It has been a strange week. Monday came with us all getting up early and heading out to Purton for Tricia’s Uncle Johns funeral. It was scheduled for 11:30am, but we had been forewarned the church was likely to be packed and to get there by 11. Well, we were there for 10:50am, and there were very few seats remaining! The church was jam packed, with over 400 present. It was a good service, good in the sense that people turned out to remember a well respected man. Even the local MP was there. After the church service we walked up to the cemetery, where he was buried. Not many dry eyes amongst us.

We all then went to the Pear Tree hotel. It was good to catch up with a number of the family on Tricia’s side… just sad that it was a sad occasion that brought us all together. We travelled back late afternoon, and stopped at a pub/restaurant called the greyhound, where Tricia’s mum and dad, her sister Lesley, her brother David and his other half Manda, and all five of us, sat and had a meal. When we arrived back home, Nikki volunteered to drive Robbie back to uni, which I was thankful for, it had been a long day.

Of course, back at work, Tuesday felt like Monday, and I felt like I was chasing myself all week. I resented the biting cold of the week, I am dead keen for spring and longer, warmer days to arrive. Winter never used to bother me when I was kid… but as an adult it is a case of clenching teeth and getting on with it. We had been promised snow, and I had been hoping the weather men were wrong, but unfortunately not. And so Saturday night we had a dump of snow. Fortunately the roads seem to be reasonably clear this afternoon, so hopefully shouldn’t be too bad tomorrow morning.

This afternoon Tricia, Nikki, Ellie and myself went next door, where Elizabeth and Don were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.

Yesterday I sat down to watch West Ham v Millwall on the tv. Last year Nikki bought me a West Ham shirt, with ‘McSweeney 50’ on the back… I wore it on a few match days and it didn’t seem to bring any luck, we kept losing. So, I stopped wearing it on match days. Yesterday however, as I was sitting watching the first few minutes of the game, I thought ‘what nonsense, it’s only a shirt, can’t make any difference’, so I went up and put the shirt on. As I came downstairs I could see that West Ham had just had a player sent off. Damn, I thought… the curse strikes again. But I perservered, and so did West Ham, winning the game 2-1, despite being down to 10 men for 80 minutes.

Not much news from Robbie since we saw him on Monday, although he facebooked ‘Finished story-boarding Iron John! 55 sketches in total!’, which is his curent project.

Picture of Nikki with her team mates from the Junior World Champs.

Time to go…. be safe everyone.