19th January

John was out with the MODS today - MODS minus Das and Mark and because of the time of year their choice of venue was limited so John decided on Fitos and booked a table.  Gail kindly offered to take them but resolutely refused to pick them up - I get where she is coming from - four hours of food, chat and vino is a heady combination!  I offered to pick them up but there again I have had 30-odd years of experience picking John up from being out 'on the lash'.

I had organised a knit and natter/bitch and stitch sesh and Nicky and Gail were coming although Gail is still recovering from her operation so couldn't knit or stitch but was happy to natter and bitch!  I invited Nicky to come and have some soup with me whilst Gail was on taxi duty.  This weekend Nicky is taking Mark on a whirlwind visit to the UK to see Peter Kay at the O2 - part of his 60th birthday celebrations (he is 60 in September).

Bless Gail she came armed with wine although as I had to be taxi later I declined.  It was a lovely day and so we sat in the conservatory - it was 25 degrees in there!  Nicky and I had had our lunch and the three of us sat and chatted - mainly about Nicky's forthcoming trip and the conundrum of the email she had just received which seemed to indicate she had booked parking on Saturday at Larnaca airport when she needed it to be at Paphos!

We did do some crafting.  Initially we did some potato printing (like in the picture at the top of this post) and then we got out some Christmas Cards that we had liked to see if we could recreate them with bits and pieces I have in the craft cupboard.

John's mum will recognise the tree and the wording on this card.  I am not sure who sent us the actual original Christmas Card - I think it might have been George and Pam.

It was fun actually having Gail and Nicky there - we had a lot of laughs and we will probably do it again periodically - we just need Gail back to being fully fit.

I went to pick the boys up at 4.00pm so they had only been out for three hours but that was long enough for it all to be a bit messy.  I dropped the Bobster at his house and then took Rich to his front door, followed by Pete and then steered John into the house and suggested he might benefit from an early night - he didn't take much persuading and I had to go and make sure he had actually made it under the covers otherwise he would have frozen to death in our spare room which is chilly at the best of times!

I was quite happy to have an early night myself particularly as I had the whole of the bed to starfish in!

I said I had had a Shein delivery yesterday - in it was my battery operated LED taper candles.   I wanted battery because they are safer.  I particularly liked these as they look pretty realistic so for the couple of quid they cost I am more than happy - you just unscrew them to turn them off and as they are on the mantlepiece that is easy even for me.

I had an hour or so TV this evening with full custody of the remote control.  There was a Place in the Sun programme which was coming from Cyprus - it was interesting to see that one of the houses featured was in Arodes and was the one which John's sister Janice and her family had rented on their first visit out to see us about 10 years ago.  I actually missed the end of the programme to see which house the couple actually decided to buy.

Having satisfied myself that John was not freezing and was breathing I called it a night and went to bed!  Little did I realise that I had picked the boys up and they had forgotten to pay!  It's OK though because we are going ourselves tomorrow so can settle up then.