h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

for an early start driving up to Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on Sunday morning. Its a long time since I've driven such a long way - (small, I suppose in the scheme of things, but just under 300 miles, nevertheless)

I'm hopeful that if I can save up on sleep a bit I'll be able to do it with just a couple of breaks.

I'm getting very feeble lately, and am constantly tired; I really don't fancy dozing off on the motorway and being rudely awoken by the Hard Shoulder rising up to meet me, thanks. There'd be no chance of hitting the Central Reservation, as the Outside Lane(s) are for Other People, as far as I'm concerned. I'm quite content to trundle along at a steady 60 or 70mph and let them waste petrol.

So - Newark for a couple of days, then up to Worksop (the name always gives me the giggles, it's as silly a name as Penge) from Tuesday evening thru till early Friday morning to visit relatives; I haven't spent this much time with them since I was very small, and it'll be good to get to know them properly at last. Maybe I will find out why my small familly became split in two. Maybe I won't; we'll see.

Then back to Newark for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, leaving on Monday morning for Kent and home. I may be dutiful and call into The Mothers; it rather depends on how tired I get - and also how well I can avoid mentioning that I've visited the Sister in Law she cordially loathes. She'll find out eventually, because I 'm too open and will probably mention it in passing sometime in the future without thinking; but sure as eggs are eggs it'll cause a row if she's in Viper Mode.

Prior to my jaunt up North - well, North-ish, anyway, I'm off to the local theatre Saturday evening to see a production of "Hot Mikado", which will be a nice feel-good thing to do; a bit of fun and nothing too intellectual to enjoy in the company of my friend from Broardstairs. I'm looking forward to it.

So; see you all at the start of July, once I've unpacked and resurrected the flat. 9 days away is going to give the lads plenty of time and opportunity to make a right stig of the place. And there's no illusions that they won't. I thought *I* was untidy until they arrived on the scene, and they make me look like Mrs House Perfect.

Bless their off white cotton socks..............

Have a great time away, EC


Drive safely, hunny.... and I will look forward to your safe return


lil x

Take care Ev, and have a nice time. A change will do you good, and I am sure the boys will surprise you with everything shipshape when you get back, though I wouldn't vouch for the state of it in the interim

Websailor

Hope you enjoyed your trip Ev! We are away from next week too... catch up with you back end of July sometime, unless I happen to get online whilst we are away!

Yes, have a good trip (only just found this thread)

Friend Eva,
I hope you find much refreshing on your travel. Be safe in all.
JR

Dear Freind Eva,
I hope you have a time of renewal and enjoy the time with your family that you have so long in seeing. I hope your mother is not a viper to you, if so I think you will shrug it off now. The boys will certainly be like boys but may surprize you with a clean flat.
JR

Actually... they did! And I was amazed and really rather pleased, too.

It was a wonderful break; I have learnt so much about the familly history - which has solved a lot of little niggly mysteries - nothing terribly important, but it's still nice to have answers that make the past a bit tidier- and also it's built a proper foundation of mutual knowledge and trust between my relatives and I.

Which *is important and feels amazing.

And I have a 2nd cousin! My "middle" cousin adopted a little boy a year ago, when he was 18 months old, and we were introduced - he's a sweetie, and sooo tiny. Bright as a button though, and...oh, such an expressive face and full of laughter. A lovely little lad.

The stay with my friend was also very rewarding. We have known each other (we worked out) 34 years, but somehow, this visit, we learned a lot about each other neither of us knew, and I feel we, too are closer than we were.

I'll tell y'all about all the places I visited tomorrow, once I've had a long bath, a bit of supper and a really early night.

It sounds ridiculous to say I'm tired. I spent the best part of the day sitting down behind my steering wheel; but I was weaving in and out of streams of cars and avoiding the nutters who seemed to have a Death Wish, the M25 was tailed back miles to the QE2 bridge for about 5 miles, and took ages to trundle over, and the A2 motorway that takes me home is one of the most boring drives in the world - just miles and miles of tarmac, and some embarrassed looking dried up verges.

