December
Teresa’s health has improved so much since the low point of her short
spell in hospital in September. Her
sight seems to be back to normal, and her fitness so much better that she
walked all the way round the village for the first time. Ironically, just after that, Roger’s knee
started to play up (cartilage), so he’s stopped the daily walk for the time
being.
Our hot water was finally restored – a faulty safety valve found to be
the culprit.
Jay, to her own and everyone else’s surprise, found she had passed her
Grade 6 Piano with Merit. She also
played, unobtrusively, in an informal concert by her Saturday morning
orchestra. Practice took rather a back
seat at Christmas, though she and Roger did remember to practice a few jigs
together and performed them on Christmas Eve – Christmas Jigs 2003 Programme.
The girls also hung up their stockings hopefully, and Santa still
remembered to call.
Christmas Day was celebrated quietly but enjoyably at home. Helen had been able to get back for five
days, but had to return before the New Year.
Teresa produced some excellent meals as usual - here we are preparing to
eat on Christmas Day:
Among the Christmas presents, a subscription to a crossword magazine
(for Roger from Helen), which looks like providing quite a challenge. Otherwise, Teresa had ensured that everyone
had an impressive pile of presents beneath the Christmas tree. She used on-line shopping for most things
this year, though we did make a couple of visits to Broadway: Christmas in Broadway.
We tried some of the many end-of-year quizzes in the newspapers and
played some games: Jay has graduated
from children’s board games to cards – we played whist for the first time.