Twas the weekend before Christmas

I have had an interesting few days one way or another, with the weather and a very petulant daughter who is over excited about Christmas, and full of cold. The snow in the UK on Friday threatened to stop me getting home, however in the end I was only delayed by an hour and a half. I took the car to Gatwick 1st thing Friday morning ready for a return to Nottingham on Monday, and to avoid any problems on the roads, and caught the train back to London to work.


The trains were all over the place timing wise, but there was still a good if slow service running, and so when I got back to London Bridge station to go to the airport I caught a train that was running over an hour late, but it actually meant I arrived at Gatwick earlier than normal. This being the last weekend before Christmas the tourists were out in force, having left their brains at home as usual, so security took an absolute age, especially as Gatwick security is amongst the slowest in the UK, they would say for slow read thorough, so combine the two and you spend a good 45 minutes looking through the metal detector arches before you finally take your turn.

Once we took off we were looking down on a winter wonderland all the way from the UK to Angouleme when suddenly the snow disappeared and we landed in a green Bordeaux, and bizzarely I saw no snow on the drive home from Bordeaux until I reached Jarnac, you could say the river Charente was the snow line so Sigogne was a winter wonderland, but our neighbours south of river were surrounded by the more usual winter green.

Our daughter is, for the first time, suffering from over excitment in the run up to Christmas which has resulted in some huge mood swings and some not so pleasant fits of temper, which we have never really seen before, when she does not get her own way. Now I can see why parents can sometimes say I'll be glad when Christmas is over. All this is not helped by the fact that she has a streaming cold at the moment so has been inside for 5 days, I hope she calms down whilst I am away otherwise I shall be returning on Thursday to an exhausted and exasperated wife and mother in law.

So its Monday morning and I am heading back to the UK for a short week of work, I'm only working about 3 days though I already have too much to do both in both my work and private life, but that is how it is a Christmas, then, when I get back home on Thursday afternoon I will have 10 days of staying on the same place with my family which I am really looking forward to. Weather permitting I am heading to Nottingham, Harrogate, Mansfield, Ashbourne, Bourne and Southend to name but a few before I head back to France in the car on Thursday morning.