As planned, we spent Christmas Eve at Ida’s restaurant just down the road. It was a good night although she didn’t have too many people in to eat… to be honest, compared to the other two restaurants near by, it’s a bit dingy at Ida’s and, although the food is just as good as the others, we might not go there so much if it wasn’t that we’ve known Ida for a number of years!

Ida seemed surprised and pleased with the gift that we gave her (the pot plant) and, the sweets we thought she was making for the restaurant were actually presented to us as a gift (see pic of Pete below!)… so I was glad that we had bought her something!

After dinner, we could really have come home but we knew that Ida had bought fireworks and so stuck it out until midnight! I was glad that we did as it turned out there were a few other people there by that time… of course, it was a small firework display Indian style – a bit like you might have in your own back-yard / garden on Bonfire night but with fewer Health and Safety considerations… e.g., no buckets of water to hand, no being 10-20metres away when they are set off! The four or five “fountains” were lined up at the entrance to the restaurant and set off, the firecrackers were wrapped in newspaper which was then set alight so smouldered for a bit before exploding and the “big one” was set off on the land next to the restaurant which meant that the debris from expended fireworks rained down on us – what a laugh aye! Reminded me of fireworks at home in Swanley when H&S wasn’t really a thing (or at least wasn’t something often discussed in our house!).

We must have left Ida’s around 12.30pm and, on getting back to the apartment, thought we would give the sweets a go… as I thought, there were not many that I liked as many include desiccated coconut which I really do not like… Pete liked them though so I went for the Cakey / Chocolatier ones instead – a good result for both of us!

After a later night than usual, we woke on Christmas Day a bit later and decided that, as has become a bit of a Christmas Day tradition for us, we’d rather go for a walk instead of going to the beach! It was a bit hot but we knew there was a walkway that we had passed in a village not far from us called Orlim (we had passed it on the bike) which we thought we would investigate at some point so why not Christmas Day… We walked from our accommodation and the whole thing was about 4 miles in total. An opportunity for lots of photos so brace yourselves!

We were wished Merry Christmas by many people as we strolled along the road and through various villages – at one house, the family were sitting on their veranda when they shouted their greeting and asked us to wait a moment… the lad pictured bottom left above was sent into the house and came back with a tray of India sweets for us to try… at least we knew which ones we liked from having tasted Ida’s offerings from Christmas Eve which was handy! How nice 😊

After our walk, we had a good relax and, like most of our more recent Christmas Days, spent the rest of it in front of the box watching a few films and some of the Christmas telly on iPlayer… it was a very nice day and, after a Christmas call with Louise, Lee & the grandkids at midday UK time (5.30pm for us!), we couldn’t be bothered to even go out for dinner so had a night in – lovely!

Today, Boxing Day, we have been to the beach… it was a lot busier than it was before Christmas with a mixture of Indian, British and Russian tourists… it was nice down there but already Christmas feels like it was ages ago – I guess that’s what you get when you are away from home!

I remember my first Christmas spent away from home in 1989 when, as a naive but rebellious 20 year old (had my 20th Birthday whilst I was away!), I went to Australia travelling for 3-4 months with a guy I worked with at the Winged Fellowship Trust (which was renamed Vitalise and then Re-Vitalise until it’s recent closure 😔)… We had arranged to meet up with three other staff (or I guess they must have been ex-staff by then?) who also happened to be in Oz at the same time. One of these friends/ex-colleagues, a nurse from Scotland called Fiona, had immigrated to Perth on the West Coast and agreed to put us all up for the festive season… being in Sydney on the West coast, with just about enough spending money for a recliner seat on the Indian Pacific train across the entire Australian continent to Perth (a distance of around 2,700 miles) we set out on this epic train journey through the Blue Mountains near Sydney and across the flat, “otherworldly” Nullarbor Plain with just a loaf of bread and some cheese slices for subsistence – we really were broke!

The best thing about this was that, when we arrived at our friends house in Perth, we received lots of mail from home including a Christmas gift from my Mum and Dad which was a tiny little Christmas Stocking with 200 AU$ in it! It was the best present ever as it meant we had funds to keep us going until we returned to the UK at the end of January! I wish I still had that stocking but I’m not sure where it would be now… happy memories anyway!

This evening, I was due to have a call with Mum but, although I’d arranged it with them, there was no answer when I tried to FaceTime her so guess they were either busy or the iPad isn’t working as it should although it worked when I had the call with Steve the other day??? Anyway, I’ve emailed them to rearrange for next week now as, for some reason, the power keeps cutting on and off this evening which would have made the call with Mum tricky as when the power goes off, the WiFi cuts out too! Ha! Something funny just happened… the power went out again so Pete said he was going to hang the washing out on the balcony… on his way out, being buff naked (it’s a bit too hot for him even with the aircon on!), he said “you watch, I’ll go out there and the power will come back on”… and yep, it did! 😂🤣😂 That’ll teach him!

Right, now that the power is back on, am going to publish this before it goes off again! Hope everyone is having a nice time out there! xxx