Christmas isn’t a time of year I look forwards to; it’s too commercial, too full of expectations and false promises and the daylight hours are too short. However, I appreciate I’m very fortunate to have friends and family and I value the time the season offers to be with them. At the River Cottage Canteen in Bristol, just before Christmas, we celebrated Tom’s birthday with three of our four children, their other halves and Bee. A truly happy occasion was made even happier by the news that we’re anticipating not one but two new arrivals in 2017. It looks as if we’ll need a bigger table for my birthday next November!
Without my dad and Tom’s mum it felt important to make memories with our remaining parents so we drove to the south east to collect Ma and Tom’s dad, Ken, so that they could spend the Christmas week with us. We’re very happy that they’ve both been out on the boat this year, but we’ve added fish and chips at Tenby, beach walks at Aberaeron and Poppit and surprise Christmas stockings to the store of thing to look back on. The nine hour traffic jam to take them back home again is probably best forgotten!
For all that I know that every year brings its share of ups and downs, I love New Year. I have a brand new diary for work on my desk and my pocket diary (yes, I’m old-fashioned like that) is already filling up with dates. 2017 lies ahead like a stretch of newly-washed beach still damp from the receding tide - what impressions will we make on it, I wonder?
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Hello Muddy! It was awful, wasn't it? We ended up in Sussex so might even have passed you along the way!