and time marches on!

I'm not religous but even so our lives are still based heavily around the Christian calendar here in the UK, the biggest events being Easter and Christmas. Unless you live on Benbecular its pretty hard not to be affected by the retail frenzy each December and the one thing i enjoy at this time of year is visiting the Weihnachtsmarkt, whether in Germany/Austria or just here in Englandshire. The version put on in Brizzle is abysmal, prices are ridiculous, i mean, £6 for a sausage in a bun and £7 for half a cup of watered down 'mulled' wine. So i decided to go have a look at the much vaunted market in Bath, a mini adventure as i usually go by bike, on this occasion the bus got the job.

Thursday was cold and foggy so i wrapped up warm and close on two hours after setting out i headed into the shopping zone of Aquea Sulis, not sure what i'd find. It was quite busy once i reached the first bit of the market, not silly, think Saturday in any town back in the seventies. The crowd density did mean you could see the various wares on offer and there was hardly ant wait for food/beverages which, generally were much cheaper than Brizz. I paid £4 for a decent cup of 'mulled' wine which i thought was fair, then continued to explore the 100 or so stalls spread across the city's retail zone.

Well i didn't find anything i wanted to part cash for and there wasn't much of a seasonal atmosphere and not as much as a roundabout for the kids, i'd score it @ 3.5/5, Bristol got 1/5! I departed @ an hour and twenty after arriving and started the journey back.

Friday i took the bus to visit a local shopping estate with some specific purchases in mind, apart from a turkey lunch, i failed to find anything i wanted! Back in Fishponds i got everything i set out for in @ fifteen minutes! Which brings us to Saturday, another cold day but perhaps a little less damp in the air so i ended up doing a walk through the Frome valley with a sausage sarnie warming me around mid way.

You will have noticed the lack of two wheeled travel, well having already surrendered to missing my target i've been concentrating on recovery from the cold/flu of last weekend. Yes i've been out walking, dressed like Nanook it has to be said, but cycling drags the cold, dank air deep into your chest, the longer i delay doing that, the quicker my recovery - i really don't want to be nursing a cold when i head north next week.

Today i've cooked a semi roast dinner, pork loins, stuffed tomato's, veg, roast tatties and Yorkshire puddings, bit of a belly full but thats about it for the day. I'll go for a short constitutional in a bit, well you have to do some sort of exercise to keep mind and body together right?

The big thing today is of course the posting of a new Gaby chapter and today you get Collegiate Christmas, chapter 6 of Only Five Minutes. Its more coincidence than planning that these seasonal chapters are posted now, i hope you enjoy todays offering.

That wraps up todays post, i'll be back midweek with more tales of the expected,
Tschussie,
Madeline Anafrid