Alarm at 0730…but too tired to leap into action after last night’s excesses. Eventually hauled ourselves out of bed. Porridged. Aki donned her waterproofs and headed off to the hairdresser on Essex Road. I packed and brought the car down so I could fill the boot. Put together our packed lunches. Aki got back just as I had started transferring our luggage to the car. Wished Lynne upstairs a happy Xmas, and out some cards through neighbours’ doors before heading off up the Great North Road. M1 was slow going. We stopped at Tollington Services to eat our packed lunch and grab a coffee. Passed about four stranded vehicles on the motorway, including one which had just come off the slip road from Dunstable and was sitting in the slow lane! We got more and more behind schedule as we hit bottlenecks, and then we saw warning signs stating that the M1 northbound was closed between J32 and J33. We pulled into Woodhall Service station, and decided to drive out via the service road onto the local road system, which took us toward Rotherham...traffic was very heavy as it was obviously being diverted off the M1 at J32...our diversion eventually saw us re-join the M1 at J33. Came off just after the Tinsley Viaduct, and headed across country toward Holmfirth in the dark. As we drove down hill toward the town, a warning message appeared on my dash saying Error: power system failure - seek workshop assistance! However, the vehicle kept going, and we managed to get it uphill onto Underbank Old Road and park up outside Jim and Kath's house...about three hours later than we had anticipated. We were warmly welcomed, and met Duke, their new dog, a rescue from Romania! He's very cute, but very timid, and didn't want to make friends. We were delighted to find that Ro was at home...having gotten married in Cayman last month, she is now awaiting naturalisation paperwork so that she go go live with hubby Rob on the island...we are already planning a visit! Barney was also home, but had gone in to town to meet old school mates for the traditional pub crawl. I had a go at lifting Barney's Ivor Novello Award statuette...it weighs a ton! We were treated to dinner, and I served up some of the rice pudding I'd made for Katrina and Tony...it was very creamy, and the nuts give it an unusual crunch. It went down well. We retired to the living-room for a catch up and a beer before heading to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment