Monday saw another change of locality as I wooshed west to the A1 then up to Durham to catch Tony & June again. I settled in and enjoyed a cuppa before driving up to Low Fell (via McD’s) to see Jon – who I met when we delivered newspapers for the same shop a scary number of years ago.

Once upon a time, he was a tall kid who did karate and could kick your ass. Now he’s a tall guy with a degree in Chiropractics who works on the Newcastle United first team. And who could probably still kick your ass. And if he couldn’t his younger brother, Ian, definitely could. A shame Ian wasn’t around as it would have been nice to see him as well.

We chewed the fat and watched Family Guy for a couple of hours, then I had to head back to Durham.

Waking at a reasonable hour for once, I packed up and thanked my kind hosts once again. My next stop was to have my gob examined by another ex-schoolmate who now happens to be my dentist.

Simon gave my pearly whites the all clear (amazingly), and then kindly treated me to lunch down at the Gold Medal (formerly Porcupine Park, formerly the Gold Medal – yes, you read that correctly). I forced down a rather large Thai chicken pie with far too much veg and mash – delicious – then squeezed my overloaded carcass into the car for the journey up to Scotland.

I decided to pop in and see Leah again, and was fed a rather tasty baked potato with Mexican sauce-smothered beans. We surfed through rather bad TV and crashed out quite early. A good night, really – and just what I needed after the rush of the previous few.

Wednesday and Thursday were catch-up days with paperwork gone through, credit cards canceled, cheques deposited, blog postings written and Hallowe’en all but ignored. In fact, I’m only dating this post as the 31st so I can pop on that rather cool picture of Leah’s neighbour’s pumpkin!