Big Chill

What a week – where shall I start? That's a good idea, I'll start at the beginning...(sorry – it's turned out to be a long one...)

You probably don't care that might have noticed that I didn't even do the Sunday Stealing meme last week – you know what? I took one look and thought, emphatically – no, I have too many other important things to do. My resolve held tight and I resisted.

On Sunday morning our good friends from Colchester were coming up for coffee and of course I had to provide nibbles to go with it so I ended up making my mince pies – for my transatlantic readers (apart from Kathy!) I don't know if you have pies made with sweet mince meat (a misnomer – no meat is used!), it's made of dried fruit and sugars and lots of other sweet things that don't readily spring to mind! We don't usually entertain on a Sunday morning – generally I sit around in my PJs for far too long so I had to make an effort!

I cannot even remember what I did on Sunday afternoon! Probably dozed and crocheted and mentally prepared myself for Monday, which saw the start of the first full week of my interim role – clearly nothing special happened because I can't remember (anybody spotting a theme here?)

That takes me nicely on to Tuesday – which was my birthday, a big birthday. I'm generally quite shy about birthdays and tend to keep them quiet at work but this year a few people had found out, thankfully nothing embarrassing happened and the day passed quite discreetly. We went out as a family on Tuesday night – just the four of us. Son 1 volunteered to drive which was great and we were really grown up and went to a bar for drinks before dinner! We had dinner in one of our favourite restaurants which serves mainly pasta and pizza dishes but has recently started serving more chicken and steak, which I think personally is a shame. We really enjoyed ourselves (I think I speak for all of us) and had a lovely evening. Oh I almost forgot my dear friend Janet wrote this for me I was so touched, it made my day!

Wednesday – nothing special, but Thursday brought the first snow of the winter. I left work to go home not having looked out of the window for a while, to find snow in the car park! John and Son 2 were both going out for the evening with their respective work colleagues, before he left John asked if I would pick him up – as this was early evening and the snow was already falling thick and fast and laying on the roads I was a little bit reluctant to say the least! Son 1 came to the rescue and offered, as long as it was before 10pm he would pick him up. Fortunately for us, he got a lift. Which took over an hour and half to do a ten minute journey. John said the town was gridlocked, police were stopping drivers going to the town centre and all of the side roads were virtually impassable – which then led to the question 'Where was Son 2?' Attempts to speak to him on his mobile phone were fruitless he either hung up or couldn't hear so John decided to go look for him in the hope they would meet fairly close to home. He was closer than any of us realised. He was actually laying, in the snow, in the road – in our street – making a snow angel! You know – children usually do this by laying down and moving their arms and legs from side to side and leaving an impression of an angel behind. He's 19 and to my knowledge never done this in his life before! But then alcohol played its part.

We woke up on Friday morning to the heaviest snow I can remember for a long time (I think I read somewhere that it was 18 years ago that it was this bad which I remember quite clearly – John and a neighbour went to the supermarket with a sledge to get the shopping!) I can walk to work so set off at my normal time and John gallantly walked with me – it was not an easy journey by any means but a lot easier than some of the team who couldn't get their cars off of their drives. Team spirit won through and those that had got to work covered their missing colleagues without any fuss.

When we woke this morning there was more snow which had fallen on top of the slush which had frozen – as a result of yesterday's snowfall my grocery shopping couldn't be delivered so I had to brave the elements and shop myself – I'm still trying to work out how I spent twice as much in person as I would have done on line – ahh, temptation!

Sadly we were unable to go down to Colchester today to see our lovely God daughter in her latest production, we've been planning it for months but today the roads were still not good and the sky were full of more of the white stuff – John, who is normally more than happy to drive in bad weather was very reluctant to venture away from home so reluctantly we decided not to travel. The inevitable happened this afternoon – the sun came out and no more snow fell. I slept, John wrapped and the afternoon passed.

As I write this we have just finished Son 1's birthday dinner – he and FDIL are now upstairs packing up his bedroom in preparation for the big move out. How do I feel? Strange. I don't know when the ultimate move will take place – probably not until after Christmas, although they will spend some time in their new home whilst they wait for delivery of furniture and installation of the satellite TV and internet access. He'll be home for Christmas!

If you've managed to get to the end of this, thank you for bearing with me! May even do the Sunday Stealing this week!