On A Winning Streak

We've had a bit of luck recently. That comes as a nice change after month after month of no numbers on the National Lottery and a complete inability to pick a winner on Betfair. We went to the Framlingham Residents' Association Christmas party last Friday and were lucky enough to have one of the first numbers out of the bag in the raffle. Local businesses and supporters of the Residents' Association had been extremely generous and I had a host of excellent prizes to choose from but as soon as I saw the Aveda gift set donated by the excellent Carley Hill Hair I needed to look no further.

I must thank the Association for putting on such a lovely evening for next to nothing (£10 including food and music). We joined in singing some carols and were entertained by local musicians Intermezzo with some classical pieces and the lovely Damselflies who performed a series of traditional Suffolk folk and improvised dance. The highlight of the event for me was James Hutchison Jazz (above). James, a local student can regularly be seen performing on Market Hill in Framlingham. He's an excellent musician and, now that he has teamed up with an equally excellent singer, maybe we'll see them follow in our other local songsmith Ed Sheeran's footsteps and hit the big time. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Back to the winning streak. About Fram provides an excellent weekly mail shot highlighting local events and promotions and, amongst other things, also produces a regular printed About Fram booklet. These booklets usually contain a competition with some outstanding prizes and I always send in an entry. The last edition featured an article about the wonderful ham produced by Emmett's of Peasenhall who've been making ham in Suffolk since 1820. The prize was a huge black glazed ham and I couldn't believe my luck when About Fram contacted me to tell me that I was the winner. I went to pick it up today from their super shop. What a fabulous prize! You don't have to live in Suffolk to enjoy Emmett's excellent produce. You can order direct check out their website here.

Collecting my prize from Emmett's proprietor Mark Thomas

It's been a few weeks since my last blog as we've been in Scotland and you know what that means - no internet. Except, to be honest that's not true anymore. Although the Caravan Connect internet is still impossible to use, 4G has found its way to Craigtoun Meadows and by linking the Mac to the iPhone and buying extra minutes on GiffGaff we've got a fairly workable solution to the caravan internet drought. I didn't have time to blog as we kept ourselves pretty busy while we were in St Andrews.



While Suffolk was enjoying brilliant sunshine and bitter cold we were experiencing milder but more overcast conditions. It didn't deter us from having a great time visiting the family.

For once the two little princesses discarded the Disney dresses and dressed for the great outdoors.

We went to Muddy Boots, a local farm and play barn attraction and chose a Christmas tree.

Which Melody and Rose had a wonderful time decorating.

We had some quality time playing with and reading to the girls. All too soon it was time to get back in the car and make the long journey home. We were lucky enough to have two very smooth journeys and did the five hundred mile trip in about seven and a half hours both times.




























I'm not going to write much about politics - it only gets me into arguments but I was interested to see while in Fife that, whilst I am criticised for wanting a second referendum on the basis of a lying Leave campaign and the shambolic government handling of the outcome, nobody was calling these Scottish Independence campaigners treacherous or traitors despite their referendum result at 55/45 being far more clear cut.