Diamond Days!

As you *may* have noticed, this last weekend has been the Diamond Jubilee. I've been off all week and so was suitably excited by the time Friday rolled around. I loved the documentary on BBC One, with the Prince of Wales watching childhood home videos, a truly lovely show which showed another side to the Royal family.

Saturday, despite all the weather forecasts was gorgeously sunny! We went to the Jubilee Fete in a park in town and had a lovely time, eating cake, watching donkey rides and maypole dancing and mulling over the outrageous size of sheep testicles....

 The Park, in the wonderful sunshine.

 The cute donkeys :)

Check out the size of THOSE bad boys lol!

We finished off with a stroll along the seafront, arriving home just minutes before the heavens opened! How's that for timing?

Sunday was a Barnsley visit, and despite the weather Hague had a wonderful time with the boys whilst I tried to watch the outrageously bad coverage of the Thames Pageant on iPlayer....seriously, how hard is it to actually show the boats and hear the music?? Seriously bad work from Auntie Beeb :(

Monday had been decreed a lazy day (by me) so we had a few beers and relaxed until the evening when we headed out again for the lighting of the beacon and fireworks (boy, do I LOVE fireworks lol). It was packed  on the sea front, full of people out to celebrate and enjoy themselves!

 Fireworks (red, white and blue of course)

Jubilee Beacon

The fireworks were fantastic, all red, white or blue and it gave me a chance to practice firework photography too!

Tuesday heralded the 6th birthday of my youngest Niece Carys, a lovely way to end a lovely weekend, with family and a very excited little girl playing her new guitar and showing off her red, white and blue dress.

Shame every weekend can't be like this eh? Gawd Bless Ya, Your Maj :) 

A Surprisingly Good Day!

When I woke up this morning after not enough sleep the day didn't promise much...It was only 9am, and ahead of me was a meeting at work, a counselling session, trying to remember my Mum's enormous order for my company shop and trying to juggle the finances as I'd managed to leave the Sky bill out of the monthly budget :(

But...

The work meeting went well. My new manager (another one) seems to understand that my return has to be handled carefully and together we have worked out which days and shifts I'll be working. Planning ahead seems to be the key to keeping me calm and so this was a perfect way to achieve something quite difficult. So, I shall be returning to work on December 12th and right now, I feel just fine about that :)

My counsellor was up next, and she was really pleased with my progress. It will be my last face to face session with her, and she has helped me so much over the last couple of months - even a month ago returning to work seemed miles away, but now I'm well on the way to recovery, able to cope much better with problems and much closer to the person I thought had gone AWOL for good!

After such good results from unexpected places the draw of going into town to see the Christmas lights switched on was just too much to resist. I love Christmas, and I love fireworks and this evening the two combined. I rather like the fact that it is practically December as well before the council switched on the lights - keeping it relatively special. The marketplace was packed, and the mood was joyous, little children everywhere festooned with reindeer antlers, santa hats and various neon crapola :) I managed to forget my tripod, so any technically perfect pictures were never going to happen, but I liked the results.

Due to the lights being switched on, the shops were open late and so we were able to pick up another present, the list is getting much shorter now :) Finally, when you're out on a chilly night, all wrapped up, literally NOTHING warms you up like a portion of market chips, fresh, delicious and hot! Me and Hague got a portion each, and wooden forks in hand devoured the paper wrapped morsels of nom. Just sitting eating the chips next to Hague, all cosy and with his birthday tomorrow just made me happy. Happy that I have him, happy that my life is getting back on track and happy that simple Christmas lights and fireworks can still create childish wonder in me.