last Sunday of the year..

Steve here this evening....just making sure that a) our reader hasn't forgotten me and b) that I haven't forgotten how to type. Tomorrow is "back to work"....so I had better get back into email/iPad/Blackberry/laptop mode. As I type we are preparing for the disappearance of son No. 3 who is off to Munich in the morning.....when questioned this evening as to why he's going to Munich for New Year, he didn't have anything like a satisfactory answer other than it was a "cheap" destination. I can't think that the fact that Germans make half decent beer had anything to do with it.
He's suffering this evening from buslag....just like jetlag, but the transport is slower.....He went to some party at the Watersplash last night.....one of those destinations that sounds great (even when you live in Rozel) before the event.....but when you find yourself at the other end of the Island at 02:15 (apparently they let you stay "on the premises" until 02:00 these days!!) it does seem like an awful long way from home.

As our reader might imagine, Dan's enthusiasm for packing this evening is not great....moping around the house trying to think how he can get 5 days clothing in his hand luggage...yes you heard right....hand luggage. It would appear to me that one of the reasons for the cheapness of the flight is that no official luggage is required.....I suspect that an awful lot of clothing will be "worn" on the plane. You stay mighty hot....but you get to travel with enough clothes for the duration! I'm not sure that Dan had considered temperature when booking the plane, but seeing as he discovered yesterday that it's barely going to get above freezing even during the day in Munich this week it's not surprising that he's now fretting about how he's going to keep warm. No more suggestions necessary thank you dear reader....

While I mention Dan...he did feel very hard done by in one of our Christmas games the other evening. The questions concerned Heinz Tomato Ketchup.....Bex's question was a picture...what is this?....a photo of the top two inches of a ketchup bottle.....not too difficult. Dan's question was "why is the number 0.028 significant? and the answer (of course) is that 0.028 is the speed (in miles per hour) that ketchup comes out of a glass bottle of ketchup....just slightly more tricky....I suppose one can understand why he got stressed.


Jack has been skiing around Meribel all day....and how lucky is he? Yesterday was not the best day to be travelling to the French Alps....tens and tens of thousands set off for the slopes yesterday morning....and very many of them didn't get there. Put up in schools and churches overnight when routes became blocked and impassable, the police were, this morning, turning motorists around and sending them back home if they didn't have snow chains on. No snow for weeks and weeks and then a humongous amount in 24 hours.  Jack had a driver who knew all the back lanes apparently....he's a lucky boy.

Dog walking activities today consisted of a short burst this morning with Bex and AB....Jill was otherwise engaged with housework activity of another kind, and I was "on the radio" for the Politics Hour....and then a longer blast on the beach with Jill and I this afternoon. It was a sharp contrast between yesterday and today....stronger wind and quite a bit colder.....it proved so (literally) breathtaking that we started at Longbeach and almost immediately went back to the car and drove to Seymour and started again from that end of Grouville Beach.....it's so much easier to do the second half of any dog walk with the wind at your back. When you get exhausted and turn around, to head to the car, the last thing you need is to, at that stage, have to deal with a Force 6 wind trying to blow you back down the beach.....my contribution is being brought to an abrupt conclusion.....her ladyship wants to add a few jewels.

... thank you for the anonymous comment left on yesterdays post!! Cheeky.
 I have blood test 9:30am tomorrow morning... fingers crossed as I have a bit of a sore throat... think its probably due to all the nagging i have been doing to the minion.....