It seems very odd writing 2025 at the top of this blog…another year started and I’m still writing it! I hope you all came through the New Year celebrations unscathed and are well on your way now, with all your resolutions intact. As you might gather form the title of this post, mine are not intact at all! It has been quite a busy month for us yet again and so all will be revealed as I go on!
We started the new year with a family day out to Maryport. Now, Maryport is an odd choice of place to visit on a bitterly cold January day but Hazel had discovered that the small aquarium there and its café were open and so it seemed to be a good idea. I don’t normally like aquariums but this one turned out to be a great place. It is quite small, but is very well set out and has lots of features which appeal to children of all ages, as well as their accompanying adults, and so we had a really good visit. The café was very busy (I suspect there were not many places open) but it was warm and the food was not bad at all. All in all, we had a good day and our little one loved it, and the outdoor playground was a big hit too, until it got too cold to be out there, even for her! We more sensible older adults were already drinking hot coffee in the café by this time!
We have, as always, managed to eat out quite a bit this month. Our U3A French speaking group had its “Christmas bunfight” as the organiser calls it, at Laings café as usual which was nice but a little wet! We had had a bout of wintery weather just before that date and we were given a big table near the window in a porch area. Unfortunately for us, although the view was nice, the porch turned out to have a very leaky roof and with the ice melting on it, several members of our party ended up getting quite wet. Our complaints were met with a barely sympathetic response, although we were not charged for our drinks. It did put a bit of a dampener on the event though, which even the successful Secret Santa presents did not lift entirely I’m afraid. I also went to another post-Christmas social do with my craft group which was a nice evening. Speaking of craft…I come to one of the half-broken resolutions which is part of the title of the blog this month. I have been knitting a lovely blanket since the middle of last year…decided upon in a moment of madness! I have loved knitting all the squares but, as some of you know, I hate sewing up! Unfortunately, I have been putting off this task for some time now and so made its completion a NY resolution. I’m sorry to say that it has not yet been completed…it is a very thankless task. I have done a bit but somehow, always find other things to distract me! I WILL get it done…eventually! As well as the episode with our U3A group, Geoff and I have had some nice Wednesday lunch days eating at some of our favourite places including a couple of new ones for us…the Sally at Irthington (lovely food and great service) and just last week we treat ourselves to lunch at a hotel we had wanted to sample for a long time, The Inn on the Lake at Glenridding. Our lunch was lovely (if a bit expensive, of course) and the views from the dining room were fabulous looking out over Ullswater in all its beauty. We decided though, that although we would love to stay there, the prices were a bit steep so that is not going to happen any time soon! This week we went back to the Wheatsheaf at Wetheral where the food is great…and the prices more reasonable!
Some of the less exciting activities completed this month have included getting our little car through its MOT and another eye clinic appointment. My eyes are now as good as they will get, I fear, but with the aid of the regular injections, the condition is being kept at bay, thank goodness. I am still able to read all my favourite books via my Kindle and am still more than able to complete my jigsaws. In fact, speaking of jigsaws, I am now totally addicted to the WASGIJ puzzles and have completed quite a few now. They are really challenging, as you do not make up the picture seen on the box but actually what the people in that picture are looking at! Hence, you have no idea what that is or where all the little cameos (which you can do by matching colours) actually go! I love them and happily they do come into the charity shop on occasion so I buy them up as soon as I see them as they are quite expensive to buy new!
We have also continued with our usual church activities which included a café church session, during which we introduced 75 people to the delicacy which is La Galette des Rois….a real throwback to our French life. Of course, no-one had heard of it and the look of horror on the faces of our trusty “ladies who bake” was a joy to behold! However, they came up trumps and produced some great galettes. We did not put in the fevres mind you – that was a step too far- and the only crown in evidence was the one I wore to explain the concept of the gallette to the assembled congregation. It did take us back though, to the many Januarys we spent in France munching through galettes galore…until we were heartily sick of them!
