Home Again

Back from Up North after a long drive with many slow downs, hold ups, and speed restrictions, it took nearly nine hours. Tiger and I whiled away the time with quizzes word games and listening to Beatles CDs,  joining in with the well known bits. Luckily we did not encounter any floods. There was some snow on Christmas day in Allendale, but otherwise it was wet, wet, wet.
Most of us stayed in the Bunkhouse and sister J and I slept in bottom bunks, but fortunately there was no one on top.   Twenty of us sat down to Christmas lunch which was delicious, all wonderfully cooked by granddaughter F and husband R. The baby does not like being put down, so his parents stirred and chopped whilst holding him under one arm (he did not like being held by willing aunts and uncles and grannies to take over baby pacifying).   The other three little Darlings aged nearly six, four and three behaved beautifully.   So we had a good range of ages from nine months to eighty five (me) and also Bradley Wiggins and grand daughter M`s cat.    It was a really good get together and I enjoyed it all.
I have become suddenly totally deaf in my left ear and not too good in the right either, so I have been hard put to it with lip reading and guessing what was said, often getting it completely wrong much to everyone`s hilarity.  I have made appointments at Drs and hearing aid place. Now I am home I can have the telly and radio on full blast which helps, but perhaps I am going to be like Beethoven and just have to get on with it. My cello playing has been dodgy for some time so maybe I will have to hang up my bow for good. 
Bradley Wiggins had a nice time being taken for rigorous walks over the moors with daughter J and others but he was glad to be home to his familiar walks and his cosy basket.   His namesake was on the radio being the guest editor on the Today programme and he pricked up his ears every time his name was mentioned..
I have been given a good pile of new reading matter and also a supply of bubble bath stuff to keep me going in the New Year. That is all I need really.

All Cut and Dried

The time of the Round Robin is at hand.  I have only received two so far: one from Australia,and also a very long one from Winchester, both extremely interesting.   I love them, especislly the non boasty sort. I feel I do not have to write one myself because of this blog which is a sort of ongoing round robin.

I feel sorry for the people in Cumbria, enduring more floods.   I keep remembering the night of the terrible flood when I was staying with sister J up in Wynlaton Mill near Newcastle a couple of years ago.There was the moment when the cats were both marooned in the corner of the sitting room as the muddy water rose higher and higher and then later when we both went upstairs with a candle and the gin and tonics and wondered what to do next. It was amazing then, as it is now, how everybody rallies round to help. I have just heard on the radio of a farmer who has retrieved all his cattle, one of which swam 20 miles and was found on a golf course

I  enjoyed the play, Capital, on BBC1 which was on over three Tuesdays. It was a treat to see a well acted, well written drama instead of cliched rubbish like Downton Abbey and grisly crime series. I read the book by John Lanchester which was also excellent. 

We are planning a trip up North on 23rd December to Allendale,where grand daughter F lives.  Some of us are staying in a Bunkhouse very near her house. I keep totting up the totals expected  and get a different number each time, but I remind myself that I don`t have to worry,the catering is not my responsibility,one of the advantages of old age. . As long as I do`not have to sleep in a top bunk it should all be lovely

Grandson M has just been for a visit and cut my hair,and Bradley Wiggins is going to College to the dog department to have a cut and blow dry tomorrow so we should both look well groomed for Christmas.