Home again, far from alone!

We have returned home after a few days spent in Denmark to attend DK's Christening.
We left home on Wednesday & visited cousin JR in Cambridgeshire.
We lunched at "The Cock" in Castle Camps, a lovely village pub, newly opened by a young, enthusiastic couple with great enthusiasm & good food.
We went back to JR's for tea , supper & an overnight stay, then off to Stansted on Thursday morning for an Easyjet flight to CPH.
Allowing for parking, transfers & checking in, we needed to arrive at the car park at 10.30am for a 1.15pm flight!
W met us at the airport whilst G was apoplectic, having just paid £12 at Starbucks for two coffees & a cookie. We went back & had dinner with the family at W & MK's before going home with T & B, who very kindly, put us up during our stay.
Five star accommodation, highly recommended.
We stayed until this morning & had a great time, talking, eating wonderful Danish meals, drinking, walking & visiting the family, some 15 kilometres away.
Many thanks to T & B for their wonderful hospitality.
We have had four days of almost incessant snow & sub-zero temperatures, making everywhere look wonderful.
Amazingly, life continued as normal despite this.

DK was Christened on Saturday afternoon, along with two baby girls.
Harry, who was at Imperial with W & is now a personal Trainer, was a Godfather, long with a friend of W & MK, whose name I cannot spell.
It was a nice service which included a hymn written especially for DK by a reverend friend of the family.
We went back to W &MK's, with a lot of family members & friends, for champagne & cake - a vital ingredient in any Danish celebration.

DK has grown a good deal & is a dear little soul with a very cheerful disposition; J is a bundle of fun & now speaks sentences in English.
We have lots of photos, I will post some later.

J, G & family came to see us when we got home, along with P, Jessie & Thomas.
G, Oscar & the twins are staying for a few days, they are all asleep at the moment - I hope that this lasts until well into tomorrow so that G has a good nights sleep.

Granville again.

Does anyone have any body armour that I can borrow for my next day on supply.
It only takes 2 or 3 bloody little monsters in a class to make the lesson tough.
Swad has some of the rudest, most unpleasant children that I have ever met.
Requests are met with "why?", at best, no response/ talk to neighbour to refusal followed by storming out of the room with a "F... you" on the way out.
I have perfected the art of taking none of this personally, secure in the knowledge that they are merely saddoes who know no better.
I have lowered my expectations & smile through, thinking of my bank balance.
The staff are really nice & very supportive.

Anyway,to real life, a cold wet day with snow still around.
A rumour that AR has been recalled from holiday in Spain to sort out a school in special measures.
The LEA obviously want to close it down.
Off to see JR tomorrow - I hope that the sun shines.

Is there anyone out there?
How about a comment?

A day at the chalkface.

I didn't sleep well last night. I think that this was due to a number of things:
G twitching, hand stretching & clenching on every fourth breath, for the first hour or so.
Dreaming - on a long journey, watching the scenery flash by.
Sleeping on the settee for at least an hour.

Anyway, the last thing that I wanted was a phone call at 7.33am from Granville School.
Icy roads in the village & a long queue to get onto the M42, but I arrived in the nick of time, had a good morning followed by a pretty difficult afternoon with 10 3 maths, hyped up by snowballing at lunch time.
I called in at M&S in Ventura Park on the way home to pick up odds & ends for Denmark as I am at Granville again tomorrow.
This is not the week that I had planned!

Yesterday we had a relaxing day, services at Shustoke & Over Whitacre in the morning then off to Hatton Locks to meet P, A & the children for a walk.
They are both very good walkers.
It was muddy rather than icy. Thomas took a few tumbles & was caked from the waist down, causing a lot of smiles from people going in the opposite direction.
A nice cup of tea at the cafe set us up for the journey home.
It snowed again on the way & into the evening.
G cooked stuffed mushrooms & salad for dinner (life's too short......)
We couldn't cope with "The Devil wears Prada", but stayed up to watch "Enigma", for the third time.
With hindsight, this was a mistake.

13 Oscar nomination?????

A partial thaw today - dry feet for a change.

The garden under snow.

A nice bright day - sorry W!

Two woodpeckers!

As volvo intended, apart from the grime.

Sunset tonight.

Yesterday was a Thomas & Jessie day as Jessie's school was closed due to the snow.
G came with me to finish some jobs, to the delight of J & T.
Jessie had her school lunch already packed so we had a picnic on the floor in the conservatory. T sat on G's knee & ate Grandad's fish chowder in preference to his carefully cut finger sandwich selection.
We managed an hour or so in the garden building a snowman & racing circuit for T's pedal car after lunch.
B&E did not require our babysitting services, due to the weather, so we went on to the cinema.
We had an Indian meal in Shimla Pinks, which was a little disappointing, & then saw "Benjamin Button"
I thought that the film was about as disappointing as the meal - unbelievable twaddle.
A clock made by Mr Cake, that ran backwards, followed by BB, born as a baby sized old man, who grows bigger & younger. Based on a short story by Scott Fitzgerald.
aj, she who knows everything, had read the short story years ago & knew it was twaddle.
I wish that I had asked her, apparently US films get Oscar nominations because they're American & take years to make.
Not a patch on "The Reader"
I haven't been asked to sit on the voting panel ....yet.

