Holiday souvenirs...

image from Clipart Library

Yes, I know that I've been MIA yet again but I do have a good excuse this time ~ we've been south to visit family and had to Get Stuff Done before we went 😉

We flew all the way down this time, which is not Adrian's preferred way to travel it has to be said.  Our friend Phil drove us to the airport for us to get the 10.30 flight from Kirkwall to Aberdeen on the 21st September.  Our first port of call was to visit my sister so we were able to book Loganair flights all the way through to Birmingham, which took care of the luggage.  We had a bit of a wait at Aberdeen as our onwards flight wasn't until 14.25, which gave us time to get a bite to eat.

By the time we'd collected our luggage and got over to Birmingham New Street railway station we were starting to hit rush-hour!  We let the first train to Redditch go as it was just too packed for us and our luggage to squeeze our way on ~ to be honest, it was all way too much hustle and bustle and crowded for my liking 😦  Anyhoo we finally made it to Redditch, where my sister met us.

We had a lovely weekend and even though poor Amanda had a cold and cough, we got out-and-about.  On the Sunday Amanda drove us down to Bedfordshire to our parents, where Adrian and I were staying for a couple of days. We all went out for Sunday lunch together, picking up our son, Sam, on the way to Mum and Dad's.

Unfortunately by the Monday I was starting to feel under the weather as I'd picked up Amanda's cold.  I thought I'd better do a Covid test just to be on the safe side as we'd done all that travelling which thankfully was negative.  I spent the couple of days we were at my parents sitting as far away from them as possible!        

Dad took us over to Hitchin on the Wednesday afternoon where we spent two nights before travelling back home again, by which time I had reached "peak cold" and Adrian was just starting to get it too 😟  We usually try to catch up with our friends Christine and John, and Olive and Tony, but because we both had such rotten colds we thought it best not to see any of them this time around 😔  We did have lunch with Sam again on the Thursday though, keeping our fingers crossed that we didn't give our cold germs to him!

We had been planning to get the 08.50 Peterborough train out of Hitchin on the Friday morning, to connect with the 10.18 service up to Edinburgh as we were flying back to Orkney from there.  However we discovered that ASLEF were taking industrial action the next day so folk would be changing their travelling plans from the Saturday to that Friday, as there wouldn't be any trains.  There was also an overtime ban in place (the bloody railway seems to be held together by the staff having to work overtime!), so we took the decision to travel on a very much earlier train out of Hitchin so that we could connect with the 08.18 up to Edinburgh.  This meant us being picked up from the Premier Inn at.....06.20😮  Neither of us were feeling 100%, especially poor Adrian as his cold was really kicking in *sigh*  Still, despite having a longer wait for our flight home, I think we made the right decision to travel before the train became crowded later in the morning.

 Although it was, of course, lovely to see everyone I'm sure you can well imagine how happy we both were to get back home to Orkney, where the lovely Phil was there to pick us up from the airport.

Unfortunately we later found out that my Dad had tested positive for Covid on that Friday, although thankfully my Mum was negative.....until Saturday, when she too was positive.  Adrian and I tested on Saturday too, and despite keeping our fingers crossed, you guessed it, yes, we were both positive as well 😒  Fortunately Sam, Amanda, and Liz are all fine.

Mum and Dad say they don't feel too bad at all really, more like they have a cold.  They had their flu and Covid boosters a couple of weeks ago so hopefully that will be helping.  Because of her health issues Mum is being monitored, and has been given steroid and anti-viral meds to take if her Covid symptoms get bad.

I suspect that Adrian and I have been feeling rather poorly because we've had the double whammy of getting Covid on top of already having a cold; he has been feeling more unwell than I have and had to go back to bed over the weekend.  Although the cold has more or less cleared up I am still coughing, and feeling a tad tired, achy, and lightheaded.  I'll see how it goes over the next couple of weeks or so, and if it doesn't seem to be getting better I'll have a word with my GP.  I don't want to end up with a chest infection and bronchitis like I did early last year!  Thankfully, though, we are both a fair bit better than we were.

It would be really good to have a nice, uneventful, trip south at some point 😄