Bringing Things Up To Date

I haven't posted on here for well over a week. The way things have been going I really had no desire to write anything. Carol's passing has hit me hard. We had such a wonderful life together. The funeral is arranged for 11th January at Crownhill Crematorium at 2 p.m.  Postcode : MK8 OAH. The finer details are beginning to be put in place, such as what hymns and songs will be sung and the numbers for catering for the wake, which will be at the Oaktree Centre, the address of which is: Wallinger Drive, Shenley Brook End, MILTON KEYNES, MK5 7GZ.

I was invited to stay with my daughter Chloe and her husband, Steve, in Worcester over the Christmas period, from the Saturday before Christmas until the Wednesday after the New Year holiday. It would mean I wouldn't be on my own in the house in Milton Keynes, and I could take Alfie, my Yorkshire Terrier, with me. I had, at first, asked if I could be collected from home to be taken back to Worcester, but it proved impossible. Then Chloe suggested possibly going by railway, but it would have meant at least a two-hour journey and a change in Birmingham. It would have been difficult taking Alfie, probably on a lead or at least a carrying case of some sort along with luggage. Not going to happen. Then I thought, I've got a perfectly good car, which has only recently been serviced, in good working order. I can drive to Worcester, fill up with fuel in Milton Keynes and go across country. It'll be a lovely journey. I didn't envision using the Motorway as I'm not a good driver on a Motorway. So I left mid-morning on the Saturday and it was fine driving from Milton Keynes, through Buckingham and then out towards Banbury. I didn't need to set the satnav for that section of the journey. I had intended then finding the road for Evesham and then onto Worcester, but I got into Banbury at exactly the wrong time. Nose-to-tail traffic, of people doing their last-minute Christmas shopping. I could not find my way out. I eventually had to set the satnav for Chloe and Steve's postcode and just followed the directions. It took me via the M40 and eventually the M5. It was fairly straightforward and the traffic wasn't too heavy and I just stayed in the slower lane most of the way. When I got to Worcester I had to reset the satnav for the final stretch to Chloe's address and arrived at their front door at around 3.30.

When I'd unloaded Alfie from the cage in the boot (incidentally, he'd been absolutely quite for the entire journey. Probably because I'd put the parcel shelf in which would have meant it would have been quite dark in the back of the car and he'd be safe in the cage.) I took him into the house. I don't think he was expecting two young children to be running about, George, age 3 and Eddie, just turned 1 (not quite walking but getting there.) so whenever George ran around, Alfie began to bark. It took him a while to settle down and by the weekend he had got used to having them about.

So, we had a lovely Christmas Day with Steve's parents and his sister, Katy, as well as other family members, which included Steve's grandfather who is in his mid 90's I spent a lot of time chatting to him. They Skyped other members of the Wilson family who could not be in Britain, spread far and wide, a couple in Australia. I've never used Skype before, so it was a new experience. The picture and sound quality is amazing when you think how far away some of the family members are. I'll have to give it a go sometime. In the evening we sat around a table and played games, one being Linkee which is similar in some ways to the BBC1 show 'Only Connect.' Another one was to identify objects from a very close-up photo.

We walked to a park, or, at least, a large green space. It seemed to be a popular place to walk dogs and Alfie made friends with one or two, but one large dog kept following us. It wasn't on a lead, which was annoying, and I don't think Alfie liked being followed. It took some while to get any mud off his paws when we got back to the house.

On Saturday we went to what is called Worcester Woods where there was a run. I don't know how many participated, but probably several hundred. Alfie came in the car, but he sat on my lap but he wouldn't sit still. Then, when we got out of the car, he didn't appreciate the crowds and I didn't appreciate all the mud. None of this made life easy for me, but never mind. He had a lovely run around a large field. Not really my sort of thing, but never mind.

I didn't leave Worcester until Wednesday morning. I thought it probably best not to travel back to Milton Keynes over the holiday period as there was likely to be heavy traffic on the Motorways. I left at around 8.45 and got to Milton Keynes at around 10.45. I had managed to reset the satnav the night before, but I couldn't get it to work once I left Worcester, so I just decided to get on the M5 and make for the M42, then the M40 and got off onto the road I know reasonably well and went through Buckingham and back towards Milton Keynes that way. I really need to spend a bit more time looking at the satnav in the car before I go on another long journey and set it up properly.

Visiting Grandson George

It's a good many months since we were at George, my grandson's christening in Claines, near Worcester. We had to wait until the Easter holidays to be able to plan another visit. A good two-hour drive there needs a certain amount of organisation. We'd bought him some clothes in Sainsbury's a few weeks ago as well as a chocolate rabbit in Morrison's on Sunday. A difficult decision as regards an Eater treat of some sort, whether to get him an Easter egg, something made from chocolate, or a rabbit (gold paper wrapped with a little golden bell on a red ribbon around it's neck.) so the bunny won. Duly loaded the car, SatNav installed, camera, mobile phone and all the other paraphernalia. Car fuelled up on Sunday, which saved us some time. Not able to see Chloe or George until after 2 p.m. 

