Christmas Begins

We’re at my parents’ place now and doing our best to relax. The drive up was long, but we managed to avoid the worst of the stationary traffic (and it looks like things would have been a worse if we’d travelled yesterday as the roads are badly overcrowded as a knock-on from so many airports closing due to the fog!)

Instead, yesterday I was up surprisingly early and took a stroll around the park. I did some snapping of the birds on the lake and came away with a usable shot of one of the mute swans. After breakfast Rosie and I headed into town with my dad (poor Brett was still bed-ridden with a stomach bug) to shop for the weekend. Rosie and I had a look at some lenses for my camera but didn’t buy anything.

The bulk of the weekend shopping was for a get-together we are organising on Sunday for a few of our old friends from school. In previous years we’ve spent several days of the holiday period trying to visit everyone we know and we inevitably only ever get to see a few. I really didn’t fancy all the time and travelling this would involve this year (I really AM after an easygoing holiday!) so instead we invited people over to the parents’ place for lunch; we’ll lay on a buffet, everyone will come to us and we can catch up with everyone at once, they can all catch up with each other too, and everyone should be happy.

Well, I say everyone should be happy, but once again we seem to be having difficulty reaching Jon A. I’ve now left two messages on different phones trying to reach him and haven’t had a reply from either. Conventional wisdom is that he has a very controlling wife and that seems to fit with the observable facts; whenever Jon runs into someone in town he is always very chatty and wants to spend time with you, but usually gets told that he has to leave by Ann (his wife). Ann seems not to like any of his old friends very much; she is always quite short, verging on the abrupt, when talking to any of us and seems to try to prevent any contact with the old gang, or to limit it as far as possible when it is inevitable. It is rather sad, but that is the way it looks and, yet again, events are bearing out the theory.

I spent yesterday evening mucking about with my websites; I’ve now got my photographic domain name pointing to the commercial site where I’m putting up the stock photos for sale. I got those few (four actually) of the photos I’ve taken with the Nikon to date uploaded and available. I’ve also put a few more into circulation on Flickr to hopefully get some feedback from other photographers.

Today? Who knows? Probably a run out to Billinge Beacon to see how the view has changed. Maybe another walk into town. This evening drinks at Chris and Michelle’s place.