Today was delivering all the local-ish Christmas cards day, which we always do on the last weekend before Christmas. It often seems to be the only time we actually see certain friends, despite promising each other every year we will get in touch and make the effort to get together more often. Christmas cards generally have been very thin on the ground this year – not sure if that is people being ill, a move towards eco-friendly not sending them, credit crunch meaning people are being tighter with their spending or merely us dropping off people’s Christmas card lists ;).
So we planned a route to take in Argos at Chichester for yet another reserved online item and calling into Bognor which has a The Works where I wanted to get a few bits. First Christmas card delivered and Ady went to do it while the kids and I stayed in the car. He was gone ages and really we should have gone in and had a cup of tea with them for a proper catch up. Ady’s promised we’ll have a night out with them soon (it’s his oldest friend and his long term partner) although quite how we’re going to arrange overnight childcare I don’t know! Hard to explain to someone when they regularly have her grandchildren to stay over.
Argos to collect and then into Bognor to drop off more cards.This was to the parents and sister of the previous friend’s wife who sadly died of an asthma attack when she was in her early 20s. The parents now live in an annexe of the house of the sister and her husband and their three children (still with me?), which by coincidence is the house that Ady was living in when I first met him and I often stayed at with my then boyfriend who also lived there. Two sets of other owners had the house inbetween those days and our friends buying it. Told the children the story and explained how you can die of asthma and all the people we know who have asthma and then gave a lift into town to the middle daughter who is off to uni next year. Those children were younger than Davies and Scarlett when I first met them and now all of them are embarking on uni and grown up stuff!
Both sets of friends said to Ady ‘we saw Nic on the telly a few months ago!’ 😆
I’d been planning to nip to the shops I wanted to visit but Ady and the kids decided to come into town too so we parked up and split up. I got the various bits I wanted and then we met back up again. Home via a Garden Centre (where Ady used to work and was working when Davies was born. On his first Christmas Ady was on the management rota to go and feed the pets on Christmas Day so we have photos of Davies in his little santa suit there when everything was closed :)) for a book I’d spotted for Scarlett ages ago but not managed to go back and buy since.
Four more cards to drop off on the way including two to old ladies Ady used to do gardening work for, one of whom was home and he says still hasn’t aged at all. Scarlett had been wondering about what happens at the beach when it snows and I’d told her the salt means it doesn’t really settle so as we were driving alongside the coast we pulled over to park and have a quick look.
It’s been really interesting driving around today seeing how in Chichester and Bognor all the snow has disappeared but here in Worthing and Lancing it is still very much in evidence with all of the side streets and all of the pavements still totally iced up and very dangerous for driving and walking. I was really surprised to still see big clumps of now very icy snow still very close to the sea on the beach so we ran around (by necessity, it was bitterly cold down there) for ten minutes or so before finally coming home.
and I managed to slip over 😆
Once home the children disappeared off to play and I got roast dinner on and did some baking. I made some pastry but it’s in the fridge to use tomorrow as I ran out of time and some mincemeat muffins. I also marzipanned and iced one of the two Christmas cakes. Again I’ll do the other one tomorrow.
Dinner was lovely, we ate watching the James May Lego house thing on TV and then we all watched River Cottage Christmas before the children had another late night. Tomorrow will be wrapping up and checking we have everything at which point all the stressy stuff stops and we can just get on with eating too much, drinking too much and watching lots of Christmas specials on telly!