Adventures in Yorkshire

The train journey down to Edinburgh passed in an instant - I was so tired when I got on the train at 7am that I fell asleep for the whole journey. Having to hang around in the train station for my connection woke me up a little bit - it looked like everyone was travelling on New Year's Eve, and the crowds were insane. I managed to find a slightly empty corner and grabbed a little respite from the solid wall of people - I'm not properly claustrophobic, but I always felt a little panicky when caught in such big crowds. It was with relief that the platform for my connection finally flashed up and I managed to force my way through to the ticket barriers.

With another four hours to go before I reached the station nearest Dave's home, I'd prepared by downloading half of the first season of Nashville. My sister had been raving about it over the past week, and promised it was nice easy viewing for a train journey. I don't know about you, but I can never focus on anything serious on a train, there's far too many distractions for me to follow any form of complicated plot.

Alyssa had been right - the relationship dramas interspersed with fabulous country music helped the hours fly by, until before I knew it the conductor was announcing the next station as Dave's. My excitement grew as I spotted his familiar grinning face as the train pulled in.

"Daaaave!" I basically jumped on top of him a hug, with him collapsing between the combined weight of me and my full to bursting backpack.

"Jane! You made it!"

"I did indeed - it's been a very, very long journey, but I made it! Also, what's with everyone travelling on New Year's Eve? Are they crazy?"

He gave me a measured look. "Says the girl who just travelled half the country on New Year's...?"

I dismissed his look with a wave. "Pfft! Mine's different, I bet all the others didn't have best friends about to abandon them for half the year, I had special reasons!"

He held a hand to his heart dramatically. "You mean... I'm special?"

"Special reasons does not make you special." I mock shook my head at him. "I've told you enough times the real reason I'm here..."

He sighed as he led me to his car. "Yes, yes, I know! The dogs!"

"Exactly. The dogs!" I smiled happily as he started the car. "Ooh, this is weird. Driven by Dave. Should I phone my mum and warn her I might not make it back?"

"Haha, very funny. No, you'll survive, it's all the other drivers you need to watch out for round here..."

"Typical man driver, blaming all the others!" I giggled as he glared over at me.

"Um, who exactly is putting you up for the next two days? Keep this up and it won't be me..."

"Aww, you know you love it really! But fine. You're the exception to the typical man driver rule. Happy?"

"Much!" He grinned smugly back as I tried and failed to contain my smile.

Less than ten minutes later, we turned off onto a winding country track. As we came around a copse of trees, Dave's house slowly turned into view - it was stunning. A huge sprawling country house, with at least three levels, and a huge garden around the back. I'd known that his family was fairly well off, but this was amazing!

I tried to hide my awe as I got out of the car, not wanting Dave to see. Luckily as soon as we went into the house I felt more at home - the building was amazing but obviously quite old, and the inside was your typical country house scene: wellies strewn everywhere, big winter coats hung up, and a large flagstoned kitchen with a glowing Aga. I heard the skittering of paws on the floor before a wave of yapping erupted and two beautiful collies flew round the corner and slid to a halt, staring at me in suspicion.

I knelt down on the floor and held my hand out to them, letting them come to me. As soon as they'd sniffed my hand and realised that Dave didn't seem threatened by me in any way, they jumped all over me. I grinned in pure happiness as I repeatedly told them how beautiful they were, being licked all over.

"Such a pushover!" sighed Dave as he picked up my abandoned suitcase and started climbing the stairs to my room. "Believe me, you'll have plenty of time to stroke them later, come on!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was sitting on the floor giggling away as eager tongues explored my face when Dave's mother walked in. Jumping to my feet, I introduced myself before getting stuck between whether I should go in for the handshake or a hug. Settling on an awkward little wave, she made my mind up for me as I was enfolded in a giant hug.

"Oh, Jane, it's so good to finally meet you! We've heard so much about you, it's wonderful that you could make it down for New Year."

I blushed a little. "It's really no problem at all, there was no way I was letting him go halfway across the world without a proper goodbye!"

"You're such a sweetheart. Now, has he been a good host? Has he offered you a drink, or a snack before dinner?"

Dave snorted. "Food? All Jane wanted was the dogs!" His mother gave him a look as he protested further, before with an exasperated air I was provided with a glass. We settled quickly into easy conversation about the holidays, before a bump at my knee made me look down and burst out laughing. The younger collie was sitting there with an expectant look on his face, with his lead in his mouth, and as I stared down at him he deliberately bumped my leg again.

