Another hectic weekend, this time in my home village.
Started off sitting in traffic for hours getting there. Every road looked like a clogged artery, but it was a chance to chill out as I’d worked solidly dreading hair that week. It's been a bumper month with six booking so far. The travel fund is looking peachy.
Got over there in one piece. My brother, Bill, and nephew, Damian, were down for the weekend. On the Saturday I went shopping in Rugby with me mam. We trawled the charity shops and came back via the plant nursery in Crick. Then we went down to Hollowell Sailing Club with friends of the family. We have a small boat there, and we took a picnic down. Mum had made apple cake and chocolate fudge brownies (yum!) and I made banana & cherry cake and chocolate & coconut cookies.
That evening, Bill and I went up the pub for a few drinks. We don't see each other often, so it was a chance to catch up and put the world to rights. We ended up bumping into a couple of guys who used to go to my old school. We got chatting and ended up back at theirs for an impromptu house party. Met a very interesting guy who was brought up in Keswick, near Castlerigg stone circle. Really nice bloke who gave us a lift home at an ungodly but satisfying hour.
It was really good to spend some quality time with my bro and get to know a few faces from the village again. I always find it strange when I go back because I’m constantly looking for people from my school days, but expecting them to be the same age and look the same as they were then. Very few people stuck around I think. I haven't seen any school friends there for years.
My local has just been put under new management and it's thriving. For a number of years it was foundering and there were threats of closure but, hats off to the new couple, Kate and Nobby, they're even installing a microbrewery in the courtyard! Huzah!
I headed home on the Sunday and, after clearing the traffic caused by the annual point-to-point horse race, things were going swimmingly. Until I broke down on the A449.
This is a fantastic stretch of road between the M50 and M4, at Newport. It saves paying to go over the bridge but, once you're on it, there's very few ways to get off it, which means recovery vehicles take a while to get out there. My alternator had packed up and I lost power on a stretch with no hard shoulder, so I had to aim for the bank. It was quite exciting but, luckily, there wasn't too much traffic about, and I brought a book with me so I tucked myself up on the embankment and waited 60 minutes for the AA man to arrive.
It took a long time to work out where I was. I wish there was some device on your mobile phone that you could press and let them work out your co-ordinates. When you're surrounded by hills and trees, one direction looks very much like another. Sod's law I’d pulled up directly opposite an AA telephone, but it was on the other side of four lanes of traffic and the number was white on an orange background - impossible to read from the opposite side of the road. Luckily, I had TomTom with me and it gave an accurate reading of my location and how far I was from the next junction. TomToms are lifesavers. So is having a fully charged mobile phone. I’m just glad I could get a signal.
So, that was my first experience of being rescued, and the bloke was absolutely lovely - thank you Mr. AA man! He's a very nice man, and the part I needed cost a grand total of £4.99, which I had in exact change :)
I’m back now and all's right with the world. Plodding on with uni work. My plan is to get all the boooring essays out the way this week and take next week as official holiday 'me time'. There are a few places I fancy seeing whilst the weather is lovely.
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