January the first and second.

January the first was a quiet day. As no one went to bed before 4.00am no one was up before 11.00am. The day was off to a slow start and no one wanted to do very much at all. It is one of life's experiences to stay up late, but the days when you could stay up and then continue as normal the next day are long gone. This doesn't only apply to us in our sixties but also to those in their thirties.
Zoe very kindly volunteered to go to the supermarket and brought back a hot cooked chicken and some very good bread, so brunch was a great hot chicken and salad sandwich.
After brunch every settled o. The sofa and seemed disinclined to do very much at all. As a result we sat and watched two films. The first was Hugo, a very different film from Martin Scorcese . However we all enjoyed rut immensely.
The second film was the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a very sad and thought provoking film, which on reflection was perhaps not the best film to watch on New Year's Day. Another way of looking at this was that it started the New Year making you think about what has happened in the past. There are certainly issues in this film which should never be forgotten. Anyway at the end of the film we were a little depressed so we watched a recording of Phil Jupitus doing a stand up routine which cheered everyone up a little.
The second day of the New Year was also a little lethargic. Zoe went off to the airport to collect Mark, a friend of theirs and on her return made very one a bacon salad sandwich for breakfast. The rest of the morning was spent chatting and lunch was a grazing board of cheeses and cold meats, including a supposedly spreadable salami, which was anything but spreadable. In the afternoon, David, Mark, Rosemarie and I popped into Manly to look for some sandals for me. The cheap sandals I bought in Portugal are wearing out. This is partly because I have worn them almost every day since we left home. We couldn't find any sandals but we did find a pint of beer. We sat in the wharf bar in Manly watching a motor boat trying to pick up a passenger from the pier. After several near misses they succeeded in getting close enough for the man to leap from the wharf to the boat. It provided us with about thirty minutes of entertainment.
We had a great evening meal of spicy lamb and retired to our beds.