Christmas Day no 2….

We save our family pressies for the day we all get together, and today was the day :-))

Off to D’s sister Ele’s and being joined by Andrew, Nikki, Esme, Nikki’s mum and Bonnie the greyhound :-)

Much chat, much laughter, great food, thoughtful pressies and Esme being an absolute scream. I have no idea where that girl gets her confidence, humour and worldliness from. She’s definitely been here before!

It was approaching midnight as we set off home in the dark, clear, icy night. Felt quite magical.

A couple of miles from Ele’s we reach a turn in the road where we carry on to the right but my childhood village is a mile along to the road to the left. As we approached the junction I had this overwhelming feeling of time reversing and in my head we were heading to my grandparents house circa 1987 where we’d be greeted with much love, warmth (literal - coal fire - and metaphorical) homemade soup, scones, laughter and no doubt practical jokes (my gran loved mixing very real looking fake biscuits on the serving plate with the real ones and watching D try to bite into them! :-))

So immersed was I in this train of thought I got quite a fright when David slammed on the brakes as we turned right on the roundabout at said junction. A car coming from our left had been approaching the roundabout at such speed D was convinced he wasn’t going to stop and run right into us. Thankfully his action averted that disaster! But it certainly brought me back to the present with a jolt! Also it’s at that very spot I was involved in a motorbike crash in my teens. Not quite as happy a memory (although thankfully I can’t remember the crash.)

Thankfully the rest of the journey was uneventful, well apart from us singing along loudly to Heart 80s radio :-)))