October - November

Chaos begins

Once we were back from holiday, I had 5 days to do my post-holiday washing and ironing, and cram in a haircut, a visit to a gasrto-intestinal consultant, and an have an Endoscopy, before my family came to stay.

When I went up to London, I took the opportunity of of visiting the display of poppies at the Tower of London. They were certainly spectacular, just a sea of red. And of course, they weren't all there yet. It's quite mind-boggling to think of that many people being killed.


I've never seen so many people around the Tower, so taking photos was a longish process, involving queueing to get near enough to see anything at all. Mind you, I believe it got worse in November, and people were being asked not to come.

The day after my endoscopy, my sister, my daughter-in-law and my grandson arrived to stay. My sister was only able to stay three days, and left the morning my daughter-in-law's mother arrived from France. (There had to be some pretty swift sheet-changing.) Apart from the day when she arrived and the rain poured down, the weather was pretty good and she was impressed with the beautiful autumn colours in southern England.



This was taken in our garden, just as the leaves were starting to fall in the last few days of October.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much time for sightseeing with them all as my grandson became ill with a respiratory tract infection, and eventually we had to take him to my doctor to get an antibiotic. We had to change their train ticket back to Manchester as the poor little soul was too ill to travel. My daughter-in-law's mother left after five days to go back to France, and fortunately for us, she didn't develop the illness she caught from our grandson until she got home, when the poor woman was quite ill.

Three or four days after she left, my grandson was well enough to go home, and the following day I was back at the hospital for a long and comprehensive breathing test. The day after that, I got the respiratory illness my grandson had kindly passed on to me, and was ill for some time. Life went on around me as I languished in bed, and eventually I too had to visit the doctor for antibiotics.

On the day I got out of bed again, I thought I should get some air, though the weather was rather damp. So we had a rather muddy walk in Emmets Garden, where there was a wonderful display of autumn colours.



The day after that, we were off to Manchester again. My son and daughter-in-law are due to have a second child, and I am going to spend some time in Manchester to support them. So I spent nearly a week up there, trying to find myself a place to stay. I want to be close to them, but it don't want to stay in their house, which never works well for very long. Anyway, I selfishly don't want too many disturbed nights - I'm not too good if I don't get my sleep.

At the end of November, we came back home again because I had yet another hospital appointment on December 1st. I'm convinced myself that it's acid stomach juices from my constant reflux getting into my lungs which are damaging them and causing my breathing problems, but it seems to take several specialists and umpteen different tests to prove or disprove this.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

End of the holiday

Saturday October 18th
Because the last day of our holiday was a day of 6 trains, I resisted writing about it, leading somebody to ask me if I had, in fact, ever come back. So, yes, I did come back from holiday but it has taken me a couple of months to steel myself to write about it - I suppose it depends on how much you enjoy train travel, but I did not find 16 hours spent in trains was all that enjoyable!

We left Kanderstag at about 8am - not the best time for photos - but I did take a last few snaps as we walked the short distance to the station to remind me of the place.

The town is in an almost circular bowl and mountains which surround it are high, as you can see.




I imagine the place is often dark like this because it is completely surrounded by high mountains and the sun only reaches into the valley floor later in the day.

You can see the sun effect in my photo of the station.



The sun is striking the mountain tops, but it'll be a while until it shines into the valley. Although it's a pretty village, I think I might find it quite depressing to stay for any length of time, with louring peaks on all sides and only a few hours of sunlight around midday, when the sun is directly overhead.

Train number one took us to Brig, where we caught train number two to Geneva. From Geneva, train number three took us to Paris.

It was evening by the time we reached Paris, where a coach took us through unbelievably awful traffic (Paris needs a congestion charge!) from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord. After a short time in the very shabby Eurostar terminal, we caught train number four to London. In St Pancras we said goodbye to the rest of our group and went to the other end of the station to catch train number five, a Thameslink train to East Croydon. Train number six took us to Oxted, from where we caught a taxi home, arriving around midnight; I was too exhausted to unpack anything, and we just fell into bed.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad