Confessions of an Author

Lisbon to the Algarve 1 Breakfast. Boys only 10 minutes late. We did a quick trip to the supermarket. After the trip to E.coli Service Station, everyone is a bit sensitive about where our food is from. Bought a range of breads and crisps and plastic looking cheese slices. My bread rolls have a use-by date of Jan 2019, so I’m not convinced they have much that’s natural in them. But hopefully that includes bacteria. Left the Sheraton, Lisbon, at 11:30. The resort in the Algarve only had a P.O. box address, so Husband looked on their website and entered the town name—Praia da Falesia—into the SatNav. All seemed fine. After driving for about an hour, the SatNav directed us off the motorway. J checked, and said he thought it was probably avoiding the traffic queues which were ahead. The roads grew smaller and smaller. When we were directed down an unpaved road, we began to suspect something was wrong. Could the SatNav have been tampered with by a gang of criminals, who w...

Portugal 1 Family Holiday 2018—Portugal We had planned a family holiday for the last two weeks of August. As the date grew nearer, the whole of Europe was gripped in a heatwave. We watched as temperatures in Portugal went over 40, and saw wild fires on the news. All rather a worry. Saturday We met R at the airport. J had been helpfully sending her updates on our progress (wrong airport, earlier flight, left already) but we managed to meet her at the bag drop. All good with the flight. I sat next to M/factoid boy, and therefore knew lots of facts about Portugal by the time we arrived. Some of these were interesting, for example, did you know that the Romans called the region known as France and Spain ‘Gaul’ and we were going to the area that was the main port, hence ‘Port-o-Gaul’? Or that, an exploring nation, the Portuguese discovered Newfoundland? However, after trying to establish a colony there they left, saying there was ‘nothing there’—hence name ‘Ca nada’. We ...

Surviving Easter Weekend and a Post Post Script Hello, and I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend. I am actually writing this on Good Friday, in a snatched few minutes before the next onslaught of jobs. No idea if I will actually make it past tomorrow. It has been a stressful week, but I will try hard to not apportion blame. It began badly, when the painter arrived on Monday. For some reason, somebody had booked a man to decorate the entire house, beginning the week before Easter. This is generally a busy time, as all the family, including my mother, come to stay, and then on Easter Monday we invite the whole church and anyone else who wants to come, and we all go for a country walk and have a cream tea. Last year we had about 80 people, so it involves baking quite a lot of scones. And having the house tidy. And is not helped by having a bloke painting random rooms the week before. But we survived. The painter man turned out to be relatively low-impact, though hav...

Setting Off Left home at 5.30 am. When I’m travelling with Husband, arriving on time is never a worry. Taxi to Heathrow. Went through all the airport procedures – luggage-drop, security, passport checks. As Husband travels so often, he knows exactly what to do at each turn, and always seems to be on the next stage. Every time I glanced up from finding my passport, or putting it back into my bag, or reloading liquids into my hand-luggage – he was out of sight and onto the next stage. (To be honest, I am not entirely sure  why  when you are at the airport 32 hours before your flight leaves, it is necessary to sprint through every stage. Just saying.) Husband travelling for work, and me using copious amounts of airmiles, so rather nice lounge experience. Though we were travelling with BA, and in my opinion, they are not as nice as Virgin. They had  paper towels in the washrooms, for goodness sake! You’ll be pleased to know I coped. Eventually got onto the plane...

These are a few of my favourite things….in case we have a thunder storm. 2 Christmas tends to involve a lot of stuff. Some of which is fun, and helps the general mood of celebration, and some just gets in the way. Sometimes I think we have too much stuff, and life would be much simpler without it. But there are some things which I really like, for a whole variety of reasons. Sometimes because of who or what it reminds me of, and sometimes just because it works really well. So, I thought I would share with you some of my favourite things (even though some are perhaps a bit odd.) I shall begin with my iron. People have been very rude about my iron over the years, but I think it’s perfect. It’s small and heavy and doesn’t hiss steam in a scary manner. My brother gave it to me in 1988, and it still works just fine. I expect you are jealous. Next is a more recent gift, a mug from my mum. It is chipped now (no one admitted responsibility, one of those mysterious damages that ...

Happy New Year! (Survived 2017 okay?) Well, I did it, I made it to the end of the year. Christmas was lovely, but busy, then straight into visiting family, family parties, and preparing for New Year Eve’s party. I can now collapse in a heap somewhere. The family parties especially are good to survive. They are fun, but somewhat different to the parties we had when I was little. In those days, we all went to my granny’s house, where she had a huge room that stretched across the shop below, and we played games. The games were things like musical statues, and postman’s knock – where no one ever wanted to have to kiss Uncle George because he didn’t have many teeth. He’s dead now. Today, it would probably be classed as child abuse. These days, I go to my in-laws houses for family games. These range from the impossible (Eg, trying to match words my mother might think of – I opted out this year and let my brother partner her) to the not so impossible (trying to stay awake du...

Christmas Meal with the Family For the last few years, we’ve tried to go up to London, to see the Christmas lights and have dinner together. Not anywhere particularly posh, but just to be together, somewhere different, where I don’t have to do the cooking. Last weekend was the 2017 family meal. I wasn’t sure if we’d manage it this year, as only Husband and I were at home, and everyone else would be travelling from different parts of the country, but they all seemed willing, so I booked a table and hoped it wouldn’t snow. It didn’t, but it did rain, which made the event damper than planned, but it was still nice to see everyone. We arranged to meet at 5:30pm at The National Gallery. I chose this time because it was an hour before our restaurant reservation, and my family, whilst wonderful, are somewhat unpredictable when it comes to times and trains and going in the right direction. Well, actually, it would be more accurate to say they are very predictable, and I knew ...