Thursday 15th December 2022 – Keeping in Touch and Freezing

Since yesterday evening, I have been keeping in touch, via WhatsApp, with our youngest son as he travels to New Zealand for a holiday and Christmas with family. Not the best start to his journey, the flight from Heathrow was delayed; the crew were late getting to the airport due to the rail strikes. An element of time was made up and they landed just forty-five minutes late in Singapore. The next leg of the journey involved an immediate transfer to a flight to New Zealand’s South Island. The whole journey is going to take in the region of twenty-five hours and after leaving here on Wednesday evening, he will arrive mid-morning (New Zealand time) tomorrow which here, will be later this evening. I have never been on a flight longer than from Gatwick to Crete, which takes slightly less than four hours, so have no concept as what it feels like to be in the air for such a long period, and to arrive at a time that would throw my body clock into confusion. Anyway, at the time of writing, he is crossing Australia and I am hoping he has a window seat enabling him to have an aerial view of the terrain. I will find out more later when he lands and we are back to WhatsApp communicating. At times like this, I really appreciate modern technology and being able to keep in touch with ease.

The frosts have continued, not quite as hard last night but in some ways this was worse. We had some rain yesterday afternoon, which during the night froze on the roads and paths making it far more treacherous than previous mornings. We didn’t go far, just down to the car park where Peter distributed some grit from the bin on the corner before we bagged some to scatter on the road outside both ours and our neighbour’s home. I have a large bag of cooking salt and used some of this on our drive. I then spent part of the morning making a door wreath using foliage cut yesterday from our garden, adding some artificial berries. This afternoon there were still ice patches but it was a whole lot better underfoot. I collected some pine cones for decoration and walking back home along the cliff top, a popular path with walkers, we were surprised how quiet it was only one other on the path and nobody on the beach. Back home, I have made the Christmas pudding mix which will soak overnight and be ready to cook tomorrow and I may also put out some decorations and start planning what we will eat over the festive season.

Today’s photo was taken the other afternoon, with the mist rising up off the golf course.