Sunday 22nd December 2013

Ho,

Ho,

and indeed,

Ho.



But let's not all get carried away with all the festive spirit, when much more importantly as it was the shortest days yesterday, the days from now are getting longer and that means that spring is on the way. Despite according to Google yesterday was the first day of winter. In celebration of the coming of spring, it is hammering down this morning and the wind blowing a hooly. So, it might take a while for the weather to feel spring-like.

If the weather lets up, I might head out to snap a railtour this afternoon. But if the rain continues to hammer down, then i won't.

Thursday/Friday The weight of responsibility is something that promotion brings. And having to produce certain items for the contractual obligation and getting that approved took most of the week and a race against time to meet the deadline. When it was all over it felt like I had run a marathon and was exhausted.



Saturday.

For some reason I woke up at two in the morning. I can confirm on the shortest day of the year, two in the morning is dark. Very dark indeed. I went to the kitchen, made a cuppa and looked online at the news and checked Flickr and the such. At four, after I tried to sleep, we decided to get up and hit the road. Christmas is the time when families get together, and so for me that means heading up the A12 to sunny Lowestoft.

At least leaving at half four in the morning means the roads will be fairly empty and the Dartford crossing is free until six in the morning. After loading the car, we set off, dodging the lorries heading from the early ferry up towards London.

As we headed into Essex we thought dawn would be just a few minutes away. And yet due to the low cloud and heavy drizzle, dawn only made itself known as there was a creeping ligtening of the sky. Once north of Ipswich, once the decent roads ran out and we trundled up what counts as a trunk road to Lowestoft, it did began to get light, and the countryside came into view.

But we pressed on, heading further north until we passed the sign, 'welcome to the sunshine coast'! So called as being the most easterly point, it is the first part of England to see dawn's first rays.

We headed to The Foxburrow for breakfast before we went to see Mum. As to why; well, Mum's house is not the cleanest these days, and as she does not have the stuff we like, its easier for us to go somewhere, have a healthy continental breakfast which sets us up for most of the day, and then we don't have to go through the charade of pretending we're not hungry.

After that, I drove us to Gunton St. Peter church, which I had never seen before. Although I lived in the town for 25 years, but churches are not high on the list of places your average teenager wants to visit. Even if his best friend lived a hundred yards from it, and I must have cycled along Gunton Church Lane hundreds of times but never saw the church.

Of course it was locked, but then it was still early. But it is a fine looking place, stone and flint built with a small round tower.

There was no putting it off any longer. Let's head to Mum's and find out how things are!

Mum got out of hospital on Wednesday, and is feeling slightly better. She has lost a lot of weight, and she is focusing on that rather than the cause which is a problem with her intestine caused by decades of lack of fibre. Although things were cordial, when we pointed out that we had looked into her problem, and related what she should do, she did the thing she always does when she does not want to hear and move on to the next subject:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Her mind is closed. Which is fine, its her life and she can choose what she does and does not. She will have to live the consequences of course. We let it lie.



We shared some cheese and crackers with her before we thought it time to move on. we drove into town to visit a friend of mine who has opened a Dr Who themed coffee shop-cum-comic shop. He was surprised to see us as we walked in the door, we had a cuppa and caught up before he had to head out to do businessman things like go to the bank.



It was time to head south, and so we went back to the car and pointed the bonnet south and pressed 'go'. We even saw some sunshine as we drove through Suffolk to Bury St Edmunds to join the A14 and then head further south to the motorway. In Cambridgeshire, the clouds gathered and the rain began. It was grim driving in spray and heavy traffic as we headed round the M25. There were warnings of congestion at the crossing, but at least the motorway was still open. At least we had the footy on the radio to us (me) company.

The queues were not that bad, and we were back in Kent soon enough and heading down the M20 towards Dover. The rain got heavier, so I eased off the speed and and headed for home. City drew 0-0 at Sunderland, which is OK I suppose.

The cats were waiting for us, which is always great. That night i made chorizo hash for dinner and washed it down with one of the bottles of fancy French Christmas beer I bought from our trip to Calais.