Nostalgia

Life is trundling along here, work is going ok. We have a new locum at work, which might mean I get a chance to take some time off at the end of this month, which would be great!
The car I have at work sort of fell apart a couple of weeks ago, (well, it is a Ford after all, can't expect much better I suppose). the gear box needed replacing, (and that has nothing to do with me putting 20L of unleaded fuel into it's diesel tank a week or so before - how dumb can you feel?????!:). So I had to put up with driving a brand spanking new peugeot 307 around for two weeks! It was lovely to drive, but now I have gone back to the old Maverick, complete with new gear box and three new tyres. :(
I made the most of having the Peugeot and drove over to Chesterfield, which is about 20 minutes from here, and caught up with Lee, a friend from uni, on her last day there before she moved onto her next locum position. WE checked out the markets and looks around the cathedral with the crooked spire, which Chesterfield is famous for. Apparently it was built in a bit of a hurry several centuries ago and they didn't wait for the wood to dry properly, so as it dried out over time, the whole spire has spiralled a little bit. it looks quite precaious but is so tightly joined now that it wouldn't fall down very easily at all!
I then drove further south to 'Fenny Drayton' the village where my Grandparents used to live. It was where my family stayed the times we came out on holiday, the last of which was about 13 years ago, so it was really quite surreal to be there again. I saw my Grandma's old house, which has had some extensions on the front, and the little park where we used to play with some other kids in the village, and where I saw snow for the first time. Lots of little memories came flooding back, and driving myself around, places were all connected up so they made more sense. I dropped in on a friend of my Grandma's and my mum's (and now mine as well!), who used to live on the next door farm to my mum's family in a place called Bentley in Warwickshire. Mrs Farmer is a lovely lady, and absolutely loves animals, and worked at a vets for a while herself, so we sat and chatted for ages. There had been some really severe storms, which I had driven through on the way down, and there was not power in the Village, so we drove to the next town and got fish and chips for dinner.
I drove home feeling like I had reconnected with my mum's side of the family, and I will be back down that way again to see some more friends no doubt.