Oh what an anarchist I am 🙂
We needed to pick up and pay for my car this morning. After some debate we decided to walk there (Dad had offered a lift). It’s not far but it’s a tedious and boring route alongside a busy road just walking past houses and then the last ten minutes through an industrial estate. But we’d not really been out much and despite it not being *fresh* air as such I decided it would do us all good.
So we walked, and chatted, and jumped in icy puddles and prepared a response to what we felt would be the inevitable question to the kids from the bloke at the garage ‘are you looking forward to Christmas?’ with ‘we’ve no money for Christmas, we have spent it all on the car’ 😆 which entertained us no end.
The card machine at the garage was playing up so after several attempts I said I’d go and get some cash if I could have the car to drive. The bloke was quite happy with that and very apologetic about the machine not working. This did mean I had to dash home, collect a card for a different bank account and withdraw from two places as the bill was more than the daily cash machine allowance from either one. Back to the garage to pay and then home to juggle money back about online, including a minor panic attack at the amount of money left to last until the end of January until I realised I don’t get paid til tomorrow so my wages were still to come.
We had lunch and the kids spent ages playing with the cardboard box Scarlett’s Playmobil came in, tying some string onto it to create a sleigh to tug some of her soft toys around in and then making furniture for it to turn it into a house. There are loads of festive films on so we watched some Spirited Away, Nightmare before Christmas and Alaska.
I finished Maisie’s bag (a Christmas present) and then made a soft toy duck for Scarlett – she wants a Sploosh and a Lucky so I started with Sploosh, the black one. It went really well aside from the bill / beak which I just couldn’t get right despite two attempts. Will have another go at that tomorrow but Tarly loved it regardless.
I took a phonecall from the letting agent, very excited because he had got a viewing lined up for Thursday. All sounds quite promising too :). I really don’t expect it all to fall in to place quite that easily but it’s nice to know there is interest straight away even if it comes to nothing.
The kids and I had a bit of tidy up, they had some food to tide them over til later and Ady arrived home. We’d decided to drive into Brighton for the Burning of the Clocks – as it turned out the right decision as it only cost us £2 to park and the train would have been about five times that for the four of us with a far longer trek home. We wrapped up warm, drove in and parked, had a quick walk round the big shopping mall and then walked towards where Mike & Rose were who we had semi-arranged to meet up with but we got caught up in the procession so walked along with that instead and waited at the pier for Mike and Rose. Amazingly, given how many thousands of people there we did find them although we didn’t manage to meet up with Ali which was a shame – my phone had patchy signal and it was so noisy it would have been all but impossible to make a call anyway.
We walked along with the procession which was amazing and wondrous but I understood the advice to get to the end location earlier when we actually arrived and despite being only two or three layers of people back we could see nothing at all other than the back of other people’s heads. The kids saw more thanks to Ady and I lifting them up – I had Davies on my shoulders which retrospectively is pretty crazy even with a smallish ten year old ;). Thankfully the people around us holding their cameras and phones up high gave us small screen views of the burning and then when the fireworks started it didn’t where you were as long as you could look up.
We really enjoyed it and would definitely go again but would go for the birds eye view of being higher up next time rather than at lower level with limited visibility. We said goodbye to Mike and Rose and walked back to the carpark which seemed far longer on the way back, particularly as we were all hungry and walking through Brighton is one great big lure towards eating with cafes, bistros, restuarants etc at every turn. I showed the kids where my car had once been towed away from and shared other such anecdotes of my youth.
The car park was way cheaper than expected so much cheered by that we headed for home. Ady cooked the kids something and packed them off to bed while I had a bath and then I cooked for us while he had a bath. Since Alison mentioned a fry up a while back I have been craving one and thinking it would be good for dinner rather than breakfast so that is what I did – sausage, egg, bacon and potatoes with onions and garlic and some beans for Ady. Yum 🙂 Did feel very decadent to be eating ‘breakfast’ washed down with a glass of wine instead of a strong mug of tea or a glass of orange juice though.
Friendfeed induced silliness kept me from blogging and bed but having outstayed the wusses I am now headed that way myself.
If you want to see the end show then the trick is to take part in the procession. We’ve done it most years for the last decade. You get access to some reserved space and have a fab view.
Comment by Allie — 22 December 2010 @ 11:58 pm