Last night, I thought I would install the new flat-ribbon aerial I had just purchased from our local radio and television shop. This apparently simple job has its complexities as it involves putting the arms of the ‘T’ in the top corner of the room. I tried a variety of methods first involving drawing pins and then masking tape until I achieved the results I wanted. But the end result was no better and in some ways worse than the very simple and inconspicuous aerial wire I had purloined from another system. So I pulled the wholly erected edifice down and surmised that I was better off using a simple wire aerial that worked rather than a more complex and extensive aerial that did not. As a sort of compensation, I seem to get almost perfect fidelity on ‘ClassicFM’ to which I listen the most with the minimum of FM hiss (but reception not quite as good on Radio 3 and Radio 4) So after all my exertions of last night that came to naught not to mention the rest of the day’s activities, I was somewhat tired this morning and could easily have spent a bit more time in bed but as our domestic help was to arrive quite shortly, I leapt out of bed and got myself showered. When she arrived, we thanked her profusely because, in or absence last Wednesday whilst we were up in Yorkshire, she had put out some Christmas decorations for us and finished dressing the silver Christmas tree. Meg spent a bit more time in bed so after we had breakfasted we popped down into town, picked up our newspaper, made a lightning visit into Waitrose and then decided to go to the park for a quick walk around the lake before we returned home for lunch.

This afternoon was a quiet afternoon in which I busied myself writing the Christmas cards for local friends and neighbours. I then realised late on in the afternoon that I had to put the bins out and took the opportunity to hand deliver the Christmas cards to our immediate neighbours. Later on tonight, I need to do a little bit of labelling up of supplies of damson gin and vodka which will be distributed as little Christmas presents during the morning. Tomorrow, I need to get up fairly early and get myself outside the supermarket the minute it opens for a weekly shop necessarily enhanced by all of the extra Christmas shopping that needs to be done. Today is the date on which we experience the winter solstice which is when the earth’s tilt away from the sun is at its maxium and hence the year’s longest night and shortest day.I console myself that once Christmas is well and truly over, it starts to get lighter by about a minute or so a day. I was always fascinated by the way in which our very earliest ancestors managed to compute when the winter solstice was experienced so that the mid-winter festival and feasting activities could begin. Incidentally, I seem to remember that at some point in the 1950’s there was a concern about the increasing commercialisation of this festive period and a campaign slogan, used across the front of the mail that we received, was an imprecation to ‘Put Christ back into Christmas’ Whilst this sentiment is understandable, it is undoubtedly the case that early Chrisianity somehow commandeered Christmas and the Christmas story was superimposed upon earlier festivities. Christmas owes its roots to the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia, which was a pagan festival which was celebrated from December 17-25 each year. This custom was altered and absorbed into Christmas, and this allowed early Christians to gradually erase these old pagan holidays. Whilst the tradition of Christmas trees owes much to the Victorians and particularly to Prince Albert, there has always been a much older tradition of bringing green branches into houses and decorating them. I did know but had forgotten that in the Middle Ages, Advent like Lent was a period of fasting and self-restraint, all of which came to a glorious end on Christmas Eve and midnight mass. As we were coming home from the park at lunchtime, we passed some of our Irish friends who had their grandchildren with them, taking them for a walk. I asked the grandson who is aged about six if he knew how many ‘sleeps’ he had to count before Christmas day itsef and the answer of ‘four’ sprang immediately from his lips. I engaged in that adult thing of sustaining and reinforcing the Christmas myth by asking whether he and his parents had a ready supply of carrots ready to feed to Santa’s reindeers. I also pointed out that Santa appreciated a good big class of sherry to be left out with the carrots and the grandfather almost gave the game away by observing that if Santa did not appreciate a glassfull of sherry, then the adults in the household most certainly would. I reminded my fellow Pilates class members that when I was very young, I used to shout up the chimney to indicate my desires for Christmas presents but what to do if one lives in a house without a chimney, I am at a loss to say.

