It’s that weird time between Christmas and New Year, so an ideal time for an update!
Mum came up to stay for a few days a couple of weeks ago. She arrived by train on the Monday, and we then spent a chunk of the afternoon traipsing around looking to buy an artificial Christmas tree. Ever since I’ve been in this house, it’s never really been in a state to have Christmas decorations, so this year I thought it was finally time. I hadn’t realised how expensive artificial trees are though – most I was seeing were well over £100, and some quite a lot over that! I’d kind of resigned myself to having to spend a lot more than I wanted, but then saw some in ASDA that were much cheaper, but still looked decent, so that’s what I bought! I got all the tree decorations from IKEA (we went the next day), and also managed to get the glass sliding doors for my new wardrobe. Took a while to construct them, but now they’re on, it really looks great!
On the Thursday, we went into Manchester on the tram to check out the Christmas Markets. It was definitely a lot smaller this year (mainly due to Albert Square being out of us due to the town hall renovations), but also there wasn’t really much that stood out. Also, it was absolutely freezing – the weather had gone really cold (especially at night), so we probably ended up spending more time indoors in the Arndale!
That evening I cooked an early Christmas dinner for us both which turned out really great – to be fair, roast dinner is my favourite so I’ve had practice making it over the years!
Early Christmas dinner with mum.
After mum’s visit, the plan was to drive her back to Tamworth on Friday afternoon, and I’d spend last weekend down there. So we left early afternoon, and had been driving for less than half an hour when we heard a pop whilst driving on a dual carriageway, and suddenly a warning was showing on my dashboard saying the pressure in my front passenger-side tyre was dropping rapidly! I was in the middle of no-where really – I knew that Alderley Edge was the nearest place to where I was, so headed towards there so I could pull over safely. But with it being country-type lanes, there was nowhere to stop, so ended up driving on a flat tyre for nearly 2 miles, which wasn’t ideal at all!
I realised my tyre was totally trashed, so started to empty to boot to get the spare tyre… only to discover I don’t have one! My previous car had one of those thin space-saver one, so I’d kind of thought I had the same with my Qashqai! Instead, there was a bottle of fluid which you’re supposed to used to patch a puncture, but obviously that’s not going to work when you’re in a situation like this!
I had a bit of a stress out because I’m not in a recovery service, and when I did try and ring some to join, I couldn’t get through at all. Probably didn’t help that there’d been snow across the country that day, so they were dealing with a large number of breakdowns. I also rang round some local-ish garages, but no-where had my particular tyre available, and even if they did, I didn’t know how I’d get my car to them anyway! Eventually I found a website that acts as a broker and finds you a mobile tyre fitter, which is what I ended up going for. It took them quite a while to get to me – it was basically about 4 hours between stopping and them turning up, so me and mum had to just sit in the car trying to stay warm whilst there was snow outside all around us!
We eventually got back to Tamworth just before nine o’clock, to discover mum’s central heating had stopped working, because a pipe to the boiler had frozen outside, and it was too high up to get to to defrost it! So that meant that the house was pretty cold all weekend! Luckily by the Monday, the heating started up again, but that was when I was heading back home!
My Christmas dinner.
Christmas was pretty quiet – obviously with it just being me at home! I did the full Christmas dinner of course, with enough leftovers to last the next few days! And I binge-watched a TV show I’d seen people talking about – ‘The Traitors’ – and I found it really addictive… watching all 12 episodes across Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!