A surreal New Year's Eve was spent in Hampstead. Cousins with young children came for lunch in the afternoon and older ones came in the night. On glorious full stomach's we left taking adventurous Grandma [8 of us] for the walk up Parliament Hill on the Heath.
It is a special spot which overlooks from up high the whole of the London skyline. The sky was orangey and the walkers up the hill in the dark silhouette of the hill seemed to masquerade as pilgrims one by one. Champagne accompanied us with glasses as we slowly made our way up. Grandma at 91 is a real trooper. The countdown began with hundreds chanting. Fireworks abounded over London and at that moment Prince George did indeed seem so far away. You can get all kinds of fireworks here at every corner store. A popular one is a Chinese lantern which many had on the Hill. They are quite terrifying to set off and some make it in the sky as they are supposed to and some don't, then you duck and hope for the best. If launched correctly they are glorious to watch float by. One very silly man became a sort of human torch holding firworks in his hand as we all quickly fleed from him. So different to Canada, there we were openly drinking champagne next to the police car[where we felt completely safe].
When it came time to leave I left with Grandma. A party mode mid thirties guy accidently bumped into us, realised he was nose to nose with an elder and charmingly took a few steps back and entered into a wonderful conversation with Grandma..ended up kissing her on the cheek and offering her his champagne to which she said 'Thank you so much but no. I have just finished my own" to which he gave a bemused look - it was a moment for sure! We all headed back to my sister's home, to more food and some dancing when eventually we hit the sack about 3am.
Next day, thanks to Greg, we got up to attend 10am mass at St Mary's again in Hampstead followed by very civilised coffee at the Cafe Rouge. greg has promised me he will write a song about The Heath.
We headed back about 4pmish to Manchester to deliver Grandma safely and soundly to her flat. She feels safe there and knows people. I feel things are significantly changing for her though memory wise and I hope the coming months will continue to be joyous ones for her whilst we are here. We will be seeing her again in 2 weeks when we pick her up to bring her home to Camblesforth.
Well...school starts again in 2 days...We will look forward to the half term though when we will be seeing my brother Richard in Bordeaux. Between now and then a lot of hard work will take place at school, Greg will turn the dreaded 60 on January 15th and I am embarking on losing a lot of pounds, weight that is!!!
Have a safe January...I am having trouble uploading pictures so my apologies, some are up on facebook courtesy of Beni though!
