Every week on Friday morning I set out in our little car and pick up Alice and Hebe from their place, and we go first to Marks & Spencer and then to Sainsburys to get our groceries.
There used to be a bus from Silverhill (where Alice and Hebe live) to Marks & Spencer, but it took 40 minutes to get there (to Marks, not to the bus stop), and cost them £3 each way — so £12 in total. Then Stagecoach (the bus company) changed the routes, and moved the bus hub from by the depot in Silverhill down to the main railway station in Hastings, so the 99 bus going to Marks & Spencer from Silverhill still sets out from the depot in Silverhill, but doesn't actually stop there — it begins its official journey down in Hastings town centre. So now, if Alice and Hebe want to go to Marks & Spencer, they have to get two buses both ways, one down to the station and then another one to Bexhill, doubling their total expenditure on bus fares from £12 to £24, and increasing the journey time from 80 mins (40 mins each way) to two hours and ten minutes (an hour and five minutes each way).
It takes me about five or ten minutes to drive to their place, and about ten minutes to go from there to Marks & Spencer. There is no bus from Silverhill to Sainsburys, and it's a long and very tiring uphill walk. So we do both shops in one hit every week and it works very well.
Also I go to church on Sunday, have recently begun to attend a Bible study group, and sometimes go to the church coffee morning on a Tuesday (in the actual church).
That's the sum total of where I normally go in a week, apart from walking round the block for exercise and sometimes driving down to the sea to walk along the promenade in the summer months.
My youngest daughter lives down in Dorset. She works at a legal firm, and is also studying psycho-synthesis in London, which combination uses up all her time and all her money. She used to come back to see us on her birthday in June and at Christmas, but since she began her course she can no longer do this. I have driven down to Dorset once or twice, but it was inadvisable; the drive is too difficult for me — big, fast roads — only the constant vigilance of other drivers kept them and me alive.
A couple of years ago Rosie (my oldest daughter) paid for us both to go and visit her Dorset sister. It was lovely. We all stayed in a hotel, even my daughter who lives there, because her study course used up all her money so she could only afford the rent for a shed (I do mean that literally) and our visit meant she could stay in a proper room with a proper bed and sheets and a shower for two nights. But that all cost a great deal of money, so we never repeated it even though we had the most glorious time.
But tomorrow we are going there again. We — 'we' being Rosie and Hebe and me — saved up our money and booked a hotel room months in advance to get a cheap deal, and bought saver tickets in advance for the train journey, plus I have an old people's discount card for the railway and an old people's pass for free bus travel. Alice isn't coming with us; she has to stay at home because their cat Miguel is very old and frail and needs waiting on hand and foot by someone who Understands Him. Grace isn't coming because it's term time and though her kiddos are home-ed they need intensive taxi-ing around to all the things they do.
By now my Dorset daughter has more work hours and has been able to move out of the shed and into a proper suite of rented rooms in someone's house. Not before time — a branch was going across the steps to her shed, there were wasps nests in the walls and rats in the roof. She was glad to move out to somewhere with a proper kitchen and bathroom and bedroom.
So this time she doesn't have to come to the hotel too, which means the rest of us could afford to go.
We are so looking forward to it — only two nights, but let me show you where we're going!
The first night we are going to Winchester, which I have always wanted to see.
Our train gets in to Winchester in the afternoon, and at 5.30pm we'll go to Evensong at the cathedral.
I love the music of William Byrd.
Then straight after Evensong we've booked a table for supper at a restaurant in this 15th century rectory five minutes walk from the cathedral.
I can't remember what hotel we're staying in, because Rosie booked it all and that was ages ago, but it's just ten minutes walk from the restaurant.
The next day (Tuesday) we get a train to Bournemouth and then a bus to Wimborne Minster. We'll stay in the same place as last time we went, an 18th century coaching inn. This is the sign on their frontage.
We stayed before — and are staying again — in the converted stables at the back. They have been made into a row of lovely rooms, a bit like alms houses. You go under the arch from the street, and there they are.
This is one of the rooms. They're all different (but similar) and I don't know which one I'll be in this time.
If the timing works out we can go to Evensong at Wimborne Minster, which was founded in 705AD (though I think the present building is 12th century), and was a Benedictine convent for some years during its history.
But we might not, because after her work day is finished my daughter who lives there will join us, and maybe we'll be able to go and see the new place she's found to live.
We'll have supper — all four of us — just round the corner at The Olive Branch, a really lovely restaurant with a big inglenook fireplace.
Then a bus three-and-a-half miles to Bournemouth, and back on the train that goes along the coast, changing at Southhampton and Brighton, back to Hastings in time for supper on Wednesday.
I've been eating really carefully and taking all my (natural) meds. A couple of times I thought I wouldn't be well enough to go, but I think it's going to be all right — I surely hope so!
I love travelling. I used to go and visit my mother in Saffron Walden when she was alive, and a couple of times a year I used to go and stay in York, my favourite place. But though I have plenty of money to live comfortably, if I'm careful, it no longer stretches to anything like that, and my health has made it too difficult as well.
So this feels like a very special adventure. I think we're going to have the loveliest time.
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