Festive Update

So it’s back to slaving at work after a rather long escape from the office.

Christmas was spent in Kent, dinner cooked by BIL (which was actually pretty good), B kept out the kitchen generally. Mum found it all rather strange not having to cook dinner. We had a surprise guest, who’d (in his typical style) confirmed the day before (yep, that’s Christmas Eve); in the form of my sister flatmate from Canada (who now leaves ½ hr from them) who wasn’t going back to Canada for the festive season so at a loose end. For someone who just came over to teach maths for a couple of years (some now 3 years ago), I think he’s smitten with this country (probably due to the mild winters, his hometown is having an extremely warm winter at an average +1C daytime temp) as he’s now talking about getting residency. It was great to catch up with him, and I hadn’t seen him for ages and certainly made me enjoy my Christmas Day a lot more than I thought I would (bless, with his prairie boy ways that he insists on calling my mum & dad, Mr & Mrs B). LOL he was trying not to see mum’s cards at uno, despite her showing them every time she laid one down! Mum liked Uno (she’d not played before), however dad didn’t like it so much as she kept giving him +2 & +4 cards.

Then we had a bit of a burning session with an old diseased apple tree in the olds garden on boxing day, followed later on in the evening by the start of snow laying. By the time we got up on the morning of the 27th to head north for the Lakes we had between 3-4 inches … it was hard to leave it without enjoying it … so we did with the stuff still on the roof at South Mimms Service area with a bit of a snowball fight (strange as we were the only car with snow on the roof … easy to identify in the car park). We finally lost the last snow down the rear window around Northampton. The roads were bad with first snow then traffic all the way up to the Lakes (average speed 42mph over the whole trip .. that’s with lots of motorway!)

Lakes alas weren’t as good as wished for … as Dr T I did very little walking and lots of being ill … typical, travel all that way and don’t get to enjoy it. The 1 day both of us were well enough for a whole day walking … it was rubbish weather (so we hit Carlisle & its Castle). So overall we were a bit grockly. Mind you our walking alternative for one afternoon (I wanted a warm car to sit in) was to drive over the Kirkstone Pass to Windermere. There was a dusting of snowy frost on the hills, although the road was well gritted so no driving issues. The view from the pass was lovely (even if cold due to the height).

Fortunately the journey back was the complete opposite of going up … 5hrs 15mins Lakes to Soton Driving time (super quick) … ave speed of 65mph and lots of pretty clear roads. Bit of Granny visiting before finally making it to the flat for washing// unpacking/ food shopping etc. all yesterday afternoon.