It got busy at The Oakstump on Boxing Day! Chris, Lucy and the girls arrived for lunch, joining Steven and Sherry, and later, while I was out on a dog walk, Andree, Ian, Svitlana and baby William. I had to leave just as the party was getting going, and before Claire, Si Bess and Florence got here, travelling down from Leeds.
Simon and Kate collected me and we drove to Kettering for our annual Boxing Day family meal with my sister Pauline, brother-in-Law Rob, and niece Megan, together with her boyfriend Matt. We left as rain was turning to snow, which got increasingly heavy, but turned back to rain by the time that we got to Kettering. ”My” Matthew (as opposed to Megan’s boyfriend) had driven over from his new flat in Rushden, but for the first time Dad wasn’t there, since he was still in Baildon, near Bradford, with my other sister Ros.
We chatted, exchanged presents, played games, had a lovely meal (since I wasn’t driving this year I enjoyed a glass of wine or two) and had a musical interlude – music in the loosest sense of the word, as some of us did our best with kazoos and a swan whistle. Unusually, I hadn’t brought my camera, but had brought my new i-pad to show Rob – I wasn’t very impressed with its photographic ability.
We headed home late, with the light rain turning back to light snow as we headed east long the A14, and the roads around Croft were covered with a thin veil of snow bisected by black tyre tracks, and the less trafficked Thurlaston Lane was sprinkled completely with frost and a dusting of snow.
Our house was till busy when I got in – Sherry, Bridget and Megan had all retired to bed, and the Holoweckyjs had gone home, but everyone else was up, finishing a game, and I got a big hug from Bess and Florence.
Saturday dawned frosty and sunny, with a covering of snow, and we all drove to Bradgate Park, meeting Keith in the car park. The plan was a walk along the surfaced path through the park, with granddaughters on their bikes, but the ice and snow proved just a bit too precarious for young cyclists, even when equipped with stabilisers on the younger girls’ bikes, and so we all walked instead. This at least meant that we could leave the busy bustle of the path, where much of the County population seemed to be walking off their Christmas excesses, and we climbed up to the higher ground above the path, giving Chantal‘s lungs a post pneumonia work-out, which almost proved too much, as I assisted her up the last few feet. It was a wonderful winter walk, the frosty snow glistening under a clear blue sky providing lots of photo opportunities for both scenic shots and family groups.
As we descended towards the ruins of Bradgate House I realised that my left coat pocket was empty. This was unfortunate because shortly after entering the park it had been full of Tia’s lead. Chantal had walked ahead, and so Si and I, together with a leadless Tia, retraced our steps in the hope of locating the lead before the loss was discovered by Chantal, whose lungs had recovered sufficiently for her to have reminded me at length that losing dog-leads is a bit of habit of mine, and maybe I should take more care of them. We failed to locate the lead, and returned to the family, meeting Chantal who had been informed of the loss, and, after a bit of tut-tutting, she and I once again retraced the route, eventually reaching the area where we had climbed away from the path, and which myself and Si had searched methodically and diligently 20 minutes earlier. Chantal took the easiest route back down to the path, using her tripod as a walking stick to steady her descent, and in less than a minute she spotted the lead lying in the bracken. There were dark mutterings about me and Si having had a mere “man-look” for the lead as we re-joined the path to catch up with the rest of the party…
Back at home Simon and Kate joined us all, and it was a rather noisy and lively early evening, with four excitable granddaughters, as well as a few loud and boisterous adults!
The family drifted away over the evening, starting with Keith Steven and Sherry heading for Leicester station at 5, and finishing with the Hands leaving at 8ish, but not until the girls had enjoyed bath time in Grannie and Grandpa’s big corner bath, and a tired Florence finally gave in to sleep after a busy day
The house was awfully quiet after everyone had left…
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