Today has been a full day but we have managed to pack a fair bit into it. The most important thing is that we had an appointment with the optician fairly early this morning and this appointment went well, with no significant changes to report. Fortunately for us, the optician knows us very well and has been testing the eyes of both Meg and myself for at least 10 years now, so it is excellent to have that continuity of care over the years. He was able to provide some words of reassurance and so will see us again in about one year’s time. After this appointment was concluded, we popped into one of the charity shops in order to augment our supply of Christmas cards – I thought that we had boxes a-plenty but I needed an extra supply not least to give to my Pilates fellow class members when I see them later on in the day. One of the boxes of cards was of quite a stunning design and I wish I had seen them before but it is always possible to be wise after the event. Then we paid a visit to our local television and radio dealers to see what they had to offer the way of FM antennas for my newly installed system. Late last night, I borrowed the very simple wire aerial from one of legacy sysems and put it onto the newly installed Panasonic and was amazed at the quality of the FM transmissions that even this simple wire aerial managed to produce. Considerably heartened by this, I was happy to purchase another copy of what is technically called a flat-ribbon FM aerial for my new system. At the moment, I have it draped over a radiator to give it a degree of warmth to remove any residual kinks in the system before I install it later on this evening. Then I received a call on my mobile from our University of Birmingham friend who was happy to meet us for a coffee in the Waitrose coffee bar as his usual ‘Men in Sheds’ (participation in running repairs to whatever people put in front of them) had packed up their toolbags as this is the week before Christmas. Whilst in Waitrose, we met with two more of our pre-pandemic friends and we exchanged Christmas cards and Christmas greetings with each other before promising each other that we meet again next Tuesday (the day after Boxing Day) and we just might manage to squeeze in another visit there this Friday as well. Whilst I was in Waitrose, I noticed a bottle of Prosecco that was being made available in the middle of all the other Christmas stock. As I know all of the members of staff so well, one of them kindly wrapped the bottle for me in a combination of red and white paper which was folded around the bottle and decorated with a huge bow – it really did make the whole into a very attractive gift. This is intended for our new neighbours who just moved into the bungalow just across our communal green area and we will pay a visit to them later on today.

When we got home, there was a bit of a race around to get things ready for my Pilates class. Fortunately, I had already labelled up and wrapped in Christmas paper all of the damson gin bottles to be distributed later. Then it was a case of writing Christmas cards for all of my fellow class members and then I pulled on some of my Santa Claus kit which I wore underneath my track suit bottoms. The journey down into town is a bit burdensome on this occasion because I have a rucksack with some Pilates gear in it, a Pilates mat, a bottle bag with seven bottles of damson gin inside and then a Santa Claus hessian bag with all my other Santa Claus gear inside. The routine is well established over the years. We always have about 5 minutes of ‘relaxation’ in the session before Christmas and I take the opportunity to creep out, change into the rest of my Santa Claus gear and then come back into the studio as the relaxation session ends to play Fr.Christmas, distributing my cards and gin to my fellow class members, my tutor and the two administrative staff as well. Then, of course, there is a frantic change back into more-or-less normal gear before it is time to walk home and cook a belated lunch (traditionally fish cakes on a Tuesday)

After lunch and a rest, we went round to introduce ourselves to our new neighbours who, as it happened, were just turning up in the family car as we wandered across the green to see them. We took with us not only the bottle of wine but a business and a Christmas card. As it was cold and dark by this time, we had just enough time to exchange names, make brief introductions and then make a promise to have a proper Christmas-time mince pies and sherry session (traditional with neighbours in any case) where we can get to know each other a little better and I can fill them in on any of the practical arrangements of our communal living arrangements. Then we knocked on the door of our next door neighbours where we exchanged news and were invited in for a very welcome glass of sherry.

This has been a chewey type of day if you know what I mean – some things have gone right and some things have not. First thing this morning I had to do some work for the bank with whom we are in contact as they needed one extra page of a document. Actually, the extra page was not needed at all as it only contained general information which was not germane to the rest of the document but nonetheless I had to hunt it out, make a new PDF and sent it onwards and upwards. After Meg and I had breakfasted, we made our way into town where I picked up the daily newspaper and then we paid a visit to our local TV and radio shop in town, only to find it closed. It looks as though they close on Mondays as a rule but I thought that on the week before Christmas they might open to catch up on some of the Christmas trade but not so. The reason for my visit was to pick up another aerial similar to the last one that they supplied to me. I have espied on the web a system exactly identical (or so I thought) to the beautiful little Panasonic music system I had so successfully installed in our kitchen. As this has given so much pleasure and the sound quality so superb, I thought I would duplicate the system and upgrade some of my other audio, particularly as one of my Pure DAB radios has turned belly up after about 10-12 years. With the assistance of my son we got loudspeakers successfully wired up. So far, so good but then things started to go a little pear-shaped. I couldn’t tune in the radio part of the system without the relevant aerial and I can’t get hold of this until tomorrow. But on examining the system, I found the supplier had made a mistake and sent me the version of the music system without the DAB radio. I needed to look carefully at what the ebay details had specified and what I ought to have received and then sent a message to the seller. In view of the parts of the system that worked perfectly, I decided not to return the system, even though it was not as decribed but to ask for a rebate as the system received was not as described. Then I received an ‘out-of-office’ reply to my email, indicating that the earliest I could get any kind of resolution to my problem might be Wednesday at the earliest. Hence, one of those frustrating type of days. Later on this afternon, after lunch and a desultory viewing of ‘Young Victoria’ I labelled up and then wrapped up some bottles of damson gin. This is because tomorrow, I have to play my Father Christmas routine at my weekly Pilates session. This tradition is about five years old by now and it involved a surreptitious change into a Father Christmas outfit followed by a distribution of supples of damson gin and Christmas cards.

