Snippets

Phew, we had a long day of travel and transfers to make the journey home - one of us (moi, of course) slept quite a bit. Dale was across the aisle from a mucus-gurgling, sleeping child whose parents kept holding the barf bag to her face when she choked on mucus - a little disturbing, and not sleep inducing.

We had a couple of hours delay at both Birmingham and Paris airports on our return trip. Charles de Gaulle was shrouded in thick cottony mist - it was weird to imagine being so invisible in Paris. This photo was taken on our inbound journey; none of this was visible on the return flight. 

Arriving back in Boston and waiting for the C & J bus was like arriving unequipped in the Arctic. Last night the temperature was recorded at -18°F (-27°C). It's brutal and fierce out there! We also had to clear snow off the car once our bus journey was over, but it really wasn't too difficult, just awfully, deeply cold. Thankfully, the depot has a collection of snow shovels for patrons to borrow. We had snow brushes and scrapers in the car, but a shovel was needed for this amount of accumulation.

What a welcome surprise awaited us as we arrived at our house - a cleared entryway! How incredibly lucky we are to have such kind friends who thoughtfully shoveled a space to park our car as well as a walking route to our front door through the 2 feet of snow. Just ... amazing! This made our long-awaited arrival back home after dark so much more manageable. Thank you, friends.

And, talking of amazing, Dale's cousins skillfully finagled a way to send a bottle of French brandy to our Welsh bungalow, that was hand delivered from our local Spar shop. What a delightful surprise that was - we felt so loved.

My brother and his partner were, as always, super welcoming, helpful and accommodating, offering all sorts of ways to help us transition smoothly, and providing anything we needed or mentioned. Besides a blow-up air mattress and some folding chairs, we set off for our new home with a home-baked lemon drizzle cake!

We didn't hear any Welsh spoken in any of our interactions - it was all straightforward English, except for 'haitch' being used instead of 'aitch' when spelling a word.

On one of our excursions to collect some comfy chairs for our living room, we struggled to find the exact house ... so we endured a drive along a convoluted, rutted, potholed, muddy farm track into the Welsh hills with a steep drop off on one side only to realize we were in the wrong place. We eventually managed to turn around and drove back down to the civilized part of town where we could get phone reception. Turns out the D-I-L had used the cottage name that she could spell in the text to us, but which wasn't to be found on Google maps! The other unspellable, named house on the property was traceable, though. The elderly farmer's wife stayed on the line with us and directed us to her gate and showed us around. It was an old rambling, run-down building that had moisture and damp creeping all over the walls, with musty carpets and curtains. The family was committed to emptying out the place so they didn't have to continue paying Council tax on an unused building.

We struggled to get both armchairs into the rental car, and didn't want to have to do a second trip in the dark, so we started questioning how we would tie the trunk down when the old lady remarked that she had some string because of course, this was a farm. Before she returned with her farm string, I remembered that we'd been traveling with "stretchies" in the car for just such an occasion, and we were able to secure the load very easily.

In all the uncertainty and stressful driving conditions, we didn't take any photos! Thankfully the chairs were not fabric-upholstered, and I was able to clean them thoroughly and immediately we got home - we had been 'gifted' numerous cleaning agents in our home, one of which was appropriately called "Bang! Black Mold Remover." Hey presto, we were in business ... but still didn't remember to take direct pictures of them, so here is an incidental peek at our newly acquired/earned armchairs.