Reality Bites

Friday 23rd November 2018We have been home for a whole 5 days.It's quite a shock, living in a house, sitting in a bath (that's where I'm writing this), watching TV even sleeping in a real bed.Here's some interesting observations for you.• Living in a house - Living in the van I always knew where Mrs P was. She was either right in front of me or right behind me. Technically, she was also always in the way but, we got so used to living in each other's pockets that she was, in reality, never in the way. Our 2 bed house is pretty small but I can now go up to an hour without seeing her. It is quite disconcerting• Sitting in a bath - Ahhh! Need I say more?• Watching TV - It's winter, we have no money, there's not much else to do. I'm enjoying the adverts. After 4 months away they are all new and all Christmas related. I love Christmas• Sleeping in a 'real' bed - We bought a new bed shortly before we went away. The bed in Gandalf is way more comfy• Clothes - I had been looking forward to just wearing something different. Something stylish from my extensive collection of tatty old t-shirts. However, nothing fits. If you want to lose weight just go away for 4 months with no fridge, exercise every day and, hey presto, I lost around 9 lb or 4kg. Mrs P lost around 6 lb or 2.7kg.We weren't exactly packing timber before we left so, to regain some weight Mrs P has suggested an intensive regime of pumping iron or eating pies. Well, we can't afford pies so it looks like it's back to the gym.• Health - Not a days sickness in 4 months. No injuries (Mrs P says I can't include my cut finger even though I had to have a plaster). I shall talk more on this subject (health, not the cut finger) in the future but, briefly I had some aches and pains before I was made redundant and all just miraculously went away. The same applies to Mrs P. This is not a good advert for sitting in front of a computer all day long. Even my posture has improved.• Next steps - We still don't know what We want to do but we have worked out what we don't want to do. More on this soon.We are breaking ourselves back in to reality slowly. We've been cycling, hiking and checking out the gym. We haven't yet looked for the dreaded work.Tomorrow (Saturday 24th November) we are off to North Wales for the Alpine Club Annual Dinner (yum!) and AGM (yawn!). We are staying on for a day or two and hope to get some climbing and walking in. We will then travel slowly home visiting friends and family along the way.I will try to write more for the blog for those rarest of rare creatures who have told me they will miss my ramblings.Watch this space...