Tomorrow might turn out to be quite a busy day. Meg has a trip booked at the opticians earlier in the day and then I have course I need to try and acquire an aerial and get my Pilates session done and dusted. We noticed this afternoon that one or two large removal vans had turned up outside the bungalow that faces us across the communal green area so it looks as though the house that has been on the market for about nine months now has been well and truly sold. Later on tomorrow, once the new neighbours have had a chance to turn themselves around, I am going to pop over and make some introductions. When I have a few moments spare, I must turn my hand to writing the ‘local’ Christmas cards but this job should not prove to be too onerous.

Today’s big political story is the Government’s victory in the High Court, which ruled that the Government’s Rwanda policy was legal. The Government expressed extreme satisfaction on hearing this result which resulted from the last minute halting of the very first flight to Rwanda with eight deportees aboard. But it is one of those judgements in which both sides can claim a measure of victory. The campaigners against the Rwanda policy can only have been pleased that the High Court ruled that the individual cases of the eight deportees had not been fully considered by the Home Secretary and ruled that a further reconsideration should take place. No doubt this will go to the Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Courst and will no doubt run and run. Although Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, has claimed that the High Court completely vindicates the government’s policy, the actual deportation of individuals to Rwanda may be weeks or even months away. Finally, the Government has started legal proceedings against the firm allegedly linked to Baroness Michelle Mone at centre of PPE supply row and it appears probably that this particular Tory peer has now been hung out to dry. Again, this might be a case where the government appears to talk tough but resolution of the problem may be weeks or months away.

Last night, after we got back to our hotel, I realised that I had left a couple of crucial carrier bags round at my niece’s house so an urgent text message was quickly despatched. As she was out on the road giving her own daughter a lift to a baby-sitting session, I felt slightly less bad about her offer to bring them both round to the hotel so that we could have yet another goodbye. As her birthday and that of our son is in March, I am thinking of some plans so that we can meet for a meal in a place which is mutually accessible to both of us. I did a certain amount of packing last night by emptying the wardrobe, leaving the rest to be finished off this morning. We both had a reasonable night’s sleep, aided I think a little by the fact that I tune in the TV to ClassicFM and have it playing very softly all through the night. So we had our customary cooked breakfast – the last in a while – and then had some chats with some of the regular restaurant staff before we completed our packing and set off for home just before 9.30. We had our customary coffee break at the service station which is almost exactly at the half way point. We got home to a rather cold house but soon got ourselves more or less unpacked, the washing put in the washing machine and a bowl of soup consumed before we settled down to watch the World Cup between France and Argentina.

Before the game started, I thought I was reasonably well disposed towards the French team. As the first half progressed, though, my sympathies started to evaporate as the Argentinians played much the better football and the French team looked as though they had hardly turned up. By half time, the score was 2-0 to the Argentinians and we thought that the French would never score three goals in the second half to win the match. But 10 minutes before the end, the French striket Mbappe scored a goal and then added a second some 90 seconds later. So the game went to extra time and the scores were still level at the end of the first period of extra time. But half way through the second period of extra time, the Argentinians score a third and we all thought that was it – but towards the very end, Mbappe scored again for the French and so the score at the end of extra time was 3-3. So the match proceeded to penalties – then one of the French penalties was saved and another was missed whereas the Argentinians scored with every one of theirs. So Lionel Messi was extremely influential in scoring one of the Argentinian goals and being actively involved in the other two so at the end of a really exciting match, I was pretty pleased that the World Cup went the way of Argentina. Some of the commentators are billing this afternoon’s game as one of the ‘best’ foootball finals of all time which I suspect is a bit of an exaggeration but the final stages were certainly gripping.

Now we have one week before Christmas proper and I can start to pay some attention to what needs to be done before Christmas day itself next Sunday. For a start, I need to do the ‘hand-delivered’ Christmas cards to neighbours and friends but this ought to be relatively straightforward. On Tuesday, I need to take Meg for an optician’s appointment and also have to play Fr. Christmas which is an annual tradition for my Pilates class members. I have the supplies of damson gin/vodka bottled and all it needs is labelling and wrapping up in Christmas paper which is a job I will do tomorrow. At some stage, with having been away for several days, I will to get some food shopping done and we also tend to have a family meal some time just before the end of the week.

