Up and at ’em! Painkillers, breakfast, check out of the hotel, cases stored for collection later, then to the NHNN for a final appointment with Joseph before going home.
Joseph was happy with the existing settings, no side effects emerging, so he left things as they were. We said goodbye, gave him a large chocolate cake to share round, and a card that simply said inside “This is a sample of my best handwriting” – something that Joseph had had me write many times before to assess my tremor/handwriting, and which was now improved beyond belief.
We collected our cases from the hotel, and headed off to Charing Cross to catch a train to Hither Green, where my wife’s car was waiting outside Fig Tree House for us.
We left a card and a box of chocs for John and Ruth, the owners of the B&B, and also paid a visit to my pal Gerry in his log cabin at the bottom of the garden. Loaded the car up with our luggage, and set off homeward around 1pm. Sat Nav said we should be home around 4.30pm, but it was after 6.30pm before we arrived. Not sure what happened, probably just sheer weight of traffic on the Friday afternoon of a bank holiday weekend, but we were in almost stationary traffic between the Blackwall tunnel and the M11 for a couple of hours.
We arrived back at Southrepps in heavy drizzle to find a small crowd in my back garden. My wife’s 2 sons, their girlfriends and her ex-husband and girlfriend had transformed the place while I had been in hospital. It had resembled a municipal tip beforehand, with stacks of tree half filling the space (from a 30′ Leylandii that I had had cut
down a couple of years before), an old bicycle, stove pipe and other assorted rubbish that I had nowhere else to store, and no energy or inclination to sort out. Now it was actually a garden, with flower beds, paving slabs that had emerged from beneath all of the crap, a garden table and chairs, bird table, new fencing panels to replace the ones that had expired, and gates that opened and closed!
We retired to our lounge, out of the drizzle. Two minutes later there was a knock at the door – it was the landlord of The Vernon Arms, clutching a bottle of champagne and two glasses – a gift from some of our neighbours who had seen us arriving home!
We decided to retire to The Vernon Arms so that I could buy them all a drink as a thank you for my fantastic garden. I managed to order the drinks, but wasn’t allowed to pay for them. The landlord bought the round – “I look at it as an investment, Ian” he said, “you aren’t shaking any more, so you’ll be able to drink more beer in future!”.
Everyone has been so kind.