Thursday 28th December

We have spent quite a few days in England.  Christmas and family and friends.  And while all of that was very enjoyable, and really couldn’t have gone better, it seems as if I have been living in some sort of dream state, or suspended animation.  Waiting, I suppose for my real life, back here in France, to begin again.  I haven’t even, as I am sure you will have noticed, been writing this blog.  It used to seem so important, but because my routine has been so altered, I just never seemed to find either the time or the motivation to write anything.  Mind you Politics seems to have gone into the deep-freeze too, with the exception of the downfall of Damien Green.  But somehow even that couldn’t seem to inspire me to write anything.  Reflecting on that now, I do have to wonder why these guys are so vehement in their denials.  It would have been so easy to have admitted that he was informed of pornography being found on his office PC at the time; he could have then denied it was him, as several of his staff used to access the machine, and apologized for the misuse on behalf of his office.  Instead he brazened it out with absolute denials – denials which must eventually be exposed.

Anyway – we are back.  A pretty horrendous night drive home.  We had originally planned to drive back on Wednesday daytime, but our expected Boxing Day failed to materialise so we changed our plans and crossed about 4.00 p.m.on Tuesday afternoon.  We drove and then slept for an hour or so, then drove on again.  But the weather was awful, strong winds and lashing rain all the way, which made walking the dogs difficult.  But, actually they were pretty good, hunkering down with us for the long journey.  It got dark pretty soon after hitting Calais.  We glided through Paris around 11 at night, barely going slower than fifty all the way.  In fact one of the things we have noticed is that we do not hit a single traffic light in France, whereas in England it is traffic lights everywhere.  The early hours were a bit grim, but eventually the sky lightened for the last couple of hours of driving.

All in all though, we achieved everything we set out to do, bought all the paint and other stuff we had planned, visited all the relatives and friends, had some good meals and it couldn’t have gone better.  I suppose it is just me.  I never seem to feel really happy at the time, only in anticipation or on reflection.  Oh well…