Back from Chesterfield. Lots of Catching Up to do.

Friends ReUnited.


Can it be January 26th already? I guess it must be. I'm back in sunny Ireland from rainy Chesterfield! What a hectic time we seemed to have had.

On the Saturday, we all got up rather late. Someone woke me and I staggered into K's bedroom and collapsed on the bed! K lay down too but was a good girl and went and had a shower while I had another 5 minutes. Look what she did though!


That's me, in K's splendid nightshirt. I loved it.

Luisa made egg, bacon, sausages and toast and it was delicious. K and I headed over to Matlock, where I used to live, with the idea of looking up two friends. I didn't expect the first one to be home as she probably works on Saturdays, I thought. However, we took a chance on it and, having knocked on the wrong door, finally found the right one. I could see Ann sitting on the settee with her back to the window.

Ann Elliott

Ann and I worked together for several years in the NatWest bank. We hit it off straight away. She has a wicked sense of humour and I always think she should be on the television as she is a great storyteller. The best times we had were when we both ran the little sub branch of the NatWest Matlock, called Darley Dale. It only needed 2 members of staff and for a long time it was us two.

We used to do the crossword in the paper and drink copious cups of tea and coffee. You couldn't technically leave the branch so we took it in turns to have our lunch. Ann is a Brownie Leader and sometimes she would bring in a craft project for us both to try. 'If you can do it, the brownies should be able to' was her reasoning! So we made daffodils and snowdrops amongst other things! The customers loved us and all in all we those times at Darley Dale were some of the best in my banking life.

So after all that, Ann and I had a wonderful, surprise catch up, laughed a lot and chatted non-stop for over an hour! Poor K just sat and watched, smiling to herself and patting Chloe, Ann's very large brown Labrador. She also took some lovely photos of us:

Ann had some photos of some people I knew on a holiday to Spain. It was fun seeing them again if only in the photos. Her tales of the holiday had me in stitches.

Finally it was time to go, so K took one last one of us having a hug:

Chloe the dog wanted to join in of course. I love this photo. Note we both took our glasses off!

We drove to see another friend Brenda, who is on Facebook, but sadly she wasn't there. I had stayed so long at Ann's that we had to drive back to Chesterfield as we were going out for a meal in the early evening. So I didn't take any photos while we were out at all!

In the evening we drove to a pub where they served a wonderful carvery meal at a reasonable price. When we reached the pub, K's 2 older children, Kirsty and Tony, were there already. Kirsty is engaged to be married to Kerry, who has a son Kyle and they were there too. We had to sit at 2 tables sadly, but were quite close. Kerry was funny and Kyle, although a bit shy at first, soon relaxed and I think he enjoyed himself. Kirsty, Kerry and Kyle brought me a lovely bouquet of flowers.

We were soon tucking into our amazing roast dinner:


Look at that huge Yorkshire pudding! This was Kirsty's plate.


This is our table. L - R, Kerry, Kirsty, Lina, Tony, K and my chair!

And the rest! Rachel, Luisa, Kyle, Aimee and Amy!! (The 2 Aimees are friends).

Outside the pub, they had some pretty lights:

It all looked a bit like Christmas.


K asked a young lady to photograph us all. It didn't flash but K fiddled around with it and I rather like the atmospheric effect of this.

I'm at the back with all the hair!

I'll finish off my holiday posts tomorrow.