The Unforgiving Minute….

Hi everyone….So it’s official. I’m heading back home in 42 days’ time – I bought the flight last week, and everything is paid and confirmed. Meanwhile, I’ve been busy organising trips (work-related and not), one of which just took place last weekend. On Friday Jim and I went to Liverpool again, and we returned to Birmingham yesterday. Friday was quite bad, with delayed/cancelled trains, last-minute work decisions and having to plan a work trip to Glasgow for two people and myself starting tomorrow – all in a matter of half an hour….But as soon as I set foot in Lime Street Station it was fine. I was in Liverpool!

Saturday, in fact, turned out to be one of the most brilliant days ever. In the morning we went around town and visited the official Liverpool FC store. James took me around some streets and gave me a little bit of background info (about the city itself and also a few childhood memories!). We then went to the tourist office to collect our Magical Mystery Tour tickets, and there I found a fridge magnet with my mum’s surname’s coat of arms on it, and a booklet explaining its scouse origins. In the afternoon (at 14.10), we took the MMT around the Beatles sites in Liverpool – FANTASTIC. I can’t begin to describe the feeling…Our tour guide – Eddie – was great! He’s done this for 22 years now and well, if practice makes perfect, then this tour really comes very close to that….(in my totally biased opinion, of course!). As soon as Eddie greeted us at the tourist office and announced that the MMT bus was down the road, “waiting to take us away”, my heart skipped a beat. There we were, bright yellow ticket held tightly in hand, on our way to visit the sites that formed the setting within which some very important pages of our history were written…and what’s more was that taking us away on this surreal tour was the actual vintage bus used in the Beatles video Free As A Bird!

It was all brilliant! We passed by Ringo’s birthplace, stopped in front of Paul and George’s houses to take pictures, Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, etc, etc….Eddie told us Strawberry Field (a children’s home) shut its doors last May and is now for sale. He was wondering in whose hands its destiny lay…will it be Yoko, or a business man with a tractor? No one knows…so just after taking the picture you see here, I snapped off a twig from one of the branches…That way, I’ll have a piece (tiny as it is) of Strawberry Fields….Forever….:o)

Over all, I was a very good girl, until the bus stopped in front of a particular house…Mendips…here it is in the picture. Eddie pointed out that the window above the main door was John’s bedroom window, where so many familiar songs were written, and at that point, the tour guide played “In My Life”…Tears started rolling down my cheeks and I could do absolutely nothing to stop them. They weren’t at all tears of sadness…only of strong emotion…

Anyway….enough about Liverpool! So….42 days to my departure. Out of those, I’ll be spending 13 days away: this Tuesday I leave for Glasgow to run some powder experiments. I return on Saturday afternoon. The following Friday I’m going to London, then to Eastbourne where I will spend a weekend with James, his mum and Jayne, and the four cats. We return on Monday morning. Between the 10^th and 13^th December I’ll be with Janice in London….and less than a week after she leaves, I will go back home for Christmas….

When I’m not away, aside from day-to-day chores around the house, overseas phonecalls, working my way through the pile of my “To Read” books, and general playing around with my ibook, I have to analyse the data I’d have collected in Glasgow, finish my code, squeeze in some Christmas shopping, and co-organise a pre-holiday Christmas dinner with James….

………………………………..

Well, after going through a somewhat rough patch emotionally (mainly due to the fact that I was allowing myself too much free time to “Stand and Stare”) I decided to follow a different poet’s advice, and I can safely say that Kipling was right. I am definitely not managing to fill my minute with 60 seconds’ worth, but I’m doing the best I can…and I’m certainly feeling a lot better!!!

Take care!! :o)

XXX