"Think that's your cue, Dave! Take Jane out around the lake, give them a proper run and tire them out." His mother shooed us out of the kitchen, with the dogs excitedly prancing around us as they realised that walkies were actually happening.

Dave drove us out a short distance to a little car park next to a fairly large lake with a number of sailboats moored up at the edge. He noticed my gaze and nodded towards them. "We own one of those, actually."

"You own a boat as well? How much posher can you get?" I teased him. "Seriously though, I didn't know you could sail!"

"Ha, well there's a reason for that - I definitely can't! It was something my older brothers always did with my dad, he could never get me out on the water as a kid."

We wandered along the rough path, laughing as the elder collie repeatedly tried to pick up stones from the path before dropping them in favour of 'better' ones. It reminded me of my collie, Isla - collies always seemed to pick up odd compulsive habits for no apparent reason. In Isla's case, it manifested when we moved her kennel from behind my parent's bedroom to the bottom of the garden. We'd had this wendy house on stilts, with a large space underneath that a kid could easily stand upright in. As we were now all grown, the wendy house was rarely used, and so dad converted the area underneath into a kennel with a little flagstoned area, and contained with a fabric net so that she could still see outside into the garden.

Dad was so proud when we put her to bed that night - which only turned into consternation when we got up the next morning to find her lying outside the back door. A quick investigation found the method - a chewed hole in the net. Hence replacement of the fabric net with wire netting. However, same thing the next night - albeit with a slightly more painful grin from Isla. Next step - getting thick wire netting with very small holes so that she couldn't bite into it - for her safety as much as keeping her in the kennel overnight.

For the next few nights everything seemed fine. Every morning we'd go down to the kennel and she'd be sitting inside, waiting to be let out. Bring on the weekend - and suddenly she was back to greeting us at the door. However - this time there was absolutely no indicator of how she'd escaped. Netting in place, door tightly shut - we'd somehow become the owners of the genuine canine Houdini. The battle continued for a few months further between dad and Isla, with the kennel being constantly upgraded and Isla mysteriously beating all improvements, until mum caved and started letting her sleep in the nice warm conservatory every night. And who says humans are the clever ones?

Dave's collie finally decided on a stone he liked, and with a happy toss of the head ran into the lake to chase the younger. Dave laughed, and started telling me about how when he was a puppy, they had to repeatedly take him to the vet's to remove all the stones in his stomach. We continued sharing stories until we suddenly hit upon the topic of holidays.

"Oh, that reminds me! You know I said I'd come visit you?"

He scrunched up his face. "Oh god, yeah, how could I forget about that horrible threat?"

"Yeah yeah, you know you'll miss me. Anyway, I was thinking, instead of me coming to Philadelphia... how about we make it a holiday for both of us? You'll be in Philadelphia for half of the year anyway, and there's so many amazing places in America to visit, so we might as well make the most of it!"

"Yes! That's such a good idea! We could go to Chicago, or Boston..."

"Or, I was thinking, maybe even somewhere like Hawaii!"

He stopped and gave me a look. "Uh... how far away do you think Hawaii is from Philadelphia?"

I returned the funny look. "Surely not that far. You'd just have to nip across the country and then it must be quite close to the coast, right? And internal flights are so cheap in America!"

He shook his head at me in disbelief. "I can't... Yeah, I'm not explaining that one, I'll let you look up the costs and how long it takes and then come back to me on that one... Maybe a better idea is going south along the east coast, there's always Miami and New Orleans, all that area..."

"Oh!" I exclaimed, a thought coming to me. Dave mock covered his eyes, already despairing of whatever suggestion I had.

"Oh shh, this is actually a good suggestion! Philadelphia is quite north, right?"

Dave cautiously nodded.

"Well, how about heading up to Canada? Isn't Toronto quite near the border?"

His face lit up. "Wait, that is a good idea! And then we can go see Niagara Falls as well, that was on my list of things to go see whilst I'm out there!"

I started getting excited too. "Yes! And I've always wanted to go to Canada, I'm even thinking of looking for oil and gas jobs out there maybe, so it would be amazing! Plus don't they have that really tall tower you can eat in? We should have a super duper fancy meal up there and pretend to be really posh - except it won't actually be pretending for you..."

