Reasons To Be Thankful

Managed to locate a halal turkey yesterday weighing a mighty 8 kilos, this being the size of bird which Maureen and John are expecting for the dinner they're cooking up for us today. Our original supplier could only manage a slim-line 4 kilo affair, not enough, I'm afraid, for the big occasion. This was one of several 'issues' that needed to be settled yesterday, but settled they were, making me realise how lucky we've been throughout this little trip. Well, lucky so far - but that's more than enough for us.

A few examples of the universe being on our side:

We took the Eurostar when it was actually running, just before the big freeze. We travelled up from London before the roads became impassable, and the car we've hired for Part 2 in Manchester, a Kia Soul using diesel, handles really well on the snow and ice.

The French immigration people turned a blind eye to the fact that Noi and the girls didn't have documentation of how they were intending to leave France (long story) when they could very easily have refused them entrance.

While the rest of the country complained of chaos on the roads, Fifi and Fafa were enjoying sledging down a variety of slopes on John and Jeanette's wonderful bright orange plastic with a bit of string at the front sort-of-sledge - the cheapest fun you can possibly imagine.

Mum has been considerably more lucid since our return from London, and we actually got her out to drink some tea with us and go shopping in the course of a visit to the doctor.

The strike action threatened by BA cabin crew, which would have screwed up our return journey big-time, is, for the moment, on ice (as it were) due to a court injunction.

The trapped nerve I was suffering from earlier in the year, which made it impossible to walk for more than ten minutes a time, seems to have untrapped itself - I have had no problems with it at all throughout December, at one point walking along the Seine from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower, from the Tower to the Arc de Triomphe, and then all the way down the Champs Elysses, right back to our apartment in the Marais. (Pardon the spellings which I can't check here.)

I finally got hold of Procol Harum's Broken Barricades on CD - with bonus tracks - and it sounds as good as it did when I first bought it on vinyl when I was a callow fifteen-year-old.

Blimey, not a bad run of good fortune. Now all we need is decent enough weather to fly back to Singapore on Monday unhindered and it'll be a royal flush indeed.