Month: December 2024

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Christmas!

Wednesday was Christmas day, and it was a lovely day. the four of us enjoying each others company, presents and a fantastic lunch. The day seemed to pass by quite swiftly (in a good way) – no arguments, no drama, and the day finished off with a couple of TV Christmas crackers – first Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance most fowl; and then the final ever episode of Gavin and Stacey to round off a great day.

Two days before (on Monday) we had been to Lifton in Devon to meet up for lunch with Becky’s family:

And Christmas eve was spent at home, en famille, getting everything ready for the next day:

On Boxing Day we enjoyed another chilled day (I did go for a run, but the weather for the last week has been constant grey mizzle and damp – not the sort of weather to entice you out for a brisk cleansing walk) and we all built some Lego.

One of the Christmas bag rounds was Lego – each of us drawing someone from the hat and tasked with buying them a Lego kit. Sophie drew me, and bought me this Lego Vespa that I enjoyed building. (Becky also bought everyone another small Lego kit. The Lego mini-figures we had bought of a street market in Nerja)

We also played a few games of cards – Sophie was “MC”, we played “Granny” – sort of real time solitaire with four players, Uno, and my favourite, Exploding Kittens.

Yesterday, I took Sam to Bristol Temple Meads for an epic train journey to Carlisle to spend New Year with Poppy. It was a long journey made longer by his connection from Manchester to Carlise being cancelled, and then the subsequent later train suffering techincal problems before departure; but he got there safe and sound.

Today the Christmas tree, decorations and outside lights came down. Other than the mountain of snack food and treats still scattered around the house (and the unforgiving reminder on the scales every morning) it does seem like Christmas is over for another year.

But its been great.

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Gathering of the clan

Today we all went over to Jane’s for a pre-Christmas gathering of the clan. It was a lovely day and a rare occasion that all my side of the family were together.

Yesterday Sam came home, Sophie having come home on Tuesday. Last night we all sat together in the sitting room.

On Thursday we (Becky, Sophie & I) went to the Festive Fiesta in Bristol which was, once again, an excellent night out and, I think, now an established Christmas tradition.

In other, more mundane news, but worth recording for future reference, this week I migrated my websites to Hosting UK. They moved my mathsteacherwrites blog for me (although some of the dynamic pages now longer work as they did – I may just ignore them and stick with the written posts, or investigate how to get them working again), I moved the other two blogs using UpDraft plus plugin, which went well, except the images didn’t move so I had to spend a few hours manually migrating them. But pleased that they are now down.

And my arm/shoulder/neck is getting much better – no longer painful, but still at times some pain in my lower arm, and pins and needles in my hand, particularly in my first finger. So not yet 100%, but significantly better than a few weeks ago.

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Madeira

Late last night we got back from a great six days in Madeira. I blogged daily and you can read that here: http://hap-pea-travels.co.uk/category/portugal/ We had a wonderful time, I enjoyed our hike, even if it was a little damp at the start. The rain did clear to provide some stunning views:

I had a swim – for much of our time their the weather was changeable, certainly warmer than the UK, and less grey, but it was only on Friday that we had plenty of sunshine and the temperature climbed into the low twenties. The sea wasn’t warm, but neither was it freezing – probably less cold than the med in late October?

The food was good – and you could eat at a sensible time in the evening – and the pastries divine. I enjoyed every one of the (many!) pastel de natas that I ate

and having discovered “God’s bread” it became a breakfast staple

The Christmas light were amazing, and everywhere, and I particularly liked the “storm tunnel” It felt like I was in a cartoon!

We both really liked Madeira – somewhere a little bit different from the norm.

Now its back home to reality, and the run up to Christmas.

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The weather!

Now that we are through it, I can say that the weather this week has been dramatic.

On Thursday evening, it lashed down – just as I was leaving school to come home (and my trusty, strong Joules umbrella that has withstood many a storm and squall was fatally wounded. Just as I opened it, a strong gust of wind blew it inside out and there was no recovery from that point on. After years of trusty service, it has been consigned to the bin.

And having got home, I had to almost immediately head back out for the cathedral Carol service – perhaps appropriately, the rain was biblical. Friday morning broke calm and beautiful, the pink sky seen in the top photo a peaceful backdrop as I walked to school for the last day of term. I (and I think everyone) was ready for/needed term to end – tired and ready to rest. And that is pretty much all you could do on Saturday as storm Darragh hit with a vengeance, with extremely high winds from Friday night into Saturday. At about 7pm on Friday evening our phones blared into life, klaxon sounding, with a red weather warning. The wind was howling, but we haven’t had too much rain to go with it (thankfully). Its still a bit blowy today, but definitely calming down – a good job as we fly to Madeira at 7am tomorrow morning and I don’t want any delays.

My shoulder/neck/arm is getting much better but I still get the odd ache and pain, particularly on the computer, and sometimes I still wake up in the night and struggle to get back to sleep as I can’t find a comfy, pain free position for my arm. Will be interesting to see if a week away from the desktop proves to be the cure I need.

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Aches and pains

I can’t quite believe that today is the 1st December, I’m not really sure where November went, and that the month of Christmas is upon us. Above is a pic from school where the trees have been wrapped in lights; when it is quiet and dark in the evening, or the calm gloom of morning, it is peaceful and magical. At home, today I put up our Christmas lights outside.

I continue to ache. At times it has been my neck, at times my shoulder, but I think the route cause of the problem is RSI through using a computer, with pain coursing through and up my right arm. Using a mouse, in particular, seems to be particularly triggering, my right first finger is often tingling and sore. I have ordered myself a “vertical mouse” – arriving on Tuesday – to see if that helps relieve the symptoms.

And, to add insult to injury, lying in bed last night/this morning, I could feel a pain in my lower left back, in a similar position to where I hurt it 4 years ago (same time of year – I wonder if general tiredness, run down-nes, a long term sat in front of a computer are factors?) so I didn’t run this morning, and spent a few hours with my back brace on. It seems to have helped, but I must be cautious as the last thing I want is for my back to “go” again – that was hugely debilitating and painful. Think I have hatched a new years resolution already – when all these current aches and pains have gone away, I need to develop a regular daily stretching regime to shake out the kinks and twists of daily life.

And just for info, today I swapped the dimmer switch in “my room” for a normal on/off switch – a simple task, but no more flickering lights.