Katy and I had a very productive weekend. We'd both taken Friday off to go into town and finish up the last of our xmas shopping. People look at us like we're insane when we mention that all our shopping is done. It's not our fault – we were forced into it. And think, Katy's folks' shopping is not only done and completed, but also already all gift-wrapped. Scary!
I'd managed to book myself an appointment at my optometrist on Friday afternoon. The good news is that my eyesight is stable and as good as they can make it and my eyes are in good shape. The bad news is that my eyesight is just about borderline to drive. As in, it would probably come down to the DVLA eye exam to determine if I can drive or not. Not the news I wanted to hear, really. I'd hoped they could have tweaked my prescription just enough to allow me to drive, but that's not possible. Meh. I'll see if I start taking driving lessons anyway in the new year and hope for the best. Coming back home was a nightmare. We were stuck in rush hour Cambs traffic for well over an hour (for a journey that normally takes about 20 minutes) and then we finally made it home in time for Donna and Will to come over for dinner.
On Saturday, we went to Saffron Walden to go have a look at the new Adnams Wine Cellar that opened there. It's not as big as the main one in Southwold, but it was still interesting enough to pick up a few bottles of wine. We also stopped by the butchers there and couldn't resist walking away with 4 kilos of prime Scottish beef. Half of that is in braising steak form and the other half of that is cubed (and already marinating to be turned into a steak and strong Suffolk Ale pie tonight – watch this space!)
I took some pictures of the pussy cat.
He's such a grumpy animal, it's not even funny. This morning, even, he bit me while I was trying to get some stinging nettles and other flora seed pods out of his fur. He's also a crap guard cat. When we came back from grocery shopping on Saturday, I opened the front door and heard a cat bell jingling about upstairs. Nothing unusual about that. Except that the cat that was jingling about wasn't ours, but some unknown black & white spotted cat that we've seen before in the village. He'd simply wandered in using the cat flap and was having a mosey around the house. He seemed a bit shocked to see us because he bolted out the front door as soon as he saw me :)
We had to go into Cambs against our better judgement to go meet a friend of Katy's who was in town for a College dinner. Even taking the Park & Ride, it was insane. It was so crowded as to be unpleasant. It'll only get worse for the silly season. In that sense, I'm glad we don't need to go into town again for shopping. Our trip into town threw a bit of a spanner in our dinner plans and we ended up eating at 8pm. Not good. We'd planned to make nachos and pizza again but – gasp! – I'd done something silly and bought flavoured tortilla chips instead of the plain ones we needed. That wouldn't have been so bad if the flavoured ones didn't have garlic in them. Our food crisis was thankfully solved by a quick trip to the Sawston Budgeon's (we called to make sure they had some. They had, yay!). Homemade nachos? They rock.
Sunday was a slob day. We decided to take a break from the gym and spent as much of the day dressed down as we could. We decorated the house with xmas lights and put up our “tree”:
I'm also inordinately proud of the fact that I finally fixed the damn lock on the front door. The thing was getting so loose that the whole cylinder was wobbling when we were trying to lock or unlock the door. I had to take the backplate off and tighten all the screws holding everything in place but, thanks to that and a bit of WD40, it feels like a new lock. This makes me happy. It'd been getting on my nerves for weeks now.
We did the usual weekend stuff (dishes, laundry, tidying up, etc) and we also did something that I hope will become a staple of our weekends: we played a round of cribbage :) I've been teaching Katy and her parents how to play. Katy's a natural. I keep (jokingly) commenting that she's picking up the game too quickly for my liking.
