Saturday 22nd February 2025

Woke around 0800. Got up and descended to the kitchens to make tea. Aki cooked porridge. Sat at table with mum and dad…Kath out working. Nice sunny day. Aki and I walked down to Darras to buy milk. Stopped for coffee at No.9. Walked back up Whinfell Road...Aki waved hello to a woman who was doing some gardening out front of No.36, and she came over for a chat...she and her husband are in the eighties, but look good on it. She used to be a county swimmer! I mentioned that my dad went swimming at the Sports Centre, and that he celebrated his 95th birthday yesterday, at which point she said, "Weren't you in The Blackbird yesterday? Turned out they were on the table behind us! As we said goodbye we found ourselves falling in step behind a couple of blokes carrying shopping from the Co-op...I thought I'd seen one of them on the phone outside Bruno Guimares' old house opposite mum and dad's, and asked them if they had moved in...turned out Newcastle United's young left back, Lewis Hall, has moved in, and the blokes were Lewis's dad, and grandad. The dad asked me what I knew of the Halliday's, who had lived in the house in the 1970s when we first moved to High View...it turned out he had been a policeman, working with William Halliday in Slough with the Thames Valley police force!!! I used to baby-sit William!!! Extraordinary stuff! Buffet style lunch. Decided to take advantage of the sunny afternoon, and drove to Northumberlandia, near Cramlington, for a walk. Took two cars, as Kath needed to head off for work in Morpeth afterward. Dad only managed it to the moat, and turned back to wait for us in the car...mum decided it was too windy for her to mount the face, and Kath took her back to the car park while Aki and I successfully climbed to the summit. Took in the views, and hurried back down out of the cold wind. Drove back to High View to cook dinner...boiled a ham, which we ate with mashed potato and greens...Aki did a mustard sauce. Cooked up a chicken tikka masala to put in the freezer. Watched a bit of telly and pottered about upstairs on the computer before taking an early night...hoping for an early getaway tomorrow morning.