The weather conditions at the moment are a little bit contrary. After about a fortnight of freezing weather conditions as a result of cold air being drawn across the country from the Artic, there is forecast to be a rapid change of temperature as warmer air sweeps up the country originating from the Atlantic. But this might bring a very rapid thaw so it may be that road conditions become particularly treacherous with a lot of melting ice everywhere. Certainly, when we stoppped for our coffee break, the weather outside the service station seemed so much colder and icier than we had experienced on Harrogate which surprised us somewhat. Meanwhile, conditions on the industrial front seem to be equally glacial.There is a complete standoff between the government and various groups of workers, not least ambulance workers, border and control staff and the nurses who were on strike last week and will probably strike again next week. The government are, I think, seriously concerned about the action to be taken by ambulance workers and the army are being drafted in as well as hospital wards being emptied as rapidly as possible to try to avoid the impending chaos.

Last night, in our hotel room, Meg and I were watching the last of the Hannah Fry (= well known mathematician) series on the science that lay behind every day objects. Last night, she was exploring the history and science of the running shoe. Naturally, they started off with the utilisation of rubber and the development of rubber technology with vulcanisation. All of a sudden, up popped on the television one of my former colleagues from the University of Winchester who I will call ‘Tim’ and whose forebears had been some of the founding fathers of rubber technology. This was all absolute news to me because when ‘Tim’ pops up onto our TV screens, it is nearly always something to do with the history/archaeology of Hampton Court Palace in which is a national (or even international) expert. But here he is talking about rubber technology and there was no mistaking his voice though his countenance has changed slightly after he survived a near fatal illness a few years ago. So you never know what surprises the TV is going to reveal. This morning, we wanted to have a very gentle morning as Meg was starting to feel the strain somewhat. So we had a hearty breakfast to set us up for the day and then wandered slowly into town to our favourite Italian eating house where we made the journey up the steep stairs if only because the upper storey is so indivualistic and comfortable. There was only other couple upstairs so Meg and I ‘bagged’ the beautiful old leather settee and comfortable armchairs before settling down to enjoy our coffee and pastries (which they warm for us, by the way). I mentioned the comfortable seats because on leaving, we offered the couple on the next table to chance to enjoy our newly vacated comfortable spot and got into conversation with them – it is that time of year when people are feeling a little more relaxed and inclined to chat. It transpired that the wife came from Manchester and actually knew the two districts of Manchester in which we had lived and in the second of which, we bought a terrace house overlooking Platt Fields park. She informed us that she had worked in Owens Park which was a large residential tower block used primarily by Manchester University and the street where we lived (which she knew) was in a little block of streets of terrace housing on the other side of Wilmslow Road and facing the park. We exchanged reminiscencies about we how much we had paid for our first house (£1,995 in our case, but only a few hundreds in the case of the lady to whom we were talking)

As we left the coffee shop we espied a really convenient ATM from which we could replenish our dwindling supplies of cash and then could not resist a tour around the very large Red Cross charity shop which was nearby. We located a dress of the appropriate type but with a flowered design and ex-Edinburgh Woollen Mills which was reduced to 50% of what was actually a pretty cheap price. So we availed herself of that and Meg now has one more thing added to her wardrobe. We knew that for lunch, all we wanted was a simple bowl of soup and we intended to go into one of the little coffee shops that serve light lunches near to the hotel. But as we passed one of the large Anglican churches in the centre of Harrogate, they were advertising soup and sandwiches so we decided to partake of this whilst sitting in a area in front of the pews and below the altar – rather a strange experience. The meal was so cheap that we could make a donation to the church becaue they distribute free food to those who need it in the late afternoon so we could feed ourselves and others at the same time. Then we went back to the hotel and had a rest and a cup of tea before we set off for a family gathering at my niece’s house in the afternoon.

We had a wonderful afternoon at my niece’s. Relatives came from both my niece’s and my husbands branches of the family and we had a table groaning with Christmas food. We took the opportunity to catch up on news with lots of family members, who treated Meg very kindly and we were both made welcome. We all dispersed some time after 5.00 and Meg and I made our way back to the hotel to have a quiet evening of packing up and relaxation before we start the journey back tomorrow. I always find packing to go home so much easier than packing to go away because one’s choices are effectively very simple – everything in the room (wardrobe and cupboards) has got to find its way into the suitcase or similar. Although we missed the football this afternoon, we should be at home in time for the World Cup Final tomorrow afternoon if there are no holdups on the journey. The weather forecast is pretty nasty for first thing but there ought to be a massive improvement throughout the day.

