October 09

October started with Dad's 65th Birthday. I met Mum, Dad, Sandra, Joan and Albert in Richmond after work on the Friday, having been in Huddersfield that day and we had a lovely dinner before going to the theatre. It was a West Country Theatre production called Home on the Range and the three actresses in it were very good and as seems to be common with their productions, very good use of very few props.

Saturday was the Amazing Praise concert, this year foolishly, I didn't start practicing until a week before and had a crisis of confidence and almost pulled out of it. Mum and I spent some time on the morning clearly marking the notes that I was going to play and which I was going to ignore. I think it worked quite well and I managed to get through it without too much embarrassment, thankfully there were two other cellists there so I managed to hide behind them. Next year must learn to say no, or have something already booked in for that weekend....

I finally had a week off work in October, having been the only one not to take much time off work over summer this was the first opportunity to take more than a day off at once. After I'd booked it in I needed to decide what to do with it so I of course, looked at who I could go visit and decided that Madrid in October would be nice so I set off to stay with Vicky for 3 nights. After arriving on the Saturday we went out for Ice Cream and cinema. Sunday was mainly sightseeing, trip on the funicular railway. There was a birthday party that Vicky wanted to go to for twins of a girl who had been helped by the pregnancy crisis service in Madrid that she volunteers as so we spent a couple of hours there. My main conversation was with a 5 month old girl as no one else spoke English but we were fine until someone else came for a cuddle with her and then I was left to play toys on my own. Monday Vicky was working for some of the time so I wandered round the gardens, read my book in the sun and then Tuesday morning we went to the cathedral and the royal palace.

I spent the rest of the week at Mum and Dad's, getting to catch up with quite a few people - dinner with Vicky and Ben and lunch with Carlie and Noah before joining them for Helen and Paul's Wedding. I think officially that makes me a wedding crasher but no one seemed to mind!