{"id":7555,"date":"2011-12-26T23:45:57","date_gmt":"2011-12-26T22:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7555"},"modified":"2012-01-02T14:16:20","modified_gmt":"2012-01-02T13:16:20","slug":"how-was-your-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7555","title":{"rendered":"How was your Christmas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vee and I spent Christmas with her twin sister Mari and brother-in-law Derek at their home in the village of Felpham<\/a> on the coast in West Sussex, just outside Bognor Regis. Now Felpham may only have a population of around 10,000, but it is well-endowed, having a community hall, two post offices, and no less than five pubs.<\/p>\n

As soon as we arrived on Christmas Eve, it was obvious that Mari was not well. She had real pain in her right shoulder and had to take pain killers. Nevertheless Derek took me to one of the local pubs – “The Old Barn” – to meet his drinking mates. It was a rough and noisy place that was not my idea of fun, but it did give me an inspiration for a short story provisionally entitled “Dying For A Pint”. Afterwards Mari felt able to join the rest of us in visiting some of their friends for drinks and nimbles. But she had a terrible night, suffering a lot more pain.<\/p>\n

Consequently Christmas Day morning involved an early call to NHS Direct who recommended a hospital visit for Mari. Vee drove her over to Chichester – where we were married 30 years ago – and, after some waiting at St Richard’s Hospital, Mari was diagnosed with some sort of infection, given antibiotics, and sent home,<\/p>\n

As a result of this drama, Christmas lunch – cooked by Derek – was turkey and all the trimmings (delicious) around 3 pm and a special Heston Blumenthal pudding<\/a> (yummy) about 5.30 pm with Mari retiring to bed again in between.\u00a0In mid afternoon, we had a call from our son Richard in Montreal where he is staying with his wife’s relatives (it is -17C there) and we finally opened our Christmas presents (mine were books).<\/p>\n

On Boxing Day morning, I took Derek to the sea front for a ‘big breakfast’<\/a> at “The Lobster Pot” by the sea front. But Mari had had a terrible night involving repeated nausea, so we had to make another call to NHS Direct who recommended another visit to the hospital which resulted in a different course of antibiotics.<\/p>\n

We had all been due to travel up to Egham to see Mari & Derek’s two sons and their families but, following all this trauma, Vee stayed with Mari and I went off with Derek. So now I’m back home and Vee is still at the coast.<\/p>\n

Not the Christmas we had expected and an utterly miserable one for poor Mari.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"