Meg and I had a pretty comfortable night last night. What absolutely ‘saved our bacon’ was that we espied in a little space next to the wardrobe in our hotel room one of those oil-filled portable radiators which I pressed into use in the centre of the room. In a large room this certainly helped to supplement the one radiator we had in the room underneath the window and it meant that by the late evening the warm, if not hot, room was certainly warm enough to make sure that we had a pleasant night’s sleep. So we woke up just before 7.00am which is a perfect time to have a cup of tea and slowly get ourselves into gear for the day. We had our customary filling breakfast for the day and then set forth to see what the streets of Harrogate had to offer. We could not resist the lure of some of the charity shops and noted that the prices were of the order of 50% greater than we are used to in the West Midlands but perhaps that is a reflection of Harrogate life. We made our stages to a coffee shop run by Italians which is almost ‘creme-de-la-creme’ but in a more folksy way. We made our way up a very steep flight of stairs to the upstairs room but were greeted by what looked a huge television screen which was just showing the detail of a burning log fire. It certainly made you feel warm, although the effect was evidently psychological. We treated ourselves to some capucchinos and home-made pastries, served to us by an interesting Polish lady. We exchanged our observations of what it is like to feel Polish cold as opposed to Yorkshire cold but we are both relieved that better weather is on the way by Sunday. Then we found our way into a ‘Scope’ shop where we wondered which of two jumpers we might buy for Meg. Another customer and the shop assistant were extraordinarily helpful and eventually we settled on one of those jumpers which looks better on than off and which is a longer length than normal so it helps to keep one’s nether regions warm. Then we made our way to Marks and Spencer where we bought a gift voucher as a Christmas present for our loyal and hardworking domestic help. As we were making progress through the store, Meg admired the look of a jumper and it did look rather fetching but at £175.00 per item we were not unduly tempted. We did, on our peregrinations throughout the charity shops, buy one interesting item from an Oxfam shop which is going to be a surprise present and which we are sure is going to be appreciated. We made our way to a little Chinese restaurant we have have often frequented in the middle of Harrogate as we wanted just a simple, light meal as we knew we were going to have a more extensive afternoon tea this afternoon. After we had relished a simple sweet and sour pork, we started to make tracks for the hotel but on the way home, I wanted to buy one particular cosmetic item which I had forgotten to pack last Wednesday morning. Vanity prohibits my mentioning the nature of the item but when we enquired in Boots, the chemists, we were quoted a price of £27.00. When we exclaimed that this was far too much, we were directed to a cosmetics and beauty shop across the road where we bought the desired item for 69p! Then we made our back to the hotel for a swift cup of tea before we set out for the afternoon.

For my sister’s 80th birthday last August, I treated her and several other family members to a speial ‘afternoon tea’ in ‘The Crown‘ which is the hotel in which we are lodged in Harrogate. By way of a Christmas present, we thought we would repeat the afternoon tea idea and once I had secured my sister’s assent to this idea, we made a booking with the hotel. This afternoon, Meg and I set off in plenty of time to pick up my sister in our car from Knaresborough. We arrived on the dot of the appointed time and then got my sister and her ‘wheeled walker’ into the boot of the car and then set off for Harrogate. Fortunately, the reserved parking space is incredibly useful for us at the hotel and so we all sat down at the appointed time and enjoyed out tea of Earl Grey, tasty little sandwiches and an assortment of dainty pastries and sweetmeats. Munching our way though this little lot took us some time and when we had eaten our fill, it was time for us to transport my sister back to Knaresborough and for us to return to the hotel. I must say that the hotel was full of Christmas spirit as there were Christmas trees and Christmas decorations whereever one looked in each of the public rooms. I wondered whether the volume of Christms trees deployed in the hotel including those outside might approach the number of 100. Tomorrow, we will see my sister for the third day running (which must be some sort of record) as we are due to go round to one of her daughters in the afternoon where we have been invited to a family ‘at home’ of mulled wine and mince pies and we should see a lot of other other family members there as well. So the whole concept of extending our stay from three nights to four nights so that we have a complete three days of seeing family members has proved to be well worthwhile.

