Last Day of the Holidays

So, we got an extra day of school holidays, to give everyone the chance to test for Corona before going in.  Yay.  It was a beautiful winter's day - deep blue skies.  Yay.  What better thing to do than go skating?  Liz asked me if we wanted to go with them.  Lancaster have an ice rink for the festive season, it was still open and as most schools were back, we thought there was a good chance that there wouldn't be many there.  We were right - we had it more or less to ourselves. 

So last time I went skating was about 15 years ago when I went after alcohol at Somerset House and fell on my coccyx so hard that I couldn't sit down properly for 6 months.  Tom has never been!  We were up for it.  We pushed and pulled the cumbersome ice skating boots on and went for a skate.  The Holmans, it turned out were complete pros.  Liz's mum and Dad met whilst skating, it was therefore a big piece of her childhood, she's had lessons and everything - she can do twists, turns etc etc. 

I held onto the fence for the first circuit and then gradually got better and better.  Tom had not a clue and really struggled for a while.  Once he understood not to try and walk on the ice and to glide he got better and better. He fell over a lot, but only had one bad fall on his elbow which took him out for 5 mins, he then got back on the ice and kept trying.  Liz, Annabel and Owen were all great, helping both of us when they weren't pirouetting and prancing around.  We all enjoyed it.

Afterwards, Annabel, Tom and I went on the 'big wheel' was actually quite small but you could see all of Lancaster from the top - it really is a very small city.  

We went to café for lunch and then a bit of shopping before heading back home.  It was a really good day out.  Tom went for a bath on his return, then a game of Wingspan before a good ole British tea of sausage, mash & beans.

Back to school tomorrow - he only has 2 lessons as he has an appointment with the asthma specialist at the hospital at 12.20.  I wonder what is going to happen in the schools with Covid - can he continue to dodge it?  How long before they have to switch to home schooling due to lack of teachers? 

 

New Years

New Year's Eve we were invited to the Holman's for the night.  Seeing as we hadn't socialised together in an absolute age we said yes please!  Initially it was a 8pm start, but it got brought forward to 5pm.  We packed up all our naughty food and alcohol and took it with us.  

We played silly games, drank lots of fizz, chatted to lots of people, lots of whom just came and went and well, just generally hung out.  It was a lovely easy night.  We were there for 9 hours and I really can't work out what we did for all that time, but time went quickly and somehow it was past 2am before we thought about heading home.

Tom came third in a 'pick up the cereal box' challenge - shows just how flexible he is (although he did get beaten by a 51 year old lady!)

We had a bit of a karaoke session at the end, warning - we had been drinking for 9 hours and it was 2 (ish) in the morning!.  

We didn't get back till after 2 - as you can see Tom made himself a nest in his bed - needless to say we had a very quiet New Years Day and a pretty quiet 2nd January too!

December & Christmas

Pretty & simple decorations in the village

December was a bit of a whirlwind!  I was mega busy with chocolates and cakes!  I got 'found' for my chocolate dipped oranges and as soon as I put a batch up on my website, the website would go crazy and they would sell out in hours!  Not only that, but when they bought those, they would look for other things and order from all over.  Not a complaint, I maintain my stock on the website as 4 items of everything available, they aren't necessarily made, but putting it at that level means I can quickly make them and send them off.  Well, normally anyway, maybe not when I am getting orders in the quantities that I was.  In the end I had to go through my website and put lots of things out of stock so I wouldn't get any nasty surprises.  One day I got 12 orders in a day, considering I normally get 1 or 2 a week you can understand how mad that was!

I had also taken on some cake orders in December, so it was very much a case of head down all day every day.  

I didn't get Covid from Deacon Blue, which was good.  However, for the last week of school, Tom had a horrible cold - he missed most of the week of school.  He got the flu jab at school the first week of December and felt a bit sick afterwards, he got sent home from school and wasn't allowed back until he had a PCR test result.  He was clear, it was just the effects of the flu jab.  Then he got this horrible cold, this was after him sitting next to a lad who had just tested positive for Covid so we were sure he had Covid this time.  Took him for a PCR test.  The next day, before Tom got his result, Matt couldn't taste his lunch, so he thought he had got Covid too and went for a PCR test.  Tom's result came back - negative, phew!  Matt's came back positive - we were shocked?!  How could that be?  They had gone to see a model railway the weekend before, but it was strange that one would have it and the other not.  Tom was a lot sicker with his cold than Matt with Covid.  I had to ban them both from my kitchen and Matt was sort of isolated.  Tom and I went for PCR tests to check - I had lots of chocolate to be picked up / sent off and needed to know that I was clear.  At least with the new rules I was allowed out and about as I am double vaccinated and had no symptoms.  It felt wrong though, so I only went out to post parcels and for shopping - felt wrong to socialise.  We both came back negative.   Then a day later, Tom's lateral flow test came back positive, so off he went again for another PCR but it came back negative.  He managed one half day at school that week - just as well it was the last week of term.  Once all my chocolates were finished we opened up the house and decided to mingle - if Tom and I got Covid now it wouldn't really matter and it would mean we would have it over and done with. It didn't happen, we didn't have it, however, I did get Tom's cold and it was a nasty one - took 2 weeks to feel normal again.

