festival in one of the pubs so we spent most of the evening there sampling the guest ales before moving along to a couple of other venues. Before I knew it we were getting taxis back to our field in the middle of nowhere and seeking out our tents. Time flies when you’re having fun!

We had a couple of guys with those fancy tents that you take out of the bag, put on the ground and as if by magic pop up and you have a tent ready to use. You don’t even need to put your drink out to do it. They look pretty cool and while I know my tent can handle anything a British Summer (or Winter) can throw at it, it’d be nice if it only took 5 seconds to assemble. However these pop tents do have a downside which I recorded a video of – they take an age to put back in the bag!

They got there in the end but I think I’ll stick with my tent for the time being!

Pain is something that’s very difficult to describe. Many years ago I got a filling and decided to have it done without anaesthetic. My thinking was that the pain of a dentist drilling into my teeth would remind me to brush my teeth so I wouldn’t need another one (plus it wasn’t a deep filling so I was assured it wouldn’t be too bad). It was, perhaps predictably, very painful. I remember realising at the time why torturers liked drilling holes in teeth as the pain was excruciating and there was no escape from it. But trying to describe that pain – what it felt like – to someone else proved particularly difficult. No amount of description could really do justice to the sound and sensation of the drilling and the electric shock-like shooting pains that you just couldn’t prepare yourself for.

And it’s exactly the same with the other end of the spectrum describing intense pleasure. Like, for example, eating an amazing meal.

This weekend to celebrate my birthday, my brother’s birthday and our anniversary, my good lady, brother and I went to Gordon Ramsay’s Maze Restaurant in Grosvenor Square, London (England) for dinner. We’d given my brother a voucher for Christmas to go for a meal there and he reported afterwards that the whole experience was superb and the food was sublime so it was time to find out for ourselves if that was the case.

The first thing to note is that while the restaurant may bear Gordon Ramsay’s name, the executive chef is Jason Atherton so really the menu is designed, selected and created by him. Anybody who follows the world of chefs knows that Jason (a Michelin star chef) is straight out of the top drawer, and the fact that he’s a Yorkshireman makes him even better since that’s where I live!

Anyway, the restaurant itself was beautifully decorated, a real quality look without feeling overly posh (i.e. I didn’t feel completely out of place!). The service was probably the best I’ve ever experienced. Having been a waiter myself during my student days I can appreciate a slick operation when I see it and at the Maze they were like a well oiled machine. You never even thought about topping up your glass as it was perpetually filled, the food seemed to appear and disappear, we never felt like we were being hurried out at the end and there was none of this spending 15 minutes trying to attract someone’s attention to pay the bill!

And so to the food. This is where it gets tricky to articulate. We all went for the set 7 course meal where you had a choice of a couple of options on 3 of the courses. Each course was small, beautifully presented (like pieces of art on a plate), the ingredients were all top quality and the flavours were out of this world! Each course seemed to complement the previous one and we kept marvelling at how ingredients were put together in unexpected ways to create a taste sensation. Heck, one of the courses had mini shepherd’s pie and I’ve never tasted one like that in my life!

We quickly lost count of how many courses we’d had and how many were left. It was like eating the most amazing tapas one dish at a time and soon enough we got to the dessert (which I really should have taken a picture of) and our culinary adventure was over. As is always the case with tapas-style food I felt I could have eaten more but when I stood up later I realised I’d actually had enough.

Overall the experience was fantastic. The ambiance, the service and the wine were all tip top. But the food was indescribably good. It wasn’t like eating a meal, it was more like being injected with a cocktail of pure class A drugs. No wait, that’s a terrible analogy! Let me try that again… It wasn’t like eating a meal, it was like… Eh… You see, it’s not easy to describe what it was like, nothing I could say would do it proper justice. Let’s just stick with a single word – divine. If you find yourself tempted to go to one of Ramsay’s restaurants but think “that’s a lot of money”, I can assure you it was worth every penny!

In the continuing saga of us growing our own veg we’ve hit a major milestone. While we’ve been eating more lettuce and other greenery than you can shake a stick at (we’ve had to give some to our neighbours such is the amount we’ve grown) we’ve been really looking forward to our ‘proper’ veg being ready. I’m thinking traditional stuff like carrots, beetroot, onions and of course potatoes.