G & I knew that we had been to the pictures 5 times since Christmas, due to meals eaten, but could only remember 3 films.
After a whole day of hard thinking, we asked P what we had seen; we had forgotten the Bond film & the Daniel Craig film.
That says something about us & the films.

This morning we went for a walk up Moat House Lane to the Church in the sunshine, wet, muddy & slippery in places.
We came home, made soup & did some clearing in the study before I wrote a sermon for tomorrow whilst G had a bonfire of garden waste & papers.
We have since had lasagne & the remainder of a bottle of tempranillo, in front of a big fire in the lounge. There are some good things about cold weather.

It was very cold last night, -7 in Maxstoke, -6 degrees here.
Tonight promises to be the same.

More snow - up to 2 in!!!

Snow overnight bringing the level to about what it was on day 1 - a couple of inches.
Little traffic along Hollylands this morning, drivers getting straight on to the main road from the village, avoiding our slippery back roads.
Most schools were closed again.
I think that they should have cut their losses & closed them all for the week, to cut out the daily guesswork. Teachers always have plenty of work that they can do at home.

Today has been cold, dull & grey, unlike yesterday when it was bright & sunny all day with temperatures soaring to 9 degrees. This caused me to stay in & do research on t'internet.
I found that the benefits of becoming a senior citizen will be £90.70 a week pension, cheaper membership of English Heritage, reduced entrance fees to the cinema & theatre (I have already accessed this, to make G feel better. Sadly, no-one has questioned this), a local bus pass & half price train travel if I buy a £24 pass.
Wow!
This afternoon I took the dyson for a drive, met Maurice at church & we spent over 2 hours cleaning - polishing & vacuuming. My exercise for the day.
G has got on well with sorting out the study - 6 bin liners of paper rubbish so far, he has yet to unpack the big boxes.
We have had yellow fin sole for dinner & watched Piers Morgan in Monaco. I think that aj &I had a better time there, on the whole.
The news is getting a bit samey - photos of snow & skidding cars.
Thanks to the Bank of England for cutting interest rates to 1%.
I'm delighted that people can borrow more money at the expense of those on fixed incomes who rely on investments for an income.
Yes, the snow is a better option.

The lull before the storm.

Heavy snow is forecast for the Midlands & Wales tonight, so we should wake up to a white out tomorrow morning again.
There was a light covering of snow last night & Hollylands was like an ice rink today, other roads were fine.
G started to sort out his mountain of paperwork in the study this morning, in preparation for decorating. I took advantage of not being involved & went to the gym, via Knowle.
Two hours in the gym, 18 lengths of the pool & then some food shopping in M&S.
Apparently, they were very quiet on Monday & Tuesday, due to the 2cm of snow closing all major routes.
Thanks to this climatic abberation, there were a great many reductions; we have just eaten like Chinese aristocracy for a mere £5! (This was accompanied by a rather fine bottle of Sancere, by mistake - my favorite wine.)
We have relaxed by a big fire, having been unable to resist the second half bottle of wine.

We are watching "The Buddy Holly story", having seen it on stage a couple of times.
It is 50 years since he died, prematurely, in an air crash.
I,m sure that the music of our youth has never been equalled.
G is nodding rythmically & has a big satisfied grin.

Off to bed shortly, before we fall asleep (again)

Tomorrow we have to clean the church & possibly attend a cofee morning, if we can get out.

We had two spotted woodpeckers together in the trees behind the shed in the field this morning

Whoops, forgot to blog.

I really thought that I'd blogged yesterday. I composed it in my mind but obviously didn't get any further.
Shucks!
Anyway, yesterday, it snowed:

Jessie built a rather fine snowman whilst A looked on! (photo courtesy of P)

We had porridge for breakfast & then phoned the family to see how they were faring in the snow.
Guildford had snow half way up the car wheels. We only had a couple of inches - snowed in!

Even BMWs in Guildford were snowed in! (Photo courtesy of N)

((apparently this is N's Ford, so G tells me))


Our car wasn't exactly snowed in, but it did look clean!



The snow was still there at bed-time.

We put food & warm water out & then watched a variety of birds visit the drive for the seeds & the pyracantha berries -a spotted woodpecker, blackbirds, mistle thrush, robins, tits, sparrows, finches........


We then enjoyed a nice cosy day in. G sorted two bin liners of waste paperwork from the kitchen bureau & cupboards & filed the remainder (some to post to US)
I made soup, cleaned , polished, washed & ironed.
We settled down early in front of a big fire, ate pasta & fell asleep.
That doesn't sound a lot for a whole day. I've just remembered that we actually had a late breakfast in our dressing gowns, then I had a facepack & a long soak in the bath, while finishing my novel. (Wilbur Smith - "River Gods". A brilliant story set in Egypt in 2500BC)
This took until lunchtime.
We had lunch at tea-time.

Today the sun is shining, G is sorting out the study ready ready for decorating, I may have to go shopping for milk & firelighters.
It's a tough life.


This is my corner of the study.
This is my desk that was my Grandfather's, then my Father's. The opposite corner has G's Father's desk which is much more ornate.
This one has to go to make room for the lovely new bed settee & make the room more useful when we decorate.
It is beautiful solid oak, darkened with age.
Does anyone in the family want to give it a good home or shall we sell it?
(I really thought that G would move the junk before he took the photo!)

We are not getting rid of the dining room fireplace - we did have a fire in there the other day - the first time for a number of years. It got really warm! I note that the "Cornfield frog" even turned round to have a look.