Today is the first full day of our holiday and we both had a reasonable night’s sleep after our journey of yesterday. Having fallen asleep, I found that the TV was still broadasting but the control did not turn it off, from which I concluded that the batteries in the control must be exhausted. I found a way to do this manually and was not, therefore, kept awake all during the night with a recalcitrant TV. So Meg and I made our way downstairs to have a breakfast before the rush although there is no way of knowing how busy the hotel actually is this week. We called in at reception with our remote who fairly promptly inserted some new batteries for us which means that now we have one tribulation of life removed. Then we had a traditional cooked breakfast, such as we have had on our previous two stays here so we know what to expect. The last time we stayed in the hotel, a Japanese guest was evidently intrigued by the toasting machine, the like of which he had never seen before. It was one of those machines where the toast makes a slow jouney under infra-red lights only to be disgorged a minute or so later in various stages of over or under-doneness. I explained to my fellow guest that whilst the Jananese culture to world culture were excellent motor vehicles and electronics, that of Great Britain is the design (if not the manufacture) of machines to make breakfast toast. After we had breakfasted and prepared to sally forth, I made a visit to the newsagents (McColls) recently taken over and saved by Morrisons and bought some iron rations (milk for our cups of tea, biscuits for the occasional nibble and so on) Then we departed to see my sister who lives in Knaresborough which, although only three miles distant, can take some time to reach if the traffic is very severe. We spent a couple of very happy hours with my sister mulling over family matters. When I was about to sit on the settee, my sister exclaimed ‘Be careful not to sit on Bruce’, Bruce being what is now in the terminology is called a ‘Remembrance bear’ of a ‘Memory bear’. I do now know how or when the concept of memory bears started but the basic idea is very simple. You send off to the firm that specialises in these products some sample of the much loved or familiar clothing associated with the loved one (spouse, child) and the firm then make suitable items of clothing for the bear. In my sister’s case, her husband’s name was embroidered onto one of the bear’s feet. The bear can then sit in a favourite armchair and part of the loved one has a visible presence. This is particular salience because it is a year and a week since my sister’s husband died and therefore the Remembrance (or Memory) Bear has a particular pride of place at this time.

After lunch, Meg and I visited an ‘eating place’ on the outskirts of Knareborough. What started as a garden centre now has a restaurant attached to it selling really good meals. We have visited this establishment once before with my sister and a niece the last time we stayed and thought we would give it another visit. As it is so popular, one often has to wait, but in our case it was only about 10 minutes and we spent some time chatting with a Geordie couple also here on a family visit I imagine. They were talking about a local cultural hero, Grace Darling, who was Victorian heroine. She achieved great fame for the part she played in the rescue of survivors from a wrecked merchant ship in 1838. Born in 1815, Grace heroically helped to rescue survivors from the Forfarshire, a vessel travelling from Hull to Dundee, which was wrecked on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland. Together with her father, who was a local lighthouse keeper, she rowed out in a tiny boat amidst the most turbulent of seas and eventually rescued nine people in total – tragically, she died of TB only about three years later. Now my first girlfriend when I was about 15 had the surname of ‘Horsley’ and she always maintained that she was a distant relative of Grace Darling. I must confess that at that age I did not pay as much as attention as I should to this story as my attention was directed elsewhere. But today, with the benefit of Wikipedia and other internet resources, I have discovered that the maiden name of Grace Darling’s mother was indeed, ‘Horsley’ and one of her brothers was given that as a middle name. However, I am now pretty certain that my first girlfriend’s recollections of the family history passed down to her was not at all fanciful but seemed rooted in a strong historical reality. I think that when I consulted the web this afternoon,my first reaction to myself was to say ‘Well, I never!’. We had a wonderful meal in the restaurant and then returned to the hotel to spend a quiet afternoon before we venture forth tomorrow morning, probably into the streets of Harrogate town itself.

Today was the day on which we were scheduled to depart for our little 4-day break in Harrogate, North Yorkshire primarily to see the members of my Yorkshire family but also for a little pre-Christmas break. We had done a certain amount of packing last night but we judged it better to get up early this morning and finish off the rest of the packing whilst we were fresh, as it were. So I set an alarm for 6.15 and immediately leapt out of bed to get washed, dressed, packed up and then a bowl of porridge prepared. Then we managed to get everything done and set off at about 10 minutes later than our intended departure time of 8.30. Then it was case of battling through the Bromsgove rush hour (to which we are not particularly accustomed), collecting our newspaper and making it onto the M40 just after 9.00am. There was quite a queue to get onto the motorway system around Birmingham but this is not unusual. Although we had given the windscreen a good dousing of hot water to free of it of ice this morning, the temperature was still -3 degrees and when I tried to give my windscreen a ‘whoosh’ to keep it clean, I only succeeded in making the windscreen a smeary mess.I soldiered on, thinking about a place where I could stop if necessary to utilise a spare bottle of water I was taking with us with which I could have got the screen clear again. Having circumnavigated the M42 travelling north to the point where it starts to link with the A42(M), I was relived when I dared use the windscreen wipers again and by this time the temperature had risen a critical 2-3 degrees and the washer bottle now functioned, to give me a good clear screen. Needless to say, I was mightily relieved by this and we hit our half-way point, the motorway services at Tibshelf which is one of our favourites. There we had a quick drink of coffee and some jaffa cakes as well as a toilet stop and then we got on our way for the second and easier half of the journey. We aim to be in the little market town of Wetherby immediately after 12.0pm and we got there by about 12.05,parking in our preferred spot incredibly fortunately as a car was just leaving the row of car parking spaces which meant that we could visit our fish restaurant shortly after its opening. As a creatures of habit, we have the pensioners ‘three course luncheon’ which a homemade soup, fish of your choice on salad which we had asked for in place of chips, a round of bread and butter, a pot of tea and finally a sweet of ginger sponge and custard – all of this for a price of less than £15 per head.