We’d been growing potatoes in bags – the sort you add more soil to when the potato leaves have found their way to the surface, bury them and let them break through again and so on until the bag is full. We knew that you’re supposed to wait until they flower before harvesting but ours hadn’t and the first couple of bags we planted were starting to go yellow as if they’d been hit with blight. Turns out that in fact this also means they’re ready for picking so we tipped the first bag out to see what we got – and personally I’m pretty impressed!

To a farmer growing potatoes is as trivial as breathing in and out, but since I’d never done it before it felt like a real novelty. We went with anya potatoes which are small, thin and tasty. We planted two in each bag starting back in March and that was long enough to wait! Anyway, have a look at the photos below to see what we did and ended up with:

This plant growing is definitely a learning experience and there are lessons we’ll be applying next year such as thinning the carrots and beetroots out more, what to plant from seed and what to grow indoors first and many other things. It’s been fun so far and it just makes me want to buy a house with a huge garden so I can fit poly tunnels and grow grow grow! I think I’ll need that lottery win first though…

I moved down to Yorkshire from Scotland in June 1999 on a very sunny day. All I had was myself, a red Mk2 Golf GTi full of my worldly possessions, a new job as a software developer just outside the village of Skipton and an optimistic spirit. I didn’t know anybody in the area, didn’t really know the area itself and was looking forward to a bit of an adventure. Look at me – young, dumb and full of something or other:

I sit here 10 years later married to the first girl I met when I moved here (the lovely Rachael), our own 4 bedroom house, a lot of very good friends I’ll know for the rest of my life, have had more jobs than I can shake a stick at, many happy memories from travelling the world, a fondness of food that resulted from a decade of being exposed to quality curries and constant talk about pies (ok, that last part is a lie) and a feeling that while the last 10 years has flown by my time before was a lifetime ago.

The John Conners of 10 years ago had no dress sense, no appreciation of the finer things in life, awful dyed blonde hair, a tendency to offend people he met for the first time (his dry and brash sense of humour might work at the comedy club but left people in the real world not sure how to take him), had a fondness for outdoor pursuits and was confident to the point of arrogance (many would claim well past that point). He was rather self-centred and if I were you I wouldn’t have let him date your daughter – sooner or later they’d walk away mentally scarred for life (he wasn’t what you’d call a considerate lover)! But the one thing in his favour was that he had an enthusiasm and lust for life which many would have described as infectious. He made a point to live in the moment, to savour every second of life and try to make the most of it.

The John Conners 10 years later isn’t really all that different when it comes down to it. He’s more of a refined version of his earlier self. One who can actually take criticism, doesn’t offend people that he’s just met (as much), appreciates the finer things in life, is culturing a nice crop of grey hair (apparently it looks distinguished), shops pretty much exclusively for clothes in Fat Face, still loves the outdoors and goes hiking when he can (although doesn’t mountain bike enough), is still very confident but honestly he’s not arrogant (really!), and having read ‘Men are from Mars, women are from Venus‘ he realised the error of his ways and why his previous failed relationships were all his fault, so he’s not as bad a partner as he used to be (although his wife may disagree)!

But the lust for life is still there and if anything it’s stronger than before. Losing my mother to cancer reinforced my thoughts about how temporary life is and that you have to make the most of it and while it was a tough few years afterwards it made me a stronger person, not to mention making a connection with so many people. I’ve never taken life for granted and recognise that while I’ve had my fair share of bad luck, I’ve had a hell of a lot of good fortune along the way.

When I moved down from Scotland I didn’t really look very far ahead. If you’d told me then that 10 years later I’d still be living in the same village I’d have raised an eyebrow in surprise. I guess as a brash 24 year old I expected I’d be moving all over the world, exploring and adventuring. However while I’ve certainly done that on holidays the lesson I learned is that home is where your heart is, and for the past 10 years my heart has been in the green, often rainy pastures of Yorkshire.

And now to the next 10 years. But since I live in the moment there’s only right now. And now. And… You get the idea!