In the meantime, the Omicron variant of Covid was beginning to take hold in the UK and it looked likely that there might be a lockdown after Christmas, that plus a number of other factors meant that Mum and Dad decided not to come for Christmas, so we were back to being just the 3 of us.  We had a quiet run up to Christmas, Matt wasn't allowed to leave the house until the 23rd due to Covid isolation - he was lucky in that they reduced isolation from 10 to 7 days whilst he was isolating so he got out early.  We aren't all that sure if he had it anyway, his lateral flow tests were always negative?  

The weather was pretty grim too - we stayed in and watched films and did a very difficult 1000 piece jigsaw - never seen such small pieces before.  We all spent ages on it - and then discovered it was missing 1 piece - argggggghhhhhhh!  There were two nice days where Tom and I went for short walks.  We saw a steam train head across Ribblehead Viaduct completely by chance.  Was pretty cold - as you can see from the ice!

Oh I have never been so ill prepared for Christmas as this year, at one point it looked like it might be a damp squib, none of us had Christmas cheer, I didn't have food ordered, didn't have that many presents ready but somehow it all came together.  It was a little bit stressful though, next year I need to get myself prepared in September/October before Christmas orders come in.

Christmas Eve, Jude and Craig came to say hi, have lunch and drop off and pick up pressies.  I was so unprepared this year, that it only occurred to me as they were on their way over that maybe we should offer them some lunch?  Luckily I had bought lots of buffet food and was able to provide a decent spread that actually looked planned!  As you can see from the photo Tom has now comfortably outgrown Jude now.  He was very pleased!

In the afternoon we headed out to Morecambe as we heart that they had Christmas lights for the first time in a long while and also they were lighting up the old buildings on the front.  We got there a bit too early so did a walk up and down the prom, then drove back in, parked in the centre and saw the lights, they were so pretty.  We also bumped into the Radas again so spent a while with them before heading back home where a lamb rib stew was waiting for us.  

Christmas Day came, we invited Pat and Bob over for the day.  Only Bob came.  The day seemed to go really quickly, we seemed to spend most of the day trying to open presents, but kept being interrupted - for good reasons.  We spent over an hour with the Smyths in Australia which was fab, then we attempted a zoom call with Mum and Dad - they couldn't get the video to work so it wasn't as good as it could have been and then Bob arrived.  We had a Cornvale rib of beef:

220 degrees for 25 mins

140 degrees for 1.5 hours

It was delicious - the best rib we have ever had. 

Tom made the yorkies, we had red cabbage, parsnips, roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots and cauliflower as well as gravy.  It was a feast - we all ate well.  Tom drank through his non alcoholic wine and we were on the red. 

The rest of the day was spent not doing that much. I watched the snowman - my Christmas tradition and then we slobbed out for the rest of the day.

Considering it was a quiet one, we had a good day.

Thank you to everyone who gave us presents, we were spoiled once more.  Here's a picture of me in one of my pressies from Matt - I asked him for something to slob around the house in. This is what he came up - it's not flattering but oh it is so comfy and warm AND the stars light up at night - he didn't know that when he bought it for me - but how fun.  I love it!

Between Christmas and New Year we tried to get out and about to get some walks in.  On Boxing Day we headed over to Arnside - initially for a short walk, but somehow we found ourselves walking up to Arnside Knott - it was lovely just to get some fresh air together even if the weather wasn't great.  

We also headed over to Blackpool for an evening to see the illuminations.  We have been plenty of times before and enjoyed them, but they were a bit old, tired this year, lots were missing and many weren't working properly.  Such a shame, oh well never, mind it got us out and we ended up with fish and chips which is always a good thing and as you can see we saw the illuminations train which is always a good sight.

We also went to Snaizeholme to see the squirrels, who once again put on a good display for us. 

