Honey, I'm home!

What damp and dismal weather this country has, what overpriced goods this country has, what lovely finished buildings and roads this country has!

We’re back and feeling, refreshed, revived and slightly relieved. Can’t say it was all that easy as it was the first time back in Torrox since Louise’s Mum passed away but overall it was good to see her Dad (Peter), and even better to spend our days reading books and wandering from pub to pub. Diet schmiet!

It’s hard to believe it’s over a week ago that we were slamming back shots of pure caffeine at 4.30am in an effort to wake ourselves for the 6am check-in. Mind you, we did have a mild trauma before we left. Louise’s Granda was supposed to have flown out with us but took an angina attack the night before the flight, he phoned at around 3am and Louise nipped up to check on him in Monklands hospital, he was fine but annoyed that he wouldn’t be coming with us.

The flight out was deserted, yet despite that we still ended up with people on either side of us until a quick game of “move when the doors are shut” musical chairs ended with me with an entire row to myself. Despite this, and my best efforts, I couldn’t counteract the caffeine buzz and failed to catch up on any sleep on the flight. This is nothing new though, and the reason I can’t sleep on a plane still evades me, something which is doubly annoying when I don’t have any trouble nodding off when travelling on most other modes of transport. Except bicycles. Mind you, I’ve never tried.

The rest of Wednesday was a blur of emotions. All a bit messy so let’s skip that and head to Thursday where you’ll find us driving up to the cemetry to visit Louise’s Mums ‘niche’ (where her ashes are stored… also affectionately known as the ‘filing cabinets’).

Obviously this was an emotional time for us all, and it’s just as well the radio was blaring out some happy pop music whilst the sun bounced through the clouds. Helped lighten the mood a little. Or it may have been grey, started raining just as we left the apartment and “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. started playing about 30 seconds after we set off in the car. Which do you think?

You couldn’t make it up.

Thursday evening and a little light relief was planned as we headed over the road for the local pub quiz. Any hope of that was soon dashed as we realised that we were in ‘serious pub quiz’ land and seriously out of our depth! We press-ganged a few of Peter’s friends and somehow we fumbled our way to a draw at the end of the quiz. Two tie-break questions later (the first of which wrongly stated that the first Bond film was Goldfinger… not as we correctly guessed Dr. No) we triumphed! The winning question, which we got the closest answer to, was how many toilets will the new Wembley Stadium have? Go on, have a guess (no prizes though, I’m not rich and famous enough for that!). Answers in the comments.

The rest of the week, barring a couple of days of rain, was mainly reading books, chatting, visiting my father-in-law’s regular haunts for a shandy or three, and enjoying some great food and hospitality. The sense of community over there is very strong, and it was good to see how people look out for one another, in fact I lost count of the number of times that we were assured that ‘Big Pete’ was doing fine and that “we’re keeping an eye on him”. By the end of the week we had met all the members of the spy network and were happy that his every waking moment was under scrutiny. Not sure he is though!

Then, all of a sudden, the week had passed and it was time to head home. In some ways far too soon, in other ways just about right. Landing in Glasgow it was just as we left it. Dreich. A quick dinner stop (mince an’ tatties) with my family and home to sort out the junk mail, turn the heating up and start thinking about work tomorrow. Actually scrap that last one, I’ll think about that tomorrow.

Right… best get on. Only 84-emails to go!