The New Year in England

It was good to be back in England even though the reason was sad. I had been concerned about traveling as it was snowing in Virginia and Britain was getting the worst weather it had seen for 30 years. The airport was packed but moving efficiently and I was happy to be part of the cheerful British attitudes as everyone wished each other a Happy New Year.

I thought this was really odd looking out of Mum's window at a palm tree being lashed by a snow storm. Dorset usually has a very temperate climate hence an abundance of tropical plants. Luckily this well established tree would not suffer too much from the big freeze.

Phillip the pheasant has become a regular visitor and usually pops in around lunchtime for a snack. He's quite tame but not very vocal, yet happily gobbles up everything put out for him.

Greg and I walked down to the village in the snow to stock up on important commodities such as bread, milk, cigarettes and BACON. The local butcher shop was getting low on stock so Greg snapped up stacks of stuff. I was so envious of my brother as he's allowed to take meat back with him but I can't. He bought over 60 sausages, pork & sage, beef & garlic, and over 2lbs in back bacon. I thought miserably of the bacon back in the US where you wave a fork at it and the bacon shatters into shards.

Mum had bought these free range eggs at Sainsburys and I loved the pastel colors of the shells. They were full of flavor and large. 

 

Inside the box was a description of how the chickens were raised. Pampered poultry, but the eggs were the best I'd had in years.

When Greg had flown back to Malta after Dad's funeral, Mum and I had some wonderful girl time together. We barely left the house except to run errands but did manage to visit 2 garden centers for a look round and a cup of tea. Yay, the high life! I have to admit that I was slipping back into the English way of life very easily and quickly adopted the old routine of having at least 10 cups of tea a day. Above Mum and I having a spot of tea and a bun.

I found some of Dad's old photos and scanned this one of him in his class. This was Christmas 1937 when he was 7 years old.

 When Dad was courting Mum, they had a holiday in Cornwall. I scanned some of those images but particularly loved this one Dad took of some men hanging around the local shop. Dad did his own developing and used a textured paper, cutting the edges with special scissors similar to those used in scrapbooking today.

There's still many of Dad's photos that I'd like to scan and I know we haven't found them all yet, but I'll be going back to England in a few months to travel up to North Yorkshire with Mum and Greg to scatter Dad's ashes. That will be a sad yet wonderful trip as North Yorkshire is also one of my favorite places, so I can actually look forward a little bit to that time. And we shall all be stronger by then too.