Rachel's return

Bright, sunny and minus three when I woke up early this morning, keen to check on Rachel's flight. It was taxiing when I first looked on FlightRadar24 at eight, then a few minutes later, it was in the air over Phoenix, heading north west, all the way to the Canadian border, roughly three hours flight to Ontario and the Niagara Falls. It's a night flight for her with an early dawn heading east, then a long slow day in the air and on the ground.

Clare messaged me from town with a request to check if the Seville bitter oranges have arrived at 'The Fruit Bowl' greengrocer's shop at the top of Cathedral Road. Sure enough, boxes of them have arrived in the last day or so. I bought six pounds of oranges and three lemons, ready to turn into marmalade. A welcome home aroma for Rachel tonight.

I had lunch ready when Clare returned from town. After lunch, the first batch of oranges went into the pressure cooker. When I got back from an hour's walk in the park I took the pips out of the cooked oranges and chopped them into pieces ready for jam making. I saw Rachel's flight on FlightRadar24 enter UK air space and turn south in the vicinity of Morecambe Bay. Next time I checked the flight had landed at a quarter to six, more or less on time, although four hours later than scheduled. Getting to the coach station at Heathrow took her longer than expected and she missed the six thirty coach. Fortunately the next coach at ten to eight was an hour shorter than the others, getting in at twenty to eleven. 

While I waited I finished watching 'Freezing Embrace', and tried out a new English crimmie called 'Patience', which is about a young autistic woman who works in a criminal records office, who assists a Detective in solving crimes. It's an English clone of the French crimmie 'Astrid - Murders in Paris', the heroine is blonde too. It's not as warm or funny as the French original. The crimes investigated may be different, but the back stories of the protagonists are identical. Come to think of it, the English re-make of Professor T wasn't a patch on the Belgian original, same with the Swedish 'Wallander' series.

I saw Rachel's coach arrive when I was still a couple of minutes walk from the coach station. She was out of the drop-off area and coming to meet me when I arrived. We walked home up the Spine Road chatting madly and overjoyed to be reunited. So happy that everything had gone to plan. A very late night!