Well, Christmas has come and gone, and apart from cooking for three, we didn’t really notice it to be honest. It has been so quiet!
Traffic on the motorway going down to MOH on Christmas Eve was pretty sparse on our side. The weather was atrocious, and there was a serious accident on the other carriageway blocking two lanes where a car had overturned, we think possibly due to aqua-planing. It was quite surprising the number of people driving without headlights or at high speeds in such bad conditions.
Driving through Bristol was equally quiet and the journey only took us an hour and a half instead of an hour and forty five minutes.
In MOH’s village, there was hardly any traffic going up or down the hill on Christmas Day, no-one walking their dogs, and apparently little activity anywhere else. He said there had been no carol singers and even the closest town had lacked the Salvation Army Band from previous years.
Coming home, I was dreading Bristol bearing in mind the hordes of people who would be cramming the shops and car parks in search of multiple bargains in the Boxing Day Sales.
The media had suggested thousands of frantic manic excited shoppers and tens of thousands of pounds being spent.
Er, where?
We were through Bristol and the city centre in less than ten minutes.
Traffic on the M32 was scant, joining the M4 a doddle, and the M5 was no busier than a dual carriageway!
We were back at the house within an hour and a half, and that included a quick trip into the supermarket for bread and a sandwich filler!
This morning I took the dog out before it really started to rain, and despite the time (8.40) I saw no-one. Not a single person, dog, cat, or bird, and only one car on the road.
Having our breakfast in the conservatory at the back of the house where the garden is adjacent to the main road here, again there was very little noise, and we had really noticed the difference compared to being on the boat.
I know we said we were going to have a quiet day today, but there’s quiet, and there’s
pensitivity101 
How did the media get it so wrong (ie. expecting hoards of shoppers? Is it the weather keeping everybody home then? So are you guys still house sitting? Sounds like you’ve started to acclimate to the noise you have @ the boat..and maybe it’s just a wee too quiet. I remember people telling us, they’d grown up close to a railroad track and missed the nightly rumble of the trains, because for them, that was normal.
I have no idea. We saw coverage of the London sales and heard that there could be similar scenes elsewhere, but in Bristol it just didn’t happen. Maybe everyone’s gone today or the shops will be packed tomorrow. Even the supermarket on the way back was quiet, and they were due to close at 4pm. I could have got Hubby a huge chocolate snowman for £2, big tins of chocs for £3, and basically anything really yummy and bad for us in the goody line for a fraction of the price before Christmas. Maybe people have finally realised that all that’s plastic isn’t gold.
Yep, we are still house sitting, though check on the boat every day. The water level continues to rise (currently 3.44 metres up from 2.8 metres this morning), and even the ducks have moved venue to the other side of the river! We did see two cormorants in the marina diving for fish this afternoon. Maggie is a bit confused as she’s getting her toes wet on the dog walk! Things are very quiet down there anyway as a lot of people seem to have gone away.
Sometimes the medis gets it wrong. This might not mean much to you. But after election the morning papers headline read Dewey wins the election. He didn’t Truman was re-elect by a landslide.
Oh, I love that!
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