"You, stop it!" He pushed me off the path and into the muddy bog, laughing as I gasped at the cold slime creeping into my trainers.

"Oh, you did not just do that!" I chased after him down the path, determined to get revenge one way or another.

Festive Perfection

As the train pulled away from Edinburgh, it felt like all of the stress and tension of the last semester was draining out of me. I had two books and my mp3 player ready to distract me over the next three hours until home, but before I knew it my eyes had closed, and I'd passed out into a dreamless sleep.

A buzzing in my pocket woke me up. Squinting outside, I saw that we were almost at my home station. The buzzing turned out to be a message from my mum, just letting me know where she was parked. I'd also missed a few snapchats from Bob and the others - from the sounds of it, the bar crawl was going very very well.

As the train slowed down, I double checked I had everything on me and hauled my bags out onto the platform. Walking around the station building, I immediately saw my mum waving from the car. I ran over and dumped my stuff in the back, before climbing into the front seat and leaning straight over to give my mum a hug.

"Hey, you! Someone's glad to be home!"

"You have no idea..." I muttered into her shoulder, surreptitiously wiping a few tears away.

I was quite happy to let mum chatter away on the drive home, filling me in on the local community and what everyone had been up to since summer. Living out in the country, the village grapevine was thriving and well, meaning nothing ever stayed secret for long. On the other side, whenever anything bad happened, it meant you had an entire community immediately there to help. In the summer, when my neighbour's barn had burned to the ground due to an electrical fault, they could hardly move for all the offers of help that had poured in.

I felt myself begin to truly relax as we wound up the country roads towards our house. I'd missed the countryside so much - as a city, Edinburgh is beautiful, but it doesn't hold a patch to the forests and rolling hills of my home. Every house we passed was lit up by Christmas lights, adding yet more beauty to the landscape.

When we opened the front door, the house was silent apart from a sliver of light from under the living room door. I went to drop my bags off in my room first - I knew once I sat down in there, I wouldn't be moving for the rest of the evening. I'd just shrugged off my backpack when I heard running steps behind me and two forces rugby tackled me onto my bed.

"Jaaaaaane! You're home!"

Laughing, I wriggled out from underneath Peter and Alyssa and started messing up their hair. "I am! Finally!"

"Come on, hurry up, you need to come through to the lounge!" They both grabbed my hands and pulled me down the corridor.

Going into the lounge was every bit as amazing as I'd been dreaming of. There was tinsel on every picture frame, and Christmas cards adorned every shelf - and the tree, oh the tree was beautiful - filling up the corner of the room, glowing softly with its multicoloured lights and every inch of it covered with decorations. The fire was roaring and the scent of pine floated through the room. It was perfect, and as my dad enfolded me in a giant bear hug, everything seemed to hit at once and I started sobbing into his jumper.

"Hey, hey, it's OK, you're home!" Dad led me over to the sofa and let me lie down and cuddle into him, as Alyssa and Peter stared at me in worry.

"Sorry - I'm OK, I really am - they're happy tears, honestly. I'm just so glad to be home. These past few months have been awful. I'm just so happy to be home and able to relax and actually sleep for three weeks!" I smiled and tried to wipe away the tears from my face as mum opened the door. Isla came bounding into the room, and made a beeline for my sofa as soon as she noticed me. I couldn't help but giggle as she enthusiastically started licking my face clean.

Moving onto the floor so I could properly cuddle her, I noticed Alyssa and Peter impatiently waiting with something behind their backs.

"Surprise! We kept your Christmas decorations for you!"

"And not just one - Peter liked one, but I liked this other one better, and as you missed putting up the tree we thought you deserved two." Alyssa held out something sparkly to me in her hand.

It was a family tradition with us - every year, each of us kids got a new decoration to put up. It meant our tree was always a glorious hotch-potch of mismatched, weird and wonderful decorations telling a story of places visited, of unique decorations found and of whatever theme had been the craze that year (leading from three tiny sparkling Harry Potter lightning bolts, to the Frozen Planet year where we each had a polar bear, a penguin and a narwhal decoration between us).

