Scarf-face

Leigh very kindly drove me up to my parents' house in Staffordshire where I'd okayed the idea of dumping some possessions that I won't need whilst in Mozambique but that I shouldn't leave in my flat in Cambridge as it will hopefully cover its costs through a series of lets. I'm not sure the mother realised the stuff in question was largely going to be what I moved out in 2008 when I went to Cambridge. Boxes of LEGO, photos of travels and other sentimental crud. There's no way I can part with this for at least a few decades. The LEGO will become a collector's item so the space it's now occupying in the loft is well justified.

After working up a sweat in the loft on a bizarrely balmy October day, we had lunch at a pub called the Sheet Anchor where I worked from 1999-2003. It's morphed from a grim chain pub where we used to dump microwaved food down on trays and have eardrums pierced when supervising at the adjoining soft play barn, to a much more upmarket gastropub specialising in grilled meat. The entire place has been remodelled and is unrecognisable except for the location of the toilets. There is no trace of the conservatory area where I once found fresh baby poo on a highchair after a family had left. Even the bin yard where I hosed it down from five metres away has been repositioned. We had some of the greatest laughs working here back in the day, especially in the summers when part-time pub jobs and the social life around them are pretty dominant.

After the meal, we had a few photos as I won't be back here for a while, and my sister insisted on covering half her face with her scarf as she thinks she has a pointy Jimmy Hill chin. She doesn't, but at least the result is that she's channelling a Scandi winter vibe.

Leigh is a good driving buddy as not only does she stock the vehicle with Mentos and Fruit Pastilles, she appreciates a power ballads playlist. Some excellent car singing took place to Bon Jovi, Heart, Foreigner and others of that ilk, especially enjoyable on the monotonous A14.