First couple of days in Hassocks

The two musical events, I mentioned at the end of my last post, were part great, part missed. The first, a glorious concert in the Palace of the Arts, given by the Pannon Philharmonic was very good. The main attraction was that the soloist was the now world famous favourite of mine, Kristóf Baráti, whom I used to see regularly, but since he's got very famous, not so often.  Nowadays he doesn't give nearly as many concerts at home as he used to, and when he does the ticket prices are usually astronomic. He was brilliant, as usual and we enjoyed his play on his glorious Stradivarius tremendously.

Kristóf Baráti

Unfortunately, soon after this concert my cold returned, this time with joint aches and extreme tiredness. I decided that I wouldn't attend the opera performance I wrote about in the last post, which then turned out fortunate, as my friend, Kati, whom I usually go with had just lost her mother and wasn't going either.

Tom Burke

I kept to my bed most days, including the weekend, as I wanted to be well for the trip to Hassocks. I watched a fair amount of TV again and read my book, although my eyes were affected by the cold, so I had to have breaks after every 20 or so pages. On TV I discovered that Strike was back and as I loved it last year, got to watch it with much enthusiasm again. I love Tom Burke and the stories, the characters, the acting are all first class. I hope they have more episodes this year than last. Also, I was just about to cancel my hike with my friend Zsuzsi when she rang to tell me that she couldn't come because she had to go in to work over the weekend. So that was off too.

Roy on the lane by Stephen's house

The weather started getting very cold, apparently the air coming from Siberia was going to give us a freezing start to spring, only round the corner. Since then I read on the net, that the end of February/beginning of March has never been this cold ever before.  Or at least not since records have been kept.

One of Brighton's ancient lanes

We packed on Tuesday and departed on Wednesday. They were talking about disruption to travel by the severe weather, but we got to the airport quite easily. Once there, we were told that our plane got stuck in Glasgow, due to the bad weather and we had a delay of about 2 hours until they rustled up another aircraft. This they duly did and after that our day unfolded with not even a tiny hiccup.

Beautiful variegated hollly in a garden

The flight was uneventful, the landing soft and quiet, the airport OK and even though there was a bit of a chaos in the railway station due to cancellations, we managed to catch a late train with only 2 minutes to go. Even with the late departure of the plane we were indoors at Stephen's by 9pm.

Elian doing a puzzle on his iPad

Unfortunately the little monsters couldn't stay up, so they were in bed by the time we got there, but we were safely installed in our usual bedroom and fell into bed half asleep.  On the morning of the following day, we met our little vagabonds. They were off to school and we were off to Brighton to see the bank, Vodafone, have a lunch in the Basketmakers and do a bit of odds and ends type of shopping. The weather was bitter, even colder than in BP or Canada or the US. I think the difference was the strong wind, which added quite a bit of windchill and even though I had a wolly hat and a hood on, my ears were cold.

The power of concentration

Roy, thankfully listened to me and brought his Canadian big coat, boots and lumberjack's hat, so he was warm as toast most of the time. On Thursday we managed to get to all the places we planned, with the highlight being the Basketmakers, as usual.  I had a bit of a shock, as they didn't do my humus dish any more, but I had fish and chips instead, and that was so delicious and enormous, that I didn't mind at all.

The Basketmakers' bar with my favourite barman

In the evening we babysat as Lucy went out with Stephen and some friends to some game to celebrate her birthday. The kids have matured quite a lot since we last saw them and seemed to go to bed without undue hassle. This morning we had to return to Brighton for an appointment and, needless to say, went back to the Basketmakers, this time for a hamburger for Roy and a seefood platter for me.  Latter was equally enormous and delicious as the fish and chips the day before.

My seafood platter

We got back about 2pm and have been veging out ever since.  Half way through the afternoon, just 10 minutes after Roy woke from his afternoon nap, Xander appeared and joined us in our room. It is really nice when a kid chooses to come in and play with you, it is so much more natural and enjoyable when the initiative is from them.  I would never have thought that there is this much entertainment value to a duvet. He crawled under it, over it, did exercises and big jumps on it, we giggled, tickled and mucked about for about an hour, until we got totally exhausted.  4 year olds have so much more energy than old things like Roy and me. Still, this was definitely the highlight of the visit so far.

The Basketmakers

Now I have to go downstairs to see what's for dinner. I can hear the laughing from here, so I am off and should be back sometime next week, probably from home.

Xander and Roy in the bed playing silly buggers