We needed something to eat mid-journey. We needed to find a suitable place to eat something. We needed to go to buy sandwiches or at least something suitable. We went to Asda. As it turned out it wasn't such a good idea, unfortunately. It was around 10.30 when we got there and the place was heaving. What is it that makes people behave in a sort of siege mentality whenever there's any sort of public holiday? Easter, Christmas, New Year, or whatever? We picked up the sandwiches we wanted off the shelves, and a few crisps and other snacks and then went to pay. Every till in what is a really huge supermarket seemed busy, with long queues with customers pushing trolleys which were over-loaded with goods. Most tills had people already being checked through but with large amounts of goods on the conveyor belts. We stood in one queue and it seemed to take forever for it to move. It was no good moving to another or even going to a self-service checkout as all dozen or so were busy, with people waiting. No express tills either (do they have these in Asda? I don't think so. Or a self-scan system which I've seen in Tesco and I know Waitrose have as we've used ourselves. It does cut down on queuing.) Anyway, the woman on the till we were using seemed as if she was on a go-slow. Not making much effort to speed herself up. I don't think she could, even if she tried. By the time we'd paid and walked out, it was near enough 11 o'clock. I would have left a good deal earlier but Carol insisted we leave around 10-11. We followed the SatNav's directions and for some strange reason we went via Buckingham, but made a really different detour and followed a road we'd never been on before. It usually takes us a completely different way. We got to the M40 and then onto the M5. The whole journey was taking a good deal longer than anticipated. We had hoped to arrive at Claines at around 1.45, but we got held up in long queues of traffic and didn't arrive until around 2.40.

Unfortunately we weren't at Claines very long. We did go for a walk with Chloe and George. He's walking well and into everything, as all children of his age.We walked as far as the sports ground, with George exploring everything on the way, mainly drains and inspection covers and putting stones and sticks into various holes he hound on the way. We were surprised when Steve appeared. I wasn't aware that he worked from home. He made us a cup of tea and we sat and chatted while George played. We sat in the garden and saw their newly-laid lawn. Made of decent turf, unlike our uneven excuse for a lawn.

Around 5.15 Chloe announced that they had to go and collect her car from being repaired from the garage. It was by then that we decided on leaving, unfortunately, as we knew it was a long drive home. It was just as well we did leave when we did, because by the time we hit the M5 towards Birmingham the traffic was building up. We journeyed back towards the M6 and the M1 and finally back towards Milton Keynes. We were somewhat surprised that the roadworks along the M1 south near Daventry is still continuing. It was this area where we broke down in the car a year or two ago. A somewhat traumatic experience, as you might expect. We were rescued by a breakdown truck as we had gone into the coned-off area. Not an experience either of us would want to repeat in a hurry. It seems the roadworks have been going on for much too long. What is annoying is that the part of the Motorway which is coned off has no work going on, or at least from what we could see. Why they can't open up more and allow the traffic to flow properly, instead of having such long stretches coned off, and expecting drivers to travel at no more than 50 M.P.H. seems crazy. We arrived home at around 7.15.

Grandson George's Christening

On Sunday we went to Worcestershire for my grandson George's Christening. I have to come clean and admit that we were late. An hour late and missed the actual Christening. For some reason we thought it was at 2 p.m and not 1 p.m. I know, we should have checked, but we didn't.

We started out at around 9.30 and used the newly-acquired SatNav. It's becoming really helpful, because, if you've been reading any of my earlier posts on here you'll know that our sense of direction if fairly awful and we've spent a lot of time attempting to find a whole lot of places during our outings. It's actually quite assuring to able to rely on this technology to assist in finding places which we haven't been to before.

When we drove to Chloe's graduation in Worcester a few years ago we had to be at Worcester Cathedral (where the ceremony was held.) at something like 9.30 a.m. and we went via the M1/M5 and, as it was early morning we hit a lot of traffic on the way and it took a good deal longer than it ought to have done. The time before last (a couple of weeks ago.) we went on a Friday and went via Buckingham and then onto the Motorway beyond Brackley. It took a little over 2 hours. Had we gone that way on Sunday, even though it was the weekend, we would have got caught up in traffic going to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, so it was as well the SatNav directed us up the M1. We weren't going directly to Claines, where Steve and Chloe live, but to a National Trust property called Hanbury Hall and Garden as we needed to get something to eat as we weren't likely to get anything to eat until around 3 p.m. (or so we imagined.) This turned out to be a really interesting house and we managed to get in a group which went into the house to hear a presentation by one of the staff on the history of the house and the Vernon family who had lived there for around 250 years. It was very interesting and worth the time to listen to.

Hanbury Hall from the front

The gardens at Hanbury Hall

Pavilion at Hanbury

We had a very pleasant lunch in the restaurant, which was at one time the servants' hall when it was lived in. Reminding us very much of "Downton Abbey." Our meal consisted of cottage pie followed by apple and blackberry crumble and ice cream. We spent a little while wandering around the garden (which is when I took the above photographs.) and we then left to drive the short distance to Claines. It was as we got to the church and saw all the guests outside in the churchyard that we realised that the Christening was over, unfortunately. We then drove to the village hall for a rather pleasant tea (actually, I wasn't in the least bit hungry because we had eaten at Hanbury Hall. It was a pity we missed the actual Christening, but it was a chance to meet up with my brother Robert who I haven't seen in a long time as well as my aunt Jasmine (Aunty Jas as she was always called when we were children. My late mother's sister.)

The tea didn't go on too long and we were soon driving home and got back to Milton Keynes by around 7.30. A long day but worth it.