Alyssa's decoration for me was a gorgeous, delicate shimmering collection of snowflake strands, tinkling against each other. Peter's was a fluorescent green shimmering orb with a picture of a collie on it. I adored them both, and pulled both of them into a giant hug with the dog in the middle, feeling perfectly content.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Christmas morning passed in a wonderful blur of Santa presents, helping mum in the kitchen and taking the dog for a walk with dad. I know I'm a bit old for Santa presents, but having two younger siblings, my mum always feels she can't not provide me with something to wake up to in the morning. As Alyssa and Peter have grown older and more appreciative of lie-ins, I've slowly become the person to get up first on Christmas morning to help mum stuff the turkey.

After Christmas lunch, we settled down in the lounge, stomachs full to bursting, to swap our family presents. To keep Isla happy, she always got to 'open' hers first, which mainly involved us half opening the wrapped bones and treats until she could smell them, and then she generally took care of the rest. This year we'd also bought her a new bed, which she immediately curled up on with a bone in the middle of the room.

I'd bought Alyssa a pair of book-themed earrings from Etsy, with the character names 'Tess' and 'Angel' from Tess of the d'Urbervilles in each ear - it was one of her favourite books and she adored the BBC adaptation with Eddie Redmayne as Angel.

For Peter, he'd been joking with me for ages about stealing Dave's giant beanbag from the flat to give to him, so I'd actually found him one of those 'gamer chair' beanbags that support your back whilst you sit on them. It was in a massive box, so we hadn't actually put it under the tree, and I had to go carry it in from my room. It was completely worth it for the look on his face - both when I entered with this giant box, and when he opened it to find his beanbag inside.

Time flew past for the rest of the afternoon enjoying our gifts and playing board games. I nipped back to my room for a second to check my phone and reply to all the Christmas well wishers. Working through all the generic 'Merry Christmas' messages, I hit across one from Bob: Ahh! Doctor Who in an hour!

Checking the timestamp on the text, I realised it was less than ten minutes until it came on. Jumping off the bed, I ran down the hall into the lounge.

"Guys! Doctor Who time! Ten minutes!"

Peter whooped and high fived me, whilst Alyssa made a face.

"No, do we really have to? It's Christmas, who wants to watch some stupid sci fi programme, let's watch a film..."

Dad ruffled her hair from behind. "Come on Ally, it's a Christmas tradition! And we'll watch a film after, your choice..." Slightly placated, she leaned back against dad and was soon absorbed back into her book.

I lay down on my stomach in front of the fire with a cushion to rest my arms on, soaking up the heat. My phone buzzed again: Are you ready...?! 

I grinned to myself and quickly typed back. Yes! Who do you take me for? Wouldn't miss this for anything!

He texted back straight away. Well, hobbits are very hard to predict at times...

Peter looked up as I giggled, and shared a look with Alyssa.

"Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!"

I glanced up in confusion. "Uh... why exactly are you guys beeping?"

They dissolved into laughter. "It's the Bob alarm!"

"Yeah, every time you talk about him, or start texting him, the Bob alarm goes off!"

I frowned at them. "Well, how do you know I'm even texting him now?"

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. "Fine. Who are you texting?"

I blushed deep red and looked down.

"Knew it! Beep beep beep!"

Luckily at that point the Doctor Who theme music started, and dad shushed everyone before they could say any more. Clearly, though, I needed to get more of a control on how much I talked about Bob - not exactly a good mark in the 'I'm completely over him' argument I'd been trying to convince myself of for so long.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before I knew it, the holidays had flown past to my next major landmark - my birthday. Having a birthday between Christmas and New Year was something people always assumed I'd be upset about - after all, what about all those joint presents I must get? And what about the fact that no one was ever around?

Luckily, as my gran had a birthday on Boxing Day, my mum had been raised with the very strong mentality that giving joint birthday/Christmas presents was never acceptable. It was true that people were never around - but honestly, I liked just spending the day with my family and getting full control over the dinner menu. I went through phases of what birthday cakes I wanted: when I was younger, I had a bone cake made from swiss rolls and white fondant icing for a good four years, before graduating to 'fish cakes' decorated with white chocolate buttons. Recently, I'd formed a little obsession with my mum's pecan pie, and I'd been craving it for months. Not the most orthodox 'birthday cake', but it is the one day I can't be judged!

And this year, it wasn't going to be a completely relaxing day anyway. I had train tickets booked for 7am tomorrow to head down to England, to spend New Year with Dave before he left. On one hand I couldn't wait - I'd never met his adorable dogs, and it would be fantastic to have some revision stress-free time together. On the other hand I didn't want tomorrow morning to ever arrive... The thought of not seeing Dave again until September killed me a little inside. What would I do without my best friend and flatmate to keep me entertained in the evenings? Who would I feed all my failed culinary creations to? Who would I have to give me tough love when I needed it? It felt like a little piece of my heart was going to leave with him.

