Twas the night before Xmas

As we march our way into our 20th Xmas here it feels really quite odd.

We well OK the management has managed all the presants, it's all under the tree and it's not yet 9 pm, a normal Xmas would be a 2 am rush of parcels and paper.

This year, it is not yet nine and everything is done, we have watched a shed load of I player and retired, we are having a quiet night.

 20 years ago we had a telly, now we watch everything online.

She is reading a book, I am writing, well I suspect you guessed that one.

Think we might have an early night, we have a St Emillion Grand Cru to keep us company for lunch tomorrow, 2007 was an OK year too.

I probably paid about 10€ for it - lot of money for a bottle of wine.

Lots of things have changed this year.

We thought fostering was over and now we have G - here for at least a year.

Little D is gone, things have really unravelled for him, but you can only do so much.

We bid a sad farewell to Citroen C5 estates, they have been a big part of this last couple of years. But after a too long absence back into the fleet came a Solihull product. A Land Rover Discovery with the 3.9 V8, automatic box and LPG. I am a bit of a petrol head at heart and I love that toy.

It fits brilliantly into our needs, we have a mega fun AX for flitting back and fore into town. For practical stuff we have the VW T4 van. If we need to move 6 people we now have the Discovery, if the weather turns all horrid we now have the dircovery, actually, we discovered this week that, running on LPG, the disco is not bad for long trips either. On locals it's horrendous like pouring fuel into the floor.

I love it though, the distant muted V8 noise.

Starting to sound like Jeremy Clarkson so it's time to stop driveling
  
                 

 

 

It was twenty years ago today

It was twenty years ago today, Sargent Pepper taught the band to play.

Aside from such Sargent Pepper type comments.

20 years ago today we loaded up our lives in the house my parents died in, it took a 1957 Bedford RL truck I bought for 600 pounds - with 1000 miles on the clock

A rather dodgy Renault Traffic with my mate Chopper Charlie at the wheel.

The management driving a Land Rover 110 with 3 baby seats in the back.

The amount of gear that bedford just swallowed up was bewildering.

We drove on down to Penole 120 miles on. The house my mother was born in, something we learnt a year or two later.

It was vile rain blasting wind hurling weather and as we left the A roads the undulations set the Bedford body a flexing and soon had the ropes holding down the tarp twanging.

Lots of stuff was wet but it all came off the truck

By about 7 the fire, an elderly coal fired Parkray was struggling to make the place warm.

It was 3 degrees in the living room with the fire lit

We had not realised that the previous owners had drained the oil tank, so the AGA would run out in the morning.

The children, all babies were in their cot in ski suits.

I was sat on the settee in a puffer jacket with my hat on wrapped in a duvet.

I wondered if this moving to West Wales lark really had been such a good idea.

Trefigin Oil were about to leave for their Xmas do when we called them, heard the babies crying in the background  and one of their drivers came down to fill our tank instead of going down the pub.

The local coal merchant delivered half a ton of anthracite also

It took me till boxing day afternoon to get the living room up to 20 degrees.

Over the last 20 years we have put a bit of a stamp on the place, as one of the locals said, within living memory no one has lived here this long.

We have done the research on the place and actually, no one has been daft enough to live here for 20 years in quite a long time.

And we are still here,

R