New Year’s Eve 2023
I’ve always felt kind of sorry for the last few days in December. Reviews of the year have usually already been done but so much could still happen on these end-of-year days. That said, I have no reason to think anything dramatic is going to happen today, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t. Just in case, I will do some kind of review of 2023 next year.
Maybe this should just be about some of my thoughts about the Christmas period from my 2023 perspective of having two homes, one in London, one in Scotland. So privileged. I don’t feel like an obviously privileged person, but whether I like it or not, I know I am in some respects, not least for having two homes.
Chris and I drove from Lewisham to Scottish Borders yesterday. Due to my inability to sleep the night before travelling, I gave up trying to sleep at 05:20 and we were on the road when I looked at the car clock at 06:26. It was a Saturday and for the entirety of the drive, the roads were fairly quiet. It rained almost the entirety of the drive. We stopped at Blyth Services, Nottinghamshire, at around 09:05 and had a McDonald’s breakfast. The next stop was Mainsgill farm shop on the A66 near Richmond, where we bought some meat for tonight’s dinner as well as for last night and the next few days. We then stopped in Lockerbie for diesel. Still raining.
As we left Lockerbie for the 45-minute drive to our house, we saw snow on the higher hill tops, then noticed that it was getting lower and lower the further we drove out of Lockerbie and up into the hills more. Then it was apparent there was slush on the road and that the snow must have fallen recently on very wet ground. Lovely, a wet, white covering of snow. About six miles from our house, there having been almost no snow for the few miles previous, there was snow everywhere. Not thick, but everything had snow on it, though you could still see plants that weren’t covered in snow. The road by this point was white except for car tracks. Fortunately, it was wet snow rather than frozen or powdery. The car (I have winter tyres on my two-wheel-drive car, which make a huge difference) moved along the road of its own will just the once but otherwise it was fine. We stopped just before the house to take a photo. It wasn’t dramatic, but considering how much rain there had been and how it was only just cold enough for the rain to have turned to snow, it was surprising. It reconfirmed that we live in a micro climate within a micro climate.
It might have been the first time ever that we arrived back in Scotland and the boiler was still working properly. In fact, there were no obvious issues when we got home at 13:50. The house was cold and we were dressed for London winter but other than that, good to be back and not to have to deal with anything.
I had been away since 21 December, so nine days, and Chris had been away since 11 December, including a week in Morocco for work. It took both of us until the evening to acclimatise a bit. We know it’s colder here but it’s always a lot colder than we’re prepared for.
Being in London, other than Christmas Day/Boxing Day at my mum’s and Chris’s sons coming round on the 27th, I caught up with five friends, Chris and I had a fancy lunch out in central London (Richard Corrigan at The Portrait), we walked around the National Portrait Gallery, I bought bread and coffee from Borough Market, walked around central London, went to the New Covent Garden Flower Market, popped into various shops (including a Sri Lankan supermarket for non-conventional Sri Lankan/Indian ingredients) and easily did 10,000 steps every day (except Christmas Day).
Obviously, had I stayed in Scottish Borders, it would have been a massively different nine days, including a significantly wetter nine days.
None of the above is surprising. I have been thinking about this blog for a while now and I think tomorrow’s post will be the last, at least for a while. I think I originally thought I would finish on 18 November, a year to the day since we moved, but I somehow didn’t feel ready to end there. Ending with the first full year, January to December, seems kind of appropriate. I will, however, probably write occasionally, if and when something new/unexpected happens and maybe around the first of each month.