A hand waving in front of my face brought me back to earth.

"Calling Jane, calling Jane, is she there? It's our turn!"

Grinning, I took the box of cards from my mum and turned to face Alyssa and Peter. I'd got the board game Articulate for my birthday, and we were absolutely loving it.

"OK, the topic is places... let's go!" Mum quickly turned over the timer, as Alyssa and Peter waited for me to start explaining. "Right, it's a big bit of water, not an ocean or a lake but somewhere in between-"

"A sea!" Peter exclaimed.

"Yes! But a particular one, it's a colour..."

"Red Sea! Red Sea!" I shook my head at Alyssa. "No, the other one! Other colour!"

"Green sea! Blue sea! Purple sea!" I started laughing helplessly, frantically waving to indicate Alyssa should keep going. Peter rolled his eyes. "Seriously, Alyssa! Black Sea!"

"Yes!" I put the card down and kept going. We managed to get three right before the timer ran out, which wasn't bad considering my particularly awful geography knowledge.

As dad picked up the cards, we all turned to face him in anticipation.

"Any reason they're all staring at me like that...?" Dad muttered to mum next to him.

She laughed and patted his shoulder. "Let's say you have a rather... unusual... way of thinking, dear. It's fine though, I've not been with you over 25 years without learning how your brain works! Let's thrash them!"

They were also on places, so shaking my head at my mum's competitive spirit, I turned the timer over and set dad off.

"OK, it's a place." He paused and looked at mum expectantly.

"Yes, I get that, keep going!"

"We've been there." He paused again, whilst mum stared back in frustration. "Go on, guess!"

"You've not exactly narrowed it down! Scotland? England? France? Italy? Australia?"

Dad was shaking his head. "No, no, you're miles off. I had them in the World Cup sweepstake we did."

"What, the one we did six months ago where you had six different countries?!"

At this point all three of us kids were in hysterics.

"Dad - what even...?" gasped Alyssa before the laughter took over again.

"Shhh, you're wasting our time! Jamaica?"

Dad nodded energetically. "Closer! What's next to Jamaica? Big country!"

Mum stilled and looked at him in disbelief. "Please tell me you've not been trying to describe America." Peter and I looked at each other and crumpled against the sofa, almost in tears from laughing so hard.

"Yes!" Dad grinned and threw the card down as the timer ran out.

"Dad - literally anything - stars and stripes, Obama as president, Washington as capital? Next to Canada? Anything!" I wiped the tears from my eyes, my full stomach hurting from all the laughter.

At that point the dog, woken up by all the hilarity, ran over to dad and jumped up to lick his face. He put an arm around her and tickled her ears, pulling her close. "You appreciate me and my logical thinking, don't you Isla? Even if that lot don't!"

I leaned back against the sofa and smiled as the teasing continued. This is why I loved my birthday being where it was - I had my family, my dog, and my home, still filled with the smells of the Christmas tree, the wood burning in the fireplace and the lingering aroma of gorgeously cooked food. How could any birthday be better than this?

Author's Note: Apologies

Hi everyone,

I know I've been absent recently, but I should be back up and writing very soon!

There's no excuse for not updating sooner. The reason is that the past month went a little crazy - there were a huge number of job cuts at work, plus lots of travelling for training. In addition... for the first time since my best friend broke my heart a year and a half ago, there was a guy I was interested in. There were so many red flags, but every time I questioned if he was really ready for a relationship, he'd convince me to see where it went, or tell me that the last thing he wanted to do was hurt me. And I fell for him hard and fast, completely head over heels, and in between the work madness I've been spending every free minute with him.

Untill yesterday, when he suddenly decided that I had been right and there was too much going on in his life for any form of relationship. I'm running on very little sleep and it was a horrible day at work, but now I'm finally home I think I'm OK. Even if I'm not, I will be.

And the good news is that I will have a lot more time to start writing again now, so hopefully next post will be up this weekend. This guy will eventually work into the blog one way or another and you'll learn all (although there is a LOT of drama to come first!). All I can do is apologise for the hiatus and for not giving an explanation sooner.