Fiona's Quiet Life

don’t travel unless you have to they said…well i had to and was up for an adven­ture. Nic­ola was due to go to Lon­don and to Birm­ing­ham so i went for my monthly trip to Chip­pen­ham, but i went pre­pared, tak­ing a duvet plus pil­low a flask full of boil­ing water and some sachets of tea and hot chocol­ate. and lots of ham and tomato rolls, a torch a book an ipod in fact everything but the kit­chen sink. kept the fuel tank topped up and sal­lied forth, it is the first time i have driven down the length of Bri­tain and it being all snow covered it was very dif­fer­ent and almost unre­cog­nis­able, as it happened the new snow didn’t start till i was within a few miles of her house.

next morn­ing was another mat­ter, snow every­where, and trains to Lon­don either off or very delayed, so Nic­ola didn’t go to Lon­don after all.and the school was closed so we all trudged off to the shops in search of treats.
she went off by train to Birm­ing­ham next morn­ing at 6 a.m. ish.
next day school was on so i was pel­ted with snow balls all the way there and back…little darlings. then we did some dood­ling with Lego because i couldn’t find the on switch on their new television.….….….….no it wasn’t only on the remote.
why are boys given to sud­den run­ning, they ran­domly zoom off at the speed of light.

hav­ing sur­vived them i drove up to Edin­burgh where Sheena and i hav­ing had one of her superb lunches met up with lots of other people at the Hilton hotel, atten­ded a lec­ture by three astro­nomers and then boarded a plane.
it was the best fun i have had in the dark for many a long year.

we flew north to lat­it­ude 63.5 then the pilot hav­ing received per­mis­sion, put all the cabin and nav­ig­a­tion lights off, we taped up any screens on our cam­eras and switched off the flashes,then tak­ing turns at the win­dow we gazed at the North­ern lights and the won­der­ful stars, the astro­nomers were as enthu­si­astic as sports com­ment­at­ors at a great race.….…here comes Orion on the right hand side …etc i have never seen any­thing so beau­ti­ful as that sky.…and we got food too before the light s were put off .

www.astrospace.co.uk/NLights.html

http://www.omega-holidays.reader.travel/ReaderNew/booking1.php?eid=71&Agent=ADW1

as it is in a 737 there are three seats in the row so you have to clam­ber over each other and take turns at the win­dow, for­tu­nately the other lady in our row was a decent per­son and we all had a good look…and giggle as we kept tread­ing on bits of each other.

after a nice day in Edin­burgh the next day i thought i would go and visit my old­est friend,” she is very poorly ” said the head of the care home“you might not want to see her like this”.….….…i am so glad i went in and told her all about the stars because she died that night.…perhaps i made heaven sound too good.

No Comments »