Louise in Yorkshire

 It was a quiet run up to Christmas. Evenings spent wrapping the last few gifts, and pottering around the house. On one of the days, I decided to teach little miss how to make a Victorian Christmas Pomander. Last year, they learned about the Victorian’s at school, but given how tough these pomanders are on the fingertips, I’m not surprised she hadn’t made one before.  The smell of oranges and cloves makes it worthwhile though. It’s a pure Christmas smell.  On 23rd, we went to our local theatre, The Scarborough Spa, to see the panto. I’m one of those adults who loves the panto, but thankfully little Miss loves it too so I have the perfect excuse to go. This year, it was Cinderella, with Anne Heggerty of ‘The Chase’ quiz show playing the role of the Fairy Godmother. We loved it.  Christmas Day itself was, as usual, a quiet affair. Little Miss loves her sleep, so she doesn’t wake me at 6am to come down for presents, but we got down mid-morning to find out what Santa had...

 I was so relieved to log off at lunchtime on Friday, and to know that I won’t be logging on again until New Year. I definitely need the break. Once I picked little Miss up from school, it was a quick change of outfit before we headed across to Helmsley to meet little Misses Godparents, the chap and his sister for a Christmas meal at the Black Swan. We were originally meant to meet up a couple of weeks back, but storm Darragh put paid to that, and the lovely folks at the Black Swan kindly rescheduled our meal for us. This week was altogether better anyway because, even though the cough is still fiercely hanging on in there, most of our flu symptoms have now passed.  We had a fabulous seat for our party of seven, and as we settled in it was time to exchange some gifts. Of course, little Miss was thoroughly spoiled as she so often is. A beautiful new backpack, sooo many amazing gifts.  Me and the chap also got a fabulous escape room type game, Curse of the Dark, which we’re...

 After the previous weeks debilitating flu, by the time Monday rolled around I was still feeling delicate, but was well enough to work again. I’m quite lucky in that 90% of the time I work from home, so at least I have comfortable surroundings and don’t have to commute every day. If I did, I wouldn’t have been back to work so soon.  I’d been looking forward to our work Christmas party for weeks. Fully paid for and in one of York’s swankier bars, I was looking forward to getting dressed up and dancing the night away. It wasn’t to be. By the time Thursday rolled around, I was still coughing and thoroughly exhausted. The prospect of putting my glad-rags on and hopping on the train to York was not high on my list of priorities. I was definitely feeling sorry for myself for missing out though, and needed to inject some Christmas spirit. What better way than decorating the Christmas tree. Little Miss was so excited that we were getting the tree out, and this year she was able to hel...

 Of all the weeks to return to blogging, and I choose the one where we all come down with Flu. Little miss fell ill on Sunday, feeling especially hot and quite tired. To be fair, now she’s a little bit older, she does seem to have slowed down with catching so many things. Bugs, coughs, colds, sickness was a weekly occurrence during her first school year. This is the first big thing she’s had since starting back in September, but wow, it was a biggy. Anyway, Sunday evening, she went off to bed and I finished the book I was reading. ‘How they Broke Britain’. A great read if you want to be really angry at the media, the Government and especially Rupert Murdoch. It’s a really well researched and presented book actually, that dissects each character in the Brexit farce that has resulted in the country being well and truly, broken! Spoiler alert: It features BoJo, Cameron and Liz Truss too (like you couldn’t have guessed). As expected the next two days little miss was at home, poorly. I ...

 After about 6 months ‘off’ blogging, I’ve decided to start writing again. This is my 4th iteration of a blog since I first started blogging, back in 2019. Every now and again I just get a bit fed up and take a break, and then come back to it again. They always follow the same format, an online diary. A place to put my photos, and a bit of a journal about what I’ve been doing. What a story they’d tell if I’d kept my original one going for all of these years.  It was unfortunate that I decided to take a break from blogging when I did. I was just about to embark on a 4 week sabbatical from work, to coincide with the school holidays. I spent 4 weeks on adventures, with a holiday to Wales, and visits to all sorts of local attractions, and a spa in the Dales. I even bought a selfie stick. I know, I should be ashamed.  The problem was overwhelm. A busy workload, social media overload (I’ve been taking a break from that too), and life in general. It all conspired against me, and...