January 2024

The new year started here with illness. I'd had a bad chest and awful cough since Boxing Day, in fact, the cough still hasn't completely gone. We'd struggled through New Year's Eve with Jasmine and Eleanor also under the weather and then on New Year's Day, Mick woke up with whatever I'd had. He's not one to moan though, unlike some men who take to their beds with a cold and call it flu, he just gets on with it. I think the last day he had off work for sickness was in the last century. Anyway, we're all much better now, thank goodness.

Mick and I spent New Year's Day on our own. It was lovely actually having the day to just relax before Mick returned to work on the 2nd. We spent the time catching up watching a few things we'd recorded over Christmas. Our TV is rarely turned on over the festive period so we had a few things to choose from.

We've had a few trips out this month. You can read about our visits to the Coast & Country in my earlier post. We particularly enjoyed our visit to Bridlington on the east coast, so much so that we returned the following week when it was a little warmer, though a storm was expected so the sea was very choppy. I think Archie especially enjoyed this second visit, he seemed to have a spring in his step and made lots of new doggy friends.

My reading mojo disappeared completely for a few weeks. I read my last book of 2023 before Christmas and I didn't pick up a book again until we were well into the second half of January. Even then, I've been reading sporadically and have finished just one book this month.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

"Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavor won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements."

It's a short book at just under a hundred pages but it's packed with such beautifully descriptive writing that it will be one which is long remembered. Not a subject I'd have expected to enjoy but I found myself recounting the story to Mick and it was clear to him that it's a book I'd enjoyed. There's little wonder that Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for this book.

I was thrilled to discover that I'd won a prize in a make along which I'd taken part in during the latter part of 2023. Ellie at Craft House Magic was running the Craft 20 a Day Make Along where you worked on any crafty project for, you've guessed it, twenty minutes each day. I joined in with my English Paper Piecing and won the prize for the last quarter of the year. Ellie sent me this gorgeous yarn, one skein called All I Want For Christmas Is You and the other a one of a kind. It definitely needs to be used together as the colours compliment each other so well. I just need to find a pattern to use it in.

We've had quite a few little treats this month, taking ourselves out for coffee (Mick) and tea or chocolate (me). We're lucky that we have a choice of cafes, some independents and some chains, near to where we live, quite a few within walking distance even, so we're spoilt for choice. It's nice to take ourselves out of the house, even for just half an hour, sit down together and chat.

A new series of Trigger Point started at the weekend and I've binged watched the whole six episodes already. It stars Vicky McClure as Lana Washington, a bomb disposal officer working for the Metropolitan Police. I enjoyed the first series and thought this second series even better. If you like fast paced crime dramas, this one might be for you.

So that's the first month of a new year already gone. I wonder what lies ahead, though one thing's for sure, time is whizzing by. It never seems long after we're seeing in one new year before we're seeing in another. Does anyone else feel the same?