PhilHydePhotos: The Mad Family

There may be about seven billion people on this planet, but finding new friends amongst them is often somewhat of a problem.

Our brains dictate that we can only have up to 150 acquaintances, but these are not the same as friends. Annick reckons that she has over 260 Facebook friends, proving that she spends too much time in that alternate universe.

Close friends are rare, but it may just be that we’ve found some new ones.

Mad ones...

This New Year was a blast. To help it take-off, we stuffed our house to the brim with both decorations and people.

Enter Ruth and her mad family.

Some of you know Ruth. She also lives in an alternative universe.

Take this example; a neighbour came visiting the other morning. We were in the kitchen chatting, when in breezes Ruth. Well, I knew it was Ruth but there was a certain resemblance to something more dire. Face liberally coated with some bizarre coloured mud-pack, hair covered by a brightly coloured towel turban. Dressed in a mixture of pyjamas, drapes and other things bohemian, she stood there bemused at our shock as if this was the most normal thing in the world. I’m not sure what “Sacré Bleu! C’est un monstre hideux!” means, but that’s the last thing I heard as our neighbour ran screaming from the house.

With Ruth around, this sort of thing becomes the norm.

She had traveled across to us before Christmas with her daughter Jazz. That’s not Jazz in the photo above, honest. The trip from door to door for us takes five or six hours. For these two adventurers it took three days! Travelling from deepest darkest Wales is never quick, but this was close to a record. Getting to Bristol airport took them the normal 24 hours by bus, stopping over at a nearby hotel. The real problems started the following day, when all flights were cancelled in and out of the airport due to a small plane sliding off the end of the runway.

Apparently that is a bad thing.

Alternative flights were few and far between, but eventually we found one from Stansted to Carcassonne the next day. Another bus journey and hotel stopover later, they eventually took off.

Unfortunately they landed at the wrong airport.

I guess Ruth must have been giving directions.

On our arrival to pick them up from Carcassonne (not exactly around the corner for us) we were informed that the plane had landed in Perpignan instead!

Several hours later the coach from Perpignan arrived in Carcassonne. We celebrated with a visit to the old city.

Many hours later we finally arrived home.

Next to join us were some other old friends (by ‘old’ I mean that we’ve known them a long time, not that they are old. Although now you come to mention it...)

Finally arrived Ruth’s family, Chris, Andy and Marion to help us celebrate Ruth’s 60th, a barbecue on the veranda on New Year’s Eve!

There was also, of course, the obligatory snooker match. Chris fought gamely, having admitted that he was the world’s second worst snooker player. Which of course begs the question...

Paul played his usual blinder. At least, I assume that he had his eyes closed.

Whilst Andy, well, he just didn’t like losing.

The crowd looked on in amazement.

As part of our bonding procedures, we spent a day in St Cirq, mostly eating, but as this is meant to be a photo blog, here are some actual, gasp, photos...