Wee J

We had a very long day, a lot of it spent in the car.

I dropped my sister at the hospital first thing, and I'm really glad she came out of surgery feeling chipper. I remember that feeling. It wore off :-( No, seriously, I'm sure she's going to really get a lot of benefit from this operation.

Back at the house, I breakfasted with Mr A and L, and then we dropped L at Norwich Station as he had to go into London to work. Unfortunately, between us we managed to leave a picture (previously belonging to my father) and L's book at my sister's. Ho hum. Another time!

We headed south and met up with E and T, and baby J at the Blue Anchor in Feering. This was a randomly chosen meeting place, which allowed them to travel out of London on the train and us all to meet up somewhere with parking, decent food and a good ambience, within walking distance of a train station. It worked well. If it had been raining, it might have been more complicated.

Six month old babies with jet lag are quite hard work. Eventually, after being unsettled for a while and being carried around by his dad and his mum, wee J conked out on his dad's shoulder. The extra shows that his dad was taking some liquid relief at the time. I was very happy that we had been able to add this 'extra' to the trip down south, as E and T are in the UK for just a few days. It was the first time we'd seen them since May/June 2014, when E spent several weeks in Edinburgh. I singularly omitted to photograph her at that time, as I've just checked my blips for the relevant period. Reading those blips made me feel quite queasy at how much I had on at that time....Stress, stress, stress.

In contrast, getting from Norfolk to Essex and back home again in a day seems quite simple. We hadn't planned to make it all the way home in one day, and we thought we'd take advantage of one of the roadside hotels around Newcastle. But we got to Newcastle around 7pm and both felt ok, although I was the one doing the driving as Mr A can't drive in the dark at the moment. I just kept going, although I stopped off for ten minutes or so at Alnwick to use the loo. And lo and behold, there we were back in Edinburgh at 9.30pm, after the smoothest of journeys.

It was, in the end, really nice to be back in my own bed, and I think we both slept like logs.