But it's good to be back "here" as well

Welcome back. Glad you had a good week and you are back safely.

A rest is exactly what you need I should think, after all that driving, especially in this weather.

Look forward to hearing about your trip later.

Websailor

Righto!

Having seemed to have a cats capacity for sleep which I have thoroughly indulged when it's been cool and un-humid enough to do so, I reckon I ought to get The Holiday recorded before Life starts taking over again.

I left at 7.00am, called in via Jans at Erith to drop in some bits and bods I'd promised but hadn't done so due to a tummy bug a few days prior, had a swift(ish) coffee and set off for the main leg of the journey around 9.00am.

The trip up was nice and easy really. I have a fancy GPS system nowadays, and having that Computor voice gently nagging me "to keep to the left" etc etc is curiously comforting. I had to stop around Peterborough for a bit of a walk and a stretch but all in all hassle free. And I arrived at my friends house around half noon, which was pretty good going. After that constant panacea for everything, a cuppa, I got unpacked, and her Friend came round to cook us an absoutely enormous roast dinner. She brought him down to Kent, ealier on in the year when she visited me, and it was good to re-meet him; he's a nice bloke.

And a rather good cook, too!

Monday, H & I drove over to Lincoln, did the cultural thing and meandered around the Cathedral there for a while; it surprised me to see Pagan Symbols, like the Green Man and the Green Lady sitting comfortably alongside the Christian Symbols; the Old, obviously being assimilated by the New and not a quarrel between them!

How come, I wonder, there was so much bloodshed, and ametuer Inquisition, and screeches of "Heresy!" a few centuries after the Cathedral was built? There must have been a few centuries of selective blindness I guess. My god, right or wrong, but you *will* believe as I do...or else!

Deep meaningful (and unanswerable) questions put aside, we had a girly day and trawled the Charity Shops; found a lovely silk tea dress with an expensive designer label and a light cotton smock with another expensive designer label and got the 2 for just shy of ten quid.

I do like a bargain!

Tueday we just explored her home town of Newark until it was time for me to get into the car and drive the 30 odd miles to Aunty and Uncles. Again, that GPS was a boon. It was good to see Y & B again, and at long last, on a level; no defensiveness, no subject taboo'd in the interests of not getting into a ruck, just questions and answers in a laid back civilised manner, filling in, as I've said before, an awful lot of slightly puzzling and unexposed details.

We had a lot of these Talks, but we also went and Did things, too.

Wednesday we visited Sheffield - it's an amazing place; it seems to be full of Water Features... fountains, and steel walls with water perpetually streaming down them; it was great to see so many small children darting in and out of the fountains, giggling and having fun and doing what kids are supposed to do - it seems to be a really User Friendly sort of a place.

B, being a vicar, gave us a guided tour of a couple of the churches there, which I enjoyed; I genuinely like any old builiding, be it castle, or stately home, church or ruin. We bought some salads and juice and had a picnic lunch under a grove of trees and it was a lovely, laid back day. Lots of laughter.

Thursday morning we drove to Clumber Park. Again, well worth a visit, and I managed to get some great photoes of the water fowl there, including a really long shot of a Mother Duck and her little brood bootling towards the lake at a rate of knots from the woodland, which was a good 500yds away. My lads chose well when they gave me that camera for my birthday last year

Then lunch out, at a local Carvery, to meet up with my middle cousin and her little son. The eldest cousin lives in Greece and the younger one lives about 50 miles away from the parental home, but K is local, and I was glad to see her. I wasn't keen on her when we were children, on the rare times we did meet, so it was good to finally meet as Adults with no axe to grind, rather than - in my case, anyway -suspicious and defensive children.

It always made me feel very uncomfortable to be with such *Gentle*, softly spoken people when I was small - I was assured by the parents that it was just an act and I could bet my boots their only aim in life was to lull me into a false sense of security before the rug was pulled out from under me.

Its taken a long long time to get rid of that sort of conditioning - I'm glad I finally have.

