catching up

Just back from a weekend down south* catching up with folk and generally chilling out... OK "chilling out" might not be entirely accurate: I spent most of the weekend helping my folks convert the top most bedroom in their house from an essentially unused space into a new master bedroom (they'd already done most of the hard work, I just helped out building flat-pack furniture.)

Somehow the whole clan (me, my two siblings and their respective partners) seem to have settled into the same visiting pattern and without any conspiracy this weekend saw all five of us converge on the ancestral home. I love that the world is small enough for that to work out like it does - in spite of the inevitable smattering of sibling friction (sorry 'bout that Al) it's always great to see everyone.

Sunday afternoon I spent running about catching up with some old friends including Carol who I'd not seen in ages and whose kids Lauren and Katie are easily twice the size they were when I last saw them - Lauren drew me a picture look:



...I suppose most people would stick it to their fridge but I'm not most people. At Carol's I also met the infamous "missus" aka Andrew - the man who's making an honest woman of one of my oldest and best friends this summer. For the record C'rol I wholeheartedly approve - he's lovely.

Going back to Doncaster always has a kind of restorative effect on me which is strange given how much travelling it necessitates and how busy the weekends always are. Dad once suggested it's because there's a restorative quality to feeling that you belong. I think he's absolutely right, and I'm lucky that I do quite a lot of belonging.

*It's only just stopped feeling strange to me to refer to the North of England as "down south" even though 'home' has been a good way north of there for almost a decade now.