PRIOR to a few days ago, the last wedding I went to was my own.
But then last week I went to two weddings in three days.
My former Yorkshire Post colleague Graeme Bandeira, a talented and award-winning cartoonist and artist, married his partner Karen at the Yorkshire Hotel in Harrogate.
It was great to meet up with old colleagues from the newspaper and we reminisced about the stories and characters that made it one of the highlights of my working life.
In fact this waltz down memory lane made me so enthusiastic that I even suggested that we rekindle the weekly five-a-side football matches we used to play when we were at the Yorkshire Post.
My spirit is strong, whether my knees can cope is another matter.
The other wedding I attended last week was at The Mansion in Roundhay Park in North Leeds.
My old school friend Ged Futter – we went to the same village school and were in the Cubs and Scouts together – married fiancé Vicky.
Ged has spent his career in the retail sector and was a buyer at Asda before launching his venture The Retail Mind which offers training and consultancy to supermarket suppliers.
He also regularly appears on radio and television and in the Press providing expert analysis on the retail industry.
It was great to see Ged’s parents and brother and sisters again after so long and I saw another familiar face in Nick Agarwal, the former head of public relations at Asda who went off to Bentonville, Arkanasas to be global head of communications for Asda’s former owner Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer.
Nick now runs his own PR company with a who’s who of retail clients.
It is good to see there is life after Asda – and the Yorkshire Post for that matter.
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I ALWAYS knew my luck would change.
I recently had a close encounter with an Australian beach volleyball player.
Tall, lithe and tanned with extraordinary athleticism.
That’s the beach volleyballer, not me.
I still need a little bit more luck because this Australian sports star was male, not female.
Sitting at a cafe waiting for a ferry on the dock of the harbour in the Greek island of Naxos, I saw a very tall man and his wife on the nearby beach watching their two daughters paddling in the sea.
Suddenly he started to leap into the air and I noticed he was wearing shorts and a vest with “AUS 2 MCHUGH” on the back.
A quick Google informed me that this was Chris McHugh, a 6ft 6in Australian beach volleyball international.
He and his teammate Damien Schumann won the gold medal at both the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast and the last games in 2022 in Birmingham.
They didn’t manage to win a medal in the last Olympic Games in Tokyo but McHugh has been Asian Beach Volleyball champion five times and is a seven times Australian champion as well as winning a host of other honours in the sport while representing his country at 118 international tournaments.
Well known in volleyball for his “monster jump serve” he didn’t make it to the current Olympic Games in Paris but is now involved in helping to inspire and get children moving through his involvement as a school presenter in the Australian Olympic Committee’s Olympics Unleashed programme.
I noted that he is also a motivational speaker who uses the many challenges he has faced during his career, including 13 operations including hand saving surgery at the age of 20 from blood clots whilst trying to qualify for the Olympic Games.
Perhaps here is a speaker I can use at a future event?
The only other Australian athlete I know is former Yorkshire Bank and National Australia Bank executive Glenn King.
A noted sportsman, Glenn, who returned to his homeland from Yorkshire some years ago, is now spending some time back in Leeds.
Glenn is chief executive of PEXA Group a property technology company which is revolutionising the way that residential home transactions happen.
Having pioneered digital property settlement in Australia where 20,000 transactions a week are completed using PEXA’s platform, the group has expanded overseas and made a number of acquisitions in the UK.
And that means a return to Yorkshire on a regular basis by Glenn who has huge respect and is well liked from his successful time with Yorkshire Bank.
MEMORIES of La Grillade in last week’s blog got me thinking about which current restaurants I enjoy visiting in Leeds.
I’ve had a few hit and miss experiences recently but the one consistent and excellent dining experience I have had is at No 14 North Lane Restaurant and Bar in Headingley.
Run by Shaun Davies, who was previously at The Foundry Wine Bar with Phil Richardson, the restaurant is based in an old stone cottage which used to be the well known Bretts fish and chip restaurant.
We took my Mum for dinner on Wednesday evening and dined outside in the restaurant’s lovely front garden enjoying the glorious evening sunshine and wonderful food created by chef Wayne Brimicombe.
There is always a bit of football talk when I see Leeds-supporting Shaun and he told me he’d been visiting friends in Derby this week.
“We went to a pub called the Joiners Arms in a village called Quarndon,” he told me.
Small world.
That’s the pub in the village where I grew up.
Well at least it meant that Shaun didn’t ask me too many questions about Derby County’s recent pre-season losses to lower league opposition.
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IT was my birthday this week and I was determined not to let my advancing years put a cloud over the celebration.
However the presents I received perhaps did.
I got a dressing gown and a vinyl record player.
At least my Mum came up trumps.
I complained last year that when she went on a charabanc trip to Beverley Minster she bought me a gift of a pair of socks bearing the slogan: “Relaxed, inspired, feet up, retired.”
I hoped that perhaps she might buy me a gift for my birthday that would be more “age appropriate”.
And she did.
She gave me a ‘Horrible Histories’ children’s book.
I’ve gone from retirement to childhood in a year.
I feel like Benjamin Button.