Month: December 2025

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It’s Christmas!

So Christmas has been and gone, and it was a lovely few days for the four of us together.

But before that, on Monday, we all headed over to Wells Weatherspoons to meet upwith Dad & June, Jane, Mark, Ollie & Ben, and Rog & Lisa, Joe and Lois. Unfortunately we have no photos of the day (for reference, we went for 1pm, left circa 6pm) but it was nice to catch up with everyone.

And this week the rain has stopped falling, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. We had a lovely day on the 25th – plenty of presents and lots and lots of food!

On Boxing Day we wrapped up warm and headed off to West Hay to walk off some of the excesses of the previous day

before heading home to lunch and then some fun and games together – the drawing game was particularly amusing

Some semblance of normality is beginning to return to the household – yesterday the table cloth came off, I washes it, and hung it out with the rest of the washing. In the early afternoon I thought I had been pranked by Becky – it was no longer on the line. Couldn’t see it anywhere, got my ladders out, peered over into next door’s garden to see it sat forlornly on their lawn. It was a very windy day!

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Homecoming!

On Tuesday Sophie came home for the holidays, and on Wednesday the three of us went to Bristol for the Christmas spectacular which was, as ever, a fun night out

Then on Thursday it was back to Bristol for me to collect Sam who was back from staying with Poppy in Carlisle.

The weather, though, has not been good – very wet for much of the time leading to the river Brue overtopping near Pomparles bridge

Although in between the deluges, on Friday and then Saturday morning, I did manage to jet wash the decks – a job that had become increasingly necessary as the wet autumn had led to a big build up of green algae, making them very slippery and unsafe. Not a pleasant job, but a satisfying one, probably something I should do more regularly throughout the year,

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Lucca

Spent most of the last week in Italy. On Monday, we flew to Pisa (at a very civilised 10.50 am – a good time to fly: no need to get up insanely early, but still giving you time to enjoy in your destination) and, after a long, wet late autumn/early winter it was an absolute delight to step out into the Tuscan sunshine. I shan’t repeat everything here – visit the Hap-pea travels blog to read more about it https://hap-pea-travels.co.uk/italy/tuscany-and-no-tinsel-day-1/ – but it was a wonderful five days away, enjoying some better weather (other than one morning when we went to Pistoia – a bit higher up, and found ourselves in cold, damp, low cloud all morning) we had warm sunny days, with chilly mornings and evenings, lovely food, culture and style. Italy has won me over – my faltering learning of the language continues, and whilst away, we booked our flights for October ’26: originally we were going to fly to Malaga and stay in Grenada and Antequera, but after one day in Italy the flights opened, my head had been turned and we’ve booked a week in Bari instead.

Returning on Friday evening, we have enjoyed a rare couple of dry days at home. Yesterday I went out for a 6K run, today I refereed Ashcott U16s. I end the year felling fitter than I have done in a long time. Today, I also gave the lawn a quick mow – there is quite a lot to do in the garden, but everything is just so wet, its not very enticing to go outside even when its not raining. What a good job it was to have four sunny days in Italy!

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All wrapped up!

So Wednesday was Spotify unwrapped day, when you get to find out what you’ve been listening to all year. A new metric this year was your listening age, and I came in at 62, a little over my actual age. (Becky is the baby in the house – having spent a lot of time listening to Benson Boon she has a listening age of 19) I have been listening to quite a bit of late seventies music, and it seems that Diana Ross was both my favourite artist, and sung my most played song:

In part, I suspect this is due to my running playlist – anything on that is going to get a fair few number of plays,

I’m pleased that I listened to fair few different genres – I’m not completely stuck in my ways!

That is one of the dangers of a service like Spotify – you can easily get locked into a loop of similar sounds and songs and unwittingly narrow down your listening habits.

Curiously, Sam’s consumption has fallen a little, although I still think we probably get good collective value from Spotify, despite the price continuing to edge ever upwards.

Riding the coat tails of Spotify unwrapped, YouTube have created a similar service called recap. It seems that, in the main, I watch aviation videos, car repairs, learning languages, and more recently, exploring my pension.

But, it seems, the music I listen to on YouTube is a little different from Spotify:

In other news, term finished this week (hooray!), other than Wednesday – which was a beautiful sunny day, and I enjoyed refereeing a good U16A cup fixture – the weather has been pretty wet.