The other really good event we went to at church was a very entertaining social evening on Burns night. It was a traditional Burns Night Supper, complete with haggis, neeps and tatties, Burns poetry read by a lovely Scottish bloke in a kilt, a few quizzes with a Scottish theme, a bit of entertainment and a bit of disastrous dancing! And here we have an example of another resolution I broke…the one where I resolved to say “no” to requests to do things, more often – as I provided some of the entertainment by reading some poems in a broad Scottish accent! I hasten to say they were not any of Rabbie’s poems…they are very difficult to read and I did refuse to do that! All in all, though, it was a really good night and everyone seemed to enjoy it 
I have also broken that particular resolution twice more this month…I’m seriously not good with this resolution malarky! I was asked to take part in a Rotary quiz by Phil, my son-in-law. I do love quizzes and naively thought it would be a low-key fun event. However, it turned out to be a serious leg of a regional quiz and it was seriously hard! I was co-opted onto Phil’s club’s team (as a bit of a ringer really as I’m not a Rotarian!) and although we tried hard, our team was not as invested in winning as the other team was! We lost of course, despite a valiant effort! The other thing I have failed to say “no” to, is to become a volunteer for the Carlisle edition of the talking newspaper for the blind. I have been asked to do this before but as the recordings took place on one of my Op Shop days, I couldn’t do it. However, the recording has now switched to a morning slot…and so I said yes! I did my first session this week and was really impressed by the set up in the small studio they use. I was less impressed by the fact that I had to choose articles from a very dismal edition of our local newspaper The News and Star! I struggled to find anything very interesting or up lifting in that particular edition I can tell you! However, my choices were deemed as being OK, thank goodness. I was also amazed by the reading of all the death notices…and believe me there were a lot of those! I am reliably informed though, by someone whose mother receives these recordings, that this is by far the best bit!!
One other great event this month is Geoff’s news really. Our son Matthew bought hm a ticket to the David Hockney exhibition which was on in Manchester as a gift at Christmas, so he and Matthew met up there one Thursday afternoon to do that and to have a meal, before Geoff caught the train home again. Both boys had a very good afternoon by all accounts and thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition. It was not really my thing so I stayed home and did the ironing!! We have both been to the cinema this month though, which doesn’t happen a lot here! We went to watch “Wicked”…which we did not enjoy at all. In fact, we almost left early but stuck it out until the bitter end! Needless to say, we will not be going to watch the second part when it gets released! Yesterday saw us going to watch “A Complete Unknown” the film about Bob Dylan and, that we really loved. The music and acting were wonderful and those songs brought back so many memories for us both. I would strongly recommend going to see it if you can. We both left the cinema singing…something we definitely didn’t do after watching “Wicked”!
We were very lucky, here in Carlisle to escape a lot of the nasty January weather, which had a lot of the country coming to a standstill as always. We did get a bit of snow but not as much as other places…which for me was a bit disappointing as I really miss the lovely deep crisp snow we used to get in France. I have to say that most folk here were not disappointed! We did get a bit battered by good old Storm Eowyn during which there were record breaking wind speeds recorded in many parts of the country. Here in Cumbria, we did have a lot of trees blown down and some buildings damaged too. In Carlisle there was severe damage to a temporary roof over the Sands centre (local concert hall and recreation centre) which almost blew off completely and caused a lot of traffic chaos. In our flat complex, one resident had a window blown in and there were a lot of tiles blown off the roof, but that apart we survived almost unscathed. We did however heed all the red and amber weather warnings and stayed indoors for the day.
And so, we come to the end of January. I had wanted to try and have a night away somewhere this month but frankly we couldn’t fit it in! However, our flights to France are booked for our April trip and we have also booked to go on a cruise to Norway at the end of May, so all that is to look forward to. Onwards into February it is then…and a certain person’s birthday is looming. Watch this space for reports of that next month
A bientot mes amis …