Hastings Half-term, Great Storm? traffic traumas, Brum again….

Last week was grand daughter Eve’s half-term.
     On Monday morning we drove up to Beaconsfield Services to collect her from her Dad – yes, I said drove, and yes up the A21, even though it was The Morning After The Great Storm….a bit of an anticlimax, really. I was awake for ages in the night waiting for the roof to blow off, but our house is substantially more solid than our rackety old Victorian heap in Birmingham, and clearly the wind was not that strong anyway.
     Before we left we went down to the sea to look at the waves, which were big but not awe-inspiringly so. 

Waves at Rock-a-Nore

There was one tree blocking the A21, which was cleared away before we got there, and a few odd saplings and branches sticking out of the hedge into the road, but nothing that exciting really, and hardly any cars, so made better progress than usual.
     In the evening when we had brought Eve back I went down to Writers’ Group.  It was the results of the journalism competition.  I wrote a rather dull piece about the Hastings-Bexhill Link Road, but it managed to win third prize, so I’ll put it on Bombastic Battleaxe.
     Next day, we went to see ‘Turbo’ at the Hastings Odeon – a formulaic and not very good animated film about a super-charged snail that won the Indianapolis 500….. Yes, I know…. The cinema was packed, and Eve is not very good with crowds….. And the crowd was very noisy, possibly because the film was not that gripping – rustling wrappers, scoffing popcorn, clinking cans, talking, wriggling about.  I empathise deeply with Eve, but the difference is that  she voices her displeasure in a loud voice.
     By this time, also, I was getting a cold…..
     The next day was sunny, but Eve was feeling a bit poorly, so we just went for a a walk on the beach at Pett Level and did lots of beach combing.
 

Eve and Grandpa at Pett Level

 Set off for Birmingham on Thursday to take Eve back to her Mum – the traffic all the way up was absolutely horrendous, and the journey took hours and hours.  Something is going to have to happen about the state of our roads – another few years and the M25 will no longer be useable. We have been travelling around the same bits of it for around seven years now, and the traffic density increases year by year.
       We stayed, as usual, with our kind friends Sue and Alex, and, as usual, had frenzied round of catching up with friends – me with sore throat like sandpaper…….
       Came back on Saturday – we had tickets for a piano recital at the Stables – the second prize winner of the Hastings Piano Concerto Competition, but I didn’t fancy sniffing and snorting all through, so Philosopher went on his own. I stayed in and watched ‘Strictly’.  Lordy, that Bruce Forsyth is an embarrassment – why can’t he retire?
        Today, I woke up with throat better but my eyes stuck together – eesh – conjunctivitis…… Now, in the evening,  I look like Nightmare Fright Battleaxe – appropriate for the time of year I suppose…. I just hope nobody I was with catches this particular bug.
   

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