Christmas in Newark

Sue's dental problems put our planned trip to India for December and January on hold and on 20th December I picked her up from Stansted with the intention of spending Christmas and the New Year in Newark.

Just before she arrived I damaged my right knee crawling around the bathroom doing tiling and pipework and we ended up a couple of convalescents, with me hobbling along and Sue often in intense pain from her dental work.  This got so bad that just after Christmas she had to go to a dentist who prescribed her antibiotics to deal with an infection which had flared up.

Notwithstanding our health problems we had a remarkably good time chilling out watching TV, going shopping and doing local walks.  On Christmas Day we went for a walk along the River Trent and got chatting to an older man who knew a lot about local history and whose conversation seemed to turn worryingly often to anecdotes about suicide.  Maybe we provided him with a welcome distraction.  He also confirmed that a big splash that Sue had heard might have been an otter.

With no particular schedule, I felt for the first time part of a "retired" couple without being too depressed at the prospect.

The Other Route to Stansted Airport Station

I flew back to Stansted on Saturday night and got the courtesy bus to the Holiday Inn where I crashed for the night.

Next morning, lacking the £3 change for the bus ride, I decided to walk back to the airport railway station, just over a mile away.

It's not a route designed for pedestrians and I had to edge my way along the side of crash barriers and frost-encrusted embankments navigating by the airport conning tower.

I was in a funny mood.  I'd started the day watching Boris Johnson being interviewed by Andrew Marr.  The whole thing had a surreal air, a lop-sided and articulate Marr asking intelligent questions of what looked like a badly-stuffed teddy bear spouting intellectual sounding nonsense interspersed with a constantly repeated tagline - "sturm and drang ... take back control ... blah, blah, blah ... take back control ...".  The one question that I was dying for Andrew Marr to ask was "why do you keep repeating 'take back control'?  Are you trying to brainwash us?"

When I reached the perimeter of the Airport it seemed appropriate that the sign had a letter missing, like a robot eye which had come adrift from its socket.  "Take back control ... take back control ..."