Happy New Year

Blimey, over a month since my last blog. It's a good thing that J keeps hers relatively up to date. Two major calendar days have passed without comment and a few others too so I'd better say something...

I hope you all had good Christmas/New Year breaks. J was at home for Christmas and appreciated catching up with her loved ones. It meant a quiet Christmas for me - dinner of leftover lasagna and chocolates in front of the computer. Still, as an atheist and away from family it really was just another day.

New Year's Eve was much anticipated. J came home on the Monday and it was great to have her home. In a reverse of the relativistic effects of travelling, time seemed to pass slowly for me here while much happened for her while away. I surprised her at the airport by actually being there, but even that was a close run thing as she was 25 minutes early. She spent the rest of the day sleeping off the jetlag, then the next day getting sick. Either food-poisoning (but we had the same things to eat) or norovirus (but I didn't catch it) but her back to bed, so come New Year's Eve she was too crook to go out. Damn. Never mind, we popped out just long enough for the count-down and to see, from a distance, the fireworks off Edinburgh Castle and Calton Hill. the good news is she is now over whatever it was.

Since I had 4 consecutive days off from the pipework we popped out to see a couple more castles. Linlithgow was quite graceful and liked to be called a palace rather than a castle, while Blackness was a solid fortress, built to withstand Cromwell's artillery and later used to store the Scottish army's ammunition. Of course we finished exploring in pitch blackness (boom boom) as the sun disappeared at 4:00 pm. Two other days were partly filled by being dragged around shopping centres.

What else? I had a night out with some of the work crew playing Laser Quest. I was crap - cannon fodder - but still had fun. Oh, and there was a work dinner and a badminton dinner. The restaurant where we had the latter was burnt down a week later, which is a shame as it was a good restaurant but also a heritage building. But aren't they all here?

We've started making our plans for the year to come, with the overall assumption that J will get work again soon enough. The very weak pound (97 Euro cents, so way down from 1.40 last year) means we have that much less spending power, but what the heck...

We have decided on Leeds/York for our next place of residence. Leeds is the 5th largest city in the UK apparently and has plenty of history while York, though smaller, has even more. Each is an easy commute to the other so it doesn't matter which we find work in. Leeds is on the motorway and main rail route too, and they're not so far from here to move all our stuff.

This month we will try for a week in the Scottish Highlands; in February (or earlier if J has no work) a week in the archives in London; in March a short trip to Paris for J's birthday; in April catch up with G&RH; in May attend the 65th in Cassino, finish gathering those photos; following on from this, in June get matches for my own next article on a battle at Termoli, and spend time on a Greek/Croatian/Albanian/Montenegran (tba) beach for a couple of weeks. Then back to the grind for the rest of the recession-struck year.