Finishing off 2009

As 2010 arrives crisp and cold, there is snow still lying on the hills not too far from here but the snowman in my garden is reduced to a small mound with a straw hat on top.

I seem to have narrowly avoided being snowed in on several occasions this festive season. We travelled back to the UK several weeks sooner than we first planned. Had we followed our original plan we would have almost certainly been trapped in London, unable to continue northwards when the snow started as the trains were cancelled for a few days. Not that being trapped in London would have been a bad thing in itself. We could have spent more time with our number one offspring but as the rest of the family was in the North West of England it would not have been totally satisfactory.

As it was, we were already here when the snow fell and fortunately had completed most of the festive preparations. I did have some difficulty returning home from Manchester city centre one day. As soon as snow falls the minor roads are closed and buses to more out of the way places are cancelled. Fortunately some hardy taxi drivers were still prepared to drive along main roads and I managed to get home.

In the end we managed to get all the family together, even on one occasion gathering relatives from southern Spain, the North West of England and London together to take over an Italian restaurant in central Manchester. The smallest members of our party made their own pizzas. The rest of us preferred someone else to cook for us.

I avoided the madness of Boxing Day which should be renamed “Rush back to the shops as soon as possible after Christmas” Day. However, I discovered that Boxing Day has become a moveable feast. As it fell on a Saturday this time, the following Monday became a public holiday. The habit of making a bridge (un puente) seems to have transferred from Spain to the UK. I confidently set out to catch a bus on the said Monday and found myself waiting twice as long as usual: public holiday = Sunday service!!!

One amusing bit of shopping I did do was buying a new pumice stone as ours had disappeared from the bathroom here. When I finally located one in the local chemist's shop I discovered it was now called a “depilatory mouse”, obviously because of its rodent-like shape. I had a sudden vision of a mouse working in a beauty parlour with the task of waxing clients’ legs!!!!

Our stay here rushes to a close now. We are about to head back to the Iberian peninsula, just in time for the fiesta de Reyes, when the Three Kings bring presents for Spanish children and traditionally leave them on the balcony. Just as Father Christmas can manage to enter chimneyless houses, the reyes have magical ways of getting into homes without balconies.

I wonder if they will leave me anything. After all my “Spanglish” nephew and niece (Andalusian father and English mother) have for many years received gifts from the man in the red suit during family visits to the UK and then gone back to Spain in time for Gaspar, Balthazar and Melchior to give them presents as well. And I have tried to be good!!!