Just made it to the last post of the year. I’ve been in bed for the last three days with a really bad upper respiratory tract infection – my personal vote for hell on earth – but it retreated overnight, and I now have just have a very bad cough, a tight feeling in my chest and general fragility in the upper body area. It arrived late on Sunday, just after David and the children left, and necessitated the cancelling of my eye appointment at hospital yesterday and the end-of-year celebrations planned for tonight.
I’m overwhelmingly grateful that it didn’t arrive earlier and spoil the Christmas celebrations with our family. They arrived as scheduled on the 21st, and the children loved the new room arrangements, with Oliver in my study and Amy in Dot’s study.
The next few days were busy, but we managed to fit in some games and a couple of quizzes, as well visits to the Maddermarket to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (cold theatre, but excellent production) and the Odeon to see the latest Star Wars. The latter was nothing short of superb. David and I both wanted to see it again.
On the Tuesday we also fitted in visits to Rosie, the cemetery, Auntie Sheila (fleeting) and Jessie, who supplied her usual excellent mince pies.
On Christmas Eve we were invited to the Hendersons’ for a buffet supper, which was very pleasant, especially as my god-daughter Holly was present. Also some old acquaintances from Saxlingham and the Butchers from Cringleford. As I was leaving I was introduced to Robin Myerscough, who had some fond memories of my Aunt Dorothea. He had the Philip Butcher role of Chaplain at Norwich School for some time many years ago.
Christmas Day was lovely: Dot provided an excellent Waitrose turkey repast, and the children got advanced gadgets: Amy a laptop and Oliver a Playstation game and a Bluetooth version of Scalextrix that was a considerable improvement on the original. After this it proved increasingly difficult to access the TV, and the only thing Dot and I saw over Christmas was Downton Abbey.
David bought us an Apple wi-fi extension that enables us to hear music from our phones played through our hi-fi set-up – brilliant – and thanks to an extension cable, enables us to access things like iPlayer directly from the TV.
On Boxing Day Kevin, Lisa and Matthew came over for the afternoon: Kevin’s new job seems to be going well. On the Sunday (when we gave the joint service at St Luke’s a miss) Richard came over with Maddy and Darcy and stayed for lunch. On Monday, Norwich beat Aston Villa 2-0; so everything was hunky dory. Hopeful in a day or two I may be feeling hunky dory too.