I’m very particular about coffee. I don’t drink instant coffee because it tastes terrible. I’ll drink Starbucks coffee when I don’t have a choice as the coffee is OK (in my experience about 1 in 3 cups I buy from Starbucks has had the coffee burnt by the barista). If I’m out for a meal at a pub or restaurant (even expensive ones) I’ll always turn down the offer of coffee after dessert as I know it’ll always be average at best. I have my own espresso machine, only buy quality coffee that’s ground in front of my eyes and keep the coffee in a plastic container in the fridge to maintain optimal freshness. As I say, I’m very particular about coffee.

I’ve gone to many a cafe over the years and my absolute favourite has to be Bean Loved in Skipton. It’s a family run cafe that is exactly how I imagine Starbucks was when it started (before it became hugely successful, global and consistently mediocre worldwide).

For me a good cafe requires either good food or good coffee. Bean Loved has both. They have a selection of paninis which (unlike Starbucks paninis) are varied in terms of ingredients and always delicious (the minted lamb one is my current favourite). I should probably write a separate article some time about my obsession with muffins and my pursuit of the perfect muffin, but let’s just say the the blueberry cheescake muffin Bean Loved sell is right up there (it combines the classic blueberry muffin format with cheesecake mix in liquid state – delicious)! And the coffee is excellent, and looks as good as it tastes:

What I particularly like is the attention to detail. If you order a take-away coffee they do this pretty swirly pattern on the top – even though it has a lid on it! I’ve never had a burnt cup yet and I can see as the coffee’s being prepared that every bit of care and attention is taken (since I have my own machine I know how to get the best out of it and they certainly do).

The cafe itself has ample seating, some sofas, some wooden chairs, nothing uniform – which I like. The staff are very friendly and helpful and I can feel the real enthusiasm that comes from people who actually care about what they do (something you don’t get in certain global corporations I could mention).

So if your find yourself in Skipton and fancy a coffee then take a wander along Otley street, just off the high street (next to the pedestrian crossing) and go visit Bean Loved:

You won’t be disappointed! Oh and before you ask: no, I am in no way affiliated with Bean Loved other than being a happy customer.

Relationships are hard. You’ve got to work at them to keep them fresh and alive and I have to admit, over the past few years I haven’t been keeping up my end of the bargain.

We’ve been together years now – in some ways it feels like days, in some it feels like decades. We got off to a great start – we were at it several times a week, there was always a smile on my face. I’d spend my days thinking about what we’d do together and my evenings and weekends doing it. The best part was the way we shared our passion with my friends, having them along and joining in made for even more fun – we’d all sit in the pub afterwards enthusiastically discussing what we’d just done and how we could go at it harder and faster next time. We went all over the country, exploring every nook and cranny together and it always felt so natural, so free, so perfect. We soared to such heights that I never thought the happy times could end.

But over the last couple of years we’ve barely spent any time together. I can’t remember the last time I got my leg over, can’t even remember what it feels like. I’ve said I’m too tired, I’m too busy, I’ve got a headache, the weather’s too miserable, my friends are away and it won’t be the same with just the two of us, it’s not you, it’s me – but they’ve just been excuses and deep down I feel I’ve let us both down. All through this you’ve composed yourself with dignity and never once complained. You’ve just sat there impassively with eternal patience, waiting for me to make the first move. For me to re-ignite the passion and fire. To pick up where we left off. To get all dirty and sweaty together just like we used to. To roll back the clock and the years.

Every time I look at you I feel pangs of guilt and regret. I know I’ve not treated you right and you deserve better than me. But we’re together for life and I’m going to make it right – you can’t just break the commitment we made. I promise this Summer will be a new era for us. The sun will be shining and we’ll be at it like we used to. I’m a bit older now so probably won’t be able to keep up the pace and frequency I did in my 20s but damnit I’ll do my best to bring back the magic! We’ll take risks together, feel the rush of adrenaline, we’ll meet others with the same obsession as us and it’ll be like this barren spell never happened. We’ll move on and it’ll be better than it ever was before. Like I said, you have to work at relationships and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I’m going to dust you down, clean you up, give you a good servicing, get my shorts on and take you for a ride. I’m going to treat you like you should be treated – and this time it’s going to last, I’m not going to quit on you.

And here she is, my beloved Marin Wolf Ridge mountain bike as shown by my lovely wife Rachael. I can’t believe I’ve left her gathering dust in the garage for so long (the bike, Rachael gets to live in the house). Roll on Summer!