Before we left Wetherby, we did a little tour of some of the charity shops but, in general, we saw nothing that we particulrly fancied. What we did note, though, that the prices of most goods were approximately double what we would have paid in Bromsgrove or Droitwich- I suppose it is a function of the fact that Wetherby has always been quite a prosperous little market town. However, just before we left we called in at the Oxfam shop and there Meg saw a lined woollen skirt that she rather fancied. For my part, I happened to see a trio of little oak nesting tables that I think will go perfectly in our little newly equipped music room, so the shop proprietor helped me load it into the bck of the car and then we journeyed on to Harrogate. We got booked into ‘The Crown’ and are gradually getting our little hotel systems installed. The room that we have been allocated is ‘interesting’ – on the positive side, it is pretty large and warm but on the negative side, the bathroom is down a series of two little steps which I am fearful about Meg negotiating in the middle of the night on her own. So if she makes a toilet visit in the middle of the night, I have told her that she must wake me up to accompany her so that she does not have a fall in the hotel bedroom.

Some of the dangers of migrant crossings of the English Channel were vividly illustrated tonight. A local fishing boat managed to rescue 33 people from a craft in distress and by all accounts there were several people in the water screaming for help. The official estimates are that four people have died but it is actually quite likely that the death toll is larger than this. Rishi Sunak has been busy unveiling plans to rapidly return migrants back to Albania and to his end he is securing the help of the Albanian government. There is a a great volume of media noise, not least from the government, decrying ‘illegal’ immigration but all asylums seekers and/or people fleeing modern slavery are presumed innocent in law until the point at which their claim for asylum is rejected.There is a lot of playing to the ‘right wing gallery’ on this issue but whether these latest attempts to wield meaningful results will prove successful remains to be seen.

Today was the day in our diary when we were scheduled to go and see our friends in Oxfordshire for a pre-Chriustmas lunch date. We set off in time and got ourselves well prepared yesterday so that the car was filled with petrol and, as we normally do, we took along some bottles of wine and also a specialised little cactus plant in its own little mini greenhouse which rather took our fancy when we espied it yesterday. All went reasonably well on the trip but we did have a holdup on the motorway with massive congestion on the M42. We did not bother with SatNav as we were pretty sure of our route of the A34 after Oxford in the direction of our friends. In the event, we thought we had missed our turning and got of the A34 early. But after a bit of fishing round, we fortunately located our friends postcode so that the SatNav could ride to the rescue and, in the event, we got quite soon again back on track. The journey on the way back is always so much easier as the M40 being a major arterial route between the South and the Midlands is on the roadsigns from about 30 miles out, meaning that you can navigate back in your sleep. Fortunately, the weather was kind to us and although we started off at 0 degrees and it became -1 as we progressed along the route, we did not have any ice or snow to impede us, even on the country lanes in the environs of our friend’s house. We had a delicious dinner of some specialised meatballs with cranberries embedded within them. Our hosts told us that this was one of the specialist Waitrose recipes so we must go and try it some time. After a marvellous meal and a chat, it was time to go – our friends had some business with a bank so they needed to leave in time for their appointment. On our part, although we are always sorry to take leave of our friends, we were quite pleased to make some progress whilst we had some daylight left as it can start to get dark from 3.30 onwards at this time of year. We managed to get well onto the M40 before the shades of twilight started to close in on us and it is always plain sailing once we get onto this motorway and we have motorway all the way to within about three miles of home.