We also played countless games of Tom's new board game Wingspan.  It took us two days to fathom it out (the first time we got it out, we had to put it away again none the wiser) after watching a video on youtube we worked it out and got immediately hooked.  I have been lucky and won every game so far, but I'm sure that won't be the case for much longer.

Oh, forgot to mention, Tom is certainly becoming a teenager now.  He is getting a good 10+ hours sleep a night, doesn't wake up naturally until after 10am now.  I can't complain - I suffered terribly from being unable to get out of bed as a teenager and given a chance will still lie-in.

Deacon Blue

So on 30th November, I finally got to see Deacon Blue live.  I think I first got into them when I was around 15/16, I can remember my best friend at the time, Anita was into Bros and gave me jip about being into 'alternative' music.  I can certainly remember playing their album on my turntable in my bedroom in Wokingham and also sending Mum with money to Bristol (when we were in Backwell) to get their new albums.  Certainly I spent a LOT of time learning the lyrics to their tunes (which became evident during the gig as they all came flooding back!)

Living in Bristol in my late teens meant that I never got the chance to see the big bands of the time as there were no suitable venues - the best we got was Tanita Tickeram at what was then called the Colston Hall.  Then at uni, once again I didn't have a chance and by the time I had come out of uni, they had stopped recording!  

Fast forward over 20 years, Matt takes me to see Muse in Manchester, which reignited my interest in live music so then I started looking at bands that I like.  I found that Deacon Blue were touring, they were going to Manchester and the ticket prices were very reasonable.  Excellent - I bought 2 tickets there and then as there weren't many left.  Matt saw them when he was at uni and didn't think much of them, I didn't want to go with someone who wasn't that interested so asked amongst my friends - bingo, Janine was a fan and had seen them and thought they were great.  She was up for it.

Then - bang!  Covid hit and it was postponed for a year.  Suddenly it was November again, with my chocolate business going mad I was mega busy and could really do without another trip to Manchester, and I was worried about Covid and Christmas and my business - so I got every order finished before we went just in case.  Then Janine and I got the train into Manchester.  We decided it was a night to enjoy ourselves and forget about Covid.  I great idea.  We booked into our hotel, and then got a taxi up to the venue, we were surrounded by an audience which on the whole looked (slightly) older than us - I was finally with my tribe!  We decided on cider for the evening, found our seats and took in the atmosphere.  

It was a wonderful night - everything was funny - we giggled like school girls for most of the time.  We danced, we sang our heart out, there may have been tears.  I was transported back to being a teenager, I relived so much in my life - marrying the songs to events.  I knew the words to more songs that I realised.  In short I had the best night.  I didn't want it to end.  They did all the big hits, some new material, some lesser known stuff, high energy stuff, chilled stuff, I loved every second.  I think it was better for the fact I had waited a good 30+ years for this night.  Both of us were exhausted after it though - we then looked up how old Ricky and Lorraine are: 63 &57 - wowzers, they are looking, moving and singing so well - we were both humbled!

We came out thinking we both had Covid - there were 1000s in the venue and everyone was singing at the top of their voices, but it was worth it.  I still well up now when people ask how it was and I start talking about it!  I think having lockdown delay it by a year and everything that went with it - made the evening even better.

  

  

November

So Christmas started early this year, I got my brochure and on-line shop ready for 1st November and offered an early bird discount and suddenly got order after order!  Some were big too, with some ordering over £100 of items which, for me, is huge.  So, the kitchen is in full chocolate mode - just as well I didn't get many cake orders for November!  So far, I have kept up and everything has arrived in one piece which is great.

Tom has started his immunotherapy at Manchester Children's Hospital - he has an injection on a Friday afternoon for 4 consecutive weeks.  Means he misses 3 lessons at school - PE (not a problem), Spanish - teacher is keeping him up-to-date and Art (teacher doesn't reply to any email so no idea what he's supposed to be doing, and anyway it is only art so it doesn't really matter).

We have been staying at the Komorowskis in Salford each Friday night, which has been good.  Tom isn't allowed to take part in strenuous exercise or have a hot shower for 48 hours after the injection, so we have to take it easy at the weekends.  The first weekend, we went to the Christmas markets in Manchester, the second weekend we went to the Airport pub at Manchester Airport to do some plane-spotting.

There have been a lot of dark, cloudy and dreary days which makes working hard easier.  Today we had a beautiful day so headed to Morecambe for a flat walk - the views were outstanding.

I have a feeling the next couple of weeks are going to be manic work weeks.  I've got a gig to see Deacon Blue at the end of November which I can't wait for, but apart from that it is going to be work, work, work.