A Pretty Miserable January!

Well, what a grim time we have had over the last six weeks! We caught the flu pretty soon after we got back to the UK, and basically had to cancel Christmas. Although it has to be said that if that happens, the O'Connor sisters make sure that if Mohammed can't get to the mountain, they'll make sure that the mountain will come to Mohammed! So we had plenty of visitors to our new house in Chester over the Christmas week, plus we managed to meet some of our new neighbours, so it was still quite busy.

We'd had the delivery of all our goods from Malaysia, and that was interesting! I have to say that the condition of almost the entire shipment was excellent. I think we had one broken glass and a chipped bowl! The shippers from Malaysia, the storage company, and the transport guys from Liverpool were all fantastic! But, almost the entire house was taken up by the goods, so we had to quickly try and clear at least the sitting room, and our bedroom upstairs, not least because we were hosting all these sisters who were cooking for us! The least we could do was offer them a seat and a cup of tea (although we had to borrow a kettle for that!)

One highlight was that back in London the evening before our flight back to Egypt, we stayed with Ben and Lisa. Hannah joined us (always ready for a night out is our Hannah!), and we went to a lovely riverside restaurant, so that was a great preparation for our flight the next day...

Do you notice how Hannah's glass is always empty? "Who's drunk my wine?"

...which turned into a nightmare! Not that we knew it at the time! The bloke next to me sounded as if he was dying, and sure enough, a couple of days later Janet had caught bronchitis...which turned into pleurisy and pneumonia...which entailed a five day stay in hospital! All of which has put our lives on hold for most of the month! Janet of course didn't keep the bronchitis to herself, so here I am still fighting off the cough. It hangs around!

One thing I will say: the hospital was excellent. A major benefit, of course, of having health insurance, which we are very lucky to have! Janet had her own room, and those meals you can see her enjoying above were described as 'excellent' by her (and you will know how difficult that rating is to get from Janet!).

Anyway, Janet is now afraid of catching the dreaded lurgy back from me, so we are still keeping at arm's length from each other! I can tell you that we won't be sorry to see the end of January!

Lots of love to everyone!