Before we went on our journey this morning, our son who had arrived early to work in the study he still maintains in this house, located the Christmas tree and decorations that we keep accessible in the loft and we safely rescued them. Last year, instead of a family ‘genuine’ Christmas tree, I bought a tree which is made of entirely artifical silver branches. Although this sounds a bit tacky, the overall effect is very pleasing when it is compared with thoe artificial trees that attempt, and fail abysmally, to emulate the real thing. So after we had arrived home and had our obligatory cup of tea after journey home, I decided to erect the tree and put it in a customary spot in the hall (near a power supply) At first, it did look a little straggly as one had to bend some of the branches into a particular position and then, of course, there were the lights to disentangle. When I gave the lights a cursory look, it appeared that they were unifom ‘white’ colour but upon my testing of them before I put them on the tree, I was delighted that they were actiually multicoloured. From this point, it was a simple case to drape the lights around the tree and make some adjustments to cover any evident gaps and then admire the overall effect. I must say, the overall effect was very pleasing and tree requires no more adornments (being silver anyway) to look more than respectable, particularly when illuminated. I cannot now remember whether we did actually put any more decorations on the tree as we used to do with our ‘original’ Christms trees but am sure that our domestic help, when she arrives on Wednesday, might be more than happy to give it one or two little tweaks, Incidentally, although it sounds a little killjoy, we no longer stack family presents under the tree as we did years go. We feel that to do so might be an invitation for someone to break into the house and steal them. When my son won a scholarship and spent a year in a Mexican university, the family actually did some last minute shopping in the days before Christmas and their car was broken into and all of the presents were ‘liberated’

Whilst we are getting well and truly fed up with the current spell of cold weather, it looks as things may improve for us from about Saturday onwards. Meg and I have got into the routine of wearing ‘two of everything’ and so today, for example over my norml vest and shirt I have three sets of jumpers called into use and I still feel that I am only just about warm enough.

Today I knew it was going to be a ‘crunch’ day for our Christmas cards as time is rapidly running out for us. Tomorrow we are going on a lunch-date to Oxfordshire whilst from Wednesday onwards, we shall be in Yorkshire. Thinking about all of this, I appreciated quite early on that it was an absolute priority for us to get the Christmas cards written and despached as soon as possible. Consequently, I decided to make this my major task this morning and I did thank my lucky stars that at least I had all of the materials I needed for the task. For many people,it would seem quite a simple task and I suppose it is possible that I am making it somewhat complex than it needs to be. Often though a Christmas card is the one way to keep in contact with lots of friends and neighbours and I feel the need to supply a minimal amount of information about what has been happening to us over the past year. I have one particular label which gives details of how Meg’s health is progressing and this I have done for the last year or so. Then I have another label whih gives all of those details that cannot be fitted onto a normal address label such as my mobile number, web home pages and blog addresses. Finally, I attach a simple address label that lets people have our current address details. I write an individualised little message which often runs along the lines of ‘I hope that we can meet again in 2023 as soon as the weather improves ‘or similar. There were some frustrations en-route, becase occasionally an address has not fitted in its entirety upon the gummed label and I have to rescue the missing part from an adjacent label and then cut it off with a pair of scissors and do a careful lining up and afixing job. I was delighted to get the bulk of the Christmas cards written and ready for despatch by 1.00pm but then I have to go and prepare a mega fast lunch before we are due to go out this afternoon.

This afternoon, Meg and I fulfilled an appointment with a large legal firm here in Bromsgrove in order to process some legal work that we are having done. This firm has been recommended to us but we have not used them before but nonetheless, we took along our two forms of ID which is increasingly necessary these days. We had a very fruitful appointment and were dealt with by friendly and professional staff who instilled some confidence in us. From this point on, everything will probably be handled by email and/or text message but evidently the first ever meeting has to be ‘in the flesh’ as it were. This transaction being successfully undertaken, Meg and I then joind the long (but not extraordinarily long) queue in the Post Office in order to buy our Christmas stamps. We had three Christmas cards destined for Spain and although, in theory, Saturday was the last day for guaranteed posting for them, we are pretty confident they will arrive on time (assuming that Spain dos not have the number of pending strikes that we do) In the meanwhile, we bought our quantum of stamps and were delighted to get them into the system. It is rather an off-putting, though, to hand over £10s of pounds, then stick them on a series of envelopes and finally dispose of the envelopes via the large posting bin. The number of Christmas cards that I have posted is somewhat down this year, more because of deaths and ‘lost’ addresses than any other factor but I am sure that the total number of Christmas cards in the system will be quite radically reduced by now, particularly after the last price increases making a first stamp stamp in the region of £1. Today seems to be the last ‘official’ day for the postage of Christmas cards so we are delighted to have our cards into the system as it were – hand delivered ones can now wait until a bit before Christmas Day itself.

The local news media has been filled with news of the tragedy when four boys fell through the ice in a lake in the Solihull area. It seems that one boy got this leg stuck in the ice and three friends came to his assistance. In the event, all four of then fell into the water and the extremely cold temperatures meant that they all suffered cardiac arrest, of whom three could not be revived and the fourth is still in critical care. I am just waiting to see if in the days ahead there will be calls blaming the local authority for not putting up signs warning people against the dangers of walking on thin ice in freezing conditions. This has not happened yet but I am waiting to see if this emerges in the days ahead. One has to ask whether the children in quetion were being adequately supervised by parents but more details will no doubt emerge in the days ahead.