Tyres

Had a puncture on the way home from work last night - limped to a layby and rang Mercedes to send somebody to come nad change the tyre for me. No answer - all the lines were busy, please hold. Trouble was that my mobile was discharging rapidly [I MUST get the battery sorted...], so I rang off and rang Steve instead, to get him to ring Mercedes from the home phone. He was off out walking the dogs, but he came to find me, and changed my wheel in 8 minutes! THe tyre was totally shredded, with steel poking through the rubber - not nice! Today, it was going in for a service to the garage, so I had to warn them that they tyre in the boot was being sorted - I am NOT going to pay Mercedes prices for 2 new tyres...-but they found other things wrong with the car and i had to have a new rear suspension and something on the roll bars on the front, so ended up paying over £400. Not a good time with my car recently. Lets hope this is the last I will have to pay out for a bit.

Travel light

It looks as if I will be able to return to my previous policy of traveling with 2 items of hand luggage when flying to Paris soon, as some airports/airlines are easing the restrictions. It is a great feeling when you arrive at your destination and are able to vanish as fast as possible without having to wait [and pray that it DOES arrive] for your hold bag to plop out onto the conveyor.

Airports set to ease bags limit

On the twelfth day of Xmas...

...the decorations have to come down! I hate taking the tree down and removing all the baubles. Wrapping them all up individually in tissue paper is a very sad occasion. This year I only had a small tree, so lots of the baubles are still in their tissue in the boxes. Next year, I am gonna have a BIG tree again...

Terracotta Warriors

Was lucky to get a ticket on the day to see the terracotta warriors at the British Museum. It was a superb exhibition, and I was bowled over by them. Although I expected more of them, they were very impressive, and must have been very impressive in all their bright paint when they were first made. Now, I want to go to see the rest of them in situ in China... After I emerged from the exhibition, I was trying to write a postcard to a friend, but words totally failed me at the time. I would have liked to have been able to take photos in the exhibition, but the security people were like hawks, so I had to buy postcards afterwards! I think I will try to get tickets to go again...