Thursday afternoon was spent...well, digesting such a massive lunch, really. I was persuaded to indulge in a dessert with the wonderful name of "Lumpy Bumpy Cake", made primarilly of Chocolate, cream, and yet more chocolate.

It's a tough job, but *someone had to try it

Friday I packed, and we all met up again at the local Pick Your Own, where we industriously picked huge basket loads of strawberries, Lit'lun included. Bending or crouching was a bit of a challenge for me, so I just crawled along the lines and lines and strawberries and got thoroughly earth encrusted from the knees down and the hands and face up - I left them gloriously mucky with 2 baskets of fruit for H, which we made into jam, and hulled and froze when we ran out of Jam Sugar.

I shan't ever leave it so long to see Y&B and the Cousins again. The beauty of meeting properly as adults is that you meet as "people" rather than relatives, and they are lovely folk. What amazes me is that they are not so very much younger than The Mother, and yet they are so youthful i their approach to life and have such a zest for it.

Saturday I nipped into Newark to get a few bits for H whilst she went to her workshop, as she had a saddle fitting to do, and for once, the customer s brought the horse to her instead of the usual her going to the horse. We returned home within 5 minutes of each other, which was great, because we just had time to get ready for her friend to call on us, and we drove to the Peak District to celebrate one of their friends' 50th (surprise) Birthday party.

I'm not *quite sure what was in the communal punch bowl, but it was very more-ish, and more than likely had something a little more potent than the abundant number of strawberries that were floating in it! I'm glad it was H's friend A driving and not me!

Sunday, once the chores were done, H & I drove over to a whacking great Boot Fair.... one man's rubbish is another man's treasure, and I found a pair of curtains that will fit my front room windows perfectly, from ceiling to floor, thus cutting out the draughts come winter.

And that was it, really. I visited over 6 counties in 7 days, 5 of which I'd never been to before, and I want to do it again. I can feel another House Move coming on, somehow; I like what I saw very much and felt comfortable there. The South of England, although I have many individual friends is not as generally friendly somehow. As for Kent being "The Garden of England"... well - maybe sometime, it *was filled with greenery, but it's not any longer.

I'm back to concrete and council tamed beaches, and primly mown lawns of the one park again. Short of meandering along the beach and watching the waves, there isn't any scenery that makes me catch my breath at the beauty of it, as I did last week. I love the sea, but I'd like to be near woodland and hills again. I forget how much I enjoy them.

On the plus side, my friend from Broardstairs is calling into me for lunch tomorrow, and next week I'm back to the theatre to see a One Man Show by Julian Clary.(Not even as High Brow as Hot Mikado, which was great, btw,, but again, something to laugh with)

And it's Son No 1's birthday tomorrow week, and he wants to go to Howletts Zoo for the day. Mother, of course, is chauffering him, so it's a friends and familly day out. And no doubt, lots more photoes.

See? Life is taking over again already

Good, isn't it?

What a fantastic time you had, Ev Meeting rellies as adults is indeed a joy: there is that common link already established, so if you get along you can miss out all the background 'getting to know about you' questions. I'm so glad that you've discovered family: it's important.
Fb

It is, Fb; but I've managed a good fourty of my 50 -odd (very odd!) years telling myself it isn't, so it still comes as a surprise that, hey, actually it is!

That's thanks to the lads, more than anything; They loved me and instinctly knew about "blood" ties far sooner than I figured it out;

being adopted, and having met my Natural Mother only to find she'd got (at least) another three adult children, one of which was a good 14 months older than I...and had kept them, but farmed me out for adoption left a very sour taste in my mouth, especially when I realised she really truely was, at the most charitable, an irresponsible liar. She was that worst of things, an insincere person. I can tolerate any fault but that.

I decided famillies sucked! And I didn't need one, anyway. Honest.

Then the boys came along, and children have no pre conceptions, do they?

So I watched and listened and I learned from them what my parents should have taught me from the word go.

It took me awhile (far too long, really) to accept how much they really loved me. But I'm glad I did.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A2082197 sums it up quite nicely.


It feels really good finding some more people I can love almost as much as I do my sons