Dry January

So Dry January seems to be the buzz phrase at the moment. My alcohol intake is not that high that I feel the need to participate. However, I have found January this year to be rather dry and boring without resorting to abstaining from alcohol. Here in the UK the daily news is Brexit, Brexit and more Brexit. Sometimes the problems in Venezuela get a mention, or maybe the goings on in the USA, or the antics of the yellow vests of France. Last week Prince Philip hit the headlines, which made a change, but now that he is back behind a safety belt he is no longer news.

The other issue which is a big yawn is veganism. At the moment every newspaper and magazine sems to have an article about vegan food or vegan cosmetics or something else vegan. A vegan diet must be so boring. Where is the enjoyment in life if you only eat plant material? Sister in law gave us some vegan chocolates for Christmas. They are in the cupboard. We haven't eaten them yet.

Then we come to social media. What did we do before it took over? We read books, spoke to on another, watched TV or went to the cinema, theatre or the pub. I am not interested in Facebook or Twitter. I don't have time for either and I am not interested in reading about the minutiae of other people's lives and I am certainly not going to provide a running commentary to my daily life. Anyway it would be boring like Dry January! I went as far as opening an Instagram account, but it would not work. So that was the end of that.

The weather here has been anything but dry. We have had enough rain to waterlog our garden and on Tuesday and Wednesday we had snow and ice.

Yesterday I had another bum haircut and today I have a stiff neck from the hairdresser's wash basin. So I guess that I am looking for a new hairdresser. In the meantime, we are off to New Zealand to see husband's relatives. Me with a brown paper bag on my head.

Too close to home

Strangely yesterday afternoon I was fretting about the lopsided haircut that the hairdresser had given me the previous day and bemoaning the fact that we had moved to Cheshire from Surrey, where my lovely little hairdresser never seemed to make such mistakes, when I saw the headline on the BBC news website that a man had been stabbed on a train in Surrey. Initially I did not think too much of it. It was Surrey and we no longer lived there. Then husband who is always voracious for news read the report and to our horror it appeared to have happened at what had been our local railway station and what is more the victim had died.

We lived in the attractive village of East Horsley, which is situated between Guildford and Leatherhead. It is affluent, leafy Surrey with nice houses, many of them large. Residents in general are professionals, who commute up to London from Horsley by train, as did my husband for several years.

The incident happened between Guildford and Clandon, which is the stop before Horsley, where the culprit got off the train and legged it, meaning that a very dangerous individual was at large in the area. The police have now arrested someone and hopefully it is the culprit.

Thankfully last night, 200 miles away, we slept soundly. I wonder how many in that area of Surrey were so fortunate.

More information on this story can be found on the BBC news website

Happy New Year!