Tuesday December 27th 2022

A really enjoyable but exhausting day for Lois and me - if we needed any more proof that we're getting old, this would be it!

09:00 We roll out of bed and go down to the kitchen. This is our last day of staying at our daughter Alison's crumbling Victorian mansion, where she lives with Ed and their 2 daughters Josie (16) and Rosalind (14) and son Isaac (12).

When we arrive at the kitchen table we see that there is no space to have breakfast because work continues on the "impossibly difficult jigsaw puzzle", that can't possibly be finished before Josie, Rosalind and Isaac go back to school in early January.

What madness !!!!!

Alison and Rosalind continue to work on this year's

 "impossibly difficult jigsaw puzzle"

10:00 We pack our stuff into the car and drive the 70 miles from Headley, Hampshire, to Risinghurst, Oxford to see Lois's relatives there. Lois's brother Andrew sadly died at the awfully young age - in his early 50's - and Andrew's wife Jenny died in 2013, but their son Ian and daughter Sharon are still there in Oxford, each with a large family. 

We haven't seen them for 3 years because of the pandemic, so this visit is long overdue, and we've also got bags full of Christmas presents for Ian's family and Sharon's family - 11 children in all.

we drive the 70 miles from Headley, Hampshire, to Risinghurst, Oxford

to see Lois's relatives in the Oxford area

12:30 We arrive at Sharon's house, but we think Sharon must have been in the shower, because nobody answers the door when we ring the bell, which is a pity. However Sharon peeps through the curtains at about 12:45 pm, and opens up, so all is well in the end.

Soon it's lunchtime and we are joined by Sharon's family: Sharon's partner Michael, Sharon's daughter Molly and her partner Sam, Sharon's son Billy, and Sharon and Michael's 2 daughters Lily Rose and Little Lois.

Molly is Lois's online chair yoga teacher, and we meet Molly's partner Sam for the first time. The couple live in Leeds, where Molly works for social services and Sam works in IT, mostly from home.

Lois's great-niece Molly and Molly's partner Sam

(left to right) Sam, Sharon's son Billy, Sharon's daughter Molly,

Sharon and Michael's daughters Lily Rose and Little Lois,

and Michael with Sharon, Lois's niece

We have a really enjoyable afternoon chatting with them all, they're all just such really nice people, every last one, and Sharon and Molly both talk nineteen to the dozen, which is nice too!

We are also green with envy when we see the private bar-room that Michael and Sharon have had built at the bottom of their back garden.

the private mini-bar-room that Michael and Sharon

have had built at the bottom of their back garden.

I ask Michael if they got the idea from stand-up comedian Jon Richardson, but they don't seem to be aware of Jon's private mini-pub, the so-called "Dog and Bastard", a media sensation which was extensively covered in Jon's and his wife Lucy's reality TV series "Meet the Richardsons".

But what a great idea anyway!

16:00 We drive off to our hotel, the Hawkswell House in the Oxford suburb of Iffley, and, feeling totally exhausted, we check into our room. Lois wants to see "The Goonies" on Channel Five, a film that we took our two daughters, Alison (10) and Sarah (8)  to at a cinema in Columbia, Maryland, where we were living in 1985.

Happy times !!!!!

We feel very at home at this hotel, we've stayed here several times over the last 15 years or so.