Crossing Borders, and Accidentally AWOL

Ooops. Where did the last month go? It has been fully and thoroughly occupied by gardening, builders doing some long-overdue work to the house undercroft, more new windows, and the minutiae of “life in general”.

All very time consuming accompanied by many thoughts of how lucky I am to be doing it all.
All completely irrelevant to a blog which I am trying to keep focussed on my campervan.

Ignoring my little blog was quite deliberate, but I didn't expect that once I had no need to visit Blogger for myself I would drift away from reading and commenting elsewhere, that was not deliberate at all. If I have ignored you when I usually visit and comment, sorry.


But yesterday I had errands to run which took me over the border to Scotland. As I passed the huge blue & white sign on the M74 I reflected on how simply I had crossed from one country to another. On how I was in a warm, safe van with plenty of water, food, clean clothes and heating. Thousands of people in other parts of the world cannot cross borders, it was a sobering thought (grainy screenshot from Dashcam).



However, the cessation of 'normal' life in other places does not mean we should not carry on with our lives, so before I joined the motorway I took some time for a visit to Houghton Hall. It was a shock to find it's nearly five years since I was last there; it is almost on my doorstep but definitely not on my regular radar. A quick rummage at the Bag End blog brought up this post:



Poor Daisy was determined not to enjoy her day out . . . The subsequent blog post tried to explain her behaviour (in as much as you can ever explain) and yes, I would have that unique brand of crazy which was my Darling Girl back in a heartbeat. I do not believe you every really "get over" deep grief, you just learn to live alongside it.




Yesterday, however, I had a bloomin' lovely time and the Christmas displays at Houghton Hall were so much better than in 2018. I escaped without buying a single thing (because more decorations? really?) but the atmosphere was lovely and clearly so much time and effort had gone into setting up the retail space this year.










Errands accomplished I headed for home and figured that as I was almost going past the door of Dobbies I should check out their Christmas displays as well. Hmm, should have quit whilst I was ahead. What a difference - perhaps it was too late in the day (4.00pm) but the store was almost empty, the lights were too bright and there was no atmosphere at all. The decorations were laid out in seried ranks which might have been easy to shop from but there was no incentive to do so.

Came home with my credit card safely untouched all day, but what a lovely trip out; my errands could have been accomplished in about 3 hours if I had been focussed (hour there, hour back, hour doing stuff) but this was far more relaxed. Bimbling around in the comfort of Blue Bus, mugs of tea whenever I felt the need, lunch in the fridge, and most of the comforts of home if required. I really MUST make the effort and do this more often.