Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Back to normal service, more or less

The intention had been on New Year’s Day plus one, to collect Gwen at 1, after a leisurely morning and a bite of lunch, and then to go out for the afternoon. No plans for the morning.
Alas, I woke at 5:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. The Builder wouldn’t let me get up until it was properly light, so in the meantime I sat in bed, drank tea and played games on my iPhone. And the INSTANT it was light I was up, abluted, dressed and ready for action.

But what to do? We decided to go to Stockbridge, where I have never been, to have a poke about and a bit of an explore.

It was absolutely FREEZING outside. Freezing, I tell you. Anything wet was frozen. Anything green was now a crisp white. The sun was shining. It was truly and absolutely beautiful. But cold. We took our coats, hats and gloves with us!

Jenny took us along a very picturesque route to Stockbridge, which is a pretty village in the Test Valley in Hampshire. It was cold. Very cold! But we wrapped up warm and went for a stroll, poked about in the shops, found one which was selling toast and marmalade pottery at reduced prices, so had to buy a serving bowl, admired the river Test and all the mill leats and streams and generally admired the place. Got back in the car – and my lips were so cold that when the heating kicked in - they split ;-(

We drove back to the Hobbit House by a different route – and found ourselves coming through a part of West Dean which we had not previously properly noticed. We also discovered that the village bridge was much prettier than it appeared when you were merely passing over it!!

After lunch we made our way back to Gwen’s place. The traffic in Salisbury was once again at a standstill, so we bundled her into the car and made our way to the New Forest via Downton, where the traffic was much more sedate. We had a lovely drive around, over as much of it as we could manage, and stopped in Burley for afternoon tea. We were held up on our way out of Burley by a cow with two calves meandering along in the middle of the road, seemingly oblivious to the queue of traffic that was forming behind them (I say “seemingly” because I am fairly sure they knew exactly what was happening behind them and were secretly laughing at their amusing little jape!!!)

We dropped Gwen back at home, briefly visited the Hobbit House, and then made our way to Winchester, where we were meeting Jeanette, Matthew, Rebecca, Evie, Ian and Sophie for dinner in a pub near where Ian used to live. It was a good evening and nice to see everyone again.

And then suddenly it was Sunday, and time to go home. We left just before 10 and had a really good trip back. The roads were nowhere near as busy as we had feared. And we discovered that Waitrose is making incursions into the motorway services business – we called into a services which had a small Waitrose supermarket tucked in a corner and managed to get bread, milk and a chicken for whatever you call a meal that you have at around 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon!

As we headed into Derbyshire, we noticed that the pavements, fields, roofs, trees were covered in a light dusting of snow. As we got closer to Tupton, the cover of snow got deeper. Tupton itself had a decent covering. Made unloading the car a bit of a challenge!

Marlo was quite pleased to see us back!

And now I am back at work. That two weeks off went by mighty fast!! It helped a bit that I am on an evening duty today. I couldn’t work out how to get a parking permit for today, so decided to come in just for the desk shift. So it will be tomorrow when the Great Alarm Shock occurs for me!! In the meantime, we had quite a pleasant morning and early afternoon just sort of pottering about. But normal service is now, more or less, restored and that long, long run of Sundays has finally come to an end . No more holidays for me until April. Although the April holiday will certainly be noteworthy, given that we are off to Oz for three weeks.

Got on to the scales this morning. Was quite shocked by their report. Grabbed the tape measure. Was very shocked by its report. No point even trying to get into the wedding trousers! Made the Builder weigh and measure. Was even more shocked by his results. Shouldn't think his wedding trousers would fit either. Have put us both very firmly on the wagon to see if a few weeks of abstinence will have any effect. If not, we may need to bring Lent forward!

I did, in the end, work out how to get that Belling to work. Belatedly, and rather too late for the large hob to be of any use. But I’ll know for the next time I run across one. Didn’t ever get any life from the grill, though.

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