Pat and Maureen arrive

The big cooking day for Beth and Lorraine, with the ladies purposefully getting on with huge amounts of festive cooking, Beth cooking an enormous ham, luckily she is feeling a bit less peaky than yesterday. Still lots of preparations of things to be done.  I went off into town, where I had my hair cut, and I mooched across town to pick up a few last bits, as well as a Radio Times, a festive prerequisite. Bus home, and then in the afternoon Lorraine and I fixed up the curtain in the big bedroom, ready for Pat and Maureen.

Home again, I was feeling particularly shattered. After their marathon cooking session, Beth and Lorraine go to the station to pick up Pat and Maureen. Lorraine cooked chicken and rice and vegetables, and we stayed in chatting in the evening with Pat and Maureen. Toby texted me from the airport in Toronto, having had a ghastly taxi ride to the airport before his flight to Japan.

It is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas is beginning now.