A grumpy look back at the festive period

There was an almost total lack of Christmas in our house this year.
Anyone who knows me will know quite how grumpy I get at this festive time of year!

It wasn't helped by the boiler breaking down three days before Christmas day, the same day that one of my tooth crowns came out embedded in a wine gum. Unfortunately my life doesn't stop for Christmas, though everybody else's seems to.
Fortunately we managed to get somebody out to fix the boiler (the tooth has to wait till 2020 but at least it's not hurting). On the negative side, the boiler went wrong again on Christmas Eve.
So we spent Christmas huddled in one room, thankfully with woodburner keeping us toasty warm.

Lots of snuggles and the woodburner kept us warm and cosy for Christmas

Christmas Day itself gave us gorgeous weather. We spent a good couple of hours clearing out some of the veg beds as I put my slowly recovering back to the test. Then it was a short drive to take the dogs for a walk along the River Welland in Crowland while the rest of Britain tucked into a gluttony of turkey and listened to the Queen's Speech.

This meant that we didn't encounter a single other human being while we were out, which was just perfect.

My faith in the human race (well, at least one of them) has since been slightly restored as the boiler man came out the day after boxing day and spent a good couple of hours getting the boiler up and running again and didn't even charge us.


I have been starting to sort my seeds for next year and planning the next rotation of the veg beds. We have a week of dry weather ahead of us which will hopefully sort the ground out a bit too, as Arthur doesn't like walking on the mud or getting his belly wet wading through puddles.

Two days after boxing day I braved the shops - alien territory for me. I have a trip coming up in February and the only clothes I have are old clothes for outdoor work, certainly not suitable for where I am going.
It was all too much for me and we managed to do a whole retail outlet in under an hour. Nothing purchased though.

The penultimate day of the year saw me down in London to have a camera down my throat, part of ongoing surveillance for a genetic condition.
Fortunately they gave me lots of sedation so I don't remember a thing, though the results weren't great and I have to go back again soon. A final kick in the teeth from 2019, which has not been one of my better years. Let's look forward to 2020 and hope that things go a little better.

The final day of 2019 was spent shopping again, this time in Peterborough which has a lot more to offer than Spalding.
Everything went well and I bought everything that I needed, which is fantastic as it means I probably won't need to go back to the shops until late 2020 at the earliest!