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I'm back from my holiday.
Aug. 10th, 2013 12:33 pmYay.
Things of holidayness.
1. Relaxing. The thing was, on the whole, relaxing. Some travel stresses, but beyond that, chilled. We fitted all but one of the visits to relations into one day, and they were mainly stress free, so hurrah. The visit on the second day worked out too, because it was to Mum's friend, who I've never met, so my Aunt delivered Mum, the friend brought her back and I had the afternoon to myself and went graveyard exploring.
2. Graveyard exploring. There are a lot of cemeteries in Hampshire - initially I had planned to drive to Portsmouth and see the huge, historical one, but we drove to Pompey on the first day and the traffic was so horrendous, with roadworks, poorly marked diversions and the like, that I couldn't face going there a second day, so I stuck to the local cemeteries in Gosport. The nearest still took a good few hours to explore, so goodness knows how long I'd have been lost in the "big one". As well as lovely graves and memorials, I saw foxes playing and squirrels and birds and it was blissful. (although I went back the following day to take some photos of the sunset and managed to freak myself out - not by thoughts of ghosties, more by the overgrown darkness of the place and my uncertainty as to whether this was a place to be at dusk, not having local knowledge.
3. Narrow escape on the motorway. On the way to Hampshire I was in the outside lane, overtaking the other two lanes, when a lorry pulled out in front of a car in the middle lane - I slowed, not trusting the other drivers and thank goodness I did - in the middle lane was a car pulling a boat on a trailer. Out of nowhere an entire wheel came of the trailer. The car, boat et al veered across the lanes to get to the hard shoulder, causing the other vehicles to brake and swerve etc. Meanwhile the errant tyre bounced merrily across the lanes in front of me- where my now rapid braking allowed me to just miss it and keep going - until the bloody thing hit the central reservation and bounced back, in front of me again! I had to screech to a halt this time, and thank goodness, the car behind me managed to stop too. Scary. Ridiculous and all over in seconds. I was pleased with my reactions and spent the next couple of miles fighting the initial adrenalin buzz, then inevitable crash. I say again, scary.
4. Talking of. I shared a room with my mother and midweek I had a night terror and freaked her out by attempting to scream in my sleep to wake myself - which worked 'cos she woke me in a panic, so it all worked out in the end! Horrible dreams (the third in a week) of drowning. Hmmm.
5. I came back to find a ginormous bouquet of flowers sitting (in a box) in my front garden - a gift from my bank who booked me an appointment with a mortgage advisor but forgot to put it in their diary, so when I turned up there was no one to see me. They apologised profusely on the day, phoned me the following day to 'explain' what went wrong; sent me a letter of apology and now the flowers! They're lovely though.
6. Now I'm home and it's midday and I'm still in my pjs catching up with lj. Also hungry but with no food in the house and needing to do housework but with no enthusiasm. I do have wine but am resisting the siren call.
Things of holidayness.
1. Relaxing. The thing was, on the whole, relaxing. Some travel stresses, but beyond that, chilled. We fitted all but one of the visits to relations into one day, and they were mainly stress free, so hurrah. The visit on the second day worked out too, because it was to Mum's friend, who I've never met, so my Aunt delivered Mum, the friend brought her back and I had the afternoon to myself and went graveyard exploring.
2. Graveyard exploring. There are a lot of cemeteries in Hampshire - initially I had planned to drive to Portsmouth and see the huge, historical one, but we drove to Pompey on the first day and the traffic was so horrendous, with roadworks, poorly marked diversions and the like, that I couldn't face going there a second day, so I stuck to the local cemeteries in Gosport. The nearest still took a good few hours to explore, so goodness knows how long I'd have been lost in the "big one". As well as lovely graves and memorials, I saw foxes playing and squirrels and birds and it was blissful. (although I went back the following day to take some photos of the sunset and managed to freak myself out - not by thoughts of ghosties, more by the overgrown darkness of the place and my uncertainty as to whether this was a place to be at dusk, not having local knowledge.
3. Narrow escape on the motorway. On the way to Hampshire I was in the outside lane, overtaking the other two lanes, when a lorry pulled out in front of a car in the middle lane - I slowed, not trusting the other drivers and thank goodness I did - in the middle lane was a car pulling a boat on a trailer. Out of nowhere an entire wheel came of the trailer. The car, boat et al veered across the lanes to get to the hard shoulder, causing the other vehicles to brake and swerve etc. Meanwhile the errant tyre bounced merrily across the lanes in front of me- where my now rapid braking allowed me to just miss it and keep going - until the bloody thing hit the central reservation and bounced back, in front of me again! I had to screech to a halt this time, and thank goodness, the car behind me managed to stop too. Scary. Ridiculous and all over in seconds. I was pleased with my reactions and spent the next couple of miles fighting the initial adrenalin buzz, then inevitable crash. I say again, scary.
4. Talking of. I shared a room with my mother and midweek I had a night terror and freaked her out by attempting to scream in my sleep to wake myself - which worked 'cos she woke me in a panic, so it all worked out in the end! Horrible dreams (the third in a week) of drowning. Hmmm.
5. I came back to find a ginormous bouquet of flowers sitting (in a box) in my front garden - a gift from my bank who booked me an appointment with a mortgage advisor but forgot to put it in their diary, so when I turned up there was no one to see me. They apologised profusely on the day, phoned me the following day to 'explain' what went wrong; sent me a letter of apology and now the flowers! They're lovely though.
6. Now I'm home and it's midday and I'm still in my pjs catching up with lj. Also hungry but with no food in the house and needing to do housework but with no enthusiasm. I do have wine but am resisting the siren call.
